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