The Ring-bolted Sword

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 "..Lay between us the ring-bolted sword

the sharp-edged iron as it lay before

when we two together lay in one bed

when we had the name of man and wife...

Much have I said. I would say more

if more time for speech were granted me

but my voice fails my wounds are throbbing

I said what was true and now must depart.."

~Sigurdarkvida in skamma, Poetic Edda

trans Carolyne Larrington

 

 

 

 

The Ring-bolted Sword

(a 55)

 

 You brought iron into our unquiet bed

when you saw I wasn't the mask you'd paid for.

On battlefields only the dead

sleep easy.

Now you're gone

but the death-chill won't leave

these nights where my dreams

grow hyenas and serpents.

What lies tangle

truth can only mutilate.

I say what is true

and depart.

 

 

 

September 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Desperate Oracles at

desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images via wikimedia commons shared by Creative Commons license, full attribution at links: 

Cultural History Museum Oslo. Norwegian Viking-Age Exhibition 12 The Broken Sword  from Vold, Hedmark, deliberately bent and destroyed before buried as grave gift, 10th c

X-ray of the reconstructed sword from the Viking boat burial at Ardnamurchan[scotland], by Pieta Greaves of AOC Archaeology {10th c.}

 

 

Earthbound Fish

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earthbound Fish

 

 

It wants to fly

it does

or at least swim

but melancholy never made 

a path to waves or sky

any more than 

Escher's tessellations made

a living

school of fish. They only made

wallpaper

or a fish-dance of replicated cells

that might be somehow the

mute components

of a self-eating brain.

 

It needs wings

that want to be brushes,

that will refresh the distempered

canvas from black

to floating clouds.

Feathers are only clouds, after all,

air things clipped and pressed

into Icarus-wax, 

so why not?

But the paint is caked and dry,

feather-breaking,

and the staggered beating

 like an old heart

that stumbles itself into silence.

Meanwhile ten thousand starlings

live in their moving mosaic, 

a matrix of cloud,

a canvas

of pure flight

from earthdark to light;

 

it wants it wants

 so much

to fly.

September 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for

desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Fish wallpaper by M.C. Escher, courtesy of  Etoffe

Starling murmuration over Scotland, no attribution given. Via internet  Fair Use 

Mask Of Aphrodite

 

 

 

 

 

Mask Of Aphrodite

 

"There is no cure for love other than marriage." 

~Irish proverb 

 

 

Love's an old wolf who howls when she pleases,

her black lips drawn back in mock of a grin.

She's made me her meat for chancers and losers,

to open the locks and let anyone in.

 

Her yellow teeth are blunted with winters

but her fevers burn hot as melted brass.

Her eyes are flat-white as Attic marble

rolling behind Aphrodite's mask.

Her promises drift like leaves in October.

Her vows of fidelity make the stones laugh.

There's never been one she ever was true to

except the ones who died too fast.

Since I was that child who was used as a woman

since I was that woman who thinks like a child

I've run with her pack. The crows find my dinner;

there's a price to pay for being born wild.

I never whore for playthings or money

but three times it saved my life.

I never lie for the sake of loving,

only to play at being a wife.

I never was called to be a drunkard,

but I've ever been every drunkard's best friend,

to drop the mask when I see it coming;

 

the black-lipped snarling

bitter end.

September 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Illicit Encounters

at desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Wolves, © Andrew Wyeth

Head of Aphrodite, via Brittanica

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Silver Song

 

 

 

 

 The Silver Song

(a 55)

I don't remember when

the Black Fear came; it seems

it's always been here, a broken

rotted smell under the floor,

invisible but disruptive

as catching on fire.

Bright-piercing in the night-oak,

a bird too small to see

sings quicksilver notes.

 

Which more unexpected,

that it sings at all,

or that I hearing it

rejoice?

September 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Fireblossom's Desperately Different (the unexpected)

at desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Untitled (Blurred Figure) ©Zdzisław Beksiński   Fair Use

Blue Tit, ©Karl Martens  Fair Use

 

Wither

 

 

 

 

 

 Wither

 

 

 

I feel an ending

traveling through my bones.

It stops for gas

just short of my liver,

looks for some diversion

 

a roadside attraction

 

as it spreads a cloth

under an infested juniper,

making a picnic of fingernails

and rheum, mumbling,

"Damn the bagworms."

How long time seems

 

in this heat-strangled house

carpentered by a coffinmaker sun,

with no appetite for increasing,

no single cell willing

to grow and not die.

 

We gracelessly surrender

 

to the wither

of merciless azure. Even the land,

with its skin drawn taut

as a snake's winding sheet

drying in August's crinkled moult,

 

knows when to quit.

 

The newborn rain comes,

leaves flush and spin;

when this red shambled summer

finds its cold-spangled grave,

 someone will laugh

up a pumpkin-spiced sleeve

 

under feckless wild stars

 

while the goldenrod blooms and my ending

takes a short vacation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Summer's End

at desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Gas, 1940 ©Edward Hopper      Fair Use

Native Oklahoma Goldenrod, via okprairie on Pinterest  Fair Use

 

 

 

Murmur Of Flight

 

 

 

 

Murmur Of Flight

There is a murmur in the roost.

There is a rumor in the mist

and a feather in the dust,

a drop, a stall before you fall

into the long flight away

far from the silver cage of the rain,

far from the river that spies on the moon,

far from the shudder when wings are torn

by ruby traps and diamond rats

who gnaw soft parts of dreams away.

There is a tremble at the lock;

there's an assembly under the wind,

a memory at doors the sparrows tend

whose lintels are stars and whose handles, hearts

turning to open the musical sky.

August 2023

originally written for In the Footsteps of Our Feathers

and posted for Open Link Weekend at

desperate poets

Images: Three Sparrows In A Rainstorm, ©Ohara Koson  Public Domain

Ornate Door in Fez, Morocco  via internet author unknown   Fair Use

Dancing With Crabs

 

Dancing with Crabs

Little crabling bastard

what makes you think
you matter

 

a million like you

hatched a day

for the chef to batter.

You chase what you can’t have;

you get what you won’t own,

a tin can for a hat

 

a scuttle down the sand

sideways slow alone

to lose what you never had.

 Little crabling baby

you know that you’re
half crazy

to want what women have

to love what makes you mad;

to dance, a hermit crab

 

in a white parade of swans.

Little baby crabling

ballet's not for crustaceans.

So borrow from the oyster

loneliness the pearl

that adorns any station.

Last Day of November 

2011, revised August 2023

posted for Lonely Town

at desperate poets

Header Photo: Black Eyed Hermit Crab by Dan Hershman on flick'r

Footer Photo:  Swan Lake by Bella Lago on flick'r

Both shared under Creative Commons 2.0 Generic License

Brujeria

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brujeria

 

I don't know what fetch

was living in his hair

but there was always something

 

when it blew back in the hot breath

of the redtangled hills; new-hatched snakes perhaps

curling from the small broken shells of his words,

 

tendrilous avatars in those nights that hid

the color of blood so well;

or soft rain-threads each sweet as a sugarfall

 

on my open face as we made love,

for the medicine painting, not la brujeria,

skintalking the Healing Way.

 

Whatever it was, it

wasn't the mild dog in his eyes,

not fur, not a tail-wag.

 

It was syllogistic, sensate, restless;

hungry as a hopping flea.

whose tiny itch is only felt later.

Perhaps it even had Buddha nature,

or something else

 borrowed from Kali.

 

It was one of those things about him

that taught me to look away.

I saw only its soft brown habitat

as I slipped my fingers through

felt its satin dance

against my touch

but what lived there never left

like all the other things I tried to disappear.

I could feel them breathing

though they never made a sound

not even now when

they ghost him back to my dreams.

August 2023

posted for Odd Little Things

at desperate poets

 

Art nouveau lithograph poster 1903 ©Alphonse Mucha  Public Domain

Man with Long Hair, ©Odd Nedrum    Fair Use