Sionnachaí

Into the cradle of an eclipse I am born again
With the arms of an adult and
My own legs
I skit from
the underside side of a thunderbolt
That flashed to bless the top of my head

 

Walkabout

Split me from my dreaming
like quartz from the granite
Worn to rubble

Stone to pebble

Pebble to sand

I shatter to the wind

And in the flicker of an eye
I remember Grandma
showed me how to
Swallow dust
Smelt
A compass in my gut
She said only the bellows of my breath can cool and let it spin

I call out my songline so that the echo
might guide my back to the river spring again

Though once this is then always been
in my breast
The earthen goddess
is cast by the compass
Kneaded by the wind

Just remember that

I asked for this.

I came to scorch myself on the earth
barefoot and wandering
flat footsteps padding
over anthills, tumbledown dunes.

Etched through grooves
left by snakes
and geckos.
Dead riverbeds exposing roads
that lead to muddy lakes.

I walk with hips biased to the horizon.
Pulled by the echo
sonic of the bats beat back
the riddles of ancients rock groves

At dusk in the scorch of red clay
each tread burned more of my old soles away.

Tearful and weary, lost child, baby clay.

I crawl grazed and ashen into the shadow
a great laugh of dark creation
from a giants mouth.
I turn away from doubt

thirsty for the quench of the clouds
as dusk swept the haze away.
The mountain came swift, reared up before me

Asking for ascent

Asking me to glow penumbral

At its crest

And sit myself at the gateway
to the eternal and the divine
Fired in the kiln of the barren angel sky

Until the endless sun
surrendered and finally set.
At last the clouds descended to my mouth and
finally my lips were wet.

Dark and dusty
The anima of the red admirals’ cavalry
Linen-winged and stormy
In my last beats I rue the cool face of the lady
who romances the sea.

Oh I, naive me,
I cast my wings to her, my eyes shone skyward
the yearn to be reunited.
Reeled by the rays that tether
with silver cast from ether
I set flight
to kiss the face of her my feet like bristly whiskers
Lofty in the low night
I flounder into a hall of mirrors,
Succumbed to a haze of
luminous impostors

wherein I embraced not her
but a flicker
and was set ablaze by the yearning for a love I could not keep myself from.

A cloth thud and frantic batter of flicking wings on wood
I spasm in the scorch of my velvet torso
my wings tipped with an emberic glow
She wanes from me as death darkens my dreaming.

I let go.
I am released.
Still though,
there is something so beautiful
in the loss of life
while striving for light.

Summer bit me
and the stars swallowed the smoke from the city
choked
and fell out of the sky.
You came and kissed me
but only stayed a little while

and I sat in the hallway
and I sat on the stairs
and I assembled the furniture so the spirits could be with me there.

In the  strange house I could hear the echo of the dry walls
calls
thud with the lack of folk
and I was ran ashore without a boat.

And a crow cried out,
and a commoner came and plucked me from my high bough,
and the devil on my shoulder asked me honestly
‘are you happy now?’.

What a thing to ponder,
that he sets me to the road again to wander, no hearth no home,
no place to dig my bones.
Therein lies the madness, therein lies the grief,
that there is no place to chalk a threshold,
no place to sow my seeds.

And god called over one night to put me in my place,
and I had forgotten what it was to feel disgrace,
I submit myself to Her but she said it to me straight;
‘Stop sister, unlace your wings from that pincer, place your faith in the spring that follows the winter’,  but I was too corseted by the will of the money mincer.
And no one claps their hands for a clean spoon and nobody howls back when you don’t howl at the moon.

I walked miles and miles in the circle of convenience handing out paper cups to the sleep starved helping them get back on the engine that’s run by the blood of our new gods.
I sacrificed my innocence to it’s endless progression without growth.
And I saw beyond the glass ceiling the castle of the kingdom and the children drowned in the moat.

I waited, and waited, and waited, for the harvest that I thought I sowed.
I walked, and walked, and walked, but found nothing but death at the end of each road.

And you cried, and I cried, and we were far away.

So I called to the ether, wherein lies the secret and I sought the reaper, so that the reaper might not know the seeker. I danced, I danced, I necromanced my shuffling corpse tied to the hooves of a horse,
jigged ol nick jostled him out back door.

And finally the moon howled back and the tide changed and a wave came,
And the tide deigned to turn around and bring you back this way.
And when you came you brought the wind and it came to rip my rotten roots and strip me of all sin, and god called round, stomped up the wooden stair, and she set me on the zephyr, cast me on the air.

So at last I have a halo that is no more a noose, at last I have my wings to sing, my light to bring, my love to be set loose. At last I settled feet on earth and surrender to the road, I see the path before me and I carry nought but the grace that I am owed. Home is where I sow my seeds and home is where I rest, my home is in the hills the streams, the cities and forests.

One day I will have a garden where I can be alone. Until the day I have a garden, my rest is in these bones.

Terror
You walk in, out, in, out.

I walk around.

I face and face nothing.

Not myself.
Not even.

You raise your voice.
I lower mine.

We make spaces that the other fills. Submission. Dominance.
Silence.
Roaring.
Familiar spaces. The sacrificial virgins to the old gods.

Too many times now, my right arm, my last two fingers, some ancestor keeps me here.
At war.
At war.

I ask to speak
I speak without permission.

I live
I live.
I dance without you.

Older,
I walk backwards in time. I become a whale, a mermaid.
A cup bearer.

Drink the elixir, please, true lover, see inside me.
Read between my eyes.

I sing.
I sing ancient songs for silent times.
I ask that the birds echo back
And the bats
Yet all I hear is the keening of orcas
And the hollow crack and echo of ice on water.

Since the time
I was cast out under the cloudy thunder
Fled a nest fearful
I reached out for you
Only to meet your indifferent blade
My fingers severed from the palms
One whole hand from wrist

Father father, why did you choose this?
You watch me sink and sink
into the dark throat of the ravenous
tide
little me
under an ocean that swallows the sky.

In the soothing of my scarred limbs,
my phantom will
No man can I trust till they can bear witness
Still
I know you took the fingers from me
So there would be nothing I could point
should I dare to surface.

To go slowly,
a brave thing.
To stop and taste the Spring.
To feel your weight on me,
to go slowly.

The mare of me, I buck at the bit of subtlety.
My nostrils flare at the indignation of this pace,
yet no carousel can spiral higher than its place.
(I wish the courage to stop.
Be still)
Afraid to feel the reins slack,
the thrill of uncertainty,
and know it to be
the elixir that lifts life.

Teach me
that the seeker is not sought
and she who does not gamble to give trust can be
assured she will win nought
Tell me to stop, make me breathe.
Hold me down,
and go slowly with me.

Although the acres of my arms open before her,
she comes not when she is called,
but only where she may.
Held back by her locked sinews
strapped to the rigidity of pain.

I caught her in a photo,
the light made her seem cold.
And with her saber gaze, she cuts the glaze.
Yet this is the only her
I hold.

Here I am
at the edge of us,
looking at the river that gushes from the cut.

Here I am,
again for the first time
watch as I walk
taking each tread
delicate as red leaves
that scatter out a deathbed
for skeletal trees.

Carrying my grandmother on my back
to the river.
The cold snap plucks my resolve
fletches my quiver.

Here I am,
I let her down
into the waters
bone by bone
some of her the river carries further than
my bullish back and brazen guile ever could.

I hold the bones to bring her home and watch the water kiss my wrists
Cleanse the scabs from the briars’ bit
that bound me to you,
but failed to hold me down
in fever fits.

From grandma’s bones I make a crown, a ring and comb
I string a fiddle with her hair
I make my throne her rocking chair.
I do not leave her in the ground, unseen, unsung
her flesh bitter dust, her teeth tocking at the stones
her hair to dress a badgers den

I bring her pain
her grudges and disdain and turn them into
beauty
and passion

I make from her the things
that she could never reach.

She becomes the empress within me,
the one, with arms unbound
stretched out to greet the dawn.

Cruel nature, why do you inconvenience me,
with the stripes on the tarmac interrupted horizontally
by the lame death of the dark dog striped white from snout to crown
Another casualty to edge around.

For it is impermissibly crucial to keep clear
the crux of the crucible,
there is not room for blossom or bees.
And how the dim glow through fumes is blocked by these insufferable trees,
three generations gathered conkers from,
soon they scatter not even a legacy of red leaves
But the scar on the pavement
Cookie cut
a new patch of weeds.

 

It’s said we came book bound to cultivate the unholy earth
trim the hedgerows, keep the garden clear of crows.
Keep the skyline hardnosed, snagging smog on balconies hung with grey worn washing and the rebel songs from wars not won.
Marked only as wars by casualty.
This is the black smoke on which we rose
Strapped to a cross of industry

 

On desecrated pitches the men come to split the hares, pick the battles
spill blood and consecrate each squeal slitting the gullet of the swine,
‘Tisn’t cruelty, tis only cattle. Sure death will get us all in time?’

 

Aye suffering, that saintly maturity with which we dole out pain,
Bear our jaws on the bones of all that gets in our way.
Deontological to the profane, as we strip
And rip, slit and maul
and our eyes grow dimmer
so the red on our hands no longer appalls

 

This is God’s work. We are Gods work.
Or so they say.

It is only right.
The world is meant to be this way.