strangers

[alwaysstrangers]

angels live the lives of the damned

cursed with the grief of immortality

infinite loneliness in a crowded universe

where has the shade of the moon gone?

is it so colonised

so overgrown with the mould of human life that angels can’t rest on the dark side of the moon?

[alwaysstrangers]

[alwaysstrangers]

Continuation of “Voice” by Margaret Atwood

I’ll let it soak up all the attention but shield it from the sunlight of truth, this unhealthy, one-sided symbiosis choking me. My voice is drowning me, but still drowning with me, camera flashes illuminating the suffocating dark as I try to pry myself away from this invisible curse but my hands grasp through nothing. Thin air which does nothing to separate myself from my voice, myself from myself. Withered roses surround us like flowers threaded through intwined hands in a coffin, because death will never do us part.

[ohevoyev]

drove through three states today and saw all the fields of winter wheat sitting like shards of amber resin in the snow. also saw mennonites in the starbucks drive thru.. but that’s a different story

[wallflowers-scribble]

Grief, did i grow up with you or did you grow in me?

- R

[ohevoyev]

the messenger: the story of joan of arc (1999) / anne llewellyn barstow, ‘joan of arc and female mysticism’ / saint joan, george bernard shaw / the passion of joan of arc (1928) / anne sexton, consorting with angels / angela barrett, joan of arc, (1998) / excerpt from the trial of joan of arc / saint joan (2018 production), starring condola rashad

[alwaysstrangers]

asphodel meadows

a section of the ancient Greek underworld where ordinary souls are sent to live after death

[alwaysstrangers]

abandoned room in the city - 2021

[alwaysstrangers]

“that the powerful play goes on and you contribute a verse. what will your verse be?”

- mr keating, dead poets society

something about this line is so so beautiful. it’s romanticising life like it’s one big piece of theatre; beautiful but never truly real. that we’re all actors living the lives that other want us to, but life doesn’t care. it moves on without you, constantly leaving you in the dust and when it finally settles you’re long gone from there. but when he asks them “what will your verse be” the power and the expectation of this statement is so great - like does anyone really know what they’ll end up giving to this play of our lives? how could they, when everyone is too lost in their own thoughts to acknowledge the world around them, let alone what they’ll contribute. but for every line of poetry someone writes, anyone, that moment becomes someone else’s and so on because we’re all living the same human experience but at different times. in the end only the way we react and act define us as who we are. you can argue about personality but in the scale of the massive universe we’re all identical specks of dust lost in space or algae floating in the aquarium of gods or lonely thoughts drifting across the sea of space and we can’t do anything, about it. so how are we meant to answer what our verse will be? we’re not. we’re being told to look at our place in the wider universe, to think past the narcissism of the human race for less than a second; a second that will open your eyes, eyes that didn’t know how to open because of our sheltered place in our universe. we can’t even call it our universe when we’re merely travellers passing through from this life to the next, sometimes existing simply for the purpose of existing. that’s what our contribution is.

[alwaysstrangers]

hanging on the edge of the world

[alwaysstrangers]

“we’re just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl”

- Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd

[alwaysstrangers]

the dry summer days stretched on, blurry grass shifting at the ends of my peripheral vision. the heat was unbearable, every day a humid, sticky fog where flies gossiped and flowers wilted. as the summer went on, I couldn’t tell where one day ended and the next started. skeletal leaves crunched under my feet, the only contrast to the persistent buzz of the summer air. cool shadows were scarcely seen, the rays of sunlight glaring down with cruel summer hate.