bloodteethandflame

A life in threes

Tag: sometimes I just need poetry

feelings.

November

MfL, Seven: Tenacious

This poem seems very Loki-esque to me — especially when one considers Loki’s association with dandelions:

“Let them try to stop you

in every way they know;

Even if they poison you,

Cut you down,

Uproot you,

Burn you to ashes,

Bury you deep,

And pave over the place

where you lie;

The weeds of your tenacity

will sprout through the cracks

And bloom.”

— Bree NicGarran, “Dandelion Roots” May 2022
field of dandelions
apoembecomes

Sometimes

Sometimes you have to wait
in the dark
For what seems like forever
Stuck
Certain no progress is being made,
not even a little growth
Nothing seems alive
You, least of all
It doesn’t even feel like waiting, truth be told,
since waiting implies an end in sight —
and you haven’t seen one of those
in ages.
You’re sure you’ve been abandoned
Forgotten
It seems as though your own soul may have deserted you
But then one day
A day you didn’t think would come —
The smallest of cracks appears
Then the crack turns into an opening
Then the opening a breaking free.
Maybe it was the way the sun hit,
or how the rain fell
or how the planets aligned
or maybe something deep within you simply knew: NOW.
It’s not just that you’ve come back to life, though
You’re different.
The life within you feels humbler, since you know you know less now.
And more grounded, since your roots were silently growing deep all this time.
You understand now, there was something happening,
something profound
in that slow and tedious germination.
It’s a miracle, isn’t it?
How even in the longest and most brutal of winters
thousands of seeds are plotting
a most magnificent spring.~

~Leyla Aylin
http://www.leylaaylin.com

art: Shanna Trumbly

Month for Loki: Eight

Loki is big on the concept of “negative capability,” which John Keats defines as, “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.” Namely, that a poet must remain open to all ideas, to all identities–even to the point of obliterating one stable identity–if that poet is to remain truly creative. Basically: embrace uncertainty, because it leads to change, and change is generative and inherently creative.

5 years.

A Poem for Pulse

By Jameson Fitzpatrick

Last night, I went to a gay bar
with a man I love a little.
After dinner, we had a drink.
We sat in the far-back of the big backyard
and he asked, What will we do when this place closes?
I don’t think it’s going anywhere any time soon, I said,
though the crowd was slow for a Saturday,
and he said—Yes, but one day. Where will we go?
He walked me the half-block home
and kissed me goodnight on my stoop—
properly: not too quick, close enough
our stomachs pressed together
in a second sort of kiss.
I live next to a bar that’s not a gay bar
—we just call those bars, I guess—
and because it is popular
and because I live on a busy street,
there are always people who aren’t queer people
on the sidewalk on weekend nights.
Just people, I guess.
They were there last night.
As I kissed this man I was aware of them watching
and of myself wondering whether or not they were just.
But I didn’t let myself feel scared, I kissed him
exactly as I wanted to, as I would have without an audience,
because I decided many years ago to refuse this fear—
an act of resistance. I left
the idea of hate out on the stoop and went inside,
to sleep, early and drunk and happy.
While I slept, a man went to a gay club
with two guns and killed forty-nine people.
Today in an interview, his father said he had been disturbed
recently by the sight of two men kissing.
What a strange power to be cursed with:
for the proof of men’s desire to move men to violence.
What’s a single kiss? I’ve had kisses
no one has ever known about, so many
kisses without consequence—
but there is a place you can’t outrun,
whoever you are.
There will be a time when.
It might be a bullet, suddenly.
The sound of it. Many.
One man, two guns, fifty dead—
Two men kissing. Last night
I can’t get away from, imagining it, them,
the people there to dance and laugh and drink,
who didn’t believe they’d die, who couldn’t have.
How else can you have a good time?
How else can you live?
There must have been two men kissing
for the first time last night, and for the last,
and two women, too, and two people who were neither.
Brown people, which cannot be a coincidence in this country
which is a racist country, which is gun country.
Today I’m thinking of the Bernie Boston photograph
Flower Power, of the Vietnam protestor placing carnations
in the rifles of the National Guard,
and wishing for a gesture as queer and simple.
The protester in the photo was gay, you know,
he went by Hibiscus and died of AIDS,
which I am also thinking about today because
(the government’s response to) AIDS was a hate crime.
Now we have a president who names us,
the big and imperfectly lettered us, and here we are
getting kissed on stoops, getting married some of us,
some of us getting killed.
We must love one another whether or not we die.
Love can’t block a bullet
but neither can it be shot down,
and love is, for the most part, what makes us—
in Orlando and in Brooklyn and in Kabul.
We will be everywhere, always;
there’s nowhere else for us, or you, to go.
Anywhere you run in this world, love will be there to greet you.
Around any corner, there might be two men.

Kissing.

~~~~

5 years ago today, many people were killed or wounded in the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida. It was one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history.

Jameson Fitzpatrick, “A Poem for Pulse” from Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence.  Copyright © 2017 by Jameson Fitzpatrick. 

2021 Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation 61 W. Superior Street Chicago, IL 60654 USA

The Wild Will Call You Back

I can not express how much I love this poem composed by Gina Puorro. I think I might start reading this prayer/spell every day.

The Wild will call you back.

Through half-remembered dreams

and sunsets painted

in burnt sienna

and vermillion flames

she will call you back home.

The coyotes will wake you

from your sleep

with their clarion call

to keep your eyes

wide open.

How long have you been sleeping?

How much have you forgotten?

The Wild will call you back.

She will hang you upside down

and shake the nonsense

from the pockets

of your mind.

She will strip your soul naked

leaving you raw and exposed

under the searing glare

of the gods.

Offer up the holiness

of your confusion

and questions.

Dress yourself

in fireflies

and attune your senses

to awe

while you learn the slow seduction

of courting your muse.

Brush the stardust from your wings

and wipe the ocean from your eyes.

Flex your claws

dig your roots deep down

into the fertile earth

and show your fangs.

Gather pollen on your legs

and speak

in venom

and honey.

Peel back your colonized tongue

and let it hiss

and purr

and growl

and scream.

Do you remember

how to stalk

as predator

and how to surrender

as prey?

The Wild will call you back.

The owls know your real name

and will call you

from the darkness of night

to dance under the moon.

Crack your heart open

with your ancestors’ bones

and dance in the ecstasy

of your love

and your grief

with flailing limbs

bloody knees

and mud-stained feet.

Braid mugwort into your hair

and dream yourself

awake.

The Wild will call you back.

She will teach you how to die

again and again

and how to die well.

There is no difference

between your funeral pyre

and your birth canal.

Do not bother

to try and stop

the bleeding.

Love with the gentleness

and ferocity

of your whole

soft

tender being.

Feed the spirits

with your beauty

and sweetness

and ask them to show you

the way home.

~ Gina Puorro

Month for Loki: Fourteenth

You flow easily

Weaving a web within

The boundaries of Wyrd

Burning with knowledge

Seeking stillness

Ancient mage

Clever fool

Your laughter echoes

Through time.

Artwork: ‘Genasi’ by Nataliya Barteneva
on Artstation

Month for Loki: Third

Laguz I surrender to the depth and the flow
Othala I surrender to that which encompasses all [the Norns know]
Kenaz I surrender to the flame that roars and sings
Isa I surrender to the stillness at the beginning and the end of all things

 

Lokirunes