the-archer-and-the-poet - Tumblr blog

[the-archer-and-the-poet]

hades isn’t a badass. hades named his three-headed-guard-of-the-underworld-dog spot. hades whispers to his flowers to make them grow. hades grows fruit. there’s no sun in the underworld.

hades isn’t a badass. stop saying this false thing

[the-archer-and-the-poet]

2 questions: Are there any poetry blogs you follow here? What are a couple really inspirational poets you admire, look up to, and/or like? Thanks, friend. ✌

Eyo! Yeah, I do. @sometimestuesday, @smakka--bagms, @nosebleedclub (which is more of a collective deal), and @heyitsdevyn. I probably don’t follow enough but I truly enjoy reading the works on these. I also admire Sylvia Plath, Anne Carson, Mary Oliver, Catherine Imbriglio, Levi the Poet, and Homer, I guess, haha. I also look up to lyricists such as Josh Dies, Dan Campbell, Matt Berninger, to name a few.

[the-archer-and-the-poet]

When I see the glimmer of the sea from the car window, I feel the notion of home. She sparks memories of family trips to the Kallyrho Coast, of searching for shells in the tide pools with Mom as she pointed out the sea anemones and the starfish clinging to the eroded rocks tighter than I had ever clung to my mother’s hand. My father taught me to swim through the waves and respect their power, leading me through the surges and jumpstarting my board with a powerful arm. Between the sea and Virgo and the temper, that is the inheritance he bestowed me.

Artemis

[the-archer-and-the-poet]

turbulent. [Altair’s narrative]

artemis had twisted her dark redwood hair into a fraying braid to keep it out of her ash-lined eyes. the silver rings in her leopard ears become more noticeable.

the ash distracts from the tired slack in her cheeks.

my sister does not bear the art of flight between her shoulders -- the only trait she did not inherit from our father, the only trait that i did. my aptitude is for that of vibrancy, for i can hold pieces of the sky in my hands.

symmetry decorates her face in smudged spots and fangs that mark the split in our genetic strands. her aptitude is for that of complexity, for she can climb into a dark forest and know what it means.

her room is decorated with bird nests and tree branches and rocks and seashells, collected over the years, tied together, painted, dangling about the room. i believe she finds significance in each organic form, and she keeps those mysteries close to her heart.

mom told me i should try to get to know artemis better. yesterday i asked her about the therapy.

she told me about how she learned how to practice visualization exercises to help her mind get better. i asked her what she sees and she said she tends to visualize flying through the air on virgo’s back, flying over the kallyrho coastline, just below the calm clouds decked in the tremendous sunset colors, then dipping to skim just above the foaming seawater.

          we fly over the waves the sun glowing at our backs my arm around her soft neck and hand in her pale mane the refreshing chill of the ocean spray flecks my toes and fingertips.

but she said she never can actually dream of flying she only dreams of falling.

            : The jolt awake, the fast-paced breathing, the IT WAS JUST. A. DREAM. :            : But once it was real :

do you ever try to stop yourself from falling, stop mid-air? // To stop mid-air I don’t know what that feels like // what does that matter? // Dreams are just distortions of what we already know Do you ever try to stop yourself from falling stop mid-air? // yes i have. // Because you’ve done it before // it’s true i have. well, what if you tried dreaming up someone to catch you, then? // To be caught I don’t know what that feels like either

she continued to organize her suitcase from that point on. today she carries them downstairs herself.

i throw my bags in the trunk of the car.

i will fall asleep on the way to tethys. artemis will pretend to sleep but she will not. she will listen to music with her eyes closed

          : to keep my consciousness under siege :

and when she lifts her head she will not look like she’s waking up, just like she’s been deeply somewhere else.

[the-archer-and-the-poet]

Sometime after she told me shared DNA isn’t as cheap as we tend to believe

Altair peeks his face in the nearly shut doorway and asks if I need any help with my bags.

          : I told her I felt like family doesn’t count because they kind of have to love me. But I knew when I said it I wasn’t right but I wasn’t wrong. She smiled below her fox nose and told me they really don’t have to love me. She was wasn’t wrong but also wasn’t right. :

          : She is less right about my mother. I know my mother always loved me until I left one fucked up evening and didn’t come back until the next day. She asked me where I’d been and I told her I ran to the park and slept there for the night because she would know if I lied. She wanted me to swear I would never do it again. When I told her I couldn’t promise her anything she blew out all of the candles in the house for a week and a half. But, like I said, that only lasted for a week and a half. :

         : I know she is more right about my brother. He dances in public when he feels like it and puts his arms around me when he feels like it and scowls at me and says things he knows will make my blood burn when he feels like it. :

Before I tell him no thanks even though they are more than enough for me to carry -- I notice he is wearing the necklace strung with the wood pendant I carved for him as a present for his eighteenth birthday.

His wings absentmindedly nudge the door wider on its hinge when he turns his back to leave. In a few hours he will be all that I have that breathes. 

I lean down to pick up my suitcase and backpack. My baggage seems to get heavier every year. But for some reason, it still hasn’t kept me from walking out the front door.

[the-archer-and-the-poet]

She was looking my way and I smiled at her, but she did not smile back. Then I realized as she turned to paddle paddle paddle, I realized she was looking for waves. She wasn’t looking for me.

Herakles

[the-archer-and-the-poet]

Magpies [Vega’s Narrative]

I had a dream last night that I collected all of the clouds and made a castle in the sky We flew into the throne room as rulers His head crowned with the sun My neck and arms gilded with all of the constellations We built a bridge over the Silver River where we could look down and see the shimmering ebony  feathers of the magpies spread bright Catching air and light

When I woke I greeted the heels of Rosy Dawn. I drank my tea. The day began when I caught sight of the tips of his wings.

[the-archer-and-the-poet]

Dismantle the siege, do it quietly

Beads of sweat gather on my forehead. The steel bars tackled my sky.

I’m trying to pick the lock. The tools slipped out of my sweaty hands.

[the-archer-and-the-poet]

Not stone, something colder

I turn into the corridor before I open the door her room, warm as pumpkin soup. She’s waiting for me, a small fox lady with little fox ears and a little fox nose.

She looks at me like I’m a bird in a cage. Did I choose to be this way?

          Maybe you chose to get in the car but that’s nearly like choosing to wake up in the morning you didn’t choose to make it crash. Does that make sense?

She says my mind is a snowball a snowball pushed down a snowy hill, and down it goes it grows and grows and grows no matter what I chose it grows and grows the nature of the snowball is to accumulate the matter that sticks to its icy velcro down it goes.

Did I push myself downhill? Why couldn’t I have been a stone, leaving rough rocky edges and everything else unnecessary behind?

          Does it matter? What matters if you want to take a step in a different direction. Does that make sense?

I’m moving this summer to work in the wildlands near the Western Sea, I tell her. I want to wash the smog of the suburbia out of my veins. I can’t run very fast. I’m running as fast as I can.

But you’re a snowball not a stone you grew and grew and collected the dirt and twigs and slushy piss in your path you’re a snowball not a stone you could barely heave your suitcases in the fucking car

: I’ve got a junkyard of totaled relationships in the crabgrass backyard behind the soft spot of my aorta and it’s fenced in with some crappy barbed wire I strung up myself :

          When you feel the fire coming, remember how to stop and make yourself breathe.

She looks at me like I’m a bird in a cage. She’s trying to reach through the bars. She’s holding out the tools to pick the lock.

[the-archer-and-the-poet]

Dirt under my fingernails

I have no sisters.

In my family It is I and Altair borne by Leto and Aquila. They spread their wings over the skyline.

Brother Apollo fell asleep below the earth. I watched him buried.

I run in no wolf pack But stalk the forest fang-footed, Panthera uncia, lone spotted nymph,

          I am running as fast as I can, the horses in my head driven hoof-wild they trampled the amygdala gates to stampede the winds, to stamp winding bloodstream trails. Deep as craters.

I open the door with chipped nails and toss up my keys in in pavement-pecked and punched jeans.

There’s a dark shadow sewn to my feet. I can’t run very fast. I’m running as fast as I can.

[the-archer-and-the-poet]

Leto’s narrative (draft)

Goodbye, Mom.

I reach out and she takes hold of me quickly, then steps back and smiles, her motion she is ready for me to leave.

Goodbye, wild girl.

Is she ready to leave?

Her darkening hair sways as she turns.

Aquila once told me that having children makes him feel as though his heart is walking around outside of his body. When I see my children, I see the organic life forms of my most pain-staking labor, each breathing and converting oxygen on its own and seeing bright and dark colors. Each taught the ability to stand and open doors, to use their feet to change direction with purpose and to use their hands to take up objects in order to improve the state of whatever lies around them.

When I see Artemis, I see the being that I have brought forth to the earth: a girl equal parts turbulent and tranquil, cold and passionate as the Western Sea.

She looks over her shoulder, a smile peeking out, and waves goodbye. She does not always use her smile to tell the truth.

I yearn to believe that I am leaving her in a better place.

[the-archer-and-the-poet]

He could swear it was green (draft)

It came like the impact of a body hitting the water. Then--

Everything became one blended cacophony of noise; one long, screeching shatter. The tones spreading out like a scattered drum riff, rounded out by metallic highs and creaking lows of the cars skidding, bending, and breaking.

And when the percussion ceased, the dull ringing in my ear rose in its place. The lantern streetlight glow and the neon reds and greens bleeding into the navy and the surface of the asphalt.

When I coughed out dust from the airbag, pain ripped into my chest.

I heard him cough, too. Dimly, I called his name. Dimly, I could see slack and then tension in the wrong places on his face.

“Apollo?”

In his next cough, I heard an urgent violence I did not hear in mine.

Where is my phone? Pocket.

Reaching sent another fire bolt through my chest. I reached anyway.

Dialing. Apollo gasped for air.

What was the emergency? --could have sworn it was green. What street were we on, again? Please hurry. Dial tone, dropped the phone. I turned to Apollo. Dimly, saw the red leaking onto his face.

“Help....coming...stay--stay--”

With his eyes blinking wide and the veins in his neck bulging, dimly, I could see all of his being struggling to stay, but slowly removing, removing, removing...

The last sound I heard from Apollo, I keep locked in a closet in the basement of my mind.

[the-archer-and-the-poet]

[the-archer-and-the-poet]

A landlocked alternative for jumping in the surf

arrives in the form of simple extension and compression while the kelp forest sways idly in the underwater lull you’re a six-foot swell on the horizon

air bubbles in the synovial fluid crackle under the surface of my spine tugged by the pressure of a tidal energy // your arms a double overhead barrel closed out by open palms curling in

:: i keel into unity with water anatomically, the energetic housing of chaos coiling head over heels, swirling throughout frothy endless vigor till i level steady an inspiration for air, a receiving ::

a burst of calm. endorphins releasing in the happiest of exorcisms.

my freckles smile bright washed by the sun and saltwater the shore ebbs // “you smell like the ocean,” you say in an exhale and ensue the radius and ulna and humerus relaxing till the tide goes out

[the-archer-and-the-poet]

what if our souls are the stars and the dead are the heavenly bodies and we all make up the universe maybe i’m not dying maybe i’m making my way back home

(via trumanblaq)

[the-archer-and-the-poet]

Francisco Soria Aedo

[the-archer-and-the-poet]

Did you know, seeing as there are no primates native to Australia, bats are our closest animal relative?

Also, Old World fruit bats (megabats) i.e. our grey-headed flying fox - the largest Australian bat, is hypothesised to be a descendant of an early primate.

Hand embroidery on natural linen.