Blood-beads: (day 9 of 100 -- Poetry Challenge)

I’ve got a strand of blood rosebuds.
A monk in a monastery of Dream,
“Holy! Holy!” I cry.
I’m a fire-rod,
a golden chalice,
a double-edged sword,
a token taken to the streets,
a flaming bush.
These beads are soaked in the blood
of sacrifice and they smell of mineral-iron,
life-force steeped buds, dried and strung,
tied knots…

By the knot of
1 the spell has begun.
By the knot of
2 it cometh true.
By the knot of
3 so it be.

They say you crawl before you walk.
I ran first, so my mother said.
There's a scar where I hit the ground,
a tear of a memory my dead mamo
saves in a shallow grave.
Where’s everybody going so fast(?)
I was the one out the door first,
now I walk slowly,
my center-line of blood-buds strung,
a spine of beads and prayers sung.

I pause in stillness.

I.
I sit in the garden and watch the people on their go-rounds, looking the same, doing the same things, always in a hurry, still, I sit like a rosebush, I ponder; buds push forth from my thorn’d stems, petals spring and my prayers manifest pungently sweet upon the breeze.

II.
I saw a man like death, skeletal remains in his everything designed garb, shined shoes, and spit-down hair — he was bone and blood-shot eyes, rattling round an invisible dream, chain-link tethered attachments, soulless remnants of a life lived in search of baubles and adulations, the safe life of worn thin pavement, crowded full, sardine-tin-times, the chatter of puking-guts-out and self-importance: A ghastly apparition!

III.
I linger upon each bead, how it came to be bound and knotted in place, how the patina builds as I cogitate, considering its position to the others, like a spine of discs oddly shaped and dark. Each once a promise of possibilities, of unfurling brilliance, and of the beauty of creation, fertile and alluring — each a dehydrated reminder, cut, desiccated, consecrated, blood-fed-Dreams, “O Holy! Holy! the perennial phantoms I’ve seen!”

Under a cloister a sacred sweetbrier Dreams a dream of a Dream as a Monk takes to the blood-beads of a mommy bush.

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• All pieces are newly crafted and posted shortly after in adherence to the rules of the challenge. All the photos are mine unless otherwise stated.

• The top photo is a detail shot of a large oil on board (my work).

• Entry for Day 9 of 100 Days of Poetry Challenge by @d-pend.

• Join the Steemit School here: https://discord.gg/yZvYjfM organized by @dobartim on Discord.