This was sparked, of all things, by a Hallowe’en mask

Masking

I tipped my hat to Death today -
and smiled.
It’s been a while -
at one time we were close,
But I strode, limping slightly
In another direction.
That which does not
May be biding its time.

A chilly stone in my chest
Pressed me back, to hide beneath,
But I tilted my head back,
Lifted my hat,
A ghost of a nod,
A sliver of a smile.
You shouldn't burn your bridges.

He strode on.
Couldn’t tell where his gaze was fixed,
Even in those dark times
I might have mistaken his intentions,
After all.

Today I didn’t bow,
Just tipped a wink,
And strode off,
Not even looking over my shoulder,
Hugging history,
Content to let death
Be just another mystery.

I’m not entirely convinced by the rhyming-couplet ending, but the emotion of the whole thing makes me smile...

Inspired by the London literary festival “Parnassus”, I wrote this:

Parnassus Dreams

Head high in clouds
That stream down his sides
To water all four corners,
Tears that wash his sight clean
Gleaming in the grip of his charge
Parnassus dreams

And he, immovable, moves,
Solid, sways,
Stays his unspent breath
Gently — to hear what he must.
The bluster of winds as timpani
And brass — casting trees to dance
Hands to grasp at the air
That gasps answers that
We didn’t know we’d asked for.

Parnassus dreams that he is
Immortality’s lust mustering in
The tread of Terpsichor,
Erato’s sighs,
And Clio’s stern insistence
That history must uncover,
And govern us forever lest we fall again
And fail to fly, our torch unlit.

Parnassus dreams, and his dreams
Give weight to patience
A place to lay a head, cushioned
In all the things that make us more
That are hearth and cloak and door,
Gorgeous and bawdy as waterfalls,
Pure as snow-gilded breath at his peak,
Immediate as the pebble in the palm
And infinite as the breadth of stars.

And we chart his dreams,
Reach within and without
Draw threads through our mouths
And hearts, startled into the liminal
And then laid down, adorning the stones
That clothe love, tugged into darkness
While he dreams light for
All we leave behind.

So, what’s that all about then? Well, Parnassus (name of the London poetry festival referenced earlier) = Mount Parnassus which, as I’m sure you all know, was the Ancient Greek mythological home of the Muses. (And presumably Apollo when he wasn’t flinging himself around the place falling in love with randoms and shooting golden arrows at things.) According to Wikipedia (which I actually trust re: mythology where I don’t re: politics, geography, and living public figures), there were nine (which I already knew), but that came a lot later — earlier Muses being fewer and referencing broader performance necessities like speech, breath, memory, that kind of thing (I’m not looking at Wikipedia right now — you can probably tell). There’s also talk of them springing from, well, springs at the top of the mountain.

At one point in the poem I was setting about naming all of the nine standard ones, then realised that I was shoe-horning and thought noooo, rubbed out a clumsy reference to Thalia that was apparently leading to whoever the sacred poetry Muse is, left the three in that were there already coz I liked where they were, and got back to the business of writing the poem that wanted to come out rather than the mangled name-checking list. Coz goodness knows: writing a poem about Classical Greek memes for inspiration already stands a pretty decent chance of being pretentious and “look, I know Proper Mythology — euuurgnn!” as it stands…

Resistance to shoe-horning is one of the reasons I tend not to do standard-rhythm end-line-rhyming poems, by the way. It’s rare that I ever feel I’ve done rhyming well enough to warrant it and admire deeply people who can manage it well without sacrificing meaning to meter.

A variety of inspirations (including someone else’s mis-spelling of the word “wipe”...) led me to this poem:

Come To Me

And let me summon out your fears,
Stroke pain up to the surface
To flow away in tears.

Come to me,
And let me control your breath,
The gasps of your disgrace
That leads to little deaths

Come to me,
And let me be the one,
The face of all you hold in thrall
Who'll clasp you when you're done.

Come to me,
And let me make you raw;
The one whom you can beg,
The one who holds the door.

Come to me,
And let me be the voice
Commanding you to take the pain
Because I am your choice.

So come to me, my dear,
It's better now you did;
The way before is scoured clear
Of all that I forbid.

Unusually, a rhyming one for once...

Those of you who know my work will know that I like to play with mythological reference and (sometimes obscure) plays on words. This is one of them, and written for someone (several of them, actually) who’ll likely never see this:

Fate On Hold

And do you know him?
Sure, you must have seen him
Even met him, or his kin.
Not a quiet life, his – soaring and diving
On a platform made of fear and desire
Clinging to the gifts his father gave him
Tattered now, but still part of his definition.

He knows the wet and angry depths,
The steps that falter down
In the wake of flight,
And the moans that escape
Biting his tongue too late
As the fall pulls bile from his wretched throat,
Poison pouring out, thick as blood,
Tearing tender membranes,
Scorching the fingers of those he falls through.

So he thinks: soar! Get as high as you can.
Gall falls transformed from burning heights,
Lights those up-turned faces,
Graces them with the gift of altitudes
While they’re glued to the ground,
Impounded by a lack of wings.

He sings, striving higher,
Feeling as though his sins are scoured
By speed, the shriek of winds,
The glare of the sun.

Never look down,
Eyes fixed on a prize
Eluding fingertips,
Slipping like ice as the heights turn cold,
Boldness freezes in thin air and, hanging there,
Before the wind-rush returns
He’ll hear, like crystal, his father’s voice,
Feel the weight of its message.

But he waves it off, flailing at the words buzzing
And broken he plummets, eyes burning,
Hands clasped to block out the sounds,
The screams he sees as laughter,
The sighs he knows as judgement,
And after: as the waves close over his head
Again, he drowns in the echoes of his own regrets
Until he kicks free of weeds,
To try again to tread the paths
That only Hermes sees,
Heedless of the voice that tells him:
Be a man, and all a man can be.
It is enough.