Hekate

Hekate

I've stood at the crossroads

for a thousand years, triple faced, staring

down the choice of roads; a goddess, a witch,

one third a woman, till the times revolved

and made me a ghost.

The curse of a god's eye rests upon me

and the curse of birth sits upon thee.

What once was rare now is common;

what once was common has gone

beyond recall, the library of the ocean

emptied scroll by scroll, the old light lost

and sweetness of air. 

I split the directions to give my visions,

six eyes to see forward but none to look back.

What once was rare now is common

the blasphemy of waste, the apostasy of wealth:

the constants which confer the cruelty of power--

and at the last turning, the helplessness of love

consumed in cold fire--

what once was common is only a tale. 

But the dead past behind me I cannot see

and so, poor mortals, I give you witchery.

~July 2016

posted for     real toads

Challenge: Play it Again

(Kerry's God's in Nature)

Optional Musical Accompaniment

Iamge: Triple Hecate, 1795, by William Blake  public domain via wikimedia commons

Totem

Totem

Spirit Eater

White Waltzer

secret inside my skin

snailcurled in snowdrift

sleeping, black lips closed over

teeth big as carrots, dark poppy-pod eyes
shut, REM flutter stilled

silent as the melting flake;

in dreams you

come to eat the gold yolk

from the half-egg moon called

winter’s sun.

Wake when the hunter comes,

lift your chainsaw paws,

show him your ivory-yellow teeth

scrimshawed by the obduracy 

of your kills; shake 
his bones from your throat
with a growl.

Ice Orphan
White Diver
my only protection now.

All winter you reaped

sleek black bodies of grief,

turning the ice

salty red with your patience,
and when the dark time came

and there was nowhere else, you wooed me

 with garnets and alabaster, freshcut from
the sorrows you'd slain for me.
So I gave you

sleep in the black heartcave

content to barter away

all yesterday’s skins

for the talisman necklace

of your ebony claws.

~January 2011

Originally Posted for   Fireblossom Friday   at real toads


(Hannah has a very similar prompt up at real toads today so I resurrected this but did not link.)

Header image: Post card. Bear totem on grave. Ketchikan, Alaska.

Source: US National Archives, series: Photographs of the Inhabitants of Metlakatla, British Columbia and Metlakatla, Alaska, compiled ca. 1856 - 1936
Public Domain via wikimedia commons

Sacrifice

Sacrifice

Chaos is too strong

and takes up too much space

so to sweeten it away, 

we say

we must make sacrifice.

Never ourselves, no,

but something we pretend

is quite important, beautiful,

or dear, yet when the blade is done

will not be missed.

Chaos is too quick

on its feet. We thieves

swindle out no bright salvation here

shifting barefoot in the ash

the lying Order of our tears

dried by the furnace breath

of Chaos laughing.

~July 2016

.

 posted for   real toads

Weekend Challenge

Image: A Sacrifice, Govanni Battista Piranesi
public domain via wikiart.org

Raven Dream

Raven Dream

Raven reels in raucous black for the sundown sky

before I dream my crippled dog is somehow young,

can run, that love poured out in sand grows palms

and fish, that slickened cogs grating off the true

can still be grasped and purpose given back. 

I sleepwalk down to the druid's obsidian wood. An

earth-glass pool's a window for that other wind

of pomegranate and pine ruffling yellowed lace;

by a twist of shattered light it reflects a smile

I knew in another time another place.

Raven swells in circled sky on lintel'd wings

pulling a wire on which we both are hung,

glass beads that slide together whole and touch.

The ring of our collision in midair

is unmakeable by one but not for both.

~July 2016

posted for      real toads

 Challenge:Words Count with Mama Zen

(which I have failed miserably--this being a little over twice her required word count--sorry)

Image: Big Raven, 1931 by Emily Carr, pubic domain, manipulated