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

 

 

 

Mask Of Aphrodite

 

 

 

 

 

Mask Of Aphrodite

 

"There is no cure for love other than marriage." 

~Irish proverb 

 

 

Love's an old wolf who howls when she pleases,

her black lips drawn back in mock of a grin.

She's made me her meat for chancers and losers,

to open the locks and let anyone in.

 

Her yellow teeth are blunted with winters

but her fevers burn hot as melted brass.

Her eyes are flat-white as Attic marble

rolling behind Aphrodite's mask.

Her promises drift like leaves in October.

Her vows of fidelity make the stones laugh.

There's never been one she ever was true to

except the ones who died too fast.

Since I was that child who was used as a woman

since I was that woman who thinks like a child

I've run with her pack. The crows find my dinner;

there's a price to pay for being born wild.

I never whore for playthings or money

but three times it saved my life.

I never lie for the sake of loving,

only to play at being a wife.

I never was called to be a drunkard,

but I've ever been every drunkard's best friend,

to drop the mask when I see it coming;

 

the black-lipped snarling

bitter end.

September 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Illicit Encounters

at desperate poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Wolves, © Andrew Wyeth

Head of Aphrodite, via Brittanica

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hunter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Hunter

 

The heart is hunting alone and lean

after the things she thinks she has seen;

 

after meat on the doe not the sweetgrass sea

wind-combed in waves to wild-braided streams;

 

after the caterpillar's cuts and devours

not the greenstem-road to wings that it follows.

Her running breath catches at all the wrong times

at the taste of the dove, not the air it can climb.

The heart is hunting and so cannot fly

for that most alive is the thing which must die

 

too heavy to carry

too sought to let lie.

 

But when the hunt falters, breath evens and slows.

When the hunter suddenly unstrings her bow

what was looked for is seen in a stillness of light;

 shining like tears in the last hour of night.

 

 

 

 July 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for earthweal's

Wild Stillness

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Hunter, artist unknown, via internet   Fair Use

Woman in Grass, © Fosco Maraini, via internet Fair Use

The Moon Nurse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Moon Nurse

 

 

Someone must guard the moon

deep in the Dreamer's long shatter.

Someone must keep clear her pathway

mirror'd on the wavering water.

 

Someone must nurse the moon

when the red plague slips in without trace.

While Time ticks to its last empty hour

let my hands refresh her pale face,

wash it with rosemary's greening,

herb airless void with white smoke

between her and the storm oncoming

where light itself is revoked.

All the nights she's held watch above me

by the bed where sleep loses its way,

the silver songs she's sung me

put a debt on me I must repay.

They say she poisons the fallen

who ravage across the wide earth,

or stare in electrical cages

where madness has gone to give birth

 

 but those 

she brings whole through the hunter's dark

burn tonight her evanescent spark.

November 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for Poetics

at dVerse Poet's

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: this poem has been revised a dozen times since posting, and I'm still not happy with it. It didn't rhyme at all at first, and now it rhymes too much. I blame Poe, whom I've been rereading WAY too much lately.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: ©Dmitry Brodetsky  All Rights Reserved   Fair Use

Author and title unknown, via internet      Fair Use 

 

Red Smoking Mirror

 

 

 

 

Red Smoking Mirror

 

 

 I.

 

That was a hell of a poem, that one.

Some captive of war, some harem

woman, spilled her guts to you

flayed away all her hide

to bare nerve.

You

picked it up and wore it

just like mine, our wrists flapping,

bloody faces making masks

for yours, cut lips singing

all your 

butcher's songs.

 

II.

It's plain I said, I need to make a pyre

of all these undead fears and burn them out.

Oh no, you said, there's never enough fire.

Make garments of your fears' flayed skins and shout,

for loving's a red coal beneath your feet

and being loved a poem you can't complete.

But I turned off that voodoo child advice

when I saw you line them up like bowling pins

for your mumbled brujeria to hypnotize.

I left; now all my words are my own sins,

 

spells of blood are broken for a price,

with ravensong in dreams and peace the prize.

 

 

 October 2021

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Poetics

at dVerse Poets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

brujeria: (Spanish) witchcraft, sorcery, black magic

 

Process Note:" In Aztec mythology and religion, Xipe Totec [pictured at top] or ... Xipetotec  ("Our Lord the Flayed One") was a life-death-rebirth deity..[the god] was also known by various other names, including Tlatlauhca, Tlatlauhqui [or]Tezcatlipoca ("Red Smoking Mirror")... [he] is represented wearing flayed human skin, usually with the flayed skin of the hands falling loose from the wrists...Various methods of human sacrifice were used to honour this god. The flayed skins were often taken from sacrificial victims who had their hearts cut out..."~wikipedia

 

 

 

Image:Xipe Totec as depicted in the Codex Borgia, shown holding a bloody weapon and wearing flayed human skin as a suit.  via wikipedia    Fair Use

The Accordion Man

 

 

 

 The Accordion Man

He stands in my head

where the music once lived

like a tongue in a bell

when the ringer is dead,

corroding a little bit more every day.

He came down from the crossroads

with a small spotted dog.

He plays in my ear

til my dreams turn to fog.

The dog wags its tail and then runs away.

His shoes are like blimps.

His face is like claws;

his hands push the buttons

that work the bonesaws,

to slice out a song no one wants him to play.

He won't ever go.

I know that by now.

He plays in my head

and it chirps like a crow

his accordion clatter of skulls on a tray.

He chants all my names. He adds seventy to nine;

but the worst is

his eyes

are sadder than mine.

I could watch them all day.

~August 2021

posted for Fireblossom

at The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image © Guido Vedovato   Fair Use

 

 

 

Friday 55 Holiday Edition 2020

 

 

 Welcome all, to the final Flash Fiction prompt of 2020, a Holiday Edition of the Friday 55. This year has been a slog, and it's not over yet, but the time has come to acknowledge it will not last forever, and in fact is in its last throes of weirdness and upheaval as we speak. Whether your mood is celebratory, contemplative or still an utter roil of feelings, you're invited to write it all out here, in 55 words, no more no less, on any subject that strikes your fancy.

 

I will leave the page open for contributions til December 31st at midnight since this is a busy time for all, even in isolation. 

 

Post the link to your 55 in the comments below, and I will be by to mark the passing of this Hell Year with you.

Brighter Days Ahead.

 

 

~ *~

 

My 55, such as it is:

 

 

 

 

 

 Supplication To The Old Year

Jack Frost, Jack Frost

crack the wind

for what we've lost.

Kiss the tree,

break the wood.

Show us all that's gone for good.

 

Toss the cow over

the mad moon's head.

Put stars on her horns

in the land of the dead.

 

Numb my hand, burn my ear;

then keep your promise and disappear.

 

 

 

 

 

December 2020

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Vintage Victorian Christmas Card, circa 1890  Fair Use

Illustration for The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam, © Edmond Dulac  Fair Use

Cow and Moon, © Alex Colville    via intyernet   Fair Use

 

 

The Wandering Eye

The Wandering Eye

I made you

from a map, a hawk and a flower.

I thought you

clockwork-canny, full of power,

a road-veined eye for

spying the highway hours;

a bird, a map,

a flower meant to be

a fragrance and a passage 

 seeking sea.

But so far away

you flew there could never be

a coming back

despite the lies, despite the slick pretense,

so to see you now

as a morph'd and piddling glance

on a burning

globe of constant transience

is only another

blink of blight and fear.

You tell me this

is the you who's real and clear;

fine words from one

who's broken every mirror. 

August 2020, 

(with fragments from March 2014)

posted for

The Sunday Muse

Images:Still Life with Spherical Mirror, 1934 © M.C. Escher   Fair Use
footer, artist and title unknown,  Fair Use

January House

January House

Fierce-As-Red-Hair and Fly-As-A-Fox

from the liminal's edge came to pick the locks

dressed in their frills

for thrills and kills

they opened the door

and live here still.

Fly-As-A-Fox and Fierce-As-Red-Hair

can spin windershins and dance on green air

with nightshade brows

and bones of mouse

they climbed the steps of

the January house.

Fly and Fierce have a skull that sings

have pleated blue smocks and onyx rings

on the balcony standing with little sharp things

that gleam by moon's eye

where you cannot pass by

unless you dance

 with Fierce and Fly.

Don't splash through the mud where the lily nods.

Don't go to a church where you don't know the gods.

There's no time to pray

and the blood has its way

when Fierce and Fly

come out to play.

June 2020

 posted for

 The Sunday Muse

 Note: The flowering plant below the girls in this picture is agapanthus, or Lily of the Nile, native to South Africa. It is not a lily, and not from the Nile tho it does like a warm climate and a moist soil.

Image: color (not colorized) photograph from 1908, author unknown, manipulated