Rope and Mast

Salt stinging spray, collecting on my face

A wind dried throat, burning with pain.

You grasp at my soul for your saving grace,

Mock my desperation with self disdain.

My lungs are weak like yours. They gasp for air.

My eyes, blinded by wind, squint for their sight.

While skin withers under the sun's false glare.

I can drown too in the sky's endless fight.

You chase your will-o-the-wisp, your siren.

You beg the fish-girls for a a place in their waves,

Careless that their kiss is as deadly as sin.

You flail and you rave, too afraid to save.

I will not drown whatever my life costs.

If you plunge to the depths it's you who's lost.



ps -- I hope the new background doesn't confuse you too much. I like a change of scenery every once in awhile

Bleeding Elephant

Wrinkled pillars,
In four corners
Of aging flesh
And clotted fears,

Abandoned life
Of no more use
To those who watch
Blatand abuse,

A Web of viens,
Pumbing out blood
In a rust pool
Of yellow mud.

Who will avenge
Sorrow and pain
Of this blameless
Animal slain?

(Apologies for the morbidity. This was a nightmare that needed to be written out)

My Xanadu. My Wasteland.

Mind fueled by a dim and flickering furnace.

Faded Memory, ripe with souls long past.

Uncertain wisdom crowded with ghosts.

Will you deign to take their place?



Images fill my cavern of consciousness.

A smile, a touch, a shadow colored glance.

Imagined memories, tales of romance,

Laced with thoughts of rest.


Smothered in mind patterns, I struggle for air,

Entranced by the entity called self,

Unable to escape, to breach gulf

That surrounds my empty lair.



If I reach for you will you close the gap?

Smother the smotherings with your breath, your voice,

Words that choke the cacophony, the noise.

Touch my mind. I'll give you a map.



Show me everything you know how to chase

Don't leave me without the grasp of your hand.

Join me in my Xanadu, my Wasteland.

Would you deign to fill that place?

X: X Marks the Spot

A shrine hidden in a faraway land
Calls me to follow what I cannot see
With no promise I ever be free
From the siren pull of desire’s hand.
Bound by the gravity of native sand,
I choke and spew on the salt of the sea.
Danger drowns my in strains of apathy
Unless I chase the waves beyond the strand.
A treasure is buried, waiting to be found
By the lost fires of my soul unbound.

I: Intelligence

A flickering screen with words typed from

knowledge in a chip.


My mind's ability seems obsolete

compared to its hip,


quick clicks, and artificial information

made of binary


synthesis, but machines will never learn

to write poetry.

D: Dragons

Here There Be Dragons

The ocean's blue gleams against scales of green,
My reflection dripping in saliva.
Teeth gnash. I sharpen my claws for hunting.
My prey struggles against an armada
of chains welded with fear made mania.
I can not escape the shrieks of my heart,
self lit fires impeding nirvana.
I am imprisoned by a breath scorched art
of my creation; poison bled from my own dart.

Growling the secrets of safety, of lies,
My longing becomes a song of restrain.
Devouring the stinging salt of sighs,
a gust of destruction guards in my veins,
That place of horror where my mind still reigns,
A key buried deep in a weave of nest,
the chord pulling tight against heavy strains.
Here there be dragons, warring in my breast.
But past the sea's horizon lies eternal rest.

B: Blue Light

Blue light scatters when it hits the air.

It becomes your eyes, the sky, the sea.

It breaks away. The particles drift free.

Waves rise where no other colors dare.



Sense abandoned for traquility,

Blue light scatters when it hits the air,

A vivid distortion of reality.



Blue light masks what is not there.

In fractered pools of philosophy,

It becomes what you would have it be.

Blue light scatters when it hits the air.

One Stop Poetry

Dedication

Desecrate my temple with a candle
With flames that burn beyond the final sleep
Incense drowned in a bequeathed ritual
Lit by men long dead for us to keep
Prepare me for my burial with gifts
As scalded wax drips down sacred pillars
Teach me the truths that ceremony sifts
And learn the innocence hidden by scars
Hear cries of children never born as kings
And pay homage to their everlasting sire
Screams of purity torn from time's sweltering
Defile my memory for every missing fire
Defy the spark dimmed by the fall of breath
As vibrancy passes through strains of birth


To read the rest of the poetry for One Shot Wendsday or include your own click the link.

Hazzah!

I have finished a draft of my story. It is a little too long and needs some polishing but I feel a lot better having it completed beginning to end. I will post an analysis of the process I used to write this story and what I think I've learned from it for those of you who are interested in that sort of thing. (If you aren't I completely understand. The analysis will be mostly for my own benefit as short stories are sort of a new teritory for me.)But for now I celebrate with these sonnets I've been tinkering with just for fun.

 
Erato
 
The black pulse of a thousand minds
Waits for truth to hold back time
Steeped in color and liquid light
The darkened roar demands its sight
With fists raised in unseen design
They cry for communion with the divine

Tonight the sky drops down its eyes
The silence drowns in lucid dies
Between the rifts of glittered strands
Hang the fates that mock demands
Beneath the pull of threaded sound
The tower falls, a toppled mound

Inspiration here at last
To join the present with the past


Food of Love

My forever faithless jealous lover,
Leaping from the fingers of another
Unresolved notes loose their effect
In punishment for my long time neglect
A word with a sonnet, a wink at verse
Moments when I was too lost to rehearse

My fingers slip and fall against your keys
Rough sounds flow through your hollow reeds
Nothing is left but your siren's screeching
A hand cramped from my ceaseless reaching
I am parched for the voice you will not grant
With a mind flailed with silence I recant
Flow back to my brain and out of my throat
Forgive if you can the false words I wrote


Motley

Whir of colorless gauze begging for dies
Shadow filled laughter drowning out sound
Paint covered eyes spinning round and round
Drink bitter delights to sustain the lies

A popinjay decked out in white and black
Swallow the emptiness. Wash out the hues.
Dance to the silence of a drunken ruse
With feathers and bells dripping down your back

With masks twisted out of charm and wits
Don't let them see that your eyes are their eyes
Don't look at yourself. Don't dare become wise.
Whisk your cloak full of glittering bits

Invisible in gilded finery
Wear the costume you expect to see

Haikus!

My much cluttered muse
Too often abandoned
Do not leave me yet

If I could pen words
For every mindspun thread
My fingers would break

Beowulf

I always thought that the plot of Beowulf went on too long. Monster attacks stronghold. Hero kills monster. Monster's mother takes her revenge. Hero kills her too. That should be it right? The stronghold is safe. Conflict resolved. A little about the victory feast makes sense but why follow Beawulf all the way home if nothing is going to happen for another thirty years? And why, oh why add another episode with a dragon when no victory could ever compare to his victory over Grendal? A bit anticlimatic isn't it.

If Beowulf were only an adventure story that would be true but I reread the peom this week and on closer examination I don't think its about a single exploit of bravery. Its about mortality and how the Anglo Saxons thought that a life could be worth living in spite of inevitable doom. Cheery I know.

Grendal himself is an example of doom lurking outside even the strongest most prosperous stronghold. Beowulf conquers him but there is yet another monster, his mother, his source. Even after Grendal's mother is destroyed Hrothgar warns Beowulf that strength and victory are not long lasting acheivments. That they will fade with age and if a hero is not courteous as well as brave so will his aclaim.

Beowulf's acheivements after Grendal are only told in flash backs just before the final show down with the dragon but it is clear that he took Hrothgar's advice and lived as a just and courteous king. But why do we need this final battle? Can't we just enjoy imagining the hero living a long and happy life without fast forwarding to the end of it?

Many old poems show us a character's life from beginning to end. Morte D'Arthur begins with the circumstances of Arthur's conception and ends with his burial but while Arthur's story is a tradgedy of how a great kingdom went wrong and fell prematurely the death of Beawulf is not a tradgedy at all.

Beawulf's death shows that even the strongest, most vireous and most honored man dies but he also shows that if one must die one might as well die . . . with his honor on. He died the best posible death for a Geat and a reader fully emersed in the culture of the tale can not be satisfied with his long and happy life until they know how he ended it. In the beginning of the story he conquers doom, holds it at bay so that the Danes can enjoy Heorot again but at the end the inevitability of doom catches up to him. He dies but conquers doom once and for all by behaving heroically up to the very last second of his life.

So its not anticlimatic after all.

In Which I Attempt a Sonnet

Ribon of ink, a soul's entrails
left from the dead, a story tells
A truth, a lie, a sentament forgotten
A word, a spell, world I am lost in
Incantation from long ago
Bound inside a rhyme I know
World held still with thoughts repeated
World spun on with life unheeded
Mangled mind unraveled with sore eyes
A scholar watches, stricked as he spies
A life lived and then discarded
Poet's words scrawled on empty space
What has a thousand times been said
He writes again for future eyes to trace

Little Cat

Little Cat

Little Cat
Sitting on a ledge
Her balance looks precarious
Her place to sit is small
I approach
Feet fumbling in the morning
I am quiet but she looks up
Eyes wide, she sniffs the air
The same early grey as her fur
Between time
Between touch
I reach my hand for the sleek surface of her neck
Eyes wide, she sniffs the air
She turns her head
She looks around
No one there but me
She arches her neck
My fingers move closer
And for a moment
Trust

Small Poems

Emily Dickenson wrote small poems. Hundreds of them. She lived a small life. A short life, lived mostly on the same small piece of land. She never wrote about great battles or interesting adventures or fascinating things she had seen because she never saw much. Instead she wrote about life. A small life lived by a small woman who saw small things.

Then why, after a hundred years, do we still read these small poems?



I read my sentence steadily,
Reviewed it with my eyes,
To see that I made no mistake
In its extremest clause, --

The date, and manner of the shame;
And then the pious form
That "God have mercy" on the soul
The jury voted him.

I made my soul familiar
With her extremity,
That at the last it should not be
A novel agony,

But she and Death, acquainted,
Meet tranquility as friends,
Salute and pass without a hint --
And there the matter ends.