She felt intimate remembrances sleeping, murmurs
I wind the licorice rope
tightly around the candied button
at the entrance to the sugar castle
I must bind taut the defenses
Babel Tower dystopia
Baba Yaga’s home
insidious seeping dread
fleeting sense of the stillness of hidden spaces
A child, dead,
tethered to a post
startles from the courtyard
I fear his ghost
push him down the well
He must not be seen
exploring the home, foreign but intimately known
reuniting with the other boy
reviving pliant keys
they open my eyes
to the greater danger
the lurking wraith
eager to devour
to destroy the girl beside me
She must be secured from within
searching for those abandoned spaces, promises of protection and gnosis
warning’s radioactive signal
bluebeard burning in my head
her secret place, her secret self
the boys twirl their knives
act threatening
small curved blades
the heroic brothers
come to save their sister
from truth?
flooding her awareness, revelation of fear
They must forget their place
retrograde amnesia fails to save me
I remember why I don’ t want to know
the wraith, diaphanous
I must refrain from seeing
paradox to remember what I forgot
denying what was there
in the purlieu of the psyche
distorting memories loom
delicate and pernicious confections
the reason for all this cryptic architecture
spirit unfurling truths unleashing
here before me with his knife stabbing
I will drown in the well
mouthing outcry no sound forms
voice stolen by the echo
she’s gone on ahead without me
Chromapoetica 
this is so great! I really dig this one. Baba Yaga and everything. Oh, cool. Makes me jealous.
Thanks Jesse, it was initially two poems that never quite worked by themselves. I realized that the dreams were really about the same thing and thought I could find a way to blend them together and keep the sense of dread and disorientation.
This is terrifying. Suffocating. Very cool.
Thank you, I find this voice a stretch for me so I’m glad it was imbued with the horror and sense of entrapment I felt when experiencing it. I really enjoyed your poem for the de Chirico prompt.
haunting and terrifying. I really liked the first stanza.
Thank you again for your continued readership, I look forward to seeing what you’ve been writing lately.
I always find your writing interesting..
this one again fantastically written piece 🙂
Thank you, I always appreciate your comments :). I look forward to reading what you’ve been writing!
Anna..I really like the Blubeard reference, & the language of ‘cryptic architecture’ scaffolding the imagery & emotion, past & present, in this poem: in particular ‘voice stolen by the echo’ & ‘she’s gone on ahead without me’..protect the sacred little girl inside
Boy, you’ve got straight to the emotional heart of it. I hesitated to post this piece because it is so disturbing to me, such a part of my personal trauma but I should know by now that this community of poets is a safe space. Thank you so much for the book recommendation, you made me realize I don’t know where my copy is; I should reread her now. It’s been about 18 years, far too long!
Forgive me for being so late to this one, Anna–we had storms and ructions and our own deep fried electronics today. Nothing like the storm of terror in this poem, however. This is the most pared down and direct use of image and emotion, shorn of any pretense of extra-logical adornment or amplification, that I’ve read from you, no time for the cerebral adult analysis and afterthought–just pure clear and all-seeing child’s mind, soul’s voice. Such a hard place to get to, except when it won’t let you go anywhere else. I’m shaken by it, and I applaud you for tackling it. The first stanza is silken perfect, starting out with dreamy fairytale–but there is nothing more horrific under the candy gloss than what fairytales dish up–Baba Yaga is an instant visual of that kind of quaint but quiet menace…and then out come the knives…the dead child, the lurking wraith, the radioactive memories, the search for safety and self, all sharp with the fear only a small powerless soft creature who has no protections can feel. I’ve tried many times to write about these sorts of things and been totally inadequate to the task. This was superlative, and thank you for going there. It’s not a pleasant journey , that trip back to the past, but hopefully, at least it’s a cathartic one, if you’ve gotten even half from it that I did.
Oh, and as a sidenote–you used your italicized and bolded phrases exceptionally artfully and well–I find them often intrusive affectations in many poems–here they had great power of expression.
Thank you for your ever keen eye and discernment and especially for your kindness. Your insight and encouragement are most valuable to me. Arron and I were just talking about showing our horrors through art and poetry; in doing so we allow others to know they are not alone. You have my deepest gratitude for your resonance and for creating a safe creative space where we can exchange these ideas.
It reads like you have intertwined three poems in one, it’s very interesting to reading them as one and/or as three — the bold lines alone, the italicized alone and the normal text alone. 3 voices belonging to one dealing with a nightmare. The italicized seems the one that expresses lost, despair, and still trapped in its state; the normal text describes the nightmare in frightening images and metaphor, the bold one appears to be the protector, determined that what horror was seen must be forgotten and sacrificed itself. Re-reading it over and over, sometimes the italicized voice feels like it could the ghost of the bold one. Nonetheless, the normal voice representing the narrator as is, has already told the story and gone on ahead without these underlying voices, who on the whole seem to be trying to squelch it and forget the nightmare.
The use of normal, italics and bold styles are in themselves also very well applied in illustrating the role of these voices within. Italics always seem to give weak feel, of mystery and hiding, while bold often emphasizes and looks to represent defensiveness here.
I really enjoyed this poem in its many dimensions.
Thank you for your engagement and meaningful comment; I see precisely what you’re saying. I think I needed the structure as a lifeline out of the memories so that I could create a poem not recreate a horrific experience (if that makes sense). I especially appreciate the parallels you draw to the inner voices, I fundamentally see the psyche as multifaceted and that we gain greater health by integrating these ‘selves’ above denying them under a powerful central ego. One of my philosophy professors in college, John Riker, wrote a marvelous book called An Ecological Conception of the Psyche which has had a lasting effect on my thought process. In it he argues for an integration of selves verses the oppression of an omnipotent ego. Again, I appreciate your helpful comment immeasurably. I look forward to visiting your blog again.
I think I know what you mean about using this structure, and I think it also does make it easier for readers to approach the poem for the emotions they can better relate to, rather than the true event itself. And thanks for giving me another interesting subject (of ‘selves’ and central ego) and reference to check out. 🙂 I always seem to learn something new when I visit your blog.
What a duology (dilogy) of voices; image, melding into one. Such a presentation as well. My first visit to your work. I am very impressed. Crystal clear, yet powerfully profound. Great job. And the word-marriage, cryptic architecture, blew me away. Superb!
http://henryclemmonspoet.blogspot.com/2011/08/look-away-please.html
Thank you for your kind compliments. I look forward to reading more of your work; I’ve been to your site through the Rally or Potluck, I don’t remember which. I’m glad you liked cryptic architecture it’s the name of one of my poetry collections.
Your poem is a good proof that lanuage creates an alternate reality in order to save us from ourselves, our histories, the world. I get a child running stanza to stanza as if room to room trying to find a safe one. What are fairy tales, anyway, but myths cooked into chicken soup for the soul, offering solace and physic exactly where silence would be complicity and ultimate violence? And the poet has to be parent and initiator and god, showing that the witch in the wood can always be tricked and escaped, that there is a homeward road … fine writing here, carving its truths with a scalpel … The catharsis, as Hedgewitch suggests, is in the saying all the way through …
Yes, the words are like an apotropaic wand, a gift only an older self can bestow through mythic exploration. Your comments are poems in themselves. Bushels of gratitude would not suffice to repay you for your insightful reading and generous spirit.
Wow, this is some serious imagery, trapped in, for sure, thank you, much appreciated, WS
Thanks! I struggled with this one so I’m glad the imagery worked for you.