Enigma

After A BAJILLION YEARS I'm finally posting a new piece. Sorry it took forever ^^ Life's been busy lately.

I still feel like this piece isn't quite right; it's been fighting me. But I don't know what else to do with it - as it is, it says what I mean, but perhaps not quite in the right form. Does it seem jumbled to you? Bleh. I'd love to hear if you can make anything of it. If not...yeah, suggestions on what to do might be helpful there, too, haha.

For and about a dear friend of mine. Ours is a strange relationship, haha...but he's the closest thing to a shaman I've met in a long while, and he is rather like a cooling summer rain for my spaz of a spirit.

"Poem for the Ocean"

  Cure me of this drought.

You have been known to call down the rain
and my forest fire-heart, heaving and sun-sparked,
needs the coolness of summer storms.

You are a sea; and I can do nothing but cling to your shores like sand,
hope to be swept off to the depths so I might understand them.

I am a knowable thing, clear and crisp;
the smell of pine forests, moonshine—
a distillation of all my youthful restlessness.
I want to run til I can drink the air like vodka,
clear and crystalline in my lungs.
My spirit is hungry, an Appalachian wendigo—
a wind eating its way across the Kentucky border,
carving great bites in the mountain flesh.

Though well-acquainted with the contours of lace,
often weaving its silky strings myself,
I am no spider, and your sea swell lace crests elude me.
I am no sea captain, cannot read your ocean currents
but the restlessness that sits beneath my lungs
and crawls its prickling way up my spine
makes me feel that I’ve never been better.

Though you may sound of sadness there is a peace in you.
You bring the sweet quiet of thunderclouds in early evening,
a premature twilight dusk that for once I do not fear.
I recover from my scrapes and scrambles; I am still
picking blood from my ears, grass and reeds from my teeth.
But for once my fingers cease their skittering and
in your rains I find my heart able to settle down to rest
where it may grow roots into mountainsides

so that I may wander freer than before,
learn to trust my sword-arm again.

Herbalism

Okay. This is after HOURS of trying to hammer this thing into some kind of decent shape

Ugh. I've just not been feeling as good as usual about my work lately. This still feels clumsy.

Anyway, I was trying to convey something....hideously complicated and convoluted, and I have a feeling it came off as equally convoluted in writing, but I've hit a point with this piece where I just have to let it go and come back to it for some more editing later.

PS. Mature language warning. Didn't want the cuss words to be a surprise to anyone. And if there's any occasion, to me, when cuss words are called for - it's this one.

"The War of the Ivy and Holly"

We are at war.

We are at silent, stifled war.

We are a waltz,
and I am a quiet Ginger Rogers,
not smiling
for fear of doing or saying too much,
for fear of the wants that eat our garden hearts.

When I travel to you I carry garlic bulbs
to keep me safe, to prevent drowning.

Dancing rings around the rosies
Grabbing pockets full of posies,
What's the point of making nosegays
If they all just fall to ashes?


I grow thistles by my door to tell me
whether you are friend or foe
by the way you catch your clothes,
by the way you curse the spines
within the fingers that pluck them from your jeans.

"Shit" and "Damn it" are safe
and occupied,
like glances,
with something else.


You are a lone figure
rising from a wheat field white with sun,
you are riddles in the dark of my head,
the dark of my mountain cave—
the bay leaf dream sent to me,
uncomfortable and leathery between my teeth.
But true.

At night, you are the holly sprig
at the lintel, keeping the darkness out.

We are at war
in the juniper pauses
where our spirits try to speak
directly to each other,

"Do you remember how I

"Yes I remember, and how I

"Yes. Like the moon."


You bloom in deathly cold,
a capsaicin heat that floods my veins
spiked and chili peppered—
a cool, calm red as you appeared
that night when the fire rose in your eyes.

I try not to climb the cracks
in your brick walls.

You have become, in the early morning,
a kind of silent yearning that stretches
beyond the confines of my nearly-woken dreaming,
across the mists of the Virginia fields between us
stretched out in the yellow light.

You are a new snake
cutting wide streaks
across the gold desert
that ate my garden-heart. 

Constellation

Whew. This one's a doozy. Another madness-themed piece, but I'm not sure how well it worked.

I desperately need critique. On EVERYTHING. I would particularly appreciate comments on these topics...

This is really supposed to show a person's disintegration into madness, but I'm not sure how well I showed that.
1. Plot arc. Can you see the character's trajectory? Can you see a story there? How does it end?
2. Consistent perspective and tone. Although this is supposed to be a madness piece, I'm concerned I'm too inconsistent in POV, at the very least.
3. Do you like the way I've used line breaks/capitalization/punctuation (or the complete lack thereof)?
4. How well do you think the imagery progresses? Despite being a madness piece, do you think there is some kind of logical flow to or connection between the images?

I guess that's what I keep coming back to - although it's a madness piece, I think I need to make some basic level of sense, and I'm worried I haven't done that.

Comments appreciated.

"Звезда"
(Star)

i. I was still, once;

a rock amidst constellations that

flapped like birds.

Their spinning gravity wells

have strung me—

a glittering necklace of asteroids.

Madness is only a quiet hunger for those

who do not live within the skull

that is being broken apart by too many stars.

ii.

as a fox kit i will wander russian forests in winter hoping to be taken in

longing for bright red curls but silver furred and searching hungry for the mice beneath the snow

ringed round with chicken wire and caught amongst the hens wishing for the

russet hair that would blend me in

if i were catherine the great i would not have to feel the rising fear every december

and as virgin queens go i would be more of an elizabeth than a victoria always

turning tailward to devour enemies of the throne

but the most i may hope for by march is to be caught by the forest witch

and have my boiled bones strung like constellations amongst my fox kin

outside her chicken legged house

gravity and greed are just hunger of different kinds

iii.

come close child and listen to me

listen to the story of when i went as lovely vasilisa to the witch’s house and came back out again with the star light of the insides of skulls and listen to how i became the doll given to me by my mother and of how i set my own eyelids on fire trying to convince queen cassiopeia in the sky that i already had my own constellations and how people would not believe that she was trying to come get me

and how i was abandoned by the scarecrow that hid Beetlegeuse in its heart

and how my antlers came in early and i tore them off to keep it secret

and how this one time i caught my hair in the willow tree and spent three lifetimes as a fortuneteller

and how it is russia i keep coming back to with its name like winter trees fore telling me as a collection of ice and fur beneath a night sky empty of everything but my paranoia and the way orion from his height keeps looking at me with hunger in his eyes

and i have seen hell

and it is white white and leaves nowhere to hide

iv. Even buildings are not safe.

I am allowed outside if I am good.

One of these January mornings I will be good enough

and they will find me months later when the thaw comes

sleeping with the dead river

and all the other fish

who cannot swim.

Odysseus

Thought about how Odysseus' wife must have felt when hearing about his adventures.

I know I'd be pissed.

Ottava rima completed for DFC '12 day 3. Again, not entirely happy with it (I'd love to spend more time getting to know these forms a bit better, but I'm still behind, so I'm still simply trying to catch up at present!), but I think it's better than the Isaac Asimov one I did the other day...

"I am no Witch-Queen, but I Bide My Time"

I waited for you, my Odysseus.
For ten long years I waited, all alone.
Men have called for me, lusty, pitiless -
and you, yes, you passed beyond all you've known,
found comfort in other arms - delicious,
weren't they? Distractions from the voyage home.
And, love, I'm no Medea, no witch-queen,
but I will bide my time, and act, unseen. 

Qualia

This is a canzone for day 2 of DFC '12. 11 syllables per line, rhyme scheme abab cdcd efef aa

Those two mathematical sets TOTALLY DON'T COUNT TOWARD THE NUMBER OF STANZAS just sayin'. I wanted to space the lines out to reduce the temptation to make this too singsong-y and keep the rhymes spaced out a bit.

Used the idea of set theory. See Georg Cantor (sneaky use of his last name, no?) if you'd like more info. I don't really feel like trying to explain math at the present...

Hope you enjoy! I'm not entirely happy with this, but there you are, I suppose. 

"You and Me - Set Theory"

{0=n-n}

"Truth," he said, "truth is pure multiplicity,"
and I suppose he was thinking of sidewalks—

I've been chasing concrete cracks round the city,
planting face, hoping for the growth of beanstalks

to clear out my heart-cracks of your name.
My cheek against the sun-warmed slabs of concrete

touches your cheek, sets my whole body aflame
with you—here, I see where earth and heaven meet.

{Ø{Ø,Ø}…}

My mathematician, if only you could sing
to me about the universe, my Cantor,

could tell me of the pavement to which I cling;
we are a set in stones, small and granular.

Though truth cannot be found in simplicity,
still, like sidewalk cracks, truth's in infinity.

Isaac Asimov

A rispetto! In iambic tetrameter. I chose to go a bit silly ^^
Despite the minimal imagery...I hope you enjoy, haha.

"A Love Letter, Written for but Never Given to, Isaac Asimov, From Mars"

I am still new to writing verse.
Forgive me, I know it's ghastly,
But you're my entire universe,
My love, you're the laws that bind me.

Mars is lovely this time of year,
Please, my love, come visit me here:
The red dust in our eyes like dew—
My heart-gears will turn just for you. 

Carbon

WHOA ANOTHER FIXED FORM PIECE? Crazy talk. This is an alliterisen, base syllables 11.

I'm doing a fixed form challenge this month, so expect more posts! I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I enjoyed writing them, internet. I'm finding the challenge of fixed form to my taste :)

"Carbon Winter Heart"

I welcome winter with still, stalactite heart,
a new creature of carbonite, mirrored and mirthless.
I grow grizzled and old, December-dead,
diamond-dreaming, but graphite-grained and losing myself,
organic only by carbon content.
Lacking heart-valves, void: free of my changeling-child,
I am fully frozen, a newly caustic queen.