Poetry Magnets [2016]
Author: alexiselizabethaella
I enjoy traveling and adventure, Dungeons & Dragons, beekeeping, lucid dreaming, camping, and hoarding books like a dragon. (Last best guess the count is around 4,500.) I am an agnostic pansexual Ravenclaw, who is married to a Hufflepuff that looks like Dexter Morgan.
Mummification [10-8-18]
The sacred ceremony, meticulously documented for thousands of years. Texts of directions and procedures and specific step-by-step ceremonies of tending to the body of the Dead. The long process to prepare the dead, now done with this life, prepared for the journey to the next life. Soul and body would meet again. The Wedjat eye watching over all. The feather of Truth waiting patiently. The priest performing the opening of the mouth. Attending shabtis effigies packed along with worldly possessions. The tomb not a final resting place, only a crossing over, a trip on the journey to the next life.
Perfumes and oils. Resins and linen and medical surgical tools and Papyrus texts. Gold flake paint and incense burners and sacred God-headed canopic jars. Walls adorned with hieroglyphs and burning torches. Natron, layers of cartonnage. Evisceration and embalming, and the mask of a jackal. the heart and the kidneys remain inside. Liver, lungs, stomach, and intestines, and the four sons to hold them; Human, baboon, Jackal, and falcon. washed with wine, and water from the sacred Nile. Sutures and a beeswax ceiling incisions. Amulets carved and imbued with spells. Tens and tens of days of wrapping of the body with anatomical precision. Body cavities filled with aromatic plants and herbs. Eye sockets containing replacements of onions, stone, or glass. Elaborately decorated burial masks made in the likeness of the deceased.
“The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore” by Hilda M. Ransome.
“The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore” by Hilda M. Ransome.
Informative and enlightening. Must read for any beekeeper.
The Sound of Loneliness [3-12-19]
The sound of loneliness is
The lighting of a cigarette.
The noise of an all day Netflix binge.
A dog snoring in my bed, instead of a man.
The sound of loneliness is
My own voice thinking aloud and giving me pep talks.
The turning of pages in a book in dim light,
The shuffle of my feet as I pace across the floor.
The sound of loneliness is
The ignored notification dings on my phone,
And the clicking of keys as I text someone who doesn’t answer.
And audio books I don’t have to play through my headphones.
The sound of loneliness is
The tickle of a fish tank filter,
The soft rumble of its pump,
And hearing my parents talk in the next room because I moved back in.
The sound of loneliness is
A car pulling away,
A plane taking off,
A call being dropped.
The sound of loneliness is
Being sent straight to voicemail when I call,
The silence after I say “I love you”
The beating of my heart,
The taste of the salt in my tears.
Farm [1-27-12]
She rose with the roosters, just before the sun peaks above the horizon, as any farm wife should.
In the early mornings, the small farmhouse filled with the smells of coffee and bacon and eggs frying.
Her long hair braided loosely down the back of her pale colored dress,
The end of her hair touching the place on her waist where her apron was tied.
She stepped lightly and barefoot about the kitchen,
Fresh sunlight and the sounds of waking animals coming in through the open window.
He comes into the room with the sun,
Hair ruffled from sleep and jaw peppered with stubble,
Worn overalls smelling of dust and straw hanging from his squared and load bearing shoulders.
They eat and talk and smile and love.
In the bright of the afternoon she feeds the animals,
Their calls and cries for her from the fences of their fields, matching seemingly to her singling.
Under the high sun, he walks and talks and plows.
His old stocky horses stomping and heeding and dragging the steel plow through the earth.
They sweat and tend and work and grow together;
Woman and man and plant and beast.
I Want [4-4-07]
I want those country roads that we drove on in a flurry of snow,
My parents talking about moving out of the city,
As they followed timidly behind us.
I want to ride shotgun and hold your thick callused hand,
While we sing to Jason Aldean.
I want that love we had,
As we drove your monstrous red Chevy
To your grandmother’s farm,
Where you said, one day, we’d raise our children.
Poetry by Amanda Loveless
“The princess saves herself in this one” and “The witch doesn’t burn in this one” by Amanda Lovelace.
Finally got my own copies so I stop accidentally writing in the ones from the library. (In pencil, calm down.) These are now on my shelf next to the great old classical poets.
I feel like Jon Snow [12.3.15]
I feel like Jon Snow.
To be more specific, when it is after the main wildling attack on the wall. The night’s watch has fought valiantly, and they fended off the initial attack of scouts. Jon snow has returned to the nights watch, run from the wildlings, escaped to warn his brothers of the impeding wilding invasion to Westeros.
He has always been a crow, even when he was with the wilding, even when he was with Yigrette, even though he loved her.
The men are patrolling the wall and castle black and the tunnels, surveying for their dead, and a damage report. John snow was in the battle as well, firing his bow into the wildlings scaling the wall and ramparts and towers.
Much like Yigrette fired arrows into him as he sped off on his horse, her screaming and tears and arrows following him off as far as they could reach.
Jon Snow walks among dead crows and wildlings alike, praying to the old gods for her to not be there. He walks and looks even though he’d rather not see. He walks and carries fear and regret and guilt with him in his heart.
And among the snow and black cloaks he sees a glimpse of red hair, and there she lay, kissed with fire and an arrow in her chest. Dead.
And so is he. Dead in the anguish of losing her. Weighed down and nearly killed with the guilt of not knowing is it was someone else’s arrow, or his own, which pierced her heart and lay her beautiful and lifeless upon the snow.
Reflections [9.27.08]
It is nearly noon here now, and we’ve already been up for awhile. Breakfast was fried eggs, freckled and warm from the coop, covered with salt and pepper, and crispy greasy bacon to dip in the bright orange yolks.
We spent fifteen minutes in hot pursuit-meaning he ran around the barn, appearing and disappearing, while I gave chase and tried to shoot him with a bow and arrows.
I am at ease here; the fridge is full of milk, the yard of wood for the bonfire tonight, and my head with thoughts of petroglyphs and praying mantis, and the sex we had on our knees on the wooden floor of the kitchen earlier.
The majority of today I’ve seen behind the lens of my camera; shiny blue glass electric line bulbs. Yellow argiope garden spiders with abdomens the size of grapes. A feisty horse. A teething puppy. A hayloft whose drying onions were illuminated by sunlight through windows.
My mouth tastes like hot coffee and cold mint tea. Hand-rolled cigarettes and semen. Fried eggs and the beer I gargled with when I woke up this morning.
Coffee Shop Coven [7-27-20]
I should start a coffee shop coven; girls only, no boys allowed.
We could have themed aesthetic outfits:
Weekends black and gothic and macabre,
Tuesdays and Thursdays for whimsical floral dresses and sun-kissed skin.
Mondays and Wednesdays for battle armor and weapons of war.
Fancy Fridays for formal wear, also known as the
“I poisoned my second husband for his money” outfit.
We could gather and talk and plot and laugh and scheme and cry and debate.
We could meet at midday and dance in the sunlight,
Or meet at midnight and kiss under the full moon.
We’d trace sigils in our cappuccino cream with our spoons,
And build tiny replicas of the pyres they’ll burn us on with our wooden stir sticks.
By day we’d pick herbs and make men love us.
By night we’d have séances and kill our enemies.
By day the right hand, by night the left.
You need coffee for both; long days and long nights.
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