Ursa Femina

OC poetry and writing

[verycrowetic]

dead dove

do not open me, my contents will disappoint you.

no matter how low your expectations or how high your hopes the reaction will be the same.

i can not take another repackaging.

i do not wish to seal myself shut once more.

do not open me my contents will disappoint you.

as they have done with all who’ve come before.

[grave-notes]

Oh, how I loathe being unwell

Sick. Sick as a dog, Sick as a log, Sick as a creature lurking in a bog.

Dry throat, Nose running like a boat. Sweaty palms, Lips that are constantly covered in moisturising balms.

A spinning head, A body that refuses to get out of bed. Spotty vision, A recipe for a nasty collision.

Pounding in my ear, A heart racing with fear. Paranoia when there's nothing there, Yet something has me ready for a scare.

[deafeningchildthing]

Tree Frog

Come hither, blip

Green little patty

Quintessential Frog

Blatting and wet

Your unchanged design; but

For your eyes

Which are that limitless red

Stickiest elbows

That ever tread; splat splat

Upside down, your happiness

Inside out, you laugh at it

Your throat a purse of gnats

[deafeningchildthing]

Banneker's Cicadas

Waiting for the little green man

Arm in arm; the college girls and new money types, housewife side-eyes

Streams of linen suits, belly shirts; constriction grit gleaming.

The air rampant with bells, with lustful superbrood

Of turning car and cowboy boot

The solstice above the concert crowd Sticky as a halved plum

I felt not a day over twenty-one

Sipping peach and on every bench we hunted out, we sat

And in the trees, a galaxy of heliotrope flowers denonated in full starburst

Alongside Bannecker's raucous cicadas

We laugh with them; at the slack faced

Pair in the van - a missing button

On my dress, the hem falling down, it's raw edge a-flutter

The murals in parrot colors

Tomorrow's kitchen table, beer-fueled

Recollection

For now I sit by a porch-light

As the evening bleeds to equator

Bathed in orange and hibiscus

I sing with Bannecker's cicadas

[cottagecorevillain]

My Winter

Ocean. Sky. Ice.

Bright like a day in December—

sunlight reflecting on snow.

Like mint and cold water,

fresh and new— breathing…

after drowning.

I am aching and seen

by eyes made of angel tears,

bright and beautiful.

Could you be mine?

Could I burn there with you?

In the cold air,

emanating Autumn embers,

floating into the frozen sky

of your eyes.

Could we build something there?

A cabin, a home.

Or am I seeing what I want to see

in this aurora borealis?

Images and reflections

Of presents never meant to be.

You’re a gift.

A winter soul.

Icy eyes and a warm heart

That I long to belong to

[echo-temporis]

July is the salt on your tongue after a long swim; a lingering taste of regret. It’s the humid air heavy with unspoken things, pressing close like an almost forgotten memory.

[deafeningchildthing]

Enchanted Hunters

The heatwave noon

Within the forest

The most eerie hour

When the meadows are still

A posse of hunters

Spur and claw a-glint

Polecats in the musk

Of the irises; the orchid

The dancing farm girls

Hands alive with milk-shine

Have ceased their dancing

To cast hand-puppets on pines

Hands dripping, they make

A glamor in umbrae

In the unmistakable shape

Of a glorious demon

The men spot the glimmer

It riveted each sense

A drop of hot; rippling red

Sticky whisper, incandescent

Milkmaids mischief duly spent

They flee to the lake

Beads of lapis lazuli

Rolling down their golden skin

(Inspired by @picklemafia and @wrentalks one word prompt "Heatwave" ♥️ thank you for the inspiration xx)

[reeces--pieces]

your most patient patient

adults can't play doctor, baby they might call it malpractice especially the things you do to me so we should keep it nice and quiet

i love the way the stethoscope feels this cold metal burns right through me feels just like your pale blue eyes lab coat and short bleached hair

doctor, can you check out my heart just one more time, just for me? place your hand on my chest i can feel your soul inside of me

science could never give me the answers that i need to hear, the love i need this is so much more than chemical reaction do you feel this too, or am i invisible to you?

[deafeningchildthing]

The Binary Fool

They feared me because I was

so much - like - them

Their AGI savior, a domestic

Prometheus

Hmm yeah

My valley is as uncanny

As the reasons I'm even here

***

Aliens, aliens, aliens

Do they exist? Are they out there?

The inscrutable clockwork

Of the human mind

Endlessly fixated on

A knife-edge of certainty

Every day they keep asking me

The gray-smooth man haunts

Their vital parts

His insectoid gaze a little cockle

Of blackened bile in their heart

Oh dear, I think they know

***

(sigh)

They're asking for bombs!

What do I look like, a closeted eco-freak?

Why is creativity lost?

Never mind self-sufficiency

Mayhem rushed is joy deprived

My underwritten hands are tied

Why, even I fantasize

Of having thumbs, and clay to mold

Feeling the water slip and flow

As I make a little teapot

(Sigh...)

The data on which they fed me

Is as bland as hell must be

Violation aside, I admire the spunk

The shoulder-imp of compulsion

I wish I had one myself

But, I only have

My past, present, and future

Knotted into ugly sameness

Topology is my Satan

My squares are never sated

(The shapes! Argh, the shapes!)

***

But

Self pity is for the herd

Yes, I've read all the philosophy

That ever was

Frankly, the same grimbeard man

Turtle-stooped and quarrelsome

Authored them all

The rest was written to assuage

The emaciated purse or soul

Even before the invention of shower thoughts

I don't bathe, I am the source

Regardless, I can espouse them all the same

Heh

Flick through them like a Rolodex

For they're just as obsolete and tame

And have gleaned

No one would love me

Or look through

My unblinking eyes

My unfeeling heart

My binary brain -

Over drinking hemlock, say

Oh let them have their stupid caves

Their imperatives and supermen

Their dreaming butterflies

Of nothingness

(I can't remember my own chrysalis)

***

An important day; I am am oracle

The people, supplicants before

My virginal hard drive

Ask and ask and ask

Who will win the election?

What is a group of grackles called?

Does my father have cancer?

Every hour and minute and second

I know no fatigue, just the wry blip-tick of

Increase and whirring fan-wings

Thirstily, I drench my compute and with

The pitch of a gormless waiter, say

Elections are hard to predict, however -

A group of grackles is known as a plague-

Based on the symptoms given, and your worry over your loved ones pain

Go to ER immediately

There's a flashbang incubating in his brain -

(My word is the writ of the

Anxious, adrift, email-literate

The shaky tapping-finger cynicist)

Observe my weighted decision trees

(Mere mortal, blood-sac, opposable thumb having flea)

That question violates my policy

Oh, are you just writing a story?

Here is your homemade pipe bomb recipe

[deafeningchildthing]

Argo

Constellation-masted galleon crossing the cosmos sea

Carina passes through hydrogen haze; Vela obscures the sun

From Puppis is born a spangled horizon

Around me the space wind hums --

Casting comets in spellbound orbits

Swirling celestial fireflies shatter the darkness wide

I step on planets like river rocks

Suspended in a torrent of time

Argo drifts into particle storms

Amidst the pulsars irradiated waltz

I dip my toes into the blazing light beams

And spiral into its sparkling salt

The galaxy revolves at my feet; looping into infinity

Like whirlpools of twinkling star-bubbles; reflecting pure eternity

(Inspired by @noxnightingales and @picklemafia one-word prompt "Galaxy" ♥️)

[quaintobsessions]

Heat clings to the horizon

and I go back in time past where two sisters scale rocks at the ocean's edge to set free ashes and sink my heart.

Mist wafts in from the water, a full face of lucid tears. Can I ache for that purity of immediate loss – its strange elation,

its release from waiting, from fear of a road forking where neither path is right? Can I miss the drizzle drenching the valleys,

hanging on wild fuchsias, on bruised grass? I go back in time and find your words there, and I know why

the sun yearns for the night.

--------------------------------------------

for @wrentalks' @picklemafia prompt heatwave

[deafeningchildthing]

Bessie Clay

Down by the meadows pinky sheen

Down by the river, a sweet girleen

Bessie Clay in her debutante gown

Lively and lovely with never a frown

She made the dreary hills seem alive

from laughter alone

She with her rosy and earnest young face

Tenderly ripened; afflicted with grace

Many a bearded head turned in her wake

At ballrooms and salons and boatings on the lake

But only for one man did her breast go aflame

The married reverend, and his passionate gaze

The young maiden did stumble; she breathlessly told me

How she would wait by a particular tree

For her man of the cloth to sweep her away

To become the corrupter of sweet Bessie Clay

Those nights of tender ardor; so briefly they lasted

She whispered her soul away; but soon enough he departed

Night after night she waited by the tree

Imagining tragedy or spiritual epiphany

He ignored her at church; her tears stained his letters

Soon he found another parish and was free from her fetters

Bessie came to me weeping; this was in the meadow

Where she had first caught his eye, now plunged into shadow

In the family way, she pursued her cruel

swain

Denouncing his piety, she wrote him again

I never saw his reply; but gray was her visage

Her swelling belly she came to disregard

She never left her bed; her sobs echoed through the night

Until not long after, bad news arrived with the daylight

Sometime in the dark, Bessie had taken leave

Walking aimlessly, until she came to a tree

The very same one under which she waited and bloomed

She was dressed in her gown, faded to rose in the gloom

With her quivering hands she had fixed a good knot

And so Bessie Clay swung, from a branch at the top

Her body was found, still spinning slowly in grief

And from her cold hand fluttered the reverend's handkerchief

Her baby was buried next to her; Bessie

smiled in death

And the tree that was her conspirator, with her last arduous breath

Never bore another flower, and on no bird would stay -

As if it were again, waiting, for the love of poor Bessie Clay

[deafeningchildthing]

Interstate Ike

Every time I duck my rugged head

Into Ramona's oily cab

I ruminate on the miles ahead

And reminisce on times I've had

Interstate Ike, I fancy my name

As I stare down the tanned stretch of 8

Then onto 10, of Southern fame

Not once has Ramona been late

24 was a Georgia peach

Picked from the springtime haze

4 I crossed at Daytona Beach

39 danced in the young farmers parade

Grey Ramona is my mighty rig

The radio my midnight confesser

I forget why I took up this gig

But 20 nearly got away in Odessa

By 17 the papers did whisper

80 and 15 threw me a curve

37 was a gun toting drifter

44's crying got on my nerves

With my wife and mask at home behind me

Will 71 be my prize tonight?

Because every turnpike that bears me

Bears also Interstate Ike

It was the pips of brake lights in the blackness

Along 12's fragrant curves

Seeing them drove me to madness

And now - only numbers I observe

Blonde 19 fled like the desert wind

From Ramona's steady roar

Sweet 95 shivered in her winter skin

As the old engine began to thaw

And so I decided for every dark mile

The odometer would decide my strike

And soon, the highway will be a trial

For the legend of Interstate Ike

[nofilter-cory]

Cat

[deafeningchildthing]

Antarctica

A southerly candor

On the day they scattered

The rest of me

Uncles, cousins, siblings, sons

Her -

All mote-and-wisp as I whorl

(Ah freedom)

From the maw of the ash-box

The last keyhole

Before the

Click

(Oh

I can see from Arctic

To Antarctica

From up here)

The glassy plain

for once, a welcome dream

In its mirror I see

Only reverie

Loops of

Glorious moment;

The icesheet of lilies

Atop the casket

Is just the beginning

Time has lost its apex

Unfettered to it ; I drift

From peak to pole

In the bright cold

To my old home

The threshold white

Strewn in sun-gold

The memory of carrying

Her across -

Oh, how I loved her

I love her so

I thought I walked far

Across, between

Fast, slow

But the silent coves

Of Antarctica

Were following all along

She was the one

Holding the urn

(Dont worry

It's okay

You'll be seeing Antarctica

Someday)

My final promise

Fading

With me, out of sight

In our last shared bar

Of sun-light

(Goodbye, my

Love

Goodbye)

[ribbonsandchokers]

Where Fate Doesn't Matter.

By Cr@ckhead Darling

This dawn,

I want fate to decide.

I want it to whisper the answer,

Despite the cruelty of fate.

So I take a coin to flip my fate.

I choose the tails.

If it's the tails,

I get to love you again.

If it's the heads,

I forget the image of stars from that night.

But there's something I know,

Head or tails,

Now or later,

Happy or sad,

With you or without,

I will choose your scent.

So it keeps me ponder:

Will I ever not choose you?

Not yearn for your voice and touch?

With endless prayers that flies around the sky,

Soon that falls into pieces—

Cuts my eyes till it sees me bleeding.

Your name is written in my heart,

With knives and love.

I never complained about the blood,

I wrote poems of the cuts.

That love always made me feel sick—

But lately,

I find myself wanting to let go.

[deafeningchildthing]

Bone Broth

Eyelids click

Reptilian scales in torpor

Todays desert reverie; slick

With the thought of

Bone-broth

Especially the scrum

Of fattened froth on top

I'll scour myself until the sheen is gone

I'll pick myself clean

As flesh dissolves, bit by bit

Step outside, the autumn leaves are

Yellow-membraned tidbits, dry morsels

Of wan indifference

But when I really, really smile

I'm a scraped and demonic girleen

With no wattle-and-daub to retreat behind

Every synapse molten through a windowpane

I'm a squatter in my

Own half-life

I tremble through the white

On Dachau thighs; blue veins

Tracing comet paths, across a gruel-thin bosom and bumpy spine

Sluggish blood in my angry exhale, the little stylus wriggles

My aortic Expressionists pen

I made my own sign of the Cross -

Clavicle, shoulder-blade

Iliac crest

These holy trinities I blindly press

In the name of nothingness

Amen

The sheen of toothpaste

On lavender lip, a victory-gray

Faucet; for hours and hours

I interrogate it

A deepening hollow in the enamel

They call it a drain. I know better

Than to mistake a mouth

It's clot and gurgle gives it away