Light-Singed

Under winter thunder
sinters sky in splinters
Earthlings blow like tinder
New-age baby birthlings

Wineland is Our Land

Just woke from a dream that I was living in a high-rise co-op, almost like a hotel but filled with co-oppy sorts. I was visiting a girl in her room, set on a very long corridor with a dozen other apartments. Through talking with her, I disturbed this guy living catty-corner. He came out, stood stock still, started stamping his feet, and slowly turned red. He worked himself into this ridiculously passive-aggressive state in which he confessed, ‘Your voices are bothering me.’ A good friend of mine, about four rooms down, popped his head into the walkway then shuffled out, wondering what the chat was about. Ignoring whiny guy, I kicked over the latter’s cup on the floor and enunciated to him, ‘Are you always this un-assertive? Do you always struggle to tell others what is on your mind?’ Then my friend and I went into his room for some converse and he brought out a handful of seeds of variegated colours – grapeseeds! We discussed how everyone now had to live and reside according to where different strands of grapes could be grown. Wine-grapes formed a foundation for a large sector of the economy now. Did my wine-worshipping ways blow up into the general populace? Tragically, the darkest varieties of grapes could no longer be cultivated, as their seeds & sires had been forever lost due to climate change, and the new environment had restricted the kind of earth & bedrock on which grapes could give a yield. This in turn was controlling the available units of human habitation and where one might legally reside. My friend had strategically planned his housing accordingly, saying he was tired of getting shafted in other co-ops. He gave a long, intelligently delivered, but mostly contradictory explanation of this! He often gifts me with wine when I visit, but alas in the dream we never got that far.

Stuck in a Rut

Why are toilets more cultural ('taboo') than something invented or experimented with? Function isn't half the story. The weak whirl-swirl of my homeland's toilets always made me wonder ... but then I realised:   It's convention not invention. It's not as if the Brits deserve a reward for their awesome water-dropping tanks that flood down water like a cataract & get the job done nicely (with splashing). I bet the Germans won't adopt that just because 'it works'. People love their flushing comfort zones. Everyone's stuck in a toilet rut. ;-)

Eclipse at Ugarit

Eclipse at Ugarit

May ninth anniversary

of the blackening sun

over Ugarit in 1012 BC

Sun not yet risen.

I heat me from winter-weather

                   with warm mead, Weisswurst, leeks, eggs,

                   log-grown shrooms,

                    soft insides of cattails

                             newly swampy suckaliscious

May ninth anniversary

of the blackening sun

over Ugarit in 1012 BC

Sun not yet set.

On the sunlit grass

O’Murchadh and I give one another

          songs and stories, whinnies and whimsies

She laughs patient as booby-me bursts a bottle

          of fermented milk in my leather satchel

          and squishes the milk goo on the green

We roll and writhe and cuddle kiss

May ninth anniversary

of the blackening sun

over Ugarit in 1012 BC

Sunday not gone,

Moonday not come

          Pease soup, superb, with just firm carrots

          A Just So Story at midnight

We dived on her divan,

          snuggle-oafs on sofa

Apes in Eden’s bleeding twilight

          bounded past her bower eaves

                   over the borders of bedwed folds

                   milking the womb of blushing age

Midnight gone and Moonday come,

Dark moon nearly new.

Monday ground turned milky cream,

                   bound in frost

                   in the sunrise gleam of 2010.

                                      My red cheeks,

                                      Ugaritic and Greek,

                                                hot in the morning,

                                                eclipsed the cold

Pushmower

Pushmower

Blades are rushing, raiding,
goring mower’s roaring
Rotating cuts turn fatefully
beneath me turning lethally

Fallow petals falling,
fazed by death the daisies.
Iron knife is rifling
newest grasses blooming

Can I hear their man-fears
Under me limbs sunder

Pausing now then kneeling
with knees upon the grasses,
I lie down low and peer down
with love inside the cuttings

Red ribbons of amphibians
I find torn on the shorn field,
lost to life short-lasted.
I lift alive a frisking gift,
a frog upon the soggy swathe –
In swamp I free him romping

The haulms have fallen calmly
Cut down, fluttering critters,
some giving life, yet living.

Stopped is ripper’s stripping,
Bees aloft hum softly,
Toads are burping, goading
lovemates for a sating

Slowly, quit, the mower
quakes above earth’s shaking

College Health, II & III

 I. Nutrition on the Bus (dern blog won't allow lay-out - columns)

II. Infernal Recess

Vernal Recess from infernal pit-cess
of all-night pizzafaces
Student debauchville, studless,
won’t neigh for two weeks
with loudmouths gone
Donut kids won’t steal my bus
on caffeine-kinked mornings

I pedal in peace on my icy cycle
gliding through the silent town,
the quiet glee of March snow,
as work-days come and mirk-nights go

Skunk hash scents the sidewalks
next to Knuckleheads
where the leisure poor make space for talk
and lift each other’s loads

Credit kids have flown to Cali
Knuckleheads are gone – Scram
Student screams are caged
in Florida folly

Baby rashes are scratched
with counterfeit rations on beerhead beaches

III. Schooled Blight

The noisy brats have blown town
Their dustcloud lingers low
down the emberdraft of wind

University manfactory
manufactures malaise

Springbreak, supposéd repose,
breaks springbuds
like an elephant’s hose

I throw a party for myself
Cook sardines in coconut, garlic, basil, salt and lime
with pablano peppers
Rocket and kale rock with tomat O, avocad O, onion O,
          axed flax, sage
Vampire, entrancing Transylvanian wine,
volubly envelops my throttle

The fake health of youth
is manufactured by malefactors

Outside whines the winds
fallen by sixty degrees,
a blight to the buds
Foodmakers yield less, yearly,
while plenty plummets
Piles of money buy less
as capital’s decapitated,
headless in the ashes
     Dollars to squalor
             Members to embers
                    Nickels to pickles
                             Quarters to Morte ore
                                     Dimes dust of time
                                            Bills paper pills

Dixie Rhine Dialogue

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=gmail&attid=0.1&thid=136e5054b7434de6&mt=application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document&url=https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui%3D2%26ik%3Db115abb3cf%26view%3Datt%26th%3D136e5054b7434de6%26attid%3D0.1%26disp%3Dsafe%26realattid%3Df_h1f4fpwo0%26zw&sig=AHIEtbTE-tajDe2afBndTO0Tlzin8XvhFw&pli=1

Wolfbower, a Tale of 2008 a.D.

            I wanted everything uber-guestfriendly today. I wanted Oksana allured. A plan was planted for her to eat over, and my buddy Canten beguiled me with assertions that doe who stray to other stags' forests are sniffing them out as potential mates. Even if she was already mated, she had no secure nest. She was not deer enough to him. He was a cold hart. Canten’s words did not hinder me from microbeautifying every mite of territory I owned in preparation for her arrival. I tidied bits of my nest I’d never noticed before. Christians prepare for Christ's Return. I prepared for my girl guest.

          I gave my burrow the thrice over, gleaming up the wood and glassware, and making it natty and nuptial. It became the Natty Bower.

Not wanting to let the commune's officiated cook cook for my guest, I came out a gourmet chef and put my own dish with the communal meal. The house was full of food-loot as supplement to personal shopping. The sum result could beat out the finest restaurant in town. Here we could make a meal out of two hundred fresh ingredients at low cost – if we knew how. I produced a cream of onion-cum-peppers soup stocked with coconut milk, spices, cream cheese and tempeh. I made quinoa griddlecakes stretchy with eggs, topped with brambleberries and cream. Oksana’s a valiant vegevore - so I took out the fleshmeat and put in the flaunt.

          I would taunt her with the best tipple too. I stacked four flasks of mellifluous mead behind etymological dictionaries in my room –  hand-aged honeywine from my own honey vats. The golden barm had newly gone to bottle, and it frothed under the corks. The dew was rank and ripe. If you poured it, it made suds on top of the mug. Malt barley gave it bubbles, but honey gave it bite. I’d learnt the art from Vikings of the Orkneys and Shetlands. Norse girls would let their braids fall down – long maiden ropes wrapping their men. Óðinn had seduced Gunnlǫð the Giantess this way:  Three sips of bloody honey from a goblet. Good Glapsviðr Óðinn, Beguiler Óðinn, had bemused a fertile giant.

          I looked out with raven eyes as I slid over the ice. I was back from the store. The wolves pulling my sledge stopped and gave a hungry whine. I took off the cushions from my coach. I felt like a cateran specialising in conjugal conjury. I cut some runes off an ashen stave – they blew up in flakes. Letters fluttered in the air.

          At rare moments in my life, the shadows of images turn into real light and living skin. Perfectly minding my own business, I stooped over my cooking pot, head potted with projections, and turned and stared at her. At her herself. What on earth was she doing there, even then, even there? Had I séanced her out of the stovetop?

          She asked voluminously,

          ‘What are you cooking?’

          ‘A giant’s meal! What are co-ops for?’ We sneaked up to my room on the top floor. Her questions made me tingly. They kept me on my toes too.

          ‘Do you ever have conflict in your co-op? Do people mind you eating off alone in your room instead of communally? How do you govern twenty-seven people in one house!? How long have you been studying old Germanic languages and why did you start?’

          I was smitten by her questions – it took two hours to answer them. Whenever I looked at her, she never seemed bored. Her lips and eyes sucked it all in. If my mouth went dry, I poured in some burning liquid. Our honeymouths could say no wrong. Still, my diction seemed to drown the thoughts I wanted to say.

She often made long pauses, the kind a person makes who wants something but is afraid to ask. I fancied her hips grew heavy in her chair, freezing her there. She seemed almost pregnant, about to give birth. She could not look away, nor stop asking and answering. Normally very disciplined and orderly, she lost track of time. I looked at her tongue loll behind her cheeks. I saw what she wanted, but daunted. Demure for pretend.

The snow fell on the roads and on top of her car. She fidgeted. I saw her head sag and think, ‘How will I get back uptown?’

          Our faces sat flushed, hushed. The love-bower warped our time. A gust made an hour, a breeze made a sigh. Our tongues heated the air around us. Mouths melted. Discourse volubly enveloped a spell – mouth-spell, eye-spell, tell-spell. Locked in locution, we told our tales till night-spell, when winter-spells forced her goodbye, and our talk tolled Ten pm. Time told me a lie, left me lost in the last hour – what conjuror had shifted all the clocks?

          I watched her in her chair, how far and near she was. Had she moved closer? In trance, the object of observation will seem farther and nearer, and a person will forget who is looking at who, or who is saying what. Was she doing it on purpose – melting me into her – or was I doing that to her? Her face kept filling like a wine goblet. Her hips gave little heaves. I noticed I’d nudged forward the legs of my chair.

          Now and then she pulled herself up – she’s gonna leave, I thought. But then she’d slink down, sit even heavier in her seat. Maybe she wouldn’t go uptown after all, I fancied. Safety wasn’t everything – the strongest prison is pretty damn safe. Whereas I lived in this free-house of love and honey. Twenty-seven people are safer than two. Here we were all deer. All genders rutted.

          At her request, I stopped pouring mead into her glass. I left the leftover sizzling in the bottle, waiting to shoot off its cork another day. Firm in her will, torn from my tale, she planted her feet. She stood up like a tree. Frost covered her fingers and branches. Snow fell on her crown. Outside we glided to her icy metal box and its hot motor rolling. Howls came behind us, wolf-tongues lolling off my pets chained by the drive.

Hart-Crown and the Victory

Hart-Crown and the Victory

 I was alone on the American plains. It was autumn now – the bladetips of grass were white in the mornings. The stems brushed my thighs up to my ears. I walked with untense arms, letting them drag over the frosted stalks of big bluestem, little bluestem and indian grass. I walked eastward where the grass blew more lowly along the wide lakes. I did not halt till I came to the Onandaga, the keepers of the Central Fire of Longhouse Nations. A White Woman fled out from them on a white horse, riding over sunset grass, their icy husks glowing red. She did not stop until her steed was motionless in front of me. I got up behind her on her horse, and we fled over streams and long rows of grass bowing over brooks. We dismounted in a grassland of oaks as I looked back east and saw a sea of horsemen filling the plain. I heard a pounding echo of their hooves, and their voices whooped like trumpets. They called with surround-sound and closed any distance with their gait of long practise.

          I turned to face their baritone voices, and my eyes shot camera like close to their cheeks. Their heads were like spiked towers above their mounts. Gnarled horns grew high out of each shoulder. The Iroquois leader, blood of my blood, tongue of my tongue, took up their rear, then circled to the front. He had a tall upright crown of hazel and hickory growing out of his shoulderblades and collarbones. The veins and bones of his chest were tissued with the wood. The limbs rose upward like forked spears, fingerlimbed and intertwined like wicker. His eyes glowed hazelbrown in the setting sun, and suddenly I was afraid. Around him echoed a growing crescendo of horn-voices: ‘Hiyen watha, Hiyen WATHA Hiyen WATHA, HIYEN WATHA! H I Y E N W A T H A.’

          The lens of my eyes trembled. I zoomed in to an army of thousands. And the man at their head could turn them with one motion of hand or foot or head. He dismounted and cleared the nearest stream, stepped over the bent-grass and came at us under our tree. I climbed up the oak with the White Bride, her garments silken and soft, her limbs round and alabaster. Once up the tree, we met a rival moiety, the people of the Bear. They told me that when this chief of Deerfolk – Deganawida of the Hadinioñgwaiiu – came at me up the tree, I must stab him through the throat and not be soft or hesitant in my thrust. ‘Do not be cruel as those slow to deeds are wont to be – be swift, or we shall kill you ourselves. Death is a mercy in both cases.’

          I looked into his eyes to read their gravity. No levity or cruelty shone in them. But he hunkered in the oaklimbs like a crouched cougar, eyes unfocused in scattervision. He continued, ‘Death is a mercy in both cases, as those with bare feet held under Long House coals know too well. Keep your White Bride, or we shall take her for ourselves. Take your knife. Here he comes beneath you – your friend and foe – Hart-Crown of the Stag.’  

          Hart-Crown’s copper arms grasped the tree-limbs like hard wire, and he slung himself up with ease. His people saw fight as holy rite more than enmity. This made him climb at me calmly – then he smiled, and reached a hand toward me to hail me. I took it, pulling him up, and his grip was terrible in its strength. Up thrust his head, and his crown of horns grew out of the sinews of his breastbones, taller than elk-antlers.

          And when I saw him, I loved him. I spoke to him ‘Friend!’ I wanted to worship him. He was the Great Peacemaker – Deganawida. That is their Immanuel, a Meshiach, heralding reign upon reign of peace.

          ‘If you are not brave enough to kill him, we are brave enough to kill you,’ the Bear men told me. I drew my long knife and thrust it downwards with a twist into Hart-Crown’s neck above his collarbone. The blood fell on my hand and red all over the White Bride.

          The White Bride trotted slowly beside me. I’d not given her the sanctuary she chased after, and I’d slain a leader I loved. But when I looked back, I saw the sun set over his high horns of hickory. I saw him hanging limp from the tree boughs. Then on the ground beneath the tree walked a man, and he circled the tree nine times. When done, he picked up a hazel fiddle and a willow bow strung with golden hairs, and he played my victory.

          I retreated. I retreated west from Longhouse Lands, and I did not see the White Bride again. I walked alone. Dusk fell deep on Lakota Savannah. I quickened my pace and began to lope on two legs, then on four. I bounded on my paws. Spent, I threw myself down and slept in a prairie oak-grove, and I dreamt. Rhythms of canines lolled over me:

Blacksky on frost field,

Shadowtree on slumber-den,

dusk over lakota savannah. 

I watched and I waited

under oak tree

on hunger-hill.

Lolled for bloodtooth and bloodcheek,

reddened with life.

So a big black wolf, a she-wolf, brought me food. 

Piece by piece, she fed me.

Loping, she-lupus came and went. 

Tossle-mane, raven-fell, tangle-thick, she lay near me. 

Side by side, we tore and ate.

She sought me, warmed me, braved me, outloped me. 

In dark of night, she shifted –

stood up wolven

and woman.

Thick black hair on whitesky skin.

Do not know her,

Never saw her awake.

With her I’ll share

and share alike

the carcass.