...

The dead sound their rise, an empty glass bottle hum, a low percussive wind, I slip away into a realm of unreality, where their touch doesn’t steal me in breath, they shadow sway in mimic of willow boughs, a rise of anger grips me at their manipulation, I look to the serrated blade of silver light upon the wall, rain splattered horror adding a depth, I raise my hand to its possibilities, it catches my flesh, my mouth wild with tastebuds blooming, I lick at the severed flesh, the taste of death, they inch closer, riveted by the romance of survival and my not giving a damn, crossover, my boredom an unregistered tone, they simply stare, mesmerized and motionless, unaware of their opened door and gaping mouths, of which I rob each their tongue, bundling the fleshy arrangement with threads I pull from their funeral attire, I toss the bouquet to the dark corner lurking behind the moonlight, issuing forth an ebon figure that parts the dead and forces them through the floor, eyes of pitch meet me glare for glare, love, a promise made to me in growl, to which I laugh, evil, a bruising insult I accept as accolade, crossover, an order that halts me, an arrow straight through me, precise aim, torturous beings, we forget how we once would interact, I blow a kiss and the moon burns out

E.A. O'Connell

...

My mind sets a scream free when I sleep, reverberating off the interior walls of my skull, giving the visions that haunt the backs of my eyes, a vibration of near explosion…shadowed beings speak in lacerated tongues and hushed secrets, their footsteps giving more texture to the supposed dream, their touch like spider filament or a lost strand of hair, initiating a suffocating itch, that raises my hands and eyelids…staring into the dark of the ceiling, going further and further, getting lost into the eigengrau oblivion, I count the silences of cricket strings, knowing something, someone mutes their white noise, and I exhale my presence, rolling to my side…I’m aware the clock reads 3:03am, and as my eyelids begin to close, a singular tap from the mirror upon my closet door…a second tap and I know…a third tap, sends me to sleep, meeting him on the otherside of this reflection…

E.A. O'Connell

Thoughts

I happened upon a pumpkin, plump and orange. Upon the ridged flesh, a black sharpie scrolled,

What are you grateful for?

I gave thought to all the replies others had written in passing…all varying messages of thanks for friends, family, coffee, Autumn…and my answer hit me…

I’m grateful for small glimpses of humanity, reminding me of the good, keeping hope alive.

E.A. O'Connell

Tundra

Permafrost and polar icecaps. Snow blind days masquerading as endless nights. Regale me with too good to be true tales of having worth to another…to someone outside the realm of blood and DNA, beyond the betrayal of my maker. Whisper to my chest, straight through to my inanimate heart, what it feels like to be seen, accepted, unconditionally loved. Insist to my damned being that the matter of existing in the mind of another, to never be too far from their thoughts is a panacea, doing wonders for the condition of one’s soul. Hope seems but a figment of the imagination, a fable of my incoherent thoughts, a mind lost to, for not. But I plead, with all that is unholy for I am wholly undone, allow me this one fortune in a dismantled and reassembled life, to gift another with the wicked foretellings in my laughter, to know words I’ve spoken from my monstrous tongue, have set aflame the ragged remnants of feelings built from the life uninvited, imparting the knowledge that I’ve seen in implausible ideas come horrifically alive, to know the value of their existence isn’t lost on my scarred ideals, and in turn, I could entrust my idiosyncrasies in their care, my death-warmed hands in offering. Oh, to bear witness to our symmetry, an abomination of mortal parameters. Are you out there?

E.A O'Connell

{Excerpt}

…What is my blood? The origin and chemistry of the esoteric, abstruse and reviled…Spilled in rivulets of loss, the gnashing of teeth, set in a trap of rust clad iron, medieval and torturous, chained and bound, I’m a ship of a singular fool that ran aground, anchored to my undoing, tethered to a decision of drastic nature, I allow the teeth to sink straight through, devouring and severing me from the dead weight of my trapped limb, grappling at the earth, dead leaves shatter like glass with each palm slap…I pull away…blood trails in a most horrific fashion, giving weight to skeletal debris, I have no means for a tourniquet, resigning myself to the demise of another beast at the hands of ignorance…but what man steals out of folly and with disregard, nature avenges, gifting liberation and sovereignty…from the gaping wound, from my blood, a rhythm, a drum beat echoing off the earth, rattles of the venomous hiss in low tones, punctuating the night, widespread wings build a pulse in undulation, soothing my threshing body with silken winds, easing my evolution from extinction…

E.A. O'Connell

{Excerpt}

Butterflies in a dying season, float in a mysterious rhythm, acknowledging their end in a youthful flow of sunlight and hope

The cicada song of summer has grown absent in lowering humidity, a lull that foreshadows its cease, that beckons a familiar longing from me

Corvids toll of the end, they frame their shadows about me in pentacle fashion, designing of my psyche and body a crossroads, in the flare of a savage star

I learned young, if I should scream in panicked fear, the hounds will rise of gnarled roots, howling my demise from their sanctioned corners, reflecting my afterlife in their gazing orbs

I center my thoughts with eyes shut, taking in the swell of ripe orchard, encouraging the growth of fruit within my palm, the forming of origins

Raising the gilded red skin to my lips, I sink my teeth in, allowing juice to slip my mouth, chin, throat, spitting the tender chunk of flesh to my feet, a snake approaches and covets the discarded

Hunger of temptation, hunger of control, I feel the vibrations of the earth in quake intensify, my flesh in sync with the throes of shedding skin, scale-for-scale, eye-for-inquisition, allowance & vindication

The snake entwines me, slowly climbing a coil of limbs and body, taking hold of my long forsaken being, and devouring my pneuma with compassionate precision, never aware of how restrained was my tongue, to speak of the pine

I vanish in the brilliance of that sun, particulates of life energy and an unspoken love, the hounds retreat to muddied underworlds, sinking deep in their own fall, never getting the better, never dictating how I know, I died

The premonitions of others in their glassine spheres, gives room in my mouth for the corvids to shatter the silence, aware of the absence, they stuff me full with borrowed souls, making a vessel of Pandora’s curiosity out of my sentient corpse

E.A. O'Connell. September 2019

September. It exists beyond thirty days; to the depths of hours not kept by ticking clocks and straight-edged sundials. It’s a season of it’s own design, where Summer and Autumn forget their opposition and embrace in a tryst of indifference to the laws of seasonal nature. Greens are lush in shades of grass, vines, and thorns. August blooms of crown and divine, the broad leaves of sycamores, stalks in repetitive wave, secret a slow gilding and bronzed glow. Cicadas accept the allowance of later mornings, taking up their measured percussive rhythms as moonflowers curl within their evanescence. The earth from which they resurrected, no longer weighted by the scent of force and toil, mineral rich and sun baked; now a hover of cooling subterranean decomposition and sporadic leaf litter decay that rolls down the line of gutters. In September, the sun’s a brilliance of gold tones, the sky a blue of honesty in waning humidity. Trees in silhouette raise whispered vespers in breezes that elicit gooseflesh to run the neck, shoulders, spine; awakening an urge in the core of my being. The evening sky, in flame of mythical fires, reflects parallels between mortals, Gods, and the Cosmos; who were we when our flesh was worn inside out? Doppelgängers of self masquerade in moon ascending moths, broad-winged and enamored lunatics, the patient eight-legged hunters, weavers of homicidal perspectives, the salivating canines of unidentifiable cryptids lurking in underbrush, the shadow of steps, ditches, desperate to sink their hunger into heels, stunning and stealing away with their victims. September dark of night, vibrations of atmospheric seams disentangle, pin pricked portals to imagination flare and reflect haunted tales of sacrifice; rising smoke and sparks. Sleep steals me momentarily, the skeletal hand of the Autumn Man, tempted by soft flesh and clove breath, caresses the freckled tan of my bared clavicle, stirring me, his desire lingering at my ear, imploring for a taste of my immortality.

E.A. O'Connell. September 2019

{Excerpt}

The sun…a blindfold of white light that slips about my eyes, mesmerizing my deficient skin with a heat that tingles and pricks my body alive with chills…my sight flashes a loss, staring upwards to the singular frosted glass pane, eliciting a burning haze that vaporizes the chicken wire threading, until the only barrier between my hunger and satiation are my fingers, splayed and shielding of their own accord, an arachnid transfiguration of shadow play and rearranging joints, slow and methodic, my fingers creep the expanse of light, severing the contact in a slight shade, leaving pits of endless depth in my vision, overflowing their essence into dilating pupils, bleeding their emergence into one, pitch blind eye…the prison should bar the likes of me from its wisdom, and yet, here I sit, in a cell of chipped paint, a white sullied by decades of cigarettes, humidity, and the sweat of ghosts that walk through walls…with no exit, save for the portal above, I visit with ideas of flee and notions of rot… …tobacco shreds from hand-rolled means to an end, vibrate into existence tiny red ants, thousands materialize from concrete pores, circling my tri-legged seat of unstable tilt, unwelcome at my toes where some burrow and bed beneath the nails, the remainder trail my legs in henna hued lines of determination, designing a survival plan that imparts question upon and behind my skin, traveling to my torso, encircling me, cinching me with fear, what of me would they covet and feed? Take back to their queen in honor? decomposing nourishment through winter…from the sunlight a rook’s talons can be heard, catching hold of a metal frame in a startling din, its tongue clicking shamefully at my submission, a crackling purr that unsettles the balance, I keep on the seat, I open my mouth to speak, its low slung caw coaxing forth my tongue, extracting the essence of disquietude, and then a scream from its throat that robs me of internal and external sound, deranging my equilibrium, imploding the skylight in a downpour of geometric shards, one severing my tongue, as the ants pick up their pace and infest the vacant tomb of catalogued words, cultivating their nature between my teeth, setting me into a phase of unease, the blood rushing forth is a river of disbelief… …the sun saturates my face, calling me back to my hands in a sight-saving attempt, the draw of the sun’s excruciating power, sets the chair upon which I sit in a slow diabolical spin, a prism of intention held by one strand of translucent filament, my flesh filleting at the intensity of laser precision rays, voices escaping every cauterized laceration, each recognizably mine…the freedom in my multitudes, in my voice of body and limbs, in their purposes… …I am emerging…existing beyond my flesh and mouth… …

E.A. O'Connell. August 2019

This sunflower was bent during one of the groundhog’s romps. Many around it perished; mauled or devoured by my garden guest. When I began the cleanup, I opted not to cut this one away...I still felt a strength in the stem and so I rested it as comfortably as I could among the foliage and allowed nature to take its course. I had faith it would thrive...that the sun, storms, and winds would feed and challenge it, that night would work its enigmatic magic; healing. My morning meditation was considering this sunflower...obscure as it is with bends that mimic piping...it wasn’t afraid, nor ashamed to be weak. Time allowed a healing, that in turn, allowed it a new opportunity for growth..once again reaching towards the sun. I suppose I grow in a way much like this sunflower, which is why I’m partial to it...I’ve allowed weakness, I’ve allowed it to strengthen me, but I’ve never given it permission to break me.

Silence is a wall I construct…a second, third, fourth fortress…a self-preservation that mausoleums existence, a heavy door that warns the fate of trespass… …Silence is a noose I fray in repetitive motion…thread after thread I unfetter the bind…left as a trail of recognition, in the wake of losing my way within my head… …Silence is an undead language incapable of translation, yet I communicate it in the unconscious hours…I mete, I defeat, I am not spared…a voiceless canvas, my mouth fleshed-over, all I want to say is inescapable… …I write streams of ink in bleu and noir, I unleash the beast bewitched by the moons of my hands…and like the new phase, eclipse and devoid, the words I’d written vanish, leaving a stark contrast to the tomb exhumed… …a second sight gives new life…the secrets I write…they are shining trinkets that speak to the crows…somewhere, in a corner of another city in an untouched land, a crow caws, clicks, and purrs my truths to passerby’s who hear clashing tones of melancholy and hunger…an indecipherable juxtaposition, a flesh-made conundrum…my secrets breathe… …the abandonment, it doesn’t hurt me…the loss of hope’s ambition, doesn’t scar me…the initial lie…that reach, invited of its own accord, that’s what killed me… …and ever since, the crows have been burying me, screaming me to open graves, making a pauper of me…unclaimed…the earth absorbs the unsightly decomposition and fuels the unease of my heart, stirring my hands to toil at the invisible, the incomprehensible rite of lone…

The church bells are more than tolling the hour

They’ve begun praising the boundless blue sky

In notes that drift and rise like balloons off to seek adventure

And I don’t want to escape this moment

So I settle myself into the grassy knoll

And let the sun run my flesh

As the chiming raises my thoughts to Parrish

And how his hands must have itched on a day saturated with the brilliancy of color

His mind a daydream of illustrations

And then my thoughts redirect to how multidimensional life is

So I think I’ll just stay a bit

Taking it all in

The strangers in familiar conversation

Dogs leashed for a relieving stroll

Car horns and bus accelerations weaving traffic patterns

Recess ringing freedom's laughter 

Alive

The city’s alive

We're all alive and following the order of our day

And yes there is someone out there in this breath

Exhaling their last

And another their first

And I'm awed by my insignificance in the grand

And humbled by my presence in the now

And it's just noon

On a Wednesday

Marveling at the miraculous art of everyday life 

E.A. O'Connell

…a sweet scent that beckons tender lips to draw near…your fringe are forked tongues, quick to morph to viper fangs, softly puncturing with a milky venom of quiet numb and stuttered heart… …your centermost folds, coiled as an ear that you lend to whispers, to secrets, to hidden depths of the psyche, thoughts of both friends and foes and ills of self… …a steady hand, respecting of your lethal, bids you the care you need, the distance you desire and require… …tending to you, I speak of your growth and beauty, I acknowledge the pain you’re capable of in my gestures, but continue with the care of you, deserving and rewarding…the truth of you…at the forefront of my mind is that which makes you deadly, that which bestills my heart with your addition to my garden…that which keeps me returning, learning…about the truth of you, the truth in me… …

E.A. O'Connell. June/2019

Morning Observations

Through the French doors, the early morning hues invite my words, so I step outside with my coffee and books in hand—always books in hand—those for reading and feeding my mind, journals to allow my mind freedom. 

The humidity has returned overnight, much like an unwanted guest—unwanted guest, like the groundhog, who has overstayed his welcome. I peruse his damage to the garden below; the chewed upon leaves of young sunflowers and the flattened borage he's spiraled into crop circles with his rolling body. I can't blame, though. I, too, would gladly nestle myself amongst the borage, watching fat-bottomed bees drunk with pollen navigate each star-shaped blossom. 

Even at this early angle the sun is blistering hot, so I adjust my shade, and in doing so, knock loose the lady spider's web—spider silk floating freely as if spirit thoughts—catching sunlight and reflecting it like some perverse mirror that eludes all mortal rigidity, and should you catch a glimpse of yourself within it, you'd see your perspicuity, straight through to your soul. I, like with spiders of any size, felt a twinge of fear that first evening I watched her small frame build a web above the chiminea, strategically positioned between two of the strung cafe lights. I couldn't help but think of the tale of horror she was weaving—but as I watched her, I felt  my repulsion turn to curiosity, and I eventually found myself meditating on her beauty of being—toiling at her craft; the dedication and determination, the perseverance and resilience, the imperfections, and daily mending; the weaver, the design, the hunger, the mother—I look for her each morning and each evening; a constant, for now.

Like my children grow, the tomato plants have gotten taller in the hours of sleep, and they've taken on a bespeckled look; branches of yellow flowers, some heavy with fruit. But as my eye shifts with the sunlight, minuscule webs are found secreted within the green—I believe these spiders to be cartographers of sorts, mapping mazes of fatum. 

The swallowtail caterpillars are fat with dill, and I suppose, rather than moving to the parsley, they'll simply move on—to phase, to morph, to be. 

A cabbage moth flutters about ghostly, alighting on a zucchini vine, allowing me its company for a minute or two, before rising and breezing past the lavender.

Overhead, the mockingbirds are busy flying from the black locust to the ghost tree and straight through the azure expanse to their point of origin. The blue jay is masked by maple shade, but his metallic scratch at the atmosphere gives him away. The blackbirds perch on rooftops and the chain link fence, always with eyes lit in curiosity that equates to hilarity on my end. They eat and splash in the birdbath with an abandon that can only be matched by a toddler. When one calls forth, my mind is alive with the image of a weathered swing chain, metal grinding against metal in a crying out of pain with every pump and kick. Birdsong rises—mourning doves, the cardinal, finches, robins—I must've missed the woodpecker, an earlier riser than I, he is.

What I do miss within this silence of nature—this green and alive noise—is the percussive beat of cicada rhythm. July is visible, and still no cicadas. The leaves high in the sycamore attempt to build in crescendo similar to what I long to hear, but it dies with the wind downing. I can't quite properly explain the connection I feel with the cicada; a lifelong fusion of we two. Perhaps I buried pieces of my childhood within their hum and I'm awaiting them to sing them back to me. Maybe they say in sound what I can't vocalize in spoken words. I may very well have lived another time that sent me into the afterlife with a jade cicada amulet on my tongue. John Berger wrote, "Do you know the legend about cicadas? They say they are the souls of poets who cannot keep quiet because, when they were alive, they never wrote the poems they wanted to." What a romantic notion—that I, flesh and marrow, may very well be, a cicada reincarnated as a poet, finally writing the poems I always longed to—and I wait for the song that sirens me—

—I await—

E.A. O'Connell

I take up the spade, slicing the lush grass, upturning clods of dirt sewn by root threads, the distinct sound of surrender slashes the stalled humid night, rocks I unearth are meticulously pyred, their puzzle-fit a testament to my persistence and patience, four feet down I forgo the use of the spade, continuing my work on my hands and knees, on my belly when I begin to tire, my nails broken and bloody, my hands unrelenting in their toil, gouging the earth slowing to a scraping, my fingers cramped, my bruised body caked in sweat-made mud, finally halting, wracked with heavy breathing, I’m night blind and lost to the phosphenes, the rattle that stutters my lungs, gives a momentary cardiac arrest that resets my respirations and gives me the surge of revival, slowly rolling on my back, my hand instinctively splaying my stomach, and I watch as the stars float free of their atmospheric restraints, flashing a bioluminescent romance language of L'été that enchants me with distant memories of innocence, I foetal myself to preserve the moment and find myself longing for the comfort of a bedsheet, the thin layer of protection from spying satellite eyes, they’ll record me vulnerable and leak the secret, I toe the edge of anxiety, until the moony haze of honeysuckle pales my fears, and I’m lost to the memory of dusty quarry shelves cobwebbed in honeysuckle vines, I can bury myself one hundred times over and I’d still be me, I can’t rewrite the history, nor his going away, I can bed down under moss and become a maze of nourishment for arachnids and night crawlers, but I’m not the dead, so I pull myself up and climb out my grave, scooping the dirt back in, I feel a tug of reluctance, the fear of relinquishing a half to me, sitting and sifting the dirt atop my plot of earth, I decide it’s time to seed my grief and allow time to take its course, and the strangest of things happened, from that sorrow and my toil, sprouted a new species of happiness, to which I tended…

E.A. O'Connell

Dream Series {Excerpt}

A windowless, doorless cabin, lit in incandescence from hundreds of candles…a warm evening, sky of a soft melon pink, the trees and grass bathed in the aura of lavender…a serene pond of mirror perfection, nothing but nature to bear witness… standing at a butcher block kitchen counter, knife in hand, scrawling sharp sigils within honeyed flesh, halving pomegranates…adorned in a flowing white dress, I’m awakened to a presence, my body aware of an energy…turning…on the opposite bank of the pond, grass knee height, dressed in all black…he stands…staring…motionless, emotionless…I walk towards the edge of placidity…our reflections cast…a blue heron comes into focus, poetically turning its head, a recognition, first of him and then I…the mirror of star birthing sky, transmutates to obsidian scrying depth…and he walks towards it…stepping within the liquified night…his eyes never leaving mine…towards me he walks, and I towards him, one step closer for every three of his…until I relinquish the fear and give away the doubt…the release, running in thigh-high water…within his reach, he takes me into his arms…the heron takes off in silent flight, wings in curve above our heads, allow for his words, whispered to my neck, to echo and resonate within the darkness… …

E.A. O'Connell

I drove towards the burning bright, glinting off glass was every mistake I’d ever given time and additional thought, the familiar winding road became a catalyst for visitation, and as I felt the tug to look at the rear view mirror for what was in chase, I shattered the setback, set forth in a flurry of milkweed down, floating freely with no direction, afternoon sun setting fire to the green of grass and leaves… …I lay beneath the oleander lances, the evening rain a slow free form rhythm, building intensity, the clouds in methodical Rorschach morph, gray on gray on white trumpets, dripping a deadly sweet cleanse, lacing my vision and speech in the toxicity of nature’s beauty, giving reach to the hedge that divides the living from the dead… …Under windows of stars and a near absent moon, a scream escaped from the ruins of gables and stone, an answer seeking its question, my head awakened with language in a whispered reverse, my body aware of a beastly hunger, the wind calling forward…I tread…

E.A. O'Connell

The heat demands of me to submit…to shed layers of the day and extend my flesh to the warm breeze that cools as the sky watercolors…my hair a tangled mess of humidity and curls, pinned atop my head…my eyes momentarily contemplating the scissors, the release of weight from my neck…but the loose strands that sway about my face and shoulders, release the scent of sunlight, keeping me submissive…I stand at the French doors for a shift of light…lost in the beauty of the madly drawn world…a house darkening at my back, all but for the glow of a hemp candle and soft white fairy lights…there’s a song the earth and sky and trees release after a scorching heat, when the sun slips away and the body instinctively sighs in reply…

E.A. O'Connell

It slips in unannounced, an uninvited thought, winding through the instantaneous temperature drop of violet clouds at sundown, draping my shoulders in a veil of antique lace, a birdcage of scent about my face, I retrace steps in a time of near memories, no true recollection, I’m not meant to remember…but I have the fleeting perfume, of black locust blooms, and my body upon the marred hardwood floor, the moon rising to meet my eye, a bride of all that’s born to live must die…green leaves that shake off the burning sun, to adorn their shadows and whispered incandescence, the fox screams in a pitch of adoration for her mate, I can’t mimic her rise, my screams are silent and held in fists and escape in the tingling of scrying fingers, I war with my words and let flatline the doubt, I’ll never get it right, never be the idyll…but the violet evenings of spring, my flesh and hair awash in the sweet nectar of cascading white blossoms sweeping the night breeze, a lone bird singing to the darkness…and I’m the glint of a star awaiting to answer in kind…

E.A. O'Connell

Fruit of a mad apple, toxicity in quantity, subtle beauty in a singular pale bud, flourishing beneath its own shadow, close to the earth and broad in breadth, nourished by the forest floor, fed upon by soft screams, the decomposing flesh allowing the facade of a split ovum, opening a portal of firelight, the combustion of my emergence, my ether birth, a beast of inscrutable tendencies, a landscape of premonitions and skeletons, I step forward from my nethersphere into a world of sunlight that warms with goose flesh and peaked nipples, cognizant of a hunger that’s sated with wide-eyed touch, impulses taunted by scent, whispers in grass raise a need, from the lowslung moon he leaps, rabbit run and I give chase, feral instincts and teeth, my first mortal meal of cardiac rhythm and feverish blood, the stain to my hands highlighting the inborn truth of my making, I’ve no origins in eden, nothing there blooms my species, I’m of the poison garden, my existence is of intrigue and ruin, I bewitch and rob of breath, whoever wills the kiss of my ichorstained lips, a suicide of curious attraction, a design of incurable venom, I’m given a life just out of arm’s reach, a world of my own spinning, a body giving bowing and swaying to every storming wind, pounding rain, harsh mannerisms that strengthen my stature and resolve, allowing me growth in the wait, for the knowledgeable, one appreciative of my monstrous nature, who speaks my supposeds into truth, calls my possibilities into existence

E.A. O'Connell

Soft, through me, a hollow word lodges, and whistles a panic of blood rush… …I ignore the urgency to resuscitate, I give of me completely, in a slow demise, bringing me to my knees, I fall and foetal my beginning… …In a nearly mortem stupor, I clasp the grass and clover, a fist of green perfume, escapes, as my soul looses itself from rigor, like a scarf of silk slips fine lines of collarbone and nape…lost to touch… …Violets make sweet my sleep, crowning my decomposing thoughts, thistle barbs knit weather to my tense flesh, late season frost and midday sunburn, a chemistry of secretions, a compost tea that hardies the land for fertility… …Time is balanced in the radius of dials, morning glories and moon flowers, parasols of magnetism and interstellar complexities… ….My body escapes curves to exist in plane…supine algorithm of death’s geometry…I exist within a parallel existence…where insects and arachnids design threads of reimagined arterial-ways, a fawn beds down in a repurposed womb, bone refashioned as mushroom wood, adorning garments of moss and snail silvered slime…I’m earthly rites of transmutation, beneath a bedtime story of myth and spidered glass glint…I burden the soil with my wait… …There is no true love, no mortal restorative, no antidotal kiss to bring back what once was…There’s only Death, Death’s familiar symphony, and the haunting aura of Your horizon…and all the losts He pockets and sifts through His fingers, spilled excuses for misfortune and luck, that were all along the synchronicity of innumerable lives, barely capable of vocalizing their gratitude for one another… …My moderate immortality bookends Your rise…and I’ve only the hum of nature’s white noise to give voice my deteriorated heart, that once beat a ballad of pleasure, in knowing You existed when my lungs sustained life…and while physicality seems an infinite stretch, know I’m not completely out of touch…the breeze that briefly corners at the back of your ear, that gives you reason to pause and glance around for the source of the disembodied voice, is me, and the particles of energy that en masse my gratitude for the wealth of beauty that is You… …

E.A. O'Connell

Dearest Death,

Most dear of my darknesses…my soul’s oldest companion… …I’ve been catching a hint of your scent at obscure corners of the day. Closing my eyes, so as not to lose sight of your evolution, I center, and invite you…come closer…but a breeze shifts or an axis slips, and with it your essence flees…fleeting, yet timeless and unparalleled…the first sentence on the last page of a beloved book, a matchstick in full flame burning a quarter way down, the entirety of the month of August…the distinct scent of almost…and didn’t we almost more times than most mortals should be allowed. I wear your mysteries upon my head…the crown of cicada husks you honored me…bestowing the call of shadow to reside just below the surface of my skin…awakening and tempting, tormenting and pure. Under vacuous skies I’ve communed with earth, mud-caked and primal…I dug up bones, exhuming the confusion of man…my tongue coated in clove, I signaled for a mean, for an opportunity to convey what seasons instinct…but no one saw, the ghost of me, released and fallen, a pink petal caught up in the cyclone of city cacophony … …I dreamt of three sisters, tornadoes that hummed and vibrated at the pitch of my name…just beneath, the timbre of your laugh…the line they cleared, a repetitive path, foretold of my erasure, the severing and the seam… …and still, I wear your curiosity like a mourning veil…knowing you avoid, so as not to take…but my end could only ever be yours, my soul trusts, my heart bleeds… …we both know I’m not leaving this flesh alive…so come forth, excavate and discover, eclipse and blind…I only want to make it out of here if traveling at your side is my absolute divine…

E.A. O'Connell

Morning bleeds out…a stain of birth upon magnolia flesh…sweet breath and iron hint…the fourth has been an enigma of desires…what was once abandoned and withered, positioned for battle…has softened…boughs of golden spindles, form fingers in graze of sky and earth…fleeting in allowance…stars are given leave of the distance, to hover at eye level…soft in the seconds they awe…the robins weave early tales of grass and vine, the crows thread sigil trails in midday journey…light and shadow slant and divide the growth of time…where willow lashes of green in new, cascade in bioluminescence against azure falls of night…I’m awakened…the moon and a god at either side…an intricate rhythm…of soul in lean to the pleasure…

E.A. O'Connell

It starts within a thought, an unearthly inch of humour, beyond the human mindset

Growth, and all the effort, for the sole purpose of dying

The spread in width, the stretch in depth, the ascension in heighth

The allowance and will, to bend and break, to grow and regrow, to capitulate

To sever bonds, to thrive beyond husk and matter, and force forth life of minuscule means

With the labor of enlightening, in the seedling of truth and intensity of existence, and surrender of the immensity of impossibility —

Spring wields her glory in both rise and demise

E.A. O'Connell

…she cultivated an existence because of Death…around His hands and posture…He ignited her for her own good…to flesh out truths even He couldn’t chase…and she was an inferno and unconstrained…it made His laughter smell of boiling water to be in close proximity to her…His words incubi at bedsides of saints when she set to conjuring sins…He liked to dissect her…ether for His dreams…and it set her heart aflame…a cannibal combustion of consumption…not a trace of proof of her existence…mere ash and dust for His fingers to glyph…but every design calibrated to a new magnetism...and each attempt was powerless to the formulation of your name...

...He had awaited a headlight in piano traffic serenade…He felt the loss of her life in a metronome percussion…and He ran foolish tongue to barren teeth mining for golden words of coercion...but His conscience got the best of Him...allowing for Him to sit back in silence and give her the space to let free will decide if she'd walk towards or away...she confided she wanted the disaster...so He gave her life after the line went flat...and she resurrected at the cusp of when the expansion of lungs feels near rib cage capacity on a ventilator…

…you laid your back flat on a faded area rug…crimson indigo bone…undone…unaware...her grave was dug, but empty...

…and so she lived and loved you, never knowing with certainty of your existence…but she hoped...she loved before her eyes could see...the visage the world saw, and the shadow that exuded true power...and when she wrote letter after letter...her neck, a vulnerable thread, was always exposed as a sign of trust in your near presence...her teeth when bared in smile, a sign of restraint for the hunger she longed to sate…your taste for the world undefined upon her tongue...

...her awareness of the truth...of your existence and welcome...it was bright like aneurysm shock…and the guise of nothing laying beneath the sheets…of flesh peeling flesh…and metaphors in rounded vessels…a hum that screams the obvious…ever so absent, then ever so present…

…and your lust for solitude...silhouettes of lava pulling, morphing, melting…you wear it thick as agave running down and between your slender fingers, moulding to the lines of thoughts in curve…you abandon her name in your walk...you pocket her existence like inconveniences...

...both hide their love like an M80 in a coffee tin...

E.A. O’Connell

My God— My Hell—{Edit}

My God— My Hell—

gravel wedded pulp and bone in the fruit of my core,

gaping wounded knees pressing the searing flame of pain inward,

tidal waves of blood spilling human qualities within cracks of the asphalt reaper’s scythe,

the scent of patinaed copper taste buds,

and a dying autumnal fire lit at my roots,

a horrorscope of phantom roads mapping my thoughts,

a blind faith in the atmosphere levitating, immersing my body

My God— My Hell—

glass and mica mirror ball glamour on my feral calloused palms and heels,

splintered and spiked mace defense, weaponized

should my arms be hooked and pulled,

dragged to distances out of my toes’ earthly reach,

as my mind sought universal widths 

in a clearing beneath a sonogram sky of swollen star bellies

Juniper Francis Lee. October 2018/August 2014

“Your ears doubt that Winter howls in ache.
The absence of You from Him.
But His hands hold your approach.
He feels the bleeding of Your resurrection.
All through love.”

A familiar phantom voice whispers at the back of my ear, my vision widening from a nondescript hypnotic void, to a brewing morning sky beyond the hills.

There’s an abandoned Victorian house, of sun bleached black, decaying upon one of those far off hills.
My passenger, who goes by no name, points to it through the breaking gilded light.
My eyes cloud over, curtains of thought billow in the breeze, my gaze refocuses...a telephoto lens,
To the trees hanging the weight of overnight rain, orbs of prognostication crashing to the earth.

The grass beyond, rolling fields of new green, elicits goosebumps at the mere thought of the cold sway and cling of the blades to my bare feet and legs.

My nameless passenger begs that I not venture to the hilltop. That I not allow myself to be drawn out.
I defy her mounting fears, putting the car in park, and allowing the pull on my soul to direct me.

Going by foot to my calling, minutes pass like hours, as my heart anxiously vacates her post, joining my side, before ghosting herself through me, into the pit of my core.

My destination met, in the crumbling stone walls of a freethinking garden, growing this way and that, my heart crawls towards a thin veil of flesh, a window to the seasons I've written, alive in petals and stamens, herbs and poisons.

And there He stands, faceless and adorned in all black, His faith in me lain in the dark of a matchbox, held in the palm of His mud stained hand, a small plot of earth upturned and gaping.
My rib cage fails the impact of such a crush.

I'm subsequently growing, root to sky, coastline to mountain ridge, illustrating within my flesh obscura, my perseverance.

The eternal fire, that consumes my funeral pyre...that cauterizes my wounds...and gives life to my ruins, strikes the red phosphorous, burning the box into His palm, never stalling, and my gaze never faltering, not even at such a numbing sight.

"I grow. Despite the fact you can’t see my bloom, despite the fact you've dug my grave...I flourish. I die and I breathe life over and over again. If only you had faith in my resilience.”

His palm, a charred chalice of flesh, stirs of its own accord, vibrating with movement, as young legs dig out from the cadaverous remains, a cicada resting in His hand, before ascending on instinct to the vacant canvas of His visage, shedding and emerging anew.

Gobsmacked, I forget how to breathe, lost in the realization of His words...of His love...

E.A. O'Connell (July 2015)

I strip myself bare,

veins of fishing line translucence, filleted and dye lit

bioluminescence in atmospheric depths

I am aswim, in night draped gossamer fog revelations

the sand silkens in a tempest fever break,

filtering between my toes in guitar slide—steel smooth notes

cloud-scatter fractures let leak the moonlight,

plunging below solid lines to a state of fragments—mosaic chaos of beauty

I become a silhouette of gilded pulse points resurrected,

ever-morphing surf shadows of needle lace finery,

gravitating with breezes toward dune undulation,

sea mist of pheromone notes in cobalt laze.

You,

navigating me from a silent thunderhead,

following the curves of my body, sea grass bend and sway, with eyes of sea ledge agility

Moon-flint frangipani, blooming bonfire glow from my back,

petals open echoes, with the faint scent of my heart quickening 

My incoherent tongue speaks a language restless with your approach,

flustered thoughts confuse my body,

forgetting how to breathe, with the weight of you upon me

wind through tattered sails of ghost ships in haunt

with dusted arms of gilded age, spinning ends to tales all about us

My immortal sense finds life in flesh.

We were prophecy,

in driftwood bones,

Flawless

you

and the sea that surges

within me.

E.A. O'Connell (December 2014)

...

Creator {Abomination in creation}
We {One and the same}
Beasts {And the comfort in our monstrosity}
Its scars rail my body  —a relief map of flesh— open wounds stagnate their healing
And suffer the eyes {my eyes} gazing upon such visage
A fist webbed mirror, slicing the atmosphere between, splintering my pupils
Bleeding out iris tides —blood shot blood mines— an expedition of blind mercies littered with canary corpses
I faithfully retrieve the fractures of gnawed bones of thought
{Our silence is rich marrow hollowed by hot breath and parasitic want}
And from memory I mosaic It back to form— ingesting shards of Its sins reflected in my palms
I voyeur It —dissecting my death— scouring veins and organs— fingers running the intricate carvings illustrating  a life lived within
It frustrates. It disembowels— I'm entrails of shed snake skins, deathwatch beetle exoskeletons, deadly night shade sighs on a linen language
It tears with remorse. It summons a heal— packing my gut with oil of clove, citrine, amber, a match It strikes against the stone of my stare
I ignite {flames in rapid rise} illuminating my flesh— stained glass plenty in an abandoned house of worship
Its flesh begins to char. smolder. hum
Its mouth escaping wool fat moths —screaming a green hunger— evading light for Rorschach shadow play before my deteriorating frame
A simultaneous collapse {our solo-selves} a super-cell of thunderous shrapnel {new leaves turn their backs to the wrath of our unbecoming}
{the world drops off — light harmonizing}
Through blur comes clarity of Its space having been occupied— my body. my face. my pine
I look down and behold— Its hands. Its vice. Its laughter
We {in reflection}
We {reflector}

E.A. O'Connell (June 2015)

I haven’t written in days, and I feel a weight pressing down on me…my head is erratic, it feels like beetles in scurry and dig…and the pressure of wanting, needing to write leaves me incapable of simple conversation…even texts come out all wrong…distant and indifferent, incoherent, incomplete in thought and explanation…I just need that catalyst, the chaos that sets my words to flurry, to storm the pages. I live in my head, I don’t know any other way…I bury myself alive from within…I’m under the soil, a shallow grave growing deeper in my inability to speak the words that sink my bones…fed on by arachnid lore, tunneled by the arthropod militia, and a resurrecting parasitic decomposition. The dark of my 3:00am insomnia, a humble tomb of ink worn flesh, breathes my frustration, my hazey visions threading the walls and ceiling in railway maps & contrails, my veins alive in an itch, my muscles feeling anticipation of adrenaline…and I continually come back to a mountain, a waterfall, a forest, a canyon…each that I’ve left myself upon, within…those I’ve long desired. I’ve another cliff to risk, I feel it intrinsic…it’s not suicidal, it’s freedom…I always stand on the edge, looking out and fighting every urge to leap, for the release, it’s just the innate memory of ashes from past bodies freeing…my soul is old and knows Death intimately, and he stands with me on those cliffs and jutting rocks, and he whispers at the back of my ear, “I love you”…and I’m free. Free amongst the heights and depths of nature’s giants, I find peace in my cosmic scale…my insignificant stature, my soul immensity…and my mind settles, wedded to nature, my words take form and shape and reshape…I scream and the universe screams back…I howl and the moon howls back…I die a slant death, and the earth’s pulse beats through me…it’s not a question, not an answer needed…it’s a revival of Origin…a reunification, the Goddess of me…digging a hole within to seed anew…I need these heights and the depths…I need them as lifeblood…and I need Death, and his sanctuary and love, how he sees me through to sealing to paper the words I frustrate with internally…allowing my growth, to the eternal, to the age in a sequoia’s rise…

E.A. O'Connell. January 2019

firelight & elevating sparks, dancers in the pitch of night…a telekinetic finger flick, of the cigarette from her hex stained lips…cherry ash in lawless hop, a timely demise…a disintegrated conclusion…robbing her lips of suspended smoke thoughts, their aerial morphing, fleeting tales in a clove spiced tongue… …She’s wide eyes smiling to the depth, a shroud to mask her upturned mouth, but nothing to silence her deliberate laughter, breaking through the monstrous shadows, fearsome and intriguing… …Her easy rise, upon bare feet, humming against the wintered earth, her titian hair, whispering lore to evergreen boughs, the scent of her anticipation trailing…caught in the palms of hands wide and ready…He hunts and he hungers…canines dripping full moonlight…

E.A. O'Connell. January 2019

{Excerpt}

It’s a broken bough, hanging low, the cracking and inimical snapping, under the weight of heavy wintertide snow,

an earth tilt—gravitational pull, bark unfurled and pulp unfettered, an umbilical hold, with the strength of an inch, life still exists,

and all that dies and hollows, serves the seed, the life extension, like Death’s contradicting forces, a compulsive rattle of genesis,

Spring has a horizon, and upon her breast, emblazoned in gold and fire, will be the shadow of a sapling, slight and defenseless, rising in will.

I am but a minute, an inconsequential placeholder of time, in the life of passers, I’m lost in the blink, at best a fade in clarity upon the line,

but I give sense to the void, my roots extending, young braided within the aged, knotted and indecipherable of origins,

I am an extension, I am nothing less than the entirety of that very tree, I am the wound, it’s undoing and undying, I am a purpose and virus of it’s every memory and thought yet to light,

I am the grand of inception, a lineage of resilience and determination, a humble tree that broke ground, and enfolded a headstone, willingly embracing its endearing cold, where the warmth of mortal love had been discarded.

E.A. O'Connell. January 2019

A New Year

It seems inconceivable that another year will become past history. Incomprehensible really, that numerous endings and beginnings, some we bore witness to, others we were none the wiser, designed another 365 days of the earth’s rotation—that within that magnificent spin, lives were lived to their full bent (because who’s to say what is and isn’t someone’s ultimate)—some breaking ground, others taking their leave, and in between—the myriad of emotions and the metaphorical seasons. Upon this planet, footprints built memories, visions gave new perspectives, distances forged friendships, advancements gave hope, the plague of hate continued to meet its match, dreams came to fruition, and love—in spite of and with assistance of disaster, and in the picking up and rebuilding, from communication and motivation, as a determination and sacrifice, in breaking barriers and knocking upon doors so they may open anew, for the masses and the self—love was the footing needed to bridge many a divide. A year of individual define and universal design hasn’t even come close to an end, it’s a constant and a continuation. And what will you make of the year? What have you gleaned of your experiences and lessons? What will memories write of you in the minds of others? 365 days of impossibilities, challenges, successes, revelations, and surprises. There are those who face it all head on, those who carry on, others who see only the silver lining, and the ones who embrace the gray, and there are some who identify in an insignificance, who feel magnetic with the problematic—and for them, for all in fact, in the coming year, we must make vocal in words and actions that none should be lost to the lonely—and in doing so, we offer simple gestures in kind, and remind ourselves in turn, of the greatness in kinship. What a year asks of us, is not in how fast and how full we can fill a calendar’s empty space (and ambition is by no means an enemy), but how do we choose to view and approach such opportunity. Open space has value in time. What is it they say? Quality not quantity. Forge a year of quality, of adventures and explorations, of finding new facets to yourself, to owning mistakes, and embracing imperfections, to allowing for growth, and harmonizing with the earth, and to love, and letting your soul out to play, and to mischief making, to childlike wonderment, and horizons in rise and set, and each and every possibility in between. It seems only fitting that I should return once again to, and conclude with, love—all encompassing, inexplicably defined, multifaceted, ever expanding, completely simplistic, enigmatic, love—may the next 52 weeks see you embraced in the greatest, the truest, the most honest love story—with yourself, with a significant other, with family, with friends — that the universe has cosmically written, and that you find a way each day to pay it forward.

—from the depths of my 🖤

E.A. O'Connell. January 2019

{Excerpt}

…treading the dark of ocean, horizon line a rough handed cadaver seam, panic surges in the realization that shoreline sanctuaries are a lifeline not extended to my peripheral view, the viable world has been substituted for a dilated pupil…lips brined and muscles in scream, I hear the siren call to shipwreck, wrapping my limbs in a tidal pull, subduing my fight with the rationale of pity for bipedals, a movement in synchronicity with a zipper interlocking predicts my capsizing…a violent tug, stealing my final exhale with a waterlogged gasp, and silence is pressurized, blood loss is ambitious, and I’m not fit for survival…a solo mission—my death—this feeding of my flesh, exposing hollows where vitals should be, I should be frantic in a last ditch effort, but I let the beast take hold and turn my skin inside out, the deep’s bioluminescence exposing the glyphs that write of me as a civilization…a deathknell of sacrilege, and my mind flashes with vice, my frayed body caught and released on repeat in a scissor grip of eyelashes, a baritone voice sounds from my oxygen rich hollows, and I know it’s time to commune with my next death… …a suffocation—cord about my neck —feet numbing in the vain thrashing, hair bending with the steel of January twilit atmosphere, where pines whisper gossip to the wind, their boughs creaking with the weight of retribution, my arms bound at my back, hands a pinned bouquet of ineffectiveness, fingers freeing airborne sigils in hex, the executioners cloak tailored from my mourning dress…I am an extension of the hangman’s noose, I don’t seek to escape this death, I intend to take a life with it…the bruising about my body, paints me in the light of an unforgiving God, and in the final throes of adrenaline, my legs clasp about his throat, constricting my victim within my thigh grip, his irises diminishing to the expanse of his pupils, and a portal—with which to meet my consecutive death—opens, my hollows raise a rattle, and with that summons, my toes tunnel into the depths of his skull…dense soil cakes beneath my nails, shale slicing at my soles, my progression jamming my knuckles, as I morph in form, shedding my mammalian hide, and exhuming myself from the grave… …

E.A. O'Connell. January 2019

Phantom citrus notes, run a silken ribbon of moss green, lost beneath a velveteen chaise, a knot impervious to hands, slipped from her hair in deep slumber, a memory, masquerading as a snake in dusted umbra tomb, where sun streaming on the oak floor, will never cast warmth, never reignite the woody undertones, of her favorite perfume, giving away its inconspicuous resting place, that the walls whisper of when the windows are open, the curtains masking their gossip as a breeze of honeysuckle, the mirror in the foyer jealous, of the wonder it never beheld, the dream that let free her hair

E.A. O'Connell. December 2018

{Excerpt}

To throw off the flesh of this life, to know I made parole after an intolerable human sentence for my immortal deeds, banished from the comfort of my afterdeath, forced into an inescapable mortal coil, a flightless bird earthbound and landlocked, I turn my head to the east each morning, awaiting the rise of opalescent light, but the colors no longer sing to me, not the same way they once did, as the one looking in from outside, now the silhouettes of trees, their branches a friction in the frigid wind, are leaded frames to auroral glass, forlorn and desperate to shatter, I step out in thin fabrics, bare feet, in below freezing, awaiting the searing bite, but my punishment carries on, I feel nothing, my eyes scanning the twilit greys and cedars, focusing on the chain link breach of nature, until I’m overcome with a chill at my back and about my arms and chest, held tight in your winter borrowed embrace…I can’t come out and play…I miss your face, so…I devour books in the ceaseless hope of finding you…this language I now speak is broken and an irritant to my tongue…I plant endless gardens in the off chance you will receive my messages, that I may conjure and breathe in your scent when they wither and die, just one more time…people sit by firelight, but no one dances within the flames, and I long for that fuel to stir my soul, but fire here burns…I’ve learned in dreams there’s a way to die…but I’d be thrown into the reflection of you, moving in reverse, just shy of our meeting of flesh, neither an intimate brush nor breath, just the minute absence of physical connection, but the everexpanse of mental separation…I’ll continue to toil at this soul numbing existence, awaiting my heavenly summons, and when I’m called, and death has presented me formally, I’ll take knives to any wings I may grow, I’ll dismantle any pedestal upon which I’m to stand, I’ll renounce a halo placed atop my head…ichor stained and unclean, as a shadowed wild should be…and I’ll journey to the underworld, to reunite in full roar, standing by your side, our union a terrifying thing to behold…

E.A. O'Connell. December 2018

Under a nonexistent sky, lost to a possibility of rain, or just my overthinking, the church bells began to chime. The churchyard mere feet away, my morning unfolding without worry of time, was severed by song and a contemplation, that halted my breathing and gave me pause in my movements…what is it about the din of church bells, that stirs my dark soul? Why is it, no matter where I am, what I’m doing, I’ll stop and let the clanging of song and chiming of time, solely exist? I’m present in that moment, for what the bells are speaking. Is it time that moves me? I accepted my fate as mortal as a small child, beside my father’s vacated body. I accepted death’s spontaneity as a teenager, when on the receiving end of a loaded gun…and the overdoses that took, the near deaths that spoke, the miscarriages, the diagnoses… …it’s all brought back to timing…to time. Or am I heralded back to a space or two or many, in time, where bells tolled my own deaths…tolled my every sin…tolled my awakenings…my births…my joys? There was a point where I felt controlled by the rules of time…but I threw the concept away. Clocks in my home are set at random. When they slow and the batteries die, I let them rest, sometimes a year, before setting them to work again at the time of their revival. The same goes for any clock stopped due to a blackout, where they revive, they resume. I lost the will for watches more than a decade ago. No watch could be worn by me…no matter their make, their battery or wound, they’d gradually slow to a stop within a couple of days of being placed about my wrist. An enigma of energy or foretelling of the inevitable, I don’t question the inertia, nor the sentience…I just allow the impulse, to let it be, to be…within, running parallel, without…I flow and I forward…but at the sounding of the bells, I stop and give myself freely to the spell.

E.A. O'Connell. December 2018

Existence, and the question of whether I

No-body and anomalous in the judgement of untold eyes

Will survive my flesh, unarmored and vulnerable

or

Will mistrust and the misdeeds of life, endlessly dress me for war

I mis-taken

Under the right stars, I had been

More than trial and fail, fault lines and abandonment

I was an acrobat of certainty, and beautiful in graphic detail,

Each of my flaws

Put on display, ridiculed and compared

I am neither victim, nor victor

I am monstrously human, navigating with no direction, no end point seen

Effortlessly walking through walls I’ve built and secured, with each promise and every blame

I free what I’ve been given, I’m released by any who’ve taken

Existence, and the question of whether I

Have a name,

that will last upon the tongue

E.A. O'Connell. December 2018

Silver backs of brittle leaves, beaten furiously by the wind, wearily mending in ease of the sun, white light that reflects in mirror fashion, the glinting transfer of form, as the leaves take up again, shivering and crashing, a cacophony of fish breaching, fins in flail…scales iridesce, a rise in roar and then the hush,

my face a dual burn of frozen sun, with my eyes shut, I’m a theater of shadow play, the stature of dead, wildflowers and grasses, haunt my hips and finger sway,

gilded leaves release their living bond, in a state of half-life, they fall about me, the minutiae of time, giving a death view through beech hued tissue and veins, the sweet slant of decomposition, my trespass…a funeral march to season

rooks perched upon gnarled limbs, their murder of impenetrable frames, open arcane portals of dimension, I broach the divide, my presence a plague of riot and righteousness, they allow my pass, their tongues hourglass my stay

I open, I liberate, I away,

I’m milkweed down on a course,

of self-perception and appreciation,

I am the approaching…

winter, biting and vast, a landscape of pristine destruction, raw and silencing, my body the fury of squall, my solstice mind an absence of light, my turbine soul a cyclic process…the earth that wombs seeds of daily progress

E.A. O'Connell. December 2018

{Excerpt}

I recede to the shadows, a temperamental corner in a barren room, harsh angular lines and edges, segmenting the false light of thought,

I adorn my shroud, my feet and the whitewashed floorboards, cold-for-cold, my toes stir motes of dust and particles of death, I watch as they compose and alight, upon a rain rotten sill of discarded life,

disintegrating wings and decomposing husks,

I train my eyes to the warped panes of glass, a figment of wonder in the plane of sight, a skewed reflection of a beast salivating, broken-jointed and crawling,

a Jacob’s ladder of spider filament, the caul on the face of a devil, the bridal cap of a lady, beetle deeds undone and turned out,

Within a cubic chamber, carved into a cabinet of curiosities, of Pandora’s own giving, hands embrace a false god, a false expectation,

I martyr my own heart, to escape the empty promises those hands of similar likeness spill, throwing its still beating form, to the malformed beast, who tears at it, exsanguinating and stunting, devouring its nucleus

I succor the loss, my own hand pumping rhythm, echoing the cavern walls, in Fatum,

My depiction, ichor of my aorta, stains the beast’s flesh, in destruction, and it’s back arches, its neck flails in maniacal laughter, its disjointed return to my hide

The window, encapsulating star bodies, fury and inferno, a coruscating display of drama unfolding, the beast, its mouth of putrefaction and pestilence, at my neck in wait,

I steal its hand and blind my sight, in globe anguish, the window ruptures, my fingers plucking dreams from the depths of their ocular beds,

and I listen as they write pandemonium, indecipherable prognostication, at the beast’s escape, its rapacity in fruitless bay, as hope is eternally frayed

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

{Excerpt}

The black shadow knelt at my bedside, in honour, in a mourning, for my body lost in phasing, deep in repose

I wanted to revive, to come into existence, to offer my hand, to touch and seek, the shadow who sought out my soul, but I, silent and waning into complete darkness, willed my sinew, begged the strength, to divide from him

His energy was palpable, vibrating beyond my conception, distorting my control, a pulse of chaos theory, summoning the transmutation…my rise, to my knees, arms outstretched and risen, my body waxing to full light, a glow, both terrifying and impossible

And he grew, an immensity I couldn’t fathom with sight nor fear, his stature and presence a quantum theory, absorbing our surroundings, until it was us, two entities amongst the vast, so I asked of his universe my place, and his hand went straight through to my core, to the very essence of my being, and for the first time in what has felt like eons, I was true, the moon to his witching hour

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018