Three Poems

Hello friends,

Three poems this week. Enjoy! (And if you do, please consider supporting my work by purchasing either The Robots of Babylon or my new omnibus edition Knit Ink (and Other Poems).)

Alternatively, buy me a coffee on Ko-Fi!

This first poem, a Shakespearean sonnet in iambic pentameter, is composed of perfectly anagrammed lines:

LILITH AND HECATE

I stirred, there, cups of haemoglobin true.
There’s magic in our blood, the purest fire.
The nighttime pours a red, or cries of blue;
bright Luna comes to pour the rife desire....

Horrific, gruesome battles (hope untried)
are fought, remote, in scriptures I behold.
The rip or turn of loss became their guide:
“Rise up!” The rust of iron became their gold.

From Hecate rebuilt, their grip’s due soon.
Before she put their drum to Grecian soil,
I buried starlight sure, the creep of Moon

demure of air. I brought the serpent’s coil.
Rebuild me too! Repair the curse of nights —
before I rule, through past demonic rites!

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The second poem, an ottava rima in iambic tetrameter, is a palindrome by pairs of letters:

IN VAIN

In vain do we resume — till fire
in rain does gleam, yet meet me in
the river. Thinly, I’d retire,
side idly on the ash.... In skin,
vain skin, sheath only, I’d desire,
tire idly in the river thin.
      Meet, meet my eagles do in rain!
      Refill time? Sure, we do — in vain.

---

This final poem is composed of perfectly anagrammed lines:

MUTATIONS

The scribe’s frames are atomistic. But in
mutations, the Scribe Afar scribes time.
Become a rubric, matter shifts in its sea,
but its core, its fabric, remains the same....
 
It is a cabinet, a crib, the summer forests.
It is the ember cut from a cane. It is brass.
It is a mimic, stubborn secrets, a feather.
(But its core, its fabric, remains the same.)
 
It is the brief but mesmeric sonata’s arc.
It is absent rites; chamber music to fear.
It is a manic orchestra’s ebb. It must free —
but its core, its fabric, remains the same.

It is sacrifice, abasement, sombre truth.
It is a ceramic urn, a fresh tomb. It besets.
It is a cherub become man.... It starts fires.
(But its core, its fabric, remains the same.)

It is the scientist, macabre form; a rebus.
It is mechanics, time’s barbarous fetter.
It is a cosmic number. Set far, it breathes —
but its core, its fabric, remains the same.
  
It is a bust of Artemis — her bent ceramics.
It is a statue from birch — timber séances.
It is a tribe’s rich number — a totem’s faces.
(But its core, its fabric, remains the same.)
 
It is a sermon — the burst, beatific scream. 
It is an Arabic secret, the umber of mists.
It is a burnt fresco, a scheme’s bitter aim.
But its core, its fabric, remains the same.
 
It scribes afresh. It embraces mutation.
A chimera of cries, it ebbs; it transmutes.
Acts remember the fabrications: It is us
(but its core, its fabric, remains the same.)