Ad Mortuos

...and the dead came back to me when they'd heard I'd found it

sitting on the rock sunning itself, a coiling unpinned


thing, a wing, burning and glowing
chorus growing in the water there on the rock like me
a loaded knot like me
unknotting suddenly and green; ascendant
in amphibian sing
coiling unpinned plopping
down (like me)

betrayer, she (betrayed the rock)

my night of madness in a drop
forced back by death
and calling

surely some tremendum is at hand

a night of madness in a drop
teetered there and clung to stone
until what shook began to rock
in rocking splendor terribly the moan
through frogs and toads and tatter
garment torn; belittled and dismembered spot
smaller, weaker, harder to believe
raised itself still wet and shorn and dressed in
wing (and of its own accord began to sing)

here is where is still the growing tree

her bright spot glazed in christic night
and in betrayer too, the wing eternal
danced das ding

O Sing! O shadow word (but just this once)
of that to which the lord of frog and toad relies
of that to which the dead return with rage and cries

the unperfected stillness

in the speech
of man; O
shadow, slur this speech and stir

bright
love

her death
came back to me and when it did
athanatoi came too;

the whisper full in emptiness
and sign; a glowing
darkly burning yet divine

This poem first published ...©2008 En Kata Poetry Series Ad Mortuos stephanie pope mythopoetry.com



Writing For Ghosts

the best episode

of Buffy
brought together
in solution
the slayers of all times
& formed them into a
timeless series
gathered at once
to muse upon &
doing as they do
you and I will too

to touch this new meaning
the wounded image used,
we imagine our stories
the way ghost writers do

when what they do
is write for ghost bodies

how, in newer poetry,
timelessness moves
a timeless story along

ghost ritings
honor virtual things having
no futures & are not passing
anymore for things;

not things
they
shape the way
haunted blood flows

I loved the fiery tongue
of that final Buffy season
suddenly torched by the
wounded fate in a
divine female form
offering the bodiless fleshed
slayers to paler font; the

little minute― the many
on fire at once
made this talisman



Moon Wings

Everything in the orphanage

belongs; stars are fed and fed

to emptiness, the

dark space

not empty, buoys

a girling in between;

an in between that

is not ―Alive!

***



The moment light fed here

‘is not’ began to be-long;

it longed and moved

movements twy-formed

in being-so; nothing
came first

these movements

swished & swirled

in twirling swishes hissing

where no one wanted to be
starry movements in ‘once upon a’

timed be-long still not anything

& life’s conception thrice prolonged

noticed there was a girl-tale in it and

the holiness of it.

***



The fire, what fed there, had its

own weathered reasoning.

Nay! Two, at least!

Subjectivities already without subjects

knew no riddance; rhymed and reasoned

why a world weight upon it.
T’here came Death; it entered on cue.

Love, his brother came licking his chops, too

and you and I entered like they

star-flung tales tailing creaturely sire.

Nowhere swished feathered rivulets t’here

almost successfully

***



Once upon a milk bond is make-believe

Light, growling is too, in substances tis true

which knew no riddance. So, too

did a reflection likened unto a girl

enlivening a crèche of stars with a tiny God.



And, the story says, he placed her

in the belly region

along with the enlivener, not filling

a creaturely sire who’s tail feeds ‘there’ t’here.