Dream Series: Desert Gods

Full moon light: shadows casting a thick green hue…succulents and grass the blue burn of flame…pale petals and stone a spectral glow.

My mind alternated: a restless city half-sleep and distant desert visions: bat wing rhythms and night blooming cereus.

A song of insect and flora storming my senses: the lightning branches voicing a distant convergence: an ethereal billowing about my body and jointed arachnid legs edging past my feet.

Stepped monolithic gods poured of blood: evoke a wild serenity: my son whispering at the back of my ear: They hold all the secrets. Will they respond? If my canvases call or your film?

…so I walk towards, closing the distance until I can place my palms to the preserved flesh…shutting my eyes and letting down all guard…feeling a pull…a pulse…a warmth…a glow…

…my silences, loud as they’ve been…have still more to learn from the immortals and beasts of arid land…

…the maps remain…long after I’ve shaken sleep from my bones…

E.A. O'Connell

...

At least once a day I look out on the sycamore…stoic giant existing in shapes of seasonal cusps…and I meditate on the hues of bark and foliage, the angles and lines of sunlight and shadows, the cut rope that still sways in absence of its swing. It’s an unloved tree; unowned, misunderstood, neglected: an island…fear gets the better of some, calling upon its death. I calculate distance and height, I hypothesize directional destruction, and I address probabilities: age and health. I hear no alarms sounding. My mind always circles back…to the majestic stature that flexes with every gust…tornado bearing down, sky of night backdrop to pallid complexion, me with infant in arms and a womb full, glimpsing the give, imploring of its god, as cracking maple joints took my hearing…slate, shutters, glass, roofs…betraying…but never the sycamore…imposing and gentle, true to roots…nor’easters that thrash and splinter the branches, the frozen weight of ice and snow…the latest taking with it each nest that dappled the limbs…but still it reaches, widens, heightens…most mornings I get lost in labyrinthine thoughts, eyes towards the sycamore, coffee in hand, but I almost always give to dreams…the branch from which I’d swing…the crook I’d nestle within, book after book read from my perch…the limb of greatest height, my toes would grip, closing the distance between the moon and my fingertips…

E.A. O'Connell

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}