Plias Mourner

(this is a revision of an earlier post)

The lately leaden anchor upon my head brings me slowly,
slowly,
closer, closer,
to the heart of the earth;
I sink into its dirt mirth,
with a fantasy of mired hopes always diverting the tryst of it.

Down there,
the dear divulging of the reverie of maudlin birth,
a paganesque existence,
clamouring beyond the barred bones of ancestors and inspirators.
Ecce homo - quid est ergo tempus?

I wonder: do the bells ring belated after the last of the species is dust?
I am a woman, a grungling, bumbling, mumbling thing -
I seek my mark no longer.
Here, the lovers carved on a tree,
here,
the boy buried a box with his flower cloves and dove feathers.
Predicted, they, no aerie silence as such will follow -
did they lie in wait for my heart?
Yes, I'll apprehend their loresong....
but O! My dear heart rends
for the meagreness with which I'll offer their hallowed store a telling tale,
to speak back to the spoken, ennui of my memory...

She lay in the dirt, patting upon two oval stones placed each equidistance apart, fitted under her hands and they sing forth a thick patta-patta-pat-pat-patta-patta-patta-pat-pat.

Achew a chew a new chew in this rough.
Had I been a bird my life would be rife with this stuff.
Swallow the slimy composter and take to the air -
there's my flighty metaphor and I'll move it upon the wind - away!

No, that is not my fate.
I am not only belated, but late.
I wish to mince and pinch my skin -
This roving belle chose!
A quandary ancient woman I'd much prefer be!
Where the heights of authority lay in the fine command of a village,
in having a knowledge of the seasons,
in being a clever seamstress and weaponsmith.
Here, to render a fire,
commence this making - a feast worthy of Greek bards to sing of!
Take the young doe, noble jeune,
Ah, but too young - I stop the ceremony
"We must make balance with the earth!"
A cheer swoons round, and we move to my abode
where the stories are told:
I keep the largest fire in my hearth,
And sing a solemn myth of the beginning and end and our promise for the present to keep.

She spoke to her heart to rise and there, before her, the afternoon sun strew its haze orange light across the yawning plain. Brulée, her back; dark and muddy her limbs. The key elements of a supplication lay upon her lips, but with the image alone – nothing was rendered to the light. A strong, stuttered breath and she moved her body across the land. Grave, willowy waif.

A Justification for Insomnia (A Doggerel Piece in Heroic Verse)

To the daylight hours I send my weal
for to some, they have indeed their appeal,
but 'tis ever the night that I like best
(not, as some may say, for its wickedness)
But for the calm that pervades o'er the land
When music sounds more striking, when, pen 'n hand,
I can seek words that full truest resound
with the state of my soul, no longer bound
to the trivial ooze of common speech,
that swamps all 'round the midday, as a leech
insatiate, that knows no food of its own
and must sponge among Custom's wasted bones.

New March

I changed this one to have 10 lines in each stanza, concordant rhyming scheme, and 8 syllables in each line. Let me know if you think it is an improvement.

I sit here on the first of March

And I have had my nameless day

in sullen, mottled economy

of mind - nothing do I say

but of auguries well untrue

as might spit the embittered sphinx

that Oedipus wrought with the rue

that all chastn'd riddlers do feel

at being sounded like a bell

with no muffle to dead'n the peal

So long is wisdom badly kept

interred in th' furnace of our breast

(spewing fallow seedlings of change

that threaten always to molest

my impatient autonomy)

that I work 'pon more vital things,

the outward show of liberty,

as would in my hands abide-

O, fickle and careless freedom,

why choose the young 'mong us to chide?

A Love Poem to a Sage of Mine Own Age

Far below the folding sky,

among the trunks of two leafless trees once called the Heron's Legs,

I dedicate parts of the street

(shiny baubles, pigeon's feathers, iron bridges gliding over gutters)

to the heart that first coronated them

for my young mind, love-full with the sediment

of a sea – not of infinity –

of the deep, longing hours

spent lying (nearly) in bed

watchful for a voice to resound clear to me

beyond steely lights, above meandering clouds–

always superlative.

(I only speak of difference

when I have not the image

and I'd prefer a word).

I would bear you close to me here,

in the manacles of languid providence,

and watching the obsolescence of the new–

Oh, please pray for me in your most secular hour–

The draught of this land

wreaks unseen.

Nothing has ever been so ravished

as our sense of time, moving slow–

nothing has ever been so emasculated

as the silence between words–

men delight in their explosive power

like children who drop eggs from a great height–

I may only be motioning my own anxieties

(I always do

though I try to keep them hidden–

for you)