Spacetime Breakdown

Spacetime treats you differently
than the usual garden variety
in which things are planted, birthed, flourish and die
in a more or less methodical manner.
Spacetime sprawls
it bounces and stretches and snarls
itself with bright white spikes
of what could be daylight
or large sharp teeth.
Somehow you have attracted it
with your staccato sentences and
lanky legato limbs. It has swept
you up and away and into
a vortex of varied places.
You emerge occasionally
dropping vintage phrases and
spilling these sci-fi dreams that I
simply cannot understand. Spacetime
stretches and shrinks you
too grand to hold
and too tiny to fear and too you
to bear to lose. But there you are
with your shrugging shoulders
asking, no telling me,
that you need them both, together,
you need space and time
and I nod
and let you go.

The Leave Taking

Rain brings the Fey

The Fey tell the fate 

of those who know wand and wood

who would and want

Who bend bone and mend manners

in such a way as to stay.

Let the limbs grow straight

but stay ready to sway

and the need to believe

be greater than that to retreat

into that great non-thing reality.

Bring the babe to the woods

in the rain, the quiet rain.

Let the wind bring the fey

and listen them to them say.

This is the way, the way, the way,

that the story grows

This is the way, the way, the way,

that the tales go

A kiss on the cheek for me my love

A kiss on the lips for me

A kiss on the air for you my love

A kiss to remember my love.

The rain is coming

The wind blowing

The fey are dancing, love,

and it's the end of the day.

You say the times are changing, dear,

the weather is just a thing

But I say I am a changeling, dear,

and it is a gathering 

for goodbye, for good ways,

and for the Good Folk. 

So kiss the baby darling,

Hold her in your hands,

Tell her the stories, 

Tell me you understand. 

The Fey tell the fate

and they say that I am late

So in the rain I'll stand and stay

Love, it's time you were away. 

The rain brings the Fey.

Punctuation

The insatiable seeping of self

is the issue

a word which means both product,

and problem

a variance that smells like

both life and death, or perhaps

salt and iron.

At the very least it is a tension

the incapability of retaining

the sort of thing which ought to be restrained:

words, emotions, vital fluids.

On the other side of tension

is a laxity which begins with sleep

and grows into weakness

to both not move, and not desire to,

a slow-breathing passivity.

At the most, there is pain

both in loss, and in the failure

to prevent loss,

which is a different sort of ache

built on possibility and bruised somewhat

by statement.

The issue is, out loud, unstated

being in itself, a state

and therefore determined by such

boundaries as may be drawn

invisibly

across hills, or plains, or time

demarcating such things as beginnings

centers, and ends.

It begins with a hint of this

coming or building or swelling

and ends with an epilogue

a promise of sequel and series.

It is, internally,

and by necessity also externally,

a test of selfhood, an establishment,

of the empty self by emptying

or the invaded self

by remaining unbreached.

Both a signal and a symptom

of singularity,

and if not, of secondarily

another nature, of another sort

of another self.  

For the X in Sam's phone

A compass always points north
magnetic drag on the tiny arrow
and it's all up with freedom
There's only one way to go.
That seems to be how it works
with you too.
Up your arrow goes
and like a hound enslaved
to his sniffing nose
you are off
to wag your tail
around another painted hydrant.
Red is such a trashy colour.
Maybe that's your magnetism
working away.
Cheap tin, and plastic,
good enough to fool you.
So here's to gold, and here's to north
and to good riddance.
Follow your nose wherever it goes
I don't have to put up with your
shhh....

Snowfall

The earth is frozen

the crops die

the people starve.

It is the first winter.

There is no history for this

no warning of foliage change

no gradual autumn.

This is grief, sudden and vicious.

This is rage, indescribable.

Who has stolen the treasure,

has breached the sacred stronghold?

What is the daughter

but the mother's own form

made again to be shaped into

her own image?

Who then has stolen her self?

Demeter rages for justice.

The earth is emptied.

The womb is bereft

The cradle abandoned

each of these losses

Demeter has borne

for the filling of another space,

the orchard of her lilting laugh

the little rivers overflowed with her songs.

This theft bears no new fruit.

The seed is fallen deep into the earth

and has not bloomed again.

No salve for the soul

that has been stretched into two skins

that has been severed

into two selves.

Demeter is at once alone

and lonely.

The people starve

The crops die

The earth is frozen.

Six red seeds fall like blood,

are planted in the daughter's womb.

Death grows in her bones.

The self will not return.

A separate soul arrives from Hell.

Winter is born.

Future

You exist

in early mornings

when I am too awake

to fall back into dreaming

a weight behind my eyes

an anxiety in my bones.

I cannot sit still

I cannot go back to sleep.

besafebesafebesafe
I would build an iron box around you
a place lined with lead
with strong locks through thick latches

and then sink you into the sea.

The night is young and hungry
I am starved for sleep.
We prowl together
slouching, careless.
The hunt is short
the game up.

So is the sun.

You exist in early mornings
teeth and claws and kissing
the back of my ears.
You gnaw over numbness
and scar the skin.
You are more hungry
than the night. More starved
than me. More scared.

I cannot make you safe.

I am sorry. 

Invocation

Call out the young men
summon the strong guards.
Strip them of their duties
Relieve them of their post.
They will shout in protest
This is their land, and the land of their fathers
their fathers before them,
and their father's fathers.
Back it goes but before fathers there was the earth
loved, not lusted for, growing, not groaning.

Gather up the weapons.
They reek of rust
and old blood.
The bite of blunt blade is shallow
but poison
to eat all the living flesh.
Burn the reddened blade
the shamed branches that grew green
and have soaked up death
instead of cool waters.

Take the bitter ashes
and dig a deep hole
a pit not a grave
a mouth of broken teeth.
Pour the grey muck, the dust, the filth
like an offering
and pray that it is swallowed
not spewed hatefully as it spread
by man's hand
in young men's blood.

Let the hand that swung the sword
be given seed to sow.
Let the archer loose his bow
and bend toward the earth.
Commanders of young men retire, rest.
Take up the plow, drive only the ox
Young men, build homes
not barricades
and march in cadence
for the summer dances and harvest games.

The earth was young
and is now old.
Care gently for the seasons
and the turning tides
Treasure them up in your heart
and store them away like grain
to ripen and enrich your dreams.
Young men become fathers
who love the land
who cause it to grow.