Yesterday I was too busy and preoccupied to post anything. Today I have:
Made a hedgehog house and café, away from the fence. The dogs scream at the poor thing as it tries to have a quiet meal under the plum tree. Watched a young deer leaping through the meadow, the heron circling looking for water. Written a letter to the tax people. Walked the dogs and preempted a violent meeting with Imelda (cat) twice. Made a hospital appointment. Watered all the things in pots with water from the well. Made a minestrone and the dogs’ dinner. Written a few poems. Revised a bit more of a manuscript. Watched in admiration the changing light in this warm autumnal breeze.
Here, for those who would like to use it, is a selection of words that I didn’t post yesterday. Quite a good one, I think.
There are strange things hiding in these strings of random words, the limping laugh and untidy cry, a venomous cure, clam oil, ruddy muscle (or mussel) and the insistence on milk. And there are whole tragedies, the irate uncle with a secret, who imbibes until his state reaches alert, and the attractive skier now a grey stiff. Ultra regret.
This is what I got, a cadralor, I think. I chose this Chagall because it’s bright and full of music and movement, but also ambiguity.
Imponderables
1. We are a barbarous race, build bonfires of all that is good and scrape up scraps of tawdry leavings, gewgaws and glitz, to venerate.
2. The peace breaks, a muttering in the air. Did the wind swing the bell, or does it toll in alarm at the change, a gale gusting from the ocean?
3. Bird-talk, a busy painting, a concert hall’s swollen sound, laughter that dive-dips, the colour of jay’s wings, the rhythm section of the chiff chaffs.
4. Speaking of God, I see him striding, the curé, as if he still evokes fear, seeing only the ghosts of the long-dead, who would have bowed at his passing.
5. There is something grandiose in snow-capped mountains, and secrets shared with a cat, a baby, someone who will never tell.
Because my first Oracle-inspired poem was such an odd one, and because Kerfe’s poem was also a strange one in the same way, I went back, using the new word set this time. She gave me a cadralor, less enigmatic, and one of her favourite paintings (by Odilon Redon) to illustrate it.
I had a dream
1. I had a dream blue lake violin music drifting like mist and in a pool your face smiling.
2. Salt clings to the skin a memory of childhood oceans sea caves echo with a fading song.
3. Death waits beneath every stone in the road each step takes us closer. Owls croon uncaring.
4. Spring shadows were cool as moon eggs summer hedges are red with the flutter of departing chicks.
5. If I had a thousand lives I would keep from each one a single petal and make one glorious flower.
I’m getting this in early because I won’t have time later. 100 random words from Oracle II. My poem is below. The Oracles work as a team.
Waiting for the rain
1. I hear the crash of dark waves and the intake of mussel breath. Lighthouse, coastguard, the beacon on the hill, sentinel from another time, watch the darkness. Fear, trepidation or curiosity hold our gaze, waiting to see what will drag itself into the world.
2. We challenge history, deny the truth, draw it out like chewing gum, wrap it around a stick and toss it in the fire. We have always done it, rewritten the facts, and it has always been to justify the flawed incubus of the present.
3. Some word associations feel uncomfortable like Satanic verses, yet we see them writ large in fiery letters every day, their net cast and drawn in, wriggling and squirming with the dark deformed things that should never have seen the light.
4. Quickening, the leap of joy that sometimes missteps and never leaves the crucible of potential. Not every wish is granted, not every shoot will blossom. The quick and the dead, all the same in the end, it’s just a question of time.
5. Cloud hangs low, damp smoke billowing, and we watch for stray lightning bolts, listen for thunder. Most of all we listen for rain, not the gentle foam hiss among dry leaves, but the purifying torrent. Night falls with the first drops amid the release of withheld breath.
I wanted to write a cadralor for the dverse prompt. I don’t think this is one really, and it needs more work, but it’s late. I’ll look at it again another time.
Taste of past places
1. We never ate out when I was growing up. No money for that kind of thing and where would we have gone? Only with you, always with you, to sit watching you, the sensual joy of watching enjoyment, indulgence, and on your skin, the candlelight.
2. Hilltop town encircled by vineyards, Giotto colours, background of ochre and eggshell blue sky. I never even imagined living there. Too close to perfection, even longing for a green-shuttered house of orange stone would have been a sin.
3. Shrieking brakes and voices raised, anger dying down as easily as it flared. Laughter and the roar of a scooter. The gutters were full of cigarette packets, Nazionali, And the streets always smelled of urine, and pizza bianca from the darkly enticing trattorie.
4. So many times we slipped in among the students and workers, the noisy, crowded places where food was cheap, and there was no menu. Always spaghetti with tomatoe sauce. Basil leaves. We were i ragazzi francesi not knowing enough Italian to put them straight.
5. Nights I smell things. The migraines do that. Perfume sometimes or odd, dead things. But I never smell pines and Nazionali, sun cream with sand in it, pizza bianca, Frascati and red Colli di Trasimeno. I never smell the past that was where we began.
1. I would heave these shadows overboard, watch them shred in the spray, blow away in the mist, and let the sweet sea-light flood all the dark places.
2. The dog with black ears keeps a wary eye on the drunk, singing now, but when he remembers his bitterness with the world, he will heap it all on that uncomplaining head.
3. Sun bakes beach sand brittle, shrivelling the green of spring, and we are blinded by wave-glitter. There’s a haven over the water, they say, but who dares swim in such fire?
4. A chaffinch sings in the summer tree, filling the holes in the silence. Flowers bloom between your words, and you ask, how I can be sad in such a garden. You don’t notice the roses falling.
5. Just spread grass beneath my feet, forest shade about my shoulders, let the wind make music in the leaves and let me sit with you while the rain drops diamonds.
Cadralor inspired by yesterday’s Mechanical Oracle word suggestions.
Something better is coming, perhaps
1. The letter stays unwritten, the bell tolls in the rain, and faces turn away, thin lips tightened, keeping their words of kindness for themselves.
2. The river has burst its banks, the bridge unpassable. Caught between here and high waters, I wade into the leaf-swirl, become a broken branch.
3. Summer oranges in the sieved sunlight, the smell of bread and coffee, such wealth in this room that has only ever known poverty.
4. The scales are level but only here, on this cusp of time and place. Beyond, greedy hands are building the pyre. So much ash in the balance, and I have nothing left to counter it all.
5. Night trees roll in a wave of ink, the fierce day is over, its heat drenched in the cool swell, and joy in the shadows runs wild, dark and sweet as purple wine.
The Oracle has her work cut out for her, to create a little optimism.
A better place
1. Who are these people who want? To be, to have something different? Refugees from themselves, ship-searching, looking for an ocean of their own creation.
2. There is bitterness in this dawn that drips with cold mist, the kind that rots and rusts even the brightest things.
3. They tell me there’s an entity up there in the sky or down in the cool earth, a mother watching, guiding. I think I feel her presence, a mother screaming.
4. Perhaps the sun rises for this, to end these mad dreams, to dry up the mists that hide what’s really there, the fallen trees, the orange decomposition of leaves cars.
5. Only when the storm dies do we hear the sea whisper, of blue and better times, a place where the only pounding is the surf, and spring is soft rain and apple blossom.
Not a literary magazine for ordinary times, but a journal for an exceptional one. Writing the pandemic, together. Image, Somewhere in Time by Hengki Lee: Instagram @hengki_lee
Jane Dougherty Writes 