perzephone | Entries tagged with poetry

Current Mood: hungry
Current Location: cube sweet cube
Current Music: quiet office noise, someone has the hiccups

Last night, I dreamed

I was laying on something
Cold, smooth, hard
Under my shoulders
Under my hips
Under my heels

Someone was reaching inside me
“Hey! What are you doing in there?!”
Hands, pulling out my bones
Laying them on a shelf
“Give those back! Those are mine!”

I could not speak
Then I saw, on the shelf
Among the bones,
My lower jaw
And I understood

The hands took my pelvis, my spine
Grabbed a rib, and another
There were not enough ribs
But then the axe head
And I understood

The lack of words
Did not quench my disquiet
The hands would not stop
Until all of my bones
Rested on that shelf
Another voice, “Quiet there!

Can’t you see, we’re all
In this together? Might as well
Let us sleep in peace!”
I heard, the other voices,
Angry murmurs, and saw
All the bones, all the shelves
And I understood

Current Mood: pensive
Current Location: somewhere else
Current Music: whalesong.. odd

Do you remember, brother
Those days in the wood
When you ran with the deer
Falling bloody on my doorstep at dusk
Stepping from the skin
Grateful to be a man

And do you know, brother
Just how I longed
To wrap myself in the golden hide
Smelling of musk
Blackberries & rain

Tell me that tale
Give me that choice
And I’ll choose speed & horn & hoof
Give me that choice
All you cruel, clever faeries
And I’ll choose the wood
Not the prince
Terri Windling, Brother & Sister

I, too, would choose the wood. Part of what gives me chills whenever I read that poem is that line about blackberries and rain.

In the North country
Beneath a Winter moon
A small grey stag with a silver hoof
Speaks with a red-brown cat

In the North country
In a darkened hut
A hunter watches over
An orphan child
And the red-brown cat
Who is all that the child has left of her home.
She has changed his evenings.

He used to return to an empty hut
To eat, sleep,
Then rise again at dawn.
Now he returns to a child laughing
It is still a wonder to him.

Now he feeds wood to the stove,
Eats the simple meals
She’s so eagerly prepared,
And tells her of the five-point buck
He has never seen
And will never hunt.

Sixty Winters he’s followed the herds.
He knows every ridge, every trail, every tree.
He never comes home without a deer,
He finds them even in blinding snow.
She cannot understand
Why he has never glimpsed
The one they call Silvershod
- Ellen Steiber, Silvershod

Current Mood: peaceful
Current Location: not where I want to be
Current Music: WoW in the background

Somewhere sweet water flows
Through trees and ferns
Flowing to the ocean
Over the mossy stones

Through Her long hair
Lush as kelp, waving in the tide
To the lips of a Goddess
Sleeping on the sea bed.

Her dreams are peaceful
In time to Her breathing
The ocean softly rocks
A lonely fisherman to sleep

His canoe a cradle
In their dreams they meet
Playful as otters
Hungry as great white bears

- JF, 8/17/09

(Cross-posted to FarceBook because I'm feeling needy right now)

Current Mood: distracted
Current Location: my cube - shhh, don't tell anyone
Current Music: Hollywood - Collective Soul

If you come to me
Your dry-hearted queen
In this desert of solitude
If you will bring me rain
I will open wide the floodgates
My spirit will drink from the still pool
Cradled in your hands

All I can think about are seals and tidepools and seabirds...

Current Mood: wyrd
Current Location: Somewhere off center
Current Music: War drums in the distance

One morning
I woke up dead
Beside a river filled with forgetfulness
The dogs tore me apart
Sundered my skin
Devoured my flesh
Scattered my bones

One night
I woke up dead
At the feet of a goddess
The lions of her chariot
Tore me apart
Sundered my skin
Devoured my flesh
Scattered my bones

One afternoon
I woke up dead
In the coils of a serpent
She swallowed me whole
Dissolved my skin
Absorbed my flesh
Digested my bones

Last night
I dreamed I was alive
I stood and screamed into the wind
"Why did you not
put me back together?
Gather my bones
Sculpt my flesh
Weave my skin?"

A voice cried back
Old and far away,
"Why did you not ask?"

Current Mood: content
Current Location: Las Vegas, NV
Current Music: ticking clocks, a plinking oven (it's baking chicken we're having for dinner)

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It's so hard to choose!

This one:

I am a fox
I am supposed to die
I already threw my life away
Something daring
Something dangerous
I wish to do
- Endore & Ortiz, American Indian Myths & Legends

... or maybe this one:

Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance, in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you’re perfectly free.
- Rumi

Current Mood: quixotic
Current Location: here in the center
Current Music: night outside the window

I have lost my seal-skin and drum

have surrendered my dance,

have surrendered the sun

now I stand in my bones,

shadows cast long behind me

in my wake is left only stone

desolation on my lips

the heat and light fade,

the cooling embers of my hips

I am the bear come down from the mountain

I am the mare come home from the waves

I am the hound of moon and star

I am the lion freed from the chariot reins

I have drank deep of the sacred well

I dance in the living flame

I dance on the heartbeat drum

I live inside the hidden heart

I have danced to the womb of the unhewn stone

To find me...

Current Mood: frustrated
Current Location: my arse
Current Music: quiet house noises

Last night I went to sleep with a poem waiting to be written inside me. I should have flipped on the light & jotted it down, but instead I told myself, "Nah, I'll take care of it in the morning". Here is morning and there is no poem. Just one line:

The mountain dreams.

Maybe I'll remember the rest of it later on.

I have to get Rob up & moving. The OJ Simson trial started at 5am & I dunno what I'm going to have to face going to work, especially traffic caused by news vans.

Ugh. Hate reporters with their nasty little questions and nasty little cameras.

Current Mood: content
Current Location: my cube
Current Music: Sugarcoat - Breaking Benjamin

wake up, wake up
this night is gone
wake up

abandon abandon
even your dear self
abandon

there is an idiot
in our market place
selling a precious soul

if you doubt my word
get up this moment
and head for the market now

don't listen to trickery
don't listen to the witches
don't wash blood with blood

first turn yourself upside down
empty yourself like a cup of wine
then fill to the brim with the essence

a voice is descending
from the heavens
a healer is coming

if you desire healing
let yourself fall ill
let yourself fall ill

- Ghazal (Ode) 2133
Translated by Nader Khalili
"Rumi, Fountain of Fire"
Burning Gate Press, Los Angeles, 1994

Did a little updating on last night, just some dying and cosmetics stuff. I was on the windrider and had nothing better to do between Moonglade & TB & then TB to Gadgetzan. Rob's been in the battlegrounds lately & he seems to have pissed off an entire server. Every time someone from Sargeras sees Hellhound, they go after him like he stole their birthdays or something. My Druid hit lvl 45 last night - 10 more lvls & I'll have qualified to make a Death Knight once WotLK is released. I probably won't enjoy the DK class - Warriors in WoW are so boring to play, that straight-up melee class, ugh. The concept of a Paladin is cool in theory, but in practice they proved to be either a Warrior who sucked at tanking or an over-armored Priest that sucked at healing. Bubbles are over-rated.

Current Mood: amazed
Current Location: my cube
Current Music: Home - Persephone's Bees

and think to myself, "Why have I never heard of this before?"

Personal anthology: Osip Mandelstam
Take from my palms, to soothe your heart,
a little honey, a little sun,
in obedience to Persephone's bees.

You can't untie a boat that was never moored,
nor hear a shadow in its furs,
nor move through thick life without fear.

For us, all that's left is kisses
tattered as the little bees
that die when they leave the hive.

Deep in the transparent night they're still humming,
at home in the dark wood of the mountain,
in the mint and lungwort of the past.

But lay to your heart my rough gift,
this unlovely dry necklace of dead bees
that once made a sun out of honey.

— Osip Mandelstam (tr. Clarence Brown and W. S. Merwin)

A song came on the streaming radio by a group called, of all things, Persephone's Bees. I went 'WoW!' & read up on their bio, which mentioned the line from this poem. It's enough to make me cry at work.

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: my arse
Current Music: Beautiful - James Blunt

For years now, I've been trying to find the source of this little blurb of poetry:

… one night
there’s a heartbeat at the door
Outside a woman in the fog
With hair of twigs & dress of weeds
Dripping green lake water
She says, “I am you
And I have traveled a long distance.
Come with me, there is something I
Must show you…”
She turns to go, her cloak falls open
Suddenly golden light, everywhere
Golden light

It's Woman Who Lives Under the Lake by Clarissa Pinkola Estes - author of Women Who Run With the Wolves.

I'd sit here & drink tequila til dawn again but I have to go to work tonight.

Outside my bathroom window, a bird is singing and singing. It's still dark out there.

(Wait... there's a haiku in there.

A bird sings and sings
Outside my bathroom window
It is dark out there.)

Current Mood: Amazed
Current Location: my arse
Current Music: SG-1 Atlantis in the background

by Daniel Ladinsky:

I was invited
to an important conference
where many learned men from different countries
were all going to address the topic:

Where is God?

I was wearing my best clothes and had even fasted for a week,
hoping to sharpen my mind.
Just before I was to leave though,
I felt powerfully drawn to a little shrine in my bedroom,
and I went there and knelt to pray.

I could not believe what then happened:
Kali threw her arms around me and started tearing at my clothes,
then she started throwing delicious food into my mouth,
purposely missing several times it seemed,
thus soiling my pundit attire;

And then she made me perform many times as if I were her
husband; then she said, "Now, Kabir, don't be late for that
important talk, and don't change your clothes--
I like that love-stained look; maybe it will become chic?"

I arrived just as it was my turn to stand before this august crowd,
and apologized for my appearance.

"So Where is God?" the head of the conference says to me.

"Well (well, I stammered)
if you really want to know the
truth--if you hurry--you might
catch Her legs still spread
back at my
pad."

Current Mood: exanimate

My freewillastrology by Rob Breszny

Capricorn Horoscope for week of October 6, 2005

In his poem "Jerusalem, Easter," Stanley Moss writes, "On this bright Easter morning / smelling of Arab bread, / what if God simply changed his mind / and called out into the city, / 'Thou shalt not kill,' and, like an angry father, 'I will not say it another time!' / They are praying too much in Jerusalem . . ."

( - not part of the horrorscope, just me - for some reason, even not being JudeoChristian, this little poem sent chills up & down my back & arms, and I almost burst out crying. So to me, obviously, it rings of truth and reality.)

This is the rest of my horrorscope:

With this as your inspiration, Capricorn, I'd like you to meditate on two themes: 1) What crucial message do you keep getting from God or life but continue to ignore? 2) Is there a certain ideal you say you believe in but sometimes neglect to carry out in your day-to-day encounters?

I've found over the past few days that I inspire great fear at work, and I'm not even trying to intimidate anyone. In fact, to my knowledge I've only threatened people directly twice - once involved the printer & an ink ribbon, the other time, well, we have the ability to be signed on twice at the same time - but if you post cash on one sign-on, it doesn't always show up when you sign off at the end of a shift, so that money is in the computer, but lost at the same time, which means trouble for the auditor when it comes to balancing. So I told Scott that if he kept showing people how to get the double sign-on, I would have his head on a pole and would shit down his neck. But when I ask for something, people jump. Everyone got the message finally - leave me alone. And leaving me alone allowed me to get the rest of my August revisions completed. Finally.

Ye gods, what a week. And I've got a big test to look forward to today. Fun fun fun.

Tangelo

Sweet, salty sweet
Like an orange eaten at the ocean
Tangy scent of rose

The tree within the fruit
The tree doesn't mind
Us eating this bit
We become a vessel for the tree
The seeds channeled through us
Become more fruit

Solar orange brightness
On clean white china
Fills the house
With joy

copyright by ME!!!!

Current Mood: grumpy

The Barbarian invocation

Our lager,
Which art in barrels,
Hallowed be thy drink.
Thy will be drunk,
(I will be drunk),
At home as in the tavern.
Give us this day
our foamy head,
And forgive us our spillages,
As we forgive those who
spill against us.
And lead us not into incarceration,
But deliver us from hangovers.
For thine is the beer, the bitter and the lager,
Forever and ever,
Barmen. "

I had to get up at 5am to take a shower & get dressed so I could go to a stupid-ass 'Diversity Class'. I feel I have been greatly inconvenienced and I don't think $20 is enough compensation at all.

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Page Summary

Just a Dream, Really
For Relevance
A Poem, Written With My Left Hand While At Work
Distractions
Dreams
Writer's Block: Taxmen and Poetry
A Tad Rusty
Mountain Poem
I <3 Rumi
Sometimes I Miss Things...
Found It!
Birdsong
The Most Awesomest Poem I've Read in Awhile
I like reality. It tastes of bread. - Jean Anouleh
Tangelo
The Barbarian Invocation

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Page generated Jul. 4th, 2025 02:22 am

Namaste, Bitches

I'm homesick for a place I've never been

Entries tagged with poetry

Just a Dream, Really

For Relevance

A Poem, Written With My Left Hand While At Work

Distractions

Dreams

Writer's Block: Taxmen and Poetry

A Tad Rusty

Mountain Poem

I <3 Rumi

Sometimes I Miss Things...

Found It!

Birdsong

The Most Awesomest Poem I've Read in Awhile

I like reality. It tastes of bread. - Jean Anouleh

Tangelo

The Barbarian Invocation