Hunting The Children of Electric

You may think we’ve harnessed electricity but don’t be fooled by its compliance, it’s merely an angry beast straining at its leash, longing to be free.

 If you’ve stood watching for the crackle-flash of its untamed brother, then counted and listened for the rumble, you’ll know what I mean when I say, the effect of that wild, white-blue, flicker of unmatched brightness is terrifyingly exciting.

Muted by clouds rolling across the air, it might expand into arc-light and tint the earth below, or casually hurl jagged blades, bright as electric spears, down from the shadowy sky. In either form, such lightning hints of voltage, caught up in brilliant crystalline shards of molten heat, driven by fierce winds of ether.

How can you not be fascinated by such power?

Yet, those hoping to capture its vitality should know this is still a tamer breed. Sheet or forked it’s both the same, just happening on mismatched sides of clouds. 

Me, I hunt the rainbowed spheres of netted power generated by massive thunderstorms.

Some call them ball lightning, foo fighters, or St Elmo’s fire, but they are, in reality, those, elusive, children of electric that float in fickle, fuzzy, gemstones of rotating energy.

They follow no path, break all the rules and are tantalizing in their omnipotence.   

The small, pea-sized, ones that sometimes tumble down a chimney or slip through a window and mesmerise you, are easy to bottle.

I have shelves filled with over a hundred, incandescent, flasks of them.

The fist-sized variations of dappled orange need more careful handling and of course are better stored in barrels.

Although both varieties have been known to pop inside their containers, like over stimulated champagne, they are generally safe to handle, but the rarer, larger, ones, those as big as your head, well they’re trickier to deal with.

 I know because I’ve been teased, taunted, scorched and beaten backward by their touch, several times, when I’ve encountered them.

Their danger crackles hungrily, tingling the senses, luring you with beauty and calling to you with seductively singed tones. They seek to prickle your skin with hot fingers and can lift your hair with static or just as easily blacken your flesh and send you into oblivion.

Such treasures are gloriously flashing balls of fettered fire, shining with yellow filaments, or sparking red teardrops of flame. They are able to float and hang as potent orbs, or dart and hover like fat dragonflies, trailing a sulphurous tang of electrical power.  Explosive, and naturally resonant, with unbridled crack-snap heat, they can burn wood, bend metal, dance through pylons and devour the power lines of their more subdued sibling.

I have learned, for these priceless beauties, you must counteract their primal force with a mossy earth-lined cage of filigreed and charm cast stone.

You also need nerves of ice, a steady hand and, please excuse the pun, lightning reflexes.

 

LOVE - LETTER TO LEAR (A bit  of nonsense )

 

Wheelbarrow, wheelbarrow , high in the sky,

 Wheels, star-bright as mud,

Cast their dust in my eye.

 

The Sun wades in water, and dances in time,

Singing harsh muted-melodies

Buried by garlands, rusted in rime.

 

The mountains are racing on legs spun of silk

And the half-hidden moon, in pearl-netted trees,

Is covered in memories, dripping with milk.

 

The wind in my hand, flaming silent and cold,

snares death by appointment

Ties her in shadow and paints her in gold.

Will try harder

Feeling guilty as I've not updated or contributed to the site in ages .

FOLDS OF LIGHT

Time does not affect the pulse and flow or journeying glow


 of flame-speckled suns that illuminate the dark, where star-streamed, 


pearly, dust falls in a curtain across the shadowed bowl of sky.


Here frosty winds blow dregs of clouds across a startled moon 


and, small flakes of snow float and sparkle in the mysterious dapple-dark.


Slowly, growing below the dye-dipped shades of flickered air,


the violet-hue, and glitter-green, of rippled colour dances above the silent earth.  

Into The Abyss

Here, below a dark and vaulted sky, tortured star-shine cries

and trickles clotted blood down, twisted, jet-stone pillars,

gleaming in the dagger-dark.

Spiked and hanging, draped on staves, pale corpses

are food for vixen-blooded pit-hounds pacing,

and howling,  among ancient fallen wards.

And the dark-light, how it glitters against furled fire, trailing,

in episodic bursts of flame, shooting through shadows,

pegged against the sooty, heated,  gates of Hell.

Someone Always Knows Your Secret.

He hadn’t walked this trail for some time, but the bog-frogs, snakes and small furry wild-things remembered him. Delicate sundews, snapping shut as he passed, knew the shadow-less figure too. They remembered the stench of death floating with him when he came. Even worse, they had all cowered in the moonlight; witnessing what he did.

Bog-water glistened like burnished sap in starlight as he picked his way carefully through the squelch of mud.

Smiling, he kicked carefully at the peat. 

It looked like a log, but he knew it was a leg from the body he’d buried there years before.

Awakening

Unwrapped, one eye flutters into wakefulness

while the other quivers against soil,

shifting and grinding alongside rock in motion.

Within the unlocked, cave-cracked, glistening deep,

toothy, fire-kissed lips yawn and leak blistered steam.

Wakeful now, The Ancient One spirals hot breath

through sooty, snouted, scales, into the baked air.

Pouched and powdered as ashes trailing over black-burned bones,

Her petal-pleated skin gathers in sulphur-scented blossoms

of sweat flamed folds, drenched in ichor.

Tapping out times secret melody of memories, long forgot,

Cautious claws click rhythmically over fire-seared stones.

Then, diaphanous as thought, brittle as flame, she summons darkness   

as she moves into starlight

and unravels colossal, bright, wings against the sallow moon.

Haiku - In the rubble

Posters stained red and

Bruised by fierce revolution, 

Flutter like torn skin.  

(using three prompt words  - bruise poster & revolution)