Articulate the Sweetness

love is revolutionary. life is beauty. live, love, be.

[silvermythago]

Ouija Board Love

We say we won't ask it about love and then we ask it about love. The rule is you keep one finger light on the pointer, never shove, and if you shove you say so.

We're down in her basement where her father hangs the deer heads and hides the wine he counts by the neck. The board gives off that little dead glow cheap plastic gives off.

I ask it who I'll marry and our four hands drag to the corner, slow, toward YES, though YES is no answer to that question.

She swears she isn't pushing. I swear I'm not. A moth comes through the screen and lands on the G and won't leave. She says it's her grandmother.

I say the dead don't care who we love. She says everything cares who we love.

— Jody Schiesser, June 19, 2025

[silvermythago]

"It's Gotta Go"

I. A single cracked neon flickers above the neighborhood laundromat— coins tumble / clatter / shiver / clink like starlings startled into dusk in a whirlwind of murder; so much depends upon this brittle light still insisting yes, to exist is good.

II. I saw the republic of billboards screaming mercy along the interstate— tall priests of plastic prophecy & their gospel of BUY / BURN / BURY— and I howled my small name into the exhaust‑colored dawn, my chest a drum of bewildered blood. O mad‑eyed century! you wire electrodes to our dreams, pipe phantom wars through pocket screens, yet every traffic‑light pause or breath births a miracle: some daffodil bulldozed flat last week already unlatching green knives toward the sun. Tell me that isn’t holy. Tell me the heart isn’t a rogue generator spinning gold even while the grid goes down.

III. My father, Coca Cola sugar on his knuckles, says simply: “Kid, life’s gotta go.” Not wisdom polished smooth, but a river stone from the Cedar he’s carried pocket‑warm fifty years, thumbed, believed.

So I follow the river— herons lifting like slow blue prayers, water scripting its silver sentences on the air. I kneel, drink, remember: the world is wounded & luminous, both.

IV. Listen— the geese are stitching the torn sky back together, calling anyone still breathing to open the door, step outside, feel the wind write yes yes yes along the bones.

And we keep keeping on— not because the night is gentle, but because somewhere a clover, four-leafed, splits the pavement, because the heart, faulty engine, still beats its red music, because even now our cracked neon human soul refuses to quit, throwing its fragile, strobing courage across the darkened nation we pledge our allegiance.

[silvermythago]

Keeping Things Whole

In a field I am the absence of field. This is always the case. Wherever I am I am what is missing. When I walk I part the air and always the air moves in to fill the spaces where my body's been. We all have reasons for moving. I move to keep things whole.

— by Mark Strand

[silvermythago]

How Is Life Going?

It’s gotta go, or as my Dad likes to say,

You give it a little push

To nurture the love and the light.

[silvermythago]

a meaningful existence

Victor Frankl's theory-known as logotherapy, from the Greek word logos ("meaning") holds that our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful. I, too, believe in this theory.

[silvermythago]

It is never difficult to feel what's right.

Sometimes, perhaps, there seems to be a conflict between two things to do that both feel right.

When this happens to you, accept it as a message that you are not in tune with your self. Do not try to make a decision.

Relax, and allow your feelings to take over.

You are a precision instrument, and you can always feel what's right.

Don't fight it.

Relax.

Do it.

-- excerpted from "Das Energi" by Paul Williams, but pertinent as the orange man gains hold of the helm of our society again

[silvermythago]

[silvermythago]

The Skull-Crush Man

Let the Skull-Crush Man hunt honey in the hollows—

a blur of yellow wings in the cathedral of my skull,

where the dome hums with thunder and sweetness,

and thoughts riot like bees drunk on their own gold.

He moves like a bruised prophecy,

wrapped in smoke and crowned with ruin—

a breaker of stars, sifting bone to powder,

then pausing, always pausing,

to taste the wild pulse of life, fear, and love.

Through the dusk of my marrow, he wanders,

part hymn, part hurricane.

Do I fear his shadow, or do I follow it?

His fists eclipse the sun, his laughter swarms.

Yet he kneels where the bees sing,

gathering the amber drip of survival’s hymn.

He is the fist and the flower, the ruin and the nectar,

and when I listen too long in the deep hum of myself—

I taste him there, burning sweet and feral,

singing wild and deep within the hollow of my soul.

[silvermythago]

ॐ A Young Prophet at Breakfast

I wanted to believe in the world, but while I was savoring my waffle, a small girl slapped me, hard— a sharp sting across my face I looked up to find myself, to my astonishment, the center of the diner's universe, all eyes fixed, even the slow-swirling dust seemed to gather and hang.

This girl, a stranger’s daughter, a prophet with ice-pure eyes, slapped me again.

“Old man,” she said, her voice ringing like an ancient bell “Why do you tell lies about what life is? Why do you pull such tricks on the young?” With her small, fierce hand on her hip, she demanded, “Why pretend to know?”

I fumbled, searching my ransacked heart, and she watched, calm as a priestess, waiting for my soul to confess.

“What do you ask of me?” I said And the world stilled.

She grinned, wide as sunlight, as her voice, sweet as prophecy, floated above the pancakes and coffee mugs.

“Old man,” she whispered, “why do you breathe?”

“Little girl,” I replied, “I don’t mean to hurt you There’s so much out here that will try to make you bleed But trust this: every gift you give, every small kindness, every taunt, every hurt each breath, they all return— in ways you cannot yet dream.”

She laughed, bright and full, a laugh that broke through the walls of the world like thunder's first chuckle She touched my arm and said, “You’re funny,” “Old man,” she said, leaning close, “Maybe you’re not a fool after all.”

With half-mischief, half-innocence she spun and twirled her way to the door, a tiny mystery, leaving the restaurant and me stirred and hushed.

[silvermythago]

Because the Wind

Such beauty the way the light ripples from the water

Burning pink spreading into the aquamarine blue

The air smells sweetly fecund

Human car noise from faraway

It is beautiful

Despite it all

Or maybe because

Birdnoise squawks and chirps

Winged-beings at play in the marsh

A cast of fiddler crabs clicks

Tumbling over each other

To hide in small holes

So beautiful

I huddle here on the stones by the bridge

Shivering

Gazing at light in my periphery

A blaze of God's eye

Shimmers in the surface of the marsh river

Perfect, deep, fathomless

A reflection of the sun

The light glistens and ripples like the kiss I forgot

A tear slips from my eye down along the edge of my nose to my lip

I shake from memory of a fat man

Pedaling furious in the clouds,

Or maybe it is the wind.

— Jody Schiesser, September 10, 2024

[silvermythago]

A strawberry full moon, on the summer solstice 2024, lifting with waffly energy over a Waffle House in North Carolina.

[silvermythago]

[silvermythago]

frogs are lucky (poem)

I hear her hungry, in the clear glacier water wanting the ageless truth the shiver. the stones. sketched in blue and violet laughter aflame, she rises to devour earth’s moon a perfect crescent the ancient sky swimming with stars I ride a rickety bus through the hills touching the spiral screaming time’s lie on and forever as I fathom these mountains of the Q’ero are wrapped in her lavender milk.

[silvermythago]

The anatomy of any comeback these days requires that the artists in question play it reasonably safe. A recognition of everything that went before and a

Glasgow Eyes, a gem of a Jesus and Mary Chain album!

[silvermythago]

Radio has no future

Radio has no future. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible. X-rays will prove to be a hoax. 

-- William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, English scientist (1824-1907)

[silvermythago]

another psalm of survival

The air hummed with frantic energy, as the small community of those still alive gathered amongst the rubble. Maia, her dreadlocks buzzing with anticipation, plucked a defiant silver string from her battered guitar. "Alright, folks," she rasped, her voice a smoky echo of countless late-night jams, "let's turn this fear into fuel."

Across the fire, gruff Ben snorted. "Fuel for what, Maia? The next apocalypse?" His calloused hand instinctively brushed the faded tattoo on his arm - a memento of a life lived just a hair's breadth from disaster.

"Fuel for life, Ben," countered Amara, her eyes holding the wisdom of a woman who'd seen more sunsets than most. Her fingers, gnarled from years of tending her rooftop garden, tapped out a gentle rhythm on a chipped teacup. "Fuel to remind us why we're still here, even when the world feels like it's falling apart."

A young boy, barely taller than her guitar case, tugged on Maia's sleeve. "Will it really work, Maia? Will our music scare the darkness away?" His wide eyes mirrored the fear dancing in the flames.

Maia knelt, her gaze meeting his. "Little Leo," she said, her voice soft as a lullaby, "darkness isn't scared of loud noises. It's scared of the light we carry inside. And when we share that light, when we sing our stories together, that darkness doesn't stand a chance."

The fire crackled, casting dancing shadows on their faces. Hesitantly, Ben strummed a chord on his battered banjo, the sound rough but honest. Amara's voice, deep and warm, joined the melody, weaving a tapestry of hope around their worries.

Leo, no longer afraid, hummed along, his small voice a beacon in the gathering gloom.

As Maia sang, the fear in their eyes began to fade. They weren't just singing notes; they were singing the stories of their lives, of loss and love, of laughter and tears. They sang of the sunrises they'd witnessed, the storms they'd weathered, the bonds that held them together.

The song wasn't perfect, but it was theirs. It was a testament to their shared humanity, a defiant melody against the encroaching darkness. And as the last notes faded into the night, they knew they weren't just survivors. They were storytellers, light-bearers, and in that shared song, they had found their strength, their solace, and their astonishing power.

[silvermythago]

A PSALM OF SURVIVAL

To whet the beat a finger strums a seam of silver in the place spirit sets its feels on us

We tend twirl somersaulting a guitary twang through life and death

With the good of Love our song weaves the in-between spaces where matter doesn’t matter a rhythm holding the Universe safe

Beauty and sorrow entwine they thrum we smile brave and together as the tremor hits.