Complicit You

It was warm today. A rain soaked the earth overnight, and while the sun fought to make His presence known, the silver sheen of clouds won out. Still, it was warm…it was comfortable. So we walked…my three children and me. We walked our usual path, seeking snakes that might be fooled by the false Spring, and we listened to the hawk and the blue jay back-and-forth. We sought green and we reflected on puddles. But all the while, my heart was sick. Miles from our home, parents, siblings, significant others, extended families, neighbors, and friends new and old, were making funeral arrangements for their beloveds…seeking answers…listening for answers…reflecting on what had and hadn’t been said, what had and hadn’t been lived…What’s happened to our country? That we could have a president that tweets accusatory condolences and can read a TelePrompTer speech that never once touches on the true issue at hand: gun violence and gun control. Where is the humanity and the empathy? Where is the humility of the president and political figureheads, admitting they’ve failed our country, our families, our children? Own up to your faults. Own up to the fact that money from organizations that demand your silence on gun control is worth more to you than actual, living, breathing human beings. Own up to the fact that you have failed as a government for the people. Own your failures. Apologize. Ask forgiveness and accept that you will be held accountable. And that you will probably not be forgiven. And when the people speak of their experiences…of surviving, of losing a loved one…shut your mouths and actually listen. Hear their words, feel their fear, their pain, their loss. That is when your silence is needed. Your silence and insistence of silencing all who ask about gun control after a mass shooting, is not effective, nor is it acceptable. Your silence is you counting the monetary loss you’d incur if you spoke out against your gun running backers. Complicit money. Complicit you. As we count the lives lost to a completely preventable threat.

E.A. O'Connell

...

…no thought did He give…sacrificed me to violence…the light vanquished and my skin shedding…my cold beyond touch…and veins with nothing to give…blood of life, blood of gifts…blood absence…visage of immortality, ageless of face and lightness of foot…anise wings hovering the bed…soul revolving door…the violence waged and the world about me cringed…they feared my being, my unbecoming…I, steadfast and comatose…unsteady waves and blind…paging through the voices…connecting to the memory of vine charcoal smudges, reflecting back the tale of demise, and it’s not simple, not easily defined…my existence questioned, until 3:00am…Genesis…from a death repose, I’m resurrected, gasping for air…teetering, one foot in, one foot out…and I weep not, nor do I register vocally in the pitch of their heartstrings…I merely listen, taking it all in…the phantom sensations…the sewing of a new seam of life…I hear confessions crashing a funeral…I drop communion from my tongue and beat back the mourners…I’m His very sin brought back to life…I’m His abomination and sacrifice…I’m the embodiment and manifestation…The Sin and The Absolution…Death’s compass true north…Lilith’s womb waging war…

E.A. O'Connell

Afternoon Thoughts, January 18, 2018

…the cherry tree has buds…mid-January, below freezing temperatures…and tiny buds have begun to form… …a long few days…today, a day to beat me down… …I don’t have my lotus to go to…so I went to the cherry tree…standing beneath and looking up…taking my armor off… … …let me bud through the biting cold…see me through to spring…blooming, bursting, thriving, flourishing… … …a tequila shot or three… …then a shovel and muscle to bring forth tomorrow… … …I should’ve heeded the rook…calling forth…under a moonless late hour… …I never heed the warning…I never heel… …too wild for streetlights and streetcars… …I’ll go naked in the walk, in the run, in the cliff side dive… …I know my home…and I intend on returning…as a dog eared probability…as a mathematical migration…as a branch of pink blossoms escaping… … …mud…ripple…exhale…

E.A. O'Connell

{Four days after writing this, I happened upon a rather fitting quote by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it."}

... {Edited}

They,
the Angels with soot coated wings,
feathers broken and still burning…

pulled me from my boots,
a hit and run impact so fierce that it leaves the socks still warm and foot full within shoes that bounce and roll,
as dice under casino fluorescent lights…

They dragged me by my wrists along July burnt asphalt,
and shards of distempered broken windshield
stripped me of my clothes and pressed me naked between pristine white sheets,
the dye of my flesh staining an imprint of my death…

the peeling of me,
like ice tearing from lips,
the methodical ripping of me,
quickly,
intentionally…

and then the wake up call,
the stubbing of tobacco cherry ash and fire pocking my body,
the stripping of my fingerprints and a blunt force to fell,
scalpels and bone saws to dissect…

DNA…

seeking,
waiting,
seething…

and no pain registering….

like children with a magnifying glass,
shards of slate,
and a violent curiosity,
the worms and bees,
and their resurrections at the feet of a phantom Christ…

gutted,
disemboweled,
exsanguinated…

and from the abyss of my soul’s tomb,
the forked tongue of a Gorgon sister,
slithering my esophagus,
flicking flint sparks at molar facades,
extending for the fruit of the sins they stripped of me,
the sweet of rabid canines trickling a stream of profanities down my chin,
my neck,
my breasts…

a failure at dismentaling me,
dismantling the bomb planted in my head at three,
the defiance and the will that sees me through,
like the pistol in my toddler grip as I hit every target directed…

So I find it nothing more than child’s play to annihilate Death,
his intentions,
his desires,
and his reign,
and cannibalize the very life they stole and placed in vials and scales beside me…

walking from the surgical lights towards the very street that stole me away that night…

and all the cameras,
security and otherwise,
capture the anomaly of a song in physicality,
the phenomena of stellular conception...

E.A. O'Connell

...

I caught a glimpse in the rouge of her face, eyes rimmed in an equal hue…glassine tears threatening…rivulets and blue…I heard her gasp in awe…camera obscura shadow and light…our backs to footfalls and laughter…rolling green…children and DNA factors…I saw it in the tip of her chin and the set of her lips…years in youth…unbeknownst to her…keeping me alive…decades succumb to adulthood…and I know it when I look at her…she was always the light, always the beautiful…she’s the kindness and my peace…and I never knew if I gave her anything but trouble and fear…never knew if I impacted her existence as she has mine…and then I heard it…the undertone of her words…the base note of us…I Got Used To Having You Here…and hell, if I didn’t want my hands on the throat of Death…banishing any possibility…I’d break her heart…break my promises…break our blood…all because I inherited the weak link…

E.A. O'Connell {September 2017}

Dream Series: Road {A Gothic Tale—Edited}

...cold, damp concrete in an after-hours parking garage...
puddles that vibrate with distant highway rush
                                      and
a harsh static light that triggers a seizure in my right eyelid
...frantic seeking, frantic breathing...
I'm being crushed by the weight of uncontrollable climate and atmospheric claustrophobia...
I'm losing to the wind that voices its anger and loss through cracks,
commanding the wilds of flora to suffocate their own young
{no life will make beauty in this hell}
...in a dark corner, clutching to her knees, a tiny face is buried...
the back of her dress torn, buttons in a gravitational pull on frayed threads, hanging on to absence
her flesh scratched, leaving cavities to decay
{no life will make beauty in this hell}
my fingers hover above pinpricks of blood that pool and harden like beetle shells
...Who did this? escapes from my fingers...
I'm too close within her space
...the tiny face rises with a wild eye stare, her head rattles a venomous warning...
fear implodes my pupils: iris ink wells and runs my face
my fear: she gnashes her teeth, snaps back at me in warning...
a progression of sound {silence accelerating}
...... GO ......
she sounds like a guttural growl in ever-echo
my eyes on the moons of her nail beds...
her hand rises before her face...
a relief map of time...
turning her palm, bringing it flush to my mouth...
the syzygy of we
{my eyes shut, I can smell May green}
she removes her hand, the deep scar within my lip...canyons...
{on the tip of my tongue I can taste a thunderstorm}
a progression of sound {silence illuminating}
...... GO ......
she sounds like a jagged stone thrown in a placid pool
...rippling warmth...
she begins to dissipate...
condensation puddles where she knelt...
my hands skim the silken surface...
my hands pull away and she sounds in the breaking of the bond
...... GO ......

...atop a parking garage ledge, eye-to-eye with the moon...
I release from the hold on my feet
{highway rush, trails of headlights: night accelerates from behind star spirals}

...the rise of a sun, blood orange at earth's lips...
I, from the backseat, count miles on the abacus of my spine
{with distance I gain perspective}
I've always wanted for more...
more words in earth song, more days in hill climb, more soul ache with the rising moon...
far from this car, far from this notch in time...
...... GONE ......  

E.A. O'Connell

Violet Light Violence {Edited}

Violet light violence
friction striking, seeking escape of my veins
—still in rigor fashion—lung reflex silent—
my dusted pulse animates in shadow peel, shadow step, shadow melding with atmosphere
—filtered light through bottle green bones—a porous drift song—
he carries languages of oceans long extinct
that slow dive through starling slick to a boiling chlorophyll-bio-luminescence
—a folk-like pixie light essence—
making an expedition of my fragrance
mapping me with pin pointillism pleasure
October wind through cattails and reeds, the marshy mirror of evening cloud scatter
—breeze of clove and seasoned earth—
fingers fall, hollow chords on glass strings
...exhalations... 
tissue flesh cracking, peeling
a Japanese lantern skeletal cage, the fossilized artifacts revealed
—fish bone lodged in esophageal well—herbal tinder ash in stoppered vials on rib cage apothecary shelves—
shadow leans, shadow steals
…gasping…
— persimmon glow in bittersweet heat—
his tongue tastes of Autumn setting fire to my nerves
...pins and needles...
my body of spider silk, bejeweled with mica and mist
—of exsanguinated flesh in mid-winter frost—
supples and burns, an amarayllis trumpet depth, but with sakura flush
I kiss him back
he mouths E-V-I-L to my neck
—lips devouring the decadence of each letter—
I laugh with a lust of star anise shape
foreshadowing his aftertaste, maddening my mind for days to come
—coastal asphalt and primeval sun—

E.A. O'Connell