Mythos: Retellings and Self-Excavations: Poetry Collection

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Sometimes

Ogma says

We must gather firewood

Instead of poetry

The Alphabet in the mouth

Won't build itself

The Ogham is a small house

In the rhyme of living

But in the dark woods

The twigs don't fall right

Bres reigns

When he Delights

Tethra's limbs

Are swords in the night

But the story flows

In piles of pine

Amber songs

Are quite divine

When the splinters

Haunt the tired mind

The seeker's guide

Chimes with mapled

Lyrics of riverslime

The Corncrake's quest

Is the sound of flight...

And are we the pen

Or the memory

Of a bygone time

When we scrawl

The verse of ancient

Walks in the woods

With the Nectar

Of everyday songs

And yearning for more

In the deep Earth roots

Of the moment's lore?

The Morrigu  

Heads hang on the Loom

Of the Night-womb

Voices of Valkyries

Sing flesh tunes

Warm and velvety

As blood leaks onto stone

Their cries are sovereign

Wedding memory to carnage

The dead are threads

Between their fingers

Rewoven, respawned,

As their enemies' children

Leaves fall in every forest

All drops will know the Ocean

Steeds gallop in every chest

Hoofbeats thunder in the West

Over the battlefield I fly

Souls join me in the sky

I hold them to my breast

Swaddle them in threes

Beings of the Bean Sidhe

And like a Spear

We shoot straight

Through the heart

Of everything

Rending the satin twilight

Dragonflight is our drumstory

Talons pierce their prey

Bagpipes screech

Phantoms chime

On the hillsides

And my crows dive

Past the skyline

Careen past lifetimes

Offered up like milk

And I am healed again

Walkurjas, scavengers,

Their widows cry

While I laugh

Because the grave

Is an effigy

Of the resurrected

Their feet will run

Through these blades again

The eels and Wolves and hens

Change shapes too many times

They always forget

But like babes in my hands

I gather them near

Whoever tastes death

Has another chance

Sargasso Seas recall their Kin

Round Tables meet in gilded glens

Lake's Lady's dwell in inner depths

But the Sagas of tonight

Are still unspent

And Nemain's foes faint with fright

The Badb's tongue is still alight

With the flame of Macha

Verdant as the Ford and stream

The Corn goddess is still asleep

So tonight we fly

Their ghosts roll the dice

The Tuatha meet the tides

Of an old wave and myth,

Fierce and Fomorian,

To crest, Ironclad,

With the battle blossoms,

Scarlet-flushed and white-eyed.

White Flame

 Dark, the acrid root,

The Lorg Anfaid,

Burrows under the hills.

The smoke-shrouded blizzard

Like the Dagda’s mace

Turns its grey eye outward

And leaves the slain in the fields-

The oaks unrobed.

Solar cinders are smoored…

Shadows dig empty wells

Into the knolls

Where the Sidhe

Once drank deeply

With the children

Of Oimelc.

But the Bride’s fire

Still burns in Kildare

When Her veil

Blossoms over the land.

The White Flame

Calls Danu’s children back

By name,

Tends them with a floral train

That burgeons, candle-lit,

At the foot of the patroness

As the King of the Tuatha

Raises daisies from the grave,

Stokes the embers in the caves-

The Saint runs bare

Through verdant blades

When Spring unfurls

The Cauldron warms

And the Light uncurls

Into the hearth-hills of Ireland.

 Traidisiún Istigh

Rain falls in the canyon

Heat and streaming tincture

Sculpting misty steeples

Vapored sanctuaries

Ancient arrows soaring

Antlered and dendritic

Through unhewn brain-forests

Arboriform altars

In skylit furnace

Sylvan nerve-roots helix

Past the aspen spires

And here am I (delighted)

Tending Brighid’s fires

Eyes the plucky lyre

For Her hearth-song

To be played

Lion's Gate 

Antheian wreaths gush rays

Coined goldenseal and nightshade

Stamped low in earthskin footpaths

As Morel-glyphs and moonbath

Dialects of softwood

Braid elm-alms and stardust

Supine stoops of heart-huts

Guard Orion, Earth, and Sirius

Panther meadows constellate

 Legends of the eighty-eight

 Land-scripts in flaxen pyrite

And verdant scythes of cone-spice

Where creatures crouch on hillsides

Tors of sprouting manes and legs

Rimrock herd from story-web

Hangs Wind-threaded to evenlight

Feathered-flock blossoms leeside

Frost-fyre snouts of northern gales

Stampede through the August grails

Of Eithne-wheat and leaf-tide.

*Inspired by the Lion's Gate (8:8) when the Sun is in Leo, and Earth, Sirius and Orion align.

New Religion

Boughs of Swallowtail morning

Forge a quiescent doctrine

Serpentine covenant spawns

Cesaire’s first steps on Erin

A trinity of arks embark

Far west on apricot horizons

Handfasted vows of Malachite mountains

Near the shores of Blue Lace Albion

Within the spiral path of Oak men

As faithful as any congregation

On the Selenite spectrum

Spear and altar pre-ordain

Lugh reborn as Cuchulainn

Litany in greenstone glass

And verse of mango citrine

Symmetry

Today, the answers are outside.

Cards to be pulled

Toes to be curled

The buds alight

The cat black

The forest wet

The stones aligned

Sometimes it’s enough

For the why

To remember itself

As flesh

Taliesin

 The stardome

Permits my entry

Salmon dreams

Overtake me

Watermelon tourmaline

Finds its purpose

Summoning initiation

With a broad brush

Sometimes in wheat beige

And others with red-faded pink

Stalactite memory

Sweet and piercing

Crimson milk

Sucked from a thumb

Pricked and primed

To feel as alive

As the child does

When it is chased by a dog

Which becomes a wolf

With the right kind of mind

Ready to plunge to its death

Or to be invited

To become the next portal-

Recursive Rosen Bridge-

Reborn in a web of pelts and brine

As Awen

 Palindrome

 Never odd or even

The way it conjures itself

An ocean becomes a drop

When I name it Wisdom

I try to call it forth

But slippery as a salmon

It will not become a book

A hymn will barely lend a tone

When I try to coax it to be more

Oh who was it I saw, oh who?

When as a youth I imagined

A thousand lanterns were me

Each shape an incarnation

A sea of fire straining to translate

How the shadows danced with each other

As I only noticed the flickering

Never odd or even

But ever intermingling

 The seeds become a field

They refuse to be distilled

Or even guessed at

Until my fingers run through them

Each season, each moment

A synthesis of the empirical and unknowable

Won’t lovers revolt now?

When they find out

Their certainty was only temporary

   As I release some lanterns back over the ocean

To quench their naïve insistence

That mirrors always know what they reflect.

Be

 Your scent greets me

Sweet symbiosis

Tantric tapestry

Breath weaving

Cradle-wise

Not like last time

The fragrance snagged

When I cried in the canyon

Because I had not

Been told your name

Asked a guide for a book

On plant life

Pages turned

But there were no names

For the bouquet

Of barkflesh and honey

Primordial knowing

That we had met before

Or which life it was

Where our limbs

Last tangled

Today I respond

With a symphony

Of lucidity

If I yank the thread

Too hard

It unravels

The dust dream

I let you fill me

With your Sap-fruit

Empty my mind-chalice

Of thoughts

And today

For us

Entering and leaving

Each other

Through the path-sugar

Of stomata and lung

Is enough

Tale of the Fisher Kings

 Rhiannon's birds were whispering

As they soared above the moldered kingdom

They couldn't wake or lull to sleep

The world between dimensions

They kept skipping over the ripples

Of windy currents and Time

Like little pebbles over the surface

Not really wanting to Dive

What they knew too well

And no one likes to tell

Is that there were many Kings

Trapped in the dash of their own fevered questings

They did not sit at the round tables

But hunched their shoulders in isolated corners

Of the castle, which was dank and gabled

With mounted tails and silent mourners

You see, all the Grails were empty

They had been out fishing far too long.

They didn't even have enough oil

To light their lamps, yet kept the curtains drawn.

There wasn't anything left to regret

Or they were not capable of it

Save for the debts they incurred

When they stole the last Trident

They could never pay its price

Let alone wield it like the pelagic*

They didn't have enough eyes* to see

That beasts can never control magic

Even Poseidon couldn't save them

When his family hung on the hooks

And he met his own swinging Gallows

In the trials from their Holy Books

Still, their hazy eye-nets

Cast themselves at invisible mountains in the distance

They chose to mine for gems like dragons

And built statutory moats for fences

Thus their whole world fell off its tracks

It couldn't find its way back

To the realms of volumes and sovereigns,

Powers and provinces

The only thing that still creeps on the dead beach

Is the old Lady Goldsmythe

Shaking her finger at the chatty blackbirds

And hunting for a rye-wolf* to make bread with

Notes:

Pelagic: The upper layers of open sea

Enough Eyes: The trident symbolizes many things across cultures, but almost always some version of a Trinity. This reference alludes to the third eye (or intuition) being closed.

Rye Wolf: A demonic creature from Germanic folklore that haunts the rye-fields 

 Shadow Self

 Winds howl inside the hounds

It is dark

In their woods

Because they turned their eyes

Into the sun

Like Alexandre’s stallion

Tripping over hoofs

And dangling reins

Far too bright

To notice the light

Or tend the shadows

They Became.

Their blades found their marks

In bridled vixens

That lost themselves

When they smelled the blood

Because they turned their knives

On their own hearts

And couldn’t grieve

What they forgot.

Albums

 A bristlecone pine reclines against the sky

A queen with lovers on lids of Etruscan sarcophagi

She ponders the night, leaning against a sparkling wave of starseeds

Her serpentine spine embarks on an intimate journey with the east

Tying on grey-granite hiking shoes and

Chasing Orion over the peak of the Family Mountain

Her lover, who is not so very Sirius,

Manages to keep a straight face

When four of her cones turn into talons

And she learns how the wolf tastes raw meat

Telling stories with cloven feet

And wrapping the pelt of responsibility around her shoulders

Coming of age in the belly of a four-legged species

Lends a ladder to her limbs

Rungs climbing the branches of Her ancestors back to the heavens

She becomes a black howler monkey

Swinging from bar to bar

Wrapping new fingers around the stories in the Centaurs’ marigold manes

She is the spangled wildfire

Burning Lyra’s chords back into the campfire melodies

Because Her psyche cannot ever be buried

Just sung. felt. discovered,

Again and again

The wind brushes the tight lid off the jar

Watching the oiled rim fall to the fertile floor

Shepherding the fleecy growth of Calla Lilies

The pine straightens her crown

Spits the cotton out of her mouth

And names herself Anastasia

We are the pine

Stretching out our limbs

And flashing our fangs when the old crone’s picture albums crack open in our bones

Note: Anastasia means resurrection

The Crossing

 The Fogs are blanketing

Their gauzy bodies over the lake

Spinning milky webs over our heads

Birthing Spider Woman’s babies

The Hunt is Over

And we are not hiding in the Hills anymore

The grassy doors are creaking on their hinges

And the stags listen to their music

We have taken back our birthrights

Named them like kings

And sent them in the silver ships

To the lands evergreen

We have chosen this return

Anointed our lips with our own spells

Dipped our fingers in the mists

Of our own stories

Rent the shrouds obscuring our true powers.

We remembered the shrines

Climbing back to the skies

And named our origins

Blessing them with Wild Orange

And healing in their Motherchurch*

We have touched our own blood

Painted with it in caves

And did not shy away

From the myrrh we gave to the earth

When we reclaimed our Magic

We have ridden the White and Red Dragons*

Stroked the trails into their backs

Written their names in the Labrynths*

With the pens in our Passages

Galloping across dimensions

We are the Traditions

Of Creations and Cauldrons

Poems and Pendragons

Music and Morrigans

We are no longer Vagabonds

But initiates of our Inner Selves

Calling up the Veils

Casting them aside

Like Beltane’s brides

And Returning to Avalon

*The White and Red Dragons are actual Ley Lines in Glastonbury, England