The Ballad of Robert Hode

In the year of 1332

After the Despenser War

Robert Hode of Wakefield

Become a famed outlaw

He’d been an archer for Lancaster

(who was executed by the king)

And had his lands forfeited

For daring to fight for him

Now you may know him better

By the name of Robin Hood

Who some say came from Nottingham

But I would say you should

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You kiss the tops of my closed hands, the mottled scarf round, a hand-fasting

Where little triple diamonds sit, it stands like a marriage 

Our walk round the sea brimmed with its longings and its blue remedy 

I am peering into our brief lives like Ægir’s wife and her sea fury

what’s lost is lost 

May the mead of poetry find me still 

I make a new dream for us to take refuge from ...

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No-one's happy with their life.
Someone, somewhere, was telling you stories.
No-one's happy.
If you are lucky, you'll do alright.
If you are lucky.

There's a way to be.
There's a way to cope.
Where's the God that's supposed to help us?
Where's the love that's meant to guide us?
Where's the hope?

No-one's meant to have it easy.
Someone, somewhere, must have been crazy!
Nothing's eas...

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The Celtic Spring begins today, so Happy Imbolc.

__________________

Green Man

on a ceramic head

by Paula Zimmermann

I know that you must be there,

innocent divine,

although at first I cannot see;

your martyrdom, daily,

amidst brick, steel, and glass

goes almost un-noticed

and has made us blind.

We have all but buried you.

But then I find ...

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The Raising Of The Trickster

When the western sky turns slowly into the colour of an old bruise

And the last orange streaks of daylight bleed from the setting sun

A cold white vapour swirls through the fields of corn its fingers prising apart the stalks

As the lands of Albion darken and strange noises start to crawl from the mist.

At the edge of the fields there sprawls a ...

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Corruption

Here in the verdant meadows

All on a summer’s day

The dreaded army of the dark

Met with the noble fey

They fought until the long sundown

And the lost blood of the dead

Soaked into the sacred ground

And turned the roses red

When the fight was over

And the legion of the flies

Had swarmed across the corpses

Stealing hope from sightless eyes

...

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Crow Lore

We sit and watch the world go by

On fences long and oak trees high

The waxing moon the setting sun

We are the crows of Albion

We chronicle the human ways

Their restless nights and confused days

Mother, daughter, father, son

We are the crows of Albion

Our stories written down in books

Guarded well by crows and rooks

And no one knows what we ...

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Apothecary

Beneath the ancient gallows tree

There sits an old apothecary

Where deep within its ancient rooms

Resides an old man selling ‘shrooms

That he has harvested from soil

Of graveyards where the serpents coil

And if the ache screams in your joints

Just follow where the way-marker points.

The place smells of dust and moist mildew

And the foul dark liqui...

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The Mandrake Curse

I spied the purple mandrake flowers

Sitting in their nest of green

And foolishly looked to rip them

From the earth they serenely sat upon

And everywhere a shriek echoed

Across the woods and leafy vales

and to my weary eyes I saw

The bulbous body resurrected

A face demonic in its glare

For being torn from fitful slumber

Wizened arms of k...

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I know I traded something

A part of me

For the splendid splendour of money

I did that thing you shouldn’t do

I gave myself to him

You know, the soul

Cut a piece of myself out for him

You know, the heart

I cut a piece of myself off for him

(You know which part)

But I didn't feel a thing

I'm waiting to miss it

Miss this

Thing

I'm waiting for the pain

You...

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effective myth, metaphor, & mysticism transcend

semantic efforts to articulate dynamics erupting

dreamlike amidst more trusted, linear conceptions

of reality, imagination, experience, & being

by presenting arrangements so engaging, uncannily

familiar, irreducibly insightful, idealogically slippery,

that the foamsplash suddenness of its crashing

across a previously unnotic...

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As I leave my home behind

To walk the far farm fields

The spirit of the land enfolds me

Its silence becomes my mantle

While I alone hear

Those wafted word

As the wind caresses the treetops

Whispering englynion

To lure me on

Through woodland and moor

Beyond fences, ever deeper into a land

Clothed in swirls of radiant mist

Rising from plashy pools and tarns

Amo...

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Eostre

Not the cross or the thorns

or the blood or the nails,

not the spear or the whip

or the rumble of stones

from the mouth of a tomb.

Not the hatred and bigotry,

the small minded hypocrisy

of this clan or that clan

whose father is biggest

or most feared or cherished.

Not the myth and the fable

espoused by blind acolytes

heaven bent on venge...

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Like grains of rice, her love it grows;

Forms a crown from lush meadows.

Beneath their skulls with blooming fields,

Dandelions caress skin, living shields.

Arrays of light pour onto ivory,

Little, brown connect-the-dots scatter accordingly.

With envy in their eyes, the fairies hover,

Frowning between one another;

Wondering how they lost their glen

To a pair of human...

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Dockery Plantation Blues

In a Mississippi graveyard,
as the midnight hour crawls,
sits a young boy and his guitar
wailing tunes at the moon.
He prays his fingers faster
as they dance across the frets,
weeping at his inability
to speak in tongues from the strings.

He is lost in a fugue
of chaotic chords and strumming,
as the Delta Blues pour muddy,
like the churning brown river,
fr...

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A Tree In The Elephant’s Graveyard

It began with a pen
and paper,
beneath a tree.
Carried here
upon a rat
to rest awhile.

The paper was white
and stared at me
insolently.
The pen hovered,
dripping ink
like tears.

A serpent
coiled itself
around My neck.
I thought of stars
and dreamt
of gouache landscapes.

Still the paper
would not
fuck the pen.
My thoughts
were clear,
...

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Twisted Maleficarum turned abomination

desperately seeking a return to one's humanity.

Expelling demons,

pumping passion like the blood that summoned them.

Bleeding tears, sweating fears

soaked in trepidation.

Summon some feeling

no time for healing

when paint is just pain with

twin pronged brush strokes.

Tattered, trying, tonal

...

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