Broken Lantern

Broken Lantern
(incanted)

Cricket sing and beat the bat

deaf against a stony post.

Rub your legs that can't be fat;

chase away the sonar ghost.

Broken lantern lost his light

thrown on the rocks of endless night,

snakeskin succubus lost her bite

cast out by a wafer and an old man's fright.

A broken hag saw her mirrored face

plowed up for flowers with a double-bit brace.

Changeling child found a cold embrace

in a boomerang's claw, in a fickle grace.

Light was broken, curse was spoken

though she made no sound. It lay on the ground.

The sun gave a shout, the well gave out

the cow went dry, but the bishop ate trout.

In a hawk heavy sky, when the moon was round

two doves died fast, two sins flew past

the nightingale singing her bloody last

of a lightness broken, a curse soft spoken.

Closed door womb, a raddled room

littered with toys as a baby's tomb

where the curse was spoken, where light lay broken;

where the babe's bound tight and gently lies

in arms of steel where the knife never dies.

Too soon, too soon, for the hard lullabies,

for the waking sleep never meant to keep

where the curse is spoken, the light is broken.

Cricket sing and fool the bat

deaf and blind, lost and found.

Wild wolf howl, wail black cat;

light is broken and lies on the ground.

~November 2012

If you'd like to hear the poem read by the author, please click below

broken lantern (incanted) by Hedgewitch O'theWilds

Posted for   OpenLinkNight   at dVerse Poets Pub

Image: Light Blue, by Keoni Cabral, on flick'r
Shared under a creative commons license.

Caribou

Doll by Junsung Lee

Caribou

I am a caribou

under construction

derricked by dolls, secondly sighted.

I bask in my horns,

my adornment of goatbeard

my split-quickened hooves, all

the better to bolt

from the mastering hand.

I could tell you much about

bleating in lichens, waiting for the rut;

how poetry's a pillow of moss made lead

stuck awkward beneath the unquiet head

tossing sharp antlers that keep it erect;

how love is a forage of poisoned grass

caught in rough lips, slick liquid gold

slipping from have, rolling from hold

but I need to run, because running's my life,

away from this scaffold that's

nailed to the sky, away from the

brushes, the laboratory eye

to the tan tundra's ten generations of night,

where my numberless sisters

dance with white wolves

to buckle the worlds.

~November 2011

Posted for   real toads

Sunday Mini-Challenge

Margaret Bednar posts some amazing photographs of dolls created by students as a class project in self-representation in art. They are amazing and I encourage everyone to follow the link and check them all out.

Gratitude

Gratitude

is a kind of ash

that blows in volcano wind,

falling opal featherscales hissed

off by firesnakes that coil

islands in the sea,

all we have left perhaps

of rocky miles of ore and gold

stacked heavy in earth's shadowbox

melting in a pressured flux

spit out to lift a mountain

from the fire.

~November 2012

55 serpent feathers for   the g-man

Happy Thanksgiving to All

Header Image: Mayon Volcano, Philippines, by Alan Flowers, on flick'r

Shared under a creative commons license

Footer Image: rendering of Yaxchilan Feathered Serpent Diety, byEl Commandante

public domain, via wikimedia commons