Creature From The Black Saloon

 

 

 

 

 

 

Creature From The Black Saloon

 

 

His eyes are dead moons

that call up typhoons

where old sailors will die

on the devil's hot spoon,

dished up dressed in red for the Day of The Dead,

mouths whiskey wild and well off their heads.

 

He sparks a burned light

that cracks holes in the night,

calls witches to bonfires' sulfurous light

for the Dance in the dark, the Blood in the cup,

the black horns of the Beast

who will drink them all up.

 

His tongue drifts like quicklime

on a seasonless wind

in desires that die before they begin,

over the flesh that twitches and yearns

to dissolve into hexes the old gods that burn

just under the skin all mottled with runes;

I've met him. I've loved him

too long to refuse.

October 2023

posted for Creature Seeker at

desperate poets

Note; This may have been slightly influenced by attempting to watch Rob Zombie's Lords of Salem last night.

Images: Standing Figure, 1970 ©Nathan Oliveira  Fair Use

Dark Dancers ©Gina lacob   Fair Use

St. Walpurga's Nightmare

 

 

 

St. Walpurga's Nightmare

(or, No Medicine For Melancholy)

Up on the hill where the blade never goes

skimpy clouds dangle like a phrase of bad prose,

with May Day's and Hallows' night stars locked in boxes,

up on the ghosts' hill with the little foxes

 

sits the old witch always stirring her pot

of bandages and sweet oils, scalding hot,

her dry smile a bleachmark on her tie-dyed skin;

she's only waiting for the crows to begin.

Give her a coin and she'll midwife next year

or recount the rest of your life for good beer

in her voice like a hatchet while her fingers stir

mockingbird's screech into kettle's blur.

What's in the cauldron you sainted crone?

"It's hope, she croons, the alphabet I own.

You can't live on it, though so many try,

but you can certainly die on it time after time

riding the Big Wheel on dandelion silk

sucking tobacco like the baby's milk,

drinking and thinking you'll go up and up

then crushed on the revolve like a styrofoam cup.

 

Before you learn what your body can do to you, you

think its a warm glass of wine poured out for you

but it soon cracks in the time-slip and shatters apart

like your broken heart, dear, your broken heart.

 

Before you see what hope does to the living

you think it's a wise thing, loving and healing,

not bitter and blinding, 

hiding the reminding 

of the shambling footsteps shuffling in back of you

of the behemoth ambling in one night for you

the only hope that turns out to be true:

he'll break all your bones, dear, and eat them, too."

 

But dreams can be merciful with their endings

whatever the bile-twisted gist of their sendings, 

for dawn took her words just as fast as she spoke 

and drowned them all in the lovesongs of crows.

October 2022

posted for Shay's

Word Garden Word List: Susie Clevinger,

a fine contemporary poet and friend

Note: I've taken a lot of liberties with the history of St. Walpurga, a medieval abbess known for Christianizing the heathen Franks, learned in healing, who was canonized for, among other things, the 'miraculous oil' that oozed out from her dead body, and whose saint's day was enthusiastically celebrated with bonfires for many years on May Day. Obviously, I have added All Hallows to her domain quite mendaciously. She was said to be the bane of evil spirits and witches, so I'm sure she is turning over in her grave at being combined with one here. Finally, apologies to the Rocky Horror Picture Show for stealing 'time-slip,' and thanks to Susie for the gift of her poetry all these years.

 

 

 

Images: Walpurgisnacht, 1923, © Heinrich Kley

Antlers with Crows, author unknown, via internet

Fairy Tale

 

 

 Fairy Tale

Princess Moonzumi and Prince Heart-of-Ash

were betrothed as children through a looking glass.

She never knew him. He never saw her,

just a shadow that moved in the mirror's blur.

Prince Heart-of-Ash learned bard song and sword,

to jest with a blade and kill with a word.

Princess Moonzumi went out every day

to dance with the Sidhe where the dogwoggles play

 

down in the mud, up in the scud,

around the green tree that sheds no blood.

She knew every fae in the wild dark wood

and they taught her to fear the evil in good.

 

Princess Moonzumi and Prince Heart-of-Ash

were married in autumn when the east winds thrash

as the leaves fell like fire on earth's mirror-face,

and they loved each other for a year and a day.

 

Then Prince Heart-of-Ash took his sharp bright blade

down to the wood where the dogwoggles played.

The princess died like a mouse in the leaves

for a lie in the heart only ash could believe.

 

 

September 2022

posted for earthweal's

Ekphrasis Earth

 

 

 

and 

 

 

 

dVerse Poets'

Poetics: The Good and the Evil

Sidhe/SHē/noun, plural noun: Sidhe: the fairy people of Irish folklore, said to live beneath the hills and often identified as the remnant of the ancient Tuatha Dé Danann.

Note: I wrote the seed of this poem while running a fever a few weeks ago, but the prompts shaped it to final form. Apologies if I have stretched the boundaries a bit on what was requested.

 

 

Images: Mammal in Leaves, author unknown, courtesy of earthweal   Fair Use

They went hand in hand in the country that smells of appleblossoms and honey,  © Arthur Rackham, Irish Fairy Tales

 Fair Use

Watching

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Watching

 

 

I am the witch of dying things

of things that cling

to a life that's passed,

custodian of the broken-wing

who shakes in the bush

and tries to sing.

I soothe the stings

of the white-nosed pup,

his few days left like clay that clings

to the potter's hands when the pot is thrown,

wagging his tail, eyes growing dim

unsure on his feet, afraid of alone.

I was the watcher 

as life leaked away, you

winding off slow as a traveling snake

loose in the snow, slipping into the maw,

dead at first frost like a turnip top,

grey dust on a root both bitter and raw.

There's none left to be

my watcher, my witch, 

to soothe the sting 

when they see me there

remembering the sun, pretending to live,

old knots of love caught in winter's hair.

 

I am the witch of dying things

learning their ways

while midnight sings.

June 2021

Posted for 

The Sunday Muse

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image via Sunday Muse, Fair Use

 

 

 

 

Friday Flash 55 for August 2020

Welcome all once again to the Friday 55. Another month of this ghastly year proceeds down the tubes, howling and gibbering, leaving us to endure and express it in our writing. I feel a twinge of embarrassment whenever I refer to having a kickass weekend this year, but I can't help feeling Galen Hayes, the originator of this meme, would not have hesitated, and indeed, would have done his best to see we all had one. 

So, the rules are unchanged. Write a poem, a prose-poem or a piece of flash fiction, using exactly 55 words, no more, no less. Link your URL in the comments, and I will be by to read what you have cooked up out of this month's witches brew. 

The prompt will be active from Thursday at midnight to Sunday at 4:00 PM CST.

 ~*~

Here is my 55:

Song For Summer's End

Catkins, willowskins,

grey geese in the morning

sky light,  V-flight,

feather-spin in the gloaming,

bee-fumble, leaves tumble

in Fall's honey-wind sighing

her kiss-clover slip over,

pollen days flying.

Pepper-dust, finger-rust;

summer's crone's crying

too late at the broken gate

where autumn's fast riding.

Even so nothing goes

that has a song to

hold it close.

August 2020 

 

Images: Bees circa 1900, © Ban Jiaoshi       Fair Use

The Autumn, 1896, © Alphonse Mucha    Fair Use