Felling

Silken saturated, honey hued
A soaking rain tempered bark
Peeling in plates, in sawtoothed armor
I adorn my body, sweat and lichen, built for war
Green sunlit youth, a weighted scent
Withers, steel to flesh
A rhythm in rush, in crash, and the howling of man
The rope wound about my fist
Felling, and the flight of song in maple keys
Death ascends, culling leaves by their wind-form
There's a smell it brings, an assault on the nature green life Springs:
Pitch flies, plump with waste
Their buzz festering in echo against dank sills and minerals
Humid carcass sugars and oily fibers,
A nest of knotted angular legs, and soiled wings,
Self-righteous poseurs of putrefaction, descendants of the mire

E.A. O'Connell

...

I keep finding pencils within the cracks of sidewalks, weeks of this, on a daily basis, shallow graves where the bodies wait, for my fingers, for the touch of thoughts smudged in graphite, leaving a passing word, in porous concrete, breathless leaves that flee in the breeze, from pain I write, it’s the only way I feel free, where my screams can bleed, beneath childhood chalk outlines, and pink petals of life, the only place I can admit, I’m too much like you, too much for my own good, and fuck it all if I can’t age long enough for Death to ask me to cover a few of His shifts…

Why are you there?, in the stone of a chimney, book-ended by lilacs, and sheer curtains, phantoms haunting Spirit silhouettes, ashes of Winters, ashes of You, and my fugitive youth, I always feared the pitted earth, falling in on itself, a tomb behind the greenhouse, where I’d stand and stare, feeling the breath leave my body, too much absence in that land, soil of solemnity, and the voice of the swing, chain and seat, legs kicking and pumping at my back, I guess I’ll always be a haunted house, ghosts peering out from my eyes, unaware they ever died, aware they’ve secreted immortality…

I’m unlike anything he’s ever known, unlike anything he ever knew could exist, it unnerves and disarms him, holding me to his body, his strength a thing to behold, in the dark, asking me what colors I see, breathless and spent, within an arms reach, and in the human space, within the vertices of cartilage and bone, maps of veins and unfathomed depths, I open him to the ugliness, to the feral beast, and he rests, easy and at peace, and with dawn he takes on the world, for me, pen to paper, to dismantle, to resurrect, to be…

Some people find coins, messages from the other side, masquerading monetarily, some spy feathers and wings that whisper, greetings from the deceased, I find pencils, in cracks of sidewalks, and hope they’ve been able to say all that had needed to be said, even if their last words, take shape in the soles of feet, beneath constellations of stories that remain, light years distance, security, under lock and key…

E.A. O'Connell