Cratered Perceptions

"it is a serious thing/ just to be alive/ on this fresh morning/ in the broken world." – Mary Oliver Poetry|Photography|Prose|Art Best friend's blog: (x)

[paper-moon-poetry]

Eden

A fingernail nicked in the garden soil,

A quick shake of pain

To scatter budding droplets among the seeds.

A bit of animal life to feed the weeds.

A scratch of the head,

Dirt lost into the curly wiry thatch.

A bit left behind, a bit taken away.

Standing at the crest, looking across the valley,

Shadow stretching to cover hill to hill.

This stature is great only in front of the sun.

As the day progresses, I shrink until

I take up only the space of my own two feet.

[kafk-a]

[paper-moon-poetry]

[S]hades

I tire of empty mythology.

I bit into the pomegranate

to tear its rind aside,

seeking seeds to sluice,

and spit to discover it hollow.

It does not do

to plumb for truth

where only echoes are found.

[paper-moon-poetry]

I made these.

Base pattern here.

[cryptonature]

Vultures are holy creatures.

Tending the dead.

Bowing low.

Bared head.

Whispers to cold flesh,

“Your old name is not your king.

I rename you ‘Everything.’”

[cryptonature]

Autumn makes me feel cozy because as the days grow short & cold simply walking into a space with light & warmth feels special.

I try to apply this same principle to depression.

When the dark & frost sit heavy inside my skull, may all small kindnesses glow like a warm hearth.

[lunaanaart]

The Exorcism

You want to stay but you can’t

You have become

Terminally liminal

Ill equipped to exist

Within your walls

[cryptonature]

“Dad, why do we age?" 

"Well, son, time is a web woven by a fractal omni-spider whose ever-fangs can sip from all things simultaneously." 

 "Really? My teacher says it’s built into our genes." 

"Son… I think your teacher works for the spider." 

 [End Scene]

[catilinas]

obsessed

[hineinihineini-moving]

October by Mary Oliver

[kafk-a]

[paper-moon-poetry]

[Vicious] Cycling

The elimination of small imperfections:

I can be,

I will be,

all I have promised myself.

Obsessively I pick through

each sentence I’d uttered that day.

I’d revealed too much of myself,

I’d shown the cracks in my veneer.

Maybe they saw how

my smile froze,

my eyes flashed,

I crumbled my napkin to pebbles.

I can’t be seen

for the human I am.

I must eliminate

all that is flawed in me.

All of me.

Me.

[paper-moon-poetry]

Thoracic

I have an ache in my left side

like a bruise that doesn’t heal.

I know why it’s there.

But I still can’t breathe deeply.

I think frequently of home’s

overcast skies and patchy grass,

of chilly morning floors

and creaky steps.

Of crashing grey waves

and sand-rimed feet, salt sticky.

I sigh, and ache, and feel

the gap both

in my side and

in where I want to be.

How can I reconcile

happiness and contentment?

I clutch my side like I’d clutch a stitch,

and strive not to fracture further.

[smakkabagms]

“There are no asphodels, violets or hyacinths; how then can you talk with the dead? The dead know the language of flowers only; so they keep silent they travel and keep silent, endure and keep silent, past the region of dreams, past the region of dreams.”

— George Seferis, “Stratis Thalassinos Among the Agapanthi”

[paper-moon-poetry]

[Barometric] Pressure

Sometimes old insecurities

throb and twang like

old wounds before a storm.

It’s become so that I hear

“Not enough”

when thunder breaks

over the horizon.

I think these hurts

delve fleshlike into souls

and mend in the same broken way.

Please forgive me,

I was broken before

you ever saw the scar.

[paper-moon-poetry]

Icarian Sea

So this is my final sight:

the crashing waves above me

look like undersides of clouds,

those I had embraced

with every pump of my arms,

encircling and abandoning achingly.

Beneath the water and through the air

I turn, spin, relinquish control.

I am breathless, breath left above.

I sink, and see my sun setting.

[smakkabagms]

“Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one’s very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”

— George Eliot, George Eliot’s Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals