Hecate’s House

 

Yes, I’m the owner here.
Those who come, hire.
Bodies are my businessa
and my price is right.

You’ve rapped at this hatch to dicker?
Look under that lacquered dress,
finger your wallet warily,
hold your wealth hard in the purse.

I can wait until pay
dribbles into my hand;

spend, coin by coin,
obols from eyeballs.

Cut and Parry

 


No quarter,
there will be no quarter,
Wing-Heeled Walker,
not a coin shifted
where the Styx dribbles thin.

You, Boy,
bare-arsed,
that back to me!
There will be no gilt 
to flick in your fingers,
not a glint, not a glimmer
on the grim stair down.

I have paid in slices,
Snake-Snarler,
inch after inch slashed
on the slide, cold eyes
shearing tight cells
shattered to lace 
as the loom tips,
loose woof warps,
the shuttle stutters
along the weave.

Fabric was never
your forte, not
the rip and stitch of it,
Shoddy-Cutter,
light hand dissembling
white-trembled
gauze glossed 
over the nipped
thread. But I
have crafted

twopenny taffeta,
the sleek of satin,
canvas,
cut work,
crewel work,
shot silk
and the long wind of smooth linen.

No Escape

It’s here: the split

wind rattles

the warped door.

There’s Orestes,

wits away

with the Furies, flitting

the drained fields.

I need to escape

with you, my battler

brother, unfetter

the home’s bond,

hearth-wood fretted

and beating behind us.

The days are down.

I saw my father

pitted under

the ribs, breath

sputtering up

in the gore, her knife’s

flash in the slit,

bath clotted:

tunics glittering

red in the breeze,

mother and lover 

spitted, pallid

in blood’s clutter.

Revenge splashed

family-thick.

Bitter, the wind’s

edge; keen,

the howling down 

in the stoa. You,

my brother, brittle

before the whirl,

leave me hurling  

after you, panting.

Halt and slumping,

slump and gathering,

gathering red.

The bodies will burn

back in the palace.

Iphigenia’s still dead.

Glastonbury Tor

It stays,

the tower a nipple of stone

where the round moon drinks.

Morgana enchants tonight.

Her passion, high as the wind,

spells over the Severn

where Merlin mutters,

his dream a trouble of lightning,

his loss, his need of the land.

Under the world, Morgana,

everything  breathes, you told me,

but the mist came down;

I did not catch when ritual fell

to stone in the cloister,

those, too, long dropped.

The wind whines coldly now;

it cries on the Tor.

My centre gone,

rain lashes and stings

where only the street lights

pour through the dark to

echo the perfect moon.

 

Incantation for the Ninth Night

 

The moon splits

in the chopped lake,

last light

flitting and dipping;

‘Myself, always, to all of Myself’

where I tread on stars,

where buttercups hang,

glittering heads

in the tossed grass.

 

On each spin of the wind,

a tune from the spear

harping my ribs.

‘Myself to Myself,

always Myself,’

I hear when the ravens

fall past on their backs

as I writhe on this ride

in the wind-blown Ash.

 

The dark greys;

I watch for the spell

of the something dawn,

‘Always Myself

to all of Myself.’

Days. Nights.

Nine of them swung

over my heels

and one eye gone,

 

the pain of it, screams,

blood-crust my hair,

then cut of the rope

and twice the sight:

           ‘Myself to Myself.’