a Rite

The Vermilion Moon… I lift up my arms.
Chandra Namaskar. My Saint Vitus’s dance.

My stream is smooth. My breath is deep.
I count pulse. I curve and slip.
Another circle… a bow… a leap…
My rite is done. It’s time to reap.

The Moon is glad. It smiles and winks.
It drips on sheets like bleeding inks…

by TETIANA ALEKSINA
© All rights reserved 2014

43 thoughts on “a Rite”

  4. Reblogged this on 21 Shades of Blue and commented:
    Black Crowned Yew-Krane, to answer your question “what will be in harmony with this poem for you, oh Ry, my King of Water?” I’ll first say, Rai in Japanese, pronounced Ry, means “Thunder; Trust; Lightning”:

    “Loki: Vicarious Characters III (Haiku)”
    by Ry Hakari

    Low-key selfish elf
    Chief of Mischief, leaves clown throne
    Throws crown — thunder sounds

    Loki shifts his place
    Sacrifices, finds true self :
    Outcast — King at last

    “You And I In Unison”
    by La Dispute

    What will I find?
    Some sacred thing to help me handle the tragedy?
    Or did I once-Did I have it and lose it?

    No one should ever have to walk through the fire alone.
    No one should ever have to brave that storm. No,
    Everybody needs someone or something.

    And when I sing, don’t I sing your name out
    Right at the same time that I sing my own?

    Some days I swear I can feel you splitting the light through the window frame.
    The shapes it makes are always warmer, always brighter than the rest of what comes through.

    Some days I swear I can hear you sing to me or whisper my name in the slightest way.
    It’s like the warmest light now laid across my bedroom floor is somehow actually you and
    Not just sunlight.

    I have the memory climb down the balcony.
    I put a flower on the back of its dress.
    It’s probably best to forget it.
    It’s probably best to let go.
    I paint it the shade of where the skin and the lip meet,
    Only a moment after breaking the kiss. And
    I blur out everything else.
    That’s how I choose to remember it.

    Some nights are a lot like the days, I lay awake too late, I watch the shadows casted
    Trace your shape. Those silver slivers on the wall then on the bedsheets.
    I hear your song in the trees. I finally fall into rest.
    Often later when I’m sleeping you show up in my dreams.
    Just doing simple things, like buying groceries.
    And when I wake up I could swear you must’ve just left me
    Like you got up to make breakfast or maybe just to get dressed.

    But the truth is, you were never there. You won’t ever be.
    Sometimes I think I’m not either so what do I do
    When every day still seems to start and end with you?
    And you won’t ever know, you won’t ever see,
    How much your ghost since then has been defining me.

    I leave the memory up atop the balcony.
    I tear this flower from the back of the dress.
    It’s best this time, I bet, to just forget and let go.
    Paint it the shade of where the lip bleeds and blur it out.
    I blur out everything else, just blur out everything else.
    And let go, and let go, and let go.

    Everybody has to let go someday
    Everybody has to let go.

    I wonder when I will. I wonder.

    But if I still hear you singing in every city I meet
    After I blur it all out, our every memory, if
    You never fade with the days, your shape still haunting me then,
    Should I not just sing along?
    Should I not just sing along?

    I will sing sweetly hope that the notes change but
    I do not need it to happen. I’m not resigned to it. And
    If they never do I’ll sing your name in every line.
    Just like I did throughout this. Just like I’ve always done.
    In every gun, the empty church, and every tortured son.
    In all those giving up. In all those giving in.
    Until I die I will sing our names in unison.

    Until I die I will sing our names in unison.

    Liked by 1 person

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  5. Ah thanks for sharing a link with me to this one, I missed it in my feed for some reason! I love it! So surreal, vermilion is a trigger word for me!

    I wrote this word-play haiku on October 7, 2013:

    “Written In The Right Words of Passage”
    by Ry Hakari

    Riddled and ridden
    in the rite: birds of passage
    — Poetry Disease

    Liked by 1 person

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    • No problem! Before I follow your link, I’ll share the poem that inspired my haiku below! (by the way, if you work on haiku, use http://www.howmanysyllables.com/ to get the syllable count right! Though in modern times, it’s more socially accepted in the literary world to break the syllable tradition of haiku, and make the lines of other lengths. You might have an easier time breaking the tradition, as they are hard to abide by the restrictions! I often make poems that have multiple haiku in them… which you know, as that “Emotion Vs. Notion 2” poem I wrote that reminded you of the dream you wrote about in “a Combat Neuron” was actually 60 haiku!)

      “Birds of Passage”
      by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

      Black shadows fall
      From the lindens tall,
      That lift aloft their massive wall
      Against the southern sky;
      And from the realms
      Of the shadowy elms
      A tide-like darkness overwhelms
      The fields that round us lie.
      But the night is fair,
      And everywhere
      A warm, soft vapor fills the air,
      And distant sounds seem near,
      And above, in the light
      Of the star-lit night,
      Swift birds of passage wing their flight
      Through the dewy atmosphere.
      I hear the beat
      Of their pinions fleet,
      As from the land of snow and sleet
      They seek a southern lea.
      I hear the cry
      Of their voices high
      Falling dreamily through the sky,
      But their forms I cannot see.
      O, say not so!
      Those sounds that flow
      In murmurs of delight and woe
      Come not from wings of birds.
      They are the throngs
      Of the poet’s songs,
      Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs,
      The sound of winged words.
      This is the cry
      Of souls, that high
      On toiling, beating pinions, fly,
      Seeking a warmer clime,
      From their distant flight
      Through realms of light
      It falls into our world of night,
      With the murmuring sound of rhyme.

      Liked by 1 person

    • Thank you very much!
      It’s an absolutely amazing poem!
      Henry Wadsworth Longfellow… Shame on me! I didn’t hear of him 😦
      OK… I should admit… I adored to read in the school, but I hated the curriculum for literature! 🙂
      I preferred exact sciences.

      Thank you for the link. By the way… I made something similar.
      I count syllables in Excel. It’s a pretty simple formula, it works for Russian, Ukrainian… probably it should work for English.
      Wow! I’ll check my formula with this site! Just a minute, please…
      Stay here, don’t go!
      I’m quickly!

      Black shadows fall
      From the lindens tall
      That lift aloft their massive wall
      Against the southern sky

      My formula 4 5 10 8
      Site 4 5 8 6

      Hmm… I see my flaw… I can correct… but why?
      I know the perfect site now! 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

    • I like it, but just so you know, haiku have 3 lines! You might like tanka more, they have 5 lines! Generally with haiku, with newly accepted flexibility, the first and third line have close to the same number of syllables, and are shorter in syllable length the second line! Tanka have syllable line counts of 3/7/5/7/7!

      I’m glad you like the site 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

    • Hmmm… I just grabbed the first strophe of “Birds of Passage” 🙂
      I have a general idea about haiku and tanka.
      I was trying to write something in this style…
      But with you I can try to make something really adequate 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

    • If it’s too constricting for you, don’t put too much time and energy into it! Most poets who speak English as their primary language have difficult with haiku, and find the form frustrating and suffocating to expressing their creative voice as the want to, so if it ends up not being something you want to pursue creatively, that’s ok too!

      Liked by 1 person

    • You’re so careful… don’t worry!

      A challenge is my own personal brand of heroin 🙂
      I’m not afraid of difficulties.
      Hmm… I recalled my dialog with Pepper.
      She was so kind with me 🙂

      – I missed this somehow, I just now read it and commented. Beautiful, you are excellent at short verse, which is never short in thought! I adore this, “a True poem”!

      – I think… if my verses in Russian or Ukrainian is a savage garden where I freely wander between the thickets of the words… my English verses is a bonsai 🙂
      I’m like a surgeon, with a lancet and a tweezer… I pluck every odd word, every extra detail, every protruding line… I’m afraid to lay an egg… a green egg :)))))
      I’m cutting them without pity. So they are short 🙂

      So, I use to suffocate and cut. It’s not so painful… Sometimes it’s a pleasure 🙂

      I’ll try! I’ll count!
      5 – 7 – 5 = (-7)
      5 / 7 / 5 = 0.143
      It’s easy! 🙂

      OK… Just kidding…

      Liked by 1 person

    • Oh I know what that’s like, I spent all day laboring over a poem to the point I became obsessed, like a word junkie. I’m still recovering from the withdrawal, it felt like nothing else mattered but the words for awhile! Sorry it took so long to respond, I was too high on writing for conversation apparently! lol

      But yes, you are an excellent word-surgeon 😉

      Liked by 1 person

    • Reminds me of two lines from an old funny poem I wrote, that goes:

      “Mom calls me Sunshine,
      Friends call me Flatline”

      lol You have an awesome sense of humor Dr.Unbolt!

      “Dr. House (Haiku)”
      by Ry Hakari

      Nothing can be had
      so only plan sabotage
      and an empty house

      I used to look like Dr. House before I grew the crazy long Wildman head of hair I have now!

      Liked by 1 person

    • Thank you!

      I need to get ready to leave for a doctor’s appointment, after which I have dinner plans with family tonight, but I look forward to reading your post as soon as I can, before I head to bed! 😀

      Liked by 1 person

    • It was my psychiatrist, so as you are also the Mad Hatter, I thought it better to entrust the care of my mental health to someone at least a little less mad 😛

      lol I would wish you a nice evening too, but you are probably asleep, so I will wish you a good morning, or whenever you read this…

      Have a nice whenever, when you read this! 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

    • A psychiatrist? Phew!

      All you need is… a bottle of vodka and a conversation with a good friend :))))
      It’s the Russian way. The cheap, effective and multi functional way which overcomes all problems…

      I know, the Beatles will mind 😉
      All you need is… la-la-la…

      Liked by 2 people

    • There’s actually a lot of truth to that, at least as regards the good conversations! Last month was a really hard month for me in the weeks leading up to my birthday (I get really depressed every year around my birthday), but talking with friends helped me through a lot of it, and now I’m doing much better!

      I have a history of self-medicating with caffeine pills, which I used to abuse, but I have it under control now (I say that, 5 minutes after swallowing one with a glass of milk… lol but it’s equivalent to just one cup of coffee)… I probably have a genetic predisposition to addiction, so when I saw the problems I had with caffeine ten years ago, I decided to stay away from alcohol, as I can see myself easily becoming a raging alcoholic instead of a caffeine addict! I could probably use a drink pretty often though, I need to lighten up more!

      Now you know a little better why I like Dr. House so much! 😛

      Liked by 1 person

    • OK, Gregory 🙂 I prepare for complications :)))
      Yes, I do love this character, he is the one of my favorites, probably. His flaws make him really irresistible 🙂
      Ha… Recently I tried to pronounce this hellish word ‘psychiatrist’ 🙂
      It just drives me crazy! This mess of sounds, vowels… my tongue was lost inside my mouth, my cheek-bones were cramped… weird English pronunciation… My best nightmare!
      When I say ‘psychiatrist’… I know exactly, WHAT he feels!

      Liked by 1 person

    • Sounds like a pronunciation shalashaska! 😉

      Is it true that shalashaska is Russian slang for prison? There is a character in a video game I like, who has that word as his nickname, and I love the way the word sounds! I may use it in a poem, it’s so beautiful sounding!

      Psychiatrist is pronounced “sigh-kigh-a-tryst” where “kigh” rhymes with “sigh”!

      I’m on a waiting list to start seeing a psychologist too, which is basically a doctor/counselor. Psychiatrists are the ones who prescribe medication though, and psychiatrists aren’t also counselors!

      Liked by 1 person

    • Thank you!
      Wow! It’s much easier to say drop-by-drop 🙂

      ‘Shalashaska’? No, it doesn’t make sense…
      It’s a distorted word ‘Sharashka’
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharashka

      There is a slang term ‘shalashovka’, it’s kinda a cheap common prostitute (floozy, floozie, doxy, floosie, harlot, hussy, jade, whore)…

      But I found on the runet a proof for the first variant, Sharashka 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

    • You’re welcome! It was interesting for me too 🙂
      Oh, I was enjoying with this little investigation!

      Tongue-twisters… Hmm… Yes, there are a lot of sounds in English that don’t exist in Russian or Ukrainian… It’s the main problem. We don’t use sounds in such combinations, we use our organs of articulation differently 🙂

      Liked by 1 person

    • Here’s a famous English tongue twister called “Peter Piper” that is very hard to say out loud quickly! It reminds me of Pepper lol

      “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
      A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
      If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
      Where’s the peck of pickled peppers that Peter Piper picked?”

      Liked by 1 person

  7. My Dearest Hatter,

    This is lovely, the imagery is beautiful. The words so fluid, I can see and feel the movement. Another poem that pulls at my emotions, “It drips on sheets like bleeding inks…” Thank you!

    Always,
    Alice lost in Wonder-Wander-Land

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