A Month of Poetry for Brighid

[Fagan_the_Pagan]

 

The Song of Angus

Behold!  Off in the distance and the dark:
The glowing ember in the western sea!
A burning star upon some faerie bark
Is coming closer, carried home to me.

Chorus: O! There were violets in your eyes
When teardrops splashed the frozen ground.
New life your joy did realize
When freedom dreamed you could be found.
And my heart will be rejoicing
If you’ll keep me by your side,
All your praises I’ll with joy sing,
All to you, my Princess Bride.
So push back the hag of winter
And let spring the gold sun shine.
Solid sheets of ice will splinter
For that faerie maid of mine.

It is that Princess Bride, Summer’s queen
Come back from Tir na nÓg, the land of youth
To take her place as queen of those unseen
And heal the frozen land as was her sooth!

Chorus

Too long been absolute has Beira’s reign,
Yet the old crone has not begun to fight.
Be steadfast through her wind and sleet and rain,
And yours will be the glorious morning light.

Chorus

For all the red and whiteness of your cheek,
For all the flowers in your golden hair,
When your stout heart is firm on what you seek
Your foes will find no quarter anywhere.

Chorus

[Fagan_the_Pagan]

The Song of Angus

The Sídhe Mound

In the hollow of a cave
A carved our hovel in a mound of earth
A campfire burns.

It lumins the round, rough walls of scrapish stone
In a dance of light and shadow
That plays over ancient pictographs.

I slowly turn;
The impression of a hunter stalks his prey:
A three-horned, milk white bull with crimson ears.
His spear does pierce the belly of the beast,
The skin and hair the hunter cuts away.

Thus parted from its host the skin he takes
And crawls within the bull’s still bleeding flesh.
With strangely opened eyes of vision fresh,
Some part of him unused to seeing wakes.

For the first I see a path inside
That pulls my eyes from gory glyphs
And leads them down a darking tunnel wide,
Whose length I cannot guess.

Each step trembles in the cave of night
Where footing slips beneath my wagered weight,
Where hands are raw from gripping roughhewn slate.
To keep myself from tumbling long I fight.

Endeavoring long
To keep my feet beneath me
My heart’s uncertain song
Does hotly wreath me.

Naked I stand
Before the great oak door.
I take the hound-mouthed knocker in hand
And strike twice and once more.

O! How can so dark cave such light contain?
Braziers, torches, people glowing bright,
Flashing like a cloak of stars
Spread out to drape the sun.

This is no earth I know of,
No house nor castle else,
For where would fire glow less bright
Than those it shown upon?

[Fagan_the_Pagan]

The Sídhe Mound

 
Poetry in Motion

   I can spin a word or phrase
When I put my pen to page,
I can think of many ways
My poet’s mind t’assuage.

   But beauteous words are empty
If no actions lift them high,
And so I seek to scratch my name
In runes across the sky.

   My poetry is living;
In the magic I create,
In the lives that I am changing
As I’m striving to be great.

   And if I fall I’ll fall in flames,
A streak across the sky;
Then all the world will know my name,
Whether up or down I fly,

   For galleons we wright with our words
To bear us on Old Wisdom’s sea,
And if actions speak louder yet,
I’ll make a god of me.

[Fagan_the_Pagan]

Poetry in Motion

 

[Un]natural

An explosive synthesis fills the void
In wretched exultation,
Its haughty groveling distorts its troubled mien.

Against its artificial nature it avoids
A lowly exaltation,
Making clouds of earth and burning snow obscene.

He sheds dry tears upon an iron cheek,
With a soft knife tries to part the sky.
A mystic secular so strongly weak
He quips to Life how quickly Death goes by.

A never-ending staircase traps his brain
In mysterious revelation.
Confusing understanding takes its hold.

Arrhythmic random happenings entrain
With a silent oration,
Where undervalued things are oversold.

Upsetting his downfall
He undercuts his overtures.
By throwing time against the wall
Destruction he abjures.

[Fagan_the_Pagan]

[Un]natural

 

Invocation to Brighid

As I drift to sleep in shadow of your flame
In liminal state my lips caress your name.

Unconscious focus on your flickering fire,
To see your face in my only desire.

Bless my sleep with your red-gold hue,
Bless my dreams with the sight of you.

Speak to me in your tongue of flame,
Who makes the wild winter tame.

[Fagan_the_Pagan]

Invocation to Brighid

 

Brighid Candle Devotional

May my candle’s flame burn with your eyes
That you see all I do in light of you.
May your glow fill me with passion
And enlighten all I do.

May your anvil and hammer transform me;
Refine me to a strong, sharp edge,
Empower me to work your will and mine,
And grant steadfastness to keep every pledge.

May I be a light for others,
May their wisdom grow with mine,
And may all our hurts be healed
By your water and flame divine.

[Fagan_the_Pagan]

Brighid Candle Devotional

Song of the Mountain

The whistle of the wind over sharp rock
Sings the tale of ages past,
Caressing the contours of stone
A story told of one who rose from nothing.

Exploding into the world he laid his foundations,
Fiery blood dwells in his veins.
He shook the groundwork of the system
Asserting himself, rising ever higher.

Through all challenges enduring,
Through Summer’s heat and Winter’s chill,
This being, unspeakably old,
Is worn down by stresses.

A figure just past his prime,
His hard skin cracked and beaten,
Still standing tall
And singing of old glories.

[Fagan_the_Pagan]

Song of the Mountain

 

Walker in the Mist

Running circles in a sea of solid gas,
No compass can guide me,
I go where I may.

My bare feet lick the dew upon the grass,
No mysteries hide me,
I walk with no way.

No roads, charts, or maps, I follow the wind
Where’er it may take me, towards any end
And though I’ll stand my ground, when the gale blows I’ll bend
‘til the mists deign to carry me home.

Take me home to the land past the shimmering sea
Where apples grow upon the tree
Whose branch is lustrous silvery,
And never-the-more shall I roam.

Allow me to swim in an ocean of stars
Where the people know no age or wars,
Where no touch of sickness beauty mars:
Such a place might I truly call home.

Show me a kingdom without any rules,
Where the only divisions are wise men and fools,
Where the wit of a man is the best of his tools
In the lines of a leather-bound tome.

But ‘til I find that blessed land
Where seas roll up on silver sand
I’ll keep an apple in my hand
And walk the mists, composing poems.

[Fagan_the_Pagan]

Walker in the Mist

 

The Dragon

[/B]

Red thunderclaps illume a sulfur cloud.
The grinding of metal echoes through the night.
Mist and steam, smoke and ash.

The sky itself trembles, quaking in the wake
Of the roiling wroth of claws that scratch the heavens,
A flashing lemniscate before my eyes.

Impossibly massive, impossibly light,
It swims through the sky like a fish in the sea;
A crimson ophidian with brimstone breath.

O majestical terror; a beast in the sky
Whose awesome Vulcan force churns molten steel
And coils, like the Midgard Serpent, round itself.

Rumbling, grating, pounding,
The firmament erupts with bloody light;
The glowing ember sound of monstrous heat.

Tempest clouds unleash their deluge fell:
Rains fall in columns of super-heated steam,
Boiling the sky and melting the land.

I inhale the fiery air from the gates of Muspelheim,
I smell the hiss of steam from serpent’s maw,
I stare into the teeth of oblivion, but do not die.

[Fagan_the_Pagan]

The Dragon

[/B]

 

The Well of Segais

Can you smell the taste of water?
Can you feel the babbling brook?
Can you hear where you have seen it?
Can you sense it: what he took?

An armored athlete came here
Clad in shining red and white
And while at the linn was drinking
He espied to his delight
Nine nuts from nine hazels
That circled the spring
Did fall in the water
And he hungering.

He ate up each nut
And the minute he swallowed
He saw, smelled, and tasted,
Heard, felt, and it followed
Each sense it was heightened,
He saw five new ways,
For five rivers flowed thence
From that pool where he lay.

He swam down each river
And learned all he could
From this world and the next
Of what’s evil and good;
Of the answers to questions
That nobody asked,
Of magic and wonders
In mysteries masked.

He followed each path
To the salty blue sea
And swam off to the West
Into eternity.
But he always returns
To see what he can learn,
To see who will be caught,
And whose fingers will burn.

Can you smell the taste of water?
Can you feel the babbling brook?
Can you hear where you have seen it?
Can you sense it: what he took?

[Fagan_the_Pagan]

The Well of Segais

 
Our Lady of Vipers

The snake in spiral coiled
Like the waters of your Well,
The stirring of the ointment boiled,
And the bonfires upon Magh Mell.

One bite can strike a man dead
Or can prove his remedy
If its venom is extracted
And applied medicinally.

Chorus: On your day
The serpent will stir from his nest
But on that day
No fear will stir my breast
For come what may
Our Lady of the Vipers blessed
Us not to sway
Though my will the snakes will test.

His fell Edenic wisdom
Makes a man learn of his death,
Yet from sloughing off his old skin
He embraces new life’s breath.

His toxin and your cure alike
Course fire in my veins
And speak of insights that will strike,
Though knowing comes with pains.

Chorus

[Instrumental break]

Chorus

[Fagan_the_Pagan]

Our Lady of Vipers

 

Sibyl

Small steps slide across the floor.
Tattered rags behind her brush the dirt
Trailing like a distant memory of the bridal train

Knobby fingers cling together,
Wringing warmth into arthritic joints,
Shuffling in feeble gait to the fire at the hearth
Where sits a stew bubbling ‘neath the lid.

As she moves the shadows settle in her face,
In mile-deep fissures in that haggard face.
A light of defiance burns within one eye,
Empty dark stares out the hollow of its twin.

A portal deep into the ancient skull
Stares back at me, tugging at my soul;
The event-horizon of a fallen star
That takes in all, and from which naught escapes.

Her one eye pierces deep inside my breast
As if to over-look my pounding heart,
To know my mind, my soul, my future, past;
To test the fibers of my will, my stomach rip apart.

With not a pause, from off the iron pot
The lid she wrenched and threw a column of steam
Up to the ceiling, filling all the room
With fog uncanny, churning, billowing.

A screeching cry did rend the cottage there
That made me blench and stood my every hair.
I, balking as the squawking did resume,
Emerged an ebony raven midst the room.

From out the frothing cauldron stepped he then,
A most disgruntled visage showed his ken,
When widdershins he flapped about the place,
And landed in the woman’s grim embrace.

Her eye still on me, gave she then a laugh
That chilled my spine, and though my fear I hid,
I she’s more of me seen with one eye
And any pair of lover’s ever did.

[Fagan_the_Pagan]

Sibyl

 
Frustrated Poet

Shivering in a cold room
Completely uninspired
I doodle ancient patterns on the page

There amidst the growing gloom
A small taper
My only help the darkness to assuage.

While out my seeming-dead brain I exhume
Some lonely verses
With you to engage.

[Fagan_the_Pagan]

Frustrated Poet

 
Soulsmith

I sing my praise to the Soulsmith:
To She whose breath fans the flames;
To She who shapes earth into fine metal;
To She whose water tempers steel.

I sing my praise to the Soulsmith:
To She who breathes life;
To She who molds us;
To She who sets our blood flowing.

I sing my praise to the Soulsmith:
To She who inspires the awen;
To She who gives us substance;
To She who stirs deep emotions.

I sing my praise to the Soulsmith:
To She whose laugh makes the Sun shine bright;
To She whose touch makes dead wood sprout;
To She whose joy melts the frozen river.

[Fagan_the_Pagan]

Soulsmith

 
The Findian Spear

There is a moment most magnificent,
Whose miraculous magic evades our sense,
To be seen and wondered at,
Analyzed and explained,
But not appreciated.

That impossible moment that sparks fire
Using water as both flint and steel.
It comes in that strange time
When on dry land we stand under the sea
And the air pulses with the song of ancestors.

For one shining instant the Land, Sea, and Sky
Are bound together by a pillar of flame;
A bridge of light ascending to the heavens:
That flashing spear of Lugh
Which rent the Fomorian hordes
And on a silver chariot
Bore them thence to the Land of Youth.

How is it water can make fire in the sky
If it be not by the hands of one divine?