a prisoner of thought

More riddles from the Oracle. She started me out with more or less but I wasn’t sure whether it belonged to the beginning or the end of the rest of her message. I put it at the end, but I think it could go either way. Or maybe it’s just part of the circle.

dark holes devour eternity
like secrets
opening into nothing

magic is dazzled
by the night sky

ask about time
and the ocean’s vast voice
will linger in your ear
laughing

remember
to listen
to more
or less

surrounded dazzled

My message this morning from the Oracle. I’ve been having strange and vivid dreams this week.

lost and laughing–
the fool-gods and ghosts
flying
through the open window
of my night

a star smiles
behind cloudchildren dancing

I remember voices like baby’s breath
a secret
listening for the rhythm of skyholes–
time sailing a vast naked dark

secrets follow

My message from the Oracle. The beginning came easily, but the rest transformed itself several times.

almost as if
here were wandering
between a path
and a shaded longing,
night becomes the murmur
of the birdforest wind–
the one that asks who,
listens like songlight–
the aftermath of why
within this tree-tendrilled moon

I hope to get to the NaPoWriMo prompt later today–but if not, this will have to suffice.

keeping time

My message today from the Oracle. I’ve been thinking a lot about time. It gets more confusing every day.

each moment is filled
with more asking

if never comes,
will we find out
where we belong?

in dreams
spirit dances between
language and music–
stars growing wings
inside your heart

The Oracle also seems attuned to the collage book I’ve been working on lately.

sun moon earth

Laura at dVerse provided lists of word-threesomes to choose from to write a sequence of three poems. Sun, moon, earth jumped out at me and the Oracle seemed the right place to go to construct verse using those three words.

1
ask the sun
if dusk feels as full
as the dawn

2
ask the moon
if dark is as deep
as always

3
ask the earth
if between grows roots
with seedsong

extended

Even though paint, tint and grey do not exist in the Oracle tiles, those were words that I kept seeing this morning. After I figured out how to make them, the rest of the words fell into place.

When I was looking for art, I came across the above drawing, misfiled among some old collages. It seemed just right, and I went looking for the right folder, which contains a series of landscapes I did inspired by some landscapes I had seen by Georg Baselitz, which had black lines and spare use of color. The one above is colored pencil on an ink marker drawing I did as one of my original black and white ideas. That uncolored drawing is below.

Later on I painted the landscape without black lines, in gouache (the top landscape). I thought this sequence, backwards, contained the feeling in the Oracle’s words today.

the black-tinted shadow
of sleep
paints an ache
swimming through the whisper
of stilled sunlight

a grey language lies
beneath the early sky

as a raw mist plays
with the bare bones of time
you say less and less