Tag Archives: goddess

Valentine’s Week: Simon MacCulloch, ‘She’

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The people I know are an indistinct flow
The people I knew are a blur
No lover or wife in the drift of my life
No thoughts of such friends as there were.
But she, whether blessing or bane
Yes she, only she, will remain.

She took me to heart at the innocent start
She’ll take me again at the finish
No question of why, just a smile or a sigh
A memory no time can diminish.
She’s gone but she’s here all the same
Forever asserting her claim.

I don’t really care for the foul and the fair
The judgements of truth and of beauty
The rankings of love, the below, the above
The endless directions of duty.
For hers is an absolute essence
Whose value is simply its presence.

Return to your god or revert to the sod
Such outcomes are equally empty
Whatever damnation, whatever salvation
Her ownership serves to exempt me.
Wherever we go when we die
She’s there, so of course so am I.

The dancer’s the dance, the entrancer the trance
And all is as real as it seems
Her being’s persistence defines my existence
My life is the stuff of her dreams.
I ask for no more and no less
And she, only she, can say yes.

*****

Simon MacCulloch lives in London and contributes poetry to a variety of journals including Reach Poetry, View from Atlantis, Spectral Realms, Altered Reality, Aphelion and others.

‘She’ was originally published in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal.

A goddess poem, not directly inspired by H Rider Haggard but perhaps reflecting a broadly similar romantic sentiment.

“Venus, Roman Goddess of Love” by 1way2rock is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Iambic heptameter: Simon MacCulloch, ‘Jasmina’

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Jasmina is the doorway, Jasmina is the key;
Jasmina walks the path beside the pearl-infested sea.
The angels peer bewildered from the god-infested sky;
Jasmina is the only how that doesn’t need a why.

I see her in the morning in her robe of melting frost;
She visits me at noontime when the meaning has been lost.
At evening she invades the nooks the spiders thought their own
Till night demands a moon; she stoops, and hurls it like a stone.

I used to think her complicated, now I know she’s not
(A how that doesn’t need a why has little use for what).
I used to think she’d care for me, if only for a while;
I used to think a lot of things before I saw her smile.

I never hear her speaking though I think she has a song
Which many claim to know although they always get it wrong.
She feels like furry gossamer and tastes like perfumed smoke;
I often hear her laughter but I never learn the joke.

Jasmina is a destiny, Jasmina is a doom;
Jasmina is a woman but with stars within her womb.
The demons peer demented from their hope-infested hell
And beg her for a story, but she hasn’t one to tell.

*****

Simon MacCulloch writes: “Jasmina is a slightly offbeat take on the great western goddess motif (Aphrodite, the Virgin Mary etc). It is not based on anyone I know.”

Simon MacCulloch lives in London and contributes poetry to a variety of print and online publications, including Reach Poetry, View from Atlantis, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, Spectral Realms, Black Petals and others. Jasmina was originally published in Blue Unicorn.

Photo: “mask” by new 1lluminati is licensed under CC BY 2.0.