Utterly Pure

Utterly Pure

by Deborah Walker

The bull is not the only animal.
Buried deep, dust rotted horns decay.
Remembering the steps of the labyrinth’s dance.

In the house of double axes: the reborn snake.
Glazed faience skin of quarzty sheen winds
over pithoi jars and aqueducts run dry.
Where red-skinned men and white skinned women,
danced. Feet stained with dusted saffron.
Upon greenstone, jadeite, obsidian,
Beat.

Snake is the dance remembered by the dead bull.
Wound around the white arms of broken collonades.
In the palace of tunnels.
In the city of chthonic promise.
Coiled and waiting, in shadows lies the heart.
Utter purity and the lustrous promise of rebirth.

* * *

First published in Eternal Haunted Summer.

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Deborah Walker loves dreamy, dark poetry. Her heroes are Christina Rossetti and Jacqueline West. Find Deborah’s poems in Scifaikuest, Dreams and Nightmares, Paper Crow and Chizine. She blogs at: http://deborahwalkersbibliography.blogspot.co.uk/

Where do you get the ideas for your poems? 

From Wikipedia. I'll start with something, say griffins, then hyperlink until I find something that catches my fancy. They also have a lovely Random Article button on the left hand side. Let me click it, my next poem will be about . . . a Sardiita Quijarroa. I can work with that.

Trouble in Golem Town

Trouble in Golem Town
by Deborah Walker

It was quiet in Golem Town.
Clay feet treading along the
soundless, circular, mud pathways,
plodding patiently towards the end of the days.
Faces stretched tight into happy grimaces,
Each night, re-writing the words of their
lives along the hum of the static-fresh TV.
Quiet in Golem Town, until the fancy girl
came with her pinching fingers grabbing
scripts from gawping, gaping mouths.
Lightening in her brain instead of simple silt.
Smiling, rewriting their rhythmic respectable rules.
See the clay men fighting,
slow fists, brother against brother,
for the honour of rubbing their mud hands
against her white dress.
See their black glass eyes, smashed.
Gems make a pretty necklace for a fancy girl
with dirty wings.

* * *

First published in Polu Texni, 2012.

* * *

Deborah Walker loves dreamy, dark poetry. Her heroes are Christina Rossetti and Jacqueline West. Find Deborah’s poems in Scifaikuest, Dreams and Nightmares, Paper Crow and Chizine. She blogs at: http://deborahwalkersbibliography.blogspot.co.uk/

Where do you get the ideas for your poems? 

From Wikipedia. I'll start with something, say griffins, then hyperlink until I find something that catches my fancy. They also have a lovely Random Article button on the left hand side. Let me click it, my next poem will be about . . . a Sardiita Quijarroa. I can work with that.

In the Labyrinth

In the Labyrinth
by Deborah Walker

Sun baked mud-bricks encase
the remembrance of light in this
mortared embracement.
So long ago I fixed my determination
to hide my blended face
from the scorn of people who
would shine the flickering lights
of their delighted disgust upon me.

Now I have passed into myth.

But today, into this dreary, dusty dream
comes the scent of a man:
sand and sandalwood and scepticism.
Can he feel my endless animal breath
perfuming these lacklustre walls?
Does he seek my honey, hybrid kiss
light as a floating memory?
Turn my hero, and turn again
in the labyrinth of my unbelievable solitude,
until all reason leaves you.
And you can believe, once again, in monsters.

* * *

First published in SilverBlade, 2009.

* * *
Deborah Walker loves dreamy, dark poetry. Her heroes are Christina Rossetti and Jacqueline West. Find Deborah’s poems in Scifaikuest, Dreams and Nightmares, Paper Crow andChizine. She blogs at: http://deborahwalkersbibliography.blogspot.co.uk/

The Great Whore

The Great Whore
by Deborah Walker

“She will ride into the city
on the seven-headed dragon
and consume us all,”
says the old man of Judah.
The other men, those who have accepted
the new ways, look away.
They know she whispers
to Nebuchadnezzar,
sharing some of her secrets.

Nebuchadnezzar has built
an Empire upon her the foundations
of her advice.
He has built the wonders of the worlds
A tower reaching to the gods.
A garden interwoven with strangeness
that will surely grow into history.

The old man is angered by their silence,
“You have tasted her golden cup.
The whole world is mad with
the flavour of her wine.
She is the Whore of Babylon.”

The lone mushussu dragon turns
its earless, serpent head to the old man’s voice
The flickering tongue tasting treason.
Its eagle’s talons flex,
they know the savour of her enemies.

The dragon spits a plume of venom.
The moment, extends into silence
in the market square, before the screaming, searing,
white-blind pain of an old man’s sealed eyes.

He will not see the truth of his prophecy
His eyes will not gaze upon the scarlet, multi-headed
beast who waits at the gates of inlaid lapis lazuli.

* * *

First published in Paper Crow 2010.

* * *

Deborah Walker loves dreamy, dark poetry. Her heroes are Christina Rossetti and Jacqueline West. Find Deborah’s poems in Scifaikuest, Apex Magazine, Dreams and Nightmares and Paper Crow.

Where do you get the ideas for your poems?

From Wikipedia. I'll start with something, say griffins, then hyperlink until I find something that catches my fancy. They also have a lovely Random Article button on the left hand side. Let me click it, my next poem will be about . . . a Sardiita Quijarroa. I can work with that.

Perseus

Perseus
by Deborah Walker

I can find you by scent alone.
You wind through the broken, stone relics,
the reminders of the disappointing
performance of your predecessors.

I wonder why they sent you alone.
One man against a monster can never be enough.
Will they send an endless procession of you?
With your clever, mirror tricks and your painful
unquestioning belief.

Until I put aside my outrageous anger.
Until I forget the clam, cold defilement
that forced me here.

I scent you through the weary stone.
You smell of thyme and wild myrtle.
I smell of old wine and bitter herbs.
Come closer, hero.
I am impatient to blend you into the perfume of my history.

* * *


First published in the 2010 print edition of Static Movement

* * *

Deborah Walker loves dreamy, dark poetry. Her heroes are Christina Rossetti and Jacqueline West. Find Deborah’s poems in Scifaikuest, Apex Magazine, Dreams and Nightmares and Paper Crow.

Where do you get the ideas for your poems?

When I write poetry, I just unhinge my mind and let the ideas flow and blend. 'Blossom' came from three threads, the prompt from Megan, sitting in my garden and seeing the cherry tree in blossom, and a medieval ring I'd seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum. A lot of ideas for my fantasy poetry and stories come from museum objects.

Madam White Snake

Madam White Snake
by Deborah Walker

At evening tide her spirit sisters gather outside Leifeng Pagoda.
They beg Madam White Snake to shed the prison of her flesh
and rejoin them in their endless dances.
Madam White Snake shakes her head
and reties the garment of time around her body.

Through the window of the pagoda
she sees a heron swimming in low beats
in the water of the sky,
flying low over the West Lake reeds.
When she extends her snake eyes, she can see
the liquid ballet of the stem fish in the slow moving current.
Madam White Snake smiles as she watches the myriad dances
of the glass nameless ones,
their bodies shaped in simple patterns,
their voices joined in the water song.

“Sister. We miss you. Cast off your flesh. Rejoin us, our sister.”
Madam White Snake closes her heart to her spirit sisters.
She watches the eternal dances she has found
in the multiple layers of this evening’s day.
Madam White Snake has tasted the slow complex web of flesh.
She will never let it go.
And if her sisters could view the swimming, nameless one inside her,
perhaps they would understand.

* * *

Image is Fan and Snake by Ella Guru.
First published in Moon Drenched Fables 2010

* * *

Deborah Walker loves dreamy, dark poetry. Her heroes are Christina Rossetti and Jacqueline West. Find Deborah’s poems in Scifaikuest, Apex Magazine, Dreams and Nightmares and Paper Crow.

Where do you get the ideas for your poems?

When I write poetry, I just unhinge my mind and let the ideas flow and blend. 'Blossom' came from three threads, the prompt from Megan, sitting in my garden and seeing the cherry tree in blossom, and a medieval ring I'd seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum. A lot of ideas for my fantasy poetry and stories come from museum objects.

Blossom

Blossom
by Deborah Walker

The cherry tree casts a dark shadow,
two weeks of the years when
bud bursts through to trembling tinged flower.
Just two weeks of the years.
Such a short time of exultation.

Once, when I was digging at the roots,
I found a small, old ring,
woven vine, wire, delicate thin.
I have never dug further.
I leave the shadow as a recurring eulogy
to something that was once in bloom.

* * *

Deborah Walker loves dreamy, dark poetry. Her heroes are Christina Rossetti and Jacqueline West. Find Deborah’s poems in Scifaikuest, Apex Magazine, Dreams and Nightmares and Paper Crow.

Where do you get the ideas for your poems?

When I write poetry, I just unhinge my mind and let the ideas flow and blend. 'Blossom' came from three threads, the prompt from Megan, sitting in my garden and seeing the cherry tree in blossom, and a medieval ring I'd seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum. A lot of ideas for my fantasy poetry and stories come from museum objects.