I can walk this path one hundred nights,
a sewn-lipped traveller, bronzed and bare-
and still the air tastes of mountain heights,
reminding me of a long lost prayer.
On this road of familiar winds,
my feet lead forth, tempered to leather,
and though grazing gusts bite and chagrin,
my pace shan’t be stayed by the weather.
Ripe as winter, time-torn and restitched,
unchanged from rage and war and gall;
I pause upon the rock, bewitched-
a home, I think, is what it’s called.
In obsidian nights
when the rain lashes cold,
the wanderer weeps through the land.
All hear his plight,
as the twilight grows old;
in tempest, how can he withstand?
First come the stars,
like eyes in the sky,
looking down on the traveler’s trail.
Sanguine and simple,
they smile in surprise,
and gentle they breathe on the gale.
Then wakens the moon,
veiled in velvet and light
and his face chases shadows away.
Mystic, his guidance
leads the stray through the blight,
’round rivals and out of the gray.
In silence, the sun
overlooks her domain,
and sees the roamer wet and cold.
Sagely, she spreads
her arms ‘cross the plains,
to embrace and warm him in gold.
In amber morrow,
when the weather has waned,
the wanderer sings to the skies.
None hear his sorrow,
for the Three banished pain,
and in joy, he strikes his reprise.
This is a song written for my work-in-progress. I really enjoy song-writing (especially when it’s for fantasy fiction), and find that it’s helpful in world-building and culture-creating. I also like to actually write the music for my songs; most of the time I use medieval styles, intervals, and instruments to establish its melody and harmony.
It’s probably difficult to understand the overall message of this song when taken out of context (though you can probably interpret it in multiple ways). Basically, the realm that my w.i.p. takes place in worships three fictional gods who take the form of the sun, moon, and stars. This would be a hymn sung in the Temple or by traveling minstrels.
Shadows march across our cheeks,
stygian soldiers in an army of specters,
wielding their fists of smoke ‘cross our eyes
as we sit by the flames of their birth.
In that moment, we’re smaller than anything,
nothing but spots on the skin of the earth,
and the night is so heavy and the moon taunting-
as if the smallest shift in the air or the skies
would pull us to pieces, without any worth.
A small smile pricks your lips,
and you command my gaze away from the bleak-
away from the endless black above
that could swallow me whole in a breath’s streak.
“It’s not so bad”- your words milk the starlight,
and I think maybe it isn’t.
No, I know, we’ll be alright.
Her words shimmered alongside the fire,
rippling with life and light,
and in that moment, I wanted nothing more
than to sit there and allow her sweet words
to nourish me ’til the end of my days.
My eyes were weighed down by the night,
but her voice, like a star rising
from the sea,
possessed my ears and quenched my lethargy-
flooding my mind with her melody.
She speaks softly, yet louder than a siren.
She speaks cooly, yet warmer than a flame.
How her lips mold to stories
is magnificent to me-
and I hope that this tale she weaves
never ends.
The rain drowned their songs
and filled their boots with water,
cold as a dead man’s bath.
Braced on horseback they rounded
a hill webbed in weeds,
and suddenly the land unfolded before them-
a tower, standing solid and stout,
like an iron coffin;
a village, sunken in mud,
with long abandoned fields rolling across
the flattened land,
like brown patchwork on a falling apart quilt.
And beyond the empty pastures,
past the cold walls that threatened to scrape the sky-
was blackened land,
torn up by spiny weeds and husks of trees.
The sky was neither cloudy nor clear;
but a shimmering mist swelled the rain.
Some remembered this land,
and their breath hitched in their throats
as they pulled back the reins.
A gust of wind,
the flapping of cloaks,
raindrops clinging to eyelashes-
this was not the land they once knew.
This land was dying,
its fields spotted in flood water
and farms bare of cattle and mountain sheep,
with thatched roofs caving in,
and bone trees snaring the land-
they could almost see the ghosts
that, pale as fish,
dragged their feet across the earth,
acting through their endless day.
“How could this happen?”
they asked.
There was no answer, of course.
They dug their heels into their steeds,
and then reared onward,
as the wind bit their necks.
I extracted this piece from my current work in progress, and tweaked it into a poem. It might seem kind of lazy, but I’ve been overwhelmingly busy lately, and I did have some fun adapting it.
Everything ends when it rains.
This I know.
We can paint a field brilliant red,
streaked in tar and bile and bits,
but when the sky tears itself to shreds
and releases its fury in torrents and fits-
the evidence is drained.
When it rains.
We can ripen our quarrels for years on end
with hot irons and sharpening stones,
but it’ll all mean nothing when the floods descend
to quench our fury with thunderous moans-
there’s nothing more to show.
This I know.
For everything ends when it rains.
There’s a distance in her eyes,
like a path cutting through the snow,
weighed by wonder, cold as I blunder,
through the white, unsure where to go.
I could walk into her eyes,
trekking footprints through her soul,
jumping, reaching, shouting, screeching,
my voice muffled in this hole.
I get lost inside her eyes,
wandering past her doubts and fears,
sifting memories, dark reveries,
’til I find what wrings her tears.
she falls gracefully
held aloft by the wind
which speaks against her back
barely a whisper
telling her not to fear
in breathing
she does not
but the breeze
in exhaling
strengthens her
lengthens her
expands the vitality
in her skin
she falls unafraid
her hair waltzing cheek to cheek
with the sky
and she touches
so tenderly
the years gliding by
i wonder how it feels
to slip through curtains of earth
quickening and steepening
hurdling through folds of
endless azure
no ground to hit
no breaking the fall
a smile swims across her lips
she falls gracefully
In an age of songs,
legends are lost,
bent and broken until
they are not the same tale.
Heroes are erased,
villains repainted,
destinies misplaced,
fates fabricated.
In an age of legends,
songs are re-versed,
twisted and turned over
until hymns fall out of tune.
Choruses crumble,
notes are reprised,
bards weep and rumble;
the lyrics are lies.
In an age of uncertainty,
what will I be?
Will I be remembered
for all history?
Or will the tongues betray me,
and time warp my tale-
will I be erased?
Or will I prevail?
Will these chilling encumbrances never cease?
I am haunted by want, my soul turns to desolation.
Desire ruthlessly burns a forbidden path,
a flaming stepping stone along sets my fate.
But I can never be free from rejection,
never retire from this incessant burden.
It is who I am.
They call me parasite,
they say I am a leech adhered at the heel;
determined, stubborn, indignant.
I will suck you dry until you are a mere shell,
but what will you get in return?
A hopeless dream of chances yet unheard?
A faithful drone by your side eternally?
I would laugh, because you should know:
That is not who I am.
Today I was sifting through the dusty labyrinth of my computer archives, and found this poem. It’s from a few years back, when I was taking a course on American Literature. I wrote it in response to the character Lily Bart from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton.
In The House of Mirth, Lily’s a beautiful, young socialite in 1905 New York, whose biggest character flaw is her pride. In the poem (which is written from Lily’s perspective), I aimed to get across her desperate desire for financial security. When she turns to a married man for support, though, he asks for more from her-more than she is willing to give. In the end, Lily may be a ‘gold-digger’, but she isn’t willing to sacrifice herself.
Stellular Scribe 