The Last Spell

The Last Spell

The sorceress said:

My blue eye comes from a peacock's pride,

two magpie plumes, one black, one white

are my cheekbones' span, one left, one right,

and the chilblained heart of a drunken man

beats out time for the madwoman's rhyme

that runs through my nodding head.

The hedgewitch said:

I'll work in the dark of a gone moon's quirk

with a sickle of poppy stem that I've curved

slicing dust from the wing of a moth with no sting

for a paste of bat's grease that paints shadows for skin,

nurse a mandrake root with blood, milk and soot, then dance
on one foot to the lord of hell til it smiles in my bed.

Yet none of these but this blackened art

can give back to me what died when I fell.

To make me again both young and well, my craft has no skill

except in my heart.

December 2019

posted for Kerry's final prompt at

The Imaginary Garden with Real Toads

I used Kerry's play it again selection, on the poetic voice

Images: Crone, from the internet, author unknown, Fair Use
Zenobia, © Warrick Goble, Fair Use

Call of the Crow

Call of the Crow

The crow called,

What world is coming?

A world with no ease in the seeing

where the last battle

finds no ending, where gold eats up valor

where no sending of ravens

can swallow the feast.

The crow called,

what world do I see

where summer kills flowers

where kine have no milk

and die eating dust,

where women
gamble their worth,

and old men
bring false judgment;

where each child

is a reaver, each man

a betrayer,

blinding his own eyes;

 

where the sea can feed no one

not even a gull,

where poison is flowing

deep in the well.

The crow called,
I shall, I shall
see it all,

but no more

any world that is dear to me.

~April 2015

Poem 27 for April--unlinked, and a total self-indulgence.
Reposted and lightly re-edited today, December 27, 2019 for Sherry's last prompt
at 
The Imaginary Garden with Real Toads

Process notes: This poem is drawn directly from a 9th century(?) prophecy(below) I happened on that reminded me very strongly of the description of the final days before the Ragnarök in Völuspá. Bleak as these prophecies are, I also see them as vital warnings, informing us so perhaps their dire ends can somehow be averted, foretelling as they do elements of a personal disintegration which leads to the more universal one.

This prophecy is Celtic, and spoken by the goddess Babd, the war goddess aspect of The Morrigan, who often takes the form of a crow:

I  shall not see a world that will be dear to me.

Summer without flowers,
Kine will be without milk,
Women without modesty,
Men without valour,
Captures without a king.

... ... ...

Woods without mast,
Sea without produce,

... ... ...

Wrong judgments of old men,
False precedents of brethren,
Every man a betrayer,
Every boy a reaver.
Son will enter his father's bed,
Father will enter his son's bed,
Everyone will be his brother's brother-in-law.

... ... ...

An evil time!
Son will deceive his father,

Daughter will deceive her mother.

prophecy of the goddess Badb,  from "The Second Battle of Mag Tuired"

~wikipedia








Image: Crow in flight at Isfahan, Iran, 2012, shared under a creative commons license
via wikimedia commons     Manipulated.

Fire of Imaginary Origin

Fire of Imaginary Origin

We lit a bonfire

of lies on the earth

where we burned

not vanities

but sanities,

not tree parts

but peace, hearts,

flesh and bone,

blood and stone;

and whatever we learned

as planets were turned

we watched

fall to ash, and were glad that it burned.

Winter Solstice

December, 2019

It is with sadness and great gratitude that I post to Marian's Imagine prompt at the vanishing

Imaginary Garden with Real Toads

Image: The Ladder of Fire, © Rene Magrite, 1939. Fair Use

Image of fire, author unknown, via internet. Fair Use

Pinball Christmas

Pinball Christmas

The wind remembers the snow spirit

when the hunger moon paints clouds

flaxen with pearl.  Christmas is out

somewhere knocking

against lamp-poles like a steel ball

in a Jotun's bar machine

looking to clang a bell

over a red kettle with slit lid

past which a clamor of people

pass quicker, suddenly stiff,

fever eyes cast down, wary of any

expectation to give

here in the Land of the Take.

Christmas is nowhere, I say,

 in music or mind, only perhaps

in the rebound of blurred lights that fight

against the black buffer of December night,

striking their sparks where the heart is least bright.

~December 2019

Images: Salvation Army Bell Ringer, author unknown, manipulated, fair use

Christmas tree, 12/13/19, © joyannjones

The Keeper's Dream

The Keeper's Dream

Wild darkness grows tame lightning

blue light from wrinkled hands;

 St Elmo's fire, stormscream, water

pushed into a weapon,

air's hysterics

my mates in this dark place.  

From the dead sailor's dream I know

your cry, snaking

up the spiral spine of things,

to warn the time is here

when even fishes will need wings.

~December 2019

For Kerry's Art FLASH 55 at real toads

A quick and dirty 55--forgive if my tools are still a bit rusty--with thanks to Kerry for all the glories, past and present, of The Imaginary Garden, and to the G-Man for the form which never fails.

Images: Pharos and Pacifico Oracle cards, © Kerry O'Connor
Attribution Link