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

I failed, the fundamental human elements, absent from my design, I’m incapable of anything beyond a lone moon, a singular howl, raised in a hot cloud of breath at the frozen absence…I believe in the beauty of worlds spinning their tales about me…treetops in murmuration, lakes in ripple, the forest floor formulated of chemical and philosophical combustion…I fall in a love of sorts, with the simple interactions I witness between others…hands that graze or take hold of a shoulder, smiles that bloom with laughter, secreted glances and the commonplace dance between strangers…and yet, I disconnect, I disengage, I see no feasible way, to mortal my existence, when I can traverse the labyrinthine life, as a linear momentum of solitude, of a war I eternally fight and keep away from others, so as not to tarnish their shine…I failed, in my youth, at an opportunity of pure selfishness…I gave my single, God-given prayer to another less fortunate, who wept for comfort, acceptance, unity and love…and I opted to take up a pen instead, writing daily letters to an unknown entity, knowing that they’d accumulate in a drawer, a lifetime of unread, unanswered letters, each addressed identically, in the off chance, in the hope, that if we ever crossed paths…desirably in life, most plausible after death…there’d be proof that I existed, a quiet, solitary force, who trusted in the faith of an enigma, traversing the very same reality…

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

{Excerpt}

…I paced the perimeter of a deteriorating cell, animal-like, walls of rough edged stone awoke, cracking knuckles of fingers formulated by calcified history, extending for my flesh, hooking the slightest bit on my epidermis, tearing open my arms and back, like a thin cotton skirt snagged and torn on a barb, jumping a fence for freedom’s sake…my blood in rivulets, running a serenity and smearing a deficiency, reanimated my body in goosebumps, with each dip in temperature, stacking the chills, until my nipples were left in permanent tense, aching for warmth to supple, to ease, reviving my humanity…from the center of the floor, shadows began to form, to morph in a one dimensional Rorschach demise of clarity, not a one in shape of sanity, until the splatter welled and rose, as a contained mass of mercury, forming a mirrored humanoid hull, bound to a chair, reflecting my captivity…my movements of ire-infused curiosity, designed a Möbius strip of force about the unsuspecting intruder, slowing me at its broad back, my visage of feminine ferocity reflecting at me, and with the harnessing of my blood-bathed wrath, I spoke a singular word that slit its throat, my hands snapping its neck back, to open a bloodless gaping wound, a fissure broadening into a canyon, revealing a nesting doll core fashioned from the wood of varying sacred trees, and at the very center, an infant conceived of a mycorrhizal network long dismantled for the pursuit of craft…I cradled her to me, skin-to-skin, her own flesh the design of each of the tree’s recordings of natural events, her first gasp an arrowhead to my womb, bleeding me out a November sugared crimson, my breasts full and leaking the sun inflamed gold of ginkgo… …I had achieved an enlightenment in that world, be it as a captive of my mind and heart, or the wild of my soul-self, I persisted, not out of a vengeful rage, but out of a vital, vulnerable love…I had found peace in that cell…

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

{Excerpt}

In the inevitable night, where upon the habitual ritual of desire pulsates many a bed over, a primordial pulmonary malfunction of design, sets me in a counterclockwise wind…I slow my breathing, shallow and extending in a pattern of gradual demise, and I ignite in a visceral realization, my body wrenching in a celloid coil, my only transparency, the sheen of deja vu overlaying my eyes…a fish in a fit of survival, batters itself in instinct, to find its source of thrive…I twist contorted hands into sheets, cutting off circulation with serrated starburst indentations, I devise a rhythm of gripping for security and scratching for survival, drenched in sweat, pooled in the inability to take my first breath, choking on my tongue, I can’t swallow…the pain, the cage rattling agony, the terror of amplification, as I scream a tempest battering, a banshee sounding my own death…dislodging another prisoner of memory, incarcerated in the solitary confines of my mind…I am the executioner, a murder of self so divine, I speak in glyphs illumined upon my skin from a continuum deep within the chasm of being, and I read of the luciferian liberation...

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

{Excerpt}

I cull genius, a sacrifice to intuition. I could feign ignorance, but I insight instead. I’m aware of my purpose. I toil many an hour, hammering and melding, smithing my armor and blades. I know where they aim to strike. Oh, the damage of myself, and the bane of my existence. I know my place…the space that needs to be filled, the murderer of the time they can’t solitary. I’m the answer to a longing that sustains until the permanent defines my temporary. I’m the in between and the blurry periphery. They don’t remember my name, nor retain me in their memory…given unto a question, occasionally my own…who will strength and broach the perimeter…who will ride and go the distance… …within myself…deep within the forest of my head…I shut the door to the world and walk the worn path that melds to my feet…I leave no trail of breadcrumbs, no ribbons tied, nor a length of string…I disappear beyond the rough brush of thorny vines and stinging nettles…I distance and leap the divide…until I meet the walls…running my hand along them…impenetrable iron will… {…I will not…} …I walk the length until I come to a pile of rubble…a crumbling wall…I’ve allowed this dismantle… {…I will not…} …Scream…I scream, unhinged like a mad woman…maddened by the tear to the fabric of its purpose…the flaw of its fabrication…and I desire to rip it asunder, I desire to rebuild… {…I will not…} …Stare…I stare at the wreckage and question my existence…translucent spectre without a land to haunt…shadowy succubus without a dream to manifest… {…a scared little girl who hides behind walls…} …I will go…I will go to her…to the furthest depths, along the densest path…I find her beneath the willow…silent child, legs pulled into her chest, bound by her arms…eyeless face of September…a physical manifestation of the word no… {…I will not…} …Stay…I stay beside her…brushing my fingers along the back of her hand…until, hesitantly, she releases her white knuckle grip…and welcomes my hand’s embrace…sightless, she considers the horizon…I map her wounds and scars…cataloguing…remembering…touching on myself where the next target has been set… {…I will not…} …Ache…I ache for the girl who absorbed every drop of the hurt and pain…who’s will to survive built this woman from the grave up… …She releases from me…walks to the willow boughs, wrapping her arms, legs, and body in the switches…and releases…releases her hold on the earth and swings… {…I will not…} …Leave…I leave her to the singular joy the willow always brought… …My journey back makes me prey to an unseen bow hunter, armed to the hilt…aiming arrows of words that hunt me… {…burden…disposable…damaged…abandoned…unloveable…broken…} …I cast off my clothes and walk the rebellion… {…Come for me! Fucking come for me! Strike me! Kill me!} …a memento mori in song, the arrows whistle… …Grazes and scrapes mar my body, blood does spill, but no arrow penetration…no arrows to snap and push through the wounds… …I take stock and pay my respects…I take notice in how the blood always washes me anew… {…I will not…} …Apologize…no apologies for this cloistering, this much needed self-preservation… …No fear…no fearing my reemergence, to be once again thrust amongst the living… …beloved of the dead…

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

{Excerpt Edit}

I remember fearing him—and as he approached, trying to curl into myself, until I’d become a shadowed void he’d miss entirely amongst the gnarled, velveteen roots. But my body just lay there still. A windsong played about me, calling to him, beckoning him to come closer. He stood above me, and I felt him immense in stature, intense in being, but my fear soon shifted to a curiosity of this legend standing before me. I tried with all my might to piece together a coherent sentence as he knelt down beside me, but stuttering breaths and welled tears were all that escaped. He softly brushed the blood-matted hair from my eyes, and in doing so captured my tears on his finger, like iridescent armored entities, letting them scurry from his hand to the mossy bed beneath us.  

He patiently studied my face with his eyes and his hands. I had memories of voices distant, echoing off the back of my skull, speaking of his harsh, chilly touch, but his fingers were warm like mid-May sunlight and he was soft; his hands, his eyes, how he looked at me, soft like twilight. He finally laid himself beside me, wrapping his arms about my body, and he smelled of fulfilled hours, bound histories. And then he spoke to me, and his words whispered into my ear felt like childhood security and tasted like entombed truths unearthed from myths. 

‘You’re not meant for this.’

He sat up, leaning his back against the trunk of the tree, and tenderly pulled me into his lap. I was weakening and incapable of moving my limbs, so he cradled me childlike in his arms. He leant his forehead against mine, his right hand placed above my heart, and he told me to be patient and to trust him. He calmly instructed me to study the tree, all the life living about me, and nourish myself with all I learned from bearing witness to their strength, resilience, and will. He told me I would know when it was time to become one, that it would feel like a lunar tug on tidal lines, and that my first inhale would feel like my throat was engulfed in flames, but to not panic, and that he would always be near to me, and would one day return for me.

My breathing felt like an unnecessary chore and gradually ceased, but with each of my last exhales, he would inhale my breath into his lungs and lift his head to the leaves—a bordeaux depth that hinted to scarlet fire, as he exhaled a breeze of my essence that blew gently through the boughs. He pressed his hand to my chest, and I felt it work through my flesh and sink into and beyond my ribs—his palm about my heart as it beat one final time—his hand cupping that heartbeat, pulling it from my lifeless cavity, and thrusting his fist in between two moss cushioned roots, burying my pulse in the soil that cradled and nourished the maple that had become my deathbed.

He held me tight, rocking me to the rhythm of sunlight streaming through swaying leaves, as a feral scream escaped him, clawing its way through the atmosphere, and reverberating off the sound of a shovel slicing through earth. He struggled with letting me go, but eventually he laid my body atop the roots, his countenance darkening as he stepped aside, watching my murderer approach me, carelessly picking me up and walking me to the other side of the tree, where he dropped my body in the hole he dug at the foot of the maple, his voice winded as he said aloud, ‘You always loved this tree.’  

He continued to watch in disgust and rage, his jaw set in hard angles, his eyes an undefined shade of hate, as my murderer filled in my grave and walked away without a hint of remorse in his footfalls and posture.

He stayed there by my grave for some time, the weight of my death and the intent of his actions bearing down on him; he had only committed himself to such a decision once before, and he knew the implications of his actions, he knew full well he would be met with anger and severe repercussions, as he had vowed after the last incident to never expand his purpose again—because you see, only One wields the power to return life to the dead, but for me, Death blatantly overstepped his boundaries and made an exception to the One’s inviolable rule.

{Excerpt}. E.A. O'Connell. 2018 

Morning Observations

November blue light, of a dip in temperatures as rain speckles the glass panes of the bedroom windows, a percussion that stirs me from my sleep, the wind furiously whipping one moment, softly moaning the next. Even in the shadows of an early cloudstacked morning, the Japanese maple I look out upon, has lit itself in flames, a seasonal Phoenix, lush foliage and silvered-bark patinaed with lichen scales. Threads of silk, bejeweled with crystalline raindrops, adorn the outside of the window casement and brick facade. Some softly give and carry in the breeze with the fluidity of a song escaping my lips. I look each morning for the wolf spider, residing in the cavern of a cracked brick behind the shutter, this morning to ask in passing how he fared the unsettled night. With a laugh, I remind him of boundaries, and advise him to, “stay wild eight-legged child.” Coffee beckons to my bones, happy voices of children in chatter to my heart. I think we may get lost today, in an aging garden, amongst the height of trees and rush of waterfalls, the pages of beloved books, within the music about our heads, deep in thought…

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

{a deadication)

I see a truth, an impossibility of breath and flesh, that the earth can’t harness, the universe can’t fathom…this very life and blood untamable, fashioned out of a supercell building and stacking decades deep… I bare witness to the silhouette of the new moon backlit by stars, the rare glow of a shadow superseding it’s full counterpart…I grow mesmerized by the umbra of eclipse, as the sun’s white light serves as an alchemist’s proof, gold will remain inferior to the bronze of a warrior’s armor, the stain of battle worn leather…I baptize the hue of a nocturne, echoing off rocks lit in solar melt, as the chaos of a moth’s wings, spawns devils upon the flames of a ceremonial fire…and yet, I fail, each of my words, my every attempt, at properly constructing, encapsulating, that which defines, the immortal shade of forbidding eyes…

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

{Excerpt Edit}

In a trickling descent through fine eyed needle stitching, the day’s soft sunlight laughter extinguishes in a snifter’s hush, leaving in its slumber a dense forest labyrinth, where towering opaque ghosts haunt, and a placid lake of blue moon sheen, slips its shores in lily bell curves.  Whispers in wisps of spectral fog, lament a falling star loss, silencing black winged boughs of their cackles, and from the void, the snapping of dead twigs and the disintegrating of skeletal leaves… 

     —a wandering—

A distant home of stone and bones, its ivy strangled windows of beveled panes, glow a wild inferno from a seasoned fireplace, while a solitary lit flame webs the splintered windows through a figure swallowing stairwell and second story corridor, where the walls breathe with shadow dancer frames. The spiritless cuckoo emerges, counting distant footfalls in successive knocks of its head into plaster. The Spirit Guide summons the Lady’s return from the depths of her transcendental thoughts, her attention re-emerging, focusing on the placement of how the cards had fallen from her hand to the floor. Her head turning in the direction of her property’s gate…

      —an approaching—

The garden, built of a wild spirit, by hands guided by natural impulses, protected by a multitude of eyes, is awakened with an aura of curious wonder, its slate path, lined in pale bleeding hearts and gore splattered caladium spades, collapsing in a violigo astral breeze…their gasping…their glimpsing…of fearless steps in a determined dead man’s stride, halting upon the breast of the thistle barb knit threshold, a cold, earth-stained hand splaying against the weathered front door…

     —a reckoning—

E.A. O'Connell. 2014/2018.

It was an education in blind followship, to believe in bombastic sermons of words uncited, to bow and bend at the knees, to chapel my hands, and embrace my being as built from a rib.

I was a hostage to a man. a god. a devil. I was imprisoned by a grand lie of my birthright sins, and the tiered veil of an afterlife of forgiving golden halos. tormented limbo. excruciating fire.

There was no prayer to answer my dark descent into questions, no miracle to spin my faith into a pious congregant.

My faith, broad in scope to ask of the condemned and damned, my right to know why fallen angels couldn’t be forgiven, why my imperfect flesh and interminable mind wouldn’t be embraced as good stock for considering such thoughts. Why my ideal dark was banished from their idol of light.

It was a ring of maniacal laughter, a deceit of holy manipulations, an intentional shrinking of my existence for their grandeur, that raised me in a seraph’s screams, the monstrosity of its being a relief, its burning my release, as I thrashed and fought for my abysmal soul, an unhinged myth screaming lightning. I rescued myself.

I forced the hand that stigmatad my body, bleeding out their teachings, weeping eyes broke from the essence of pain, forging the will and the strength. I was reborn a child of earth. moon. death.

Drawing a threshold within the dirt, I honored God, and with civility and respect, I tolled my limits, and asked of this existence a parallel, honoring the other from our respective houses of worship, and from the dark of a new moon shone the faintest of light, and the answer I had always sought from man was found in nature, and in too many ways to count, so was I.

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

Poppet of my flayed flesh, my tormented bones, cloned of blackthorn and rowan, adorned in clair de lune

Intricate details of my far flung soul, like a scavengers nest spilled in storm: broken bits of wrought hedges, shiny trinkets of glass and resin, frayed threads and strands of hair, copper heads and cobwebbed dust

Thoughts that skip like stones, upon the placid obsidian mirror of yesteryear and the morrow, ring the mental fuck it wherewithal, the ghosts of incandescence moan my mournful dirge

Fingers set to work, in black salt smudge and hallowed earth, bindings and pins, she’s stitched lipped and blinded, her bare body righteous upon the pyre, the instrumental flames, rise in a cacophony of words from the pages of her own tome

The whipping girl, the wretch, the witch

To burn, to proof and cast, I curse her, the embodiment of intellect, so no wound, nor gesture of kind could fell her strength, her will…I expel, I recover, I seal the threshold, crafting an invocation of blade and blood, with which I spill, I exhale

Nights, I await our resurrection, the evacuation of tomb and the unveiling of caul, whereupon I splice foe with soul, aware the cycle won’t ever be broken

Our duel of heart, dual of will and woe, our evidence of circumstance, my most murderous crime against self

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

{Excerpt}

I find pencils within the cracks of sidewalks…weeks of this, on a daily basis, no matter where I walk…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 delicate 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…I must break this cancerous curse…quicker of wit and the lengths I’ll go…

My preservation and your displacement…Why are you there?…in the stone of a chimney, book-ended by lilacs, and sheer curtains…phantoms haunting in 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 surrender to the haunted house, ghosts peering out from my eyes, unaware they ever died, aware they’ve secreted immortality…

He loved me incapable of words, grew resentful of my voice…he once told me…I’m unlike anything he’s ever known, unlike anything he ever knew could exist, it unnerved and disarmed him, holding me to his body, his strength a thing to behold, in the dark, asking me what colors I see, breathless and spent, I broke free…within an arms reach, and in the human space, within the vertices of cartilage and bone, maps of veins and unfathomed depths, I opened him to the ugliness, to the feral beast, and he called me incomprehensible and just shy of evil…he rested, easy and at peace, and with dawn he rejoined the chatter of the masses…but for me, a night’s long contemplation, I don’t live permission nor approval…I spent a morning of pen to paper, to dismantle, to resurrect, to be exactly what I was meant 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, a light years distance, in security, in the space of concrete seams…

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

An unseen hand, be it the God of man or the Deity of self, force feeds me steel wool fibers, rasping the soft tissue of my cheeks and tongue. A complex system of saliva, swallow, and speech, bludgeoned into a primordial gobbet of raw inability. If I could only convey…

Emerging from the cavern of self, a steady crawl of joint footed hydraulics, ascending my esophagus, suffocating my airway. Slowing to a stop, and scratching, tearing at, puncturing through the hollow of my throat. Stretching and forcing, the beast steals out the stoma, given in the light an unholy name, and a secondary purpose. To my mouth it creeps, where it silks a Kevlar thread, venomous fangs piercing my lips, as the sharp of the exoskeleton meticulously stitches, a web of silent design. An acursed weave that captures words as they attempt to escape. If I could only conceive…

From the netherabyss of the earth, upon which my stilling body lies, roots of sinew strength break through, instantaneously vining, binding, trussing my body. Thrashing violently, my flesh rips and bleeds, my hair pulls from its scalp, scorching tears of wrath blind my eyes, a rabid foam seeps through the web of my mouth. I am on the verge. A growl of frustration, an urgency for conscience, a chemical combustion of rage and fear, a death rattle of warning…I implode…in a pitch of deafening fury, electricity discharging and glass splintering…I am blinding white light…a phenomenon of disbelief…and from this, I speak…

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

The earth is fractured this morning. A humid steam seeps from its bowels, coaxing a sweat to nectar my flesh. From the Devil’s hour, a solitary scream ripped the fabric of time, the clock in my bedroom halted, and a momentary confusion befell me, as I attempted to regain my bearings aside an indecipherable roar…falling rain or crackling fire? The misplaced scent of clover beeswax coating hammered iron answered. Bedded down atop a thin sheet, sleep was dense like the fur of a hawk moth, erratic like its flight. A dream torn at its edges, leaves behind faded faces in speech and forearms in gesture. Has a seal been opened somewhere? A release? A most gentle breeze alights my skin…a faint hint of clove on my tongue.

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

I am vapor, a fog. I cloud the earth at the hour of cerulean horizon, where raven caws take shadow form, haunting streets, jumping bridges, drowning in creek beds. I am an anomaly of predicament. I didn’t ask to be a circumstance of curse. I’m a casualty of birthrite. A daily reminder in the shunning, the avoidance of my existence, by the eyes that see through me, the disregard for my space, the silence of ignorance. I panhandle in whisper, I sleight of hand in scream. I exist as asylum, in solitary fortitude. Every hand I’ve extended calcified in wait, each truth met with aversion. I’m a pariah of psyche and pneuma. I’m the creature of robbed graves and stitched science. My creator, the God of mortals, his handiwork a lapse of reason, the sins of the father, and the abscence of a sympathetic humor. And still I wait. A spectre of thought and of the reckoning. I am lone. A chasm no one dares to negotiate. A language declared extinct and shelved. And yet, I await.

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

Hawks have been prominent in my daily life, as of late. Often at eye level and within close proximity to my body, and on two separate occasions capturing and feasting on prey. I am reading these happenings carefully, paying close attention to where my thoughts, actions, words are when we crossroad. I feel it is in relation to my work, just as the praying mantises, snakes, and eagles correlated with my life, health, and writing at integral points. I believe in the importance of being in tune with nature, as signs, guidance, and answers we seek are present.

Monarchs have been abundant as well, so much so, they are fluttering outside my classroom drawing my students attention. My gardens are rife with them. I cross a parking lot on foot, and I nearly walk into them. This is more a communication from the other side, but nevertheless, a reply I’d been awaiting.

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

Days…plagued by spying eyes…kaleidoscopic sieves of life in mercurial projection…following a discovery of trance in the angles of my form…the temper of my thoughts can’t free from the restraints of my silence…they fever an osmosis and solder upon the dusky wings…this anomaly of curiosity…carrying an imprint of me through astral realms…to the voyeur…who reads me…intimately…

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

An abundance of monarchs in the front yard today…their flare and dip, a flash of planetary hue, as the moon hung off kilter and wide in the ever expanse…

The thistles that line the walkway were angry, their thorns capturing and snagging, a mood settled by my gentle hand, and my appreciative words, “Your evils are lovely”…

Moonflowers that seeded themselves, sought darkness inward, centripetal curling, their illumination soft with pleasure in reminiscing the night’s lore…

A singular, fuchsia-maned zinnia, bold in height, trained her keen eye on the orbweaver…a textile of petal and silk and candy-striped spindles…

…the end is in sight, I see the telltale signs, so I take it all in, at the pace it sets…the garden…each year I watch, as it slows, as it fades, and gradually withers away…as light casts new angles, and shadows unearth new portals…I’ll winter and I’ll await…the reincarnation of transcendent design…

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

…from the denim fade at morning’s rise, the screech owl’s serrated cry severs the horizon.

Dawn charges.

Her ritual rise, reigniting embers from the depths of Hell, illuminating the sky in gilded light.

I sit within the aura of Gaia, silent in my physical, silent in my breath, my mind imploding with thought.

…I have a student who gets bullied daily, 3:30pm yesterday, he came to me and leveled me with the words, “I want to die. I’m ready to kill myself.” The maternal took up with a rage, the empath crushed by the weight of his hopelessness, the nurturer set forth to aid.

I get told daily, never bring work home, but a child isn’t work, an inanimate thing, nor their pain easily dropped and forgotten.

The morning flares, as my thoughts cycle, the unhealthy cycle, the opalescent light guiding my hands, into prayer, into meditation…I think upon the lotus, the heron, and sight…I silence my mind, I fuel my fight…

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

Last night, swathed in the dark of my room, I sat upon the bed, looking out upon the eigengrau sky, vacant of moonlight and star luster, and the shadows of pitch and depth.

The wind gave touch to the magnolia, sounding a percussion that hasn’t been audible in nearly a year, sounds of bronze and falling water.

I was keenly aware of the autumn precipice, the scent of one season absorbing the other, the faint chill accenting my home, bedroom, and body…cedar, juniper, rosemary, wood sage, sea salt, lavender, and apple.

I caught a flash of movement, inky in hue and flow, and I watched as this shadow slipped like quicksilver, until it was nothing more than the imperceptible breeze…a fox of fluidity, and cricket strings, and the distant train blaring its speed.

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

Ravens wheeling, astral songs sending them, lost within their heads, fractured silhouettes, lacerating the monochrome sky, amassing imperfections, as honor as fight

A dream backdrops, a conscious awareness, I’m falling but not felled, I’m a gasp in synchronicity with the hypnic jerk, I’m the mind patrolling for death, I’m on the edge, and the sky opens wide, the earth accepts

I Corvid, I Lupine, I Anguis…beastly flesh and tone, naked, I soar I run I coil…aspens of formulaic chance, illuminate the expanse of night, phantoms caught in almost, the staccato voice of rain, of shivering nerves, gives me cause to breathe, to hone my senses, to pick up your scent in the hunt…I’m closing in, I’m starving, for you

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018

{Excerpt}

I communed with Death last night,

His fluidity, patient in pace,

tepid solstice breeze against the thin flesh of my throat,

waking me gently

I rolled within Him,

lush darkness of a new moon wood, just beyond the hedge,

coarse fingers spanning, trailing, leaning my head back

A fingertip of half-rot coaxing my eyelids open,

our stare a reminder of origins, our introduction

a reminiscing of lunar language, our seasonal progression

and I heard from deep within Him, every lyric I’ve ever connected with as an aria, a requiem of we

crescendo in variegated storm

He inhaled the nature of his pilgrimage,

moistening his lips of moth eaten linen,

invisible threads stitching us nearer, until our foreheads rested,

our thoughts channeled,

mine giving him reason to hold me closer, His giving me cause to bloom

…“I was angry…You didn’t claim me…all those times…you left me earthbound…lost in pain, grief, agony…abandoned, lost, betrayed…but now…the why?…I can see for myself your reasons…I finally see what eluded me…there’s a bounty of worth in my chaos…”

“I’m part of every cell that made you, every breath that sustains you…I’ve never once deviated…I’m not always in your direct, but I’m never out of your periphery…we are bound and inevitable…imperfectly infinite…and you’re chaos is a wild that reminds and emboldens the Dire, to break free of restraints when collared, to chew its own limb off when snared…I didn’t, because you would…you have…you…”

E.A. O'Connell. November 2018