the willow weeps today,
head bowed in black,
bereaved silhouette on the
horizon.
the dying sun
spills its crimson blood in
adieu.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
the willow
by Karyn Huntting Peters
the willow weeps today,
head bowed in black,
bereaved silhouette on the
horizon.
the dying sun
spills its crimson blood in
adieu.
the willow weeps today,
head bowed in black,
bereaved silhouette on the
horizon.
the dying sun
spills its crimson blood in
adieu.
Sonnet I: Know Thyself
poetry by Nathan Hays
graphics by Karyn Huntting Peters
In all the world are strewn the litter of burning mind,
Scraps of journals torn in desperate hope to find,
A glimpse of Hermes' tablet, the jigsaw's missing piece,
The Word was lost so long ago, no one rests in peace.
"I found it!" proclaims the prophet who waves a patchwork page,
"It lives!" declares the scientist leashed to monster's rage,
"Eureka!" cries the thinker, his logic a world entire,
"My God," assures the pious who forsakes his true desire.
Each in turn will falter if ever they pause to see,
No key they have, no passport, no chalice to set them free,
For once they cage the candle, the light will fade away,
Their charred remains will fill the wasteland that will stay.
Follow not the guides whose flocks are led astray,
Only from within you will be found the truest way.
graphics by Karyn Huntting Peters
In all the world are strewn the litter of burning mind,
Scraps of journals torn in desperate hope to find,
A glimpse of Hermes' tablet, the jigsaw's missing piece,
The Word was lost so long ago, no one rests in peace.
"I found it!" proclaims the prophet who waves a patchwork page,
"It lives!" declares the scientist leashed to monster's rage,
"Eureka!" cries the thinker, his logic a world entire,
"My God," assures the pious who forsakes his true desire.
Each in turn will falter if ever they pause to see,
No key they have, no passport, no chalice to set them free,
For once they cage the candle, the light will fade away,
Their charred remains will fill the wasteland that will stay.
Follow not the guides whose flocks are led astray,
Only from within you will be found the truest way.
Sonnet II: The Playwright
by Karyn Huntting Peters
Midnight's velvet curtain obscures the ancient stage
Avon's murky waters still lay in silent wait
Slowly actors gather for their long-awaited wage
Stratford's dusty pages their hollow yearnings sate
The moon's orb rises higher, commands the star-crossed sky
Lumens flooding Avon, its secrets hidden still
The curtain slowly lifting, the stage's hemlock dry
Players take their places, the playwright grasps his quill
The pulsing night's blood quickens, the scenes to pages flow
Breezes coyly shifting, plays ending far from sewn
What tragedy lay waiting, no earthly spirits know
Stage borne into reality, its martyrs still unknown
The audience is fading, far stars now growing bright
And we are now the playwright, the ink our mystic night
Midnight's velvet curtain obscures the ancient stage
Avon's murky waters still lay in silent wait
Slowly actors gather for their long-awaited wage
Stratford's dusty pages their hollow yearnings sate
The moon's orb rises higher, commands the star-crossed sky
Lumens flooding Avon, its secrets hidden still
The curtain slowly lifting, the stage's hemlock dry
Players take their places, the playwright grasps his quill
The pulsing night's blood quickens, the scenes to pages flow
Breezes coyly shifting, plays ending far from sewn
What tragedy lay waiting, no earthly spirits know
Stage borne into reality, its martyrs still unknown
The audience is fading, far stars now growing bright
And we are now the playwright, the ink our mystic night
Sonnet III: The Muse
by Karyn Huntting Peters
Return to me o muse in dreams redeem thy course
By sleep the dust of stars doth carry thy embrace.
In raging tears of angst doth thou with no remorse
Full baptize hand of mine and bathe my pen in grace.
Thine eyes ensconce long-darkened tomb in golden light,
Illumineth thy sweet advance my most demure.
Disquietude thou dissipate by veil of night,
Thy softly-whispered words my mortal fears abjure.
And offer thou apothecary’s potion nigh
That i should drink with certain hand and toast to thee.
To winged flight ascend thy poesy or die,
In death as life to lie beneath the judas tree.
From dusty headstones hearts are lifted from their strife,
From ashes rise unbound to soul’s immortal life.
Return to me o muse in dreams redeem thy course
By sleep the dust of stars doth carry thy embrace.
In raging tears of angst doth thou with no remorse
Full baptize hand of mine and bathe my pen in grace.
Thine eyes ensconce long-darkened tomb in golden light,
Illumineth thy sweet advance my most demure.
Disquietude thou dissipate by veil of night,
Thy softly-whispered words my mortal fears abjure.
And offer thou apothecary’s potion nigh
That i should drink with certain hand and toast to thee.
To winged flight ascend thy poesy or die,
In death as life to lie beneath the judas tree.
From dusty headstones hearts are lifted from their strife,
From ashes rise unbound to soul’s immortal life.
Aurora Borealis
by Nathan Hays and Karyn Huntting Peters
graphics by Karyn Huntting Peters
A magnetic shudder precedes your long-awaited arrival. You are all around me, ethereal aurora borealis, hues shimmering violet, green, blue, white. Entrance your nascent victim, aurora. Sway enticingly, cascading down like waterfalls from the right hand of Zeus. Lance Arthurian swords of ancient waters through the heart of the blood-red earth. Fall from the skies like fire into the yearning hands of Prometheus. Burn through the writhing bodies of the eternal stigmata-marked. Siphon from earth's molten core its darkest pain to quiet the wandering of your ghostly lights above. Hear the unspoken whispers of dervish souls escaping into the night air, and quill their rapturous embraces and anguished tears on eternal palimpsests with night sky's blackest ink.
- Karyn
Far from burning sands and steaming jungle is an arctic silence screaming in brilliant hues. While the wide world wipes dusty grime from its salty brow, Merlin's fire lances through the icy forms frozen in the endless twilight. Deep into the earth the unearthly power streams. The dynamo throbs in rhythm with the pulsing rain. Sol's secret wind replenishes the occult flame.
- Nate
Infused anew with the mystical fire, overflowing now with white hot embers, the earth dances slowly across its starlit ballroom, slain through by the unearthly dynamo, hypnotized by Merlin's sword of light. Prometheus slowly closes his now-sated hands and draws them close to his breast. It is done.
The dervishes whirl and whisper in the ether, somewhere between the molten core of earth and the violet flame of the aurora. There is electricity in the air and the occasional sound of scratching quills. The aurora borealis has never burned this brightly, this deeply.
- Karyn
How mundane seem the mechanics of graphite and fiber, ink and vellum, oil and canvas. Carbon infiltrates the matrix with inextricable randomness. Turbid solvents flow into tiny cracks only to evaporate to the winds leaving their flotsam residues. Ordered colors are smeared together with entropic fineness. As might a meteor smash perfect quartz into a billion fragments or a star radiate its fusions across the spectrum.
And yet, coursing through these dying movements is fire! Ripping through the dust is a searing wind that leaves mere whorls and traces, but will entrance the djinns to come. In vapid grit lay forms meaningless to the universe, yet fuel the divine flames that dance upon it.
Grasp the clays, for they are the veil and the portal that lay between us.
- Nate
Promethean promise unbroken, gift delivered, the fires of the kiln are stoked. Arctic ices begin to melt, mirroring aurora's ancient dance. The scalding breath of Olympian spectators rouses the sleeping spirits. Magmous caverns, awakened by the scent of warm gases, await their metamorphosis.
The hushed voices of the ether grow louder. The djinn are stirring in adagio, crossing over from their eternal dream of auroras and waterfalls and verdant glades.
The sky pulses with life. The earth seethes in the heat of the growing pyre. The mythical bird marks another half millennium gone as he circles the dancing flames. The clays will soon be cast.
Hands of the Moirae descend in a pas de deux, but the veil will not yet be lifted. Whispers from the zephyr: porta eterna.
- Karyn
While vast preponderate clouds of frenetic atoms coalesce in galactic proportions, the silent mirror begins to stir. Eerie colors like oil films on an unseen ether swirl and knot. Soon globules of Promethean fire condense and separate. Into the lifeless clay the light presses like singularities in dimensions beyond ken. Olympian hands seal each in geodes of hardening slime. Globs of oozing mud are molded around them.
As the heat of the great furnace penetrates into the argillaceous mass, threads of the divine flame grow from within in fractal venation. Capillary fineness continues to bifurcate until the dimensions entwine on Planck's scale and the melding is complete. Soul mirrors matter in a Yin Yang of intimacy.
Infinite mind veiled in portals of clay. The breach is open though few see it or pass.
- Nate
graphics by Karyn Huntting Peters
A magnetic shudder precedes your long-awaited arrival. You are all around me, ethereal aurora borealis, hues shimmering violet, green, blue, white. Entrance your nascent victim, aurora. Sway enticingly, cascading down like waterfalls from the right hand of Zeus. Lance Arthurian swords of ancient waters through the heart of the blood-red earth. Fall from the skies like fire into the yearning hands of Prometheus. Burn through the writhing bodies of the eternal stigmata-marked. Siphon from earth's molten core its darkest pain to quiet the wandering of your ghostly lights above. Hear the unspoken whispers of dervish souls escaping into the night air, and quill their rapturous embraces and anguished tears on eternal palimpsests with night sky's blackest ink.
- Karyn
Far from burning sands and steaming jungle is an arctic silence screaming in brilliant hues. While the wide world wipes dusty grime from its salty brow, Merlin's fire lances through the icy forms frozen in the endless twilight. Deep into the earth the unearthly power streams. The dynamo throbs in rhythm with the pulsing rain. Sol's secret wind replenishes the occult flame.
- Nate
Infused anew with the mystical fire, overflowing now with white hot embers, the earth dances slowly across its starlit ballroom, slain through by the unearthly dynamo, hypnotized by Merlin's sword of light. Prometheus slowly closes his now-sated hands and draws them close to his breast. It is done.
The dervishes whirl and whisper in the ether, somewhere between the molten core of earth and the violet flame of the aurora. There is electricity in the air and the occasional sound of scratching quills. The aurora borealis has never burned this brightly, this deeply.
- Karyn
How mundane seem the mechanics of graphite and fiber, ink and vellum, oil and canvas. Carbon infiltrates the matrix with inextricable randomness. Turbid solvents flow into tiny cracks only to evaporate to the winds leaving their flotsam residues. Ordered colors are smeared together with entropic fineness. As might a meteor smash perfect quartz into a billion fragments or a star radiate its fusions across the spectrum.
And yet, coursing through these dying movements is fire! Ripping through the dust is a searing wind that leaves mere whorls and traces, but will entrance the djinns to come. In vapid grit lay forms meaningless to the universe, yet fuel the divine flames that dance upon it.
Grasp the clays, for they are the veil and the portal that lay between us.
- Nate
Promethean promise unbroken, gift delivered, the fires of the kiln are stoked. Arctic ices begin to melt, mirroring aurora's ancient dance. The scalding breath of Olympian spectators rouses the sleeping spirits. Magmous caverns, awakened by the scent of warm gases, await their metamorphosis.
The hushed voices of the ether grow louder. The djinn are stirring in adagio, crossing over from their eternal dream of auroras and waterfalls and verdant glades.
The sky pulses with life. The earth seethes in the heat of the growing pyre. The mythical bird marks another half millennium gone as he circles the dancing flames. The clays will soon be cast.
Hands of the Moirae descend in a pas de deux, but the veil will not yet be lifted. Whispers from the zephyr: porta eterna.
- Karyn
While vast preponderate clouds of frenetic atoms coalesce in galactic proportions, the silent mirror begins to stir. Eerie colors like oil films on an unseen ether swirl and knot. Soon globules of Promethean fire condense and separate. Into the lifeless clay the light presses like singularities in dimensions beyond ken. Olympian hands seal each in geodes of hardening slime. Globs of oozing mud are molded around them.
As the heat of the great furnace penetrates into the argillaceous mass, threads of the divine flame grow from within in fractal venation. Capillary fineness continues to bifurcate until the dimensions entwine on Planck's scale and the melding is complete. Soul mirrors matter in a Yin Yang of intimacy.
Infinite mind veiled in portals of clay. The breach is open though few see it or pass.
- Nate
dinner companion
by Karyn Huntting Peters
engine sounds, he tarries
nothing save impatience
his lunch, a banana unwrapping
spotted skin, hard and sinewy
passing child hears a snort as he dives
into the ripeness, nostrils filling
with diesel as the truck throws up a black
dinner companion
engine sounds, he tarries
nothing save impatience
his lunch, a banana unwrapping
spotted skin, hard and sinewy
passing child hears a snort as he dives
into the ripeness, nostrils filling
with diesel as the truck throws up a black
dinner companion
the garden
by Karyn Huntting Peters
if i should return upon a morning’s pink dawn
to our secret garden to sit beneath the shady palm
and feel the wet moss slide between my toes
and if my love should not be there to sit beside me
if i should walk among the purple flowers
inhale their heady perfume, drink of their opening beauty,
and caress their soft petals in remembering
and if my love should not lay with me in fields of violet
if i should pluck the perfect ripened fruit
squeeze it longingly to my naked breast until it weeps
and feel its nectar as it drips slowly down
and if my love should not drink of me to quench his thirst
then i should carve the name of fate into our palm
and lie prostrate in its nightshade at day’s end
gaze in grave face upon the stars and their cruel gift of desire
and bid my soul eternal rest without my love’s sweet kiss
if i should return upon a morning’s pink dawn
to our secret garden to sit beneath the shady palm
and feel the wet moss slide between my toes
and if my love should not be there to sit beside me
if i should walk among the purple flowers
inhale their heady perfume, drink of their opening beauty,
and caress their soft petals in remembering
and if my love should not lay with me in fields of violet
if i should pluck the perfect ripened fruit
squeeze it longingly to my naked breast until it weeps
and feel its nectar as it drips slowly down
and if my love should not drink of me to quench his thirst
then i should carve the name of fate into our palm
and lie prostrate in its nightshade at day’s end
gaze in grave face upon the stars and their cruel gift of desire
and bid my soul eternal rest without my love’s sweet kiss
borne of fire
by Karyn Huntting Peters
Fire deep indigo doth burn
O'er past consumed this eve
Rise again o birds of death
Emblazoned flames to cleave
Vestiges of separate flight
Eternal memory leave
Risen now from fire as same
On pyres did gain reprieve
Never-ending two this one
Entwined this essence weave
Under light of full moon's glow
Star born such timeless eve
Fire deep indigo doth burn
O'er past consumed this eve
Rise again o birds of death
Emblazoned flames to cleave
Vestiges of separate flight
Eternal memory leave
Risen now from fire as same
On pyres did gain reprieve
Never-ending two this one
Entwined this essence weave
Under light of full moon's glow
Star born such timeless eve
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