Morning Observation: Vulture House

They've come for the Vulture House.  Annihilation atop the hill...where once stood its abandoned neighbor, now bulldozed land...no tree, nor shrub spared by the greed of man.  I just stared at the deep tread marks scarring the earth, and bled inward.  White with forest green trim, a two-story, architectural beauty...reduced to a spacial memory...to thoughts blueprinted within a journal...a feather pressed between the covers.  Paneless windows, where weather worn curtains billowed in the breeze...wrapping spectral bodies in watchful habits...gave light to the vines that spired the walls...flowered the rise of the sun...and storied the vacant years.  They'll callously dismantle the Vulture House...no care or thought to history...no admiration for Nature's reclamation.  I think of the vulture...his perch within a broken double hung window, atop a battered rail...his body wider than the opening...a foreboding silhouette...intimidating, with his head always held high...surveying...acknowledging...finding eyes.  Where will he go?  Upon which land shall his shadow cast?  And the phantoms of the corners and under the stairs...the hallways and the porches...upon what floors or tall grasses will their tales haunt?  Will moonlight still play upon their figures...casting them in sight...giving shade to their dance?  And the ruins of birth and death...the scavenged bones building catacombs...and the honor of survival in spite of man's wants...who will fashion the memorial to such a wonder?  To such a glorious fight?...
Here Lied the Vulture House: Built Upon Man's Fate

E.A. O'Connell

... {Edit}

Our bodies linear, 
limbless and righteous, 
amongst the thorns of infantile black locusts 
Your eyes, 
of mesonoxian dew,
fix, 
as vacant moons
Bloodlet, 
atop the sunset 
Graves of lilacs, 
hatchet dismemberment
Our earthen anguine forms, 
my head upon yours

I still.

The future, 
withers before me
dead on the boughs and vines, 
the fruits of Gods, 
in glutinous rot
We never did sip, 
and I shall never succumb
There is no sate to this thirst
I will hunger and lust, 
always, 
after thee
The exquisite sin, 
of leaf litter, 
hollows, 
and bark,
A beast's den of carnal delights, 
homed within a brutally trespassed rock
Memories to savor, 
bitters and sweat, 
umami-bodied,
how we ripped into each's flesh, 
and scored either's bones
Our cold blood, 
Our venomous love
Our thrive and will, 
shedding, 
undressing, 
every memory of seasonal dormancy 
and self-renewal

I will not leave your side.

I will swallow you whole, 
make mobile my heart, 
chimera our souls
I will keep you, 
memento mori
I will bite, 
I will writhe, 
I will keep wild 
My eternal vow,
never to pale, 
never to shallow 
lest all we've been, 
all we'd ever be, 
shall cease to exist,
herewith,
and further still
We are of matter, 
We are of myth,
Our spiritual fray
My Love, 
Our immortality

Come to me.

Mounted, 
upon the back of Death, 
ride forth, 
bring with you a seed, 
malformed and of consecrated earth
Clasp it within your lips, 
impale it upon your fangs,
then plant it upon my tongue, 
with our final earthly kiss
I'll conceive an afterworld
where we'll confound the very blood of Life, 
each and every terror of man
eclipsing, 
constricting, 
commingling
Our unholy, anomalous forms
My love, 
My will, 
My fight, 
is entirely
Yours

Mash-up of My Writing {Writing Sample Edit}

Asleep.  Wrapped in nosebleed soaked cotton,

her silhouette has been pressed through to the mattress in a carnelian stain.  

She’s the flower preserved between two sheets

in the name of a hunger that cost her the privilege of sound sleep.

In muted colors of night terrors seeping,

her neuro-fluid rushes in a rhythm of rain water flooding a storm drain,

leaving her head absent of equilibrium and near comprehended thoughts falling,

scattering like leaves in the scrape of claws on pavement.  

They flee the impending drowning

that will catch up with them at the cul-de-sac’s bend.

The spectral fingertips quietly spread out upon her,

caking her body in a clay mud,

painting her bare skin in wounds of rough bones, twigs, and stone weapons;

her body the war and the warrior.

Lifting her from the cold slumber, her limbs limp and head hung right,

her length of hair sweeps the cobwebs

and cold breath of the floorboards creaking in the wake of their footless steps.

Lithe are the hands of the dead,

a haunting toil of a surgeon’s precision with a new mother’s delicate touch,

stealing her body away to the pyre of sassafras and orchids

where they lay her upon the vessel of ceremony.

Commencing the sacrificial rite,

their rabid hissing and growling calls forth canine teeth and talons,

tracing the language of their desires into her neck,

painlessly slicing and folding back the flesh of her throat and meat of her tongue. 

Unhinging her jaw, they study scars in her teeth,

all the while seeking the source of her impenetrable silence,

while force feeding her the jackal’s whine and buzzard’s scream.  

She gasps a strangled choke as she is pulled into the sudden reemergence of life,

throwing her body over the edge of the bed,

coughing and spitting the taste of nightmares against the wall,

their long shadows hunching as they back away in a defensive creep to the window.

Turning in warning, they taunt her with the threatening of their return,

as they liquefy, running down the brick and mortar,

mixing with the rain, running towards the sewer grate.

The blood flowing from her head, out her nose, and through her fingers,

stains the memory of the terror to her thighs, breasts, and lips.

From the north corner of her room,

a new moon voice, reminiscent of sub zero wind through frost bitten pines,

chilling her marrow deep.  

“When will you let your soul out to play?”

Her flesh pebbles, her nerves sting, but she doesn’t startle.  

Releasing her hands from a chalice pose beneath her chin,

her blood slips her palms to the sheets beneath her seated form.  

Closing her eyes to regain an equilibrium, she opens them slowly on an inhale.  

Her lips part, ichor-washed teeth barely on display,

exhaling a visible winter’s breath, she expels her silence in a hushed voice.  

“Blood. Stop summoning me.”  

“When will you despair, Small One?"

“Devil’s Hour. False shadow bravado. Blood cease.”

His thickset fingers thrumming the darkness at his side,

as a thundering origins in his chest, soars to his throat;

a guttural growl issuing forth,

indiscernible as to whether it’s an act of warning or amusement.

“Beneath my flesh. Crawling fingertips.”

Weighted steps carry him out of the shadows, stalking the foot of her bed.

A warning.  

His nearly seven foot, beast-like physique,

broad shouldered with a capricorned head,

pale in comparison to the intimidation storming in the impassive abysses he wears as eyes.  

Steadying herself, she rises to her feet on the mattress.  Petite in stature; just five feet in height.

Her bloodied visage meeting him eye-to-eye.  

Without blinking or flinching, she stands her ground, shoulders back and stock-still,

rooting in the knowledge that she is power.  

Her voice building in volume.

“Seizing my breaths. Fracturing my bones. Blood. Cease your hold.”

His massive hand darting out—stopping— just shy of clasping her throat.

An entity in its own right—silence— takes up residency between them,

sizing each up, before clearing a path for revelation.

“You...” 

“...You fear me.”  

“Why else would you come for me through my mind—my blood.”

A hint of a wry smile reaching the left corner of his sadistic mouth.  

“Untouchable.  And so very brave.

I saw a crack in your foundation, Small One,

and I exploited it. I’m in there now.  Indelible.” 

He slowly taps his temple, a mocking wink to ensure the blow to her pride lands.

A smile, equally maniacal, but ever more fierce,

slowly crawling the length of her blood-rouged lips.  

“As shall I, Mon Horreur.”

Without hesitation,

she grabs ahold of his sinewy wrist and forearm with both her small hands

—no force or strain—just a moderate pressure to her clasp. 

Looking him dead in the eye...                    

“Pitch igniting.

A language I keep. Undisturbed.

Summoning. Blood—”

Try as he might—through force, strain, and rage—he’s overpowered and lost, incapable of breaking from her behexing hold.

“—& Fire.”

Her room immediately lit by the distinct smell of primordial hide smoldering and searing with a brand...  

E.A. O'Connell

Aftermath {Marigold}

After the storm, everything was washed in gold…lemon melted into honey…honey bled into marigold…which lent into yellow ochre…culminating in raw umber as the sun vacated the sky…that was, by far, the most enchanting…tree silhouettes, black as pitch, against a raw umber sky…it was as if the world was being coiled in the embrace of a colossal snake…and all I could do was stand beneath the belly of a mythical beast, and allow it to swallow me whole…

Juniper Francis Lee.  Aftermath {Marigold}.  May 2018

Morning Observations: May II

I happened upon a baby bird this morning…fallen, stolen, pushed from the warmth of the nest.  A silent and still, pink gelatinous gobbet, with great bulging eyes, lids still closed.  The wings, they were so intricate, so defined, stiff and tucked into the body…they had never known the stretch, nor the span…never sent for the sun, never returned by the moon.  The insects, certain to arrive, will feed, aiding in breaking down its composition…that tiny bird body, bones like minuscule reeds, whistling near silence…unopened wings like a letter lost…eyes and instincts too new to see…will decompose and realign, homing in the earth, breeding with wind and origin-sowed seeds…building from its ruin, a tall and sturdy thistle… …beguiling purple crowns that will beckon to the goldfinches…forgiving stems upon which they will perch, irresistible seeds upon which they will feast, and soft down upon which they will nest…a cycle of loss and being, of rot and existence, of purpose and creation…

E.A. O'Connell

Spring: Spider

…a green spider…no bigger than a fennel seed, the hue of a fiddlehead…slowly approached…its underworld mirrored in the black glass…I offered my finger, and it gave welcome…atop the crescent moon of my nail, it spun silk…liquid descension, fluid ascension…with the breeze it took to the west…and I watched in awe…a mote of life…free in its will…

E.A. O'Connell

Morning Observations: May

Morning walk…and my thoughts trail in all directions, apparitions revisiting earthen routines…with arms that search the dawning blindness, the energy imprints on the hands and roots in my senses…for the first time this Spring, the air finally carried the scent of sunlight and photosynthesis…my tongue ghosting the impression of green…young leaves horizon-bent in their glories, lush and songful in the breeze…my bare feet soaked in comfort from the warming slate, radiating through nerves, the length of my legs…blood flow and I breathe…walking the garden I find a sprig of the columbine had bent overnight…the slim stem a model of strength, not easily snapped between my fingers…the singular bloom, a bowing symmetry of formidable curves…in the dark hours, a young rose had been devoured…and my mind, enrapt with thoughts of a soft mouth that can endure the spike of thorns…what sounds it must form…

E.A. O'Connell

Spectrum: Yellow/Gold

My day started in yellow…waking to a sunrise that lit the sky in an immortal light…gilding the green…setting white petals aflame… …a solitary rook…claws clicking in a paced step, atop the slate roof…spoke in ripples…a quaking internal monologue…a mourning, a music, a meditation… …daylight notes how the tulips are waning…the cherry blossoms are few…but yellow iris stunned my silence…what wasn’t last evening, was by morning…blooming the hue of a quarter risen moon… …afternoon brought painted ladies alighted atop plush dandelion heads…a Wonderland parallel phased between white light streaming… …My day ended in yellow…a singular goldfinch…harbinger of summer, of sun, of resurrection…charting future titans

E.A. O'Connell

Senses

…I recovered a childhood habit of mine…a prismatic paperweight with singular orange and green bands running through…holding it to my eye in the late afternoon light…the clear view felt like time had been endlessly rewound and replayed…orange pained me with dread of captivity…green spoke a language that made my adrenaline rush and my blood sing…

…in late spring/early summer…I’d collect fallen tulip poplar blooms…running my fingers over and through the petal design…yellow, orange, and green…I’d hold the flower to my eyes…looking skyward under a midday sun…kaleidoscoping the colors…to and through an opaque life…but the essence of the bloom…that gave a new define: wings like fractured, dust-beaten windows knowing the first few raindrops that bullet-hole clarity— a body of shadows with a spindle leg strong hold on dew slick bark— the humid conception & resurrection— of cicada hum…

E.A. O'Connell