Goat's Delight

 

 

 

 

 

 

Goat's Delight

 

 

 

The yellowed moon hangs low,

a pendant swung from night's cold neck,

blind platinum stare bent

blinkless on the baleful earth 

where simpering dawn is frozen in

pink slippers on the hill.

 

Last night the bloodglow of the sun

gave false fire to the anorexic trees,

scarlet-purpled sheets of light 

burning hope to killed music,

all that once was dancing

turned ash on a shifting wind.

 

Only the goat-woman is left,

the greyed-out girl

covered in indigo roadmaps traced

by her traveling heart, denim-fade eyes

croned to clouds, 

still raking coals ablaze

 

with the crooked stick of memory

wild in her wavering hand, feral

as a goat indiscriminately devouring 

all the broken cities of the years, 

following a random hunger

up to this winter hill 

 

where she sits remembering 

how to be free;

a prisoner on the edge

of her skinwalking escape.

 

 January 2026

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

linked to 

d'Verse Poets Pub Open Link  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images : Moonrise, 1884  ©Stanislaw Malinowski   Fair Use

Soulmates ©Kseizycolica    Fair Use 

 

 

Red Smoking Mirror

 

 

 

 

Red Smoking Mirror

 

 

 I.

 

That was a hell of a poem, that one.

Some captive of war, some harem

woman, spilled her guts to you

flayed away all her hide

to bare nerve.

You

picked it up and wore it

just like mine, our wrists flapping,

bloody faces making masks

for yours, cut lips singing

all your 

butcher's songs.

 

II.

It's plain I said, I need to make a pyre

of all these undead fears and burn them out.

Oh no, you said, there's never enough fire.

Make garments of your fears' flayed skins and shout,

for loving's a red coal beneath your feet

and being loved a poem you can't complete.

But I turned off that voodoo child advice

when I saw you line them up like bowling pins

for your mumbled brujeria to hypnotize.

I left; now all my words are my own sins,

 

spells of blood are broken for a price,

with ravensong in dreams and peace the prize.

 

 

 October 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Poetics

at dVerse Poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

brujeria: (Spanish) witchcraft, sorcery, black magic

 

Process Note:" In Aztec mythology and religion, Xipe Totec [pictured at top] or ... Xipetotec  ("Our Lord the Flayed One") was a life-death-rebirth deity..[the god] was also known by various other names, including Tlatlauhca, Tlatlauhqui [or]Tezcatlipoca ("Red Smoking Mirror")... [he] is represented wearing flayed human skin, usually with the flayed skin of the hands falling loose from the wrists...Various methods of human sacrifice were used to honour this god. The flayed skins were often taken from sacrificial victims who had their hearts cut out..."~wikipedia

 

 

 

Image:Xipe Totec as depicted in the Codex Borgia, shown holding a bloody weapon and wearing flayed human skin as a suit.  via wikipedia    Fair Use

Surrender

 

Surrender

"...this is the way the world ends/not with a bang but a whimper." ~T.S.Elliot

 

 

You've come a long way

to see me slip my skin

across the star-burrowed sky

past Cassiopeia's iron chair

past the spear of Orion

to the killing floor.

 

You've come for the show

that must always go on

to see my hair burning trees

on my lips the black hole

night for my breath

dripping acid rain.

 

A big bang for your buck

now the requisite whimper

that comes in the dark

with the last surrender.

I wanted to stay just

a little bit longer

 

but everything wavers

when fate breaks her lamp.

October 2020

posted for 

The Sunday Muse

Images: California Wildfires From Space © NASA Scott Kelly Fair Use

Title unknown © Mathew Brohder via Internet Fair Use