The Infernal Operator

 

 

The Infernal Operator

The incubus is having

another rough night;

a bitter bell keeps ringing

between his horns, foreign, 

off-tempo, pounding like

the gallop of a three-legged horse,

or the arrhythmic crash of cambered granite

tumbling from a fallen cathedral,

and to top it off

there's an angel in the fire,

feathers burning acrid, ashy black,

dialing, dialing the clouds, asking 

the great silence left when the clacking

rotary wheel cogs home: Where is the bird-winged host, 

my alabaster birth brothers, the holy
triune fatherspiritson
to pull me out?

The incubus knows the angel

has landed in the wrong fireplace for this,

yet still he wishes

it would happen, to see at last a miracle 

not born of tormented flesh 

or the familiar's lascivious alembics,

 

and also so the noise would stop,

the pale, luminous eyes round as blue worlds

cease following him

from window to window as

he tries frantically to let out the stink.

Doesn't it care, this minister of grace, that

the incessant ringing, the billowing smoke

of its rendered virtue, distract him 

from his greatest opus?

(50 Shades of Damnation,

to be published next spring.)

Why doesn't its everpresent

compassionate disaster master save it?

Instead it burns and burns

as the phone rings on unanswered,

sweetly smiling, staring at him 

as if the lines weren't down

in a world on fire;

as if there was something

he could do.

 

 

 

~October 2015, lightly revised June 2023 

 

 

 

 

  

I couldn't as yet find any angels to wrestle, but I do have the incubus and his quandary here.(To read poems in this series, click the eponymous tag.)

posted for Wrestling Angels at desperate poets

 

 

 

Images by Salvador Dali, Fair Use via wikart.org

Top:Debris of an Autobile Gives Birth to a Blind Horse Biting a Telephone, 1938

Lobster Telephone, 1938

Birthday Moonsong

Birthday Moonsong

Born  in the wolf moon,

at century's half-crack,

before the moving shadow box

before the singing pocket, the talking hand--

disjecta  membra of a war and peace,

nuclear snowflake crystaled in the cold aftermath,

fallout caught and whirled up

by black arms of concrete

into the sweet dance of chemical fog;

all around me

blackbirds falling

from the sky like almanacs

pages open to the gift of silent prophecy

and in the mirror, a white raven

solitary,
a meal, a target, a danger

to the flock, burning the eye like
a scarlet poppy

on a gravemound, or

a working girl unbuttoned

hungover 

in the convent.

* * *

In the house

at the edge of the world,

with the wolf moon low in the west,

its yellow eye on the scattering stars,

its tongue longing

for the fat white hams of Venus,

the north wind sleets the window glass

bitter green, rattling the taste

of old snow and bad design; the wolf moon

the hunger moon,
stops to lap

pooled pink from blood-red Mars,

swells its belly 

with faltering stars, the small and weak
gnawing them out one by one as I hum

dusting the ape statuettes, the

draped clocks, perplexed still

that the empty chair

stays empty another winter,

while the fire throws white shadows,

while ghosts fall with the snow.

~January 2015

A repost for my birthday.

Images:Wolf Dog, 1976 © Jamie Wyrth  Fair Use

The Snow Queen Flies Through The Winter Night, by Edmund Dulac  Fair Use

Witch of Tides

Witch Of Tides

I. The Wet

I cannot be

the Witch of Tides

with her greenalive

and mutable eyes

with her wavefoam curls

her saline sighs,

but only the constant

Crone of death's dust

where all things fall

because they must

when they've bled out to nothing

their sweet salt blood.

We meet in that place

neither sea nor shore;

the liminal wing, the liquidless pour

not wave nor field nor barren waste,

only a dead god's breathing face

on which we stand, the Witch and I

where three winds vie

to make the storm of rattle and fly

where the veil is rent,

where One and the Other

can mingle unkempt.

I cannot be

the Witch of Tides

whose toy is life

whose palette is clouds

whose hand is so wet,

but only the Crone of a

soft and dry

and whimsical

death.

II. The Dry

Yet her blackened

inversion am I,
with my sandy surf
of dead glass and dry

pushed and rolled
like a moving eye,

tho the sweat that's brought

is the only salt

except alkali.

We both have our wrecks

of sphinxes and ships,
of stones and decks,

of cities buried

with a murderer's care,

a privacy to the ones we hide,

shrouded in the swirl of our hair

as their world dies;

and who is to say

of the wet or the dry,

which was the Maiden

which was the Bride,
the constant Crone

or the wild Witch of Tides?

~October 2015
Reposted January 2020 

for earthweal

Though it may seem strange to post an old poem to such a brand new site, this one simply selected itself from my memory banks, so I hope I will be excused for letting it have its way. In its own equivocal voice, perhaps it addresses some aspects of the weal of the earth.

Top Image via internet; author unknown. Manipulated. No copyright infringement intended.
Great Sphinx and Pyramids, circa 1890 via wikimedia commons
Manipulated. Shared under a Creative Commons License

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.

Down Below

Down Below

A long run last night

under the Silver Eye

Blood on my hide

but not my own.

Here I lie

where the Red Eye

cannot come, where nothing comes

but Death and the turquoise tide.

Here no sound

of song or voice, no hand, alone;

coppery tongue, asleep on bones

and no one comes.

The longhouse winks

its Yellow Eyes, cruel firelight

alive inside, so many smells

a sound like bells

I cannot make

but feel its form

like dust in my throat,

conceived but unborn.

They screamed to see me,

long tongues to greet me slipped

their sharpened iron; I broke them

then, the rafters dripped---

why shouldn't they die?

Soon someone will come.

~April 2015

a monster-waiting-for-his-hero poem, reposted for
Brendan's Hero on the Road

(originally written for National Poetry Month 2015 with Magaly Guerrero

I Hear Fictional Poets:

Create a poem written from the point of view of a fictional character.)

This poem is written in the voice of Grendel,  the 'shadow-walker,'  monster from Beowulf, 

".. an Old English epic poem..[and].. possibly the oldest surviving long poem in Old English..It was written in England some time between the 8th and the early 11th century^..."  "... Beowulf leaves [his kingdom in Sweden or Norway] to destroy Grendel, who has several times killed those asleep in the mead-hall of [the king of the Danes] after having been disturbed by the noise of the drunken revelers. After a long battle, Beowulf mortally wounds Grendel, and Grendel dies in his marsh-den..."~wikipedia

 

A favorite tale of mine, retold and filmed many many times.This is my favorite indie movie version.  

Beowulf and Grendel

Images:Untitled, by Zdislav Beksinski     Fair use

Primitive Man Seated In Shadow, by Odilon Redon    Public domain               

The Snare

The Snare

Those notes you play
beneath the stars
as sweet as wine
as red as Mars

keep me hung
and strung on fire,
a golden fuse
burning beads of lyre.

My peacock fan
can't stop the blood
that paints my skin,
the traitor flood

of feelings trapped
as night runs strong
to keep its foot far
from the snare of your song.

What use the art
of lace and gown
when all I am
is so quickly unbound?

Your blinded face
eclipses your lines.
You play for yourself
not for me or mine.
 
How often I've run
from that puppeteer's tune,
till you sing me back
to fish for the moon.

~December 2015

posted for     real toads

a few quick and extemporaneous rhymes for

Fireblossom Friday: The Art of Gerda Wegener

Image:  Das Ständchen (The Serenade) 1918, by Gerda Wegener

No copyright infringement intended. Source

Talking To The Corner

Talking To The Corner

Up the nowhere ladder only

to slip on the bottom hours,
to push the first reverse

abrupt turn of the key

dangling eternity

from unwinding entropy--

but still

but still

--one has only memory

against the dark, the data
of  dada that
comes dwindling in.

It's a time of closing

a trance time, a folding, a looking away

from an edge inlaid with endings

where the only beginning

is bending the limits

of the bloody art

of letting go.

~December 2015

posted for    real toads

Get Listed

Dada: a nihilistic artistic movement of the early 20th century in W Europe and the US, founded on principles of irrationality, incongruity, and irreverence towards accepted aesthetic criteria

~Collins British Dictionary

Photo: Tristan Tzara, 1921, by Man Ray

Fair use via wikiart.org

Down On The Coast

Down on the Coast

Three ragged rocks in the bay of the heart

smoothed and seamed by the tailoring spray

now pressed flat as the long wave fades

the water stills, the tide splays

with all its fleery flotsam,

ambergris and driftwood caveats
pulled to deeper decay.

Eleven pouting lemons in a cobalt blue bowl,
secret and sullen as xanthic mollusks,

bitter suns curdling morning to fractions

piercing the tongue with soured satisfactions,

as if to say I told you so

but you just had to 

keep adding sugar.

In the dim gaslight of a half-sincere dream

the medium saw the house burn down, beam

by beam, red walls glow to nothing, saw drawn

in charcoal ectoplasm all the burnt debris--
daguerreotypes of she, of thee

wet framed in blackened ash, 

ruined before time for tea.

Tonight I dream your absinthe aftertaste

gulping loss, coughing up your waste
choking on the acrid gnosis
of each indifferent clumsy phasing

in and out, fractured in either placing,

making and unmaking 

the mask of a sailor's face.

Three rocks in the bay of the heart;

name them as you please or will, so

smoothed and seamed in glinting calm,

blue-ruffled in a bay without a mark;
still mirrors lit by day that in the dark

will founder any cockswain lost at sea

who seeks to come to anchor in that lee.

~May 2012

revised December 2015

Reposted for  real toads

 

Tuesday Platform

Nothing to do with the holidays, just an old wash of words as the pale winter sun enters Capricorn.

Image: I've once again borrowed the work of my friend Petteri Sulonen. Thanks, Petteri, as always for the use of this shot:

Calm Day, by Petteri Sulonen on flick'r

Petteri's photostream

Winter Fuel

Winter Fuel

I.

The broken elm

brought down by ice

will make a winter fuel,

cells burnt to ghost-ash

in hearth's fire heart.

Birds sing in his hair no more

only the crackle of demons

whistling the jig of fitful flame.

I gave myself once
to the fire of your touch

a broken trunk, a winter fuel.

 My snapped
arms

lost their smooth skin

as the fire burned in

and the demons laughed

and the ghost-ash fell;

but still 

in the rimed December

of want and desire,

to your thickening ice

I'd rather be fire.

II.

Dead night lengthens,

 cheap lights press upon the sun.

In gaudy December,

want and desire

both need a fire.

Anger is a winter fuel,

fear its dear

disciples: the frost-marrowed bones

whiskey-rage comes to melt,

the sleet of hot bullets

fired at the dark

from behind

a clean shirt of lies,

a mask with no eyes.

The bodies fall

like broken elms

unrelated, remote

stacked on concrete;

winter fuel
that burns cold
as Hel.

~December 2015

This poem took rather opposing directions--I have decided to include both.
The words 'winter fuel' are taken from the carol 'Good King Wenceslas'

Process notes for part II:

"HYDRO, Okla -  A series of shootings along I-40 have resulted in two deaths Thursday morning.
The rampage started near Hydro and ended in Custer County where a suspect was arrested...
Authorities say he targeted one vehicle in a road rage incident, shooting several times at the car. The driver was shot and killed..A few minutes later near Weatherford, officials say the suspect shot at another vehicle, killing a woman. Around 1 a.m., [the shooter] was arrested for driving under the influence..." ~kfor news, oklahoma city

In Norse mythology, Hel was the realm where the dead went to abide with the goddess of the same name, located in Niflheim, a world below of frozen ice and cold.

posted for     real toads

Weekend Challenge

Images: Winter Fuel, © joyannjones, November 2015

Footer: Vehicles at Hydro shooting incident, courtesy kfor.com No copyright infringement intended.