The Savage Moon
The clouds… Tonight they hide her, but she’s there:
A savage, ghostly horse without a rider.
The elders claim, “A feral, vengeful mare
Who menaces and circles ever wider
To blight the night!” I quake! This is no myth
Of frightened men, no cloak of words to hide
Foreboding from an Orb which stares down with
A hunter’s eye. The Moon means ill! The tide
She pulls to her she means to choke. The ebb
Is but the shore-line’s strangled gasp for air.
She stalks us as she circle-spins a web,
As hungry spiders must, about our sphere.
Take guard! Beware until the Moon is new,
Lest we give up as worlds are wont to do.
Omens
Those spider webs upon the wall
Resemble tea leaves which recall
The image of a rooster bound
With cobra entrails on the ground
That echo etchings in your palms
Yet fail to curb nightmarish qualms
When séance hexes fail to guard
Against the baleful Tarot card,
That proffers mystical misrule
For choosing Priestess, Empress, Fool,
Who all are superseded—all!—
By shadows in the crystal ball
That fog the fears they should forfend or,
Draw you to the Witch of Endor
Hissing death, yet for myself I
Fain would seek the priests of Delphi
Whose pronouncements offer much
Though cursed by some as out of touch.
No, Destiny demands we wait
For Time to crack, divulging Fate.
Brian Yapko is a retired lawyer whose poetry has appeared in over fifty journals. He is the winner of the 2023 SCP International Poetry Competition. Brian is also the author of several short stories, the science fiction novel El Nuevo Mundo and the gothic archaeological novel Bleeding Stone. He lives in Bradenton, Florida.
Excellent as per usual Brian. I especially like the way you personify the moon as a maleficent horse/mare, a spider, and an orb with eyes! I will never look at the moon the same way again!!!
Brian, I’ll never again gaze at the moon in quite the same ‘light’ – if you get my ‘drift’, and your collage of “Omens” is literarily terrifying! What a mood you must have been in when you penned these 2 disturbing dandies! Great job…
Brian, the mystical nature of these poems is chilling and would fit well in October with Halloween. Your mind seems to have amazingly strayed into realms of darkness with vivid images larger than life. Your vocabulary once again reveals your consummate poetic adeptness that enchants, enthralls, and is effervescent with innate alliteration in strategic places. How you ever found the archaic “forfend” is fascinating.
All rather menacing; but very imaginative, Brian, and with some inventive and entertaining rhymes. I enjoyed both pieces.
These are two scary poems, and a welcome relief from hearts-and-flowers niceties. Bravo, Brian!
The ancients thought of the moon as dangerous or threatening, and associated it with the goddesses Selene and Hecate, who were connected with witchcraft and necromancy. Evil doings were linked to the moon, as were changeability and uncertainty, both of which were looked upon as undesirable faults by the ancients (who were much saner than us on the subject).
“Omens” is a blockbuster poem. The first eighteen lines are one complete sentence, which emphasizes the throb of fear that pervades the piece, but which also sets the stage for the hammer-blow of the closing couplet. Also, the first five lines present us with a strange triple similitude: tea leaves, a rooster bound with cobra entrails, and the “etchings” on your palms — all meant to suggest spider webs. One’s palm is a web-work of crossed lines, and for believers in palmistry those lines already hold one’s future.
This goes along perfectly with the entire purpose of witchcraft and enchantment — to paralyze and transfix human willpower, just as spider webs are meant to trap helpless victims. What complicates the question is the speaker’s desperate realization that nothing can help him — not seances, not hexes, not Tarot cards, not crystal balls, not the Witch of Endor, not the Delphic Oracle. All he can do is surrender to Fate, and to the unfolding of what Time holds in store. The troubling “omens” have won.
This is a profoundly pessimistic poem, but also a BRILLIANT one. And that’s all that matters.
Thank you very much indeed, Joe. I’m grateful to be back and to have an opportunity to read through and process these wonderful comments — especially your detailed one which grasps very well that these are mood pieces more than anything else. I just wanted to see if I could write something which gave the reader some anxiety and unease. I’m glad to see these pieces did exactly that. The mythology concerning the moon which you have related is old and venerable. What I wrote I simply made up, based solely on the idea I once had that the Moon circled the Earth a bit like a horse in a corral. That image turned into a spider weaving its web and the inchoate imagery was easily transformed into a dark sonnet.
I’m especially grateful for your comment about “Omens.” I wanted very much to see if I could write a poem which sounded like sheer panic. The run-on sentence — I hoped — would give a breathless, manic quality to the poem which would then come to a traumatic sudden halt when the speaker ran out of supernatural fortune-telling possibilities. Yes, it is a pessimistic poem in some way for it rules out all of these crutches and hammers home the idea that one must live life on life’s terms.
“The Moon means ill! The tide She pulls to her she means to choke”.
Heaven forfend we continue to diss that poor, cursed steed! Brian, your brilliant words have been desperately missed. As per usual, two incomparable poems, this time hair-raisingly scary! Welcome back. (And I’ll never look at a horse the same way again!)
Thanks for these two evocative poems. For most of us, no matter how sceptic we profess to be, there’s a dark fascination in the occult. I know that such things are forbidden to us Jews, but I think that in any case I wouldn’t want to see the future. If it’s good, it’ll be a nice surprise; and if not …Anyway, I enjoyed them both.
Quite linguistically brilliant Brian: 18 lines before we reach the first fullstop! And then the couplet clincher: “No, Destiny demands we wait / For Time to crack, divulging Fate.” And I can only add: first rate!
For lunatics like us, Brian, reflected sunlight is always best. The Sun washes colors, and we don’t want that to happen. I would urge you to read Jack Vance’s Marune: Alastor 933. As always, you crack the shell and expose the meat., and all are nourished.
Thank you, Kip! And thank you for the sci fi referral of Marune: Alastor 933. I see that it is the middle book in a trilogy by Jack Vance so I have thrown caution to the wind and ordered all three on Amazon. Much appreciated!
Dear Theresa, Mark, Roy, Martin, Laura, David, James and Kip — thank you all for your generous comments on these strange poems. I did not write these poems for any particular purpose other than to see whether or not I could write work which caused a certain disturbance and unease. From your various comments, it would seem that they were successful in this. I’m very grateful! Poetry is such a great thing — it really can allow us to write anything that captures an emotion or feeling. It’s the closes the written word comes to music.