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Time unfurled
a single yarn from the hem of a sweater
pulling apart the fabric of it.
Light consumed all darkness
until even the word shadow
held no weight.
The heavy weights of fear,
depression, and the impenetrable bruises
of lifelong aches,
melted,
like winter snow being touched,
at last,
by the spring sun.
A room awaits, made for me:
a coffee ***,
always full and warm with welcome.
A leather bound journal,
with ever-ready pages,
and a pen with ink made from my own veins
that always knows what to say.
An old fashioned is served up promptly,
at 7pm,
when my mother greets me at my door
and curls up next to me on the couch
we talk and laugh,
for hours inside a minute.
Candles glow with ambered remembrance.
Music plays the odes to journeys taken.
My grandfather fishes by a river nearby,
teeming with bass,
and I glimpse the child he never was
smile at me.
Every morning the ocean of my backyard
kisses my feet as she waves hello,
her salt no longer bitter.
I greet the blood of my blood
and bone of my bone upon the shore.
They wear faces that, through centuries
still resemble my own.
We tell stories around bonfires
of the legends that we were in our time.
My soul is made tangible.
I touch the fringes of my warrior spirit,
caress the edges of my creativity.
I dance with the stars before dawn
upon a floor made of crystalline moonbeams,
and marvel at how green,
how delicate,
how infinitesimal,
is the Earth below.
Hat
He handed it to me when I was 25,
with a Cheshire cat smile,
knowing it wasn't my team,
and liking it all the better for it.
I wore it,
reluctantly,
the Kelly green of it a traffic cone
warning others not to get too close
brim worn thin
on the edges
where he was always
making sure it sat
...just.
right.
until the shamrocks stitched to the side
could no longer mask the shackles
I tore it off
set it ablaze in the front yard
and let my soft ginger curls
fly free in the breeze,
finally mine again.
Snow falls, weaving lace from a forlorn sky
that caresses the tender edges of sand dunes.
Indigo waves buoy lamented lullabies,
filling empty drifting bottles
with salted cold foam.
Gulls screech,
shrill with curses
at the winking lighthouse
taunting the winged rats
with its cold, unreachable glow.
Silver threads of moon beams
luminesce the stardust under my feet;
my toes sink in as I pirouette
among other forgotten things:
bits of shell, braids of seaweed,
and stones of glass made smooth
by the ever-changing tides.
A clock washed ashore,
devoid of hands,
chimes notes for the unknown hour.
My footprints leave a path behind me
softly whispering my name
to the wind that welcomes me home.
i watch you counting yourself out                                         
                    courting little pets of body-parts
putting pennies on the trinket shelf            
talking with wending wordage            
                 about those gruff fellows
who've been pig-holing    about your dwelling

that day  you manage a back window  
                                           and escape                            
masquerade yourself  as a gentleman
but they sniff at your aromas       
              these men in crude season
they circle you hinge-hipping
as you fleet the roads and fields                        
and evade  into the dappling woods
"come on out  we have you surrounded"                              
(you say  they say)
you stay  crossed legged   a monk among trees
(these pleasing defenders)                                

you take off your dress  and string it
            from one of these trees
you dole yourself out                        
little pets for the undergrowth

           you offer a curled shrew
from the space   your kneecap once
                          occupied

you droop your warm left breast
and drop a beast from that cove
(a plump vole clambers  fresh and
                        disorientated)

you plug one arm into loose soil
                   and the fingers snake root
separation at the elbow                
              and branches sprig out

both your thighs   animate as fox cubs
your ***** leaves from between                  
                         and slinks under some ivy

your hair fiddles loose and travels off
in currents of breeze
before flitting into little finches

your back crumples with fungal looseness
your head weighs low                              
             and the jaw lumps off
shuffling   undecided on its form

your forehead bows  to kiss the earth
and your face scatters  a gaiety of insects  and spores

                  all arts patterned about
your pile continues   in this mattering manner
collapsing efficiently    
you've canonized in nature                    
now you’re abroad  mature and freed          
to tell your friend this story
a spirit  without brag of these neat powers
one with mother glory
ORIGINAL
i watch you counting yourself/putting pennies on the shelf/talking with wending/about those gruff fellows /who've been pig-holing about your dwelling/who circle you hinge-hipping /when you fleet the roads and fields/and INTO THE WOODS
Mad
I caught the deep inky blue of it
in bottles
labeled 'pleasing'
and set them on a shelf
next to bowls full of tears
and baskets full of unwanted memories.
It was cold
aching like limbs in the winter
sip it,
let the ice unfurl,
bitter on your tongue,
grief catching
in your throat
before settling into the pit
of your stomach,
like a swallowed apple seed.
one day the winds came
knocking all of the bottles down
and all around in the broken air,
ruptured by the fragmented glass,
screams - starved and rising
screams shattering bone
screams - ringing
wild and ragged
at last.
In the hush beneath powerlines,
through fractured stones,
no gardener knelt to bless them.
No springtime choir sang.
Still, golden heads rose,
leaning towards the shadowed light,
the kind filtered by clouds
like a half-remembered memory,
or a lullaby hummed to a ghost.
Roots thread through ruin,
tasting rust,
sipping rain
that fell before the world began.
They were never meant to be here.
And yet
yellow ablaze in the rubble.
A flicker. A flare.
The petaled armor of hope
unfurled against battle-smoked skies
as if the world exhaled
and breathed them into being.
Ellie Hoovs May 9
I was born
with questions in my mouth.
Why do wolves howl?
What do bees dream?
Will I ever be held
the way that the ocean's depths
hold secrets?
*
I pressed my hands
into the cool dirt of every mystery,
removed them to find earth under my nails,
ink on my palms,
and a smile I still cannot explain.

They tried to tell me:
not everything needs to be known.
But how could I keep from exploring
when every whisper of the wind,
every caw of the crows,
every daisy's petal,
tells me there is more.

They tried to tell me:
Pandora's jar is just Eden's apple
wearing a new name -
blooming only sorrow,
but can we really know the light
without the dark?

Hope was the last thing breathing.
She was caught in the looking glass,
unable to speak,
and I thought her reflection
looked an awful lot
like me.
Ellie Hoovs May 8
I was born with 12 eyes
they said it would make it easier
to see the light
but it only left me inching
in a fog
hiding from shape-shifting shadows.
So I learned to consume the dark
with my mandibles
and let it seep in to my hemolymph.
The parasitoids laid out fences
of peppermint and lavender -
trying to cage me.
But the oak tree took me in
and let me rest upon her leaves -
told me to shed my old skin.
I hung myself upside down under her branches
tried to see the world from their point of view
but there was still so little light,
and the birds were cawing
threatening to have me for breakfast.
I learned to hold myself tightly,
wrapped in imaginal discs
that liquified my dreams
into a rich soup for me to drink.
I emerged
soft and wet -
with ommatidia that see in all directions
and bear witness to invisible colors;
and with wings formed like dragon scales,
that move in the shape of infinity.
Now I feast with my feet,
feeding on nectar of Chloris
and cross continents
while they marvel at how far I have come
from the ground they tried to keep me on.
Pulse as tether.
Mind, a blade dulled on bone.
Ash drips from the ceiling of thought
no light, only the hiss of burned names.

Tongues calcify in jars of dusk.
Flesh remembers what silence forgot.
Smoke blooms in the mouth of sleep.
Pain suckles the root,
wants nothing but to stay.

Grief is a handless clock
still turning.
Still carving
where nothing remains soft.
neth jones Apr 29
i love lax and i lust after slack                              
smoky streams dream out a caution
portions of nightmarish animalian fests
                                           in blue
i love the reptilian love of sunshine        
never mind the laws and mans fortune
and preservation          
of good food 
 in oil
15/03/25 - date of original
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