Looking up at the sky, he tripped and fell.
Plummeting down the dried up well.
Twelve feet down.
Dark, dank, stinking.
Now, twice a day he looks up
To see
The noonday sun
And the midnight moon.
And, when it’s lit down there it’s bright.
Otherwise, very dark.
Sacrifice.
Sanctimony.
Symphony.
Sanctuary.
Sacred.
Scared.
Sacrilegious.
Religious.
A strangely swapping of places of an I and E,
at the maddened haberdasher’s tea party.
There comes a time
When your light doth shine
Too bright.
Mute.
For the k/night
And,
Await
the fullest moon.
Super Pink arising,
Disquieting and almost, but not quite, too brightly.
Strange what you hear when truly listening.
The young man who complains the most and says he does not care,
he works the hardest.
The gossipy ladies have perfected lazing.
His water was cut off today. A long complicated story explicating.
The people most deserving of a hug often would be the first to refuse one.
The kind of kid for whom you cook a tasty yet healthy home~cooked meal.
Even though you know he wilt likely throw it out without eating;
but, it is the thought and effort worth counting.
I observe him when he does not know I æm there.
Who he is when know~one is seemingly æround.
An ænimal in his natural state.
Sacrosanct
His eyes go soft and unfocused.
His voice rises in pitch, ælmost imperceptibly.
Beauty without æwareness.
A repeated, unconcious nod recurring.
Like præying.
Stalking like æ big cat,
Æ Espy with mine brown eyes.
Shining teeth and blooms of the moon.
The watering can found overturned this morn; spilt was last night’s prepared water.
I tried to tell you, “let it age,” yet, what you heard was, “it is not a game.”
What was actually said only Know~One knows,
because having a steno pad is not the same as having a stenographer.
Shorthand and chicken scratch scrawlings.
Pecking and clucking.
A woman once asked my paternal grandfather,
“What do you do with an mean rooster?”
He replied, “take your hands and hold him beneath the water until he falls a bit still.”
So, she did.
Upon coming too, the bird nearly tore her eyes out.
“You did not hold him under long enough,” he dead-panned,
when she presented her grievance to him.
Careful whose advice you follow,
particularly if they keep one hand in their pants’ pocket.
Might just be a touch of sardonic, Louisiana Southern gothic.
I always watch the cycles of the moon.
They pull the tides of my feminine theatre.
Waking at six in the morn to watch the Worm moon squiggle to its setting.
Eagerly awaiting the egg moon aka the pink moon.
I put the snake’s oil over my face.
I slick back my long hair because, you know, the devil’s in there.
A Good Friday.
A potato casserole with green onions and sour cream.
Comfort.
A lamb wilt
Be grilled.
A key.
Lime.
And, what frightens is often the deepest kindness.
A casted shadow is dark, but only because it derives from the sunlight’s strike.
Embrace.
At times, certain bits of shadows overwhelm and attempt to call you back.
Home to the Pitt of Settes.
Because shadows fear the light.
At times, certain rays of sunlight overwhelm and attempt to call you back.
Home to the Haven of Heavens.
Because sunshine fears night’s shade.
Their conspiracy is to whisper, “I am better than the other.”
Begging you to pronounce an opinion.
But, you are neither one more so than another.
Just the knot bisecting the lifespan of a life’stime.
So laugh.
Ignore.
Simply Be.
Remember the faces of the parents who birthed you, beautiful or ugly?
Or, unknown.
How they looked at your earliest memory.
Recall your face as a child,
As you saw yourself versus how you now recall yourself
To Be
The imaginary worlds you could create.
Edifice
of Joy.
How your laugh howled with no concern for volume.
How you could cry freely when it hurt,
When you were treated poorly.
All the promises you made to your future.
All the things you swore you would never do.
The jobs you would have.
That thriving trove.
Oh, and all those places you would go.
Up and over where the sidewalk would end.
The edge of the world.
The thrill of the steep cliff over which you would fall off when sky met horizon.
There would be dragons to slay, or better yet, befriend.
The letters that gave you trouble as you learned to scrawl.
S’s, proper formed but backwards facing.
The pictures you proudly drew poorly.
The smell of a new-to-you, second hand book. A cheap, new sketch pad.
The sibling you craved but never had; the one you had and came to adore.
Recall falling apart frequently and immediately remaking yourself.
Tantrums displayed or bottled up.
Therein is the eternal beauty of the fleeting.
And, it is yours. No one else’s.
A child, still, in these hills, still.
Anytime you are thirsty, return here.
The heat and humidity following the vernal equinox bleeds the ink of my pen and smears the stains of my writing on the page.
The crocus thrive with steadfast confidence.
The daffodils explode perfectly.
The primrose remain fussy divas.
The rose bushes work hard despite struggling.
A place with seasons shocks me.
Just as my skin adjusted to the same color of the lily white opalescent tenor of the frequent snow,
The spring sun shocks my flesh into the rosy red of a proper sunburn.
No sooner has spring spring before I realize I must prepare my soul for the not too distant summer.
My scratchmade buttermilk biscuits finally learn to rise.
A new oven; a new season.
A novel sense of urgency.
It is the season to become.
As one dies, so is one reborn.
With an eye on the sparrow and his one eye on mine.
And, the singers of hymns look at me sideways, and the modernity looks on with eyes rolled at me.
Stranded between two sonars.
But, know what?
I sing because I am happy,
I sing because I’m glad.
I sing out of key, yet, wholeheartedly.
Because I am free and here is spring.
Speak with your face and fingertips.
Louder than words uttered.
Understated is better than stated.
And, one can tell many things about another one, by how they treat a vegetable.
The way they wash, the knife they choose and how they slice.
Dice thrown; and, the dye cast.
What music shall I choose to play for this death.
Even vegans must confess life feeds on life feeds on life.
Does that empurpled onion reduce you
To tears?
A seasoned cast iron skillet does not need soap.
Brushed with bristles.
Oiled up and then left alone.
A serrated saw to slice tomatoes to preserve their fleshly consistency.
A fat, straight blade to make onions pay for arrogance.
Slapping herbs in the face, to conjure the aromatic gift.
The coolness of cilantro is a hipster’s voice you desire to hear but also wish would shush.
Tasting whilst you bring demise because you wilt not be caught up in surprise
At what you create.
And, should you tell me, “I do not cook.”
I wonder, “Why does fear of failure have you so shook?”
Prostrate before a pinch of sea salt.
The kindly courtesan whom doth correct all.
Pray for the favorable countenance of a full garlic clove.
This is enclave.
Heavy syrup and pecans.
Three slightly beaten eggs.
A pie baked in lieu
An attempt to explain
all of the most basic ceremony and
rites of common society which I have naught
Experienced.
Imperfect kindness tempered with ignorance and an introverted nature.
Making myne own misunderstood rituals of Devotion.
Lacking. Paltry offering.
What I hold not in emotional availability, I make up with myne ability to stare at the sky and dream.
Appealing to others until experienced for a longer term.
A mystic certainly understands classical romanticism;
but, of the contemporary meaning of romantic, often feeling inadequate and misunderstood.
Leaving everything on the field whilst appearing like Æ did not come to play the Game at all.
Adrift in timelessness without the ability to connect in the contemporary.
Moving through time backwards to understand at death
the joy that others missed while they experienced
It.
Heavy bursts of ecstasies that leave others lacking It in the in~between.
Such a rage boils my blood whilst listening to the ignorant ones.
My knee jerks to curse and wish them failure;
but, what I exude wilt come back three times as strongly to me. So, I don’t.
The golden ratio of a basic rule.
A simple, plastic bag billows, impaled on a tree.
An ugly reminder I live well inside the veil,
keeping one foot Here and one foot There.
Mystical metaphysics.
Everything smells of sautéed shiitake when I feel this way.
Entropy has become this country.
Voting is not a privilege;
It is a right.
And Mister GOP, if you say “politics is a zero sum game” before the highest court of this land,
then you concede that leadership is not your forte.
Go, Jim Crow, we are sick of your antiquated quagmire.
Such attempts to disenfranchise will surely backfire.
The oppressed are motivated.
Your conservative base becomes lazy when inconvenienced.
Reaping what you’ve sown wilt be your future problem.
As they say in fencing:
My cauldron bubbles in its boil. A sacred prayer to the dead man chicken in my pot.
And, the last three years have been such an eternity that any song both brings me to proudly stand on toes with limbs extending past 90° to Earth’s curvature.
Whilst also reducing me to tears without my understanding why.
The legacy and curse of a dancer’s ballet-cy.
Words invented while subterfuge may whisper context.
Lost on most of my friendly vigilantes.
And whilst a boiling cauldron sounds dramatic, it is nothing more than a beautiful breast in spices, the most important of which being garlic.
Whole cloves and bay leaves.
Magic so simply esoteric that many mistake it for being erudite.
Just read, sweet things.
Nothing more simplistically
Put
Into a proper place.
And, the uninitiated may unabashedly speak volumes whilst claiming the Heyoka status.
When did admitting yourself to be The Fool become so unseemingly.
Chicken nervously almost cooked and begging shredding.
And the act requires meticulous tediousness.
Yet, if you want to consume a sacrificed carcass should anything less be expected?
And I miss the Jamaican aroma. Unallowed here. But, the rite of alcohol pales.
The breast resists shredding.
Respect for sacrifice;
so I rest
before the rebeginning
“Oh my, my, what of the raven? Is it you?” I am asked.
“No. I am quite simply not into carrion,” is my reply.
“What are you in to?”
“Being the last bird to leave before the storm; then, being the first to return.”
“An ibis?”
“Yes, which is also a Phœnix.”
“How so?”
“A Phœnix appears to rebirth itself from a flame’s ashes; but, it is illusion. Everyone fled the mælstorm. I never died, you left; and, upon your return, you assumed me to be reborn.”
“The truth is then?”
“I neither left nor died. I simply survived.”
Say hello just as you once waved goodbye.
A faint light briefly illuminates the window across the way. It makes me wonder what changed interiorly.
A downy softness surrounds me today.
Time moves slowly.
Suddenly surprised, hearing geese honking. Flying higher than the lowly, snowy cloud cover.
A silly goose once puffed up and squared off with me, during an unintentional path crossing.
I backed down quickly, alarmed at how alarming it found me to be.
It makes me wonder of the owl who used to visit and play with me.
Twice swooping and snatching at the breezy, long ties of my sleeveless shirt.
It subsequently perched on the lowest limb of the nearest tree.
A father and his child came to see and commented of its beauty.
I stared at them, speechless and dumbstruck, still and in awe of what had just happened to me.
The great bird was tufted. Signifying it may have originated from the underworld.
What spirit concerns itself with me?
Here it comes: the strange peach’s stone of a memory, sitting in my stomach
heavily.
So, I write backwards in Hebrew, which feels like forward to me; and, whilst I know the characters, I know not that which they mean.
Pure, pleasing automatic writing before I play.
Flowing like the blood of Abraham of Worms.
“To serve and fear,” he promised, along with gifting ten gold florins.
Sounds like the needed Judas.
Without villains, how do we know that ostensible hero?
What of we who relate to the in-between called ‘antiheroes’?
An alarm screams.
No siren, but a klaxon doppleganging.
To bind the demons, must you first summon them?
An odd gambit given that you may not have had their attention initially.
Diamonds of snow falling, whilst I read the broken man whose sobriquet is Lewis Carroll.
Here do I call him out by his birth name: Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.
And, any fan knows Alice’s hair was brown, not blonde.
An erudite form of witness protection.
Talking heads bobble.
My inner witch cobbles an awful howl of a hyena’s cackle.
So, I cast myself into the prowling orange cat and he into me;
leaving my body still and purring, and I becoming him trotting over superfluous, left leaves.
Leavening. Bread trying to rise on the level.
Yeasty and active.
Pouncing high onto window ledges to stick my wet, pink nose against panes where it surely doesn’t belong.
Letting slant rhymes mime poetry because cats don’t have to be wordsmiths.
“I’m okay, today. Just okay,” she tells her, continuing on, “I so want to be a normie.”
“Between you and me, I think normies are a bit of a boring, drag,” she replies to her.
~
And, I think I see a splinter in your eye; but, I fear I am mistaking it for the log impaling mine.
So, she takes a walk.
It is mistimed; because, the sun is so bright she must cast down her eyes instead of holding her head high.
In her cans, she hears someone play chord C on a piano, repetitively.
Middle C.
And, while she cannot count the time, she times the steps of her feet.
Four between each.
The iterations end.
A voice asks her “What shall we play next?”
“Doesn’t matter much to me. Just
WrittenCasey 