The Ring-bolted Sword

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 "..Lay between us the ring-bolted sword

the sharp-edged iron as it lay before

when we two together lay in one bed

when we had the name of man and wife...

Much have I said. I would say more

if more time for speech were granted me

but my voice fails my wounds are throbbing

I said what was true and now must depart.."

~Sigurdarkvida in skamma, Poetic Edda

trans Carolyne Larrington

 

 

 

 

The Ring-bolted Sword

(a 55)

 

 You brought iron into our unquiet bed

when you saw I wasn't the mask you'd paid for.

On battlefields only the dead

sleep easy.

Now you're gone

but the death-chill won't leave

these nights where my dreams

grow hyenas and serpents.

What lies tangle

truth can only mutilate.

I say what is true

and depart.

 

 

 

September 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Desperate Oracles at

desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images via wikimedia commons shared by Creative Commons license, full attribution at links: 

Cultural History Museum Oslo. Norwegian Viking-Age Exhibition 12 The Broken Sword  from Vold, Hedmark, deliberately bent and destroyed before buried as grave gift, 10th c

X-ray of the reconstructed sword from the Viking boat burial at Ardnamurchan[scotland], by Pieta Greaves of AOC Archaeology {10th c.}

 

 

Asylum

 

 

 

 

"..Let the doctor and the lawyer do as much as they can.
Let the springtime begin, let the boy become a man.
I have wasted too much time 

just to sing you this sad song..."~James Taylor, 1971 

 

 

 

Asylum

 

 

 

In the madhouse

on beds of daggers

we slept like crickets

chirping to ourselves

while they tried their best

to make us cannibals.

 

The nuns were worse than

lawyers, praying like accordions,

tracking their sins into our soft 

wax skulls, wheezing like roosters

when one of us cried, laying the greasy ribs

of Jesus on our plates.

They kept you behind

door number six. I'd go to you

with a stolen key, when the noon

smelled bright as carnations, 

when the nights were

more purple than the jacarandas.

 

You spoke of your father

dead of snakebite,

a clockwork marvel with

his million-dollar suit of skin,

and your mother

with the viper between her lips.

I remember your kiss

astringent with reason

as bitter lemons, and the way

your hair blew back from

your dog-brown eyes like poisonous

smoke from the oleanders.

I thought these things

as beautiful as angels

whispering in the dahlias

when I was lost in the asylum,

when the doctors did all they could

to see that we ate each other

down to the bone.

April 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Inspired by the words of Federico Garcia Lorca,

and a dream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Madhouse, 1812-1814 © Francisco Goya  Public Domain

Vase with Carnations, 1886, © Vincent Van Gogh    Public Domain