St. Walpurga's Nightmare

 

 

 

St. Walpurga's Nightmare

(or, No Medicine For Melancholy)

Up on the hill where the blade never goes

skimpy clouds dangle like a phrase of bad prose,

with May Day's and Hallows' night stars locked in boxes,

up on the ghosts' hill with the little foxes

 

sits the old witch always stirring her pot

of bandages and sweet oils, scalding hot,

her dry smile a bleachmark on her tie-dyed skin;

she's only waiting for the crows to begin.

Give her a coin and she'll midwife next year

or recount the rest of your life for good beer

in her voice like a hatchet while her fingers stir

mockingbird's screech into kettle's blur.

What's in the cauldron you sainted crone?

"It's hope, she croons, the alphabet I own.

You can't live on it, though so many try,

but you can certainly die on it time after time

riding the Big Wheel on dandelion silk

sucking tobacco like the baby's milk,

drinking and thinking you'll go up and up

then crushed on the revolve like a styrofoam cup.

 

Before you learn what your body can do to you, you

think its a warm glass of wine poured out for you

but it soon cracks in the time-slip and shatters apart

like your broken heart, dear, your broken heart.

 

Before you see what hope does to the living

you think it's a wise thing, loving and healing,

not bitter and blinding, 

hiding the reminding 

of the shambling footsteps shuffling in back of you

of the behemoth ambling in one night for you

the only hope that turns out to be true:

he'll break all your bones, dear, and eat them, too."

 

But dreams can be merciful with their endings

whatever the bile-twisted gist of their sendings, 

for dawn took her words just as fast as she spoke 

and drowned them all in the lovesongs of crows.

October 2022

posted for Shay's

Word Garden Word List: Susie Clevinger,

a fine contemporary poet and friend

Note: I've taken a lot of liberties with the history of St. Walpurga, a medieval abbess known for Christianizing the heathen Franks, learned in healing, who was canonized for, among other things, the 'miraculous oil' that oozed out from her dead body, and whose saint's day was enthusiastically celebrated with bonfires for many years on May Day. Obviously, I have added All Hallows to her domain quite mendaciously. She was said to be the bane of evil spirits and witches, so I'm sure she is turning over in her grave at being combined with one here. Finally, apologies to the Rocky Horror Picture Show for stealing 'time-slip,' and thanks to Susie for the gift of her poetry all these years.

 

 

 

Images: Walpurgisnacht, 1923, © Heinrich Kley

Antlers with Crows, author unknown, via internet

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

The Burning Tongue

 

 

 

 

 

The Burning Tongue

 

 

 

There is a burning that

makes the same smoke

from flower or flesh.

 

Air is dead.

Sound will not carry.

Words will not form

 

on a tongue blackened by 

summer's brass palm, for weeks

held radiant over earth's dry mouth.

Heat is a cloud-killer, builder

of invincible domes in steelmelt

sky. Dust catches fire.

 

Only the insect machines

still rattle. Yet every morning

in the stillborn dawn

 

there is a gasp of birdsong,

begging and faint, staccato, sharp,

freezingly sweet. 

 

In fever dreams

I gasp along, for every note,

for any word, for a charm

 

to make this yield

of burning tongues

sing out

 

in oldest music, 

wilder words,

the sparking chant

 

that death-heat kills even itself,

that someday it might

still be worth the parch

of trying to keep living.

July 2022

posted for earthweal

Wild Language

Images: Dead Woman's Crossing, Oklahoma  by Nathan Gunter   Fair Use

L'oiseau blue,© Marc Chagall 1968     Fair Use

Asylum

 

 

 

 

"..Let the doctor and the lawyer do as much as they can.
Let the springtime begin, let the boy become a man.
I have wasted too much time 

just to sing you this sad song..."~James Taylor, 1971 

 

 

 

Asylum

 

 

 

In the madhouse

on beds of daggers

we slept like crickets

chirping to ourselves

while they tried their best

to make us cannibals.

 

The nuns were worse than

lawyers, praying like accordions,

tracking their sins into our soft 

wax skulls, wheezing like roosters

when one of us cried, laying the greasy ribs

of Jesus on our plates.

They kept you behind

door number six. I'd go to you

with a stolen key, when the noon

smelled bright as carnations, 

when the nights were

more purple than the jacarandas.

 

You spoke of your father

dead of snakebite,

a clockwork marvel with

his million-dollar suit of skin,

and your mother

with the viper between her lips.

I remember your kiss

astringent with reason

as bitter lemons, and the way

your hair blew back from

your dog-brown eyes like poisonous

smoke from the oleanders.

I thought these things

as beautiful as angels

whispering in the dahlias

when I was lost in the asylum,

when the doctors did all they could

to see that we ate each other

down to the bone.

April 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Inspired by the words of Federico Garcia Lorca,

and a dream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Madhouse, 1812-1814 © Francisco Goya  Public Domain

Vase with Carnations, 1886, © Vincent Van Gogh    Public Domain 

 

Three Tigers

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Three Tigers

(a 55)

Three tigers by the sea

waiting for my company,

frightened by the gunner's moon;

three tigers hungry soon.

Three tigers in the millet;

artist, lover and a poet

find their game, make it run,

eat the work when they have done.

Two wet tigers in the storm;

 I laugh and keep the good one warm.

 

 

 

 

 April 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for dVerse Poets

Open Link Night

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Images: Dream Caused By The Flight Of A Bee Around A Pomegranate A Second Before Awakening,1941, ©Salvador Dali  Fair Use

Tiger In A Tropical Storm-Surprised, 1891, ©Henri Rousseau  Fair Use

 

Zebras

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Zebras

(A 55)

 

Remember

when we were two

trout climbing Sahara sand,

two flamingos wading snow,

two zebras

grazing rock, stalked

by an avalanche of clocks

worse than any lion.

Remember

our nights stitched from

oak's blood and violins

torn from the big cat's teeth.

Come home again

before the door breaks,

before memory's last meal

is gone.

 

 

January 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for dVerse Poets

Open Link Night

 

 

using words from

Shay's Word List #9

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Sleeping Zebra, 1959 © Carel Willink  Fair Use

Plant Archetecture, 1962 © Remedios Varo

Dream Trip

 

 

 

 

 Dream Trip

 

 

 

 

 

 After a pipe dream courtship

he married disaster. Six months gone

he woke up to

a quick divorce. He untangled himself

on the road to Vegas, where lies went down

like a cup of strong coffee

fast and black in the tarry night,

lounge tunes bleeding in air 

sharp as snake-eyed desert light, hope

another bad debt to be written off.

The wind's hand shook

like a drunk croupier, fumbling out

aces and eights

before the martinis, sanding the gas tank,

whistling at graves. The car gave out

before he made Tahoe, when

nothing was left but Jack and shit

and Jack left town. Stars sarcastically

 winked when he put his head down

slack on the wheel and slept

dreaming of her, dreaming of then,

dreaming a toffee-striped lizard

and a stand-up owl

laughing their asses off

at punter's luck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 2021

posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Abandoned Car, author unknown, Fair Use

Lizard © Chernee Sutton-Jurutu  Fair Use

Snow Blind

 

 

 

 "If it's peace you find in dying, when dying time is here,
just bundle up my coffin cause it's cold way down there,
I hear that's it's cold way down there, yeah, crazy cold way down there.."

~Laura Nyro, When I Die

 

 

Snow Blind

 

I sit remembering

when we were dragons,

our mating flight in October's

bloodbright sky, 

another country

that rush of scales and fire.

 

Or when you saw me first,

moth with green-eyed wings

on a factory rafter. You knew

 among the nymphs

I was a spriggan

twisted wry but quick and hot,

that on the mountain with the goats

I climbed the highest

to be alone, krampus-girl

too full to eat the darkness.

 

So come, wind of the north.

Blow this west-wind fever from me

with your ice-eyes and cheap bargains.

Mound the cold grey snow

upon this bed, shabby

goblin sheets to numb my sores,

 

rime my lids 

 snow blind, give me

shadow glow, hallucinations, lunatic

visions, his

living face candle-lit,

smiling

at me:

the glass dragon,

the dust-moth dry with

death's-head wings,

broken as easily 

as a candy heart.

 

 

December 2020

 

 

 

posted for Fireblossom

at The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Spriggan: "a legendary creature from Cornish faery lore...said to be found at old ruins, cairns, and barrows guarding buried treasure. Although small, they were usually considered to be the ghosts of giants..notorious for their unpleasant dispositions...~wikipedia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: photo of Laura Nyro via internet   Fair Use

Moth Wing © Amelia Fletcher    Fair Use

 

 

A Delirium Of Butterflies

 

~SCROLL DOWN FOR THE 55~

 

 

 A Delirium Of Butterflies

 

 

There will be

a delirium

of butterflies

after the fever wins,

when the sterile step is taken

under the star-masked void,

when the bounce hits dust a thousand years

unstirred by wind or small-handed rain,

 

then

 

in freefall

instead of white detritus

butterflies stagger up

owners of the impossible

hitting your protective suit

like a trauma of cotton candy

 

then

 

you have crossed the threshold

of sweetness, otherness

 

then

 

 what you call

your life

will lose its casing

will become

a fluttering

an awe

a delirium

of 

butterflies.

 

 October 2020

posted for 

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

Images: So Long As You Wish it, © Liz Houston Fair Use

Unknown title, unknown author, via Sunday Muse  Fair Use