Category: NaPoWriMo


Polaris Ascent

Deer Tattoo

Gryffin stag

Ice maiden descends
Second veil of heaven
Above damp earth
Below ephemeral sky

Land of deer crossing
Threshold of worlds
Mystical sky-horses
Stamp communion

Animal souls devoured
Ink trailed narcotic visions
Nurture strength, she is
Courted by death

At the pinnacle of her
Horsehair mitre, locus
Of regenerative power,
Panther and ram

Preside over quantum paradox
Epicenter of shamanic liberation
Larch kurgan, world tree root
Ecstatic winged snow leopard

Climbs a celestial path
Seductive gracile line
Drawn through the twist
Of antlers and anguish

Image by Kobsev at wikimedia commons, used under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 license

Ak-Alakha River in Siberia, image by Kobsev at wikimedia commons, used under a CC-BY-SA 3.0 license

 

 

Virtuous Love

for Jane Austen

Symphonic assault on propriety
a woman’s wit, most treacherous
deadlier yet if coupled with robust
appetite for passion flashed like an
overwrought Paganini violin concerto

Poverty unraveled ambitions
taught me to be tame, well cared for
I danced Purcell’s Abdelazer Rondeau
Hid all my wildness better than she,
so he sheltered me for a price

Voracious imagination unshackled
no overflow of joy in living
tethered tightly in the mind
freedom in life is terror
I remained bound by uncertainty

Poppet performing tricks
cracked porcelain doll
Offenbach’s bird aria
anyone can wind me up
or wear me down

They were in love with an automaton
dissociated darling designed to flirt
disembodied clockwork child
cold to the touch
Unaware I wasn’t real

Playing the trickster – show the world
my feints, its folly, crafting identity to fan
imaginations’ pyre rising unbidden
conflagration, melted with love
Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring riot

Fighting for a voice, rage to master
never abandoning creation
the burning art he inspired
akin to spiritual suicide
Maria Anna Mozart’s lost works

At the tattered end of ashen tears
shards of translucent ceramics
tides of words, melody, and color
remain elegies of self possession
now I write my own songs

Egyptian Veil

Faluka in the Nile at sunset (Luxor)

Faluka on the Nile (Luxor) (c) AM

From the primordial waters
I created myself
I am everything that is
all that ever was
and what is to come

No one has ever laid open
the garment by which I am concealed
I am the Ancient One
mistress of the bow
red crown ruler of arrows

On the muddied bank
in the land of the lake
I birthed the sun
opening the way
to fertile dynasty

Hellen Frankenthaler Madame Butterfly

Madame Butterfly by Helen Frankenthaler ©2000 Collection National Gallery of Australia

 

Frankenthaler pours mountains and sea
salt-stain wave of unbridled experimentation
pathfinder in the flow of a quadrillion connections

unfathomable neural networks alight
electrochemical cognate comprehension
of yet unknowable heights

entering elaborative flow, fluid intelligence
a sublime interiority of creativity
color fields of liminal poetics

realms she’s unable to disparage
reaching an optimal state
of courage, merging awareness

with action in rapturous parallel processes
lyric soak stain, abstract expressionist
dialogue of landscape and emotion

art birthed through her inventive interplay
breakthrough paradox: immediacy of motion
mimicking the spontaneity of (her) nature

intimate picture of a singular day
impossibly operatic and poignant
of inked butterfly promises never fulfilled