Mask of Aphrodite (Repost)

 

 

 

Wolves, © Andrew Wyeth

 

 

 

Mask Of Aphrodite

 

"There is no cure for love other than marriage." 

~Irish proverb 

 

 

Love's an old wolf who howls when she pleases,

her black lips drawn back in mock of a grin.

She's made me her meat for chancers and losers,

to open the locks and let anyone in.

 

Her yellow teeth are blunted with winters

but her fevers burn bright as melted brass.

Her eyes are flat-white as Attic marble

rolling behind Aphrodite's mask.

Her promises drift like leaves in October.

Her vows of fidelity make the stones laugh.

There's never been one she ever was true to,

only the lucky who died too fast.

Since I was that child who was used as a woman

since I was that woman who thinks like a child

I've run with her pack. The crows find my dinner,

set the price we pay for being born wild.

I've never whored for playthings or money

but three times three it saved my life.

I've never lied for the sake of loving,

only to play at being a wife.

I never was called to be a drunkard,

but ever I've been every drunkard's best friend;

and I drop the mask when I see it coming,

 

the black-lipped snarling

bitter end.

September 2023

Lightly edited for repostng

July 2026 

 

 

 

Head of Aphrodite, via Brittanica

 

 

 

The Howl

 

 

 

The Howl

 

 

Deep into the night-abiding trees let free the howl

of my heart(that false doppelgänger, that unreliable narrator.)

Course it there, where darkness shakes down her hair,

fleet where the small hands of rain stroke my cheek

lightly,lightly, not so bitter as kisses, not so salt as tears,

til it comes to a stopping.

 

There's a fire panting to light up the hedgerows,

to make wilder things writhe from shadows bending,

those fetches the old gods make to beguile us dappling the void

the new ones provide, movement alone frantic with silence

save for crackle and spit and the skin drum's thud

that still beats in my wrist.

 

Each day dawns with feet cut off, limping,limping,

in the year-turning dark. Willow-wisps glow

in the grove of dancing,coming to draw the light

from the road, off to the flicker where worlds rub skins, 

to flames and fetches, to what's kindling now

where heartwood was riven, heat banked in

 

each unlit log is given to the season of time burning,

of leaves crumbling and forest dreaming the hand I'm holding, 

dreaming and singing in the sough where rain-wind 

ears the night. Can a child born to houses ever discern it

where all that runs in smoke and mist is changed

and confounded, rounded off without logic

 

to fire that howls in my skull

what it won't let me know;

it's my own fetch that's come

to dance in the hedgerow.

 

 

 

 

October 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for earthweal's

Open Link Weekend #142

 

(and inspired by Brendan's Kindling in the Forest of Light and Shadow

Challenge)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Dancing Dryads, 1879, © Albert Pinkham Ryder  Public Domain

Wolves,(detail)  © Andrew Wyeth   Fair Use

Starlorn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Starlorn

(a 55)

 

 

 

The black dog runs

on the wind that

reaps the world.

 

He bites starlorn

at the moon who knows

his teeth will find marrow.

 

Behind him comes

the scythe that cuts tomorrow

down to bone.

 

Moon must learn to bleed,

monkeys to eat snow,

man to live on tears

where the black dog runs.

 

December 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Dverse Poets

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Moonrise, 1884, © Stanislaw Maslowski   Public Domain

Wolf-Dog, manipulated, 1976 © Jamie Wyeth  Public Domain

Fenrir

 

 

 

 

 

 Fenrir

 

 

"..from where will a sun come into the smooth heaven
when Fenrir has assailed this one?"~Vafþrúðnismál

 

I.

 

They say the basilisk

walks her own wasteland,

each green thing that springs

corrupted by her breath,

 

each life that starts

turned to stone as

she spies it, so that she lives 

with nothing all her days.

 

She knows the sphinx

has long since forgotten

all riddles but the one

whose answer is sand.

 

 

II.

 

The wolf at the door

puts his paw on the child's neck.

His breath smells of tiny lives, 

his eyes are round as the moon.

He waits with her for the Ragnarök

to devour the world, to swallow the gods

to bring a new sun

to the skies we defile

but while waiting he smiles

his dog-smile, his tongue soft on her cheek.

From deep in the shadows 

the basilisk regrets

 

the power of myth, and

 the child

waits to grow

and run with the wolf.

December 2021

 

 

 

 

posted for Fireblossom

at

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: In Norse myth,  ragnarök refers not only to a time when gods and men will fight against monsters and jotuns and be destroyed, but also to the world which will follow, where the earth is purified and gods, nature and man are given a second chance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Odin and Fenris, 1909 © Dorothy Hardy   Public Domain

Wolf and child, via The Sunday Muse  author unknown Fair Use

 

Friday 55 January 19 2018

Another Friday, another chance to remember and to work with the Friday 55, a meme for writers long maintained by a good man now departed, but for many of us still present in memory, Galen Hayes. Here we write for the pleasure of writing, with no rules other than that each example of prose or poetry contain 55 words, no more, no less. If you are in the mood for the exercise, link your example in the comments below, and I will be by to read and appreciate. The 55 will be alive from early Friday morning through Sunday morning. As always, comment moderation is off, but I reserve the right to apply the delete key to any passing trollish ones.

 My offering for this winter wild week in January ...

Winter Gods

Winter
tests the craven

and the brave

 limping calf, ravens' black eye-sparkle,

 days short of breath

lopped 

at the knee
by snow-padded knife.

Still
the gods hunt wild

calling where green light raids

the skyliving now.

Wolves

follow the herds 

 howling the words to
godsongs of blood,

old hungers' lore,

scenting ahead
the last home.

 ~January 2018

Optional Musical Accompaniment

"...Who shall sing me

into deathsleep sling me

when I on the path to Hel go

I sought the songs

I sent the songs

then the deepest well

gave me tears so harsh

of Death-father's  wager..."

(from Helvegen, translated)

I've written of the Wild Hunt before; if you're unfamiliar with it, there is a quick reprise of most of the myths associated with it here. 

Images :Northern Lights in Iceland, The Wild Hunt, via internet, no authors known.
Fair Use.

Day In January

Day In January

This day

so cold, so grey, its icepoint knife,

its ashen-snowed walk-thru oblivion

where spirit steps freeze on fossil tar, raucous-

haunted by midnight crows, torn curtains of love

gone stiff in mid flutter ironed in sleet

that slants in through the windowed hole,

is a rose-colored palace, mottled red

by Mars, bleached clean by Venus

doored to the infinite city

quarried from stars,

growing up like an oak from

a foundation of rot

where what once lived ripens a

turned-under death for

another month to feed 

the secret green of possibility

with all its peculiar used atoms.

This day

where the ghost steps wander 

like a run-on sentence

under the widening moon,

the wolf moon, the hunger moon

made for the hunt.

~January 2016

Process note: wolf moon and hunger moon are Native American names for the month of January. Thanks to Josh Hart for the picture behind this poem.

Photo © Josh Hart, 2016 

All rights reserved.