Thorn and Benediction

Poetry

Recent

  • 3/i/Atlas

    Written for and by request of Heather Mirassou whose poetry you will find here
    I. Departure from the Red God

    It leaves the rust-bright altar bare,
    an eye unstained yet marked by war;
    it rises through the iron air,
    a witness from the crimson shore.

    It climbs beyond the dust-lit rim,
    a spark released from ancient flame;
    and Mars grows faint, its edges dim,
    still watching though it knows no name.

    The i looks back, a single bead
    that holds the planet’s wounded glow;
    its iris keeps each buried bleed
    that stains the plains it witnessed low.

    But forward through the frozen sweep,
    between the gods in silent rows,
    it moves where voids grow wide and deep
    a pilgrim where no story goes.

    II. The Corridor Between the Gods

    The i drifts on through voiceless dark,
    its pupil fixed on far-off fire;
    the war-smoke fades from every mark,
    but memory hums like buried wire.

    It threads the halls no god has claimed,
    the gulf where exiled legends sleep;
    its sight holds names no star has named,
    its iris tuned to distance deep.

    Three glints appear: past, present, goal
    triadic sparks along its run;
    they pulse like wards upon its soul,
    a trinity of void and sun.

    III. Entry into the Realm of the Prime God

    The Jovian crown begins to rise,
    a swelling throne of storm and glare;
    the i tilts upward, widened eyes,
    to meet the king who rules the air.

    A thousand tempests split the night,
    their thunder rolling like decree;
    the pilgrim feels the pulling might
    a summons from divinity.

    The cloudmass roars its fractured hymn,
    its colours twist in molten bands;
    the i draws in each shifting limb
    of godhood shaped by titan hands.

    IV. The Initiation / Rebirth Through Storm

    First lightning strikes: a white command
    that carves a rune across its frame;
    the i endures, though iron-scorched,
    and burns anew beneath that flame.

    A second bolt: magnetic crown,
    it crowns the lens with polar fire;
    the i turns slowly, gaze cast down,
    then rises, fuelled by strange desire.

    A third descends: the breaking spark,
    the rite that severs what it was;
    reborn within the Jovian dark,
    its sight aligned with sovereign laws.

    Now Atlas bears the storm’s decree
    no longer war’s, but majesty.

    V. The Final Vision

    The storms fall back. A hush unfolds,
    a chamber in the planet’s crown;
    the i drifts through the amber folds
    as if the king himself knelt down.

    Its sight grows tall as orbit’s span,
    its pupil deep as sculpted night;
    it sees the map beneath the plan,
    the threads that weave the gods in light.

    It reads the tides of ancient law,
    the pulse that binds the spheres in place;
    it sees what mortal eyes once saw
    in myths that tried to mirror grace.

    Then out beyond the prime god’s throne,
    a further dark begins to wake;
    the i resolves,now forged, now grown
    to chart the roads no fates could make.

    And Atlas turns, with sovereign sight,
    and carries onward through the night.

    Fediverse Reactions

  • Birthday (II)

    From winter’s bite to summer’s blaze,
    I crossed the sphere’s inverted seam,
    Abandoning green for ochre’s haze.

    The distant places drift and dream
    Of travertines a youth once kept
    In rings round embers’ wicked gleam.

    And lovers’ names the shadows swept,
    Their faces thinned to trembling air,
    Lost lanterns memories recollect.

    Old heathlands darken everywhere;
    Their mosses murmur through the dust,
    Faint ghosts of frost lost now to prayer.

    A carnelian glow held tight in trust
    Burns through the years with muted fire,
    A relic smudged by time’s slow rust.

    But sharper still, the half-made choir
    Of tales I heard before I knew
    Their edges warped by soft desire.

    Stray echoes shape a world untrue,
    Yet call me back with quiet claim,
    A homeland stitched in fractured hue.

    I walk between what held my name
    And what dissolves when I draw near,
    Both less and more than what I frame.

    To yearn for worlds that never were,
    Yet still their aspects re-appear

  • Arma Christi (Clavus)

    The iron enters bone in thread,
    the void leans close with iron breath;
    the sky turns black and bows its head.

    A charged wind keens through flesh and grief
    storm-fields align the hidden core;
    the clouds split wide in cosmic sheath.

    The nails conduct the starless roar,
    each pulse a drag against the night;
    the world tilts on its trembling floor.

    Blood-iron wakes to rising light,
    drawn upward by the storm’s decree;
    the beam shakes with a deepened might.

    The thunder forms a gravity
    pulling through seams no eye can trace;
    the field bends time’s geometry.

    A final spark in vacant space
    reverses night’s imploding frame;
    the heavens tear in soundless grace.

    Blood-iron hums its ancient claim,
    a current older than the tomb,
    ascending through the stellar flame.

    We feel release within the gloom,
    as iron tears from wood and plea
    the sky becomes a widening womb.

    And what ascends is pulled to be
    within the field none can avoid:
    Star to iron, and iron to He.

    Arisen flesh of the iron void