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.
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.
Eco, Umberto…
A whisper from these lips confesses an open secret:
There is no secret.
All the mystery schools and Eleusinian plays:
Yes, no
their secret is not concealed.
Mythos.
The magic is that you assume it is hidden.
When seemingly unobtainable,
you wilt become willing to work for it.
But, what ritual teaches, you already know.
If you put in the work, your mind will show
Ewe.
But, solitary work lacks the energy of community.
Emergence of thinking in tandem.
A breath practice practiced alone is not the same as the communal.
I think therefore I am is now becoming:
I am seen therefore I am.
I shall believe it when I see it?
No dear.
You wilt see it when you believe.
This is the basic magic.
Simple reading shares,
what ritual prepares
to gift
Inquiring minds.
Worry less over initiation because they’d be lucky to have your machination.
I respect Silence’s blame; I miss thee just the same.
From me does the Stillness urge a disquieting benevolence coalescing into
this grievance.
The plasmatic burst of a coronal flare turns to a sickly flame’s green glare.
The Universe wrought itself from naught and therein do we return,
Unto a new Form.
A Thing will fall apart only to be remade into a newly fitted part.
The queen of Magnets insists on polarity because Friction is necessary.
Heresy and hearsay do not become me. Yet are they my Necessity.
Shed the veil and show thine face.
I wilt hold your place.
So tumble and flail. Howl like a feral dog into your Fog.
This peculiar part is ever of less Proportion to the W/hole.
And, the peace thou dost seek, upon being found, will be abhorred.
Until evermore.
I try to catch him; but, I continue to miss him.
Once you gift a sobriquet, you lose all control.
Wolves in winter howling at the moon,
then listening with no other purpose than to hear.
The call and response of a preponderance of silence.
This is an answer.
Echoes across the canyon.
A loneliness in a crowd.
Wanting to be in rooms where the players lick their wounds, where the second hand smoke makes your lungs hurt the following day.
A reminder you are alive because it brings you closer to the stone and farther from the forceps.
▪︎
I move through time backwards.
I am younger the more I age.
No mere howls.
Magic so high it is all but taken for granted.
The line where sky meets land is unclear.
There is a hidden seam somewhere.
▪︎
An ochlophobia of ochlocracy, along with the oddment and its odoriferous.
Œnomel stings across my nostrils and coats my throat.
And, I taste the œvre of his lifetime.
A thick honey cloys.
The best people are salted with a touch of unrespectability:
too much disgusts,
just enough delights, and,
none at all renders bland.
▪︎
The harrowing of hell taught us how nature abhors a vaccum.
Soteriology does not necessitate an orthodoxy.
I hear you child. Let me show you alchemy is mathematical.
The derivation of a unit circle before the golden ratio.
I wolf whistle, lowly.
Two fingers pushed between parted lips, touching tongue.
And, I wonder…
Why do people need writing prompts?
They preempt.
Suggestions not needed.
Explicit requests enjoyed, nonetheless.
°
“You think I was talking about you?” he asks.
“It doesn’t matter. I heard you, anyhowl,” I say.
°
This, something, but, not just anything.
Head hazy open because it is heavy.
°
An attractive, not unwelcome, nuisance.
Needing to be handled. Straightened out.
Make hard to render malleable.
Remade and dripping.
Thumb it your mouth, moth.
Carry your hardwood.
I can carry the water.
I still thumb the pebble you once cast to me.
There’s inconsistent consonance amidst the constant dissonance; and,
it makes her so tired that she could not possibly sleep.
This continent of consonants sees few vow well.
The scent of an uncapped pen’s ink funnels up her philtrum to violate her nostrils.
It makes her wet.
■
The sun grew too bright, so she saved her daylight time to accrue an extra midnight hour.
Preparing for Persephone, abiding until the winter solstice.
Her handwriting abruptly changes its font; and, she understands she is now taking dictation from a new source.
■
So, she stalks the coquettish house in the ebony of the deep evening,
listening to its moans as she strides down the strange steps of the home’s erogenous zones.
The walls writhing in their dripping striptease,
scraped off wallpaper revealing more wallpaper covering more wallpaper.
Hard wood floors caressing her soles with cold smooth.
Door jambs whisper secrets most care not to know.
Roof hovering, dominating, hiding the stars that may be falling.
Too many patterns pronounce; and, she’s so consumed by seeing them that she forgets to keep looking.
The Truth of a trickster may be bald and unabashed; but,
it is never ugly.
■
She is an unoccupied sleeve of a cigarette vending machine.
Coin plinked, toggle tugged, message received:
Brand loyalty is an unaffordable luxury in times of scarcity.
So, smoke ’em if you got ’em, for tomorrow we die, again.
She pours two fingers of spirit, then tops it with two more until only the thumb remains.
■
The Holy Ghost resents the Father and the Son; but,
holds the Fallen Madonna(,) dear.
So, She houses the Spirit tightly
against Her breasts
because God doesn’t talk to Her;
and, She refuses to speak to angels.
■
The chaotic neutral must be just that
because a single leaf fell here instead of there.
“…; and, that made me happy,” he said.
“And, that makes me cry,” she replied.
And, he smiled;
because he alone knew if it was from sadness or joy.
I plucked you a flower when,
the moon called me outside, obscenely early and scintillatingly late.
Ambuscadoes.
Whispering and bragging of its brightness.
I open my mouth, but not to speak.
He takes the cue and puts his to mine.
Licking my tongue.
My hair bursts into a corona of scarlet flames,
standing on end.
Erect.
Leave me here howling, until fully feral and begging;
then take and take more by making me wait and wait more.
Then eat. Anthropophagus.
The world is on fire around us.
So, let us burn here and now.
Together.
The rain finally fell; I missed it.
An unpacked wound left agape, to breathe in awe, and slowly heal.
A little thing festered, so I had them cut it out.
And, sometimes, I like him enough to fear he could wreck me by letting me see myself as he sees me.
A foundation. A dream of a house of cards.
The foundation will fall before you and you will then become a dream to someone else.
A sweet one and a night-mare.
Bed bugs and freshly laundered sheets.
The keel remains, but no one is at the rudder.
Those secret chiefs are here. Sometimes, I think they come to me for a laugh. They know I know; they know you know it’s going to be okay.
You are welcome, but don’t tease; because, the words are over flowing. Bubble and bursting.
⊙
Cassandra’s Cavern closes, that spot above the fourth rib.
Cicatriz of a wildling.
Whispers in my ears.
Strings of random words.
Panoramas streaming alien multitudes of locales.
I hold still.
I try to listen and see.
It fleets and my mind yells, “Stop suffering.”
“I didn’t think I was,” my non-mind replies.
⊙
I dream of a day spent by a lighthouse. Watching seals. We return home.
“Good. Your skin still takes the sun,” he says, brushing my cheekbone with his finger.
My eyes go hard into his. I feel strange. I wonder are you some sort of vampire, pale one? It’s okay. I prefer a vamp to a peacock.
⊙
Suspense and suspension; the endearment of a man in suspenders.
A giggle hushed by louder laughter in the dark issuing forth from a little one with the lecherous eye.
We recently swapped places as easily as we used to swap clothes.
A white cotton bralette with no underwire.
A wood chipper left running, unattended.
A burger joint that grinds its own meat.
The sharpening of my axe.
Split nails and feet like cloven hooves. Shesatyr running.
⊙
And, my fingers begin to invent strange signals through the bending and overlap of digits as a dog pushes its snout into the corner, trying to become invisible. I watch while I act like I don’t notice.
A divine spark. The yetzirah. Multiple bodies operating on multiple planes.
Want births intent. Breaking of want produces freedom of will. The ability to intend.
⊙
I lost myself at sea a few days ago; let me know if you spot me.
I’ve a hole in my side and there’s a hole in the world where all the people used to go.
There’s a hole in Sam Stone’s arm and there’s an Angel who still flies from Montgomery.
Click-click-click goes the capped end of my Bic, against my thumbnail.
⊙
A familiar territory. A region you know well enough by cartography. Declension and longitude; elevation and latitude.
You must act without awareness at times.
Sentinel surveillance of the syndromic and the asymptomatic.
A coalesence of convalescence conjuncting with a tyranny of averages.
Handmade beds; and, piles of filled in journals.
The area below a curve
; &,
a line above a
word.
Gating shepards watching Anafortas exploiting the incomplete mantle of Parcival’s effulgence.
The ecstatic trauma of successfully arching the black swan of your black sheep dreams is becoming the dog chasing a squirrel. Knowing not what to do if it actually caught it.
Strange, dynamic current/s; accusations of dereliction of duties.
So, they transcend from surge to suppression.
Chai spice fragrance in one room; lavender and shæ in the other.
.comingle.
Dragon breath vapours pour forth from the room where a steaming bath is drawn.
And, food is around the wall; but, every bite is like you chewing ice next to me.
But, they don’t die; and, now, they have to live with it.
Just like the sporting, courting gentleman he was, she was informed of his intentions by writing. Epistles held in chester drawers reserved for intimates.
First, she assisted in erecting the ædificium of the flora’s subterranean root structure.
Learning from watching the trees talking through their bizarre vasculature, aided by moldy interpreters, the lady discovered the secrets of the adytum of Soloman’s Temple. They inscribed themselves in the Temple’s very dimensions.
Compliment to the unsated volume of the Petaled Shrine of the Pearl.
Then, Bloddeuedd asked her starling to stalk Merlin’s peregrine, leading to his Cliffside~House.
“What do you wish me to grant you for finding me¿” asks Merlin, charmed.
“The power to grant myself my own wishes,” she replies.
I remember you. Yeah, you. You stood next to the burning acacia bush. Hard to forget.
Whilst the girl stood before the podium, clutching her tome, a man held her tresses with scissors poised. A confusing ancient image.
Nowhere else is where she’d rather be. Snip the dead ends and make the sheep shorn.
Ewe.
Ewer.
Hopelessly old to be so young.
And, in dreams did I endlessly empty the carafe into the stone basin. Naked and milky white liquid ever-flowing. My eyes trained upon a single stone upon the ground. A star, a wizard wearing a vizard.
Two pillars of sycamores framing me.
I heard your caw.
I answered with mine own trill. Basil tinted and chai scented.
The folk of Zakopane take for granted the mountain air surrounding. Snug in chalets insulated against the Kasprowy Wierch. While opening the parcel, I confuse feeling wretched with the sensation of a heart being wratched. And, all at the sight of the Slovak postmark.
Because it makes me recall the not exactly cream cheese they call qvark. White cheese paired with fruit and a terrace. A simple ripe raspberry atop to boot.
Prattle and pitter patter.
Refreshed at being carefree sans carelessness.
You are comfortable, he says.
No. You just find me cozy.
And, they threw out all the words I firmly etched with his letterpress.
Into the depths, off cliffs of Tatras,
The Fool forever falls.
“It’s returning to the stranger of your previous self passing you by on roller skates.”
“Everyone commits unconscious fraud, but crimes against your own humanity remain largely unenforceable.”
“Don’t be silly, I just wanted to hear you say you think I’m pretty.”
“You walk with the confidence of a much taller woman.”
Because she hadn’t had a moment to breathe. No bit of space to call her own, even if she did have the back of a Camel pack, a portal of the porthole in the plaster, and sometimes a view.
Sometimes a forest, sometimes a cave; sometimes a sound.
A fault line. A tyranny of averages.
And, what I thought was an ever accumulating posse of ghosts was just me coming to notice them. For, they had been there the whole time. Like when I came to understand when someone begins a sentence with “I hate to mention it”, most of the time, they mean to say “I love having a chance to bring this up.”
When I do come back it will surely be as a book, or a bit of English in a pool game, or the illegible scrawlings penned by someone in ecstasy. And, I know God and I are playing in this moment.
“I shudder everytime I hear the record’s scratch.”
“I like it.”
“It sounds like breaking. Rumination.”
“Sounds like creation.”
“Oh, shut up, Shiva. Shakti the eff up.”
Falling into a swoon of kisses before saying “Dummy,” and slapping him from his reverie.
Because she has the time, she performs the reconfiguring of the dogan. She razes, and ritely begins rebuilding her mental palace of labyrinths and mazes. The masses suddenly grow massless and restless around her, collectively unflexing the muscles of their prowess.
Even running the kitchen hood fan becomes risky; but, only because the old man upstairs is pent up and pissy. It’s become hard for him, continually hearing the business of people living. But, he creaks about the boards at a later and later hour, hoping for an email telling him, “I hear you.”
Implicating the certainty of my missing the hearing of his late night pantry raids.
A silent fireside chat.
And, even with computer processing, the avalanche of paperwork rolled over the system. A coattailing bug being currently debugged.
Some people disappeared; others went silent but seeable; and then there were those mouths which could not stop talking.
And, she wrote the same word so many times over the years, that she could no longer remember if the ‘i’ came before the ‘e’ or if the case is exceptional.
“We must stop wasting time,” he said, for the innumerable time.
“Then stop saying the same thing and get down to it. Watch the shape of the s curves of my shifting body, stretching. Do you see how the area under my curves remains the same in the end?”
“Yes.”
“You see how some iterations of my curve are more dynamic than others?”
“Very much.”
“Good. As regards this ardent analogy, ultimately, some will get it and some won’t.”
“So, we go slowly, take advantage of additional time.”
“Why not. Now hush and map my s curves.”
“Curvaceous calculus.”
And, though things were terrifically strange, she felt oddly disinclined to speak.
But, she realized that she might be interested in her thoughts on now, a few months from now.
And, she enjoys tapping out characters as much as an enthusiastic pianist paws out notes from hammer and strings.
And, all the talkers were just saying the same things.
Then, she felt narcissistic for thinking about enjoying remembering her previous thoughts.
So, she shakes her head and scribbles.
So, twist and howl. Nothing else to do.
And, she feels boorishly derivative yet, impeccably derived.
So, she began each preceding sentence with inanities such as
And; but; then; so
So(?)
And, she feels restless and pent up despite already being a bit of a metaphysically hermetic, solitary creature.
But, the public solicitude to solitude made her space feel imposed not chosen.
And, while the difference was arguæbly negligible, she found it curious how much the distinction perturbs her.
“Insert sentence g here?” Æ, speaking to myself, prompts.
“Okay, here goes,” I reply to Æ.
The body awoke ready to go, bit chomping.
The mirror folded; I fell inside.
Slipping between thighs. Breathy ardour.
Missing the coverage provided by the forest, traded for the raw exposure upon the lapping shore.
Everyone can hear my morning stomach growl, but doubt they do.
What’s the point?
The finality of a punctuated period.
The capital letter leads the presentation of the subsequent subject of a sentence.
Verdict of friction made visible by the absence of the fricative.
Does it taste as I imagine? Salty and acrid.
Does it pass through the nostrils in musky humid drafts?
Expelled and rolling down cliffs of pronounced pelvic bones.
White capped.
The space was complicated; so, she resorted to speaking over-formally.
This town is starving for outsiders, but their dearth belies how the ravenous insiders devour the stranger.
They never saw the film but did like the video.
Intriguing, not difficult, becomes your vision.
The most trivial can be the most fascinating in this mystery of local idiosyncrasies
Strangest snow days she has ever seen.
She notes the font of her handwriting is subject to change without her awareness.
And, a single, specific thought seemingly drains your flaming blood into your feet.
Watching white suits leaving a briefing room.
Rustling. Give it two minutes and watch the weather change.
This.
Something.
Anything.
A hint of earnest, earned lethargy creeps, while the aroma of grapefruit percolates.
And, she kind of likes it when he tells her, “don’t look at me.”
The drone of an organ’s pumping warbles off of twirling, warped vinyl.
The strip of a terrific, diagonal stripe.
“Come hither, fool,” I snarled your full name while summiting multiple climaxes yesterday.
Simply, because,
I can.
I may.
fly.
“Early on, it’s silent.”
The blinds breathe as winds plow into screens.
Screaming hyænas hawing; locking into amber.
And, the condescension of his tone really pulled his outfit together.
The light fades and the sun sinks; and, she feels glad to have finally reached the town called Tonite,
where you see nothing and she sees all of nothing.
The light begins to bleed down blind slats in trickles, splattering on her floor.
“They oughtta incentivise me,” she overhears the casual walker say.
The last burst of light leaks into a small pool on the rightside of the cherrywood desk.
Then, it slides down the legs onto the floor, below, to join the previous dribbles.
A sugar glaze.
She slid her skirt up to her thighs; and, she let the sun shine directly on her bare legs for the first time since the new year.
Her eyes closed; and, she imagined.
Heating legs of firm, chilled butter which begin melting into decomposition earthwards, below her.
Eventual food for earthworms.
She feels strands of her hair’s tresses pulling away and apart from her, flying from her crown like a dandelion’s spores into the languishing four corners of the world.
The grand finale of winter winds, amidst sun shine, finally blowing her asunder.
A cry heard.
Weather letting her dissolve into everything and await rebirth in the nearing spring.
She will poke her head back out like new-growth into the Great, Wide World, when the seasons shift themselves about her.
Until then, she silently hopes to abide in a makeshift, subterranean respite entombed in nitrogen rich dirt. Dwelling in darkness.
~
She comes to prefer when night comes at five and not ten o’clock.
The sun proves certain, missing absences exist within her which she already, too-well feels; so, she will enjoy the sun’s final days of not so brightly shining.
Yet, the Star teases her with its cameo appearance today, tickling her extremeties along with her forehead, cheeks, and, ears.
Its heat working in defiance of the howling chill blasting off the Sound.
~
“You remember me,” states the Sun, caressing. “You remember how I draw your perspiration. Draw forth those colors dormant inside of you.”
“Perhaps, I prefer the transparency that winter gifts my flesh more.”
“Kunst prosa, you love feeling me excite your melanocytes. The experience of pigment changing hue. The closest you’ll come to the plant’s ecstasy of photosynthesis,” the Star hypnotizes.
Hypnerotomachia renders me suddenly languid.
~
“I sense ice in your veins.”
“No shit. And, when your blood is frozen, winter cannot make you any colder.”
“Let me thaw you.”
“You will never thaw me; you will only make me sweat.”
“I will make you high.”
“But, then you will leave me dry.”
“Drink more water, should that be your concern.”
“Not until you make me,” she teases.
~
She takes off running down the lapping Sound’s shore.
Full exertion increasing her potential dehydration.
Appearing joyous, but truly seeking to the shelter of shadows
Sensing her terror in the face of his brilliance, the Sun says, “I shall not hide today. I am faster. You will never out run my effulgence.”
“I know. But, I want you to make you prove it all over again.”
“Then, it shall help if you keep your skirt hiked up, please.”
WrittenCasey 