A Magazine of Many Arts

Today is the last day at Arisia. I’ll be doing some crafts with the little kids (one of my favorite times of the con!) and wrapping up the weekend.

Next week, I will be at Arisia, the big SF convention in Boston. I’m going to have a table at the art show. Please comment if you’d like to get together.

I won’t be working on any new cameos this year, but I’ll have more knitted bracelets and some gargoyles. And maybe some other things as inspiration strikes and time permits.

damned
test-tube refuse,
love-
lessness grown in tanks and bottles
we stirred fertility en masse
at minimal risk,
same blood, same genes
our co-flesh,
(could we have foreseen
the pillaging and plundering?)

our similarities have become our differences,
same face yet deviant actions—exhibit
the pattern of autoimmune failure.
our soldier selves stand at the front lines.
how many dead?
they hold artificial lives at gunpoint.
triggers assume a life of their own,
becoming thunder claps
and then silence

Did you
never wonder, my love,
why your briars parted for me,
why I came to you
unscratched by thorns?

Did you
never glimpse, my love,
the bones of princes,
caught against
your castle walls?

I am
half ogre, my love.
My mother consumes
the flesh of children.
I steal kisses
from sleeping maidens,
and lick blood from
their tender lips.

Seven
fairies
watch us
as we dance.

Come,
raise your fingers
to my lips.
Your roses cry out
for water and blood.



“Nebula2” by Patrick Hoesly – http://www.flickr.com/photos/zooboing/5610784475/. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nebula2.jpg#/media/File:Nebula2.jpg

The red of passion isn’t the only fire.
Things burn in different hues,
the varying blues of intensity,
the suspicious yellow nearing outtage
and green, just another element.

Darkness, too, is fire
when love is neither
present or absent.
The chilling heat
chars extremities
with the bitter
you-could-have–
things unsaid always did like
to fester
in meteoric crevices or
black holes or even stars.

Nothing ever burns out
because space never runs out
of refuse.

MOON CREATURES

I miss the Sun
But I am alive,
Housed in rock homes
Inside the premiere
Lava tube on the Moon,
Carved to be an 
Underground city.

It’s almost like
Living on Earth here,
But for the sketchy
Sunlight we receive,
Depending on the
Alignment of the 
External mirrors.

We have twin islands
On an artificial ocean,
With deep sea creatures
Like the anglerfish
And the kraken eel,
With its stringy meat
And relentless stare.

Seaweed thrives, but
No fruit or flower has
Successfully bloomed here,
Despite our scientists’
Best efforts, so we eat 
What we have to endure
And survive.

In the mirror I no longer
See me, but a pallid beast 
With gills and webbed feet.
Tonight I will fish 
In the deep, my luminous
Eyes leading the way
So my family can feast.

“Burning Ship Fractal”. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Burning_Ship_Fractal.jpg#/media/File:Burning_Ship_Fractal.jpg

I.

First the storms come
and we do everything
we can to keep the ship afloat,
a three-masted frigate bound
to Portsmouth out of Ceylon ,
riding low in the water with
a heavy cargo of tea and spices.

Dark clouds fill the horizon
and race toward us faster
than the ship can run.
Light flees the sky and
in the false dusk that follows,
a harsh moisture bristling
with electricity fills the air.

Before we can trim the sails
sheets of rain avalanche
down, shafts of lightning
strike the waters about us,
and the wind begins to howl
like a bughouse monster.

Sometimes we manage
to ride out that first storm
and that gives us courage.
Then there is another,
dangerous as the first,
and a third fiercer still.

The masts topple,
the hull is breached,
and we are thrown
into the icy brine
amidst the lashing rain.

As we sink into the cold
and voracious deep,
fish with long rows
of razor-sharp teeth
tear us apart bite of
flesh by bite of flesh.

It seems to take forever
before we can drown,
our mouths screaming
soundlessly as our
convulsing lungs
are filled with water.

II

Worse than the storms
are the deadly calms that
leave the sea motionless,
a sheet of blue glass on
which reflections of the
light above are blinding.

We lie slack upon the decks
in whatever shade we find,
the sun beating down upon
us from a merciless sky.
We wait listlessly for our
rations of water and rum,
our minds lost and vacant
in the unremitting heat.

When the sun finally sinks
to the horizon, we anticipate
the temporary relief of night.
Yet there is to be no night.
Instead of shrinking the light
along the horizon grows.

Glowing orange clouds come
rolling across the waters,
horned clouds filled with
frightening shapes and figures.
The sea begins to boil as sheets
of sizzling lava sweep across it.
The wood of the ship catches
fire and the decks collapse.

As we are cast into the flames,
burning over and again,
the raging fires consuming
us endlessly, our dazed
minds come alive at last,
our pasts parade before us.

Now we realize that we
have never been sailors.
We are investment bankers,
bent politicians, cardsharps
and shady merchants,
rapists and thieves,
outrageous pimps
and audacious whores,
tyrannical husbands
and insidious wives.
All nevermore.

For now we understand
full well for the countless
time that we are nothing
more than unrepentant sinners,
mandatory guests at our own
damnations, sailing upon
the seas of Hell forevermore.

I, Sailko [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Don’t let cards or crystal ball get to you like that,
it’s just the fortune tellers’ curse;
learn to live
with the bearblood mark.

Fortune Teller
Sometimes my cards hold water like buckets
left out in the rain,
sometimes I feel their edges singe;
a glass ball is a strange thing,
shards beneath my feet, made whole.

The Tarot Deck
we are not just paint and cardboard, says The Hanged Man
but you’ll have to know us good to know, says The Priestess
Swords chatter their blades, not sure why people would read cards
and The Devil and The Fool sit smiling, back to back.

Old Seer
Before we had words on paper,
we had robes dyed bearblood dark;
people knew what we could do,
and so did we.

Glass Orb
Sometimes, I’d rather be the moon than this,
always clear so she can see through me.
Nobody asks the moon to be glass
and nobody asked me whether I wanted to be just
her crystal ball

The Green Candle
It is funny to watch her pick the truth apart
so she can make a proper fortune of it.
Sometimes, she works true magic, and that’s a different thing;
I’ve never burned so hot
as when there’s magic in my flames.

Fortune Teller
Sometimes I wish I could hide in a bearskin,
the bear’s claws and the bear’s teeth my own.

Why do people come asking for the truth
when it’s the last thing that they want to hear?

Old Seer
Remember that the moon is dark and wild
or starlight bright, yet no more tame.
We are of the moon you and I,
and a grain of moondust is wild in all of us.

Petitioner
I have brought boughs of oak, white ash, and last year’s sage,
incense and a few coins…

I have so many questions!
What say the cards? What is my fortune?

Old Seer
See, when we wore the bearblood robes
all they’d ask us for were proper questions.
These days…
well, you know yourself.

Just make it up
as you go along.

Fortune Teller
I’ll shuffle, and you cut the cards.
Now let’s see what’s in the cards for you:
they are like rivers full of rain
but don’t you worry about that…