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