The Lay of Rose And Blade

The Lay Of Rose And Blade

I have no silver left on my blade
   only the pure grey iron.
The lay of the knife, 
   the way of the sword
is all a warrior can rely on.

The lay of the rose is
    from bud to bloom,
a fragrance annulling a thorn.
   The way of the rose
is bloom blown to split hip,
   so lovesome but not so long.

I am the last of the lay and the way,
   a rod without petal or haft
I am the iron that forges itself
   short and sharp through the breast.

~October 2015

 

Images: The Blow To The Heart, 1952 Rene Magritte

Meditative Rose, Salvador Dali   

Fair use via wiki.art.org

Pumpkinhead

Pumpkinhead

How he bled

the pumpkin head

for seeing what he saw

for saying what he said

when he was only
a nerve left on

 to burn down a house

where no one's at home.

But still

they kicked him
down the road,

they laughed
when they made
his shell explode;

O that was bad, but even worse,

that they killed his voice

but not
his curse.

~October 2015

posted for   real toads

Tuesday Platform

Images: Pumpkinhead, 1972, Warm Halloween, 1989, by Jamie Wyeth  fair use via wikiart.org

House On The Hill

Image (c)  Erik Johansson

House on the Hill

I’ve built a  fine house on top of my head, grey

dormer windows, tall stories, preaching chimneys,

heavy boards of years across the door. 

It’s easier now, not going in and out,

and I needed a way to keep out the dead.

The time it's taken you'd never guess, to 

trim my ears into topiary frogs, meticulous sentinels here

by the door, crouched comical, listening and green

on the hair I’ve mowed smooth as a fog. Totems

well placed can help keep out the dead.

Of course, my eyes still stay outside, blind ovals in

the wild blow of storm, hit by each unseen coldslap surprise,

while inside my house, white incense smoke takes 

the sweetened song of a bird in a cage from attic

to hall, to ward the doors that keep out the dead.

There's the child in her room, lining treasures up.

See her bone beads of grace in a plastic cup gleam

rich red in an eyeglow turned in, flicker 

and spark giving light where there is

neither fire nor candle to keep out the dead.

She wears my mist necklace of disappearing jewels

clothes of umber leaves, shoes from old squirrel tracks

left on the lawn, paints my face with the scent 

of rosemary rubbed on the dark skin of dawn,

come climbing up over the living and dead.

And the view is good from the slanting roof,

laid on the summit of my growth, looking out

where my own eyes ever go, beyond my topiary ear

to the walled horizon of clouds and fear

the dead must cross to get to here.

~May 2011

A little Octoberish music from the past, which I was inspired to dig out of mothballs by a post at Oran's Well. I haven't revised it much.

The artist for the image at top, Revelation Fields, is Swedish photographer Erik Johansson. All rights belong to him. His website of amazing art is here, and his print store, here

The Haunt Collector

The Haunt Collector

A bit of a skull's snipped sonata,

notes hemorrhaged in saffron and gold,

starved ribs on a pumpkin piñata,
carved smile where the next loss unfolds;

in a basket, the wheel'd sigh of summer

broken down to a cracked clod of clay;

all these and more I've put in store,

dry wood for the auto-da-fe.

~October 2015 

posted for real toads

Flash 55 Plus

O Fortuna! indeed...

Image: Mischief Night, 1986, by Jamie Wyeth fair use via wikiart.org

October Begins With Poe

Edgar Allan Poe, by Aubrey Beardsley

 Ulalume,  A Ballad

By Edgar Allan Poe

 

 

The skies they were ashen and sober;

      The leaves they were crispéd and sere—

      The leaves they were withering and sere;

It was night in the lonesome October

      Of my most immemorial year;

It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,

      In the misty mid region of Weir—

It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,

      In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through an alley Titanic,

      Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul—

      Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.

These were days when my heart was volcanic

      As the scoriac rivers that roll—

      As the lavas that restlessly roll

Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek

      In the ultimate climes of the pole—

That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek

      In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,

      But our thoughts they were palsied and sere—

      Our memories were treacherous and sere—

For we knew not the month was October,

      And we marked not the night of the year—

      (Ah, night of all nights in the year!)

We noted not the dim lake of Auber—

      (Though once we had journeyed down here)—

We remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,

      Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And now, as the night was senescent

      And star-dials pointed to morn—

      As the star-dials hinted of morn—

At the end of our path a liquescent

      And nebulous lustre was born,

Out of which a miraculous crescent

      Arose with a duplicate horn—

Astarte's bediamonded crescent

      Distinct with its duplicate horn.

And I said—"She is warmer than Dian:

      She rolls through an ether of sighs—

      She revels in a region of sighs:

She has seen that the tears are not dry on

      These cheeks, where the worm never dies,

And has come past the stars of the Lion

      To point us the path to the skies—

      To the Lethean peace of the skies—

Come up, in despite of the Lion,

      To shine on us with her bright eyes—

Come up through the lair of the Lion,

      With love in her luminous eyes."

But Psyche, uplifting her finger,

      Said—"Sadly this star I mistrust—

      Her pallor I strangely mistrust:—

Oh, hasten! oh, let us not linger!

      Oh, fly!—let us fly!—for we must."

In terror she spoke, letting sink her

      Wings till they trailed in the dust—

In agony sobbed, letting sink her

      Plumes till they trailed in the dust—

      Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

I replied—"This is nothing but dreaming:

      Let us on by this tremulous light!

      Let us bathe in this crystalline light!

Its Sybilic splendor is beaming

      With Hope and in Beauty to-night:—

      See!—it flickers up the sky through the night!

Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,

      And be sure it will lead us aright—

We safely may trust to a gleaming

      That cannot but guide us aright,

      Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,

      And tempted her out of her gloom—

      And conquered her scruples and gloom:

And we passed to the end of the vista,

      But were stopped by the door of a tomb—

      By the door of a legended tomb;

And I said—"What is written, sweet sister,

      On the door of this legended tomb?"

      She replied—"Ulalume—Ulalume—

      'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober

      As the leaves that were crispèd and sere—

      As the leaves that were withering and sere,

And I cried—"It was surely October

      On this very night of last year

      That I journeyed—I journeyed down here—

      That I brought a dread burden down here—

      On this night of all nights in the year,

      Oh, what demon has tempted me here?

Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber—

      This misty mid region of Weir—

Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber—

      In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."

Said we, then—the two, then—"Ah, can it

      Have been that the woodlandish ghouls—

      The pitiful, the merciful ghouls—

To bar up our way and to ban it

      From the secret that lies in these wolds—

      From the thing that lies hidden in these wolds—

Had drawn up the spectre of a planet

      From the limbo of lunary souls—

This sinfully scintillant planet

      From the Hell of the planetary souls?" 

 

 

 

Because, it is the first day of October, and October needs to start with Poe. 

 

 

 

Image: Art by Gustave Doré (French, 1832–1883). Illustration for "Donkey-Skin [Peau d’Âne]", a fairytale by Charles Perrault that appeared in his "Histoires ou contes du temps passé," 1697.