Out Of Period: Rhymed, But Not Medieval

It Is The Beginning Of The End (August, 1991) (a villanelle)

It is the beginning of the end
of the beginning; my soul is held
and bound; torn, that it will mend.

Your eyes are dark, and hungry.
I stare at you. I know full well
that it is the beginning of the end.

My wrists. You pin and pull
on strings that bind a dying heart.
My soul is held that it will mend.

I feel your need, a sucking mouth
that beckons like the void;
it is the beginning of the end

as, twisted like rope, we fall. Desire is dark,
sharp as steel; compelling as fate.
My soul is torn - but it will mend.

This hunger for life. Giving no release
unless we lose ourselves – oh, hold!
It is the beginning of the end.
My soul is torn that it will mend.

Life Without Art (April, 1992)

I wrote this after I broke up with a man named Arthur. We're still friends. At the time of the breakup, things were a little sour, as they usually are, but we were getting along well enough that I could show him poems like this and we could laugh together over the wordplay. I wish all breakups could be so friendly. Heck, he even forgave me for using him as a guinea pig for my first mistressy notions. That's friendly.

You loved me, you said, because I was strong
(Though some would say arrogant,
or perhaps even heartless.)
Or was that the reason why? You gave
No reason, really; save that I played along
With the game, the grand façade,
and played with panache
(Though some said otherwise,
my candour being far too artless.)

You loved me, you said, for my mind.
(At least its many twists and turns,
the way it took its perverse pleasure.)
You gloried in the dance we made,
The steps and feints, the unkind way
I fenced each encounter...Was I so awful?
My fists were always gloved in velvet,
ready to stroke where I might strike
(Though – only at my own leisure.)

You loved me once, yet now no more.
(Indeed I must be graceless,
certainly I am far too artless.)
Why the game? I have walked brambled footpaths
on old untided trails, to the shore.
Its cliffs were pale, and seductive;
But I, mistress of seduction, pay little heed
to the charms of oblivion. I am immune,
having become cold; perhaps even heartless.

It Was Dark In The Night (October, 1992)

An early religious poem with pagan overtones. Some of my religious poems are neopagan, some are Christian. As always I'm a hopeless fence sitter ;)

It was dark in the night
when Fate took my hand;
The shutters protested
As a wind swept the land.

We skimmed out the door,
Two leaves on the gust;
Blown on by Force,
Abandoned to Trust

Fate asked me then
If I longed to be free -
I stared through the wind -
As she stared through me -

Giving no answer
But blinded by night,
I gave up my wings
To our circling flight;

Gave up my wings
my trembling wrists -
My neat fingers clenched
In trembling fists -

Husks of frail leaves
on the cold autumn breath
Go spinning alone
Against the white rose of Death

But such warmth in the chill!
and so sweet to be blown!
In the palm of a Goddess
I spin not alone -

The Forging Of The Grail (October, 1992)

An early religious poem, this one more Christian than not.

Burning fire, then, in the cauldron,
until out of the crucible, into the mould,
outpouring of the spirit into a shape
not unlike a Grail; made firm in the cold,
you wait for the hands of your maker.
How premature was that sigh of relief!
I have known fire so many times
that my fire markings defy belief.
I have cried for mercy in that dark hour
just before dawn, and been denied.
Mercy's not a thing for grails.
You'd shake if you were untried,
says the sadistic Smith, and you'd snap.
Better to snap now before the trial.
And he sings as he pumps the bellows,
and choking on my black bile
I try to intone a descant. My high note
rings out in darkness, my soul withstands,
I curse the pain and protest
as a Grail forms under the goldsmith's hands.

To Kevin H. (November, 1992) (a loose villanelle)

We romped in waves of moonlit black
And swallowed the lake to take our fill.
You fastened my cape behind my back.
I prayed on my knees as my legs went slack.

Deep kisses went deeper than my will
And I succumbed to your attack
With a hunger that startles me still.
(But could I not drown, to take my fill?)

Nights later, held on my back,
By some strange tremor that put me still,
I writhed in the cuffs that held me slack
And laughed in the face of the attack

Drinking in the autumn, my mouth goes slack
At what the memories call back -
The things I did in autumn
That I might take my fill!

For The Holly King (January, 1993)

Before the last gasp of muddy cold
spreads foggy against the winter's sky
and the frost comes to harden the ground
and whitens the twitching, rat-colored grass -
before the snow pellets fall on all things dun
and mutely, calmly, bring winter on -
Not first the moon, turning her sideways smile,
Shrugs herself into her cloak of night;
While all the world's stars wink on and out
and march into the advancing light -

The winter's fire burns out on the hearth,
juniper smoke curls away into vines;
ashes settle in the pit to earth.
In ashes of grey I call forth a form:
lines marching in columns traced by youth,
the aging god of an aging race;
and exhumed, my hands grey with the ashes
of gods and myth, time and space
laid out in the sarcophagi of library casings -
time gathers in and grows old.
Winter congeals on my hands, in ash, to dust;
I toss wood on the embers, against the cold.

One Final Song Of Experience (July, 1993)

With profuse apologies to William Blake

I am a little bolt
I hold two parts together
I am made so that I work
In any kind of weather

I am inspected by a crew
They see that I am strong;
They touch my parts and peer at me
And see my neck is long

If I am good then I am passed;
A company mark I wear.
My inspector was recently hauled away
For screwing me into her ear.

The Peculiar Silence Of Emotion (August, 1993)

I probably should have included this one with the Ironhawk poems, but somehow it just didn't seem to fit thematically.

The peculiar silence of emotion
that drops into night's well:
Each word, each chant, each howl
Tearing to pierce the veil -
Falls short mute, at the feet of shadow,
to dangle in the question of a spell.

In forbidden words -
eternal love, sublime, skinless longing -
Desires flame -
The air gives birth to creations
But not their names -
And in the marble silence
The eyes that stare like statues
Look not the same -

Into the dark furrows of your hidden being,
the only part still virgin, I have placed
A slow and cunning seed.
A hidden moon's horns tip-trace the leys
Whilst I cultivate your need.

The Maenad (January, 1994) (a ballade, originally titled "Hymn of Persephone" because of the underworld references)

Wild blow the winds on this black night -
laughter shrieking within my dumb ears.
A baying of dogs, the sound of horns, the mad light
of the moon blazing empty and fierce:
Here is where I make my halt. My white feet
writhe on the grass, seeking a soothing peat.
The raw soles kiss blade. White burns red.
It is a nowhere-space to which I have fled.
And the god is about: which mercy will he bring,
the ecstasy of the arrow, the sweet death's bed?
This mad poet would sing.

Death is in every gift. Do not fight
the glance, the sharp kiss, the sweet metal tears
of rain falling on midwinter's blight -
The soft sobbing patter is all the soul hears.
Dark plains of the night, where my heart might beat
from its chest; throbbing; where my mouth might eat
yet stranger foods: nectar, ambrosia, toadstool-bread,
accepting dark hell with delighted dread.
Love of my masked lord is a frightening thing.
The ground near my feet is soaked where I've bled;
This mad poet would sing.

This hell token coiled about my neck (Now invite
what's beyond the mask to the body mask-worn)
Here in this wood, mosses of malachite
entwine tressy roots along granite spears.
A gasping coitus is what makes me complete;
thick honey drips, mingling with the blood at my feet.
I give up myself. My light glows where I spread,
my hair tosses - and an ancient figurehead,
an oracle, a wild prophet, I scream - The moon is bleeding
but none perceive. These words stay unsaid.
This mad poet would sing.

ENVOI

This blind rapture is sweet -
My blinded eyes see what day-bound eyes dread,
Paths seldom trod are the ways that I tread,
Following stars to dark wakening -
My submission is serene. This horn at my head.
This mad poet would sing.

Roi Polloi (April, 1994)

This from one who sees the sun
Sailing on celestial roads rich and
Red: oh, see! and say, can you see
the sun king’s chariot spoked
with smoking lynch-pins burning red
on raw skies? His red hair fire
burning wheels against seas
of lead sky. Stay, do not rue
the road you say you saw
open up to the red chariot sun
to burn raw through sea and sky.
Red horses pulling regally
the fabulous sun, across the sky.

Rhapsody On The Art Of Memory (January, 1995)

Medieval students, like the classical scholars before them, studied the Art of Memory, a discipline that used mental images to trigger memorized data. This poem is modern in tone, but alludes to an ancient practice.

I cannot sleep.

The wind laughs too loud.
The bed's too warm for my quartered self,
A thousand displayed images mean nothing
to me - I am alone, and fitful, and hollow,
Too sick for sleep. I am this night -
cold soul, black heart, blind sight -

The willow whips the window glass
in a lover's fit. I need your hands,
I cannot sleep. Your life, free of mine,
has forgotten me - I am my own
and I lie crumpled.
I fantasize an abandoned doll.

(My sleepless eyes see laughter on each wall)

Two down, one to go -
three is the charm that binds
and I avoid the third. I've been mastered enough.
My illness burns when I cannot sleep,
it askes me - catechismically - am I not my own?
It sneers. I long to fly.
Laughing on glass panes,
The rain splatters like mad tears:
weeps with my zeroic soul
on its void of fears -

An abandoned mask -
a powerless thing -
a white snow owl without wings -
my dreams strangle me where I lie,
not needing sleep to take me where they will.
I am an ourobouric glyph. Self-eating,
I curl unseen.
My joy needs so little to go where it has been -

My bed is too large, I cannot sleep.
Pictures are poor company to keep.

Alba (February, 1995)

An alba (sometimes called an aubade) is a "dawn poem," composed at (or on the subject of) a lover's taking leave of his lady at sunrise. It's a uniquely troubadour style. The allusions to Bernard da Ventadorn, courtier to Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, are deliberate.

In waiting for the loved so far away
We cry to the night (how long are nights in May!)
We cry to night, for the pleasures that she brings.
Pleasures are twilight, fleeting and grey -
oy Deus, oy Deus, de l'alba tan t'ost ve! -
We dwell in night. Life's many springs
give life a life by meanings of things.
In meanings, in dreamings, breathing mortal clay:
in the valleys of blind men, are the one-eyed kings...
We dwell in night and dream of day.
The body's a prison; our souls fly away
to the arms of their marble god of desire.
But hell sends wind to her souls led astray.
And fear no pain and fear no fire:
If love is flame, we build our pyre
though our cinders cry; our ash is grey.
We dream of dawn and to what we aspire,
And we dream of heaven's circling gyres
living sweet hell; caught in loves wings,
The day interrupts, demanding its way -
Can one consent to the pain dawn brings?

All dreams must end, all nights go grey.

Love's Place (March, 2000)

Is love in a glance,
A passionate sigh?
The ache in the heart
The dilated eye
The hungering need
that wakes in the blood –
A loud ecstasy
Between should and could

Is love in cold hands
That reach for each other
The embrace in the dark
One heart for another
The firmness of soil
The patience of sea
The eternal hope
that tomorrow will be

Love is forever
At least for a day
A dangling prize
Not quite far away
Love’s beyond gold
though wanting will do –
Love can rend hearts.
Wanting hurts too.