…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)