One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound
except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember
whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve
nights when I was six.

All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky
that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in
the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays
resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.

It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her
son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland,
though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we
waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they
would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and
moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their
eyes. The wise cats never appeared.

We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever
since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or,
if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar
cat. But soon the voice grew louder.
"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.

And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring
out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier
in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the
house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.

Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a
newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and
smacking at the smoke with a slipper.

"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.
"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his
slipper as though he were conducting.
"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and
ran out of the house to the telephone box.
"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires."

But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose
into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier
Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt,
Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would
say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets,
standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, "Would you like anything to read?"

Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel
petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt
like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the
English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the
daft and happy hills *******, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I
made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."

"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it
came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow
grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and
settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."

"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and
mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells."
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."
"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings
over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It
seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our
fence."

"Get back to the postmen"
"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and the snow. They knocked on the
doors with blue knuckles ...."
"Ours has got a black knocker...."
"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making
ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled
down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on
fishmonger's slabs.
"He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's ****, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was
gone."

"Get back to the Presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths;
zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-
shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking
tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you
wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now,
alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not
to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp,
except why."

"Go on the Useless Presents."
"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and
a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a
little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that
an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the
trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the
red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches,
cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who,
if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for
Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to
wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall.
And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited
for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And
then it was breakfast under the balloons."

"Were there Uncles like in our house?"
"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas morning, with dog-disturbing whistle
and sugar ****, I would scour the swatched town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird
by the Post Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and
women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles
their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all
the front parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in
their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling
pokers. Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying
their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then
holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the
kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to
break, like faded cups and saucers."

Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this
time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he
would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing,
no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite,
to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling
smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the
dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a
snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of
a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.

I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face
of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high,
so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled
windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after
dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch
chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie
Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some
elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port,
stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to
see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In
the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among
festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions
for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.

Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim
and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.
"I bet people will think there's been hippos."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him
under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"

Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr.
Daniel's house.
"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's write things in the snow."
"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"

The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills,
and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We
returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-
rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock
birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly;
and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with ***,
because it was only once a year.

Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like
owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the
stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving
of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we
stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand
in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant
and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them?
Hark the Herald?"
"No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high
and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood
close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small,
dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry,
eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped
running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-
gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said.
"Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.

Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another
uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip
wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a
Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out
into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other
houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas
down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept.

Consumed with thoughts of innocence, youthfulness and vigor
Never understood the attraction between a boy and a girl
Never understood for I was just a slender spoon...
Writing, playful - never thought I'd act the fool.
In my heart there was nothing.
Nothing of substance, thought, not even a care.
There was no one…
Just a slender spoon living just to survive and not to be seen.
Then I traveled and laid bare my eyes intertwining with yours.
Never a word... a word we didn't say for you were strange...
Strange to my eyes and I was too strange for yours.
So we looked on, clueless of the storm we'd cause today.
And so under that hat you smiled at first glimpse of my beauty.
A black woman, innocent but not without fault.
How could that be...ahhhh?
Then you became curious...
Curious about that slender spoon and what she was capable of.
You now know her thoughts and I...and she knows yours.
Unaware... that man under the hat, that black felted hat would later be a man with a ring...
That slender spoon... the beauty that shone under the sun would no longer be naive, indifferent… but she later became someone who had your interest at heart.
....that slender spoon later became a woman with a ring and the man under that hat became the one… the one who gave that ring,

That man under the hat....
The masculinity who wore that hat
…It was the man who wore that felted hat.

My beautiful blue skein of yarn,
Here in my bag you sit,
I'd love to pick you up to knit,
If only for a bit.

But clothes need washing and babes need baths,
And food needs cooking too,
Besides, I'd have a hard time choosing,
What to make of you.

You see, my stitches were not even,
My gauge, no one could guess,
My beautiful blue skein of yarn,
You would not have been impressed.

But oh how I've practiced, how I've improved,  I'm sure you'll find it so,
My stitches fly right off my needles and sit in pretty rows.
My gauge is constant, my edges neat, now I am ready for you,
But still that nagging question comes, what with you will I do?

Maybe I will make of you a felted wooly bonnet,
And everyone would stop and gaze and cast their eyes upon it.
I'll wear you on holiday, we'll march in a parade,
I'll prance so proudly, show you off, and say, "yes, you're handmade".

Maybe I will make of you, a purse, like those I see in Vogue,
I'll put in you my favorite things, and then, we'll hit the rode!
We'll travel round the city, and everyone will see,
How beautiful and remarkable a skein of yarn can be.

Maybe I will make you gloves,
My baby's hands to cover,
And everyone who saw her'd say,
"her mother must really love her".

A hat, a purse, a pair of gloves, your beauty for all to see,
But, only if I stop and knit,
Now look what you've made of me,
Your potential's not all I see...

In a distant land, far beyond the time we know now, there lived an ancient people who knew in their bones of a past outside memory. Things happened over and over; as day became night night became day, spring followed winter, summer followed spring, autumn followed summer and then, and then as autumn came, at least the well-known ordered days passed full of preparation for the transhumance, that great movement of flocks and herds from the summer mountains to the winter pastures. But in the great oak woods of this region the leaves seemed reluctant to fall. Even after the first frosts when the trees glimmered with rime as the sun rose. Even when winter’s cousin, the great wind from the west, ravaged the conical roofs of the shepherds’ huts. The leaves did not fall.

For Lucila, searching for leaves as she climbed each day higher and higher through the parched undergrowth under the most ancient oaks, there were only acorns, slews of acorns at her feet. There were no leaves, or rather no leaves that might be gathered as newly fallen. Only the faint husks of leaves of the previous autumn, leaves of provenance already gathered before she left the mountains last year for the winter plains, leaves she had placed into her deep sleeves, into her voluminous apron, into the large pockets of her vlaterz, the ornate felt jacket of the married woman.

Since her childhood she had picked and pocketed these oaken leaves, felt their thin, veined, patterned forms, felt, followed, caressed them between her finger tips. It was as though her pockets were full of the hands of children, seven-fingered hands, stroking her fingers with their pointed tips when her fingers were pocketed.

She would find private places to lay out her gathered leaves. She wanted none to know or touch or speak of these her children of the oak forest. She had waited all summer, as she had done since a child, watching them bud and grow on the branch, and then, with the frosts and winds of autumn, fall, fall, fall to the ground, but best of all fall into her small hands, every leaf there to be caught, fallen into the bowl of her cupped hands. And for every leaf caught, a wish.

Her autumn days became full of wishes. She would lie awake on her straw mattress after Mikas had risen for the night milking, that time when the rustling bells of the goats had no accompaniment from the birds. She would assemble her lists of wishes, wishes ready for leaves not yet fallen into the bowl of her cupped hands. May the toes of my baby be perfectly formed? May his hair fall straight without a single curl? May I know only the pain I can bear when he comes? May the mother of Mikas love this child?

As the fine autumn days moved towards the feast day of St Anolysius, the traditional day of departure of the winter transhumance, there was, this season, an unspoken tension present in the still, dry air. Already preparations were being made for the long journey to the winter plains. There was soon to be a wedding now three days away, of the Phatos boy to the Tamosel girl. The boy was from an adjoining summer pasture and had travelled during the summer months with an itinerant uncle, a pedlar of sorts and beggar of repute. So he had seen something of the world beyond those of the herds and flocks can expect to see. He was rightly-made and fit to marry, although, of course, the girl was to be well-kept secret until the day itself.

Lucila remembered those wedding days, her wedding days, those anxious days of waiting when encased in her finery, in her seemingly impenetrable and voluminous wedding clothes she had remained all but hidden from view. While around her the revelling came and went, the drunkenness, the feasting, the riotous eruptions of noise and movement, the sudden visitations of relatives she did not know, the fierce instructions of women who spoke to her now as a woman no longer a young girl or a dear child, women she knew as silent, shy and respectful who were now loud and lewd, who told her things she could hardly believe, what a man might do, what a man might be, what a woman had to suffer - all these things happening at the same time. And then her soon-to-be husband’s drunk-beyond-reason friends had carried off the basket with her trousseau and dressed themselves riotously in her finest embroidered blouses, her intricate layered skirts, her petticoats, even the nightdress deemed the one to be worn when eventually, after three days revelry, she would be visited by a man, now more goat than man, sodden with drink, insensible to what little she understood as human passion beyond the coupling of goats. Of course Semisar had prepared the bright blood for the bridesbed sheet, the necessary evidence, and as Mikas lay sprawled unconscious at the foot of the marriage bed she had allowed herself to be dishevelled, to feign the aftermath of the act he was supposed to have committed upon her. That would, she knew, come later . . .

It was then, in those terrible days and after, she took comfort from her silent, private stitching into leaves, the darning of acorns, the spinning of skeins of goats’ wool she would walnut-dye and weave around stones and pieces of glass. She would bring together leaves bound into tiny books, volumes containing for her a language of leaves, the signs and symbols of nature she had named, that only she knew. She could not read the words of the priest’s book but was fluent in the script of veins and ribs and patterning that every leaf owned. When autumn came she could hardly move a step for picking up a fallen leaf, reading its story, learning of its history. But this autumn now, at the time of leaf fall, the fall of the leaf did not happen and those leaves of last year at her feet were ready to disintegrate at her touch. She was filled with dread. She knew she could not leave the mountains without a collection of leaves to stitch and weave through the shorter days and long, long winter nights. She had imagined sharing with her infant child this language she had learnt, had stitched into her daily life.

It was Semisar of course, who voiced it first. Semisar, the self-appointed weather ears and horizon eyes of the community, who followed her into the woods, who had forced Lucila against a tree holding one broad arm and her body’s weight like a bar from which Lucila could not escape, and with the other arm and hand rifled the broad pockets of Lucila’s apron. Semisar tossed the delicate chicken bone needles to the ground, unravelled the bobbins of walnut-stained yarn, crumpled the delicately folded and stitched, but yet to be finished, constructions of leaves . . . And spewed forth a torrent of terrible words. Already the men knew that the lack of leaf fall was peculiar only to the woods above and around their village. Over the other side of the mountain Telgatho had said this was not so. Was Lucila a Magnelz? Perhaps a Cutvlael? This baby she carried, a girl of course, was already making evil. Semisar placed her hand over and around the ripe hard form of the unborn child, feeling for its shape, its elbows and knees, the spine. And from there, with a vicelike grip on the wrist, Semisar dragged Lucila up and far into the woods to where the mountain with its caves and rocks touched the last trees, and from there to the cave where she seemed to know Lucila’s treasures lay, her treasures from childhood. Semisar would destroy everything, then the leaves would surely fall.

When Lucila did not return to prepare the evening meal Mikas was to learn all. Should he leave her be? He had been told women had these times of strange behaviour before childbirth. The wedding of the Phatos boy was almost upon them and the young men were already behaving like goats before the rut. The festive candles and tinselled wedding crowns had been fetched from the nearest town two days ride distant, the decoration of the tiny mountain basilica and the accommodation for the priest was in hand. The women were busy with the making of sweets and treats to be thrown at the wedding pair by guests and well-wishers. Later, the same women would prepare the dough for the millstones of bread that would be baked in the stone ovens. The men had already chosen the finest lambs to spit-roast for the feast.

She will return, Semisar had said after waiting by the fold where Mikas flocks, now gathered from the heights, awaited their journey south. All will be well, Mikas, never fear. The infant, a girl, may not last its birth, Semisar warned, but seeing the shocked face of Mikas, explained a still-birth might be providential for all. Know this time will pass, she said, and you can still be blessed with many sons. We are forever in the hands of the spirit, she said, leaving without the customary salutation of farewell.
                                               
However different the lives of man and woman may by tradition and circumstance become, those who share the ways and rites of marriage are inextricably linked by fate’s own hand and purpose. Mikas has come to know his once-bride, the child become woman in his clumsy embrace, the girl of perhaps fifteen summers fulfilling now his mother’s previous role, who speaks little but watches and listens, is unfailingly attentive to his needs and demands, and who now carries his child ( it can only be a boy), carries this boy high in her womb and with a confidence his family has already remarked upon.

After their wedding he had often returned home to Lucila at the time of the sun’s zenith when it is customary for the village women to seek the shade of their huts and sleep. It was an unwritten rite due to a newly-wed husband to feign the sudden need for a forgotten tool or seek to examine a sick animal in the home fold. After several fruitless visits when he found their hut empty he timed his visit earlier to see her black-scarfed figure disappear into the oak woods.  He followed her secretively, and had observed her seated beneath an ancient warrior of a tree, had watched over her intricate making. Furthermore and later he came to know where she hid the results of this often fevered stitching of things from nature’s store and stash, though an supernatural fear forbade him to enter the cleft between rocks into which she would disappear. He began to know how times and turns of the days affected her actions, but had left her be. She would usually return bright-eyed and with a quiet wonder, of what he did not know, but she carried something back within her that gave her a peculiar peace and beauty. It seemed akin to the well-being Mikas knew from handling a fine ewe from his flock . . .

And she would sometimes allow herself to be handled thus. She let him place his hands over her in that joyful ownership and command of a man whose life is wholly bound up with flocks and herds and the well-being of the female species. He would come from the evening watch with the ever-constant count of his flock still on his lips, and by a mixture of accident and stealth touch her wholly-clothed body, sometimes needing his fingers into the thick wool of her stockings, stroking the chestnut silken hairs that he found above her bare wrists, marvelling at her small hands with their perfect nails. He knew from the ribaldry of men that women were trained from childhood to display to men as little as possible of their intimate selves. But alone and apart all day on a remote hillside, alone save for several hundred sheep, brought to Mikas in his solitary state wild and conjured thoughts of feminine spirits, unencumbered by clothes, brighter and more various than any night-time dream. And he had succumbed to the pleasure of such thoughts times beyond reason, finding himself imagining Lucila as he knew she was unlikely ever to allow herself to be. But even in the single winter and summer of their life together there had been moments of surprise and revelation, and accompanied by these precious thoughts he went in search of her in the darkness of a three-quarter moon, into the stillness of the night-time wood.

Ah Lucilla. We might think that after the scourge of Semisar, the physical outrage of her baby’s forced examination, and finally the destruction of her treasures, this child-wife herself with child would be desolate with grief at what had come about. She had not been forced to follow Semisar into the small cave where wrapped in woven blankets her treasures lay between the thinnest sheets of impure and rejected parchment gleaned surreptitiously after shearing, but holding each and every treasure distinct and detached. There was enough light for Semisar to pause in wonder at the intricate constructions, bright with the aura of extreme fragility owned by many of the smaller makings. And not just the leaves of the oak were here, but of the mastic, the walnut, the flaky-barked strawberry and its smoothed barked cousin. There were leaves and sheaves of bark from lowland trees of the winter sojourn, there were dried fruits mysteriously arranged, constructions of acorns threaded with the dark madder-red yarn, even acorns cracked and damaged from their tree fall had been ‘mended’ with thread.

Semisar was to open some of the tiny books of leaved pages where she witnessed a form of writing she did not recognise (she could not read but had seen the priest’s writing and the print of the holy books). This she wondered at, as surely Lucila had only the education of the home? Such symbols must belong to the spirit world. Another sign that Lucila had infringed order and disturbed custom. It would take but a matter of minutes to turn such makings into little more than a layer of dust on the floor.

With her bare hands Semisar ground together these elaborate confections, these lovingly-made conjunctions of needle’s art with nature’s purpose and accidental beauty. She ground them together until they were dust.

When Semisar returned into the pale afternoon light it seemed Lucila had remained as she had been left: motionless, and without expression. If Semisar had known the phenomenon of shock, Lucila was in that condition. But, in the manner of a woman preparing to grieve for the dead she had removed her black scarf and unwound the long dark chestnut plaits that flowed down her back. But there were no tears. only a dumb silence but for the heavy exhalation of breath. It seemed that she looked beyond Semisar into the world of spirits invoking perhaps their aid, their comfort.

What happened had neither invoked sadness nor grief. It was as if it had been ordained in the elusive pattern of things. It felt like the clearing of the summer hut before the final departure for the long journey to the winter world. The hut, Lucila had been taught, was to be left spotless, every item put in its rightful place ready to be taken up again on the return to the summer life, exactly as if it had been undisturbed by absence . Not a crumb would remain before the rugs and coverings were rolled and removed, summer clothes hard washed and tightly mended, to be folded then wrapped between sprigs of aromatic herbs.

Lucila would go now and collect her precious but scattered needles from beneath the ancient oak. She would begin again - only to make and embroider garments for her daughter. It was as though, despite this ‘loss’, she had retained within her physical self the memory of every stitch driven into nature’s fabric.

Suddenly Lucila remembered that saints’ day which had sanctioned a winter’s walk with her mother, a day when her eyes had been drawn to a world of patterns and objects at her feet: the damaged acorn, the fractured leaf, the broken berried branch, the wisp of wool left impaled upon a stub of thorns. She had been five, maybe six summers old. She had already known the comforting action of the needle’s press again the felted cloth, but then, as if impelled by some force quite outside herself, had ‘borrowed’ one of her mother’s needles and begun her odyssey of darning, mending, stitching, enduring her mother’s censure - a waste of good thread, little one - until her skill became obvious and one of delight, but a private delight her mother hid from all and sundry, and then pressed upon her ‘proper’ work with needle and thread. But the damage had been done, the dye cast. She became nature’s needle slave and quartered those personal but often invisible

Now,
We are mellow.
Having spent the evening exploring the threads of friendship.
That had come adrift of warp, weft and weave.
Time and distance had
silks, snag-tagged-torn,
on the bustling-busy,
hectic-hustling of work
and family.

Teasing-taunt,
needle-gnawing,
small, gap-rip-rents
in the snug comforter
that is... the wonder of us.

Us, so many secrets woven. So many, nights of tissues and sobbing tears.
Darning in daring exploits. Cutting away knotted,
fear-angry-scream-fighting feuds.

Cutting work, for days of delight and nights of desperate yearning.

We used anything at hand, rough wools, pieces of string and twines.
To weave a blanket,
to hide us from life's storms.

We were,
so young, so strong, recklessly-brash,
stupidly-joyous
and braveheart-fools.

And now, time and age,
has softened our work. Felted and fuse-melded,
the fibres into a beautiful entity.

That we store-save in the heart's cupboard,
of special and precious  things.
It is an heirloom of sorts.
We bring it out,with occasional, humble-grace,
to be dandled and stroked with reverence.

Caressed and cossetted are our memories held within the abstract weave.

We are the dwindling
of a youthful exuberance
flung-thrown-heaved
to the wild winds.

So now, we are grateful to be curator-custodians of the retrospective nature
as we augment-append
and reiterate-repair.

A new thread here,
now,
embellish-embroider,embed
and tatt-stitch.
My son and your twin girls, squeezed, splashing
into your tiny bathtub
big-grin-giggling in the gurgling water.

Our future, here and now,
is the brightest of silks,

Our past, mellow and yielding in,
the luminent opulence,
angelically-asleep in,
the other room.

Call me when you have gasped your throat to splintered wood
Reach for me when your fingers have calloused to fractured stone
From the depths of the stoney pit of echoing isolation
When your legs hold you weary as rusted tin-soldiers

If your heart is hardening like lava reaching the ocean
If your song is submerged in a rain-on-tin-roof din
If your hugging arms are pulled asunder by monsoon landslides
If your eyes have filled with the angry spray of November hurricanes

Remember a warm hand against cold skin
Remember closeness like a heavy felted great-coat
Remember a low voice breathing fireplace hot upon your neck

Remember two hearts
Just two rib-thicknesses apart;
Two taught drums,
Beating in time
Together
In song.

After months of preparation — sketching and making patterns, finding and fitting models, cutting and sewing fabrics, arranging makeup and accessories — Cornell University senior Ellen Pyne this weekend will send her fairy-tale themed “Crimson” line down the Cornell Fashion Collective (CFC) runway in a matter of minutes.

Anticipating their moment to shine, Pyne and 35 other student designers have been laboring since last fall to perfect their creations for the 31st CFC runway show, Saturday, April 11, 8 p.m., in Barton Hall. For first-year designers, the event allows them to present a single look on the big stage, whereas seniors like Pyne plan a full collection, hoping it will launch their fashion careers.

“I eat, sleep, go to class and sew,” said Pyne, whose showstopper is a seamless Snow White-inspired dress made entirely out of hand-felted wool. “The collection is a statement of my artistic aesthetic and the culmination of everything I’ve learned over the past four years.”

Working just as diligently are show planners, led by senior CFC president Megan Rodrigues, who are remaking the cavernous Barton Hall field house to host a night of glamour. Since shortly after the curtain closed on last spring’s show, Rodrigues and the CFC executive board have been organizing ticket sales and a heap of other details, including a new runway design will give the expected 2,500 guests a better view of the Cornell student models on the catwalk.

“Through this process, I’ve learned a great deal about leadership, learning to delegate and being able to inspire others to a common goal,” said Rodrigues, who hopes to work in event planning after graduation. “Mostly, I’m excited to see the growth of each designer leading up to the show.”

Designers come largely from the fashion design major in the College of Human Ecology, but students from the College of Engineering and the College of Arts and Sciences will also contribute pieces. A multidisciplinary team will present “Irradiance,” a wearable technology collection that uses sensors and luminescent panels to detect and respond to audio—glowing and dimming in sync with surrounding music. Lead designer and junior Eric Beaudette said that team, which includes Lina Sanchez Botero and Neal Reynolds, doctoral students in fiber science and physics, respectively, hopes to inspire a vision for smart clothing of the future.

In the sesquicentennial spirit, the show will also include a nod to the past. Recalling campus styles dating back to 1865, Denise Green, assistant professor of fiber science and apparel design, will air a short video about an exhibit, “150 Years of Cornell Student Fashion,” currently on display in the Human Ecology Building.

Inspired by art and culture she observed studying abroad in Paris last fall, junior Linnea Fong will present “Infatuated,” luxury evening wear she described as taking on “individual obsession with physical perfection and how that manifests in the fashion industry.” Just days before the show, she’s still modifying parts of her collection, noting that “you just have to figure out how to make your ideas come to life, which is the fun part.”

Concluding the show will be a line by senior Blake Uretsky, recipient of a 2015 Geoffrey Beene National Scholarship from the YMA Fashion Scholarship Fund. Her “Crested Butte” collection of women’s outerwear, a modern twist on vintage 1950s ski clothing, includes “distinctly wearable, yet visually exciting pieces,” she said. Presenting 10 looks, Uretsky’s line incorporates classic silhouettes and wool, corduroy and denim fabrics embellished with laser cuts and other modern techniques.

“Ultimately, I want to design clothes that people love and have a desire to wear,” Uretsky said. “The show will be such a wonderful experience with my family, friends and the Cornell community all supporting my work.”Read more here:marieaustralia.com | www.marieaustralia.com/cocktail-dresses

It 's the latter part of class,
people talking and laughing
All ,but him
little to no emotion was expressed,
screaming,crying,feeling overwhelmed
Like a caged creature,clawing,
desperate for its freedom
                                                         ­                                 Bell Rings
he snaps out of it for a minute
calmly rising from his seat,
making his way towards the buses
                                                           ­                         half-way home
it happens again,

masking what he felted                                        on the outside
                bus stops
before he noticed,
he was practically almost running off the bus
                            hurting so much
his chest tightens with every breath he takes
quickly he runs in to his grandparent's room,
grabbing the razor blade
isolating himself
staring at the unharmed flesh of his arm                  
                                           ­                              his mind being filled with      
                                                      ­                                    images of blood over
                                                                ­                                  flowing from his
                                                                ­                                                      wrist
as the blade met his skin,
                                 very little pain was felted
what started out as short & slow strokes
became fast,long & deeper cuts,
in that moment there was nothing he desire more
than to end it all
                                                             ­               but did not
placing the blade on the sink,
tracing the scars that ran up his arm,
                                                  he smiles
with tears flooding his eyes
it's around 12 at night,
wide awake and possessed by his thoughts,
finally tired,
falls asleep with the last thought
before closing his eyes to rest
                                                           *­i couldn't change even if i tried

I love you more than me
it's what scares me most
my chameleon heart
I become what I cling to.

And so my colour-blind soul
passing through shades
when picking you flowers
what do I have of my very own to give you?

You made me out of blue
You felted my heart of this red
You turned my hands to gold.

I am already you
I have nothing of my very own.
My darling, what could I give you now?

The electric wires form a fox
Eyes and ears pointed at my face
Her mouth nips in the air
She's watching me
Trying to figure out if I'm prey or predator

The woods whisper your name when you walk by
When you sinned we weep of your graciousness
Rejection is a script you know too well
And I'm sorry for being a ghostwriter

Do you know? I ask
How they view you,
You are cunning and they fear it
You are smart and it's terrifying for them
You are the legends scratching cracks into history
What you have done is birth a new era
Our spines read of your sly rebellion

Millions of people have been touched by those stories
But sides have formed
And you have become a martyr

They’ve made you an example,
And I am sorry that your story is not unique
I know so many foxes
Some with white hair
Braided and ready for war
Reckless with ambition
Others with piercing black eyes
Sharp and not scared of death
Saw the injustice and called it out of its shadow

They are scared of them
Called them witches riddled with sins
Killed them without a remark for justice
Leaving their bodies in the forest
Abandon and erased
Trees have been born by their hearts
Nourished by their blood

I walked into the forest
Touched the ground
Felted the air
And came out a phoenix

So I understand the hesitation
The double step before you move
The hitch in your breath before you ask
But I am stone and statue
I speak when spoken too
Just like you, they have made me a lie
So staring will solve nothing now

Ask and you shall know what side I am on
Prey or predator?

You are still staring and I am looking back
I can see the wheels turning in your head
Prey or predator?
And taking pity
Taking rebellion by the hand
Taking you by the hand
Refusing to make you my enemy
I say "neither"
Because exil is also an exception
Because love unite foes
Because I have played the game for too long too
And you look tired of always needing to pick sides

I got those familiar feelings
hit me making me wonder
Like I have felted it before
Long time ago
Don't know where , when or With whom exactly
I'm afraid that I'm making the Same old mistakes again
wanna travel back in time centuries ago to see the old me probably taking notes how to survive in today's world.










notes so I can survive in today's world

doopth..doopth..doopth..
the intonation of a gavel
upon a felted block

order, orrrder,

i now call to order this
washday gathering
of the
metaphysical
analytical
socks
drawer # 1793

all rise and come to toetip
for the grand entry of
the great thrice darned heel

kazoos squeak  the intro
to the ode to joy
an old grey golf sock is
ushered in to sit slouched
on the top of the washer/dryer.
he observes the following proceedings.

now to business

the agenda for the day

1. groove and the toe socks
table their report on the
systematic eradication of toejam.

2.the tradditionalists continue
the open discussion on,
wool versus synthetic,
for winterwear.

3.we have a vote scheduled
on the referedum matter:
do we allow sandals and thongs
guest status in this drawer.

4.the metaphysicists update
us on the age old conundrum;
"where do the odd socks go?"
at present they are devling
into the posibilities of
superposition of states,
as presented by
the schrodinger's cat theory.

5. the analytical group are meanwhile, surveying the remaining
evenless socks;
to obtain data on the pairless state of being

6. and finally, we welcome a deposition from the natralists;
with regard to use of bamboo
and hemp to allow for the wicking
of footwater, for a longer lasting
freshness of the base arch construction.

please feel free to attend one or
more of these discussions, contributions and /or questions
will be taken after the presentations.

i am also asked to inform you, that
the metatarsals group has a table of goods for sale, at the leftside of the wash basket.
items include:
new elastics and darning equipment.
books on special this meet are;
the ever popular
"how not to become a sock puppet"
and the tragic
"my life as a duster"
then there is the new offering of
"sox and jox:
the art of underwear
diplomacy."
and one last item of note:
a reminder that membership fees,
(of one clean toe clipping) are due
before next months gathering
go now,
enjoy the gathering.

and may the foot be with you

summer of sweating, again
on felted couch from curb
side. no longer living from,
but now found (seen in)
comfort and time to brake.
running is stature set, now
for-to no longer from-to.
reticence in lingering good-
ness of lustless vessel. lust-
ful psyche. lustful soul, and
all know that exists of the
brain. epicenter, and natal
first-formed. far from first
sitting in some whispering
abyss. in absence of a whole-
some feeling, in preparation
of returning unity thru dis-
tanced words. questioning,
ever questioning the thoughts
wayfaring through the soul
in vehemence. teachers with
a breath never in speech, but
ages' ink pressed in repetition,
trouncing some threshold.
breaking imagined barriers, and
Harry Morgan's creator might
scoff at this ink of lacking age.

do you remember when we use to play the nights away and find comfort in each others arms—now it's just a cold and desolate day with the sun set in my eyes and rays in my blood stream; and when i'm alone, i can still feel your eyes set on destruction as they stare me down into a little war path of lusted rage. it was you that held me when sweat matted my skin in drops of rain, when blood coated my lips in passionate ***; it was you that varnished my skin into the glass tiles when i rocked back and forth in the middle of my bath tub waiting for the ground to descend into nothingness.

and now it's you, that disbands my brain like an array of dying stars in the sky we once painted together with our trembling hands and bloodshot eyes. and now, it's me; it's me that stands in the middle of the street with blurry cars running by like angry lions in heat, fighting for the heat of the moment because they're too ******* stupid to eat their way through the decayed animals that are too far gone into the wilderness of disaster—and with their bones like melted clay in their stomachs, i stand in the middle of a highway with my hands thrown aside like a cape of darkness.

was it that your were too tired of spending contagious sad nights with me that you had to pack your stuff in a tiny suitcase that could barely fit the words I’m sorry into the brackets of their shoulders. maybe it was the way i scratched your back during steamy tales in between the sheets that scared away the words i love you from your mouth—or the way i had to pick up the pieces of the faulty mirror for you to even utter my name from your rocky eyes. i think it was the stitches in my marred bones that threw you off guard; they were too weak to carry your ego on felted silks because while you thought art was an object of disguise. i thought it was an object demanding to be felt through brittle streaks of dull colors.

it was when you shouted at my writings for feeling too much when i whispered that my words were messages in disguise because our feelings were too much to handle—and that’s when you broke the handle to the cracked, wooden door that held more blood than the inside of our hollow scar tissue. it was then when i realized that—

my fingers hurt from unbuttoning your skin, unzipping your veins into two split pieces of heated metal that slice my wrists open with uncertainty. it was the lines that the scars created that dismembered my wrists from my hands and clawed the nails off with broken bites of disintegrated love into my knuckles—when the cemented wall hit my fist with action-packed wrath of fervent wisps of outpoured whiskey into your mouth, into my breath, into your eyes, and into my clenching veins is when i knew the nights we spent were only tales of childish foreplay—heavy innuendos of vapid, misused paint on cracked paintbrushes and oil-based pens.

i’m tired too. i’m tired of my bleeding fingers used to scatter your drops of paint onto the pallet of my skin while i had to sew the seams of my veins into a cross so maybe I could find a way to God while my God was too busy fondling the idea of pain into my eyes. i’m tired of my oil-based pen handling my hand with sacred demons barking at the nails stuck in my brain while my brain fights for some sort of unasked forgiveness that i didn’t know i needed.

it was then that i realized that the milky ways in your troubled soul carried out the stars in my name—that’s what sold me the first night we met—only, i wish we hadn’t met.

Worry taxing vindication
Deep lines score a harried brow,
Hooded eyes reveal the torment
Green of bile consuming now.

Years compile the load endureth
Weighted soul with quilted guilt,
Bowed is back and shoulder bendeth
Round and bound imbued as built.

So laboured by the leaden deeds
Weighted by the tomes of greed,
Cloistered with the avarice
Of omnipresent want and need.

Oh to see a mote of sunshine
Beam between the felted cloud,
Oh to feel the right of light
Emerge unhindered from the shroud.

God! To witness ordinary
Moments from this sea of pain…
To capture the exquisite joy
Of freely given mirth again ?


Marshalg
‘Foxglove’, Taranaki
31st December 2012

A small group (or collection, if you wish)
of wanderers and travellers
And people with desires
to see great marvels
Met by accidence,
in a era of confusement
Held together,
by mutual suspicions,
they decided
To leave their abodes.  
So they travelled a long way
Until they were in a place
A very dusty place,
with dry old things
Dry like a last years leaves,
as if there were trees
In a scorching new summer

They decided by mutual acclamation
that they were searching now
A quest had been undertaken
By accidental serendipity
Or so they believed,
among themeselves
To find a way -
To no longer be
in this place of dust
With its winds,
and fierce sands
The kind the stings your eyes,
grits your teeth
sands your clothing
and small possessions
And after a many month of same such
Make's your light heart -
heavy.

But lacking a compass
or even knowledge of one
Or any real idea of how to travel
they moved in circles
for many's the long time
Never really sure they were,
arguing........ always
This is probably what kept them alive,
or at least
That is what many now believe
Their arguing - their fighting
this generates interest,
and interest keeps you alive
But still in spite of all this,
they weren't really
Getting -
Anywhere.................

Once in their travels,
they came upon a walled city
They knocked hard the gates,
made of a redded, felted wood
Soft to the touch,
like a hide of a living creature,
or rough carpet
"What do you want?!"  
"Who are you, state your business please!"
Cried the Gatekeeper to them
As this was his role
in the proceedings, you see;
And he didn't get to do it often
Very few people came
through the wastes,
unless.......Compelled -
by one reason or another
So he was overdramatizing (a little),
But we can forgive him,
his job was
quite boring,
after all.

Help us! They cried
We want to leave
this dusty dry place
Full of bleached sheep bones,
black stones
And red rocks;
with that dust,
The dust that stings our eyes
grits our teeth
sands our clothing
and small possessions
And after a many month
of wandering
And wondering
It has made our once -
light hearts
heavy
with opression
For now we cannot
perform our tasks
This place is too harsh for us,
We are only poeple,
and wanderers, after all

"Ah, I see!", the gatekeeper declaimed
A little over dramatically (yet again)
"So you are lost then,
my wanderers?"  
No!  Said several of the more......
outspoken wanderers.
There are always
a few outsoken people
in any group,
(Unless it's a group for shy people,
Of course).
"We, know precisely
where we are, -
We are in the dusty waste
at your gates!
We just don't want to be here!,
we want to be inside!"

At that, the Gatekeeper
opened the door
Slowly and surely
but with many creaks and groans
And inside, inside.....well -
There was a dusty city,
But just like outside
With unkempt streets
filled with goats, dogs, people
Unruly Children,
playing with dried out wood dolls
Angry woman -
murmuring to each other
And irritated men -
watching the angry women
"Come in if you wish" he said.
For we were all as you are now
Once....................................

To be continued.

Scarlet symphony of rough elements,
celestial concubine of the good omen
slowly sipped though by a vogue fate.
Roots of legendary sources
are plunged into the rusty soil
and perched on waves
of frequencies in meditation.
Clouds of gold foil are felted
in lacquered curls by the wind,
admiring the highest appearance
of the innermost and pure awareness.

scarf hysteria friday,
thirteenth, even the spectators
joined in. unpacking the delivery.

polyester kept quiet with electrical
revery, silk excited us in with gentility.

it was the deepset , pleated, spotty,
adjective filled woollen slightly
felted, even reversable at such
a reasonable price, that sent us
over the edge. all was lost after that.

there are two ll s in woollen.

sbm.

I am Heavy-lidded tonight,
Heavy-lidded
and inscrutable in my childhood.

My childhood that was spent hysterical in airing cupboards,
Where I wept unashamedly to the fixed God
And the stained glass, rose-hewn Angels of churches
That reeked of oak and holy water.
Where I sat in the trees, high on life and vanila-blue ice cream
And with knees skinned by the ****** pathways of woods
Or the safe gravels of playgrounds.

Where sunbursted mangoes dripped with musky-sanded chlorine
And the sun-hot metal gates clanged shut in the holiday winds.
Where rocks were thrown by fated children
And paper-cheap candy wrappers filled up plastic trash cans.
Where strange, money-minded housewives gaggled and giggled
With their ******-white teeth
And reflected my mother' s bipolar poverty
In the lenses of their plastic sunglasses.
Where my self-hemmed summer dresses were stained
With green and brown and red finger paint
As the days outside grew warmer
And the inside self grew older,
Colder.

Where I was punished for expression of the self
And confined to the sanatorium
Or the offices of Moloch's servants
On a sun-stippled day in May
Where my scrap-bruised hands
Were bandaged by the words of the Real World
And threatenings of expulsion.
Where I hid behind felted display boards
On a landing somewhere near Neverland,
And lay and listened to the friend-fuelled ramblings of lost boys
Who sat and smoked in dormitories
And hallucinated Peter Pan.
Where I wrote self-indulgent fuckery in toilets
And drew crude artistries on mirrors with lipstick
And contemplated
Amo
Amas
Amat
As I sat and stared at my own disassociated hands.

Where paper aeroplanes flew and were thrown
By hungover kids in threadbare jumpers
With chewed cuffs and prefect badges,
Where holy Evian was poured over my head
After a long last day under a white marquee,
Where I disassembled pencil sharpeners with iron-smelling razor blades
and violated erasers at an exam hall desk in a stormy June.

Where I contemplated death;
Sang hymns in the darkness of my bedroom,
Took a blade to my flesh
Like the soulless piece of meat
That I believed myself to be.
Where I fell in love;
Hurt myself
More than anyone else ever did.
Where I read,
Where I wrote tear stained elegies
To my idols under the earth
And prayed that I
Would last
Just one more day.

They never should have let me out of the box,
these harnesses are coddled in rust and will never do,
I nearly have an arm free now.
Tis the bloodlust,
the ever recurring,
I cauterize so sickly raptured and recoiled,
vile animal reveling beneath fang and flesh.
Tis the beast wrought beneath this parchment bearing,
what is left of mortal means
as the morals feast upon the limbs and lungs of one another.
Ever screaming,
my memories wrench and tear,
torn in ribbons splayed from lung to tissue.
My demon slaughters the remnants packed and hid way
in corner and shadow,
ideals and sockets of life scratch and rip
across the flesh of the air as their lungs flood so violently,
doused in creamy blood liquid.
I die so sullenly,
so intrepidly,
dripped in god’s sunlight beams,
bathed in crackling spine and broken butterfly wings.
I writhe not in brain fractured grenade shrapnel,
not felted amongst iron clad bomb shards,
I lie so serenely,
stomach basking in sun beam,
I bite and suckle upon such succulent fruits of flesh,
human meat and such soft hips of lustful imps,
so untouched and littered in my most precise of bite marks.
I stake claim to the everest of fiendish hues,
chains so kin to my sins,
mind so ravaged in demonish,
all thought is mother to acts so sickly in hellish cravings,
I seek no retribution for ideals so crimped and carved through my bones.
All is relative to one’s fiendish benevolences.
I take care to ratify my most ancient of antiquities,
the very blood line that so racks this mortal sense of the human reality.
This evil is ever bearing and eternal lasting,
nor it’s will softened.
Shackles crease and crinkle
so fondly with every sickly furnished breath.

I want to say:
good morning
in words newly-minted
bright, sharp-edged
with shadows, alight
this June morning.

At my desk
I sit before a still-life
of small things
treasured, some made
by your quiet hands,
others evidence
of our journeying:
precious times of  
smiles and gestures,
delicate long exchanges,
photographs of course.
And in the foreground:
a trio of felted vessels
lined with thread,
my daughter’s tile
of blackbirds on a bough,
and this book in miniature,
rich in marks made
by the tides’ turnings.

summer in kansas is like being underwater,
humid and oppressive as our state’s current legislature.
our skin would get stuck together, when we pulled apart
it was like we were unzipping parts of ourselves.
painful.
there’s a metaphor in there,
somewhere, i swear.

some breakups are like surgery; removing a part of yourself,
coming out of the operating room and still leaving things on the table.

we spent a lot of time stuck together
then being pried apart by the air conditioner, among other things.
you make me feel like i have too many nerve endings
and not enough skin.
i think it must be a ******* talent to make someone feel like
too much and not enough at the same time.
we spent a lot of time driving with the windows down,
music filtering out of them
like we wanted people to know what we had stuck in our heads.  
you groan when i turn on 95.7 and whatever top 40 tune
dubbed the “song of the summer” comes on.
see, i kind of hate people who hate pop music
because honestly get the **** over yourself
and admit that taylor swift songs are catchy already
but i still like you.

so the speakers are blasting “fix you” by coldplay
and i’m wondering why songs that are written about things
i’ve never really experienced
are always the ones that make me cry.
my mom always says that i am the most empathetic person that she knows.
it always just makes me feel ashamed of all the times
i have felted shuttered,
judgmental and close-minded.

i am usually glad that people don’t know me like i know myself,
i’m afraid you wouldn’t like the inside of my head;
it’s not like i always do.
sometimes when i’m sad and my head feels foggy
and i want to unzip my veins
or something else ugly and over-romanticized like that,
i think that universe is trying to reject me
like a bad ***** transplant
like i was something never meant to be here in the first place
and it’s trying to right itself,
find equilibrium.
i know it’s not true but i still think it sometimes.

i think i love myself too much or not enough.
i am not good at equilibrium.

when you said, “i think i love you,” i thought you were joking.
i don’t know if that says more about me or you.

i’ve always been afraid
there is something terrible and fragile and hopeful
about young love that i will never get to know.

love is probably at least 70% proximity and i’m okay with that.
so you're kind of like my spleen,
i could survive without you
but it be pretty ****** to have you torn from of my ribcage.
because love is not completing a set,
it’s just finding something you really ******* wanna hold onto.

sometimes when you’re a poet you tend to idealize love into stanzas
instead of realizing that love is not poetry --
poetry makes too much sense.
love is a long-*** novel that you get bored of sometimes.
love sneaks up on you, it grows inside taking root like… honeysuckle.
an invasive species.

and honeysuckle are no roses, they’re prickly in a whole different way.
just the same,
nobody tells you that love can often be so ugly.
but a lot of kids still pick handfuls of weeds,
dandelions and clovers and grass stains,
and present them to their mothers
with a fistful of pride.

maybe love is not a victory march.
maybe love is just… the drive home.

Do you see the sun now
My dearest joy.
gazing at those chinese eyes
mysterious as if never told.

Pure love you offered
is silenced by this vague situation,
yet honest as the birds,
flying towards undying affection.

Kindness flowing like river,
pours into your pure heart,
words as keen and hand picked
gentle from the start.

Beauty as everyone sees,
untouched but educated.
I hope the best of things
kindness returns uncompensated.

As you believe in me
Now our ways could be parted.
but your memories will always remain
your values that is heart felted.

there he was
head hanging low
on a totem pole
for all to see
supposedly
their crucification, self imposed
like a bull seeing red
and feeling melancholy
he walked out of the casino
pockets empty, again
and just fresh off the farm
he now wished he stayed home
milking cows
collecting eggs
saving his money
instead of losing his scalp
to the Indians
he looked passed the exit
a door he walked into a few hours ago
with wide open trappings
where the glitz. glamor and neon
caught his eye and addiction
literally
the cling, the clang
the sound of music
Julie Andrew's voice coming to life
reach for the sky, reach for the sky
whirling around in his head
... a cut of cloth
who knows
maybe it was his grandmother's roots
grandma are you watching
yes grandson, I'm crying and praying ...
he looked over at the green mountains
the lost forests of patrons
the felted tables, banks of chips
fjords of  waitresses serving drinks
majestic, scenic and serene
and for a moment
he wished to be a boat in Norway
instead
instead
like always
he took to a splash in the abyss
******* and sadism  
his lost fork in the road
and like a billy goat
teetering on the edge
echo's  from the valleys below
don't do it , don't do it, don't do it
he peeled off all his Benjamin's
and credit
to the depts of the dungeon
beaten and wounded
where if only the next time
he rewinds his entrance
and finds his bouency and oars

Logan Robertson

5/07/2019

Only time I feel sane is when I bath.
When I cleanse my body of the sins I committed.
When my heavy weight of problems feel like a feather..
But this bath was different.
This bath was the ultimate two way street
Where I had to choose where to turn
This bath is where my doubts overpowered my way of thinking..
My lust for contact with a boy felted overpowering...  
This bath I took made me realize that I'm not okay...
This bath I took was the bath we're I laid my sins on the water just to go out and perform new sins that I was aware of...  
Where I knew I should have not done such yet I continue to go...
This bath was a traumatic bath because I knew I was going to be used and felt crap afterwards
But I still went for it..
This bath was the bath I knew I'd come back home regretting it and wished that never happened
This bath...  Just knew that I wouldn't listen

Wrapped around the room is felted flowers that turn to white stars.
When the sun is in hiding, little mushrooms bring light.
It smells of fake flowers and another mother.
A small broom for a small room.
I'm sorry I missed you.
I was spending.
Sobbing softly into my high collared coat.
Watching the body
In its stillness.

the old pine table,
was scrubbed daily
with a mixture of bleach and salt,
and then sluiced
with clean ice cold well water.
it had a felted softness to it,
a wonderful tactile memory
i am still unable to explain.

sat out upon the balcony,
overlooking the beaches
and whale island.
caught both the days sun
and a short substantial breeze.

it was an oval behemoth of a thing, would easily sit twelve adults,
at a christmas feast.
but now just one or two,
excepting when we arrived,
on vacation, then a half dozen neat.

and on most mornings,
big broadsheet papers.
spread out, anchored down,
by oranges and bannanas,
sea shells and driftwood,
teapots and coffee cups,
whatever was to hand,
scattered haphazardly about.
the rule was if you took a bit of fruit, or whatever,
you had to supply a new anchor.
so as the morning wore on,
fruit became books and toy trucks, teddy bears and cricket *****.
all presided over by granda,
as he worked his way
around the news,
spread before him,
like the hands of a clock.
changing seats, irregularly,
with a sigh and a plop.
muttering to himself,
or calling out to gran,
news of suggested import,
or the "specials"of the day.

that old pine table held,
the world spread out,
for intelligent disection.

i still can feel, it's surface,
like rolling, polished pearls.



.....no still not explaining it,
at all well.

A lost soul I will be,
wondering where to go.
Till I find my luck.
Felted the love around me.
The good vibes surrounding me
and I now it was something from heaven
that give me the strenght, the strongness,
that I need in my life.
I'm grateful and humble for it.
Because it will give me what I needed
to survive.

I remember the day we first met. In the doorway of that tiny boutique with the leadlight windows on the corner of Main and Wharf. You looked expensive, all laced-up leather and felted wool, commando meets catwalk. Your friend was in stitches about something, and it was when you turned to her and stuck out your pretty tongue - then, right then - that was the moment that I decided you were going to be mine.

I put aside my embarrassment and guilt. I ignored the whisperings of my empty wallet, and the thought of what my flatties would say in the morning. I picked you both up and took you home. Two for the price of one.

Ten years later, both of you are still around. Not quite as streamlined and sassy as you used to be. Your souls - my bad - soles are in need of repair, your white stitching has blackened, and your brass eyelets are looking a little worse for wear. But we’ve walked miles haven’t we? You, me, and your mirror image - BFFF - Best Feet Forward Forever.

i know a man who steals.
slowly slipping treasures
into those darkened pockets
of a trenchcoat with no soul.  
tumbling down deeper,
further into an endless abyss
so that if i ever may find him
and reach into those pockets
my fingers will reach out
and merely graze the felted sides
and the emptiness below.
he will flash a crooked smile
with eyes full of mischief
and simply laugh at my endeavor,
"girl, those arms of yours
will never grow again
never be able to grasp
all that you seek."
and as tricky as he may be
he will fail to see the strength
that hides in this heart of mine.
a spirit that tears the stitching
of a conniving crook's pocket
from his very own coat.
everything of mine once stolen
-- my happiness
-- my imagination
-- my willpower
will soon be returned
as it was many years before.
the man's name was age.

When you see, seer
The perfection in it all, bang
You’ve lost a point of view
Then are you utterly alone
Like the clown
All around the three ring
Circus-goers
Laugh at the absurd thing
Never suspecting how utterly profound.
Is the life of a clown.

How many bangs have birthed you then
Imprisoned primordial bangs
Bursting the unsuspecting cosmos
What a long childhood you’ve had,
While god watched
From his bang, bang launch pad
Millions of light years went by
Bang, bang
Billions of light tears he cried
Eventually, bang you appear
After
A lustful specialty bang  
Sped spermful and hopeful
To an ultimate conclusion
Destinies union.
You then,
Orchestrating bang-bang moments of between
Beautiful verdant in bloom bangs
Hang from your spring and summer tree
Of your budding truth
Of your hopeful youth
Time capsuled shutter flutter
Contemplative baby bangs soothing
The Epiphanius bang of instant recognition
Bangs so soft
They're hardly bangs at all
Being more like a soft bubble bursting
A quiescent sound
Infinite in its stillness.
Nothing to forgiveness

Then came
The bangs of the winter of your discontent
Explosive in its silent rage
Shattering the iron of its irony
The rage in its engage
The fury in its fleeing
Blind-sighted by seeing
Justified in its sage rage

Follow the bang gang
Puerile and untouched
In its rarest invisible form
Placated and felted
Velvet experiencer
Must touch.
Must taste
Must be seen
Must be to be to be.

Without the sacrificial lamb
You stand
Alone
Neither prey nor predator
Merely a spectator
To a dictator.
You’ve known all along

And frown at the clown
That was only trying to make you laugh.

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I wanted to be a sunflower
Writing to you.

Dear you,

I felt that our connection bloomed in the most random of winters

I was the sunflower who responded to your sunlight's kisses.
I remember I tried to instruct my stalky body to not forget the Feeling of you that pressed on to me that night.
It felted like sensations of signals that it was the season of spring.

I had forgotten the feeling  of being a shy lonely dormant seedling.

You've stimulated every cell in my body to mustard a seed of courage in the pit of my stomach,
To root myself down with the audacity to germinate myself out of My cocooned lifestyle in the hecticness of Christmas time.
All I want is to be enveloped in your halo of warmth.
To feel you infinity,
To be touched in forever and
Dipped in a painting to be just left right next to you
My starry night.

I wish I hadn't had it.
But I held it
It was magic.

I have and held magic
And now I hate,
and hate myself.

Felted in my own fabric
Of moldy fuzz and filth

Is a tapestry of life so tragic
built on edges of forged hilts.

This is for those that felted rejected, for those who Long...
For Love, even a simple Friendship to feel needed to feel wanted..
This is for those that hurt, that pain never go away but stays.
This is for those that are lost without a paddle to row back with.
This is for the trouble that feels that they are better off dead.
This is for those whom does not have a voice to plead their cause.
This is for all of them whom needs an Savior, even if they do not know.
For there is only one that can rescue you, that can save you from yourself.
For he wants to put Life back into you, he wants to save you indeed.