Tiger In The Abstract

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Tiger In The Abstract

 ( a 55)

 

 

"Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it."

~unknown, attr Mark Twain

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tiger walks a crumbling flow

stippled with blood, scratching scree.

 

Wind is crying in the dead-branched tree

tears of a fatal innocence

while the lamp of moon burns low. 

 

Soft sharp paws in avalanches

are pacing out his pestilence;

rocks fall like raindrop lances

in fragrant inundations,

 

dry waves of murder-dances

upon the crushed carnations. 

 

 

 

July 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Word Garden Word List

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images:Fifty Abstract Paintings..Three Lenins..Head Of Royal Bengal Tiger,  1963, © Salvador Dali Fair Use

Carnations, 1891, © Joaquin Sorolla  Fair Use 

 

The Yule Goat

 

 

 

For some continuity in a chaotic time, I repost this Yule poem from 2011 and wish all the happiest of Yuletides, while we leave the New Year to fend for itself. 

Happy Yule to All!

Yule Goat

In December’s dark descent

across crackled breaking sky ice

slivered with dagger snow,

bells ring in whitened night, sharp

hooves stamp on the cloudcloth

shaking pearl dust stripes on

emerald spruces' candelabra arms,

turquoise and white pinwheels

circling their wands

of bitter bark raven haunted.

The god of thunders 

pulls the sun's shadow,

flickering hammer tucked

in his brace of clouds,

drives his twin goats

toward the time when day

and night are strait, equals at last

as Odin's wild hunt 

passes damned, mad,

howling overhead

The Snarler and the Grinder

fleet of foot, heedless of fate
run on; tonight's feast, tomorrow’s

feat, killed for meat this starveling
night, raised at dawn.
Spread the skins and 
let each bone 

fall with care so

those here reborn 

race again on the solar wind.

O bright black eye

split with too much knowledge

devil’s mask, canting voice

of the abyss, god's bearer, hunger's enemy

come bless us this Yule with your
yellow stare, ignite yourself

against the hag’s winter storm,

flute your flames through a straw ribcage. 

Watch us make the old dance new again

under the reckless stars.

 

 

The Gävle goat

December 2011

In Norse myth, Thor was not only provided with his mountain-shattering hammer Mjölnir, his magical, strength doubling belt Megingjörð, but a chariot in which he traveled through the sky pulled by two goats, Tanngrisnir (Old Norse "teeth-barer, snarler") and Tanngnjóstr (Old Norse "teeth grinder") spoken of in the Prose Edda, who could be slain for food at Thor's discretion then resurrected with the power of Mjölnir and returned to the traces.~ from wikipedia: 'The Yule Goat is one of the oldest Scandinavian and Northern European Yule and Christmas symbols and traditions. Originally denoting the goat that was slaughtered during the Germanic pagan festival of Yule, "Yule Goat" now typically refers to a goat-figure made of straw. It is also associated with the custom of wassailing, sometimes referred to as "going Yule Goat" in Scandinavia.' As always, I've taken a few liberties with the letter of the myths.You can read more about the folklore of the Yule Goat here  and the Wild Hunt here.





Images:
Header Photo: Goat watching, by DAV.es,  on flick'r
Shared under a Creative Commons License 
Footer Photo: The Gävle goat burning, author unknown
All copyright belongs to the copyright holder

Hungry Ghosts And Thirsty Spirits

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hungry Ghosts And Thirsty Spirits

 

 

 

 

Nine snow-white candles to ward my bed

as the Hunter's Moon glares against my door.

 

Rowan and hyperion at foot and head

but your fetch is strong. I need much more.

Last night I could tell it would need to be fed.

I felt its cold lips that the flames couldn't kill

 

pressed on my skin like a waxen seal,

saw its stubbled neck scrawny, stretched and too real

as thirsting you came, crawling over the sill,

but the gods in their mercy allowed me one grace:

 

to never again have to see your face.

 

 

 

 

October 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for

Open Link Weekend at desperate poets

 (inspired by Night of the Desperate Dead)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Process note: Rowan and Hyperion(St John's Wort) were said to be protective against evil spirits and witches and were often hung indoors or planted at the doorways of houses:

 

"The European rowan (Sorbus aucuparia) has a long tradition in European mythology and folklore. It was thought to be a magical tree and [to]give protection against malevolent beings.. It was said in England that this was the tree on which the Devil hanged his mother..British folklorists of the Victorian era reported the folk belief in apotropaic powers of the rowan-tree, in particular in the warding off of witches...Sir James Frazer (1890) reported such a tradition in Scotland, where the tree was often planted near a gate or front door. ~wikipedia

 

"The common name St John's wort comes from the fact that its flowers and buds were commonly harvested at the time of the Midsummer festival, which was later Christianized as St John's Feast Day on 24 June. It was believed that harvesting the flower at this time made its healing and magical powers more potent. The herb would be hung on house and stall doors on St John's Feast Day to ward off evil spirits and to safeguard against harm and sickness to people and livestock. ..Because of its supposed potency in warding off spirits, the plant was also known as fuga daemonum (loosely "demon-flight").."~wikipedia

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Title unknown,  ©@coven of ceridwen via internet  Fair Use

La Mort: Mon ironie depasse toutes les autres! 1889 ©Odilon Redon   Public Domain

Creature From The Black Saloon

 

 

 

 

 

 

Creature From The Black Saloon

 

 

His eyes are dead moons

that call up typhoons

where old sailors will die

on the devil's hot spoon,

dished up dressed in red for the Day of The Dead,

mouths whiskey wild and well off their heads.

 

He sparks a burned light

that cracks holes in the night,

calls witches to bonfires' sulfurous light

for the Dance in the dark, the Blood in the cup,

the black horns of the Beast

who will drink them all up.

 

His tongue drifts like quicklime

on a seasonless wind

in desires that die before they begin,

over the flesh that twitches and yearns

to dissolve into hexes the old gods that burn

just under the skin all mottled with runes;

I've met him. I've loved him

too long to refuse.

October 2023

posted for Creature Seeker at

desperate poets

Note; This may have been slightly influenced by attempting to watch Rob Zombie's Lords of Salem last night.

Images: Standing Figure, 1970 ©Nathan Oliveira  Fair Use

Dark Dancers ©Gina lacob   Fair Use

Brujeria

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brujeria

 

I don't know what fetch

was living in his hair

but there was always something

 

when it blew back in the hot breath

of the redtangled hills; new-hatched snakes perhaps

curling from the small broken shells of his words,

 

tendrilous avatars in those nights that hid

the color of blood so well;

or soft rain-threads each sweet as a sugarfall

 

on my open face as we made love,

for the medicine painting, not la brujeria,

skintalking the Healing Way.

 

Whatever it was, it

wasn't the mild dog in his eyes,

not fur, not a tail-wag.

 

It was syllogistic, sensate, restless;

hungry as a hopping flea.

whose tiny itch is only felt later.

Perhaps it even had Buddha nature,

or something else

 borrowed from Kali.

 

It was one of those things about him

that taught me to look away.

I saw only its soft brown habitat

as I slipped my fingers through

felt its satin dance

against my touch

but what lived there never left

like all the other things I tried to disappear.

I could feel them breathing

though they never made a sound

not even now when

they ghost him back to my dreams.

August 2023

posted for Odd Little Things

at desperate poets

 

Art nouveau lithograph poster 1903 ©Alphonse Mucha  Public Domain

Man with Long Hair, ©Odd Nedrum    Fair Use

 

The Potato Selkie

 

"...I am a man upon the land

I am a silkie on the sea
And when I'm far and far frae land
My home, it is in Sule Skerrie.."

The Silkie Song, Joan Baez

The Potato Selkie

 

 

 

He came frying to earth

on a feather not feather,

a float of an idea soft

as a potato, begging for form.

I put him to age

in a metal-bound cask to see

what he might eventually be;

something playful

and deadly as vodka,

or a poor-mind's pierogi

 to be gnoshed then spat

like sawdust-wurst. I sunk the cask

beneath a wave (New Wave, they say) 

and soon saw a man upon dry land

who dreamed of a selkie on the sea,

a million miles from Sule Skerrie

With a slick-metal sheen, he

sang to me in a lilt and croon

like potato mash, shapeshifting

 animus to idiot maximus.

In his strangle, only heat and dead air

still and dry, a trembling reflection

a shimmer of no-light, a clockwork cry

as he grabbed for my pen

with his fish-breath mouth,

jumped in the sea

and drowned

again.

 

 

June 2023

posted for Poetry Slam at The Singularity Corral

desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Top Image: The Hand, ©Salvador Dali 1930   Fair Use

Ai generated image sadly failing to be a selkie of any kind but at least forlorn about it.

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

  

reposted for desperate poets

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

Shared under a Creative Commons License

Lady Of Dead Leaves

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lady Of Dead Leaves

 

 

 

Beneath a dead leaf my love lies hidden

with a rose pearl and a starling's feather

where the dark forest unties Her ribbons

 

where night rides as black as robber's leather

with a bagful of moon's most starving hours

in a forest where leaves are falling forever,

 

whose balefires paint meteoric showers,

whose pale sprites teach old lovers to dance

and sew up their wounds with threads of flowers.

 

For grape never saw the wine She decants,

a vintage that ripens with dissolution

aged in a song, sealed with ash and chance.

 

Under the starlight's silver infusion

asleep as a bee in the fading thunder,

 which is volition and which illusion

 

when all that's left of life is to wonder

or lift the leaf that love is under.

 

 

 

October 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for earthweal

where I am pleased to host this week's challenge,

First Poems: Door to the Wilder Eye

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Fairy Dance, © Arthur Rackham    Public Domain

Spring Beauty © Andrew Wyeth         Fair Use

Odin's Mead

 

 

 Odin's Mead

 I am not a jewel

fashioned for your collection

nor the paint-pot

for your ever-moving lips,

not the fertility

to your futility

not assumed erudition

to your chosen perdition.

I am not meant for

your wound of a mouth

bleeding hate-kindling for fire-hags

flaming sweet summer-country, 

not the heart-stake

vitriol will make,

not victory to be claimed

in a war too dirty to name.

 

I'm only the last

taste in the drinking horn

of some bright thing Other

a soft-foot step and fleet hand

pouring drunken snow

brewed by Ones who go

on spirit bones far stronger

but here walk free no longer.

 

I am only the bite

of the berry

dropping seeds from the bramble,

a tart taste in a season

of falling farewells,

a sapphire flicker

brief in the blue mirror,

 a gesturing ghost's fever

behind you forever;

 

a thrum too low to be clear

that only the silenced can hear. 

 

October 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for earthweal's

Kindling From The Forest Of Light And Shadow

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: I've recounted this myth before, but briefly to recap, in Norse mythology, the Poetic Mead or Mead of Poetry is a magical beverage made from the murdered body of a being created from the gods' spit which sealed the truce of the Aesir-Vanir war, and was stolen from the  jötnar guarding it by Odin in eagle form, who spits it out into sacred  golden vessels for those chosen by the gods. Whoever drinks from these is given the gifts of poetry and knowledge, and is transformed into a skald and scholar. Odin also releases some of the mead in his droppings as he flies. This anyone can drink, and is called 'the rhymester's share." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: One of the golden horns of Gallehus, public domain

"The Gotlandic image stone Hammars (III). It is held to depict Odin in his eagle fetch (note the eagle's beard), Gunnlöð (holding the mead of poetry) and Suttungr." public domain 

 

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