"The Imps of St. Martin's Land"

Ah, yes, they tell me I was green
when they found me, me and my brother,
down by the wolfpit. We had passed our
tenth years, mangled as that hole in the ground,
thorny and worn and hungry. Ravenous.
Well, me (and my brother)
had brown hair and ten toes, ten little fingers
and buttony noses. We were perfect

…except for our skin.
Green, green as sin.

“Imps!” they called us,
but we didn’t know. Back then,
our tongues were still our own.
I can’t remember any of that old, sweet
language now, just the new harsh words,
their meaning forced down our lobes.
We heard the worst things, then.

Imps and devils, spirits, elves,
bringers of bad fortune, foes,
bad omens, groans. Angry glares.
Or worse, the pointed silence
the absence of kindness,
meanness, any –ness at all.

The stillness stretches
into a column, rising,
a column of shadows, moving:
a million moths whispering up,
up to the roof, domed stone. A
real place. A place I’ve been. My
fingertips trace the pillar, dimpled cold.
St. Martin’s Land. My home. My home!

My brother and I grew up there,
our walls the womb of earth itself.
We all lived here, my brother, my
mother, my father, the others.
We lit fires in those pits, and went swimming
down that cavern. We sang each other
stories, danced, filled the village with laugh-
ter, laughter, laughter so we never saw the sun, so
we never had a day. We had our own
soothing words, language of touch, each other’s hands
crafting nets, weaving baskets, scavenging,
cooking herb pies, catching fish, healing, hunting
courage. Were we green? I don’t remember.
I remember the glow of the fungus at night
and the glint of the cavepearls in the fire’s
dying light. I remember the smell of the fur
that’s my bed. I remember my brother,
his woolly head, his dank brown breath
wisps, his smile a crooked line of bright.

Of course, he’s dead. They took away
his dancing, then his song, then his smile.
They took away the words that painted
his world. How could he go on?
As the green drained from his skin,
he clutched my hand, pink on pink,
and in usurper’s tongue exhaled:
“Back to St. Martin’s Land!”



(This is from a prompt over at Imaginary Garden with Real Toads; looking at images of caves, I was reminded of the 12th century old tale I read about today: two green children are found near Woolpit, UK, speaking a language no one can understand. They are raised, and they turn pink, and the brother dies. Later, the girl tells of the great, underground St. Martin's Land, where everyone was green. Wikipedia mentions some interesting theories of why children inspiring the story might have been green.)

Closing the Divide

The end of times
is inevitable,
but I was not expecting
it to stop.

The clock.

It wasn’t just my heart,
breath clinging
half within – half without.
It was the glinty green fly
diving toward the patch of grass.
It was the styro coffee cup
cast down, about to clash with
a skateboarder – whose eyes
were scrunched mid-sneeze.
It was the cloud passing the sun,
the shadow, sudden
sick purple as a prune.

Oh!

My ears.
How loud the heartbeats,
like sirens, the sudden breaking
of barriers,

the flash of blue between our
eyes, the call of the ordinary wild:

the scrunch and buzz,
the splash between the
darkest end of time
and the blistering breach
of the beginning.



(And so ends Splashing the Divide.)

Running Away, Storybook Style

“Spinning Callouses”

Here nor there,
the music hangs,
notes nailed to
thin air. The road
connects two ends,
I sit at home with
my spinning wheel.

Frayed and spun
like bloodstained
straw, I wĪnd my
wheel and weave
my will…

I weave my will
and wĪnd my mind
around the steeled
walls and climb
the turrets
to the naked wind,
castle high and current fixed.

I leave behind
wild eyes, whispered prayers,
sacred notes of silence. Fire!
Shrieks, the helling of the holy – smoke.

I twill steel and iron words
into a bridge of shallow shadows.
Washed, unraveled, threads of ash and green.

Spin the gown and in it
find the doorway through
the floor, well worn, that
leads to silver, gold, and song

– bring the dance shoes you don’t love;
they’ll be dead by dawn.

Dance the weaver’s age old
thrum, tie the threads together,
write the floor you’re dancing on,
move your ankles faster, feel the floor
grow steam and swell, a bursting of
the underwell. Move through you,
move through me, the motions
not our own but pulled by well-stung
strings of ecstasy.

Purged
in the
morning
I look out
at the club with bouncing walls, take in
the church with chiming bells. There is
nothing new, nothing old, nothing
but sweat and prayer.

Nothing but calloused feet and hands,
and a closet short shoes, one pair.



(This poem is a re-imagining of a different poem from last year. It seemed to fit this collage, a musing on the world and escape, from Splashing the Divide. It's one of the last pages of this collage book. But that's OK. I have a lot of poems, short stories, and artwork to post.

As always, thanks for dropping by, and I hope you enjoyed these little snippets of my mind's wanderings.)

Faults

Forgiveness and Shame



Words don't come easy,
thinking, forgiving.
I don't blame what you said.
I love you.

Pieces of Perfection

Right now, from where I'm sitting, what's my idea of the perfect moment?

You can hardly see the bark or grass for the aging, jewel-crusted leaves. You approach the tree, glance around, sit. Back melding perfectly with the bark, you settle, watch twilight creep up on the world, watch the world whir along. Your hands absorb the warmth of a steaming cuppa Earl Grey, sweet and clouded with milk.

"The night is aging as the sun warms your face," lyrics from Alkaline Trio's "Blue Carolina," wafting through your head.

"And a song in my head that burns so good on my tongue."

I smile.


(more pages from my Splashing the Divide collage journal.)

Smoked to Perfection

("Smoked to Perfection" from my Splashing the Divide collage book)

Welcome to Wonderland! This tribute to my childhood favorites - Alice, the caterpillar, and good ol' Chessie (whose smile I drew on with Sharpie) - comes alongside a whole summer of my returning to Alice. There was American McGee's twisted Alice game, Tim Burton's film version and the TV movie Alice (with my favorite Mad Hatter portrayed by Andrew Lee Potts), AG Howard's Splintered and Unhinged, and the classic itself. For the last year, I've been developing my own reimagined Alice, in a nightmare world of archaeology and world mythology... And, of course, Alice art surrounds me in my home.


(One of my favorite artists, Robert Walker, made this print that's hanging in my hallway)

Alice may surround me, but she is a fitful muse. When she inspires, I tend to like the work, like this one:

“Wrinkled Path to Wonderland”

She wore blue silk
the night the sky bled
red as dawn, she walked
among the stones, the grass. The wind
chimed in her wake.

It was a wrinkled path
to the Unknown, only in darkness
shaped, and the absence of sound.
A thought was sewn
into impressionable
pre-sleep crevices. The moon fell,
a branded tear, unfinished tune,
haunting the edges of slate lake
where she painted rainbows
with her toes
in the salted water.

From there, she chased
crooked kittens, caught blue
caterpillars, grew-shrank/
ate two-sided mushrooms,
and swept delicate tea sets askew.

She woke facing herself,
a rippling mirror
taunting the sinews of
memory, stroking them
to sleep. Settling in,
the darkness black,
the walls thick,
the world a box
again.

The Red Dragon

When the cold bare knuckles of fall beat at the windows, before the dust-warm heaters came on, the bathroom was the warmest place to be. I would slip from my room, grab a few catalogs, and sit with my back against the closed door, half within a loose tent of blanket. There, I gazed at pictures of the worlds of my dreams. Design Toscano was one of my favorites - it had dragons, unicorns, mermaids, fairies - the whole shebang. I dreamed of them, of how big they'd be, what emotions I could attribute to them, how their eyes betrayed their histories. Ever since, I've collected knick-knacks that glimmer with untold stories.

For years as an adult, I eyed the Dragon of Stonebridge Castle wall sculpture. What I saw was not the picture in the catalog (see below):


What I saw in my mind was a red dragon, as proud as the Welsh dragon, as powerful as Smaug, and scaled like a river of fire and blood.

I bought the sculpture, telling myself I would bring out its inner palette...
which I finally did.

Here's the result:


Soon after, my partner added a fun surprise!