Pagan Pride

Ritual

Ritual gives form to meaning
(every wiseman's son doth know).
Every act from which we're gleaning,
Every sack that we must sow
Gives rise to tides that make us wise;
Gives humor chance for binding wounds.
Does good these ancient weary eyes
To dance abandoned round the moon.



I Have All-ways Been

Magic is not part of me.
It is every molecule,
holding together higher intent.
Tracking the winding trail
stars and moonlight exhale potency
spells, incantations, hidden divinations
flicker in malleable materiality.
Living Earth, patiently moves through rotations,
inhales stardust.
In darkness, creation recycles.
Magic is all.



Dark Magick

In the still of the dark of the moon
after the revelrie has passed on
deep, deep into the frozen fields of dreamless sleep
we, walking, silently, along the riverbed
breathing in ancient ash of woodsmoke
breathing out long-growing tears
to weave ghostly tentacles
along our path
take each others' hand up to our heart
to pray, to kiss, to whisper
thus casting an eternal spell.



metaphysicians

Boldly we go where so many have gone before
Each informed by our unique set and setting.
Some perform alchemy, mixing metaphors
upon a marble altar.
Telling sooth, or constantly mapping the stars,
we orate ancient fantasies,
often reclothed to fit the current fashion.
There are werecreatures, energy vampires,
Lions and Tigers and Bears,
Insects infected with rare, lethal archetypes
-- angry demons mating with our own cells
To destroy us.
There are lethal conspiracies of demon-men,
Bent on self-destruction of their/our whole half-species.
Warships, projectiles of evil
invade our consciousnesses, destroying our dreams.
There are armies of the night, marching,
conscripting our young, our heartland, our hierophants.
We watch, and scribble notes, often indecipherable.
We chant like banshees, chattering primates,
impressed with our own noise.
Sometimes we forget for a bit, slip out of the script;
We awaken to find ourselves singing;
Creating heavenly music.




Crossing the Threshold

At the crossroads at midnight
my lady did swear
that she must be alone
to face up to her demons

"Please understand that I must
be aware of just who I am
and where I've come from."

I sat by the bridge
as she set forth her flames,
her sorceror's lore, her alchemic runes
So she'd know who to honor, to break
and to blame
what she'd been made for,
her journey, her tools.

At the crossroads, past midnight,
just before dawn
my lady thrice nodded and
stamped out her flames.
She beckened I join her out on starry meadow
to kiss and rejoyce
and reveal our true names.


Enchanting
(for Kala Snowflower)

Magical child, the world awaits you

Not just this place,
any world you care to grace,

relate to, turn your lovely face to.

"We love you"
sing the winds, the seas,
the creatures large and small

"We love you always"

Singing and dancing long into the night,

you turn it into day.

Play that haunting melody.
It moves you
into a chance to name your trance,

to name us all

as we, before your eyes,
the skies will dance for you,
will open wide their hearts of stars.
Sparkling through the night,
Shining into day.

You play.

All of creation rejoices to your song,
creating worlds of joy.




Hekate's Child

Child of Hekate,
sweetness and light?
Where is the mark
of your entombment?
Buried prematurely,
to strive for growth
in dark enclosure
striving for a breath
of the pompously negligent
Sun,
of the blushing Moon
of the squabbling sons and daughters,
of daylight's pleasures.
Striving, tenderly
twisting around corners
aching for an unknown touch.

"Tell me, sir, then, how's it going now?"
Looking up narrowly from a tepid meal,
all at once remembering
playfellows on the schoolyard
running, out of breath,
filled with pride
a jolly good game.
Always someone begging
my attention,
but it wasn't really me,
just a story to steam off
or a butt to joke on.
All the silly give and take;
only time is taken
and that in big hungry chunks
of no tomorrows.

One long day
now the part all groggy
waking from fevered napping.
It wasn't supposed to be a tomb
nestled in Transylvanian bloodlines.
It was meant to be a child's cot,
freshly laundered cotton lace.
But the rats got in,
once the cats had been slaughtered.

Slowly wakening
I strive again to find my footing.
Learning to walk
was never as easy
as forgetting to fly.



Manifestation Ritual

Create the vision.
Move into it.
Live there.
Feel it growing through you.
Play with it,
in a wide range of perspectives.
Delight in it.
Laugh, dance, weep.
Sing out loud.
Sing softly as a lullaby.
Now, slowly or quickly or however it feels right,
create a stairway.
Name each stair.
Give each a folder of possibilities,
more and more complete, concrete, living.
Live out the life of your stairway,
allowing it to lead you to the promises
you would have made yourself and your vision
as you became lovers entwined.



Straw Sky

Straw sky
Westerly
Moonless, Sunless, Starless
Leaveless trees point gnarly fingers
to the heavens
deepening into darkness

Frayed and tattered dreams
Lucid praying
A feeling beyond touch
Beyond fear or sadness
A feeling unlike hope
Without reason
Formless
Yet delineated
Like constellations.

I make motions with my hands,
Move my skin into contact
With ineffable realms,
Move with the oozing miasma
Creating signs in faint luminescence.
Bit by bit they encompass
the night's horizon.

But there is more.
It comes to me in dribs and drabs,
Droning, encircling, swooping in and out.
I organize a study chamber
Pull out maps and rulers,
Set my quill to taking notes.
Images engaged in excited conversation
Pull me in to their heady company.

I can feel the sky breaking around me,
Bits of colored prisms falling.
Make a wish.



Raising Hell

Not true sacred magick.
Cynical sleight of hand
turns sweat and dreams,
lives of desperation
into neat bundles of greed.
But the pain burns through
not content to be twisted
into fast cars, high-stakes games,
brilliant careers in glad-handing.
It wants its payment.
False wizards of arrogant charm
play with chthonic forces
more angry and deadly than flame.
Unaware of the cursed seeds
they cultivate,
strangling life force from below.
Unsupervised children
playing with matches,
grizzled and gray as some may appear,
laugh at the bright spectacle
as homes burn.
The balance is always paid.
Magick is never free.
Will the lesson ever sink in?
Be careful what you conjure.



Singing to the Chorus

Getting warmer
Days numbered by travelers,
barbarians rushing in to conquest.
Taken in longer view,
tumbling through the ages ~
Sundials exchanged for
binary spiders click-clocking,
tabulating the enormous sum,
only a summary of things gone before.
The reality of childhood, striving creatures,
pulling upward from bootie straps,
scrambling for a place in the pile
near enough to the top
that derision, pouring downward,
obliges them to only the fiercest of Lords.
Merrily spent the pocket-change of
dollars flowing upward.
Old games reign under the big top.
Solemn children in the circus stands
betting on which clown will fall.
They speak to you of evil, o' my children,
Church Fathers swearing to the sky;
cold, withered Mums hoping for a crust
of noblesse oblige.
Evil is the providence of Satan,
cloven-hoofed, dancing in circle's
centerpoint, playing the pipes of Pan.
Oceans of blood boil
Leading edges swelter, crisp into
conflagration.
In Summerland children play, dance to
rollicking pipery.
Naked under beaming Moon and starlight,
they act out tales well-loved by All.

Listen to the heart of bliss.

Lie on open sand, smelling vibrance

under oceanic starlit sky

Breeze breathes eternity, opening

inward to see intricately

expansive poetry --

thought in magnificent splendor.

All art is magical; all magic is art.

Yet they are not the same, and part

of a grander landscape.

gypsy hand

Too brite days
midnights that refuse to
abide dark and secret
when empty phrases chant
to fairytale Moons
I tell myself
This is no ordinary room
This is no fleeting flittering life
This is a magical passageway
sparkling like mica, like miracles
 
Quiet traces
luminescent impression
a trailing kite tail binds
silent whimpers, sojourning whispers,
tears shining behind mime smiles
 
Crone's gnarled fingers, play
to spite agony
simulate touch
beyond ache
Crouched scarred shadow
I cast silhouette of metamagic gypsy
hand
offering