Hammer

@skyloverpoetry
Copyright Kerry O'Connor

My heart is shield enough for your hammering ~
Defeat is only ever yours.


A Three of Swords Valentine.

Shadow

@skyloverpoetry
Copyright Kerry O'Connor

Winter passed and then the Spring
like rusty shadows of old songs grown cold.

Flight

@skyloverpoetry
Copyright Kerry O'Connor

The canary-throated raven grows roots while she whistles her platitudes.

Tarot Suite #8

Kerry O'Connor
@nexuscarddesign

VIII
The Lovers

Love flames to the brink of black
in this cosmic forge,
where the absence of light
is not void, but cogent, beyond
visible perceptions of you and me.
We could not choose but to embrace
secrets of ourselves we found in each other.
I will love you in this darkness of soul.
I will love you as time forgets to count.
I will love you when my substance frays
into the matter of all things
and you, forever counter-weight
of our mutual annihilation.
Merged, we burn
brighter than any new star:
Imaginable.



Written for Marian's Last Word: Imagine.
Also using another line suggested in Magaly's final Weekend Challenge: "I will love you in the darkness of soul"... for old time's sake.

Another part of my African Tarotscapes series of illustrated poems. All illustrations can be viewed on my art blog Nexus Card Design and for behind the scenes footage and storytelling, visit @nexuscarddesign on Instagram.

Tarot Suite #7

VII
Temperance

Temperance Tarot Card
Original Design by Kerry O'Connor

This is a cautious balancing act,
one foot on the bank,
one in the stream.
I feel Earth’s clasp on my ankle,
and hear clay mouths pleading
with me to stay
even as riverine energy tempts me
to give in to its flow.
I dwell in these wetlands, the days between
then and now, but the future
arrives just as water, rising above
the mark of expectations,
while I attempt to cup my intuition
from palm to palm,
or save at least the dregs.



A new installment in my Tarot Suite Collection of poems and illustrations, written for Magaly's final Imaginary Garden prompt 13 Poetic Bits of Kerr, using the line "the future arrives just as water" from my poem, A Painless Day, available in the Objectivity Chapter on my Skylover Blog.

Tarot Suite #6

VI
The World

The World
Original Tarot Card Design ~ Kerry O'Connor

This Earth is old, and as heavy to turn
as life, which falters
on the road to resurrection.
There is nothing spontaneous in birth,
nor tragic in death more than a sense
of something no nearer completion.
And the man will trudge beside
the bull to pasture, unaware
that tradition does not invest
existence with meaning;
the lion will evade extinction
but the eagle will feed
on carrion all the same.
I have laid out my funerary garb:
let the lazulite  scarab seal my tomb.

A Praise Song

Goat Country
Kerry O'Connor
@skyloverpoetry

A Praise Song
Kerry O'Connor

A Praise Song is a poem from Skylover: Collected Works, which I have illustrated.
The Tuesday Platform at The Imaginary Garden is hosted by Sanaa today.

Faceless

Kerry O'Connor
Inspired by the Art of Guiseppe Cristiano

I do not need the light; I know you faceless:
I hear your fingers touching notes on my skin
as the scales of a musical nocturne played blind.

Your voice is richly scented as the rainfall
I feel stirring my own dry earth to liquid dance:
your lips caress my soul as a thing of sense apart.

This appetite unappeased: loving feeds on love itself.



I am doubling up on weekend challenges:
A Portrait for Kim, and
Just One Word: Apart, for Marian.