Fairy Tale

 

 

 Fairy Tale

Princess Moonzumi and Prince Heart-of-Ash

were betrothed as children through a looking glass.

She never knew him. He never saw her,

just a shadow that moved in the mirror's blur.

Prince Heart-of-Ash learned bard song and sword,

to jest with a blade and kill with a word.

Princess Moonzumi went out every day

to dance with the Sidhe where the dogwoggles play

 

down in the mud, up in the scud,

around the green tree that sheds no blood.

She knew every fae in the wild dark wood

and they taught her to fear the evil in good.

 

Princess Moonzumi and Prince Heart-of-Ash

were married in autumn when the east winds thrash

as the leaves fell like fire on earth's mirror-face,

and they loved each other for a year and a day.

 

Then Prince Heart-of-Ash took his sharp bright blade

down to the wood where the dogwoggles played.

The princess died like a mouse in the leaves

for a lie in the heart only ash could believe.

 

 

September 2022

posted for earthweal's

Ekphrasis Earth

 

 

 

and 

 

 

 

dVerse Poets'

Poetics: The Good and the Evil

Sidhe/SHē/noun, plural noun: Sidhe: the fairy people of Irish folklore, said to live beneath the hills and often identified as the remnant of the ancient Tuatha Dé Danann.

Note: I wrote the seed of this poem while running a fever a few weeks ago, but the prompts shaped it to final form. Apologies if I have stretched the boundaries a bit on what was requested.

 

 

Images: Mammal in Leaves, author unknown, courtesy of earthweal   Fair Use

They went hand in hand in the country that smells of appleblossoms and honey,  © Arthur Rackham, Irish Fairy Tales

 Fair Use

Things That Stay Behind

 

 

 

 

 

 

Things That Stay Behind

(A 55)

 

 

Things that stay

behind memory's cold coals:

 

child's slipping skates

clipped with a key,

grandfather's rough-work hand

velvet on cottonpuff cheeks;

the margin of wild

the great lake stole from concrete,

that wish washed blue home where

only gulls screamed;

how suddenly it came, the frayed

squall of your kiss

at high water

washing childhood away.

 

 

 

 

 

November 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for dVerse Poets

Poetics: Ekphrasis, Fay Collins,

a talent taken too soon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Sunset Squalls at Connemara, © Fay Collins  Fair Use

Vintage roller skates, Photo by Sam Figueroa via Flickr Creative Commons  Fair Use

 

Mystery On The Blue Train

 

 

 

 

Mystery On The Blue Train

(a 55)

 

 

There's mystery on the blue train;

Poirot's perplexed

at passion, soft skin, desire.

There's a heart of fire

burning before the snow falls

in the cemetery-silence

that flies behind eyes

in wind that plays

dead jazz in the night

in love slung over the bar

that snaps like crisp hangman's rope

when the body drops.

 

 

 

 

October 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 linked to dVerse Poets

Open Link Night

 

 

 

 

A 55 for Friday, and the G-Man (Homage to Christie)

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Interior view of a party at Zelli's nightclub, 16 Rue Fontaine, Montmartre, Paris, 1920s Fair Use

First edition cover,Mystery of the Blue Train, 1928  via wikipedia   Fair use, Link

January House

January House

Fierce-As-Red-Hair and Fly-As-A-Fox

from the liminal's edge came to pick the locks

dressed in their frills

for thrills and kills

they opened the door

and live here still.

Fly-As-A-Fox and Fierce-As-Red-Hair

can spin windershins and dance on green air

with nightshade brows

and bones of mouse

they climbed the steps of

the January house.

Fly and Fierce have a skull that sings

have pleated blue smocks and onyx rings

on the balcony standing with little sharp things

that gleam by moon's eye

where you cannot pass by

unless you dance

 with Fierce and Fly.

Don't splash through the mud where the lily nods.

Don't go to a church where you don't know the gods.

There's no time to pray

and the blood has its way

when Fierce and Fly

come out to play.

June 2020

 posted for

 The Sunday Muse

 Note: The flowering plant below the girls in this picture is agapanthus, or Lily of the Nile, native to South Africa. It is not a lily, and not from the Nile tho it does like a warm climate and a moist soil.

Image: color (not colorized) photograph from 1908, author unknown, manipulated

 

Camellia

Camellia

"...And a breath of lemon filled the vast moment/as the wind became a flower of gauze..."

~from Nocturnes from the Window, by Federico Garcia Lorca

I am behind the wall now

wearing red and a window.

I will be safe

if you see through me

only white sky, the almond tree

and grass.

I wore the mask til blood

stained through

the sting of a flower; it

told too much with its 

sibilant drip. That 

was not safe.

I am a camellia from

snow country, cut

at the stem, dying in aqua vitae,

a fragrance passing citrus

through your room. I will be safe

when the last petals

cover my cast off mask.

May 2020

posted for The Sunday Muse

I have also used several words from Kerry O'Connor's

Skylover Word List For May

Images: A Distant Future, © Raluca Caragea   Fair Use

Yellow Roses in a Vase, 1882, by Gustave Caillebotte, manipulated    Public Domain

Call of the Crow

Call of the Crow

The crow called,

What world is coming?

A world with no ease in the seeing

where the last battle

finds no ending, where gold eats up valor

where no sending of ravens

can swallow the feast.

The crow called,

what world do I see

where summer kills flowers

where kine have no milk

and die eating dust,

where women
gamble their worth,

and old men
bring false judgment;

where each child

is a reaver, each man

a betrayer,

blinding his own eyes;

 

where the sea can feed no one

not even a gull,

where poison is flowing

deep in the well.

The crow called,
I shall, I shall
see it all,

but no more

any world that is dear to me.

~April 2015

Poem 27 for April--unlinked, and a total self-indulgence.
Reposted and lightly re-edited today, December 27, 2019 for Sherry's last prompt
at 
The Imaginary Garden with Real Toads

Process notes: This poem is drawn directly from a 9th century(?) prophecy(below) I happened on that reminded me very strongly of the description of the final days before the Ragnarök in Völuspá. Bleak as these prophecies are, I also see them as vital warnings, informing us so perhaps their dire ends can somehow be averted, foretelling as they do elements of a personal disintegration which leads to the more universal one.

This prophecy is Celtic, and spoken by the goddess Babd, the war goddess aspect of The Morrigan, who often takes the form of a crow:

I  shall not see a world that will be dear to me.

Summer without flowers,
Kine will be without milk,
Women without modesty,
Men without valour,
Captures without a king.

... ... ...

Woods without mast,
Sea without produce,

... ... ...

Wrong judgments of old men,
False precedents of brethren,
Every man a betrayer,
Every boy a reaver.
Son will enter his father's bed,
Father will enter his son's bed,
Everyone will be his brother's brother-in-law.

... ... ...

An evil time!
Son will deceive his father,

Daughter will deceive her mother.

prophecy of the goddess Badb,  from "The Second Battle of Mag Tuired"

~wikipedia








Image: Crow in flight at Isfahan, Iran, 2012, shared under a creative commons license
via wikimedia commons     Manipulated.

Friday 55 March 2 2018

Another Friday brings us to the table of word-ly repasts, dressed in white screen linen, with 55 plates thoughtfully placed for each serving. Meanwhile, the world continues on its path around the sun seemingly oblivious as human society as we know it continues to devolve into chaos on its path to self-immolation; still, perhaps we've had some glimpses of hope this week in the brave determination of a new generation suddenly and brutally coming of age in the flux. Let's hope so, and regardless, let us offer our own hope,or lack of it, or just our dreams, in 55 words of poetry or prose, no more, no less, as we remember the absent but constant Galen Hayes, who managed to face each Friday with a light hand and a kind word.

As always, please link your effort in the comments below between Friday and Sunday morning, and I will be by to read.

As for me, I have a little nonsense to offer, that's all...

Minotaur

Under the sword

you don't even blink

as if such things

can hold no power.

My hair is crimped lead

but you hold me up

eyes softer with

sheen than your ebony sides.

It's not modern to faint

but of course I do

when taken by myth

blood-alive in a man

souled by a minotaur.

~March 2018

Image via internet, attribution to Gabrielle Bakker, but no such work was found on her website. All rights reserved to the author.