©2021 Michael Raven
failing your litmus test of purity only leaves me smiling & smug
Category: poems
Ever notice that most people never really like reading poetry? Perhaps there is a reason.
thought+memory/
©2021 Michael Raven
i walk my own path through the woods with wights clinging to my side -- they remain silent watchful, waiting for the dim one to learn how to speak their tongue phantom passing touches of strangers give slight warmth, but never ever enough & the mists always return to chilling flesh, bone, heart they hop: branch to branch to ground to stump to rot sometimes laughing at the fool following sometimes chiding the child who is following sometimes silently guiding the man wandering down the narrow wooded path -- memory escaping -- thought deepening while the trees backfill the footprinted loam behind
secrets untold/
©2021 Michael Raven
into the forest wode stained & intrepid to waken from slumber the old paths the old ways under hillock & over knolls whispering, the shadows of secrets untold
hearts/
©2021 Michael Raven
digging dirt
for
low places
to find
those hearts
beating
underground
ways/
©2021 Michael Raven
the new ways lie broken shattered and painted in dried blood stigmata the culling of overgrowth ignored the groves return old growth, old ways, old songs where honor still lives fathered by ash oak thorn we sold souls for tuppence where we should have kept the gold hold on to the old ways hold on to before gambled lives gambled lies time to toss the dice & watch the bones dance before settling the score
entre chien et loup/
©2021 Michael Raven
trees flicker with the light & death of day the night sliding thief-like into the sky with indigo, tyrian & byzantium fingers quenching the fires still burning the forests bright i think i saw you smiling though the shadows may have lied -- they often do winter tide hands clutched, you stole to the forest garden my ghost in tow, stumbling over root rock & the fates tangled skein woven we lay in the leaves, snow & loam we became the heat stoked with fires within we were wine & earth & fire -- you devoured me whole flesh & blood consumed, i made you whole
entre chien et loup = between dog and wolf [French idiom for dusk]
ugly/
©2021 Michael Raven
embracing
ugly me
i reject
your standards
of beauty
burning castles/
©2021 Michael Raven
after dwelling on blood painted on the wind-hardened crusts of driven snow, two eyes turn to witchwood's seductive shadows to deal with self-made monsters sheltered within; & to burn those castles down
summerland/
©2021 Michael Raven
a kiss in
the hyacinth house
sweat dew
on your cheek
in the
afternoon's heat
taut in tether/
©2021 Michael Raven
grit teeth hanging thorn in side thunder twisting on nerves plastic howling sunder reaching to insight scab-crusted sore reaching out passion always wanting more
