Submissions by Northern_Soul
POEMS AND SHORT STORIES
Poet Introduction
There is a trick to get out of your skin 🖤
SELF POEM
Published
13th Apr 2024 1:02am
13th Apr 2024 1:02am
Hymn to Creation
i.
in the beginning
there was a ram
made of wounds
and starlight
electrical currents
for blood masked
a humble den
of deceit
ii.
the bear tasted
of dark, honeyed pine
forming clenched palms
in the veiled morning mist
carpet burns on knees
that wholly eroticised
the initials carved
into a thigh
iii.
rabbit peered from her hole
flat-eared and frightened,
a universe imploding...
in the beginning
there was a ram
made of wounds
and starlight
electrical currents
for blood masked
a humble den
of deceit
ii.
the bear tasted
of dark, honeyed pine
forming clenched palms
in the veiled morning mist
carpet burns on knees
that wholly eroticised
the initials carved
into a thigh
iii.
rabbit peered from her hole
flat-eared and frightened,
a universe imploding...
#women
#men
#pagan #metaphor
#pagan #metaphor
141 reads
2 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
12th Apr 2024 9:30am
12th Apr 2024 9:30am
Hymn to the Crone
When Cally died aged 33
of cancer, leaving behind
a Husband, 2 young lads
and an ocean of emptiness
I asked big questions
what it really means
as we float around space
on a cosmic bowling ball
if it means anything at all
inbetween paying bills
and taxes. How a world
can spin, seemingly
out of control.
I see those lads sometimes,
their little faces gleaming
through Facebook pictures,
Hubbie’s arm around
someone new
how well they look
after...
of cancer, leaving behind
a Husband, 2 young lads
and an ocean of emptiness
I asked big questions
what it really means
as we float around space
on a cosmic bowling ball
if it means anything at all
inbetween paying bills
and taxes. How a world
can spin, seemingly
out of control.
I see those lads sometimes,
their little faces gleaming
through Facebook pictures,
Hubbie’s arm around
someone new
how well they look
after...
#women
#LifeCycle
#aging
#pagan
#cancer
150 reads
3 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
11th Apr 2024 5:34am
11th Apr 2024 5:34am
Hymn to the Mother
This one is for women.
Childless women.
The ones who have been
asked with that curious eye
“So why don’t you have kids?”
as you turn to say “actually
it’s got fuck all to do with you,
Sandra”
and it hasn’t.
Not a thing.
Because I think of my womb
as priceless—
so priceless, my child
could not afford to stay
and so
I cut out the shape of my Evey
as though she is a paper-doll
and motherhood is the scissors
I curl
her hair as if it is bright ...
Childless women.
The ones who have been
asked with that curious eye
“So why don’t you have kids?”
as you turn to say “actually
it’s got fuck all to do with you,
Sandra”
and it hasn’t.
Not a thing.
Because I think of my womb
as priceless—
so priceless, my child
could not afford to stay
and so
I cut out the shape of my Evey
as though she is a paper-doll
and motherhood is the scissors
I curl
her hair as if it is bright ...
#birth
#women
#motherhood #pagan
#motherhood #pagan
151 reads
2 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
10th Apr 2024 9:24am
10th Apr 2024 9:24am
Hymn to the Maiden
There are fields in the mind
endless fields stained in gold
where I’d lay in the harvest,
stalks erect beneath the sun
listening to the gentle chatter
of seeds shivering in their husks.
Anglia grew wheat, and hops
and rapeseed. Settlements
built on boggy fens and
Roman rule
and so I’d lay gazing at the sky
dreaming of coins and rings
and treasures laying dormant
inches below the soil, thinking ...
endless fields stained in gold
where I’d lay in the harvest,
stalks erect beneath the sun
listening to the gentle chatter
of seeds shivering in their husks.
Anglia grew wheat, and hops
and rapeseed. Settlements
built on boggy fens and
Roman rule
and so I’d lay gazing at the sky
dreaming of coins and rings
and treasures laying dormant
inches below the soil, thinking ...
#teens
#childhood
#pagan #Britain
#pagan #Britain
162 reads
12 Comments
LOVE POEM
Published
9th Apr 2024 8:40am
9th Apr 2024 8:40am
Hymn to Dark Fruit
I.
what must it be like
for your ripe meat
to fall between
thumb and
finger
to pluck you straight
from the tree where
juice runs sweet
II.
your apple
is overturned,
love—
Eve only ever
loved men
III.
I think of you
in Persephone’s garden
laden in pomegranates
imagining you
at your most beautiful
every morning, red jewels
escape from your thighs
IV.
...
what must it be like
for your ripe meat
to fall between
thumb and
finger
to pluck you straight
from the tree where
juice runs sweet
II.
your apple
is overturned,
love—
Eve only ever
loved men
III.
I think of you
in Persephone’s garden
laden in pomegranates
imagining you
at your most beautiful
every morning, red jewels
escape from your thighs
IV.
...
#women
#LGBT
#pagan #metaphor
#pagan #metaphor
176 reads
2 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
8th Apr 2024 9:17am
8th Apr 2024 9:17am
Hymn to Spirits
and I’ll press my hand
against the glass of Sunday’s
bleak mirror
gaze at the small gap
between palm and reflection,
pondering the liminal
for much the same reason
as planting bare feet
at a dark crossroads
to silently meet
the man in black
as he speaks, always
through sacred wells, and ruins
that drop their anchors down
to where the Otherworld resides.
There are times when I become sick
of the new age and its fluff
because
the folk spirits I know, ...
against the glass of Sunday’s
bleak mirror
gaze at the small gap
between palm and reflection,
pondering the liminal
for much the same reason
as planting bare feet
at a dark crossroads
to silently meet
the man in black
as he speaks, always
through sacred wells, and ruins
that drop their anchors down
to where the Otherworld resides.
There are times when I become sick
of the new age and its fluff
because
the folk spirits I know, ...
#pagan
#Britain
146 reads
4 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
7th Apr 2024 7:18am
7th Apr 2024 7:18am
Hymn to Water
They were windsurfing on the lake today.
Storm Kathleen was rolling in after all
and so I watched them on a jetty
skim the waves with all the grace
of Bambi on ice.
The sports club owns that one—
charges exorbitant fees to dive
as well as insisting on wet-suits
and tow-floats and lifeguards
and other shit sucking the life
from wild experiences.
I don’t swim there.
I refuse to be sanitised
and maybe as forty looms
I carry with me the spirit
of my anarchic era
...
Storm Kathleen was rolling in after all
and so I watched them on a jetty
skim the waves with all the grace
of Bambi on ice.
The sports club owns that one—
charges exorbitant fees to dive
as well as insisting on wet-suits
and tow-floats and lifeguards
and other shit sucking the life
from wild experiences.
I don’t swim there.
I refuse to be sanitised
and maybe as forty looms
I carry with me the spirit
of my anarchic era
...
#water
#nature
#pagan #Britain
#pagan #Britain
174 reads
8 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
6th Apr 2024 8:56am
6th Apr 2024 8:56am
Hymn to Fire
There was a theme to the Leos.
A bold, unfailing theme of fuckery
because hindsight is a hell of a drug.
Truth is, I didn’t hear you leave.
Pad-foot God.
You and your blazing eyes
caught up in a massacre
and that’s how it felt—
as if I was a doe
decaying slowly.
As if the killer in you
painted my skin with ash.
A bold, unfailing theme of fuckery
because hindsight is a hell of a drug.
Truth is, I didn’t hear you leave.
Pad-foot God.
You and your blazing eyes
caught up in a massacre
and that’s how it felt—
as if I was a doe
decaying slowly.
As if the killer in you
painted my skin with ash.
#pagan
158 reads
6 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
5th Apr 2024 8:10am
5th Apr 2024 8:10am
Hymn to Air
Two arms, propellor blades
lift in and out of the lake
rhythmic and calm
rhythmic and calm
rhythmic and calm
I float
beneath the sun
yet no warmth in this world,
spring tides on a pivot of ice.
For a moment, I look at clouds
seeing shapes in formless things
then gulp down breath in lungfuls
as I plunge beneath April’s waves.
This is how it felt
before time began,
before people and taxes
became one strange God
this is how I crawl back
inside the womb, how I wait ...
lift in and out of the lake
rhythmic and calm
rhythmic and calm
rhythmic and calm
I float
beneath the sun
yet no warmth in this world,
spring tides on a pivot of ice.
For a moment, I look at clouds
seeing shapes in formless things
then gulp down breath in lungfuls
as I plunge beneath April’s waves.
This is how it felt
before time began,
before people and taxes
became one strange God
this is how I crawl back
inside the womb, how I wait ...
#myself
#pagan
#Britain
184 reads
4 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
4th Apr 2024 9:11am
4th Apr 2024 9:11am
Hymn to Earth
I found the idle skeleton
of a lone deer out on the moor,
half-visible, half-sinking
into the bone-rich mud
eye sockets empty; the skin
quite gone as I considered
how death is simply life
with a free buffet.
Often, I dream of what it must
be like to sink into nothingness.
To seep slowly into the liminal,
to pour fuel into the abyss
how Earth
is always two parts green
often ten parts silence
of a lone deer out on the moor,
half-visible, half-sinking
into the bone-rich mud
eye sockets empty; the skin
quite gone as I considered
how death is simply life
with a free buffet.
Often, I dream of what it must
be like to sink into nothingness.
To seep slowly into the liminal,
to pour fuel into the abyss
how Earth
is always two parts green
often ten parts silence
#earth
#pagan
#Britain
198 reads
15 Comments
OBSERVATIONAL POEM
Published
3rd Apr 2024 8:13am
3rd Apr 2024 8:13am
Hymn to Brigid
Ask her
where those wells touch sunlight;
where water kisses fragrant air
bursting with daisies, sweet honeysuckle
where she guides ink in heathen hands
pressed against warm sheets of paper,
word becoming thought,
thought becoming deed, and deed
becoming reason in humble retreat.
Ask her
where Celtic blood quakes in the eaves
of an oak-bound house, where children
gather around Mother’s milk, a fire roars,
part faith, part God in the arms
of the hopeless. She moves ...
where those wells touch sunlight;
where water kisses fragrant air
bursting with daisies, sweet honeysuckle
where she guides ink in heathen hands
pressed against warm sheets of paper,
word becoming thought,
thought becoming deed, and deed
becoming reason in humble retreat.
Ask her
where Celtic blood quakes in the eaves
of an oak-bound house, where children
gather around Mother’s milk, a fire roars,
part faith, part God in the arms
of the hopeless. She moves ...
#spring
#pagan
#Britain
154 reads
0 Comments
SELF POEM
Published
2nd Apr 2024 9:36am
2nd Apr 2024 9:36am
Hymn to Cernunnos
I threw up in the alley
shortly after leaving the car.
It was a mixture of things—
the smell of the place for one,
how my stomach lurched
the second I turned a corner
to see that old market cross
standing in the square
and there it was
the old flat rented out
in somebody else’s name,
the carpet shop quite gone
replaced with books
and barbers.
I looked up at the window.
Where [x] happened.
That thing.
I still can’t speak its...
shortly after leaving the car.
It was a mixture of things—
the smell of the place for one,
how my stomach lurched
the second I turned a corner
to see that old market cross
standing in the square
and there it was
the old flat rented out
in somebody else’s name,
the carpet shop quite gone
replaced with books
and barbers.
I looked up at the window.
Where [x] happened.
That thing.
I still can’t speak its...
#pagan
#Britain
#DomesticViolence
189 reads
2 Comments
DU Poetry : Submissions by Northern_Soul
