Siren Song of Tower Hill
Floating listless white
My siren’s song sets sail tonight
Pale Eye of Memory gazing down at me
As the voice of Isis calls to sea
‘Oh come, come to London town
And in his waters gently drown
Wintry kiss for you my love
Soft and soothing as a dove
Heavensweet his ruby breath
Lulls me in caress of death
The stars in crystalline shower
Bespeckle the sky above the Tower
He is lost and He is found
My love for Him one eternal round
The sundial eclipsed in the Night
Time’s shade traces his undead Sight
Ghastly wondrous Time is Dead
His corpse is ghost- yet weighs like lead
How long will Eternity sing banshee
Will the Thames ever bring his corpse to me
Raven-music of angels from his skull
His heart and wings mine to cull
Oh reveal to this Queen your tomb
That she may bring you forth from the Womb!
© Rachael Bulla 3/24/2006
Lucifer Over London
(Title Inspired by Current 93)
Black wings unfurl
Over London
The Sun a crimson memory
In twilight’s tired sigh
The stars are blinking with grit-stained tears
The moon’s half dark with Saturnine snarl
For You have devoured the heart of Albion
She is Ghost-sick with weeping
How many Times must London Bridge fall
666 fire does not purge
The sewer filth of you black tongue
Dark Serpentine waters licking the Tower
Blue iced silver is Her cage
Her swan wings gone ravenous red
Spectral eyes scream
My one true love
My rapist
My husband, father and son
My rapist
My pure flame’s hope
My rapist
My Angel
Is Vampyre
His-story
Is only one of Rape
Clock ticking of my heart
Counting down to my death
Pass the Queen’s Keys
For all is not well
For this crown of diamond-thorns
Prison flickers into castle
Then into prison again
Bird claws screech and bleed
As sleep and death
Lull to fading…
Where is this castle now
Where is this castle now
© Rachael Bulla Jan 27 2005
‘But Gwenglaer, daughter of the White Tower,
she brought strife; with her I had seven
and a grievous time there was of it.’ –Hywel ap Owain Gwynedd, 12th cen.
‘I was in the White Hill
In the Hall of Cynvelyn,
In stocks and fetters
a Year and a half’ -Hanes Taliesin
Branwyn
From my cell
Silence caresses as soft black plumes
I can hear the universe breathe…
Bran’s dusty lips part
And ghosts sing in poplar leaves blowing in the wind
Dancing spiral in their imprisonment
The sun’s rays shine unseen behind His tower at midnight
And mirror themselves in a silver-red orb
Tearstain of Night
Bloodstain of Night
Bells tingle like the gleaming of crowned jewels
White diamonds glitter in cobwebs
As a veiled form wanders
Undead, ever alive
Her white train brushing the ground gently
As she walks ever circling
(As She wanders ever circling)
“What shadows we are”
In my lover’s eyes
He is reborn and then he dies
Bran is reborn and then he dies
I marry and behead him seven Times anew
But I cannot die
(She cannot die)
My claws
That tear in brutal ecstacy-
This is how the universe expands
This is how the universe expands…
© Rachael Bulla (Quote from Current 93, All the Pretty Little Horses’ 18/08/2002
‘View from inside London Tower to Tower Bridge’ by Sir James
Asmodeus: The Nymphon
I walk down Oxford Street past the bustling shoppers
Chattering of red hearts and chocolates
While He, crouching with black wing in front of Bond Street
Smiles with blood stained lips
The shades of my lost loves hide in the folds of his cloak
As I near Him I can hear
Their Hearts beating in thick darkness
He brushes my hand lightly with his feathers
And Seven ghosts weep round my ring finger
Oh Asmodeus…
Saturn’s square wrapped round my finger
Like a snake-loop in Time
This Virgin -Widow
Always comes back to this Moment
Time frozen, time turned insideout
Time dead and…
(Time reborn)
***
Fleet Street is quiet today
And I find myself alone, gazing upwards
As his dark figure stands atop St. Bride’s wedding cake cathedral
The angel-demon’s eyes look down at me
with the Ice light of Memory
He flys down and and takes me by the hand
And leads me below to his secret well
That he guards like a Treasure
He holds me fast and with seven claws
etches his Sigel over my heart
And licks the blood with his lover’s tongue…
Oh Asmodeus…
Saturn’s markesite sparkling round my finger
Like cake icing
This Virgin-Bride
Always comes back to this Moment
Time frozen, time turned insideout
Time dead and…
(Time reborn)
***
I slowly make my circuit back to my home in the North
The Islington Angel with its metallic halo floating above
With one wing stretched to heaven
And the other to Earth
I, like Solomon of old, ask Him…
And he points to the night sky
As the moon hides his face in shadow
The Seven Stars sparkle like silver fangs
That draw only tears now
Oh Asmodeus…
Saturn’s moonlit silver round my finger
Like planetary rings
This Virgin-Queen
Always comes back to this Moment
Time frozen,
(Seven diamond pillars in the night sky)
Time turned insideout,
(Wisdom has built her Palace)
Time dead and…
(Like sacrificial king offerings)
*Time reborn*…
© Rachael Bulla April 2008
Daughter of Albion
(Inspired by William Blake)
‘Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?’-Job 38:20
Your husband in Time
Only perceives you in part
The cage of his mind
Cannot fathom your gem-heart
O Beauty who wails
Do your angel eyes not see
Your true husband dwells
In realms of Eternity
Blake etched in metal
About a Moment lost in Time
Therein lies portal
To wed perfect love sublime
Key opens cave-womb
And in deepest joy behold
Borne of your heart-tomb
The Christ-treasure pearls and gold
Sweet echoing rings
Down ice corridors’ mirror
As Raven-Ghost sings
In white diamonds and silver
© Rachael Bulla Feb 11 2007
There is a Grain of Sand in Lambeth that Satan cannot find
Nor can his Watch Fiends find it: tis translucent & has many Angles
But he who finds it will find Oothoons palace, for within
Opening into Beulah every angle is a lovely heaven
-William Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’ 37:15-18
There is a Moment in each Day that Satan cannot find
Nor can his Watch Fiends find it, but the Industrious find
This Moment & it multiply, & when it once is found
It Renovates every Moment of the Day if rightly placed
-Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ 35:42-45
Beside You in Time
‘I am all alone this time around
Sometimes on the side I hear a sound
Places parallel I know it’s you
Feel the little pieces bleeding through…’-NIN
The London bridges cross the black snake river
That loops round and bites its tail at one Point
Where the rusty cage-bones dangling by the Clink
sway like a cradle
Where the Clock freezes, then ticks backwards
Like the ghost murmur of my heart
Whose unbeats resound with magnetic majesty
The crimson undead fairy liquid
Attracts the hungry Ghost that is Holy…
I touch the Wall
As though caressing a membrane of Time
But because my heart is Ghost
I pass through like a shade
My breathing stops
And for one Moment We touch
All the clocks pause
And all the compasses point North
(The magnetic centre of the earth opens her jaws
Like a black widow spider
And shoots out white rays
As though giving birth to a son)
Oh the lines of Time
Along which you and I traverse parallel
And nearly intersect seven times seven times round
This shroud-web shimmers like a bridal veil…
*Oh which of the bridges shall I cross?*
The Ghost caresses my fingers
Like a raven feather
And I find myself halfway across the Ghost Bridge
In the heart of all the bridges
Cradling Time in my arms like an infant
And as I weep like a banshee
His alabaster visage flickers in the snake waters
As black wings enfold me like a lover’s embrace…
© Rachael Bulla
‘…Beside you in Time
We will never die…’ -NIN
At the Gravesite of William Blake
Dead dreams dance ghost white
Lilting, swirling like snowflakes
(Mother’s angelic unvoice) breathes into my lungs…
Leaves tremble in the wind
Whispering a familiar speech
Formless, wordless, spectral speech
Wraps around Their grave like gossamer
The Poet and his Sophia
A hawthorn waits in silence
Offering me one of her fingers
And I pick it up off the wintry ground
Clouds overhead like a shroud
The sun is milk light
The silence is white
Oh the silence is White
My lips part
Like a blanched leaf of paper
And are frozen
With Unmemory
(She is mute, I am mute)
A raven flies overhead
Like the quill of a pen
Father’s shadow falls
And my lips caw a cursing:
‘Oh this blackened speech of poison must die
Oh this blackened speech
Of entombed Memory, dead Wisdom
Oh the false Philo of the false Sophia!
The Poet knew it well, as do I
This blackened speech of poison must die!’
Dead dreams dance ghost white
Lilting, swirling like snowflakes
(Mother’s angelic unvoice) breathes into my lungs..
The silence is enceinte
With speech turned backwards in Time
Dreams are dead to Time, but not to Memory
My Hope is in the virgin whiteness of (Her) death
Pregnant with Speech
(This Ghost Is Holy)
(This Ghost Is White)
© Rachael Bulla
The Woman Clothed in the Sun
Oh He with cataracts over his eyes
Poisoned tongue, swollen with lies
King of Babel’s Tower high
All chatter confusedly and I sigh
My love, blinded with Might
Will he know who truly rules the Height
Crowned with golden sceptre of Sight
Withering stink of rot its blight
As I lie silent beneath the ground
Under layers of history I drown
My love, look away from the Light
To the spectral Queen of Night
Dragon-fire of Red encages me
Sunlight blinds this crystalline beauty
For all Seven Ages of Time
Eternity sleeps in her tomb-shrine
Regal ghost of sorrows of the earth
Waiting to bloom once more in rebirth
Language of gemstones bestuds my tongue
But without my true love is unsung
Spider-angels weave lace webs of gloom
Silvery lattice overhangs my tomb
My ruby heart enshrouded in White
As Jacob’s ladder is spun tonight
© Rachael Bulla
Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion: ‘And One stood forth’ by William Blake
Ophelia
Who can know her whose watery grave entombs her father and lover with her, her ears having been too weary with the sound of clanking swords in the eternal combat. And who can fathom the primordial womb to which her white form floats eternal…
As God separated the light from the darkness the Spirit rode upon the face of the deep and enthroned Herself in pale death-light above the tides, casting her magical coins across the firmament.
Like love and hate, Sorrow and Joy are Sisters of the same coin…
And sick with love-death as I softly sang Ophelia’s lament for flowers, I let Her pull me down into a dark abyss and became sea-wraith in a chaotic howling ocean, rising and falling in its moon-inspired insanity.
…But of late when the tide rises from cavernous regions, the rhythm of her wild waves softens to divine gentleness…and at that moment I can see in the night sky the Sisters’ coin spinning in infinity, a twinkling Polar Axis in the wonderful void, and that is when visions occur; when Bran’s head sings an incantation with a host of holy phantoms on London’s Hill, when angel’s harp strings pierce until the soul bleeds sweetly, and when Arianrhod appears in gossamer from her castle at the back of the North Wind and with her silver scepter of seven stars sees all with regal ghastly visage, and the universe weeps in precious adulation…
© Rachael Bulla
Snowblood's Grove 