In Hel's Hall

In Hel's Hall

It was white-ice morning in Hel's Hall

in the ninth of the Nine Worlds, when

Odin donned the Hel-shoes, cast the runes

and rode to ask his questions of 

the dead. 

Because he was a god, twisted she rose 

from her ashen bed

and by force began to speak  

of what she knew:

So I found, said the blackened lips,

that cold is a serpent that holds, pushing its

ribbon-chest deep into mountain,

slow-cracking the heads of the spirits within

for gold to brighten its rippling scales.

Will you hear more?

So I saw, moved the fleshless jaw,

cold grow wide and thicken,

putting on its grey-white armor,

that its dead mouth kisses every shoulder, 

that the tree it circles

will shake down a harvest of lives

to grind out all you love.

So I found, rattled the dustdry throat,

that cold will make red daggers, hanging

scarlet borrowed blood to temper

oblivion's poppy snowflakes,

to pierce the heart of hearts

till red and white alike

vanish from sight.

So I saw, whispered the husk of Hel,

that snow will cover fire, 

that the white wolf no sword can kill

will eat desire, that you

are a basket of bones made for wildflowers

withering in a wind of empty hours.

Will you hear more?

Then the One-Eyed shucked his Hel-shoes

jumped back in Sleipnir's saddle,

and fled the Ninth World, 

where the wisdom he begged

had frozen on his tongue.

~January 2013

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Kerry's Wednesday Challenge: Worldbuilding

Kerry O'Connor has asked us to write around the subject of alternative worlds. Here I've reached into the the realm of Norse myth, and as usual, taken a few liberties with the tales of the Old Gods.

Process notes: In Norse mythology, Hel was the realm of those dead who had not died in battle, and also the name of the female figure who ruled it. It was where Odin the One-eyed, first of the Aesir and god of poetry, war, death, wisdom and wandering, journeyed to raise a dead Seeress to tell him of the future. She prophesies the events of Ragnarök,* the twilight, or perhaps re-making, of the gods, where the children of the antagonistic god of disorder and mischief, Loki, the Midgard Serpent and Fenrir the Wolf, will battle the gods, and the World Tree will 'shake and groan.' 

Hel-shoes (helskór) were put on the Norse dead to walk the road to the Otherworld.

Sleipnir is Odin's magical eight-legged horse.

* I probably ought to add that following the events of Ragnarök, the  völva also prophesies that a beautiful new world will emerge, where men and gods live in peace and plenty. Some believe that this a post-Christian introduction, but regardless, it satisfies the happily ever after need we humans have.

Image: Odin Rides to Hel, by W.G. Collingwood 
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Century

Century

A hundred years ago

you came to undo my buttons

throw my calico skirt, my muslin shift

over the moon, unpeeled teal eyes

laid me down in piney night,
exhaled a smokering sigh to drift

around me, knotted with me tight

in deep green black.

I spit this centenary curse:

that we ever came back

to the skins we couldn't shed

on that cabin floor,

from murmuring boards so old

they glowed snake blue, luminous

as the windfall shapes we wore,

dropped apples of a  slanting 

summergone sun.

I walked like a freckled young lioness

before she learns her scarlet roar,

my mane of stars shook out on the jade inflow;

who could know I'd die there

under the gun

a hundred years ago?

~January 2013

Header: Cabin Under the Trees, Paul Gauguin, 1892

Public Domain, via wikipaintings.org

Footer: Jungle with Lion, Henri Rousseau, 1910

Public Domain, via wikipaintings.org

Scrimshaw Sonnet

Scrimshaw Sonnet

I am a woman only of earthenware

bare as windy hills if not as pure.

Your every thought to me wore the potter's mark

stark from a god's-eye that's never yet met mine,

fine and barb-hooked as a fishing line,

vined in words that pulled like hungry sand;

hands of ivory cloud worked a starving knife,

life dripped enough to wet the driest grave.

Save the lesser light of windflower spring;

bring the lamps of your eyes imagining.

Sing like sheaves of whales under blue-white wool.

Pull from your sleeves the darkness between worlds

curled away in sighs, then suddenly spilled,

filled to the brim before all things are stilled.

~January 2013

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Sunday Mini-Challenge: Chained Rhyme

Kerry O'Connor has graciously allowed me to host the form prompt today, which is to explore the possibilities of chained, or interlocked rhyme. You can get the full explanation of how that works at the link above.

Process notes: This is written in non-traditional sonnet form, with a distinctly erratic use of iambic pentameter and no real end-rhyme scheme, though it runs to 14 lines and includes a volta, some end, chained and internal rhymes. So it can only very loosely be called a sonnet.

scrimshaw  — n
1. the art of decorating or carving shells, ivory, etc, done by sailors as a leisure activity

~World Dictionary

Header image: The Rocks with Oak Tree, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888

Public domain, via wikipaintings.org

Footer image: scrimshaw is awesome, part II, by staveitoff on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons license.

Bomb Scare

                                                      B

o
          m
    b
 Scare

Between you

and the idea of you, 
somehow I was exploded,
dropped to the fuse-tune's insinuating 
crackle, round cartoon bomb hissing in my
ambushed hand, its heavy black sparking a spit
fire flashbang bone-blood delivery system.
 Now no one's left but the guilty survivor

clumsy in her new prosthesis, 
 the generous anarchist
 escaped by night

~January 2013

 55 imaginary splattered fragments for    the g-man

Image: Fruit, by whodgeswalker, on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons License

The Damned

The Damned

Alone under the concrete dome,
dead smell of piss at the newstand of bliss
but Aquaman lives. Superman forgives 

Come mind your sisters. Watch out for the misters
except for this one, and he’s never done. 

Run at the sky, trying to fly
don’t mind the paincoming, falling is numbing.
Paint out the screams, bruises, bad dreams. 

Come home, don’t you go. The neighbors will know. 
Don't playact, don't shudder, don’t you love your mother?

~June 2012, revised January 2013

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Challenge: Words Count with Mama Zen

The challenge today is to write 'the hard stuff;' something normally avoided because it's just too difficult to deal with, and to keep it to 75 words or less.  This was originally a much much longer poem I never expected to post.

Header image: newstand,  by dickuhne, on flick'r

Footer image: play time, by deszedol, on flick'r

Shared under a Creative Commons license