Muttered The Muse...

Sunday, April 5, 2020

Sprung from shallow graves

See, so busy not
Doing, having not enough
work to kill the Time

Space grows between Us
All ways of masonry wall
builders Handiwork

Stepping on our souls
Shaky grounds cause pause,
no mans land turning Over

'Til awoken from
Trenches such like ruts we run
down the clock counting.

Painting by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840, 'The Cemetery' c. 1825 in Public domain.

Hades hand-basket

One basket for All
Eggs, incubating too much
heat with Entropy

And it could happen,
And it did
Worse than we
Suspected it
Could

Do-
No more
Harm or foulness
than the
Fear hath
Undone.

Painting by Alice Pike Barney (1857-1931), 'Girl with basket' c. 1888 in Public domain.

Aerodynamics outside Elsewhere

It had happened before
certainly,
not All
at the same time.

This time
a first
Spring
vital statistics
lost interests,
attentions drifted away
from their gliding paths.

The sky dictated
directions and we employed
Free will.
At all costs
we are trying
Time
sheltering in square spaces
and speculating about the sudden
impending darkness, the doom
and the emptiness filling corners
while hands draw curtains
and blinds squint like eye-lids
in thin masks
wanting only
Elsewhere.

For once,
the calls all came down
from above. Over-
ruled our old ways.

The birds sang out
consonants, whole
notes hailing hard
lyrics none had heard
before but had been said
meaning suddenly something
anything, anymore,
save a Poets smooth
translation of such dead languages
avian, barbarian utterances
fallen on deaf ears
so many years
we stood under oblivious
and missing
the calls.

There was no place else to go,
to look, to escape, to buy, to barter, to sell,
to tell, to exaggerate, to hide, to collect,
to get, to juggle, to balance, to plan, to invest,
to pad our feet
by adding more Pyrite in the veins
connecting our heart to our soles.

Blood is always on the move.

We look down
and out-side-gazes
away from each other
avoidant, accursed
shielded and sheltered
under the same temperamental
Spring sky
whereby
a feathered friend cocks
his head and chooses
a listener to teach
one good birdsong.

Image description: Birds in flight, St. George Island, Alaska, USFWS, dated 12/04 in Public Domain.

Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Wildflower Mix

Nobody notices
the wildflowers I planted
up on the steep hill-side
amongst the chaos
and they are just seeds
It is Spring
after all,
but these are for me.

There was no way to tell
what would come up
where
and yet the rain, like blame
settles on a place,

soon enough
colors come out
like memories lured by
a scent, the way pollen
is heavy and imposing
making an occasion
to rise.

Between weeds, the butterflies weave
and I dig a fine line
between reaping and sowing,
the towhees wings graze by me
and I hear Hope
spoken in a voice that sounds
close to my own.

It was clear,
a good day to plant the seeds.
For this was the time to change
the natural course of things
as if by hand
we could sense
the Possibilty.

"I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance."
-e. e. cummings

Painting by Sergey Vinogradov (1869-1938), 'Still life with wildflowers' date unknown in Public Domain.

Time's Up

The witching hour grown heavy
with its customary anticipation,
takes its tiny minute hand
to tap gently, persistently
on my sleeping body
causing the cat to stir,
purr and stretch
Time
into manifest destinies
with whispers of sound
like padded feet
passing under doors.
Air is moving all around
us making vertigo
an entrance.

The body is moved
by the mind.
A cauldron steams and hisses
acrid blackness
and while all the other
heavily burdened bodies
are tucked deep down
in the sand,
weighted by breath
and erased by tide,
an inside voice
gives rise to words
that lie
in the subconscious
and spell
Magic
with only the thinnest lucid air.

This hour
witch made
alone
disappear
as fast as you passed through
the fear of flying Time.

Macbeth Act IV Scene I

FIRST WITCH

Round about the cauldron go;

In the poison’d entrails throw;

Toad, that under cold stone

Days and nights has thirty-one

Swelt’red venom sleeping got,

Boil thou first i’ th’ charmed pot.

THREE WITCHES

Double, double, toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

SECOND WITCH

Fillet of a fenny snake,

In the cauldron boil and bake;

Eye of newt and toe of frog,

Wool of bat and tongue of dog,

Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,

Lizard’s leg and howlet’s wing,

For a charm of pow’rful trouble,

Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

THREE WITCHES

Double, double, toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

THIRD WITCH

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,

Witch’s mummy, maw and gulf

Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark,

Root of hemlock digg’d i’ th’ dark,

Liver of blaspheming Jew,

Gall of goat, and slips of yew

Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse,

Nose of Turk and Tartar’s lips,

Finger of birth-strangled babe

Ditch-deliver’d by a drab,

Make the gruel thick and slab.

Add thereto a tiger’s chawdron,

For th’ ingredience of our cau’dron.

THREE WITCHES

Double, double, toil and trouble;

Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

SECOND WITCH

Cool it with a baboon’s blood,

Then the charm is firm and good.

Enter Hecat and the other three Witches.

HECAT

O, well done! I commend your pains,

And every one shall share i’ th’ gains.

And now about the cauldron sing,

Like elves and fairies in a ring,

Enchanting all that you put in.

Music and a song: “Black spirits, etc.”

Exit Hecat.

SECOND WITCH

By the pricking of my thumbs,

Something wicked this way comes.

Knocking.

Open, locks,

Whoever knocks!

Enter Macbeth.

MACBETH

How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags?

What is’t you do?

ALL WITCHES

A deed without a name.

MACBETH

I conjure you, by that which you profess

(How e’er you come to know it), answer me:

Though you untie the winds, and let them fight

Against the churches; though the yesty waves

Confound and swallow navigation up;

Though bladed corn be lodg’d, and trees blown down;

Though castles topple on their warders’ heads;

Though palaces and pyramids do slope

Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure

Of nature’s germains tumble all together,

Even till destruction sicken; answer me

To what I ask you.

---

MACBETH

Infected be the air whereon they ride,

And damn’d all those that trust them! I did hear

The galloping of horse. Who was’t came by?

Painting by E.R. Hughes, 'A Witch' c. 1902 in Public Domain.

Sunday, March 29, 2020

Foretelling

The tower of Babel crumbled
close to Heavens Gate
under the weight of words
being tossed across
crooked beams of Meaning,
colliding with brute force
like wrecking balls or
oblong Egos
characters fell
one by one.

The virus spread viciously
devouring breathless bodies
whose lungs collapsed
in fevered white surrender
making trespassers doubt
ownership.
Perhaps by taking flight,
the wingless mammals
mistook their own shadows for
Angels
of Mercy.

Maybe, like Icharus
we flew too close to the sun
singeing and singing our victory
songs. Hymns and hers
breaking the speed of light.
He resurfaces atop the rubble
of Babel
only spread his sickly self destructive
wings around the globe
suffocating us with immortal
whims and wicked winds.

None would dare say
aloud
it sounded like
lightning
a curse
or zero in zero chance
our earthly eyes
would adjust to this light.

Artwork by Sergey Solomko (1855-1928) 'Icarus' Dream' in Public Domain.

Monday, March 23, 2020

Reflection

A daughter is a distorted mirror
Image
of her mother
in a different light-

She reflects tiny scratches
caused by sharp objects
hurled at the surface
not hard enough
to break this concentration
of silhouette
and deformity of depth.

Only an Impression
too light
to stay in one body
fills the frame
out toward its beveled edges.

And all that cannot be contained
by Image is Imagination.

The daughter does not recognize
Herself
as better than
as more than
a mother could bear.

A swift movement of time blurs
the point
when the daughter draws her sword,
and the mother caps her pen.

Image credit: By Marcantonio Raidmondi (1480-1534), 'Justice personified' Engraving circa 1515-1525 in Public Domain.