Four Poems by Beth Tolmach

 

Tiphereth

 

we were born in the time of the

cardboard empire

of hiding from the ones

who say

beauty comes

and beauty goes.

 

today there is much left to be desired

and tempered

going slow when the world is fast

the temptation to know

has surely surpassed

the capacity to be inspired

and to see into the past,

beyond extremes of

white and black, endeavouring

not through frosted glass

to think.

 

i wear green but reminisce in pink

and dream in translucent starry forever.

i guess it’s the duality that stings

to be the thorn and want the rose

to aspire toward the goodness life can bring

must mean its nemesis we will be shown

 

i read a book, i looked inside,

i thought i had always been so nice

brimming with poetic words,

knowledge pinched and summarized

wrapped in lace and velour

I pressed send, to lift your spirits high,

but now i see my lines for what they were

gleeful disguise, seven of swords,

icy reserve, faux feminine demure

 

though i held you close in my mind

my lips couldn’t give shape to

dim contours, of moments endured

it was clear only on the other side.

and the first part of my current life

i was but stumbling the earth

spirit in body not yet arrived

the wider vista not yet discerned

 

until the day i awoke,

i was just a paper doll

pushed forth by her time of birth

as the angels had it scrawled

you and i both,

after all, we do align,

tethered, as it were, through

sun and north node,

mercury jupiter trine

 

And despite reading many books

and seeing many signs

to you it was a joke

a self-indulgent waste of time

that one could otherwise devote

to infusing material life

with true antidotes

to the woeful conditions which

through birth we are obliged

 

so in a culture crystallized,

those magic arts,

by weight of soul’s twilight,

are like a bouquet kept in hope

that flowers past their prime

might get their second growth

 

but morning rays of light

will always expose

sweet multicoloured decay

a desiccated form

reminding us of what 

we once could appreciate

and in brighter eras what

was once understood more.

a design of intangible worlds

that were once ours to explore

do you remember those days?

 

even in a landscape populated

by plastic shapes even in dropped calls and

messages later erased 

i want to believe there exists

something like a solid core,

a permanent state,

a love that persists,

despite resistance towards

its binary form.

and in the end, it’s this

force that we will face

the love that moves all to be born

and all to disintegrate.

 

and in these times

be ever wary towards

the ones who claim

that all is illusion,

that there’s nothing

worth living for,

when upon death

memory is effaced, and

oblivion is ensured.

 

for the reality of beauty past

is merely one of many doors

which open pathways

to the array of outer stars

an expanded sense of space,

where binary stars dance

in full knowing of their fate,

in true showing who they are.

 

where colours not yet named

entice us to keep on going

into plains too vast

for mortal thought to contain,

into a sky formed by the rhythm

of ever darkening and glowing.

there lies the goal of the heart of gold

to embrace a picture 

of time ever flowing.

 

 

Medicine Woman

 

i have 28 pens but all of them ran dry

i have a box filled with journals

with words spilling from every line

i search for myself, by going back in time

it took reading every frayed page before i’d realize

 

that i was always writing the same thing about you

the wheel spun, yet i got no closer to the truth

i was always writing the same thing about us

the shadow bunnies hopped up the walls

and the walls turned to dust

 

and on every finger i got a paper cut

and they stung, in the wash, as i

cleansed my sins

from the touch

of the past

that lingered on

 

singing a song about

how life is perfect, and

everything is wrong.

God is love, 

and i’m obsessed

with perfecting every

letter drawn.

even when my

book was bound

i could only focus on

rubbing my sore wrists

and putting the kettle on

 

babe you don’t have to remember it,

just blow a kiss to God and be one,

like the Sea is to its droplet.

spill blood and ink, down the sink,

twisting red-azure rivulets.

yet, i take it seriously

so here i am scrubbing the dishes

wearing liquid cat-eyeliner in gold 

replaying everything you told me

ever sinking further into it.

further into it, into it

I go into it

 

i look out the window

at the white owl

in the distance

winter sun

white light

talons drawn

i have a witness

prey is clawed

my hands are tied

so i will not pray

but instead visualize

 

the truest riches of my life

come alive

Gold and myrrh

Hawaiian sage

Of crystal aeons and

oil crayons that

tantalize the page

with infinite colour

but do not stain

we’ll never be what we were

those creatures

from a forgotten age

waves to the shore

we will return

at a future time

in a different way

 

my life is colour

your love is my core

pearlescent feathers

point toward things that

are not yet born

on the other side of

this rainbow bridge

it all exists

in liquid form

every sculpture of ice

must melt into its

unbound state,

become vapor

 

 

Affliction

 

The gusts of wind cleanse

As much as they afflict

Alone in nature is the lens

By which is revealed all the tricks

And traps, being set, in my thinking

So twisted gets my vision

That I put value in the words of

Unwitting servants to the system,

That thing so rotten to its core

With all its minions keeping the score

Of illusory games, flashing their chains

For affirmation, like prisoners of war

Who have no date set for liberation

 

Strolling the green free fields of the living plains

Bee and dragonfly wings spell out the plain situation

Of how depraved and poor the human soul became

In its relentless quest for illumination

Devolved into obsessive activities to transcend death

Scrolling, giving rise to a cascade of distractions

Like a pail with a hole

The rhythm of time stripped of sense 

’Til there’s nothing left

 

How dense was I to think there might be

An exception to the rule

That I could survive a few drops of venom

With my mind intact and blood flowing smooth

But in the knowing which these winds bring

Such deception cannot stand

What other step next then to break

From the world of men, and be the fool

 

So I commend the one talking to herself

In a pitched tent or a forest bench

Meditating, listening to the songs of birds

Vibrating, which continue on & on

Like an ancient breath revived, it mends me,

But only when my attention is steady enough

To let it all in, this moment of time,

I’ll not forget it, nor will I cling on,

Thus it becomes never-ending

And so am I

And then it’s gone.

 

 

The Cocoon

 

with every year going by

we become a bit more calcified

the dreamworld of another life

fades out while mundane memories

take its place, sculpted by

time and space,

the culture makes its way,

fortifying cobwebs in the brain, 

spinning its own dream, the illusion

of having something to say.

but when you read between the lines, 

in magazines, newspaper pages

there is nothing they can say,

there is nothing, just empty signifying 

plastered on top of a phat fact 

that everything they love has always been dying 

just as much as it’s been thriving

and prose as dainty as a rose

will not stop the deluge of time,

So give up.

you are just one grime-coated pearl pulled from the

mouth of an oyster; deaf dumb, and blind.

there is meaning to be found in 

being beaten down by the 

hand of something you can’t understand.

please Divine one, correct my retarded need to

compete in the ever-spinning ferris wheel of

performances and ideas.

 

i have inherited this disease,

a material form filthy from aeons of 

taking in, filling a junkyard with what i please, 

like a hoarder, and not releasing,

the windows are fogging up so

the light has to be decreasing.

we are prisoners in a fogged alien life but we keep

chasing it, the darkness, 

as if there’s something final to reveal 

 

When I lift up a rock I see the

insects underside are of a number unbounded,

infinity contained neatly within just one planet,

one universal flow, and do you remember that 

just one spark can ignite the whole world?

they don’t write about it 

because it can’t be counted, 

so they don’t know how.

 

if you felt one drop of warmth, like a moth to a flame

you’d give up everything, just to figure it all out

i have to melt down this wax i spent

So much time trying to make right, 

shaping it with my doubts instead of

Allowing myself to be shaped,

maybe i’ll receive the gift of vision when

i let open the blinds of this house  where I reside 

‘Don’t forget, i’m a prism bitch but not yet crystallized

just waiting for my chrysalis which will 

take me to the other side, that will undo me

Every page before it was paper

was a plant reaching toward the light,

of a star which burns and dies through me 

 

 

 

Beth Tolmach is a writer and artist based in the Hudson Valley, New York. By profession she is an art educator and small business owner. Her creative voice is informed by a love for nature, occult philosophy, and time spent living in different countries. She has been writing poetry on and off since childhood, on those occasional instances where inspiration strikes. Besides poetry, she also likes to work in the visual arts (primarily drawing and collage) and as an electronic pop musician known as C.O.R.E.