Eurydice

 

 

 

 

 

Eurydice

 

 

 

I was a god's nymph of the deep ravine,

a dancer in the dusk on dandelion greens

til listening to you I felt a dog's duress

that I in your spellsong's locket be possessed.

Under the purple awning of the night

whitened stars beat down in falling flight.

I felt yet didn't hear your naked voice.

I took and later rued an arrow's choice.

And when your always-wooing sleepless noise

drew the jackal out from the sour wood,

I tried to turn and run as best I could;

you played untouched as the snake saw me destroyed.

Even then you could not let me rest,

bright in poppy sleep in the dreaming earth

but played until your will outgrew my worth

and petals bloomed on the stone of Hades' breast.

But as you pulled me up the iron route

I saw my dandelion days were all undone,

and rejoiced in the malediction of your doubt,

freed at last where death and dreams are one.

 

 

 

 

 February 2022

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Word Garden Word List #14

 Pablo Neruda

where I am hosting this week for Shay, who is taking the week off. Come join us!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note; This poem has absolutely nothing to do with Neruda, but it is what the words on the list brought out. In the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Eurydice is seduced by the legendary music of Orpheus and his harp and marries him. One day the minor god Aristaeus sees and pursues her. As she runs away, she is bitten by a viper and dies. Orpheus famously follows her to Hades' underworld, where his singing persuades the god to let her return to the earth. ".. the condition was attached that he must walk in front of her and not look back until both had reached the upper world. Soon he began to doubt that she was there, suspecting that Hades had deceived him. Just as he reached the portals of Hades..he turned around to gaze on her face, and because Eurydice had not yet crossed the threshold, she vanished back into the Underworld...Several meanings for the name Eurydice have been proposed such as true judgement or profound judgement...In some accounts, she was instead called Agriope which means "savage face" ~wikipedia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: Orpheus and Eurydice, 1515,  relief by Peter Vischer the Younger Public Domain

Eurydice Bitten By The Viper, 1508, Titian  Public Domain

 

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

 

 

 

The Bastard

"Hey babe, what's in your eyes?
I saw them flashing like airplane lights.
...What's that laughing in your smile?

...If that's your love, just leave me blind..."
~Jagger-Richards, You Got The Silver



The Bastard

It wasn't enough

performing for the

shell-game professors

and small-time grocers

you called family.

O no.

It wasn't enough

to scrub your drawers,

peel your cow's-tongue,

wait graveyard tables

to feed the child.

O no,

you had to call me

'an authoress.'

A bastard could never

belong in your world

unless it was you.

 ~June 2016

posted for real toads

Flash 55 Plus

Image: Tables for Ladies, 1930, by Edward Hopper  Fair use via wikiart.org

Paper Dolls

Paperdolls

She put her gypsy slipper

down in his devil's dance,

drank from an indigo dipper

the shaman spit of trance.

His jesuitical jive

was the music that kept her alive;

in each mask she put crosswise

her own wash denim eyes,

then cut paperdoll lovers apart

from the thin

parchment skin

of a roadkill heart.

.

~March 2013

55 flat dolls in a chain for   the g-man

Hover mouse for image attribution, or click to go to the photographer's flick'r page.