Logomancy

  A journey into language, books, and print.  

[logomancy-dot-blog]

Seven seeds

By Chinese post, I did receive, a paper pouch with seven seeds, metallic skin, mirror black grown to sow, no turnings back. I dropped one down, into a hole, it fell and fell, towards midnight's glow, and when it stopped, it split in two, and now it shines for me and you. Tiny roots and tiny vines curl and writhe inside my mind, reaching out to darkness' sun growing deep, what's done and done. Seven seeds in mother earth, metallic skin, for what it's worth, they pulse and throb within their cave, and in the dark their tendrils wave. I put them down, I pick them up, sometimes they live inside a cup. They draw my dreams into their veins, and soak them up to dream again. Berries black bloom on their stems they ripen there in breathy wind, they pulse and grow inside my brain and dribble juice in spreading stain. A fruit so big it caught the eye of every serpent flying by. A greedy suck, a sip or two, who knows what grows for me and you.

[logomancy-dot-blog]

[logomancy-dot-blog]

Merry Christmas from Gnometown, USA, emeffers.

[logomancy-dot-blog]

unrequited

over and again

I find myself

falling in love with the world

her beauties, her charms.

and spurned.

how am I to go on,

with this limitless

begging need

writhing on the floor?

such a spectacle

of unkempt desire.

[skinnytuna]

im sorry man i can’t come hang out im actually knee deep in the hoopla right now

[logomancy-dot-blog]

We sailed on black tarmac, rudderless, root-locked,

adrift in white Ford, skimming the humid gauze

of Des Moines’ dark. By dash-light glamour you mocked

my pulse, quicked by your sweaty petting palms.

A rhinestone shroud of halogen soaked hues

absorbed your lolling laughter, low and louche.

Still unloosed, the lash that binds honey to the bruise

that purples my dreaming eye with spreading flush.

Buzzing in the noon, knee-deep in summer’s corn,

laid out on the hood, like serpents on a stone,

green and white and tan and taut of form —

and molten as the flames that feed the unbound heart.

The highway miles unroll; journeys never cease;

time ‘s the turner’s wheel, and memory the grease.

Logomancy

A journey into language, books, and print.

[logomancy-dot-blog]

Goya's mind skimmed along the surface of a black and noxious sea, riding alternating waves of antipathy and revulsion, first that which stood in horror of humanity as a kind, and then that which reviled the causal and callow exercise of fatal authority which marked and marred the mother church in the age of inquisition.

[logomancy-dot-blog]

In progress lyric:

Since you left the moon has waned,

and grow'd back full again,

winter's snows have melted down,

into April's driving rain,

I can't believe we couldn't work it out,

like we were always want to do,

But now that we're over,

I am so over,

And I'm over

getting o-ver you.

[logomancy-dot-blog]

Doggerel for Jack Sparrow

Hey nonny now,

in the market stalls,

the drunkard lurches,

before he falls.

Take a tipple or 2,

from your pocket vest,

taste some now,

but save the rest.

My tongue's on fire,

my head's brand new.

I've got a bottle of luv

to share with you.

[logomancy-dot-blog]

Tomahawk Sal’s Complaint

One of the projects I began working on last summer was a science fiction novel about an artist who works on stories in a Western genre. This framing device surrounds a sub plot which is an American Western retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh. The novel is in a rough an unedited state, but the following lyrics are from that sub-story. The character of Tomahawk Sal is a version of Innana, the Sumerian goddess of erotic love and death, cum Calamity Jane of Deadwood fame. She is also something of a witch. Sal’s lovelorn complaint for the attentions of the main character echo a similar episode from the Gilgamesh epic, and is voiced as a campfire song after being transmitted into the speech of the Enkidu character, known as Hard Luck. Tomahawk Sal is also a mélange of other mythic and liminal figures, including Baba Yaga, Hecate, and Olive Oatman, a frontier woman from Illinois, who was captured and raised by Apache Indians in the 1850s.

https://logomancy.blog/

Love me in the haylofts

Above the cattle lowing,

Or love me off in golden fields

Before the reaper starts a-mowing.

        Your love is like a winter wind,

        Slinking in through gaping chinks.

        Your hearth is cold and ashen,

        A chain of broken links.

Will you not love me in the corn?

        No, the corn is green and sour.

Will you love me in the barley, then?

        Alas ’tis poor man’s flour

Will you love me where the wild goose flies?

        The cliff is perilous and steep.

Then love me where the jackdaw nests?

        Her voice is harsh and cheap.

Love me in the bell tower

While the pious mime their praying,

Or under mourning willow

With leaves so gently swaying.

        Your love is like a lightning fire,

        Running o’er droughted grass.

        Your love is hard and stinging,

        Like the drover’s flashing lash.

My love is true, my hair is silky,

My ankles white and dainty.

        My arm is strong my wisdom keen

        My spirit one third saintly.

My love is true, my fingers fine,

My plaints entreat thee “ruth.”

        Your hair is grey your face is lined

        I spurn your love for sooth.

Then curses I’ll heap upon you

Upon your sons and daughters:

May your lands be barren wastes

And brackish be your waters;

May your fence posts fall to splinters

Your bullets fall meek and harmless;

May your herds incline to wander

And your horses flee the harness;

May dogs snap at your heel spurs

And fortune always spurn you;

While ravens mock your daily toils

And haints be bound beside you.

[logomancy-dot-blog]

do u think god fears death

I don't know the minds of the gods but death is more horrible for them than it is for us.

[logomancy-dot-blog]

2 sisters

Two sisters in the park You can't tell them apart Like I can, But I know I can. One's a big fat heart And the other's a shark Stop beating Stop swimming. One sister plays with dolls And the other is enthralled With cyan Like Diane. One's asleep in the wheat And the other wears a sheet Where I am I'm trying I'm dying. Two sisters in the halls Making passes, making calls I'm listening I'm sighing. Two sisters running round One is flat, one is round And unbound And unsound. One sister's in the ground And the other's out of town I'm buying The next round. One sister on the wind And the other's drinking gin I'm lying Beside them Between them. Stop.

Théodore Chassériau: The Two Sisters

[logomancy-dot-blog]

shadow play

up on the wall, in the government hall, tarantulas crawl, and the scorpions sway, it’s a game that we play, it lasts all day.

how we roll, roll away, roll away the day, losing time to our other side in our shadow play. let’s sneak up the stairs, (they travel in pairs) till we leap like hares, when the lights all come on, we can vanish as one, in the noon-day sun.

and then roll it all away, roll the live-long day, passing time to the other mind in our shadow play.

would you put on your crown, you silly clown, and be the king for a day? you can wear it with pride and strut it outside until it’s time to hide,

and put your milky bones away, and waltz with Fanny fae, on the other side where we lose our minds in our shadow play.

they’re coming for you, and following me, but they can’t see we. through clinched teeth on the lips I’ll slip you a hiss with my cobra kiss.

and when your spinning is done, your web glints in the sun my skin comes undone. and may we roll them all away, or put them on display, leading our tribe to the other side, with our shadow plays.

Title: A Spider. Artist: Jan Vincentsz van der Vinne (Dutch, Haarlem 1663–1721 Haarlem)

[logomancy-dot-blog]

Dear humans, quit shoveling souls into the maw of the beast. It cannot be appeased or sated. There is only one way out and that is through the very belly of leviathan, and sooner or later, you must go there yourself.

[logomancy-dot-blog]

“When I wake up from dreaming my mind is like a bell that has just been rung and still vibrating with tone. Tamping that down by activity or human noise causes the whole of the resonance to stop abruptly. But if the note is allowed to fade of its own accord there is often a lot of depth and nuance still to be found in the echo of the original clap. The tone continues, breathing in space as if it was nurtured by silence.”

— Morning Musings

[logomancy-dot-blog]

Landlocked dreaming

Landlocked dreamingpretending to be by winter’s firewith you,gives a skipping sleepy cadence tomy weighted heart,as the honey sun skirts slantwiseand drowns the strand in purple shade,we cling to desperate stripesof furtive warmthmarching slowly into night.

View On WordPress

[logomancy-dot-blog]

Beltane

Almost over, this frost licked April, pierced through with sprigs  of stinging light. So little to show for this spring in motion except for the famished need to break on through and run full madly into the star spilt open night.