Sorrow Mountain

My bias for poetry is becoming apparent here but I originally intended to post more stories. So in the interest of revisiting that intention, I made another visit to one of my favorite sites: The Proppian Fairy Tale Generator. The following narrative is a computer generated tale. I selected the following functions at the generator to construct it: delivery, villainy, guidance, and branding.

I also discovered that limiting function choices to around half a dozen and not choosing too many that conflict elicits better results. The title is mine.

Sorrow Mountain

I told a million answers to their biting questions to silence them.

The men of the earth hungered for my people's flesh. If I did not provide them with a sacrifice to abate their sorrows, they would take my body and walk amongst my people like one of the undead. They would find ways to sip their lives into their own empty souls.

The mists grew heavy. When I stretched my arm out I could not see past my hand, but it did not matter. When I closed my eyes my feet moved along with the rhythm of the mountain and its soils. Faster and faster I could almost feel myself fly.

Forms circulated around my body on all sides and I could no longer breathe. Lungs tight and waist constricted I watched as my skin turned into the color of soil. I could no longer distinguish my body from the mountain's.

What Persephone Remembers

...No one understands anymore
how beautiful he was. But Persephone remembers.

Also that he embraced her, right there,
with her uncle watching. She remembers
sunlight flashing on his bare arms.

This is the last moment she remembers clearly.
Then the dark god bore her away.

She also remembers, less clearly,
the chilling insight that from this moment
she couldn't live without him again.

The girl who disappears from the pool
will never return. A woman will return,
looking for the girl she was...











Excerpt from"The Myth of Innocence" from Averno by Louise Glück.

Red Swan

Leda
by H. D.

Where the slow river
meets the tide,
a red swan lifts red wings
and darker beak,
and underneath the purple down
of his soft breast
uncurls his coral feet.
Through the deep purple
of the dying heat
of sun and mist,
the level ray of sun-beam
has caressed
the lily with dark breast,
and flecked with richer gold
its golden crest.
Where the slow lifting
of the tide,
floats into the river
and slowly drifts
among the reeds,
and lifts the yellow flags,
he floats
where tide and river meet.
Ah kingly kiss—
no more regret
nor old deep memories
to mar the bliss;
where the low sedge is thick,
the gold day-lily
outspreads and rests
beneath soft fluttering
of red swan wings
and the warm quivering
of the red swan's breast.

Wise Blood

Her tattered robe falls open as she weaves
from room to unswept room, an empty glass
of sherry dangling from her palsied hand.
A sip of crimson wine begins to bleed

and tumble from the flesh warm lip – a sticky fire
that stains her tongue and purifies her anger.
She uncoils from a dreamless kind of languor
as moist red ribbons taste the fury’s ire.

Her lovers crowd the house as she unwinds
and lights a Lucky Strike, drags deep, exhales
grey smoke into a staring, chiseled face –
unflinching and insensible of time.

She tells them change will come and she will be
invincible. The boys seem to agree.




Poem by The Other Ivy

Painting of Medusa by Arnold Böcklin, 1878

The Garden of the Hesperides

Orbed, and glittering, and pendent,

Apples of Hesperides!

Not one missing, still transcendent,

Clustering like a swarm of bees.

Yielding to no man's desire,

Glowing with a saffron fire,

Splendid, unassailed, the golden

Apples of Hesperides!


excerpt from Apples of Hesperides, a poem by Amy Lowell

Painting: The Garden of the Hesperides, c 1892 by Frederic Leighton (1830-1896)

Psyche Opening the Box

Do not open the box.

Don't go in, don't go out

and if you do, don't stay for long.

Don’t leave the path, eat the apple,

don’t you touch the golden feather.

Don’t look back, look in there, look at her, don’t look at me.

Don’t you listen, don't you kiss them,

Do not say a thing.

The Stone Mind

A Zen teacher overheard some monks arguing about subjectivity and objectivity. He joined them and asked, "Do you consider the great stone at the edge of the fire to be inside or outside of your mind?"

"Everything is an objectification of the mind according to Buddhist thought," one of the monks replied, "so the stone must reside within my mind."

"Your head must feel very heavy," said the teacher.


Adaptation of The Stone Mind at Zen Koans