Days of Tarot

One tarot card. To inspire one poem per day. For 78 days. Cards drawn from Rider-Waite deck.

[daysoftarot]

Day 33: Page of Pentacles

Meaning: Application, study, scholarship, reflection, diligence

Kaleidoscopic

Behold, the globe before your eyes, vistas like fractals of a crushed disco ball.

You told me to skip the Everest base camp trek where my emotion would quiver like quicksand to see one magenta flower

In favor of the Annapurna Circuit where we moved from tea house to tea house never clear whether I was server or served.

You open the oysters, one after another unseeing the dark-bodied stone, mirrored flashes of green and blue forming points along the hyperbole

One step ever closer to infinity.

[daysoftarot]

Day 32: The Hanged Man

Meaning: Wisdom, trials, circumspection, sacrifice, intuition

Untitled

You give me the push and pull of complication and complicity context and creativity propose digital standards  and mask-hoarding. I suggest love and isolation  in the time of coronavirus and you ask me if that’s (a) novel.

I want to shape the context and ever simplify but the people are oppressive out for short-sighted greed. I lay low, hidden in the half light. This is the time for fight and flight. The man from South Bend articulates he can unite us all. But sometimes, I wonder  what my fellow Class of 2000-mate means by all.

I see her dark royal eyes now,  light and relaxed against the snow. How bad was it in Albion that you had to move to Canada in January?

[daysoftarot]

Day 31: Ace of Cups

Meaning: True heart, joy, contentment, abode, nourishment, abundance

United

If I could slipstream, I would give my 17-year old self the lotus of compassion

I would tell you love’s winds will blow you westward and away you will wander to the isle of natives where your cup runneth over.

Sometimes, you have to write a rhapsody instead of the hit that everyone wants. Sometimes, you have to let the love flow deep in your ice-white veins.

You have to change your sport to make it work to win the long game, to stop running and start again.

[daysoftarot]

Day 30: Four of Swords

Meaning: Vigilance, retreat, solitude, repose, exile, tomb, coffin

Zen State

You lie in repose for the moment, you pose prostate, ornate full of hate, satiate.

The battles are lost you ponder the cost. It’s hard to care anymore you bury your head in lore.

And the soft kiss of the one beloved, the son you bore as he docks his head against yours “Mum, Mum” And you know then, everything is Zen.

[daysoftarot]

Day 29: The Devil

Meaning: shadow self, dependencies, negative energy

The Devil You Know

The devil you know spits on my transformation diminishes the journey to the subterranean and back.

He looks at me with ice blue as if any man could do.

The slide into the abdomen the cut and the tug red, red birthing insides, rearranging like a bookshelf.

The devil you know sits on the sofa and offers philosophy neither here nor there lacks empathy to share.

So you banish him to drink from the knowledge cup but you realize the futility and you move ahead not looking back.

[daysoftarot]

Day 28: Page of Swords

Meaning: Curiosity, new ideas, positive change, forward movement

Lay It Down

From the vaulted ledge, I pay heed To the greatest disappointment in my life Of following multiculturalism’s lie Lay down your sword, Globalization has done its deed

[daysoftarot]

Day 27: The Magician

Meaning: Power, inspired action, purity/knowledge, new beginnings

Challenge-ling

Diamond showering skies crystal rain 2020, I will wipe the slate so I can finally see

The truths of my life the lies that I spin the secrets I left behind life I wanted to lead

But I did not have the courage to go forth and conquer. This year, I will imbue the potion with a spark of chicory

See what I see for a moment in still water I will see you for you and run to be me.

[daysoftarot]

Day 26: Seven of Wands

Meaning: Valor, barter, competition, challenge, perseverance.

The Newcomer

Don’t call me new. I am old, older than the Himalayan ranges, older than the sacred spring that runs through.

I am sun-swept, sun-burnt, sun-kissed.

I am here, as your offing your token neighborhood POC, replace “person” with “prisoner” or “particle” or other word of your choice.

I am visible only should you desire or I am a nanny, a mother’s helper, a house cleaner, a cookout worker (never mind those graduate student loans) in that line where youth and race merge.

I emerge in places where you don’t expect. I come down from the mountains cool as fresh ice water to bear witness, to record, and to pick up my mail.

[daysoftarot]

Day 25: Seven of Cups

Meaning: Fairy favors, images of reflection, imagination, sentiment, things seen in the glass of contemplation, fantasy, illusion, wishful thinking, choices.

Would That You Were

When one door closes, another opens I see you in the shadow-light, a chimera Waiting, wanting, watching.

Will I meet you, at last In some underworld clime As a writer, a singer, a scientist or just some aquatic blob.

I would have dropped you off at school You and our brother, sudden middle child The two of you fighting for shotgun I, your teenage chaperone, more parent than peer.

No one can judge the decisions we make The calculus we encounter What we choose to give and take.

But in the dark of the night, I will you to life. I think of the small bean In the ultrasound images That flourished into my son.

The love that I would have had, the same infinite oasis. As sweet, the power of three. Freedom lost or freedom gained?

But you are not here All pathways lie on the cutting room floor Yet to be fashioned into something new. In some other dimension, I know you live out your universal fate.

[daysoftarot]

Day 24: Nine of Swords

Meaning: Death, failure, miscarriage, delay, deception, disappointment, despair, depression, nightmares.

Nine of Swords

It took seven hours and fifteen meetings For you to esteem the worth of your peers. I take the subway every morning and give you my best Since you took my colleagues away.

Nothing can say you care less Than your blind eye to the sorrow of the times. You broke open the books and waged your onslaught Against nothing nefarious at all.

Those who remain trudge on and on Sinking and swimming in the blood loss Miscarrying hopes and dreams Bobbing in the letting of open veins.

You smile your regular cheer, Your pretense of cutting across decades and genres. It was a silk screen, after all. Those tones in your ears ring eerily silent.

This is the price of change. Your worker bees whisper sweet nothings In the honeycombed hallways. Those walls will come down.

Be careful what you wish for.

[daysoftarot]

Day 23: Page of Wands

Meanings: Enthusiasm, exploration, discovery, free spirit, envoy

Portent

She lit the candles for the candelabra chandelier, swimming, the wax dripped gently over the taupe wood.

We sat on the divans, sank into the plush velour. The katana on the wall glared at us with its steel smile.

Everything felt deep, dusty rose. We sipped the rosé to match the ozone filtering through the window.

To this day, I’m unsure of what I was supposed to do, make out, make love, get out?

I stared at the ceiling, and the pink liquid kept coming  and coming.

[daysoftarot]

Day 22: Eight of Wands

Meanings: Speed, action, air travel, movement, swiftness, great haste/hope, motion through the immovable

Run

Through the valleys, rivers, lakes, and streams The love in you is so fresh and evergreen.

Between the Cascades and Olympics You sweat and share your sweet kiss.

Amidst the early fog by Puget Sound, I wonder in the first place how you were wound. Under the clouds, you create your own world. All the divisions of flesh and blood begin to unfurl. As you stop to breathe in the brew of coffee, I hope you can find it in your heart to break free.

[daysoftarot]

Day 21: Six of Wands

Meaning: Public recognition, victory, progress, self-confidence

Pour La Victoire (Love Letter to Atlanta)

I’d like to remember you as a city on the verge, glimmering under the scalding sun, cooling under late night stars and pink ozone, building your vast arenas, waiting for the Renaissance that would come.

You lit the torch, I careened through Peachtree, watching the store fronts shrink to human scale, beating back Northern vitriol “Atlanta, what’s that known for?” and disdain for warmth “I hate hot weather.”

I knew your secrets beyond peaches and peanuts, news studios and Coca-Cola, crime and punishment and strip clubs on Cheshire Bridge.

You are to me, syncopated rhythms of hip-hop, sugar flecks falling from a Krispy Kreme at 2 am, burnt raisin toast at the intersection of truckers and college kids, lush oak canopies over warm pavement down Lullwater.

I saw your destiny in the crystal glass of jeweled high rises, forging the promise of six Olympic rings, where you sew the movie scenes and Beltline cycle paths. I see you in the rearview, as only I can now, and know I can never be there.

[daysoftarot]

Day 20: Five of Pentacles

Meaning: Material loss, destitution, isolation, insecurity, worry, financial loss, poverty 

The Thief and Beggar

I steal the inspiration, a thief in the night,

I climb up casement walls in search of lost fragments to piece together gems.

I take only what’s forgotten, even if the words are ill-gotten, discarded in the sheer wall of rain questions you failed to see as gain.

I sell the notions on the black market, illicit ideas that are not my own.

I peddle the jewels, stone by stone, a beggar for the next penny, the spark for the next poem.

[daysoftarot]

Day 19: King of Wands

Meaning: Natural-born leader, vision, entrepreneur, honour, friendly, countryman, honest, conscientious

King of Time

Time expands and contracts and in the crystal interstices, my mind grows and shrinks to clear the detritus of the years.

I sort through the tomes, expunging the guilt of lost information. I discard the papers, excessive debris tangling a blue sky.

I draw the cards one by one, shape the words on the tip of my tongue mix the chemicals like a lost potion uncover the runes to show me a sign.

I wander the museum of my headspace, let the artifacts glide through the musings of a half-life lived in the space between.

[daysoftarot]

Day 18: Three of Pentacles

Meaning: Teamwork, initial fulfilment, collaboration, learning, skilled labor, metier 

Threads

I weave the web in solitary honing arc and architecture quelling the pressures on the loom, my arch-nemeses.

Each voice noise I must clear from the threads Each touch a reminder of unwelcome disruptions.

I work the silks mastering the patterns of the past, the shapes yet to come, all the work in the last lines of our lives.

[daysoftarot]

Day 17: Queen of Swords

Meaning:  Quick thinker, organised, perceptive, independent, absence, separation

Cool Hands

There’s no one quite as cool as she who holds a silent flame in a cavern of ice.

The blade cuts a zero degree chill, as she maps the long game under the eagle eye gaze.

She’s standing by the iron gates of super moon lights thawing her blood, ounce by precious ounce for all the fools.