Saturday 9 April 2011

Earth Stars



From the chronicles of trees
she wants monsters:

baleful Destroying Angels,
stellar brides of hell,
all innocence and virulence
in petticoats and veil,
or troops of gleaming Death Caps,
goose-stepping through leaves,
marshalling for massacre
in copses, killing fields, as if
escape clutched in her hand might gift
illusory control.

In forests damp and warm,
in thickets blanketed by spores,
the Prince with Devil's Fingers
knows their secret, loamy holes.
He can smell them, see them, feel them swelling
opening the ground,
thrusting through the litter
with a hungry, crackling sound.
He finds her Velvet Shanks and Blushers,
puts an Amethyst Deceiver in her hand.

In the sultry, starless dark,
she'll settle for a zodiac
of flesh and pearls and earth.

Deborah Harvey


another collaboration; picture of the Cerne Giant and Stinkhorn by me, poem by Deborah.


5 comments:

  1. Well, that's a jolly phallic picture and no mistake! But then it's about a fungus and so That's All Right, as of course is the super rampant Cerne Abbas Giant!

    I did think of sitting on the Giant's vast todger pre-op, as a kind of 'farewell to manhood' gesture, but decided that I really didn't care, and besides I couldn't see how I could make an effective photo of it.

    Lucy

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dru! I don't know quite what to say. Your mushroom has balls! Is this a new departure into more titillating illustrations? ;o)

    Melissa XX

    ReplyDelete
  3. Chalk figures are quite interesting close-up, Lucy, though it's impossible to get the Big Picture unless you're a fair distance away. This is my fave viewpoint for Cerne...

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/belvedere/2612063563/

    The fungus really does look like that, Melissa! -we're thinking of a series relating to things like sheelagh-na-gigs and wodwoses and suchlike. Possibly bawdy, though not sure about titillating....

    ReplyDelete
  4. Amethyst Deciever...I love that name. It could almost be the title of a Marc Bolan song.
    Arr, love the picture too!
    Grandson's joke...
    Q'Why are pirates called pirates?'
    A'Cos they arrr!'
    He's seven.

    ReplyDelete
  5. When I first saw this post I happened to be reading Alain DaniƩlou's The Phallus which includes a closer-up view of the Cerne Giant. Your flickr photo makes an ideal companion to that with its contoured landscape view.
    The new painting suggests a cover for A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Fungi. I don't get out into the woods much because of ticks but do see the more domesticated mutinus caninus here and there. Now on to further exploring Deborah Harvey's poetic world!

    ReplyDelete