Series of series

[WickedEve]

I think what started me on this whole thing was thinking about all the stuff I always want to say when I'm doing a reading for someone - all this crazy, high-metaphor, Crowleyan, ceremonial meaning that comes to mind when I lay a card, places I can never really go because the person sitting there just wants to know if They'll Get That Job or That New Guy Is Really The One.

In real life, people get really annoyed when you start talking about the Chymical Wedding and the significance of Caliban as a balance point to Juno in The Tempest.

That's why I love this place. Poets don't mind when you get weird and multiply referential.

bj

I hope you do write about all this. It's fascinating and it would be an absolute waste not to write it down. I know it will be brilliant. I envy you for having that kind of material to work with.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

I hope you do write about all this. It's fascinating and it would be an absolute waste not to write it down. I know it will be brilliant. I envy you for having that kind of material to work with.

Thanks, really. Well, I've obviously started on it, at least a bit. When the Lovers card is finished, I'll only have 21 Major Arcana to go. heh heh.

Caliban and Juno. Argh. I have pages, but it's not poetry. It's bashing around in a maelstrom, so far. But it's part of the whole set of Lovers card stuff I've been possessed by lately, so it may yet show up a bit more in this 30/30.

I do appreciate the encouragement. Your work sends me reeling, so getting a good challenge from you helps inspire me.

bj

 

[WickedEve]

Thanks, really. Well, I've obviously started on it, at least a bit. When the Lovers card is finished, I'll only have 21 Major Arcana to go. heh heh.

Caliban and Juno. Argh. I have pages, but it's not poetry. It's bashing around in a maelstrom, so far. But it's part of the whole set of Lovers card stuff I've been possessed by lately, so it may yet show up a bit more in this 30/30.

I do appreciate the encouragement. Your work sends me reeling, so getting a good challenge from you helps inspire me.

bj

I've sold African masks, statues, fetishes, etc for years. I've mentioned those items and some of the tribes in my poetry. I really should think about doing a series a poems on that. Or I'll write about toes. I seem to have an obsession with toes.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

I've sold African masks, statues, fetishes, etc for years. I've mentioned those items and some of the tribes in my poetry. I really should think about doing a series a poems on that. Or I'll write about toes. I seem to have an obsession with toes.

I have talentless toes. They are short and have no skills. Purely decorative. My stepmother, by contrast, can tie a bow and pick up dimes with her toes. She's my hero. Not just for that, but it certainly won me over as a kid.

bj

 

[champagne1982]

<snip>Or I'll write about toes. I seem to have an obsession with toes.

Me, too.

I have talentless toes. <snip>
bj

My toes talk to me.


In desperation for a topic, the poet sees her toes.

I don't know how in hell
I'm supposed to write
when all I have are four walls
with the same marketplace collage
hanging on it, a patterned quilt,
a vase and my toes to look at. Lovely
toes that they are, they are still
the same ten I've been looking
at all my life and definitely
those I've watched this past week.

I don't want to seem ungrateful
for the company my toes keep
with me but I have to say
that their stares are starting
to creep me out. The way
they nail me with their cuticles
and explain that a pedicure
is a small price to pay in return
for the way I walk all over them.
I can only whisper that I've
been kind to them lately.

 

[champagne1982]

I've got loads of series ... the zodiac, days of the week, months of the year, the sins and the gallery of poems.

 

[normal jean]

...............

 

[Angeline]

I have talentless toes. They are short and have no skills. Purely decorative. My stepmother, by contrast, can tie a bow and pick up dimes with her toes. She's my hero. Not just for that, but it certainly won me over as a kid.

bj

I have long toes. I can pick stuff up with them and I often will pick up a tissue or some little thing I dropped with my toes. ee can do it, too, and we have in fact passed each other stuff with our toes (just to see if we can--we're not that strange). I think we were both sloths in another life.

Maybe I should write a terzanelle about my toes. A toesenelle.

 

[PandoraGlitters]

Same here on the long toes, Ange. I can even dial a phone with one, push-button or rotary.

Oh and great challenge.

 

[Angeline]

Same here on the long toes, Ange. I can even dial a phone with one, push-button or rotary.

Oh and great challenge.

I used to hate mine when I was a kid (my fingers, too; I have long, kinda spidery fingers), but over the years they've proven quite useful.

 

[normal jean]

.............

 

[unpredictablebijou]

I've been banging on a series for this thread. Still rather rough drafty, so comments and critique are more than welcome. Bash away.

Honestly, I'm not sure what order they should be in yet. Perhaps they're more in a circle than a line.



Aqua Vitae

The language is twilight, shaded.
They do not mean “sky.”
They do not mean “dancing.”

If you have built the crucible
from seven metals, you are
already mistaken.

The drops are not red and white
they are cream, or pearls
not blood, not wine.

Life, mixed here, lasts
in the ruby glass of our bellies
and our tongues distill

this drop, gold between the tips
and moving upward, behind the eyes
to that sun hot center

 

[unpredictablebijou]

More of this set

.


Solve et Coagula

If you can find those sixteen
divine couples, dancing
on their whirling disks

then focus out and upward
where bliss disappears
and becomes the spinning blade

head and hip, the fire multiplies
in a blue flame, then red, and rises
in this balance, catalyzed

and melted. Two by two, they dip
like the column dropped into the core
and steam rises, refracting, from the lake

boiling like the warrior's bath, this
pillar in water, this stone
deep in the jungle, obscured

It turns one, one, one, the deep
completion, the beheading
to simplify our crowded bodies


.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

This is the last for now. I've been noodling on a couple of other pieces but I'm not at all happy with them yet. In fact they had to be sent to bed without supper. But here's the third.




Mutatis mutandis

Everything has changed now
and across the face and flesh
we move all language toward
this new quicksilver tongue
defining these reborn curves

Assume the world
has shifted, that now when we say
red
we mean that one bright fire
the live thing, the heart with its explosions

and now when we say
white
in every case it means the tower
with its gold spiral
the spine of god, the Word

Let there be light
from now on, and the world
baptized in this fresh bright rain
has a new word, a name
for itself, for us.



.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

.


Albedo

Perhaps we measure only reflection
of light against one another's faces
what we see, we make,
and the light comes
from our joining.

Lightning can illuminate
from within, when striking
deep in the bell. Sparks
fly from your hands
and make me transparent

The source of illumination
has no center here.
This white heat emerges
reflects, and I shift to pure
libation, held in your arms
like a cup.


.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Rubedo

I catalyze
with color in the bottle of a room
you and she in the cauldron
of this lighted space

pour one into the other, over heat
let three woods burn and chant
to the hourglass under your hands
to the heartbeat, this steady shift

becoming rosy, now, as the fire
I have left there under the bed
reddens lips, lips, and the thrust
of changing flesh, purpled.

From this pale desire
the juice of your mouths
blossoms to roses, to the red
lotus peak. I will burn

separated by glass from the transformation
like a cherry tree
outside the window
two seasons in one night.




.

 

[WickedEve]

Oh, I just saw your group of poems, bijou. I did a quick read and I need to go over them again. What I've read so far is fantastic.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Oh, I just saw your group of poems, bijou. I did a quick read and I need to go over them again. What I've read so far is fantastic.

Thank you! I"m glad you're liking them.

I am very, very open to critique on these. Including what order they might make sense in. I posted them in one order that sorta made sense to me, but I find I'm questioning that now.

anyway thanks
bj