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

 

 

 

Malefica

Malefica

Of course, your worships! Of course

I'll tell you everything.

Just take the pins away.

I don't grieve for what he took,

the soul from me like a pinching shoe,

so why should you?

He started small, being just an imp;

to suckle me up like chokevine

on the corn was his main aim

and so he twined, he capered, growing greater--

so droll, good sirs, and stroked--o yes

he stroked, but always without respite

he talked, his wheedling voice alone

in the mother-pit of all silence.

He brought forth secrets from my womb;

the malice in history's whispers

the true seraphim in Eden

and Lucifer's ten thousand sweet names;

how to rot and how to blight

how to pox the peach-pink skin and turn

the plump cheek hollow.

Surely you understand! I've always

been  fond of learning, good sirs. I only wished

to improve myself. Do not! Please, 

don't pull me from the sky;

for Hel is winter deep 

and fire is no girl's friend.

 ~September 2017

for Fireblossom's   Distorted Lens

Note: I have flagrantly conflated pagan Norse Hel, a land of infinite cold and the dead, with both burning at the stake and Christian Hellfire, because witchcraft is often tied to the survival of paganism in medieval Europe, but mostly, because I can.

Images: Hexenschlaff (Witches' Sleep) 1889, by Albert von Keller   Public domain.
Los Caprichos(The Follies:Beautiful Master) by Francisco Goya   Public domain

The One-Legged Pilot

The One-Legged Pilot

When the trip begins the shore

is decorated with shipwrecked sunspots,

round mirrors of messaged bottles

I save from their cold blue exile,

and littered with rags of the rescued

I've replaced with nothing 

but the silken silver whisper

of my hair on salt-splotched skin.

The sirens call us, shrieking,

arabesque on their wayward rocks,

to sing us the torment of flesh,

of which there was never enough;
They curse

each plank we walk, and

even the death below

so nothing can really save us,

yet the peg-leg pilot 

steers us onward. The beach rears up at last; 

dry sand drinks our tears

while the sweet hormonal sea,
its tidal pulsing

the sirens' operatic hypnotic, even the grace

of salvage itself
abandons ships and sailors and

I am what washes up

alone on an arctic rim, hollow 

as a rind of frozen shell.

But the demon in the song is always full

and he is true still.

He's watched at the drydock of my bed

as decades rolled themselves up

like razor wire, tangled and untouchable

drawing blood at the slightest move.

He's seen the candle lit

and blown out
lit
and blown out
til the stump is smaller

and flatter

than even the look in your eyes.

A faithful sea-dog, my demon pilot

strong on a single leg, old but hot as pitch

his ivory teeth bigger, brighter--

a white flash in the liquid night

that only shows when he smiles.

~March 2016

 posted for        real toads

Weekend Challenge


Note: This poem has been edited since the reading



If you'd like to hear the poem clumsily read by the author, click below:

The Siren, and
Ulysses and the Sirens(Detail), by John William Waterhouse.

Public domain

The Cambion's Tale

Dear  Readers: I had intended to take this month off anyway, but after some setbacks in the lumbar department, it really looks like it may be some time before I am well enough to manage much here. Please bear with me as I mend, and eventually I'm sure I shall return. I'll leave you with this little favorite of mine to chew on, and thanks, as always for everyone's concern and support. It means a great deal to me.

The Cambion's Tale

The wind rolls in the wildwood

tonight, teasing the last 

specklings of summer’s regret

from the moon-dripping trees,

fragmented friable tongues of 

henna and ochre milled to a dusty haze

that blots future and past, dead voices

rustling the leafsong that calls me to you

my hell born babe, heart’s delight

soul’s inquisitor.

Changeling and demiurge,

furred with frosted moss and mist

horned with bone, poised always 

to run; you regard me blinkless,

hermetic as a wild thing, gaze of

opals burning through the veil where

I pretend to be protected invisible

as Niniane, everlost instead

fate-tangled and resistless to 

the beckon of that blue unicorn eye.

So I come out of the night

for your lichen'd kiss, rain

cold, a drenching draft of rust

yet sweeter than any vintage

pressed from the sun's full flaunt. We're

as fallen as Rome remembered, love,

all my smooth green weight leaning

on the colonnade of whispers

you pull from some pocket in
the heart’s shallow grave.

My breath is gone again;

you’ve whistled for it. Lost

dog of my hollowed lungs,
it lopes at your heel, leashed 

tighter than the strangled chest

that knows its next gasp for last.

The night wind blows brimstone

around us, where the idol burns a

fading sandalwood smoke

bolted with blood, spiced with loss.

O there’s nothing wrong with us, love

that reincarnation won’t cure.

~October 2011

revised, February 2016

cambion: According to the Malleus Maleficarum, the offspring of a human male and a succubus, or a human female and an incubus. Caliban and Merlin are both assigned this dubious distinction.

*The last two lines are extrapolated from an anonymous saying passed around in the 60's.

Image: The Bathers, 1904, by Odillon Redon    Public domain. Manipulated.

Eye Spy

Eye Spy

I spy with my little eye

a unicorn on a piece of pie,

an iron cross and a butterfly;

I spy the day I die...

Asleep I was

a wasted storm, a wandering

rain in stony void, blowing

over shabby

sparrow bodies on the scree,

over cast-off rocks

warm from the hand of lust, thrown to kill

in hunger and in pain, keyhole-seeing,

bent, your face again.

I awoke

rigid in a night

of fallen birds, back

still pressed on the wheel of love,

your bear-brown eyes, your

warmth on mine, your laugh as close

as dawn to day

before the waking

breaks it all away,

alone then, and more alone to come

locked in a crime no exit wound explains,

for the angel and the demon boys agree

they'll never open doors for the likes of me.

~January 2016

posted for   real toads

Bits of Inspiration; Weekend Challenge

Images: Sanctuary, 1965, by Max Ernst. Fair use via wikiart.org

That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do, 1931, by Ivan Albright.

Fair use via wikiart.org