The Burnt Angel

The Burnt Angel

Following the jesus of absence,

flying on the defunct

pegasus line,

will the angel come again

when the moon walks through the pines

or under the yolk of sun

frying unbroken above, or

on the dancing floor

where  flying leaves have one last waltz

before they're dirt and leaves no more?

Will the tongue

that was a biting worm

push deep into the shifting worlds

to eat the wide silence

of the last legends ever heard?

How will the hands

that broke down stone by stone

each road and arch, bricked bridge and hall

pile up that rampart place at last

without rafter or wall?

The icewind says nothing

in her bully brief run;

nothing to the questions

the coming dark

asks the sun.

Pegasus flies, but

Icarus tumbles

burning

down.

~December 2014

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Kerry's Weekend Challenge: In Other Words

Kerry O'Connor has been doing a series of prompts focusing on word replacement in the titles of various works. This week she turns us towards some Christmas-oriented titles--yes, this is about Christmas, of the hedgewitchian kind. I have been out of action for awhile, but couldn't miss Kerry's last prompt of the year.

Image: Pegasus, by Wojciech Siudmak

Fair use via wikiart.org

Emeralds For Breakfast

Emeralds For Breakfast

Once you gave me

emeralds for breakfast,

moonstones in the afternoons.

You set gold rings into each ear

each one a twist of  jade-apple sun

summer, inhaled from the calyx chalice

to the hot noise of bee-breached flowers.

Somehow the bright green

spilled; the gilt light dulled

gives way to silver

in the cold-hag's time

when earth sleeps brown

and billowing in surrender

and  there is only winter

staggering to me

my lost lamb, her snow

thin and matted, pulled sleet-grey

lean with a gift of famine,

delicate ice diamonds shivering

cold, cold, around her neck

begging for the garland

of  even my

freezing  arms.

~December 2014

Image: Angelina stonecrop (Sedum rupestre 'Angelina')

Ice Blossoms

copyright joyannjones, 2013, 2014

Reposts for Christmas #3

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 her blackened lips,

that cold is a serpent that holds, pushing its

ribbon-chest deep into mountain,

slow-cracking the heads of spirits within

for gold to brighten its rippling scales.

Will you hear more?

So I saw, moved her fleshless jaw,

that cold will grow wide and thicken,

dead weight in grey-white armor,

dead mouth kissing every shoulder, 

that the tree it blasts and circles

will shake down a harvest of lives

to grind out all you love.

So I found, rattled her 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 words torn from the dead

had frozen on his tongue.

~January 2013
 revisions, December 2014

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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.

Snakes Across Monet's Last Lilies

Snakes Across Monet's Last Lilies

Memory, the circled snake

is a hoop that binds 

the rolling barrel even as 

it smashes on the rocks.

Love I tell you

is a grape that's dried

into a raisin, twice as sweet

but nothing like it was.

Everything is shining

with a light of blurs and halos,

each pinhole star enlarged

and yet more vague;

a wash of blue-green shadow

floating fingered bolls of cotton,

meant for water, gardens, lilies:

all Monet's last brush, blind color on

the ghostly dregs of form.

So time has had its way

with these and every thing

a wrecking that becomes uncertain rapture

for every shape that's salvaged

for every bird-note sharpened,

pulled loose in one fuzzed-peach 

piece from dawn

disintegrating

at our feet.

~November~December 2014

Images: Water Lilies, 1899, by Claude Monet
Water Lily Pond, Evening, 1926, by Claude Monet
Public Domain via wikiart.org

Blackbird's Funeral

Blackbird's Funeral

In the silent dower house

the lodging by the gate

through which

the black-plumed horses passed

so little and so late

a toll to pay
for all the clumsy

years lived as a wraith

in charity's cribbing walls,

for charity's careless fate,

no mourner stirs.

No handler comes

to crate the funeral meat.

Only the small ones gather and talk

in the clatter of wings and beak

of fur claw-thrown and heart-thud break

down in the windy bracken

of stone crust taken/never forgiven

of winter's hunger acorn bleak

of blue water gone dead dry

in summer's intimate heat.

In a moment's stare

the bare-handed tree 

made for small-clawed feet

will deafened reach, 

above will be blank

star eyes gone vague

in the shape of a face
random as clouds,
that instant she burns

in sheets of fire
thru the dower house gate;
a flutter of smoke,

an ash of a cinder

suddenly awake.

~November 2014

Image: december sky, copyright joyannjones 2014