
A collection of poems of fantasy, myth and fable.
Above is emptiness,
the starlight, and below.
Contents
The Apprehension of Angels
Fifty Days After
Earth on Heaven
Stations
Stigmata
The Desert and the Anchoress
Enkidu Curses the Harlot
Ash Woden's Day
Song of the Sea
Annulus
The Song of the Flesh
Dryad
In the Beginning Was
Managamanore
The Motheater
Les Paladins de la Lune
Castle of the Air
The Poet at the Court of Chance
Mr. Cognition at the Palace of Wisdom
Rondelet: The Dead Are Mute
The Rites of Autoexorcism
Stone Parables
The Master Answers a Question
Landscape in a Cold Mirror
Traditions
The Apprehension of Angels
To wheel so long at Eden's gate
the flame of flashing sword,
the strength of angels must not fade
or be instantly restored.
And whole, at once, they may perceive,
or so Aquinas thought,
to see through time and matter's weave
to creation’s central knot.
Yet some chose sin, their wills were free,
and were forever cast out.
So fruitless that forbidden tree;
agnostic or devout,
it's weakness and uncertainty
puts our damnation in doubt.
Fifty Days After
She treads the garden’s simple maze and dreams
of some new life retracing what she knows.
And then the western sun spears through what seems
a shred of lace on thorns of withered rose.
As she approaches, truth's not what she thought;
instead, it is an insect's empty husk,
a papery wraith that breezes have whipped taut,
and lit up by the sun an hour to dusk.
It’s Sunday, she recalls, and Pentecost,
then whispers to herself, “All is lost."
Earth on Heaven
in Paradise, the fruits were ripe the first minute,
and in Heaven it is always autumn
— John Donne
It’s unearned golden yield that bought ‘em;
the faithful yearn for harvest day,
and in heaven it is always autumn.
No need to curse the bugs, or swat ‘em,
no need to pick them off or spray.
It’s unearned golden yield that bought ‘em.
No need to till the fertile stratum,
no need to sow or cut a waterway,
for in heaven, it is always autumn.
Imagine Adam on his bottom,
fruits fall in hand or mouth all day.
It’s unearned golden yield that bought ‘em.
It’s earth, improved, a slothful Sodom.
No cosmic vision here. Just pray
that in heaven it is always autumn.
The fruit is ripe, but something’s rotten.
Their heaven’s shaped of earthy clay.
It’s unearned golden yield that bought ‘em.
In their heaven, it is always autumn.
Stations
A word completes our life, condemned by death:
the judgement is our second body, a weight
of eyes which buckles will and crushes breath.
And then we see upon love’s face our fate
and strangers forced to make our weakness their own.
When sudden acts to comfort us berate
our curses, we stumble on the sullen stone
of pride. We rise, tell them they need not mourn
before we fall beneath the weight of bones.
Our secrets are revealed, each shame a thorn
before all eyes, impaled to all our roles,
everyone we’ve never been, and die unborn.
They take us down to place us in a hole
for someone else and drink our blood, consoled.
The Desert and the Anchoress
Magic Realism Bot @MagicRealismBot
A desert whispers to a nun: "I wish I was a labyrinth."
As the desert shifts its dunes again,
the moon pours mercy down,
a watery milk that dries to dust
before it reaches earth.
In the shadow of a granite shard
the anchoress has lived
within her vows of solitude
and silence fifty years:
her sacramental wine is but
the trickle from a spring;
her meat, the locusts left by winds.
The desert owls believe her wise;
her virtues are their own:
the viper, ant and scorpion,
the sirocco too, agree.
She sits each night upon the sands
beneath the silt of stars.
Each night the desert whispers, sighs:
I wish I were a labyrinth.
In serenade, in lullaby,
in susurrating breaths,
it pleads, I wish I were a labyrinth.
Between the notes of cricket’s song,
the hiss of wind and sand,
the baffle of the owl’s wing,
her silence speaks an answer.
Within your dunes that ever shift,
so many have been lost,
and so you long for what you have,
the folly of the world.
The truest mazes have no walls
but bare simplicity,
and thus no mark or thread avails.
Be empty, pure and featureless,
a desert true, and wish no more.
Enkidu Curses the Harlot
Condemned to die, he curses her:
so sweet it seemed when he was beast,
as wild as wolf or hart, as free.
And then at water’s edge she lay,
and bared her breasts, unwound her veils,
allowed his rude, rough hands to grope.
And after, forest things fled him;
no longer did he feel their blood,
their breath within, their timelessness.
So Shamhat dressed him with her linens
and brought him to a shepherds’ camp;
he tasted beer and ate roast meats.
The fate that followed then began
with her that day beside the water.
Condemned to die, he curses her.
The city’s pleasures, baths and oils,
fine clothes, great feasts, and golden goblets
with spice-tinged wines become his joys,
and more: his friendship with the king,
adventures to insure their fame.
They slay Humbaba and Heaven’s Bull.
Some jealous gods charge he must die;
for mortal men must not upstage
the gods; he sickens more each day.
Condemned to die, he curses her:
remembers life as beast, and man.
Condemned to die, he takes it back.
Ash Woden’s Day
for Ryan
Christian sects impose the ash
of blessed palms on penitent brows
the dark cross the dust to dust
tokens of decay portents of hope
their crucified Christ redeemed from death
But the day is named for the Norse Odin
pierced by a spear blood wrung into the well
hung upon the tree in torment as toll
to secure the secret of the sacred runes
the wisdom to write the word the Wyrd
Ballads
Song of the Sea
I pressed to sea upon the midnight tide,
riding between the riven waves and rain,
and never did I turn my looks aside
but sang the swells and deeps an old refrain.
The dark and secret sea was pitch and tilt
when nets and snares swept from her life
the serpent-maid to thrash in blood and silt
to slip the kiss of scale along the knife.
The mermaid turned as silent as the moon
upon the deck and shivered like the sails.
She watched, each lidless eye a worn doubloon,
as I pulled spines and graved away her scales.
Her face was still, her seaweed locks a wreath,
and all I saw was black or gray or white.
The salt-cracked deck was dark with blood beneath
her pearly entrails in the silver light.
I press to sea upon the midnight tide,
riding between the riven waves and rain,
and never do I turn my looks aside
but sing the swells and deeps a new refrain.
(First published in Aoife’s Kiss, March 2007.)
Annulus
We worship here the darkest appetite.
Along the water's edge we watch the scene:
the crocodiles and snakes unwind their coils,
their scales reflect and break the water's green.
It is Sybella's death we worship here:
the darkest appetite that destines us
to congregate along the water's edge.
We watch the scene: bare flesh besmeared with mud,
she dives, emerges once. The crocodiles
and snakes unwind their coils in violent
parabolas. Their scales reflect and break
the water's green with spreading rings of blood.
It is Sybella's death that destines us
to congregate, bare flesh besmeared with mud.
She dives, emerges once in violent
parabolas with spreading rings of blood.
The Song of the Flesh
The tiger-eating man awaits the dawn
of night’s slow breath, the bruising sky, to slake
the hungry rage for salt and iron.
The streets are slick with crimson spills that jet
from stoplights stung by bitter summer rains;
two shapes unhinged from shadows flicker.
The tiger whiskers wind and weaves its spell
of claws and fangs, and dies in snapping bones.
Then sinews crack, and then the song of flesh.
Dryad
In the eucalyptus grove, to faint resistance,
the moon scythes through the night's worn velvet scrim:
a locust song the grim noise in the distance.
Some years ago, I dreamed its synonym:
noise in the distance like all my pages tearing,
the night's worn velvet scrim eyeless, uncaring.
In the eucalyptus grove, I first loved you.
Smooth bark was flesh, a locust song the grim,
slow fire's lisp. Our tongues caressed each limb
and burned. I woke up seeing the moon scythe through,
to faint resistance, the smoke's first wind-blown wisp.
I first loved you some years ago, I'm dreaming.
All my pages torn, slow fires lisp,
"Smooth bark is flesh and burns." I wake up screaming.
In The Beginning Was
Life itself is a quotation.
— Jorge Luis Borges
She spoke a stream of colored stones.
I slid and fit each edge and face
to form the globe, began to trace
“here be monsters” through unknowns.
We lived beside a turquoise lake
among the reeds of malachite,
jade willows; then fell the night,
obsidian, the air opaque.
In darkness, first, she spoke a fire,
then smoke; she spoke a river of tongues
to lick the flames, spoke eyes to hang
by billions in the sky to choir
the night with light; she spoke heart, lungs
to live amid the bones she sang.
Managamanore
The castle ruins atop the hill
pierce through the ancient trees,
and all around is still.
The road has long since crumbled down;
the cliffs of sheer and brittle rock
erode without a sound.
The sunlight, wind and soft spring rain
attack; the fortress still defends.
The silence will explain.
The Motheater
On summer nights, this very one perhaps,
it takes the shape of any spot
where light is blind, and furtive whispers chirp,
where ectoplasmic shadows clot.
It mimics forms that serve its hungry hunt:
the coal-black rat, the charcoal cat,
the shadow of a wind-wracked tree
on window panes, or dark-winged bat.
It even sculpts itself into a man
if that will bring it what it needs;
and more and more, it tracks as one of us,
to find the broth on which it feeds.
It does not chase, nor lie in wait for prey,
but radiates into the night
a pulse of fevered rays that draw the ones
who hide in dark, but steer by light.
On summer nights, this very one perhaps,
it stirs to hunt in any spot
where it may feed on bloody need. So near,
it closes in with every thought.
Les Paladins de la Lune
(with apologies to John Keats)
You ask the reason I seem so:
the way that I attend the breeze
for some faint song, or sit alone
and ill at ease.
So I will tell the dream that pulses,
asleep, awake, behind my eyes.
And hour by hour, it floods and ebbs,
but never dies.
I find myself upon the moon,
and, whether dark, awaiting birth;
below horizon; or destroyed;
there is no Earth.
I see my hands are leaden gauntlets,
and I am sheathed in plate and mail
as if a knight of romance, or
grim fairy tale.
For years or days I drift across
the silver dust of arid seas
or climb the mountains' razored rocks,
but find no ease.
Within a narrow, sheer-walled valley,
pale knights approach as if to fight.
I find, each time the dream recurs,
yet one more knight.
The iron faces turn and stare.
The vacuum seems to flute and trill
through armor seams and hollow throats,
a whispered chill.
As if the sigh of long dead stars,
their voices hiss behind the gloom
and silent cold to speak their names
and so my doom.
For my own emptiness has played
the strings of every knightly doll.
And beneath my plate and mail,
nothing at all.
Then I'm alone upon the moon,
a sightless eye that rolls the vast
and starlit universe, till all
unwinds at last.
You know the reason I seem so:
the way that I attend the breeze
for some faint song, or sit alone
and ill at ease.
And I have told the dream that pulses,
asleep, awake, behind my eyes;
how hour by hour, it floods and ebbs,
but never dies.
Castle of the Air
(based on illustration by
M.C. Escher, "Castle in the Air")
Across the wide, night sea,
an ancient turtle glides;
the gentle wake is smoothed
by wavelets it elides.
Upon the sea-worn shell,
a kneeling child keeps watch
and holds with hands that know
the shell's each curve and notch.
Above the wide, night sea,
a citadel ascends,
the outline dim against
what light each star extends.
The castle hovers, still,
in tense serenity
and casts a rippled trace
upon the star-lit sea.
Before the shadow form,
the child and turtle pause
to see the castle float
upon suspended laws.
The child uplifts pale hands
in wonder and desire
while towers reach for stars,
a longing in each spire.
Upon the wide, night sea,
the pair, as if weightless, go.
And in the wide, night sky,
the winds, unburdened, flow.
Above is emptiness,
the starlight, and below.
The Poet at the Court of Chance
The fair queen of the wheel,
of the dice, and the deal
held a ball at her court of chance.
So I wore cap and bells,
brought quills, scrolls, bagatelles,
but I never once asked her to dance.
At her whim I wrote lines,
read to deepen the wines,
about moonlight and anguished romance.
Each word rose in song,
and no step could go wrong,
but I never once asked her to dance.
By her hand, light as air,
I ascended the stair,
ventured through the casino's expanse.
She dismissed fate and odds,
those cruel games of the gods,
but I never once asked her to dance.
As we swept down the aisles,
lords and ladies feigned smiles
while their eyes scorned her sweet sufferance.
Like crickets in June,
whispers hissed a sharp tune,
but I never once asked her to dance.
Tumbling dice went on rolling;
hands, face down, went on folding,
unable to meet my glance.
While the wheel goes on spinning,
there's no losing or winning,
and I never once asked her to dance.
Mr. Cognition at the Palace of Wisdom
He did not wend his way to it; the path
was not a winding one, and it was clear
enough: a bramble sprouting prickly wrath
just off the trail was nothing much to fear.
He snapped a thorny sprig as souvenir.
The place itself was stairs, was made of stairs.
He had to climb the massive brazen doors
to open them, and once inside, the chairs,
the tables, silverware, the walls and floors
were steps, whole staircases in tiled squares.
After many flights, he stood beneath
a towering window made of colored glass
depicting, first, a palace on a hill
of clouds, and then, from their dense, stormy mass
a coiling staircase, steps like rows of teeth,
curled down the sky, its lowest step the sill.
Upon the ledge, a plaque; glyphs notched its brass
to read: “But set your foot, and set your will,
upon the second step, and you shall pass.”
The Faith of Doubt
Rondelet: The Dead Are Mute
When the dead speak, they talk to him.
— Commercial for television psychic/medium
The dead are mute
on the shore of wild, dark waters, waiting.
The dead are mute,
and so by fires of briar root
they signal us, gesticulating.
Though we think we hear, insinuating,
the dead are mute.
The Rites of Autoexorcism
Whereupon the dead were silent and ascended like the smoke above
the herdsman’s fire, who through the night kept watch over his flock.
— Seven Sermons to the Dead, Carl Gustav Jung
The ghosts surround, but they are not the dead,
but dreams, though not your dreams, not yours.
And not the hope and dread
your parents fed.
The doors
you open lead to rooms, tiled walls, tiled floors
designed to daze, and you forget
the fresher air that roars
through keyhole pores.
The net
is empty, hollows of remorse, regret,
an airy grid of twine and knot;
you’re trapped by etiquette
and unearned debt.
Each thought
is bridge and spark, or cuff, garrote.
So make the dream with your own thread,
and ghosts will be unwrought.
But they are not
the dead.
Stone Parables
1. The Mountain Knows
Tectonic pressures lift the crust,
compress and buckle rock;
the wind and rain abrade the face:
one tick of cosmic clock.
I hold the remnant in my palm,
a pebble white as snow,
and ask its stoic blankness why
as if the mountain knows.
2. A Stone Appears
A sleight of hand, a stone appears,
as compact as a soul.
It rests atop magician’s hand
and round the knuckles rolls.
A flourish flips the nimble stone
into the startled air;
the naive eye will follow fast
what seems was never there.
The Master Answers a Question:
How to Think of God
You think of nothing –
ah, no, already you are off the path.
You think of nothing,
but leap and feel and paw to grasp the thing,
and loll in wisdom’s warmth as in a bath.
By god, it’s not the numbers, but the math.
You think of nothing.
Landscape in a Cold Mirror
Let us go hence, some whither strange and cold
— Ernest Dowson
To somewhere strange and cold, just there, ahead,
we turn in verse, in dreams, eventually.
The summer gold’s now muted into lead,
the moon’s dull pearl reflects in tideless sea.
We turn inverse in dreams; eventually,
the mirror’s gravity will raise no wave,
the moon’s dull pearl reflection tideless. See,
the space behind us is the open grave.
The mirror’s gravity will rase no wave,
but show the metered lines, the crust of rime,
the space. Behind us is the open grave,
or just a cave in cliffs at wintertime.
But show the metered lines, the crust of rhyme,
it’s art that holds up nature to the glass,
or just a cave in cliffs at wintertime,
the sea, the snowy crags, a shadowed pass.
It’s art that holds up nature to the glass:
the summer golds now muted into lead,
the sea, the snowy crags, a shadowed pass
to somewhere strange and cold, just there, ahead.