Of Oracles/Last Night

Another poem for the wondrous oracle meme.

last night

restless, sweating at the touch of old gods, I

lay tangled in the dawn of sleep, fretting

my pillow, dreaming of places where the wind cries

through the open arms of broken statues, seeming

 

insubstantial, shaking with fear

at the saw-blade terror of avatars

walking like madmen under foreign stars

uncomprehending of what loas rode their hands, breaking

 

glass eggs, world eggs, cracking the gold yolk

silver-limned on the table-top, 

unable either to falter, choose or stop

the terrible march of their red guns, blackening

 

the sky with stone towers, falling like tears

or waterfalls, down

the deep gullies of our throats and eyes

to mark the ruination of these years

 

and on waking

 

I was left whole but altered, hollowed out,

the inner spiral of a nautilus shell

behind each gleaming eyelid.

all was well.

Nine Things About Oracles

A poem for contribution here, and learned of here.

Nine Things About Oracles

 

first, there is blindness. like the white moon

in her witching sky, this oracle is prone to concealment.

lidless, pearls

 

scale on her milk-eyes, iridescent, each blink

sharp as an oyster shell.

 

secondly,

 

note her childish hands, slimwristed, fair,

ravelling the unseen silk. third is her voice,

keening like a lost hawk,

 

wild as a rose-wind. fourth, fifth, sixth:

count the nubs of her curving spine, warped

under salt. a sulphurous ocean

blooms in her, firebright anemones cling

 

to the tight-lipped carapace of her soul, waving

their soft fronds.

 

seventh is a mystery

as in the deeps of ancient caves she stares

at the blank wall, scratches darkness, weeps.

 

eighth is a syllable, sibyl-tongue

stuck

to the mouth-roof, breathing

the thick air, sighing go from here,

 

question the night sky, demand answers of the owls

and rivers, go,

 

but at the last, the ninth bell

 

wisdom is lacking. we stagger out,

clutching a small death over our hearts,

snared by a net of tears

 

but do not learn.