The Book of Moonlight

Sideblog for my poetry and Ineffable Husbands fanfiction. Mainblog is northwindscookie. If you write as well, don't hesitate to share if you like. I do so like to meet other writers. Community is important. As E.M. Forster wrote, "only connect."

[thebookofmoonlight]

Before the cats settle on our heads and feet for the night, weighing our souls down with claws that remember they were once moons, you the keeper of the

[aqua-regia009]

The demoniac (1893) - Joseph Middeleer

[bitchsexuality]

💗💜💙

[yonderbeasties]

My interpretation of the Wheel of Fortune: a sign of great change on the horizon. Rely on the ancient wisdoms and know that everything is temporary, as it should be.

[lilpy]

"Nice and gentle and-" "Angel, stop i-" "lovable and caring and-" "I, haha, I mean it, stop, hehehe, or I'll-" "Hm? Or you what?" "I'll- uh...ngk... Dunno... I mean...please, keep going..?"

Sometimes you gotta accept some love and compliments, right? Exactly.

[writersloth-old-deactivated2021]

Me when I improvise while writing

[prokopetz]

The thing I love about cats is that they’re basically born ready to throw down. There’s something strangely life-affirming about seeing a ball of fuzz that could fit in the palm of your hand with room to spare react to an unfamiliar creature literally a hundred times its size by going “I roll Intimidation”.

[batneko]

#the really life affirming part is that sometimes it works

[minoukatze]

[tooiconic]

cats don’t give a fuck and they will slap the shit out of whoever they want

[fenrir-fullmoon]

An angry cat is, pound-for-pound, the most powerful animal in the world, and all of nature knows it.

[lunas-worlds-blog]

"We are so focused on physical beauty. We don't know how much a soul can feed us."

Lunas-worlds-blog

[love-personal]

[thebookofmoonlight]

I wrote a book!

[thebookofmoonlight]

Chaos and Moonlight

I invited you to dinner before I knew who you were, E.

I just found out you have a dwarf planet named after you.

(Congratulations. Have some Ginger Gold wine.)

Also heard you might like a temple dedicated to you.

Even the ancients didn’t always honor neurodivergent

deities like you. A multiplicity of stories with you as the star,

but which one passes the bite test? In each one, a bit of the

familiar maelstrom. Forgive me E as I am a pattern seeking animal.

I also like a good pair of left-handed scissors when you can’t see what is being cut.

E, your scissors danced like they wore silver tights and were getting paid for it.

Yet it was always a necessary blood-letting. O Lady of Sorrow,

you have also taught me to drink tea with demons and whiskey with angels,

helped me learn the magpie code, how to fashion a table

from a bathroom mirror, bee glue, and dragonfly wings strong enough

to hold this moonlit feast in my backyard:  Garden state apples  (some bruised)

served in an upended ghost rainbow.

[thebookofmoonlight]

My first book of poetry is almost compleat! Now to find help with layout and printing.

[thebookofmoonlight]

I Draw You Down (into Me)

I arise at midnight like a sister of Carmilla

half sick I cannot drink the gold blood of the sun

more precious than ichor but do not tell those Gods--

I am no longer young or immortal

and I do not always relish their interference.

In the tangled folklore of us, perhaps

we will be remembered simply as two animals

who ate the moon and went mad with sublunary

delight. That old tale.

After you, I find myself still kissed by risk.

I drive barefoot down barren back roads

with a borrowed insouciance

like Aphrodite on summer vacation if

she borrowed Hekate’s playlist.

Depeche Mode fills with the car with silky

gloom. I’ve left my sunglasses at home

and you, just across town.

The ocean is popsicle cold. You think I’d grow

accustomed to cold currents.

My extremities could turn blue and I think

of the book I just read about the

ancient Mayans. How they painted some sacrifices

blue and dropped them in a well. If they survived

past noon, they were hauled out with ropes

and regaled their captors with underwater

wisdom. Do you want to know what those Gods

told me? It’s

easy to be a sacrifice

when you pretend it’s just creative cinematography.

[thebookofmoonlight]

Elemental

 A wet September leaf slides up the windshield

confident as a Ouija planchette. Yes,

I am safe in my Faraday cage on the parkway

while cumulonimbus clouds stretch mark the sky

cradling rain in their blue womb.

Cerulean guardian, I have already divined

the best exit in this deluge.  Tell me what it feels like

to give birth to a storm, nurse it on solar energy.

Be best friends with Zeus, hot painting the earth

and his fingernails with super bolts. Listen to Bowie

in space,

singing constellations into being: black star black star.

What a wild career for even the smallest nanoparticle to have.

You must be tired of poets

waxing lyrically about the sun moon binary

when they have always lived in celestial communion.

Humans swallow gold salts and ring ourselves

with silver like planets, imagining

we are natural satellites of those we love--

forgetting that our positions are not fixed.

[thebookofmoonlight]

To a fellow practitioner

Are you well? Is a dangerous question

to ask of anyone. I never

did know how to talk to you.

If you’re reading the cards and throwing

runes, you can see my lonely island

is still populated by moving fur pillows

and books that double as blankets. At night,

I hunt snack sized bags of cashews.

(I’m a competent castaway.) You think otherwise,

but I’m not exactly built for occult battle.

I only wanted to be armored in autumn leaves,

sling arrows of bronze ink.

Words pile on the empty seat like paper snakes.

Do you understand why I hold onto the skins?

You, who stroked sigils into my scales with deft hands

when you weren’t tempting me to have faith

in my fangs and use my venom when you

were the ophidian Ophelia, drowning daily

in bone deep sorrows.  

In the flowering season of Demeter’s joy,

I cut you almost to the root

like I was one of The Fates

(leaving one thread as you did

pulsing silver like an astral umbilical cord).

This time I will not follow the thread back

into the labyrinth. Perhaps

we jumped off the Cliff of Fools when

we became Angel and Demon

to each other. You can’t

just slice a pomegranate down the middle

if you forget the meaning and

purpose of seeds.

If you’ve given up on

alchemy. Then the arils aren’t rubies

at all, beaming red rays at each other

no matter the inclusions. No,

then they are just hollow vestiges

of a liminal season. To be buried

under the floorboards and forgotten

or perhaps pressed into the pages of a book.

In a certain light, hints of pink.

[thebookofmoonlight]

The porcupine speaks

Pain makes me a porcupine

with long guard hairs curving

in the wrong direction.

 Pain plucks a quill or two,

writes its regretful prescription

on my bruised skin.

 Pain uses the special gloves

in the back of the bathroom

cabinet to touch me.

 Pain is not light as an emergency

blanket, barely kissing

misfiring nerves.

 Pain thinks I am its pet.

That I should let holy men

walk across me barefoot.

 (As if that would help.)

 Pain serenades me in a whimper,

calls me a poor animal

while it pours concrete in my bones.

 Pain croons that it’s a blessing

even as it breaks my spines

and steals my words.

 Pain murmurs that no one

will love me like it does,

relishing me like an exotic delicacy.

 Pain is cheating on me with 10 million

people in the U.S.

who also have my condition.

 Pain turns my quills inside out

while I try to sleep;

never told me I literally

 make my own medicine.

Nice to know there is life

beyond the symptom severity scale

 (and widespread pain index.)

[thebookofmoonlight]

humble brag

I’ve been the lover of clouds; even rode my own blue zephyr.

Scryed with sunlight and didn’t go blind. Had a one-night stand with each

of the seven seas. Whispered with a unicorn under a strawberry moon.

Learned to weather work from an old book, whipping up dirt into a stinging

cocktail no one had ordered but the toads. Been a constellation of

carbs on the asphalt. Food for birds and others.

Sweet blooded, I make an excellent meal.

Wear my bites like summer badges.

Grew my hair into a rope and escaped the bedroom window

without any help. Traveled into the subcortical zones of the brain,

then painted the deep and ancient structure

from memory on my hands with water color.

Provided a good place for a small animal to die,

clover soft, with little black feet wrapped carefully in a

recycled fancy napkin. Named him Leo.

Buried him in sacred compost. No need to check the pH.

Taught my tears to flow superiorly, back up their iridescent tracks. I

am mostly water; I need every drop.