The Fickle Selkie

 

The Fickle Selkie

You came in on the wave

you left on,

dripping sleek and strong 

your secrets wearied in the foam.

You opened wide

your kelp drift eyes 

so I could see 

timelessly

the sea you plowed so long

 without a harvest

richer than sing-song.

We waltzed the wrecks

on dead men's bones,

and of 

the everything we found
we carried
nothing home.

I should have known

you'd leave as quick

as sea fret wrack

without a sound.

You are

nothing to me now---

your joys or griefs,

your warmth that fades

in the windy days

of a landsman's chill,

nothing at all of sea or land

less than the

 fine dust that seeps a sand

between lid and eye

to stab each blink,

an almost-nothing soon gone
in the rub of tears.

You are

nothing to me now

nothing, 

nothing at all--

no scrimshaw kiss

no oceanic salt-lick--

only a bit of bric-

a-brac decor,

the mounted skull

beside the door

of some strayed herbivore

who met its end in heat and thirst,

bleached and white and empty-eyed,

ant-cleaned of all the tasty worst.

Outside the walls

I cannot hear

the wave that crashes on

 your name
circling spray 

in wraithlike wreaths

around my lambent chimney tor, 

the smoke of cedars
 upward taking blind

into nothing

the burn of the soft wet skin
you left behind.

~September, 2015 

"Selkies ...are mythological creatures found in Scottish, Irish, [Icelandic] and Faroese folklore... Selkies are said to live as seals in the sea but shed their skin to become human on land."

~wikipedia

Image: Näcken (The Water Sprite), 1882 by Ernst Josephson, public domain via wikimedia commons

The Fortress

The Fortress

a sonnet

Love is unassailable; we only quit

one tall battlement of her defense

to reach another. We make a face to fit

our hands' shelter, to withdraw hungry when

it weeps upon our fingers. Every lantern's candle

inside her hidden chapel burns forever;

tho flames become obscure and smoke the mantle

tho some must flicker in the dirty weather.

Love is insurmountable; more clever

than the casks which hold her wine and water,

more lasting far than they, more put together,

living well with harmony or slaughter.

Yet when we find at last we can't define her,

with war and treachery we undermine her.

~September 2015

posted for     real toads

inspired by the poetry on somewhere I have never traveled, especially Love is, by Shanel Ranjith: 

"...When he told me he loved me forever
And infinity was our melodious endeavor..."

Image: The Battle, 1947, by Remedios Varo, fair use via wikiart.org

Carny

Carny

Watching the blue darkness,

mer-thing in a tidepool of dreams,

the sparkling shrill moon is a huckster

passing the hat, glued  with

the glitter of carnival lights,

spotlighting the main attraction

down a littered midway of stars.

 

Slithering through the tents on my scales

I'd be the rube from downstate, more

freakish than any of the acts

in my silver tail and cotton candy mind, 

snaking painfully over the gravel

from stall to stall still

looking for you,

 

not sure just what you do these days:

barker blindfolding the crowd with words,

sad-eyed urchin picking their pockets,

carny lopsidedly leering, milking the bottle toss

or the bored skull-sleeved punk

at the sticky-railed tilt-a-whirl

who'll take my dollar

 

one more time.

Better to stay where I was born

in the dance-dream of turquoise foam,

going home with a breaching dawn,

where sky pours the world

plain, clear water

for the jug of living.

~April 2013 

re-posted for    real toads

Tuesday Platform

Images: Carnival at Acireale, by Jeanne boleyn, public domain via wikimedia commons

The Little Mermaid Dissolves into Foam, by Edmond Dulac, fair use via wikiart.org

Fairytale Eyes

Fairytale Eyes

A lie in the light has

a harsh color. It

takes more from you

than the whispered fictions

darkness speaks.

Her doll button eyes so black

and slick as bullets,

dead as Tut without the glitter tomb

dead alive as the man

peeled off the cross sent

spinning into limbo,

are looking at a hundred

pink and purple moons.

Black on black and black again;

a pungent sponge of shadow

fills the killing jar, 

whose thin glass is so
unexpectedly unbreakable

unbearable until it tells itself

the once upon a time
transformation

the shimmering glamored lie.

The moon does not
at her moment of fulfillment
dress in lace and belled skirts.

She's not some cinder-urchin

after midnight, so don't say she is--

you with your cracked mirror

and blue iris of ice.

The moon is no drudge

pushed wretched in the ashes

befriended by anthropomorphic mice,

some missing slipper profaned

by Brobdingnagian feet.

~*~

Doll button eyes

were turquoise once, 

before she was locked

so firmly in this box

(or before she opened in 

this unaccountable

exploding burlesque.)

Now they're a noisy void,

Kleig lights on a stage

for mincing dreams, productions

of pranking Punchinellos, pageants

of Catherine-wheel princesses

lit by slender flames of wicked

wick'd stepmothers

dancing spots and talking dots,

who grant favors to their own,

sly torments to the rest with

circle-faced smirks
of mime-white and red.

The moon is no sleeping beauty,

more the witch whose mirror
always tells the most
obvious unwelcome truth,

or perhaps it's the apple itself
swollen with the viridian
juice of malice, so round

so beautiful so dead, 

floating its centuplicated replicas

all so wavering bloody pink, 

so saturated purple

that just one lovely bite

can drown the world.

Black on black pours out still

the lie of colors drop by splash

to the last: the changeling's
handsome prince, dashingly

backlit in psychedelic flash, 

the recapture-when-released technique

of the King of Beasts, the Beast Himself

come to lap the tears of weeping Beauty,
a savior wearing gold and green 

and Bluebeard's face,

the key to the sealed room

teasing in his pocket.

~September 2015

posted for    real toads

Weekend Challenge

Process Note: I have chosen to write about Charles Bonnet Syndrome, also called 'visual release hallucinations,' a neurological condition of the blind which produces vivid, often formulaic hallucinations, discussed by Oliver Sacks in his book, Hallucinations.

Images: The Fire Wheel, 1893, by James MacNeil Whistler, public domain, manipulated.

Bluebeard, 1862, by Gustave Dore,  engraving, public domain

One-Eyed Dream

One-Eyed Dream

There's an old woman dreaming

with one eye wide 

as the cricket sings

like a living summer

trapped between walls

with a tiny hammer,

a dark-air swimmer

a two-note composer

a tiring dancer

and laugher at riddles

runed on a lathing

chewed through the middle. 

The old woman dreams

with one eye latched

the eidolon hand

that comes out of the past

or the black-sleeved future

laid soft on her cheek

adamant on an arm 

weakening now 

as the day dwindles down

to a matchlight lost

in the swirling-in dusk;

both eyes fall shut because they must.

 ~September 2015

posted for     real toads

Tuesday Platform

Images: Seated Old Woman, 1920, by M.C. Escher, fair use via wikiart.org

Old Woman Asleep, 1873. by Vincent Van Gogh, public domain