Poem : Historicist

Photo of Sif taken by Julia Smith Wellner

Historicist has two meanings.

In one -- theology says that it is about how the prophecies of religious texts apply to our current times. Symbols are attached to events and people. They become sigils of proof.

In the other -- it is about how specific times in history are "important". They signify something. They mean.

Both are saying the same thing. That specific things hold more weight than others.

Out in the Antarctic a research vessel "found" a new island as the ice sheets melt away. They named this island for the Norse goddess Sif. Sif represents the earth. She is mother of all, wife to Thor. She is symbolically the root of everything. Her hair is wheat.

One could argue that an old god arriving at this moment, in this way, is a sign. A sigil. A warning.

One could call it bullshit.

Either way, Sif is there.

---

Historicist

A new island in the Antarctic — Sif — mother — holder of things like wheat

But of course — it is not new — it has been there forever — waiting
      glacier’s patience — patience that is violent

That she has come now — according to the prophecy of various religions —
      sleeping giants awake at the sound of the warning claxon — the glaciers — which
            until now — chose to be still — now bleed with speed — with iron

Slide into the water — clear with the lack of things — become
      the waiting ragnarok beneath a receding history

Violent because it is so slow you cannot see it — but of course it can be measured
      in the acts of kindness — the small gifts of vapor that
            become the fields of wheat tomorrow

Your belly Sif — let it become red in the sun — stare until you blind
      until you un-hunger —
            full with whatever world is next

Poem-A-Day #354 : Ars

Ars

lingering
like a child in the labyrinth
trying not to get closer
to center

my mind
endlessly recycles itself
a loop - coming undone
at the ends

snake refusing to eat its tail
but caught still
in the woosh of it
the idea of the eating

here is a comment
about lights and obsession
one about Tesla
play the hits -

ok - the path is wide
is covered in dead leaves
underneath is -
something

Poem-A-Day #299 :The Hand of Glory

The Hand of Glory

All the locks - this one
the one in the dream about the abortion clinic bombing

There is the room - it smolders
bricks as rockets as pieces of living tissue
raining down on screaming people

If only everyone had been sleeping

*

I fear that I am not done with you
that I have somehow cursed myself
to think about you too often

There is a stability in forgetting
the atoning of it - cleanliness - like sweeping
up after winter

I dream about you often
they are angry dreams - are biting
I wake up screaming or crying or both

Somehow the circle was drawn around me
the salt I laid and the sage I burned
did not rid me of you

*

You take the hand of the killer

It will be puffy and damp it will bleed

Into the bucket of piss and salt for a month
you should know the herbs you 'll need

It must dry in the sun

Rest as a crossroads

Be nailed tot he door of a church

You did keep the killer's fat as well
you did make the candle according to tradition

His hair will be the wick

*

The sound of a lock engaging

Finality - safety - it is the sound of sleep
the eyes lowering as gates at the tower
a sort of dam against the light of the moon

Here is the hand of glory
it has powers to render all motionless
static - a stasis from the terrors of night
about to and already come

*

In the dream about the abortion clinic bombing

Everyone stood at the barrel of a gun

Your face was there - it was terrifying
because your face was there

The killer held the gun like a candle

No one had the milk to put it out

Poem-A-Day #295 : Mari Lwyd

Mari Lwyd

Beyond the fence at the edge of town
the boy will be sent alone
                    he will have a shovel
a dog at his side
it will be night

It is time to dig the thing from the earth
to place the now naked skull upon the pole
                    dress it in its robe of white
the dog will whine
the boy will brush dirt from the eyes

It can see
can speak and run
it knows the dark districts and the light
it will come to your door
and sing to you

          Well here we come innocent friends
          to ask leave to ask leave
                              to ask leave to sing

When the horse is at your door
Punch will rap on the wood of your door
Judy will sweep along your walls

You will have to sing your denials
have to outwit the unburried spectre
                    it will come in
will dance in your fire
and take your food

Poem-A-Day #283 : Sir Bedivere Waits For Dawn

Sir Bedivere Waits For Dawn

I could run

The sword
                    in my hand
                                        heavy - cold - stones inlaid feel on my palm
across the bridge of the fingers - calloused numb

It is cold on these rocks

The mail is heavy

He wants me to throw it to the lake - it's written on the blade
                    cast it away

Could I be king

Raise this to heaven and sit at the table

I see the crown - lowered to my scalp - it sits
                    everyone falls to their knees - the coin show my face

It is night

The rock is slick with green

Sigh the thought

Would I could throw the might away
                                        I shall sit and contemplate the shoes needed
                    to outrun myself

Winchester Round Table

Poem-A-Day #183 : Zeus in New Mexico

Zeus in New Mexico

The lid of the sky
and the lid of the ground

A half-open eye

The copper stream of tears
reverses itself

The day is a statue unearthed
in a field after millennia

It is missing its body

Its hand is missing fingers

In the cataract
milky self-rorschach of shadows

This thing sees you
and now seen you exist

The view from my patio

Poem-A-Day #143 : Study #7 (Labyrinth)

I obsess over myths ancient or otherwise.


Study #7 : Labyrinth (8/12/04)

*
When Daedalus sat
looking over the
rolling hillside of Crete

Tapping his charcoal about the desk

His eyes would unfocus

A glaze of rainwater and milk over his iris

The floating olive leaves
would intertwine and mesh
forming a sheen of glazed
leaf pattern over darker leaf pattern

And in those leaves was the key :

          Trap it in a pattern of light
          Move it into the vein
          Place it in the center of god

*
The idea that these walls that drive you mad are the walls that have always contained you this is the thing we must remember

*
When he handed off the beautiful bull
could Poseidon have known
the chain of deaths attached to it

That Minos would cage his only son
his only daughter would die abandoned

Theseus' father would leave a namesake sea
so that the cursed child would always burn -

*
Did Pasiphae know that her bull sex would
unravel a ball of yarn attached to her fake udder
and finishing across the ocean at the feet of the man who killed her son?

*
As the green parts fade
they get red, brown, gray

A gray only seen once in all things
A gray that is only in death

There are bones left

Bones loosing marrow
small holes of air rupture the surface
leaving only the imprint
of canals that once carried blood

The leaf skeletons
          (at their centers)
this is where a light will never go off

*
All I know is this:

His wife gave birth to a creature of unspeakable traits that was ravenous in hunger for human flesh

*
Carved into a mountain
the sharp walls would slice open
and cut everything
into darkness -

Poem-A-Day #117 : Poem for Saturday

Poem for Saturday

                                        There were rings -
          : : : : : : : : : :
                    a sort of idea - placed on the scalp a liniment against burning -

     You've got your head in the clouds - you are standing on the earth - you are floating atop your body - a balloon tied to a pole beating itself against the weather -

                              Gold-colored sign posts holding red-colored signs -

          Not stop signs though -

               There is a calmness in the tight feeling across your headband - the metal inside metal inside leather inside an old store room in a prison -
                                  this is not an execution per se -

Not not one either -

Poem-A-Day #116 : Poem for Friday

Poem for Friday

And it rained -
The mountains emptied -
Everything rouged -
Blinked -
Stars -

Poem-A-Day #115 : Poem for Thursday

Poem for Thursday

Can we all just agree that Thor is boring ?

Here - on the life-blood of fated men - paint your doors in crimson gore
the sun will beam black and everything will fallow treacherously

Or something like that - the end of gods - the twilight of myth
the sun setting over the hill on every damn thing created

Whether we want it to or not

Thursday is the turn day - the hinge - it is the day things will be decided
you will have to strike the hammer or not - what is being fashioned ?

Do you still seek to know ?

A wedder is a gambler

          A wether is a castrated goat

                    A bellwether is the sheep who leads the flock

Weather is what is happening right this moment

The serpent who circles itself around the equator and holds its own tail in its mouth is feeling tired - hungry for another kind of flesh - it is going to let go

And what ?

Thor in Hymir's boat battling the Midgard Serpent (1788) by Henry Fuseli

Poem-A-Day #112 : Poem for Monday

Poem for Monday

Somavāra - missing miracle plant - sap flowing like rivers from stone
Day of white ageless horses rippling across the sky - the chariot - blazing - unidentifiable because of itself

Roots white and blind - a lotus filling slowly with dew

Moonday Blue (2013) by  Lim Heng Swee 

Nox Equus

When the weather starts to get warm and humid I sleep less and what I get is restless and full of strange dreams. I wouldn't go so far to say that I start to have more frequent nightmares, but I definitely sleep lighter and remember more of them.

Recently I dreamt a long winding dream about a caravan of vehicles traveling somewhere. My family and I were a part of it. The dream held no clues of where we were going or why. Another dream involved working in a bar mixing up colored potions. The floor of the bar was dirt, and the stools and bar top were rough wood. The dream was mundane in its plot, but felt somehow ominous.

The lack of deep, restful sleep comes down to one thing. No A/C.

The air becomes damp and heavy, hot, it grows harder to breathe. Sleep becomes more difficult. Breath is shallow.

The Nightmare (1790) Henry Fuseli

Nightmare is a word with its base in Old English. The Mare is a goblin in Germanic folklore that sits on the sleeping person's chest and controls their dreams.

Henry Fuseli found the concept ripe enough to paint not one, not two, but four different versions of what is still his most famous work.

The Mare also was believed to ride horses until they became exhausted and in some cases died. The creature, which was always portrayed as female (naturally) was also responsible for twisting tree growth. These twisted pine are called martaller or mare-pine in Sweden.

Mares are also responsible for a strange matted-hair phenomenon known as the Polish plait. This is what that looks like:

Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland

Take a long look at that thing. It is a 1.5 meter (METER!) long ball of hair, pus, blood, lice casings, dirt, and skin. Yes. All of that. On your head.

It was common in Germany, Poland, Denmark, England, France. Everywhere. It is a result of poor hygiene. In other words, unwashed, uncombed hair. Many would not cut them off because it was widely believed that it was an illness removing itself from the body. Some even actively encouraged their growth by donning special caps and rubbing lard on their scalps.

So yeah, I'm thinking about those things lately. Because nasty, humid, weather does bring to mind gross hair. Gross bodies. Dirty streets, etc.

And I certainly feel like something is sitting on my chest at night. Maybe it's my cat.

Drew Barrymore's soul belongs to that vaguely cat-shaped thing.

Ghoulish

Ghoulish (Jersey Devil) 10/30

She is pushing and she is moaning and she is in pain and it is her 13th child and she is swearing to the heavens and to hell and the baby’s head is bald and red and shaped like a horse with two deep black soulless eyes and then a neck and arms and it has hooves and wings and is covered in wiry black hair

It makes a sound like nails on metal on chalkboards wet shoes on linoleum and grabs its mother by the leg and bites into her ankles and suckles blood like milk and the doctors are speechless and the mother is screaming and the universe tilts out the wrong way for a moment before it crashes through a window and into the sky

Review

Review (Peluda la Velue) 10/21

One tortoise foot into the river and the banks will swell the pricks will stand and aim into the heart of the nearest maiden
Let us count the evils:
                        withering crops
                        shooting quills
                        flood steps
                        invincible
                        flame breath
                        strike of death
                        acidic vomit

And everyone will fall like dominos until one can reach the tail and slice through the thickness of it and the demon will die

Postilion

Postilion (Black Shuck) 10/20

The angels in the rafters are hiding their eyes behind wings
they cover themselves in worry of igniting royal flames

Lightening will strike and destroy the spires and the devil
will leave his fingerprints on the northernmost door

He is a dog with burning coals for eyes and a flaming tongue
and all who see into them will die within the year

Everything is a herald of something else
it is not a line it is an algorithm a continuous looping sigil

Flatness

Flatness (Flatwoods Monster) 10/19

Spade-faced glowing-eyed cloak-man

Your head is an air shovel and you came here in a glowing orb of red

Claw fingers you are a barn owl in a man suit

Bringing rain of illness

Bringing the doubt of emptiness in the universe

Upraise

Upraise (Bloop) 10/18

Calm glass surface rippling like water
then bubbling then boiling
the bubbles pop and sine waves pulse
across the expanse

It is making blood into sound
and sound into air

Malombo

Malombo (Grootslang) 10/17

in the
                            blood

a virus of the land

                            pushing
from here to the sea

this cave
fills with diamonds

hardened
                            tusk

a nightmare

in elephant
                            and sepent

Whorl

Whorl (Kraken) 10/16

The world is a sewing machine
spun with crimson tentacles
and ships running through sea

Stitching space between sun and center
between this continent and the next
the clouds swirl faster

One cold hand on the rocks
threading the beaches with purple
highlighting every gold ray

Non-Voting

Non-Voting (Bigfoot) 10/15

It’s going to be November
and you live in those places
where politics are hot

Where are your door to doors
your promises of military service

Where are your inalienable rights

When you go to the polls
and cast your vote the ballots
aren’t even in your language

Will you stomp the ground til it breaks

Leave your size 18s in concrete

Tell me what sort of campaign promise
a Bigfoot desires from a candidate

More schools healthcare

Barbers