Spurned on

"Spurned pity can turn into cruelty just as spurned love turns into hate."


in Aphorisms (1880/1893), by Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, writer (1830-1916)

Retro

 

The Family of Man - Clervaux - Edward Steichen

 

Ghost ship

– fable fading now like a frayed,

sunbleached atlas

– unmoored, left to the currents

– gathering headway towards 

the edge of the map

– oblivious to the homeport marks

– yet calling at foreign ports

– making time to anchorage elsewhere

– seemingly shoaling a chance course

– – now known never to return – –

– despite its casual erring

– sails always in sight

– hovering the homedock

– – it is time to storm the doldrums – –

– tonight, the locks to the harbour

shall be shut – till the seas sweep away

that fata morgana of a ship –

Skeye

  

 

Grafted to grow

"In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul."


The Mask of Apollo (1966), by Mary Renault, novelist (1905-1983)


I don't really fancy the genre, but the two novels I read were certainly interesting. I recommend reading about her life first, the novels will make much more sense.

Moonshots

 

Shot over four consecutive nights.

 

I mastered the art of falling in love

Dreamt lives lived with each love

Every possible scenario enacted

Every pleasure and pain achieved

I mastered the art of falling in love

This man delivering a package

This woman serving morning coffee

All the beautiful and ugly people

I mastered the art of falling in love

Imagining them love me, hate me

Is what I do to take on the hours

Proof that people can love still

I mastered the art of falling in love

All these lived loves always ending

For my love for you refuses to die

For your love of me refuses to begin

I mastered the art of falling in love

Every day hoping you’ll call but don’t

Every day you love this someone else

Us two dying to be loved so this is why

I mastered the art of falling in love

 

Pebbles & Bern

This morning I saw my dog

using my kitten as a pillow —

Bern’s massive head on Pebbles

who didn’t seem to mind.

Bern isn’t getting any younger,

he gets stiff hips in the morning

and has lighter hair around his eyes.

Science says one year for dogs

is seven years for us;

it also says their body systems

have factored in their own mortality.

But we haven’t. I haven’t.

One week for me, seven for Bern.

— it’s even worse for Pebbles:

twenty-one years taken the first two,

time is ruthless for a kitten.

I spend my days bummed out,

sometimes not even leaving the house,

just letting Bern out in the yard,

just letting time go by for lack

of knowing what to do with it.

While Pebbles sleeps all day long.

I have to get out of that rut,

not just for me, but for them too —

time passes differently for everyone,

but it matters for all of us.

Factoring in my own mortality.

So I’ll play with them. Go out, rain and shine.

Bern needs to go run after squirrels,

— he used to when he was a teen —

have Pebbles chase a fake mouse on a string,

make the day matter, make it unpredictable.

Get a tennis ball, grab a piece of yarn,

goof around, cuddle, nap in front of the telly,

make dinner for all three of us,

so that when we all go to sleep

our dreams make us twitch and bark,

paw and run, huff and purr.

Time that matters isn’t time anymore.

How are the five minutes of a mayfly’s like?

A day in the life of a Greenland shark?

Different, yet the same, I guess.

There’s no time in the life of a dog to get bored,

yet sometimes that’s we like doing

when boredom matters

more than time.

Pebbles just woke up.

Spheres

A second ago the air the same

now vaulted in a spherical film

wobbly, iridescent, tense

now two different airs

inbetween, the thin pellicle

clearcut yet transparent

slowly, as water drains out,

the black spots turn into a film

darker than closed-eyelid eigengrau

the tension surfacing rapidly

some symbol hanging there

love perhaps, life, death, whatnot.

perhaps someone’s ego

protected at all costs

until something runs out

then the air in, out, the same.