Hole in the Hedgerow

I like cats. I'm comfortable enough with my masculinity to admit that. I kiss my cat on his eyes, and I sing to him, and I have a custom shirt with him on it, and a worlds best cat daddy coffee mug. I like dogs too. I like big dogs I can wrestle, the smaller dogs I can run with, and the little dogs I can play with. Sometimes, I think I like animals more than I like humans. I have a love-hate relationship with people. People are infinitely complex, and that scares me. I struggle with eye contact. I think that deep down, beneath it all, we're just skeletons. I'm rational, but I have this habit of clinging to unfavorable odds - sometimes impossible ones, too. But I'm also a realist. That said, I leave a corner of my heart open to the belief that real magic actually exists in this world. My favorite beer is Guinness. My favorite color is orange. My favorite book is Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. My favorite season is autumn. And when it comes to food, I will eat and have eaten just about everything - except broccoli mixed with cheese, it's disgusting. I'm often overcome by the toll of the experience of being human. This is why I write. I write better when I'm depressed. Give me something to contemplate while watching the rain. I'm not an extrovert or an introvert. I don't believe in those kinds of dichotomies when it comes to something as complex as being human. And I don't like being put in a box! And I don't like online quizzes telling me what I'm supposed to be. I'm a tree hugger and nature lover. I like finding little worlds in holes in hedgerows. I appreciate watching sunsets and feeling the dawn. I appreciate the reflection of clouds in puddles. I rescue spiders. I think bees are cute. I recycle.

[holeinthehedgerow]

Welcome travelers. The purposefully lost, the jaded anarchists, and the bloodied knuckled pacifists. Welcome friends, new and old, the usuals, the newcomers, the frequenters, and the casually late.

Welcome to the travelers, the runaways, vagabonds, commuters, and the lost. The strangers, the outsiders, locals, and passerbys.

Welcome to the ones life dealt a bad hand, and with everything they love riding on the table at stake. Who clings to unfavorable odds like a life raft stranded in the ocean, with unwavering, unabating, faithful hope.

Welcome to the ones with calloused palms. With bloody fingertips, and chipped nails, from clawing at the bottom of the barrel.

Welcome the ones running on fumes, sustained by air alone, who keep moving forward, their eyes toward the horizon pointed to the sun, taking one step after another.

We’re going nowhere in a hurry, and we’re seeing all the sights along the way.

To the ones ready to run, with passports in their bed stands. The ones who whisper the mantra “one day” over and over in their sleep.

To the ones with cracked open piggy banks, paying unexpected debts off with their unfulfilled dreams.

Welcome to the ones with whole other worlds in their heads. With un-reflected light in their eyes somehow resonating from nothing but themselves.

To the ones taking deep breaths, and to the ones with exasperating sighs. To the ones gasping for air- their mouth just above water.

Welcome to the ones waiting in the morning at their mailbox for bad news. The unbeaten rolling with the punches.

Welcome to the hurt empathetic ones, who still leave chinks in their armor for others pain to seep in- left saturated by suffering, they stand unquenchable.

Welcome to the movers and the shakers, the still growers, and the painfully static ones watching un-boiling pots.

We’re traveling a long stretch of road between nowhere and nowhere, and we’re stopping at all the tourist traps- going nowhere in no hurry.

Welcome to the penny-pinchers putting money where their mouths are. Giving pennies for their thoughts.

To the ones not born yesterday, and the ones as old as low hills. To the jack of all trades, and the masters of none. To ones with bites worse their barks, to the ones who bit off more than they could chew, to the ones barking up the right trees.

Welcome to the ones already passed and covered in dust, and to those left standing on the curb soaking wet, and those in the fast lane driving through puddles.

Welcome to my little corner of the internet. My hole in the wall. My hole in the hedgerow.

Hole In The Hedgerow

Poetry, Stories, and Other Musings With Spilt Ink

[holeinthehedgerow]

"I recycle."

a german i see

If my trains not early it's late

[holeinthehedgerow]

Art as a kid

My crossed eyes just above paper

Watching the ink bleed into the white

So amused I was by paper and ink

Not by the surface

But into it, as it soaked up blue and red

And all I cared for was the spread

Of colour

From white to red

Of the way the ink bled

Then one day

My eyes from further away

And my view became shallow

On and not in the paper

Questioning the worthiness of the ink

At its merits and its depth as it spread

Worrying about the end where the lines were going

Not present with the ink as it bled

I wish I could be present again

A kid who forgets there's time

Who scribbles

With eyes not on but in the paper

[holeinthehedgerow]

I want to sit on a park bench with you

Watch the birds and people watch

Make up stories

Where they're coming from and going to

Take turns first me and then you

And in the morning remind me to wear sunscreen and a jacket

Fix my coller

Brush the dust off my shoulders as I leave

Want me at my best and love me at my worst

And in the evening notice my little scrapes and bruises

As you trace my outlines with your finger tips

Find my scars and make up stories about where they came from

Then make believe where were going and make me believe it's true

One day I want to sit on a park bench with you

[holeinthehedgerow]

I'm tired of new beginnings

But I'd rather a spark to an ember

That fleeting unsettled winking light

Dancing in the air as it burns away with the wind

Like a rocket running out of fuel reaching for the sky

It drifts away reaching into the night

With hopes of dry leaves in the trees

It dreams of a forest on fire

But in a blink the wink is gone

That's the life I want to live

Too hot and bright and burning too fast

But wild and free and helplessly young

And yet, how alluring the warm soft glow in the firepit just before dawn is

Having burnt away everything it lingers

I stoke it up out of the ash and watch it breath in and out with the wind

It sits and it glows warmly and softly as the sky turns from black to a dark blue

It smolders peacefully

Slowly and flamelessly

Not a beginning but an end

[holeinthehedgerow]

I love your latest poem that started with the crickets chirping. It read like a fairy tale and the way you painted the scene was so beautiful. I felt almost nostalgic. Honestly poetry drugged me straight up lollll

Thanks so much for your words! For me the poem has a melancholy feel. The birds, the crickets the frogs and the fireflies, they're all sending out their mating calls to the night, longing for each other. In different ways we all do the same. I felt connected listening to them, feeling lonely, but also with the kinship that all life yearns as I do

[holeinthehedgerow]

The time the crickets come out

Chirping in the dark from somewhere unseen

Their violin legs ring out of the shadows

Then cicadas call and the frogs they chirp

The birds will sing come morning just before light

In the dark the sounds they shout

Calling out to the night

The fireflies with their lighthouse beacons

Fearing the coming dawn's light

They wink at me and glow and fade slow

The shouts reach my sleepless ears

They're calling for all that's near

Though they speak a language I do not their calling I can hear

I call into the dark with them through the night

To be heard by a sleepless ear

Or seen by a tired eye

Fearing the coming dawn's light

I call out into the night

[holeinthehedgerow]

Flowers walking around

And dancing birds

In a garden

That's all we are

Love isn't alive or dead

But like trees asleep in the winter

And romance fills the air

Not alive or dead

But caught out in an early spring rain

Cold and wet and dulled by the passing grey clouds

Waiting for a break in the storm to run home with each other

Bees hide in the petals as it rains

Birds bathe in the puddles

Cold hands reach for an embrace

And our warmth draws us together

[holeinthehedgerow]

And again nature calls, birds sing and the winds become a breeze, the sun gets warmer, the clouds start to fade, colours cover the naked twigs.

I watch as a leaf falls, later than it was supposed to fall, it held on along storms and rain, kept waiting for a legend they called the spring, it didn't care for how yellow it became, it won't have this chance ever again. One day more, the leaf kept saying, and watching from afar I kept praying, for this little leaf to gain its wish.

At the first sight of the flowers bloom, the leaf could finally let go, so indeed the legend was true, after the storms shines the sun, and a new life comes to place what's gone. The leaf fell and was caught by the breeze, and after a few playful dances in the air, it reached the earth and could finally rest at peace.

Not a really a question but something I wanted to share with you.

N..

Thanks so much for the contribution, I love it! :)

[holeinthehedgerow]

Birds never talk to me

But I listen to them sing

As they sing on without me

And bugs

On me they don't even know I'm there

Lost in their own little worlds on me

As they live in them without me

And the grass

It springs back to hide any trace of my steps as I pass

Lightly as I can from tree to tree

As they tower above me

And I'm in nature and not on it

As it exists without me

[holeinthehedgerow]

Woah you're so good at writing could you give me some tips

Thank you for your kind words friend. Once I heard an old woman say something was as loud "as skeletons fucking on a tin roof". It was poetry, pure poetry. It's a reminder that there's ways to say things better than just saying it. It was fucking loud- skeletons fucking on a tin roof loud. Reminds me of a line from a poem I once wrote, at a time when I felt like I was "a skeleton tripping down a spiral staircase". At the time I felt like I was spiraling, falling apart, like a skeleton's bones tumbling down a spiral staircase falling apart. The line captured the feeling. That's the beauty of poetry. Where words just aren't enough, art comes into play. Once you open yourself up to that world, you start seeing it everywhere, the world becomes vast and more beautiful. My goal with my poetry is always to just be sincere and honest, I try not to worry about whether it's good or not.

[holeinthehedgerow]

A song I'll only hear once

It waves through the air in time

As its vibrations shake the leaves

They wave to me

And give their rustling applause

As it fades

The sound drifts away through the air

To the edges of the worlds night

Where its soul drifts into the black forever after

Lost with the light light-years away

I listen as it passes through me

Wishing I could catch its ghost

To listen again

But it kisses my ears

And leaves a memory as it goes

Into the trees and out with the night

Come dawn its a song I heard once

And never heard again

[holeinthehedgerow]

The rain falls beneath the light

To gather under the lamps glow

I climbed above the city night

To watch the lamplit water flow

Through the warm lit fog

Like a golden river below

Flickering down the streets

From shadow to yellow to shadow

Caught out with the rain awake in the night

I climbed above the lamplit city light

And there in the dark beneath the clouds

I watched the misty drops turn bright

With the wind and trees in the air

It was through the dark such a sight

And if I were dry asleep in bed

I'd never see the warm lamp light

[holeinthehedgerow]

What we have is shallow

Like ice skating

You asked if the sheets are clean

Funny how others asked the same

They're like snow from weeks ago

With dirt and footprints

And snow angels from someone else's body

Chalk around it

Like a crime scene

Outlining the things I've done

Dirty bedsheets from days ago

With so much scent

Stains bled through the mattress and into the floor

Into the earth forever below

But what we had was shallow

Ice skating above the ice shallow

[holeinthehedgerow]

Drinking is the least destructive thing I could be doing

Of the things I could be doing

Drinking is the best

Those things I shouldn't do

How I chase them in the night

So raise my glass and keep toasting

To the chains that drown me down

Though I could be doing less

Of the things I could be doing

Another drink more is less

Rather than the chase

I'll awaken close to home

For of the things I could be chasing

Whiskey is the best

[holeinthehedgerow]

My heart a quilt of everyone I've ever loved

Tattered, torn, and stitched

And you my mistress of sorrow

With your corner

Who I'd half jokingly propose to

Sooner than my next heartbeat

When I wasn't who I should be

With the taste of beer on my breath

Cigarette smoke on my clothes

So you could be the proof of my life

Where my stories swept away by time

Could be told by you instead

Home in a person a person at home

But a nomad I roved on

My tired checkered heart

Tattered, torn, and stitched

[holeinthehedgerow]

There's a certain kind of sleeping

Which happens at a desk

That's good for the soul

Not going but falling to sleep

When you shouldn't but do

The sound of deep rumbles

On the ear through wood

Light peaking under the arch of my arm

Into the cave where I buried myself

Holding the heavy weight of my head

And warm air on my face as I breathe

Hiding in my arms

As I cradle myself