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literature
BLOOD SKY DANCE
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Literature Text
BLOOD SKY DANCE
Hair,
Like threads of fate,
Tendrils of a black mist,
Dark against a cloud-grey sky,
Held on the fine currents of a
Vagabond wind.
It flows
Free,
Whips back,
Caught on fickle updrafts:
An ebony frame
For a soft
Pale canvas –
A Picture of Calm –
The focus:
Cold
Granite
Eyes.
Mirrors.
A picture
In a picture,
Watching specks descend from
Higher skies,
Wings unfolding:
CLACK
CLACK
CLACK!
Parabolas,
Arcs and chords,
Lines drafted across the clouds
Like tactical diagrams.
Reflected
And
Observed.
Muscles tense.
They shift beneath
Obsidian plates,
Matching breath
And poise.
He raises his arm.
The blade glimmers
In Silver light,
Rays like rain.
Then he steps forward
And
D
r
o
p
s
.
Black lines rushing
Upwards;
Turrets,
Balconies,
Buttresses:
A tangle of
Construction
Work In Progress
And
Aban-
-doned.
He falls
Through
Sky
Courtyards,
Past towers,
Between
Scaffold and
Crumbling
Spire.
The Chateau’s embrace, endlessly reaching out to him,
To save him from the City
Below.
The he flexes
His shoulders,
Feels the length of bone and feather,
Stretching out, filling the span – dragging the air.
He makes his own
Arc
And rides it out
From the shadow
Of the Chateau.
Towers
Bar
His
Exit -
The
City
Pierces
The
Sky
And a thousand
Black-haired
Angels
Leap
From their
Umbral retreats,
Blade
And Spear
And Wing.
A smile stretches
Across that pale canvas
As the
Enemy
Draws near:
The First Wave.
He raises his sword,
As if to swat them,
Then dodges
Backward
Sucking them up
In his
Wake,
Drawing them into the
Labyrinth of
Ruined stairways,
Collonades,
Watchtowers and
Gangways.
Each stone becomes a
Platform,
Each wall,
Defence and
Weapon.
He leaps between them,
Rebounding,
Spinning,
Gliding to the rhythm
Of the clashing
Steel,
Bursting flesh,
Gushing vessels.
He is a tornado of blood
And feathers, armour
And blade, pale
Skin and long,
Fine, black
Hair,
All in motion,
All graceful violence.
Molten
Granite
Eyes,
Avalanche
White
Smile,
Mist
Tendrils,
Threads of Fate,
Steel Edge-
In the shadow of the Chateau a girl knees by a grave. Hot rain falls on her shoulders and she looks up
And weeps.
Hair,
Like threads of fate,
Tendrils of a black mist,
Dark against a cloud-grey sky,
Held on the fine currents of a
Vagabond wind.
It flows
Free,
Whips back,
Caught on fickle updrafts:
An ebony frame
For a soft
Pale canvas –
A Picture of Calm –
The focus:
Cold
Granite
Eyes.
Mirrors.
A picture
In a picture,
Watching specks descend from
Higher skies,
Wings unfolding:
CLACK
CLACK
CLACK!
Parabolas,
Arcs and chords,
Lines drafted across the clouds
Like tactical diagrams.
Reflected
And
Observed.
Muscles tense.
They shift beneath
Obsidian plates,
Matching breath
And poise.
He raises his arm.
The blade glimmers
In Silver light,
Rays like rain.
Then he steps forward
And
D
r
o
p
s
.
Black lines rushing
Upwards;
Turrets,
Balconies,
Buttresses:
A tangle of
Construction
Work In Progress
And
Aban-
-doned.
He falls
Through
Sky
Courtyards,
Past towers,
Between
Scaffold and
Crumbling
Spire.
The Chateau’s embrace, endlessly reaching out to him,
To save him from the City
Below.
The he flexes
His shoulders,
Feels the length of bone and feather,
Stretching out, filling the span – dragging the air.
He makes his own
Arc
And rides it out
From the shadow
Of the Chateau.
Towers
Bar
His
Exit -
The
City
Pierces
The
Sky
And a thousand
Black-haired
Angels
Leap
From their
Umbral retreats,
Blade
And Spear
And Wing.
A smile stretches
Across that pale canvas
As the
Enemy
Draws near:
The First Wave.
He raises his sword,
As if to swat them,
Then dodges
Backward
Sucking them up
In his
Wake,
Drawing them into the
Labyrinth of
Ruined stairways,
Collonades,
Watchtowers and
Gangways.
Each stone becomes a
Platform,
Each wall,
Defence and
Weapon.
He leaps between them,
Rebounding,
Spinning,
Gliding to the rhythm
Of the clashing
Steel,
Bursting flesh,
Gushing vessels.
He is a tornado of blood
And feathers, armour
And blade, pale
Skin and long,
Fine, black
Hair,
All in motion,
All graceful violence.
Molten
Granite
Eyes,
Avalanche
White
Smile,
Mist
Tendrils,
Threads of Fate,
Steel Edge-
In the shadow of the Chateau a girl knees by a grave. Hot rain falls on her shoulders and she looks up
And weeps.
Napo 26: Also a Darksyde piece I;ve had in ind for a while. The poem was kind of concrete, but the formatting didn't follow.
This is by far the longest piece I've written like this.
And probably the most ambitious.
This is by far the longest piece I've written like this.
And probably the most ambitious.
© 2007 - 2024 taraph
Comments10
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Hmm....so, by the time I see it, has it been reformatted? Having read quite a bit of free-from poetry, I dont mind the strange line breaks--i really find formal poetry...well, limiting--there are things you can do with it, no doubt, but free form has so much more
Ok, next: I'll get this out of the way--i don't really like the subject matter of the poem. Maybe because i have don't really like fantasy, maybe because i think it is intensely hard to have anything angelic in writing without being cliche, maybe because I don't like writing about fighting--not because I'm a pacifist or anything, justr because it gets repetitive, and is usually found in fantasy writing >_>, whatever it is, I just don't particularly enjoy this vein.
That being said, I think, poetically, this is very good. The first critic there, i believe, took the approach to critiquing that Penny Arcade poked fun at in one of their comics--"You know what suck about this cupcake? It isn't a brownie." They are criticizing the poem not for what it is, but what they want it to be. And May I add here, I believe the "cold" is necessary in "cold granit eyes", and, later, you use the same subject but change the adjective--to erase "cold" and "molten" would be to destroy the difference between the two, which you are obviously going for.
Furthermore, I agree with you that the imagery should not be explored more--the only-surface approach leaves much to the readers imagination, and more exploration, i think, would bog down the poem.
Next, I also explicitly disagree with "all in motion, all graceful motion"--this change from preposition to sentence fragment is striking, and adding the "in" seems repetitive. Grammar is not necessary in poetry, as long as it makes sense.
Also, before I even read anything, I really like the last three lines. I interpreted it as a fitting ending to a poem that seems to celebrate violence--this girl weeping in front of a grave. These people had lives. And how is "She weeps" telling, not showing? We don't have an explanation for why she is weeping, or anything like that--we are left to our own thoughts.
almost done: I think the effect you did with "Drops" seems...cheap. A little to literal with the formatting.
Ok, well, theres my two cents. Or five dollars...
a note to ~Negated: I may sound belligerent in this, but i really don't try to.
Ok, next: I'll get this out of the way--i don't really like the subject matter of the poem. Maybe because i have don't really like fantasy, maybe because i think it is intensely hard to have anything angelic in writing without being cliche, maybe because I don't like writing about fighting--not because I'm a pacifist or anything, justr because it gets repetitive, and is usually found in fantasy writing >_>, whatever it is, I just don't particularly enjoy this vein.
That being said, I think, poetically, this is very good. The first critic there, i believe, took the approach to critiquing that Penny Arcade poked fun at in one of their comics--"You know what suck about this cupcake? It isn't a brownie." They are criticizing the poem not for what it is, but what they want it to be. And May I add here, I believe the "cold" is necessary in "cold granit eyes", and, later, you use the same subject but change the adjective--to erase "cold" and "molten" would be to destroy the difference between the two, which you are obviously going for.
Furthermore, I agree with you that the imagery should not be explored more--the only-surface approach leaves much to the readers imagination, and more exploration, i think, would bog down the poem.
Next, I also explicitly disagree with "all in motion, all graceful motion"--this change from preposition to sentence fragment is striking, and adding the "in" seems repetitive. Grammar is not necessary in poetry, as long as it makes sense.
Also, before I even read anything, I really like the last three lines. I interpreted it as a fitting ending to a poem that seems to celebrate violence--this girl weeping in front of a grave. These people had lives. And how is "She weeps" telling, not showing? We don't have an explanation for why she is weeping, or anything like that--we are left to our own thoughts.
almost done: I think the effect you did with "Drops" seems...cheap. A little to literal with the formatting.
Ok, well, theres my two cents. Or five dollars...
a note to ~Negated: I may sound belligerent in this, but i really don't try to.