Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Selections from The ShadowBride....


ShadowBride graphic - 2007, DS


A sampling of a few recent (1999 - 2010) poems, most appearing originally on one of my former websites, "The ShadowBride."


***

Lost Tales of Anonymous Women

Because she was not treasured, 
Time took over,
(And Time treasures no one)
And Time had its way with her;
Worse than serial killers, 
Worse than evil stepmothers, 
Worse than wild dogs. 
Like a disease, like a grub, 
It ate, and ate outwards, 
Till her skin hung like dried fruit 
Off a brittle stalk, 
Till all that was pink and white 
And frilly as Cinderella's slipper 
Blackened like an eel but
Would not slough off.

Because she was not nurtured, 
She could not live, 
She could not die...
While the briars wound around her 
Like New Year's resolutions 
And tore, like meathooks 
Into her eyes, her heart, her spine. 
And. all the time, the blood fell, 
Perpetually, chronically, 
Drop by drop,
Like an ocean 
Filtered through a water clock, 
Like scabs in the desert sand, 
Like tears on an iron pan, gone
Hissing into oblivion.

Because she was not honored, 
Her mind became a morgue, 
A silent hallway lined with silent drawers:
Each a keepsake box 
Stuffed with muffled accusations. 
And these, in turn, 
Became her windows, 
Blank as prison doors, 
Dull as an Arctic horizon,
Where a ship 
Would not appear, 
Where a dove 
Would not alight, 
Where she'd not
Let down her hair.

Because she was not pleasured, 
The ghosts moved in to stay. 
They rustled in the wallpaper, 
And groped between her legs. 
She let the dust accumulate 
In snowy landscapes on the floor, 
And let the mold grow on the ceiling, 
Its constellations hovering there
Like spells, like curses,
Like soot, like ashes, like dirt;
While, cast in the corner, 
Blackened and spent ,
Each one her heart's desire 
Or next-to-last lament, lie
A life's supply of wooden matches.

- 2000, Dia Sobin





Port of Dreams

It is always dusk

Behind the moon’s bloodless mirror

The skin is cast off
Layer by layer, submerged,
The pulse ebbs, the airs thicken

And so the blind swimmer
Sets forth
Across the border
To where a starless sky slants
Into a water, slack,

Encoded
W/ the moon’s toneless melodies


- 1999, DS





The Others

They cannot penetrate the aluminum air 
where souls lay sleeping...
migrant birds,
mute and flockless,
cast 
in a perilous density.

I am hollowed like a gourd,
a Chinese lantern.
The Others brush the walls of my interior 
like moths within a globe 
but I am blind, flameless.

Only hymns remain
encrypted in my bones,
worn as epitaphs on Martian tombs,
the heart's own hieroglyphics
hermetically sealed...

And though a memory might stir 
of the initial fracture 
or a featureless twist emerge 
from beneath this dull fabric,

I circle alone 
transfixed, wingless.


- 2000, DS




These Walled Cities

These walled cities 
They are yours 

The minarets the domes 
Patterned windows 
Frameless holes 
Streets cobbled with skulls 
Of both the faithless
 and the faithful 

Now ground beneath our heels 
Anonymous as stones 

I am the anchorite 
In the catacombs
The woman in the wall 
Skin mouldering with self-betrayal 
Brain embalmed with lamentations 
Incantations I can't recall 

Glass nails scimitars 
Nothing penetrates 

Still a light swells inside of me 
As prayers resonate in the citadel 
Bell-like tones enticing me 
But forbidden to me 
Always forbidden 

Yet, some things come to me 
The eye of an owl 
Snakes in the courtyard 
A star's detritus 

Some things come to me 
Memories of rain the wind 
Sensations in the silken skin 
A scent a bead a feather 

(But I came for love 
I came for love only)

Now I lay 
Beneath the walls 
I lie outside them 
The terrible baying of dogs 
spreads blood red on the horizon 

It is your city 
It is always your city


- 2000, DS





Mystica Femina

I know where the burning woman goes
I have seen the ashes.
I have seen the skies darken w/ her cries,
The scarlet tides,
Blackened with denial.

Oh, yes, I know what was done.
My mother was once her friend...
Whether on the corner
Or in the market-place,
Or in a burning bed.

But, even she did not love her.
Nor did all the others.
They could not even see her
As if their eyes were singed shut
By her blazing hair.

What of the ashes then?
Fire by fire consumed.
I see her dancing
Upon the ashes of a Father
That was not, in fact, her own.

After the procession,
They (all) moved on.


- 2010, DS









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