poems from the place between
Gnosis
Did Marah, in her endless days, Eat apples dipped in honey? Did their sharp sweetness soothe The bitterness of water? Our over-ripened year is falling now, From branch to patient earth. Only the ancient wise ones of the worms, Who write their scriptures in the soil, Remember as they dream their eyeless dreams - The serpent's promise and the garden's curse. Forlorn Pomona yields her gravity To greedy bites, while others scavenge seeds For cyanide, and pray for retribution.
Fragile
We are all just fragile things, Our stories shatter in an instant. A misplaced word, a broken moment, Shards of sharp and jagged selves. Pieces of the past Cannot be put together; We fix the future with kintsugi, Finding beauty in the flaws. Yesterday, we smiled.
In hope and fear, And love and loss, We take unsteady steps On unmarked paths: This living hand In yours.
Befriended
Moonmotes in the dark, Fragments of the far, Threads of weave, A tapestry of tales. Connection more than words, Truer than the faces worn. Magic knows its own, Calls out to its echo Across the void beyond. Worlds created and destroyed, Saved and lost and found again. Truth within this fiction, And dreams within a dream; The story writes itself.
Of Sea and Stone
We were formed in ocean's foam, Shaped by silent spinning stars; Driftwood at the water's edge, Voyagers of centuries. We were found upon the shore, Where chalk gives birth to flint: The tools of our becoming, And the blades of our defeat. Knap the stone, carve ancient sigils; Nehalennia take my beating heart. Where river flows into the sea, My true name sings in wind and wave. In transition, all creation Is destruction.
After Heraclitus
There are worlds within worlds, Inside us and beyond. There are words that write What can never be said. There are rivers that show, With their flowing, That the only truth is change. There are moments that last centuries, And years that go too soon.
There is a silver thread, A moonbeam path, A challenge And a choice.
Intransigent
Longing to be soft and gentle, Made to be hard and cold. Wishing for a taste of sweetness, With bitter ashes in my mouth. Hope – I knew her once, I think I still see her time to time, In distant silence weeping For a world too much to bear. I forge my tears into steel - Sword and shield to keep me safe; Surviving and surviving and surviving, When all I want is rest: A summer breeze, the scent of sea, Your tender hand in mine.
Ecce Homo
When you look at me, Do you see a man? Do my rough shapes Coagulate in mock divinity? These arms, these hands, These eyes, these lips, Dissolve and fall apart, I cannot hold. We are mainly empty space, The gaps between the atoms, The void between the stars, The catch Of breath before the ending. An imaginary image, Reflected and refracted And distorted in your gaze, Like morning mist That dissipates too soon; Identity in liminality. Still she who dwells within Cries out, And wonders why We cannot hear. See me.
Marginalia
At the edge Of field and footpath Stray strands of life Grow furtive, ears listening To the sound of harvest. Seeds scattered perhaps by starlings, Renegade grains renouncing ordered rows, Thriving in cracks and bootprints Beyond the boundaries.
They see their sisters die, And know what happens next; Only the steady grinding of the mills. Hidden by the hedge, stretching Silently to reach the sun, Hoping never to be known; Theirs is a strange freedom, Yet they outlast The season's end.
“Truth is the harvest scythe” – attributed to the Book of the Dead.
Dies Irae
Get thee behind me, Emmanuel: The gates of your perdition Are edged with pearl and guilt. Beneath the altar, relics of our innocence; Spilt wine, consecrated, Dripping from stigmatic hands. Ex cathedra I exhume this execration; Censor your thurible, no incense shrouds The stench of rotting entrails Worn around your neck.
I speak no evil, though of evil speak: A flayed conclave, in virgin flesh enrobed; Shamed light through sin-stained window steals, May you choke on your denial. Secrets of the sacristy In shattered silence torn, No hell severe enough, No heaven to forgive, Holy fire burn it all.