Muses and News

So, my laptop is currently suffering from some lovely kind of virus, which won’t let me do anything on the computer – no internet, no opening files, no nothing. I have to use my laptop in safe mode, which, if you've ever used, you'll know is incredibly clunky and slow, and generally infuriating.

This is making it difficult for me to write anything at the moment – seeing as I write everything on the computer because of the massive amount of drafts and edits I go through for each piece. Added to that, I seem to be running dry on inspiration, which is never a good thing. I need to find new methods of self-inspiration. Perhaps a trip out to somewhere cultural (the middle-of-nowhere where I live is a bit lacking in 'points of interest')? A change in weather would be nice, too. Divine intervention, anybody?

But my writing-life isn't all bad. Lately I've been lucky enough to get a couple of features around dA: a DLD on my piece .vesta (my third, hehe), this week's featured member in the wonderful group TheWrittenRevolution (which has been an amazing help to me over the past few months; it has loads of fantastic members, many of whom have helped me improve my writing through their helpful comments and feedback), and a lovely journal feature of my mythology series from the wonderful KneelingGlory - who is a far better writer than I can ever hope to be (*cough* goreadherworknow *cough*). As always, it's a surprise and an honour, and a definite cheerer-upper whilst my laptop has died. :D

.neptune

.

After the months spent in utero, walking feels strange.
Ground is sound in colour, synaesthesia beneath the heels,
watered down to reveal a horizon of endless blue, and Neptune.
Opening himself like a oracle. He is all mouth: a throat
of thunder, teeth a string of binary numbers. Kether of kelp,
barnacle bones strewn in every bottled message, each letter of
HELP scrawled into the shoreline. A missing-person clue.

Feet rubbed raw, he heads for the ocean, where those water-
logged wishers wash such surface wounds with their salted tears.
It's a pain that's only real when you're reeling, that you can only
find when hanging from fish-hooks and the coral-plugged ceilings
in the backwaters of your mind, though it's hidden behind
every dark glass. Basketcase, they may have said, but it's a fatal
tendency to identify the whole being with one interest,

and this will give him a certain distinction when he's dead;
an heir of tragedy. He looks out to sea, and sees white horses
ride the rip tide, dragging their kelpie cries and their jesus hair
through the air. They seem almost to catch and cloy, buoyed by
their bloated bodies. He would rather breathe water. But no –
he's over-exposed, caught under x-ray, so that only the bones show
through, blue-blooded. And by this, he knows, he's finally found his way
home.

.

* * *

Neptune was the god of water, the sea and (quite randomly, I feel) horses in Roman mythology.

The final stanza of this poem pays quite heavy tribute to Sylvia Plath's Medusa - one of my favourites.

The line 'a fatal tendency to identify the whole being with one interest' is a quote from critic A.C. Bradley describing the fatal flaw of Shakespearean tragic heroes. It's one I had to learn for my English Lit. exam which has stuck with me.

And if anyone's wondering what the hell this is all about, it's about the mother. It's always about the mother.

You can see the rest of my ever-growing mythology series here or here.

.apollo

.

Apollo, sleepcrawler, trawls the sky between day and night.
Behind him, the sun enters like a dreamer, shattered. Kite-
boned and obstinate, he soars toward time, dragging the raw
white eye of light, fixed inside beside the solar plexus.
Just another dead weight.

This, he knows, is important. There are few things you can learn
from a ball of burning gas and light eight minutes too late, but
from his aerial migrations he's made several notations on life.

One : to shoot stars, you must become bulletproof. Collect your
heirlooms in the hatch of the attic, patch the holes in your roof,
and learn to read braille by lunarlight.

Two : only one who fell was ever an angel. Try to fix fictitious
fractures by splint or flint, one crude paper wing at a time.
Repeat for any rip or tear you find in the fabric of the universe.

Three : he's not star-struck, he speaks only the truth. And he's just
realised that only the weak use their eyes – and that in these bones,
you can hear the horizons sing.

.

* * *

Finally, another proper update! And yes, this series is still ongoing... :)

Apollo was the Roman god of music, healing (who taught man medicine), truth (he supposedly couldn't lie) and the god of light. It was believed that every day he harnessed the sun to his chariot and pulled it across the sky. He was often portrayed as an archer.

The line 'only the weak use their eyes' is a from a song by The Romanovs called King. It's one of my latest obsessions.
And the line 'in these bones, / you can hear the horizons sing.' is a reference to the words on The Millennium Centre in Cardiff, 'in these stones horizons sing'.


And, as always, I'm going to have to ask you to see this in its proper format here on my dA. There's probably some way of formatting on blogger that I'm just too lazy to figure out, but nevermind.

You can see the rest of this (now quite epic) series here or here.

Libertine

i.
I am practising being a dead man walking - exactly the kind of game that it's easy to emerge from, carrying on, figuring that you are determined to stop those who want to spread extremism, hatred, zen.
Libertarianism is just one step away from anarchy, they said. And it is. But it's also one step away from independence and getting out of the shelters of altitudes; the atmospheric pressure. Life is not easy here, where space is on the other side, the outside.


ii.
One man smiled and said I am worried that there's something not quite kosher going on here.
But I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination, and imagination is more important than wondering on the inside.

* * *

I am just one step away, and sometimes it's nice to speak in tongues that are not my own.

This is my first attempt at a poegle, made from the phrase 'I am just one step away'.
Made for fun, really; I'm just trying anything and everything to distract myself from thinking about the impending doom of my A2 exam results tomorrow.

.juno

.

Summer seeps back into focus once again, and Juno
spends the moonless nights bending back into spilt-
oil images of sleep, lulled slick in a gulf cradle. She
dreams of tar babies, dredged from the deep, sucking
thumbs and fingers that spread oceanwide with the tide.
Each cry is sunken to a slumber, whilst someone shuffles
and mumbles excuses about fishbones caught in throats
and how no-one knew nightmares could float on water.

Only with heels congealed together could the tar children
translate the runes of an ocean beaten back into the ruins
of its own past, or understand how casting hydrocarbon-cut
ruts in the sea floor has scarred the shore. And only Juno,
hand-on-heart-on-sleeve (-Queen of kerosene, the god-breathed
babies and every marine casualty that slept too soon-) can realise
why the insides of the earth were uprooted in the pursuit
of persistently plastic things.

.

* * *

I've been meaning to write about the gulf oil disaster for ages, but it has taken me a while to think of the right words to use to write it with both shame and respect. Unfortunately, I don't think writing about this can ever be too late to be relevant.

Juno was the queen of the Roman gods, protector and special counsellor of the state. One of her titles was 'she who brings children into the light'.

The line 'of persistently plastic things' is definitely not a reference to the lyrics of Angle of Repose by Sleepytime Gorilla Museum).


More mythology poems:
.diana
.ceres
.vesta
.venus
.minerva

.minerva

.

Dawn, and Minerva murmurs from the riverbank.
She's watching scrolls of blue mist drag the lake,
unfurling remnants of a drowned world in its wake:
a glint of fish-tail scales, the torn leaves of love letters,
the bloated bulk of a plastic bag.

She takes a piece of each and logs them in her book
of things she took from history, picked from the pockets
of time. Each has a story to tell: a singed feather; an empty
snail shell. The twisted limb of a tree. Each sings
with its own broken flutings, its own fractured poetry.


When the rivulet where we are borne and met dredges up
the dawn's tribute, Minerva's on the edge, waiting to pluck
these fragments of convoluted memories from the deep.
She marvels at each scientific discovery found as the night
bites down on day, and the shattered sounds of time travel
each relic makes in sleep.

.

* * *

Alternative title: Of Natural History (which is definitely not a reference to a certain album by Sleepytime Gorilla Museum)

Minerva was the Roman goddess of wisdom, poetry, science, learning and magic, and she was credited as being the inventor of music.

Again, I'm going to have to ask you to please see this in it's proper format here on my dA.


More mythology poems:
.diana
.ceres
.vesta
.venus

Dog Days

This year, the dog days flung
a layer of smog over Moscow;
hung a stray aurora glow
over smoke-choked streets.
A fleet of trees, collapsed black
on themselves like matryoshka dolls,
was licked clean by the keen
tongues of flames – a scar
beneath the wildfire eye
of the dog star.

* * *

BBC News: Dense wildfire smog grips Moscow in heatwave

Of course, this is a problem that is still ongoing. I just wanted to write something in awe of the dystopian beauty and sheer horror of it all.

For a 50-word lit contest, The Flame(s). I haven't entered a contest in ages, so the challenge was nice.

More mythology poems are in the works, never fear. :)

.venus

.

Venus broke the night. She sucked back the stars
and started to shine with her own brightness. Sick
of cold equations and mathematical divisions, all
these diametric fixations, she preyed for a collision;
for the moon to tap into the craters beneath her fingernails.
This, she called The Pruning – the sculpting of Edens
out of satellites and solar winds, wound round her sides.

She’s tithed to her own tides, moodswung as a river
cut through her insides. She's happiest when her blood
is flooded with lovers swept into her depths, sunk into
astral sockets and crater lakes. Dreamdrunk on Venus'
sweet venom, bloated with pride, they float with the tide
as it seeps in, and take their place beneath her skin.
Feeding her Edens' deep sleep in their terra of love.

But alone, she sits and counts on fibreglass fingers,
interlocked in herringbone knots, and the loveless
dove tales of each pigeon-toed goddess. Solo,
she splinters no night, just whispers like a morning scar.

.

* * *

This is it, dear readers - this is as romantic as I get.

Venus is the Roman goddess associated with love, beauty, gardening and vineyards.

The poem also makes a lot of allusions to Venus, the planet, which was named after her. It is often called the 'Morning Star', as it's the brightest natural object in our skies after the Moon. Venus used to have a Moon itself, until they collided. It has a pocked and cratered surface, with several continents, all named after other goddesses of love - including Aphrodite Terra.


More mythology poems:
.diana
.ceres
.vesta

.vesta

.

It is time. We feel the pull of summer along our spines
as we head into hibernation. Bed is short respite for our leaden limbs,
our singed hair. The air aches with the wait of it, where the embers
click and sing like crickets. Snippets of sound from the underground.
"This," someone says, wide-eyed with awe, "is what the insides
of the earth look like" - the world beneath, struck through with
dragons' teeth, pocked with open sores. The slit smile of the crater
in a slack jaw. Our scarred skies are littered with lights, many
mechanical suns spun into the ceiling, glinting like electric sequins.

And in the middle of it all, where our tracks meet, lies Vesta,
incomplete. The heat seeps from her as she speaks neat,
untranslatable lines of words, tapped out as if on a bell.
She's a shell and she knows it, tied heart to hearth. She hears
the earth and extracts, repeats an exact echo. Sometimes
she's nearly crushed by the rush of words, spilling into the air
like prayers, but by now we know how to piece her back together.
The boughs of hair that map the family tree; the jigsaw of bones;
the singed rings round her coalstone eyes. The slack jaw.

Three hundred and ninety one summers we have huddled down here.
We tell Vesta to rest, but she won't hear of it, ears fixed to the floor.
"You're sick," we say, feeling for her burning temples, the flames
of fever staking their claim, "and we won’t stand for it anymore!"
She's tired, can hardly lift her head, but she cries like a child
when she hears what we've said. "After everything I did for you –
sang songs stamped in amber, rocked you to sleep-" She quakes and weeps.
After each rebuild, breaking is easy. We simply take her apart; pluck out
her heart. She lies Promethean, slack. Her split sides smiling wide.

We turn our backs, and only then we learn
that we have nothing left to burn.

.

* * *

I think this one requires a little more explanation to get some of the references (and some of my bad puns!). Vesta was the Roman goddess of the hearth, home, family and fire. Her presence was symbolised by a sacred fire that burned continually at her temples until worship of her - and all other public pagan worship - was banned in Rome in 391.

Prometheus was the guy that stole fire from the gods and as punishment was tied to a rock and had his liver eaten out of him every day (which is actually Greek mythology, but never mind).

I heard someone say "This is what the insides of the earth look like" whilst visiting some caves in Kefalonia, and for some reason it kind of stuck with me. So thanks for the inspiration, random stranger! :)

More mythology poems:
.diana
.ceres

.ceres

.

Harvest rolls round again. We root up the ground, and in the remains,
bury our dead. One day, it’s said, she’ll just stop loving us. Stop giving.
There is a limit to all things. To every word, half-bitten back
in the cheek; to every outstretched reach; to every breath, choked
down. Ceres, the devoted. The sorrowing. Note: the two are remote
yet inseparable. To mother is to hold love in one hand, loss in the other,
and fix them into the bone cradle of your chest, right and left.
It is a savage rite of passage.

So when Ceres steps from cities of corn to streets of crowded houses,
the fields of open mouths seem to glut, swallow her up. She sees
her ruched brown seeds feed those who hunger, not those who need,
and it shakes her to the core. No more the mother of all - just grass.
We see her now through a glass, darkly, as she breaks, face by face. Our traced
smiles sewn stark, child’s eyes swapped for magpies’. Greed is gold.
Love is loss. Her tears flow fertile as she folds, breaks down into the land -
bone in bowel, heart in hand.

.

* * *

Two poems in as many days? I must be on a roll! See, I wasn't lying about the whole mythology series thing either!

Ceres is described as the Eternal Mother, the Sorrowing Mother, goddess of agriculture, crops, civilisation, and the love a mother bears for her child. She was protectress of women, motherhood, marriage, and her worship involved fertility rites and rites for the dead.

Please do read this in its proper format on my dA page.


More mythology poems:
.diana

.diana

.

There will be thick sleep tonight. Drugged on the dull anaesthesia of lullabies,
even the anchorless feel the tug of the deep, consuming like a love, a hunger.
Above, the moon sucks in the sky like a craving, wide-eyed. Dilate. Diana ditched
the forest for the midnight; she's stitched herself to the undersides of stars.
She spears and speaks through the mouths of clouds. Moondrunk, she's sunk
into the currents of our mumbled conversations; our fumbled demonstrations
of humanity. Hunting a heartbeat amongst a fleet of ghosts.

Sleep is her uncountry; the estuary that feeds her sea of sky. She steers
past the arms of drowned suns and daughters that reach from the waters.
Taking names, notes. Traces of heartbreak in the wake of her boat.

War-torn wishers, we flit and fall like sycamore seeds, feeling not high, but afloat.
Even here she hounds us, smiling like a child, dog-hearted. She is ellipsis, eclipse,
the call of the wild slipped behind the scythes of her fingernails. We close
on the guise of the city, the immutable face of a father, and collapse back
to our tiny premature deaths: sleepscorched breath and the smell of surgery.
Flight, distilled. Diana sits and sighs, the virgin queen, unravelling the night
into morphine; saline; the salt of sleepdust rusting round the eyes.

.

* * *

I wrote a lot about sleep whilst I was away. This is largely made up of ideas I salvaged from the wreckage of my attempt at a longer project...
Anyway, at least Greece (and its amazing mythology) was inspirational. I might make a series of these.

Also, some exciting news! Guess who's been given the chance to join the questioning panel for dA's An Audience with Margaret Atwood as part of their 10th birthday celebrations? Hell yes. :D