Voyage, Voyage {A Micro Tale}

The world fell asleep last night; insomniacs found a rhythm and syncopated, children phantomed fog cities in the trees, lovers puzzle-fit their bodies and caught their breaths, animals, domesticated and wild alike, nested and denned in the absence of alarm.  As the world slumbered, the oceans inhaled and with every exhale gained fathoms, crested miles, until every suffocated cityscape, each stratospheric mountain peak, and colossal redwood were submerged; leviathans for a fraction of a second.  For a glimpse of time, all of life was reembraced by a caul of intuition, all life reverted to an in utero state of breathing, and every cell of every existence sounded back the beat of The Mother's heart.  Peace; the whale song and doppler pulse of currents, sonogram moonlight, and the momentary silence of an extinction.  By morning the oceans receded, back to lapping their shores, and the world woke to a water stained earth, as if rain secreted in the night.  Everything seemed as it always had, the people fell into their daily routines without a question or suspicion, and the problems that weigh heavy continued to plague.  But the sun radiated a warmth that lit an inkling of the night's truth to all; a faint primordial scent of origins and amniotic dreams, an awakening of sense, that cautioned a nightmare, that keepsaked a hope: the seed of kind planted in a reverie, the premonition of lot in the escalation of real time.

E.A. O'Connell

Meditation of the Morning

The lotus have died, receded to their watery clime of a regenerating sun in mud luck and deciduous fortune. Elsewhere, the renewed spring of greenery and blossoms within the garden borders haven’t fared as well; depressed, in a low slung green of vegetation putrefying under the weight of an unapologetic frost. They return not to a supple hue or texture in the sun, nor do they brown and release their hold in the dipping temperatures of November nights, they just linger in a limbo of being; awaiting, numbing.  On a walk through a churchyard I behold red begonias, winter macerated and pooled upon their sisters; a wax of thinly veiled youth, of blood ties to the mother, of a death and all it has yet to become.  Shadows spin about me, a split second of chill as they black out the sun: vultures.  I rather enjoy watching them wheel and dive on a breezy morning; how warm to the touch their feathers would be: a sun saturated abyss.  Icarus flying too close to the sun, and yet possessing wings incapable of melting.  I think they write poetry in their fluidity, or at the very least lyrics to a song.  They thread words together as their bodies cross and they raise choruses in their heights; percussion and strings and woodwinds.  Some think it odd, inappropriate even, to speak of the beauty of something believed to be ugly, horrid, that monstrosities are just that, monsters.  But who defines a monster?  Who defines beauty?  Who defines purpose?  I took my children to a cemetery and while there I explained to them that it’s not just a final resting place of the deceased, that it’s a garden; of contemplation, of gratitude and surrender, of a terrible beauty and it’s renewal: life.  I study the architecture of the church, the stained glass, and how the crows sit atop the slate roof, cawing out at all who pass; keeping tally or bidding a good day?  God and I made a pact decades ago: we’d believe in the other from within our respective houses of worship.  So when I go to the lotus, when I go to the trees, the mountains, the ocean, when I’m standing in a parking lot or outside of a church, when I’m a spectrum, when I’m faded, when I feel like a ghost to the world, to even myself...I still exist, because somewhere in the immensity of the universe, my mote of self, has someone, something, some energy, believing, knowing, that I am.  I finish my walk, admiring the damage of winter’s encroaching, placing my chilled hands in the pocket of my hoodie, nodding to the crows, as I turn and go with a whispered amen.    

E.A. O'Connell

polterheist of the alpha mind {a rework always in progress}

Chairs, ebony and knocked with wear, stack in Escher fascination…on pointe, the precision they spin, slow and methodical, a hypnotic optical delusion of black and sunlight…static builds in the atmosphere and sounds the descent…a waterfall crash…a tempest seat…piano keys and peddle release…

Serpent winds a derisive halo, atop the head of a woman, her womb a pomegranate ripe, her life solitary and defiant…reptilian underbelly slips beneath her palms, through her thighs, winding a return to her throat…forked tense and elliptical divination…it all equates to infinite constriction of her airways…she charcoals a door upon a wall…knocks & knocks to meet no response…she crashes the threshold…honoring herself…

Arachnid chessmen, cloaked in steel wool, stealth in their maneuvering about the disfigured floor…foregoing strategy for mind play…Shadows of men in child fun, run the stairs to find her eye, plastering themselves statue still, stretching and fading…incinerating in the black wick of a candle in slipped inferno…they terrorize the foot of her bed, watching her sleep, absorbing her screams with monstrous paws…leaving her paralyzed as the iron maiden mouth, clasps about her face…her throat welling & choking on the shit she refuses to swallow…leaving her a permanent power from a temporary slip…

{polterheist of the alpha mind}

E.A. O'Connell

...excerpts of thoughts in story {III}

Somewhere in the eigengrau hour, between the scream of a night terror and the sigh of a post mortem body, the cicadas stilled in a birth— stilled in the desiccation of a wound. In their absence, or rather from it, I took up a hum—my cells regenerating and calling to their familiar. In the Devil’s Hour, I heard a seat being taken, and I rolled to the ghost—I spiraled into the fugue. A slip of the tongue—No—A slip of the blade, beckoned me forth from the vapor state of thought. A kitchen…wood grain…paring knife…stainless steel reflection—I painted my blood across the glyphs and stitched my deeper self shut. The hum still creates—still deteriorates—my liberation. I lose myself on concrete and coffee— a straightaway dead ends with brick and mortar, columns and corners. In the shadows, his cigarette scissor fingers, his disheveled, bloodied apron— a butcher sends up smoke signals. I lower my hood, keeping my eyes on his, hiding neither scar, nor thread that lace my neck and face— I make holy, rites with a ceremony of feral instincts—a berserker—internally I'm at war. A second thought—a second glance—I turn toward, and he’s missed nothing, collecting my tells—my intimacy—all with merely his stance and eyeline. Marigolds bloom from my mouth, ruffled manes of sunlight, a dance of skirts masking my misdeeds, but they don’t fool the butcher—who recites an elegy in soft brogue. You know // Aye  The hum bursts the dam, a full blown commotion, chaos and communication—I’m lightning he’s caught in a bottle—I’m no longer impossible—I’m incredible

E.A. O'Connell

...excerpts of thoughts in story {II}...

“…the Sun.”
“No. I won’t.  I’ve been noctrunal far too long.”
“Shhhh. Close your eyes. Breathe from your center.  Give into your true nature.  Loosen the earthly gravitational pull…forward the soul—it remembers—reconnect with your primal mind.”
{Hands tilt my head back, fingers river flow along my neck, base of skull, forehead—tapping rhythms every few paces—}        
                                                                            {minutes slow—}
“Now, the Sun. How does He speak?”                                                                                                             {My breath catches—my brain silences—and I relinquish control}

... … …Chants…Arias… ...No, a dirge...a wild rite...a language solemn, a depth of prism iridesce and spilt apothecary bottle silence
Cedar split…fractured burns…a warm terracotta belly…and stacked driftwood…
Sin. Sin rich as September coughing seas, and soft as milk thick lightning streaming through an underwater haze…
He tasted me —my flesh as ripe as the snap of rapture—
He let himself lost in my body—my cemetery, a garden of enigmas—he tore from me, a bitter medicinal root, potent—fatal
He percussions me {vertebrae / ribs} — He strings me {hips / clavicle} — He sacreds me {sternum / womb}—He abandons me—cold steel, dissected and raw
He still rises on my taste buds —layer upon layer— tobacco soil, aged oak, wax of prayer candles—He prays to himself
His birthright tears me from inside out—his progenitor mends me and quietly recedes
He enwraps me—a chaos of breeze— the vibration in ricochet {his lips}—a burial shroud... ... ...

{My eyes open—a false reality? a foreshadow of the eye?—gauzy, black wings suspended before the craggy tomb, absorbing light—sunlight emblazons the spire, consuming shadow} 
“Can we?...Do we?... ...Live? Die?... ...We’re... ...a Möbius strip”... ...
“Accept the ride.”

{Return II Origins}

E.A. O'Connell

...Meta...

That blue hour…running water lit in ripened blood…only one tree shivers a feverish eulogy to Summer…morning memories of jays bird boxing…the tin of their screams, serrated & rusted…their flight patterns a star tetrahedron…through which I glimpse the breadth of eagle wings…you omen my divine wheeling, ascent in growth & vision… …from the earth, a mother snake sought the sun…her hatchling lifeless on moon cast stone…earthbound sparrow chatter hushed…cycloned leaves in the kicked up breeze, an energy silenced in a sun-blind collision…cicada camouflage pressed in asphalt flat…wings reduced to dusty, shattered factory windows…screams of youth bullet the holes… …Death keeps me grounded…frees me from all cages & irons…in my memory & at my bedside, we smile at each’s actuality…I thank Him repeatedly…because of our proximity, I expand on life… …Back in that blue hour…water raining over my body, lit in copper-rich blood… …I’m bleeding anew… …ever viable & always in thrive… …I’m meta… …breath & fight…

E.A. O'Connell

...

Lemon and ash skies…porcelain purging…the green of my heart chakra…the hot flashes and nausea…that coil me exoskeleton…a golden mean to an end… …bone dry veins & stick after stick…the gurney breeze & downhill slide…warmth & the dimming of lights…my gratitude speaks as the milk of sleep befalls… …the core of my being…the faces come to mind…smiling…as life caesuras… …where my head goes…unknown…consciousness snaps with thought in full moon tide…the birth of a new star from the void…a laugh… …a hand extended…my hand…to whom…I know not… …laughing…I come…I go…laughing… …one day He’ll come for me…for good…and we’ll make light a heavy life…chimera our humor… …& toll a great many bells…

E.A. O'Connell