Cryptid

 

source

Cryptid

Was it your lover

you saw in the dream,

a spirit bear on fire,

or perhaps

the chupacabra, a steam

 given off/

absorbed  by

too-hot night?

Some cryptid regardless,

a cambion that comes

when eyelids fall down

before the stare of stars

dropped silent with a burn

from black sky

as morning turns to face you

cobra-hooded.

Fragments of him

of you

litter the lawn.

Meteorite dust

hangs in the air;

the smell of old longings

seeps from the roses

powdery as the skin's

 memory of a hand

that still feels,

of lips that know words

are the dark subsidence

 

down which you will tumble

to the place of live shadows

where two become one.

Posted for earthweal's

Open Link #141

~September 2014

 

 

 A little something for All Hallows, originally posted at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Flowers Of The Moon

 

 

 

Flowers Of The Moon

 

 

 

The moon rocked in its cradle

hunched down on its paws

reluctant to rise

 

while the sharpened stars stared

and ice fell like blades

on the night she was born.

 

She wanted flowers,

hands to hold, a round-

bellied pony with liquid eyes

 

but they gave her knives, so

she learned to juggle.

There was plenty of work.

 

 "Stand back." she said,

"I could put out your eye easy

as breathing. I could and I might." 

The moon crept up to

the crossroads.The stars fell asleep.

The knives rose and spun

 

whirled and glittered like

blue ice flying

til one by one they fell

 

from her scarred hands.

"I've no time for this trade," she said,

"where every mistake bleeds,

 

where every hit frightens.

The moon needs a gardener

for roses to grow."

 

March 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images; Sunset at the North Pole, author unknown,     Fair Use

Girl Juggling Knives, unknown source via Sunday Muse,   Fair Use

The Gardener

The Gardener

The landscape was empty; bleak
after so long abandoned.
The property needed work
from Cretaceous to herbaceous,
a great deal of work
for only one gardener;
but a job is a job

in these hard times.

So, I began the renovation

of the garden on the moon.

I planted frankincense and jade,

linen off the line, an impertinent patch

of plum-purple zinnias.

I turned the stoned moondust

with a diamond shovel,

raked the bed smooth with

Cernunnos' horns

to sow the bony seeds:

old fears, old loves, old enemies

pulled from their prickling casings,

sunned by litigant stars,

watered with Phryne's tears;

then I waited

for the display.

Summer was a ripple

and a roar of rioting color,

ivory skulls on fire and the smell

of burning roses. Smiling, I sat

on the edge of a crater

eyes dazzled shut,

palms turned up, each hand

an open vein to let

the fertile self bleed out,

pooling around the roots

in the rows of moongarden,

while each zinnia-head

was a purple balloon

in the utterly defeated

void.

The garden is lovely now--

(if I say so myself, rebuilt by

a true gardener and poète maudit.)

We're in splendor this season--even into the Fall

all ready for the owner

who never comes. 

~March 2017

posted for Fireblossom's Incongruity

at real toads

Process notes: Cernunnos was the Celtic Horned God of life, fertility and the underworld, always depicted with the antlers of a stag. 

Phryne "was an ancient Greek courtesan (hetaira), from the fourth century BC...much praised for her beauty...Supposedly the sculptor Praxiteles, who was also her lover, used her as the model for the statue of the Aphrodite of Knidos, the first nude statue of a woman from ancient Greece...She is best known for her trial for impiety...[where she is described] as clasping the hand of each juror, pleading for her life with tears..." ~wikipedia

poète maudit "..​( accursed poet) ..The phrase "poète maudit" was coined in the beginning of the 19th century by Alfred de Vigny in his 1832 novel Stello, in which he calls the poet "la race toujours maudite par les puissants de la terre" (The race that will always be cursed by the powerful..of the earth)..." ~wikipedia

 

Images: Portrait of The Gardener, Calvert Richard Jones.
Head on a Stem, by Odilon Redon
Public domain

The Cambion's Tale

Dear  Readers and Blogging Friends: I had intended to take this month off anyway, but after some setbacks in the lumbar department, it really looks like it may be some time before I am well enough to manage much here. Please bear with me as I mend, and eventually I'm sure I shall return. I will leave you with this little favorite of mine to chew on, and thanks, as always for everyone's concern and support. It means a great deal to me.

The Cambion's Tale

The north wind is in the wildwood

tonight, calling the last 

specklings of summer’s regret

from the moon-dripping trees,

fragmented friable tongues of 

henna and ochre milled to a dusty haze

that blots future and past, dead voices

rustling the song that calls me to you

my hell born babe, heart’s delight

soul’s inquistor.

Changeling and demiurge,

furred with frosted moss and mist

horned with bone, poised always 

to run; you regard me blinkless,

hermetic as a wild thing, gaze of

opals burning through the veil where

I pretend to be protected invisible

as Niniane, everlost instead

fate-tangled and resistless to 

the beckon of that blue unicorn eye.

So I come out of the night

for your lichen'd kiss, rain

cold, full of the taste of rust

yet sweeter than any vintage

pressed from the sun's full flaunt. We're

as fallen as Rome remembered, love,

all my smooth green weight leaning

on the colonnade of whispers

you pull from some pocket in
the heart’s shallow grave.

My breath is gone again;

you’ve whistled for it; lost

dog of my hollowed lungs it lopes,

at your heel, leashed 
with your brimstone binding

tighter than the chest that

knows the next gasp is last.

The night wind blows hellfire

around us where the idol burns

our fading sandalwood smoke

bolted with blood, spiced with loss.

O there’s nothing wrong with us

that reincarnation won’t cure.

~October 2011

revised, February 2016

cambion: According to the Malleus Maleficarum, the offspring of a human male and a succubus, or a human female and an incubus. Caliban and Merlin are both assigned this dubious distinction.

*The last two lines are extrapolated from an anonymous saying passed around in the 60's.

Image: Tamara and the Demon, by Mikhail Vrubel, watercolor, 1891

Public Domain, via Wikipaintings.org

Carnivale

Carnivale

You said you'd give me the moon

on a piece of toast

or at least the sweet-hot peel

of her cinnamon skin.

You said you'd raise from the grave

my heart, the ghost

to fill with black-burnt warmth

that could begin

a beat to bring horned dancers from the trees

life to lift me lurching from my knees

a revenant in red

that's what you said

that night in the glimmering swell

before the Fall

but it was Carnivale.

~September 2014

posted for     real toads

Sunday Mini-Challenge: Promises

Karin Gustafson (ManicDDaily)  asks us to think about the promise behind the chocolates, broken, or missed, kept or imaginary. This is just something that popped up in my head a few months back, and seems appropriate now, as Carnivale is winding down in Venice 

and it is about a promise, of sorts.

Photo by Alessia Pierdomenico/Reuters

via google image search source

no copyright infringement intended

Cryptid

source

Cryptid

Was it your lover

you saw in the dream,

a spirit bear on fire,

or perhaps

the chupacabra, a steam

 given off/

absorbed  by

too-hot night?

Some cryptid regardless,

a cambion that comes

when eyelids fall down

before the stare of stars

dropped silent with a burn

from black sky

as morning turns to face you

cobra-hooded.

Fragments of him

of you

litter the lawn.

Meteorite dust

hangs in the air;

the smell of old longings

seeps from the roses

powdery as the skin's

 memory of a hand

that still feels,

of lips that know words

are the dark subsidence

down which you will tumble

to the place of live shadows

where two become one.

~September 2014

posted for    real toads

Challenge: Play it Again

The artful eye of Margaret Bednar (ArtHappens365) once again takes us back thru time to revisit old toads' memes that are gone but should not be forgotten. I chose this one of Kerry O'Connor's,  Superstition or Science? which I missed due to windowsh8 malfunctions earlier this month. 

(I told you I had a poem for it, Kerry!)

Process Notes: A cryptid is a creature which has been reported (or imagined) but not proved scientifically to exist, such as the yeti, or vampiric dog-lizard chupacabra. I have written about  cambions before here

Top Image: Untitled by Abode of Chaos on Flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons License

Footer Image: copyright joyannjones 2014