VOTE! 2012 BELTANE/SAMHUINN LONG POEM

[Earthwoman]

Notice: Please use the poll to cast vote(s) for your favorite long poems. You cannot select more than three. ONLY those votes submitted to the poll will be tallied. Votes submitted as posts below will not be counted.

[iDrood]

Taliesin Retold

Life's a bitch and you never know when
You'll be chased by a witch like Cerridwen
It happened to Gwion, who tended a hearth
That led to a chase and then re-birth.

Cerridwen the witch, a goddess say some,
Had two kids: one bright, one dumb.
'Sod genetics,' she said,'It's my endeavour
To find a spell that'll make him clever.'

Decided that magic was the way to beat Darwin
Got a cauldron of wisdom for brewing up Awen
Learnt from some druids how to say the right chants
Started making a potion; boiled up some plants.

Equal opportunities employment was the name of the game
She got a youth and an old bind man to watch the flame.
A year and a day the fire was tended
But something went wrong before the spell ended.

You'd think that Gwion would've listened to his Mum
And known it weren't right to suck on his thumb
But in the heat of the moment he probably forgot
‘Cos those three drops of Awen were scalding hot.

Those three drops left him feeling quite sage
So when Cerridwen heard and flew into a rage
He realised he knew how to shapeshift
Which left Cerridwen more than slightly miffed.

You'd think he'd become a wolf or a bear
But no – he opted for a fuzzy hare
Not the wisest choice he soon found
When Cerridwen morphed into a hound.

It's not easy to escape a witch
Who's chasing you as a greyhound bitch
Makes you wonder if you oughta
Slip from land into water.

Spotting a river he made a wish
Leapt as hare but dived as a fish
Then Cerridwen, the little rotter
Morphed from hound into otter.

An underwater chase extreme:
The salmon leapt out of the stream
An airborne Gwion morphed again
And turned into a little wren.

'A wren', Gwion thought, 'Merde!'
I should have been a different bird.'
Cerridwen, needless to say,
Pursued him as a bird of prey.

Hawk versus wren are not great odds
But life ain't fair when against the gods
And just when he thought 'Oh, bugger, I'm beat'
He saw in a field a pile of wheat

He knew it was time to change again
Aimed for the pile and became a single grain
Cerridwen landed and thought, 'Oh heck,
I'll have to find it, peck by peck'.

She turned herself into a speckled hen
And blew her diet there and then
It took more than a little while
For her to eat the whole darn pile.

She thought it just her diet blown
But soon found out a seed was sown
Her mood turned pretty wild
When she found herself with child.

She wanted to kill him in the beginning
But her moral compass was oddly spinning
So instead of killing him on delivery
She sewed him into a bag set adrift in the sea.

A lad called Elphin thought it somewhat queer
When he found a leather bag floating in the weir
He carefully slit the greased leather bag open wide
And nearly had kittens when he saw the baby inside.

'A radiant brow!' he exclaimed
Taliesin (in Welsh) the baby was named
'That will do well enough,' the baby said
Making Elphin nearly drop the babe on its head!

So that's how Taliesin started his life
Growing up under the care of Elphin and his wife
When your start to life's been that odd and hard
Is it any surprise you become the best bard?

[iDrood]

Math Thematics or An Ode to Lleu Llaw Gyffes

Apparently the Lady Arianrhod
Upon stepping over a magician's rod
Gasped out loud 'Oh my God
I've given birth…how odd!'

The first wave was short and sweet
Baby Dylan lay at her feet
But when the second wave was complete
There was a tiny form, like a lump of meat

Lady Arianrhod felt compromised
Dylan she thoroughly despised
And after he was baptised
He jumped into the sea, leaving all surprised.

One weird thing led to another,
She knew of one child, not the other
Because Gwydion, Arianrhod's brother
Hid the second-born from his mother

Gwydion seemed to think it best
To hide the lump of meat in a chest
An odd choice of a place to rest
And Meat became boy..who'd have guessed.

I don't know if it was something he ate
Or just an odd twist of fate
But the boy grew at such a rapid rate
That at age four he'd pass for eight.

Having seen the boy grow
Gwydion thought his mum should know
So to Caer Arianrhod they did go
Old Gwydion, with the boy in tow.

Birthday greetings were belated
Her reaction unanticipated
Arianrhod felt humiliated
At how her body was violated

Her response was abrupt and terse
She'd had a major grudge to nurse
Arianrhod spat out a curse
And things turned from bad to worse.

Although the boy was not to blame
In revenge for her sense of shame
She declared that he would have no name
Unless from her own lips it came.

Gwydion and the boy dressed in disguise
Went as cobbler's with new supplies
Arianrhod declared, in her surprise
'Look, New shoes, and just my size'

While her shoes were being fitted and sewn
She saw the boy hit a wren's leg with a stone
'What a skillful hand does the fair-haired one own'
Said Arianrhod, and thus his name was known.

On being tricked her anger grew.
She cast on Lleu a curse anew
'You'll not bear arms unless I arm you.
Oh, and do those high heels come in blue?'

Tricking her again could prove hard
Because now she would be on her guard
Time for a new charade
Involving dressing as a bard.

Gwydion, a storyteller without peer
Told tales that flowed like wine and beer
Waited till the coast was clear
Then conjured warships to appear

Arianrhod, who had slept the night
Awoke in such a state of fright
Asked the men to help her fight
Arming Lleu,to his delight.

Lleu wanted his own 'trouble & strife',
But Arianrhod, just to twist the knife
Placed on him a curse for life
That he'd never have a human wife.

Said Gwydion to Lleu, 'Don't pout.
This is nothing to get upset about
Math the mage will help us out
We'll fix this together – without a doubt.

Math said' Forget about sugar and spice,
Girls aren't made of all things nice
If I might offer some advice:
Try a different DNA splice.

Set up in your delivery room
A bathtub as an alternative womb
Filled with flowers, fresh in bloom,
From oak and meadowsweet and broom.

Give the mixture a little swirl,
Chanting as you whirl and twirl
Just as sand becomes a pearl
We will make our flower girl.'

Blodeuwed, her of flower face
Was at first all charm and grace
Soon fell for another's embrace
Betrayed her husband, to her disgrace.

Blodeuwed had an affair with her heart's desire,
And together they did conspire
To commit murder, most horrid and dire,
And this is what did then transpire.

Lleu would prove difficult to slay
For he could not be killed during night or day
When walking on foot or riding away
Fully clothed, or with it all on display

Nor with any weapon you could legally buy
But Blodeuwed discovered how to kill her guy
It involved a cauldron, a net, a goat and dusk sky
And a specially forged spear – then he'd die.

So there was Lleu betrayed by his bride
Standing there with a spear in his side
Seemed to take it all in his stride
Turned into an eagle, to soar and glide.

Gwydion skilfully tracks his kinfolk
Lures him down from an old oak
Binds his wound with his cloak
And turns him back into a bloke.

Blodeuwed, for her act most foul
Is transformed into an owl
Forevermore the nights to prowl
As an altogether different fowl.

Lleu still has an axe to grind
And, also, a would-be assassin to find
And Lleu won't have peace of mind
Until returning the favour in kind.

On the riverbank his enemy died,
Behind the stone where he tried to hide
But Lleu's revenge was not denied
His spear pieced the stone and his enemy's side.

So be careful of potions stirred with a trowel
Be forewarned, things might turn foul
Your flower-girl will become an owl
Better forget about a wife and just throw in the towel.

[iDrood]

Bad Druid, No Mead

Summer Solstice plans were born
We were going to be up at the crack of dawn
Apparently it was the Druid Way
To welcome in Midsummer’s Day
That said, it was not with glee
That I set my alarm to go off at three
I woke at four, I could have wept
Somehow I had overslept
On arriving late the others agreed
Bad druid, No Mead.

Fast forward to another date
This time I’m sure I won’t be late
I leave extra early in preparation
For a group guided meditation.
We’re sat in a circle, all serene
The Sacred Grove is bright and green
And just when all were in the zone
My phone belts out a loud ring tone
Once again did all concede:
Bad Druid, No Mead.

Now and again I hear a rumour
That I’ve a mischievous sense of humour
It seems that when the elements were called
There were those who seemed somewhat appalled
At the little joke I tried to make
When instead of fire, I welcomed “Cake”.
Causing offence was not my intention
But still, as a Druidic intervention
The consequence of my misdeed:.
Bad Druid, No Mead.

I admit I should have welcomed fire
But I really do aspire
To follow the path of Druidry
But in a way that still is “Me”
I know I won’t always get it right
There’s always an internal fight
Between the comforts of a modern lifestyle
And living life with honour on our sacred isle
It’s a work in progress, so if I might plead
Gimme fluid and make it Mead!

[wyeuro]

science works better when you realise the atoms are living, evolving, metabolising, organising, purposeful, thinking, feeling, creative entities too.


turtles all the way…er…in.

Stephen Hawking's 1988 book A Brief History of Time starts:
A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever," said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!"

i’ve listened to the scientists and this is my reply;
respectfully i must advise, we don’t see eye to eye.
my animistic atoms making predetermined shapes,
mechanically intending everything from stars to apes,
just flout the simple sanity of your established science
and seem to treat the ‘evidence’ with cavalier defiance.

you say that planet earth is really not a living being;
it doesn’t grow or reproduce, to go what you’re seeing.
but eggs and pupae, they don’t grow, nor do they reproduce
and who knows what this earth will do when we’re no further use?
it goes beyond the evidence to say: ‘it is alive’,
but just as much to say: ‘it’s not’, however you contrive.

astronomers with bated breath observe that stars evolve.
they explicate the physics in equations that they solve.
the time-scale is enormous, so we shouldn’t judge too soon –
it won’t be long before our genes ‘inseminate’ the moon!
we don’t know how the planets form – we’ve only made a guess
but why assume that they are lacking sexual prowess?

some scientists talk of termite mounds, made by, but not, biota
suggesting earth’s inanimate: i’m not fazed one iota.
our bones are inorganic things, secreted by our cells,
just like a beetle’s carapace, or nautiluses’ shells.
our sial, like a carapace, protects the inner flows
that roil so metabolically; and life upon it grows!


another speaks of darwin, in defence of whom she says
all creatures are accounted for, all qualities and traits.
that gives me pause until i see that yes! she’s partly right -
continuum from gene to plant, a very brave insight!
if sentimental purpose crafts the atoms in a star
it's working in our genes as well? that isn’t so bizarre!

my viewpoint’s still post-modern (not yet moved to what comes next)
but I still maintain that matter should be seen in terms of ‘text’
with networks just like world-wide-webs jam-packed with brawling memes
(or, since my term’s more general, perhaps we’ll call them ‘emes’,
a healthy little suffix that can serve us as a word)
a ‘textrichness’, articulate? that isn’t so absurd.

genes craft all traits of plants and beasts and do so from within.
but processes are just as smart within an atom’s skin.
so each big bang, when first it starts to outwardly explode
is explicating latent text according to a code.
and now that’s said, it looks to me so simple and so plain -
i s’pose it does to you, too, so there's no more to explain.

to sum up, with a metaphor: a gene is hawking’s turtle
comprised of inner turtles (now, look deep - try not to hurtle
precipitately inward) with each subatomic one
comprised of other inner ones, and when all’s said and done
this turtle soup inside a gene can ‘quark’ ad infinitum.
it’s turtles, going in not down! come on! they’re there! why fight ’em?

[Earthwoman]

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