Maleficium

 

 

 

 

 Maleficium

 

 

 

 

By dark lantern, by crimson candle, in

an absence floating in wine without bread,

the Necromancer toasts in mandrake hopes

the golden miracles of his dead.

 

His chamber is fumed with dubious pasts, an

offering's smoke where the last choke occurred.

His breath has gone dry as his corpse-woman's eye,

ceremonially opened with a theurgic word.

 

But that eggshell gaze is blind as stone, her

songs of the oriole fluttered away.

The nods of owls and mnemonic howls

work a brittle sequence no cello can play.

 

The final shriek puts grit in the lens, so

it never divines what time's drown erased.

The owl and the oriole dice for his soul;

every spirit that rises wears his own face.

 

In my dream you've left fetches and dust behind.

You stand by the door of a bridge's arc,

the wild blue river in flight from your quiver,

your shades all spent arrows that killed their marks.

 

 

 

 

February 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Necromancy: "..the practice of magic involving communication with the dead by summoning their spirits as apparitions or visions for the purpose of divination.." ~wikipedia

Maleficium: "the practice of malevolent magic, derived from casting lots as a means of divining the future in the ancient Mediterranean world"~wikipedia

Theurgy:".. the ritual practices associated with the invocation or evocation of the presence of one or more deities..."~wikipedia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Word Garden Word List

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Necrophile. 1965, ©Jean Benoit        Public Domain

The Blind Man of Toledo, 1906, ©Joaquin Sorolla       Public Domain

 

 

 

Seedpod

 

 

 

Seedpod

All your cars had names. You could have

called me a knotted whip, waiting just

off the Sulphur exit for Argon to pull up, 

her aqueous sides mottled with Dallas dust.   

When you showed, we were bleak as

strangers till we forgot how lame things lie.

Then, we'd never parted. Hand-fast laughing,

we brazened the blue hole's perilous beauty. 

You picked me the seedpod of a water-lily,

catacomb of caves on a stick

rattling full with brown-eyed pearls.

They watched me from a vase for twenty years.

 

The day was hot as rooftar in the pot,

the wet air a greasy mop

as we deployed, Argon starting

with reluctance--all your cars

started with reluctance--

disapproving of me there 

in her too small seat.

We drove and talked the sun 

up the noon sky, down its back 

in trickles of salt, sat on rocks 

compliant as clouds by Turner Falls,

talking by touch, by feel, 

by nerve and luck, 

words splashed on dry fields  

dust before and after,

your ribs under the blowing shirt

white as nightlights in the dusk.

Radium midnight in the tent;

I didn't know how

I could ever let you go back.

I cursed

what made me fall like water, 

pour out suddenly yes forever, 

cursed what made you fly so high,

the wind that fills the windsock and blows on.

And so, I never found that place again

a quarter mile from the Sulphur on-ramp

bright in the heat-breathing beauty of morning.

I spend instead my pale days waiting

 

empty as the chair I've prepared

with your books and candlelight, empty as a  

dry-rattle lily pod whose pearls

fall one by one on stone.

~May 2014

 

 

Process note: Turner Falls is a waterfall on Honey Creek in the Arbuckle Mountains of south-central Oklahoma..With a height of 77 feet [it] is locally considered Oklahoma's tallest waterfall...Turner Falls and the blue hole [directly beneath it] are dangerous and have claimed people's lives every year. Only experienced swimmers should swim there..~wikipedia

 

 

originally posted for    real toads

Out of Standard: The Poem is a Curse

Isadora Gruye  (The Nice Cage) asks us to write a poem involving a curse.

reposted and revised October 2023

for

desperate poets

 

 where Brendan asks us: "For this challenge, write of DESPERATE BEAUTY. You can use one of Van Gogh’s paintings as a starting point, or you may find all the required colors in another painter or poet or from your personal palette. How does a poem render the beautiful? What hues must it choir? How does strangeness improve beauty? What are the limits of beauty? Where or when does the desperation come in? And why is it alone infinite?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Water Lily Seed Pod, Bobbye Wolfe  via Pinterist

Windsock via google image search, author unknown.

Paul Gauguin's Armchair ©Vincent Van Gogh

Turner Falls, Oklahoma,   via Wikipedia

 

Red And Gold

 

 

 

 

 Red And Gold

I.

Under my feet bright bodies

of leaves, mast from the oak, crunch

of all the discards of summer, fire's coming

crackle; percussion accompaniment

to sweet smoke of raked heaps burning

where you stand smiling,

match in hand.

II.

Peridot green under amethyst clouds

the after-storm sun bent the grass back

with sudden heat, as you bent my bones

with one touch, onyx eyes

closing on summer's fire

while the last light left brushed the waterfall's

singing to red steam.

III.

Around my skin a white pelt of

frozen water, my remembering numbing as wind,

 howling hard as a cast-out wolf ten states

from its pack, too old to fight

too full not to cry,

 under a sharp sickle moon

that sees nothing at all.

IV.

Rolling wheels on warm red dirt

over the creek, around the bends where 

trees hide the climb, mask the descent,

 shaking their gravid buds in the rage of air

pushing me, pulling me,

past the point where words

could make me stop.

V.

Every season dies around me,

every leaf, every white-muzzled wolf

in my wilderness, each golden October

burning red under the match

til nothing is left but the journey

I reverse night

after night in my sleep.

October 2021

posted for Meet the Bar: Cadralor plus Nobel

at dVerse Poets

Images: Autumn Leaves, Lake George, NY, 1924 ©Georgia O'Keefe   Fair Use

Red Dirt Road After Spring Rain, author unknown, via internet.    Fair Use

 

Dream Trip

 

 

 

 

 Dream Trip

 

 

 

 

 

 After a pipe dream courtship

he married disaster. Six months gone

he woke up to

a quick divorce. He untangled himself

on the road to Vegas, where lies went down

like a cup of strong coffee

fast and black in the tarry night,

lounge tunes bleeding in air 

sharp as snake-eyed desert light, hope

another bad debt to be written off.

The wind's hand shook

like a drunk croupier, fumbling out

aces and eights

before the martinis, sanding the gas tank,

whistling at graves. The car gave out

before he made Tahoe, when

nothing was left but Jack and shit

and Jack left town. Stars sarcastically

 winked when he put his head down

slack on the wheel and slept

dreaming of her, dreaming of then,

dreaming a toffee-striped lizard

and a stand-up owl

laughing their asses off

at punter's luck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 2021

posted for

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Abandoned Car, author unknown, Fair Use

Lizard © Chernee Sutton-Jurutu  Fair Use

Driving With The Incubus

 

 

 

 

Driving With The Incubus

(Incubus VIX) 

 

 

 

When I first saw you, neither man

nor woman, flesh nor fowl,

you'd brought round the car; a wisp

of sulfur fog hung from the grill.

It snaked up your shoe to your 

black and white smile

 

neither corrupt nor immaculate,

misting my face like tomorrow's shadow.

 

You held the sedan door wide;

I might have walked away but I was young,

and you were the best chauffeur

the devil could find, with

that changeling's face, the hellpit's flare,

 

black peacock eyes and velvet hands

for the gears. You put them

 

over my fog-wet lashes;

 through the holes

in your skin I saw pinpoint stars

as you smoothed the rucked sheets

of my cheek to finger 

the bed of skull so soon to be yours.

 

It was a black car without a brake

made to run the asphalt years

when the heart 

was a cindered highway,

each crossroads a Celtic knot

the devil my driver

til we stood at journey's end,

 

neither man nor woman

nor flesh most foul,

 

incorruptible corruption

tipping at the edge of the wailing abyss

where all I can see

are waning stars,

sulfur skin steaming fog, your

sharp teeth scarlet through

a feral smile.

June 2021

Posted for Fireblossom, at

The Sunday Muse 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Process Note: I've written many poems for the incubus over the years. He's always changing his face. You can find them by searching the blog or by clicking on the label "incubus" below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: top via the Sunday Muse Fair Use

Bottom Untitled, © Zdislaw Beksinksi  Fair Use

 

 

 

The Gold Afterburn

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Gold Afterburn

 

 

 

Salvadore, Frida 

and Vincent

go into a bar.

This is America. 

They're promptly 

asked

to leave.

 

The car was as full

of prayer and profanity

as Texas sky is full

of planets and stars

floating in smoke

and blue

bloody tears.

 

Cigarettes, flaming giraffes

and your buzzsaw breath

tipped the lightning jug

over all our

constellations.

The story dissolved

the map; no surprise

everyone got lost.

 

A wheel or two

may have fallen off

in the gold

 afterburn,

and the halos,

 

but all you need to

roll on that road 

is an engine that burns

the laughter
of

the mad.

 

 

October 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Fireblossom

at The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Flames, They Call  © Salvadore Dali, 1942   Fair Use

Image via internet, author and title unknown     Fair Use

Haunt's Road

Haunt's Road

You resurrect

on the long road rolling,

with your homeless soul a

prairie schooner full of dull copper

 blood and moonshine, nightmares wild in 

the harness, their snaffled tongues slipping

into dreams with a slow-steeped poison, 

changing sun to eclipse, good to bad, 

alive to dead in a bone-shaking shock,

down along the wheel ruts

 where the wagons 

used to pass.

By 4:00 a.m. 

you're in the house.

The sound of your last rasping

 breaths liquid with suffering still

floating your medicine show, barking

on the mattress-midway the subtle

vibration of your restless shifts,

 a moan and a gasp on the empty

 crater of our bed, hawking

a snake-oil brewed 

for love, or

death.

I put 

your ashes 

out on the hill by

 the dog who loved us

so you may leave

 this haunt's road,

this dead-end.

 Run with 

her 

beloved, 

painless, free,

 green in cloudy  forest,

prairie wind to wrap

you in a place of

 naked stars.

If you 

knew who I am

you'd never
have come.

 August 2020

posted for

The Sunday Muse

*This poem has been edited since publishing

Images via internet, artists unknown     Fair Use

Flannel Perfume

Flannel Perfume

Some weeks after

you left me, panhandling

into the chile parched Mexican dust,

I unwrinkled your shirt

from the closet floor,

accused its clumsy plaid

white for weddings,

red for the factory moon,

black for lies.

It defended itself

with your incense--

old glue, old books, fresh blood.

Too much of you came to testify,

sandalwood hair hung long, flying

brows, the sawblade of

your crosscut smile

rusty but sharp enough.

I could smell the verdict

blowing off on the

highway's blistered back

windy-wild and away, 

feel the unsteady fall

of petal-pink walls, 

each day's rubbled brick 

lichened over in patchouli shadows,

hanging stale in the cell of

a convict's years to come. 

~March 2017

Note: this poem has been edited since originally posted.

for Susie's Perfume    at real toads

Images: Red flannel plaid, manipulated, via the internet
The Roses Of Heliogabalus, 1888, Detail,  by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Public domain via wikiart.org