Sol Invictus

My cold, bare arms, my ragged throat
  Have never summoned you before --
I know, much more, the light no longer
  Holds the tinder that can burn in me.

But for the sake of midnight, sun,

Rise!

Sol Invictus, epithet of gall!
Unconquerable!
Fire-eyed Napoleon, unconquerable:

Rise!

Thy lips of vital fire, strike into me thy revelation:
"Virtue alone is sure!"

But dark is a virtue, oh my beloved,
  For it wants to end.
Sorrow is virtue,
  For it wants to end.
Jealousy and Anger, those two sallow sisters, too,
  Beneath their shifts are naked virtue,
    For they want to end.

Only Hatred,
Hatred and Pride,
  Feed on themselves -- Ouroboros of vice!
    Two circled snakes, a disc of lost eternity.

And now?

'Tis midnight, oh my love, and in the dark
  All pride will waste and wither,
  Hatred, even, needs the light.

Listen close, thou molten resurrection stone:

The morbid hollow of the night,
  Alone
  Stands
  Pure
And cannot cry, but whimpers:

"Oh thou sun, thou long forgot eternity --


Rise!


Rise!


Rise!"


(Photo by schaaflicht)

Read More......

Ink Notes #2: "There are two kinds of purity"

It's a shame this poem didn't turn out, because I love this song, but that's always the way - it's harder to write something honest if you love it, and honesty was never my strong suit in the first place.

There are two kinds of purity,
       The first is to be clean:
1) The plump-faced tidy smiling one
       Who know where her hands have been
2) The pretty little meadow with
       The purple-paley blooms
Of violets
                     3) The well-swept floor
       Of a fresh hospital room.
4) The handsome white of new-scrubbed hands
       5) The freshing scent of mints
6) The smell of elementary schools
       Where other souls were sent.
7) The burn of bleach on bloody sheets,
8) The sound of freshly butchered meat
9) The clean cut limbs of paper dolls
       Before they touch your hands.
But don't forget the second strand
Of purity reserved for man -
       For if you are not neat
You only need a pretty way
Of putting all your parts away.
Perhaps inside a little box
       Or underneath the sea
       You might consider it to be
An injury -
I disagree.

(No more, in it's peculiar way
Than other purities.
The soap that scrubs can dry the skin
       The mint can burn the eye.
The pretty child can snap a heart.
       The violet can die.)

A hurt is not defined by pain,
       A wound, not circumscribed by blood,
              A broken breast not evident.
To injure - is to fail.
Cleanliness is injury
To she whose made of crumpled leaves
And last December's soil.

Read More......