Tag: ohio writer
Winter (Frostbite) (12-23-2019)
The Winter Solstice is upon us, and the year is in its dark half.
Days and sunlight have been steadily waning,
while the moon gains power and the long nights reign supreme.
I am like that tonight heavy darkness inside.
I wish to cut like ice
Burn like the cold
To be filled with anything other than this nothing.
I want to scream like the wind
And fell cities like fallen snow.
Why can’t you understand that sometimes I am Winter?
Still and dark and sleeping and alone,
My blood a frozen river,
My nails clawing like naked branches,
My teeth need to tear flesh like the sound of crunching snow.
I want to bite at you like the frost,
Make your breath pour hot into the air like a dragon,
Get your cheeks red.
But you can’t take the heat of me,
So, I only hibernate.
And it hurts.
Letter in the Mailbox (03/29/10)
Leaving the house, I stopped my truck at the end of the driveway to check the mailbox. I was expecting a book. It had arrived, and I held the package and sorted through the rest of the mail.
I came upon an envelope. I flipped it over and there was no writing or address or return address. Nothing identifiable of any kind. It did not look like it was from a business. I opened it up and caught a glimpse of neat lines of handwriting across blank white paper folded crookedly.
My brain reeled. My stomach lurched. My heart jumped as though struck by lightning and it beat with the force of a war drum in my ears. My voice caught in my throat and my breath stopped in my lungs.
For a moment I was frozen in time, standing by the road, haphazardly holding an armful of mail and staring down at the letter in my hands. My brain processed as my eyes read back and forth across the page. Trying to comprehend, trying to identify the handwriting. For a second to which seemed as though in eternity, I thought it was yours. The familiar lean and curve of your letters across to page in black ink.
Everything came together in my mind at last and I realized that the letter was not from you. It was someone else’s familiar handwriting. For only a moment in eternity I had lived with hope and excitement and exaltation and shock. The years of restless lonely longing and silence suddenly forgotten and at an end.
And in an instant all of the things I had been feeling turned to sadness.
I feel like Jon Snow [12.3.15]
I feel like Jon Snow.
To be more specific, when it is after the main wildling attack on the wall. The night’s watch has fought valiantly, and they fended off the initial attack of scouts. Jon snow has returned to the nights watch, run from the wildlings, escaped to warn his brothers of the impeding wilding invasion to Westeros.
He has always been a crow, even when he was with the wilding, even when he was with Yigrette, even though he loved her.
The men are patrolling the wall and castle black and the tunnels, surveying for their dead, and a damage report. John snow was in the battle as well, firing his bow into the wildlings scaling the wall and ramparts and towers.
Much like Yigrette fired arrows into him as he sped off on his horse, her screaming and tears and arrows following him off as far as they could reach.
Jon Snow walks among dead crows and wildlings alike, praying to the old gods for her to not be there. He walks and looks even though he’d rather not see. He walks and carries fear and regret and guilt with him in his heart.
And among the snow and black cloaks he sees a glimpse of red hair, and there she lay, kissed with fire and an arrow in her chest. Dead.
And so is he. Dead in the anguish of losing her. Weighed down and nearly killed with the guilt of not knowing is it was someone else’s arrow, or his own, which pierced her heart and lay her beautiful and lifeless upon the snow.
Curse of the Full Moon [8-2017]
These nights are long and so has been my suffering. I grow old but I grew tired long ago. I was a young man when the curse befell me, and now though grey in age and having gained more wisdom, I have not gained any rest, nor freedom from the chains that bind me. I yearned for solitude. I wanted to see what the world was like when no one was watching. How I imagine the forest must have laughed at my ignorance, my own naivety to think I was safe.
That night haunts me as a ghost, tormenting me awake and dreaming. My hands were raised to the night sky, crying out in anguish, pleading for my life. How the beauty of the moon taunted me as the sharp teeth and claws tore at my flesh, and my screams drowned in my own blood in my mouth. And then I was gone. No longer of this life. Feeling nothing of my own body or the forest floor I lay upon. And then, such pain. Such stretching of flesh and snapping of bones and teeth, and such screams of prayers of wanting to die, and wanting to end it that caught as howls in my throat.
I wished for solitude and now I am cursed to it. Is the moon forever to be my mistress? Is death the only thing I shall ever reap? Trapped in a cycle which I cannot break. Even the moon sets, so when will I? Even the moon is not always full, so why am I always so full of this sadness? It is said that he who is unfit to live in society must be either a beast or a god. I’ve been one long enough and I have been forsaken by the other. I do not wish to be one anymore, or either at all. I only wish for an end to this curse I am bound to by the moon. Everything I touch turns to ash and the taste of blood in my mouth. I pray for Death, and all the world turns its back.
Ancient Kingdom [5-15-18]
She ruled her kingdom with grace and wisdom, fairness and mercy, but also with an equal iron grasp of vigilance, order, and power. The people loved her as a Goddess. They were in love with her as a woman. They adored and feared her as a Queen. The enemy kingdoms and otherworldly daemons were no match for the ferocity and absolute loyalty of her armies, and the men within them. Each of them would die many times over to protect her, for without the Queen there can be no hive.
The days were sunny and cool, and the sweet mead quenched her in many ways, but not all. The neighboring King had kept a peaceful distance; never challenging her authority. He followed her wherever she went, appointing himself as her bodyguard of sorts. His eyes followed her more closely than his body, although he wished to lose himself in the ocean of her divine. She entertained the idea; He would head her armies and lead her heart along a path not oft walked by a God.
The wind blew her way, and on it was carried the smell of happiness.
Observations at Grand Central Station [4-3-08]
I would find it smart
When looking for help in a transportation station
Of any sort,
To ask the man with the cleanest
Shiniest
Most reflective shoes.
I figure that a man with time enough
To spit-shine his shoes everyday before work
Really takes pride in his job.
Helping people like me,
Is why he wakes up in the morning.
I am overwhelmed by the fact
That out of all of these people
Passing through Grand Central Station,
Surprisingly,
I am the only one wearing something
That isn’t black or brown.
I wear yellow,
The color of the lights adorning the walls,
And of the stars painted in the ceiling.
The room is filled with
Cops and business men,
A skitzo and numerous car operators.
They all have started up conversation with me,
Numerous times,
But not about the stairs I’m stretched out on,
Where a very obvious and official sign,
Prohibits my doing so.
Black Hills, South Dakota [8-17-19]
The formations of the Badlands breaks the line of the horizon,
threatening to swallow the sun lie a massive Cretaceous era beast.
The Black Hills rise like the shadows of distant mountains beyond the trees.
The Ponderosa pines stand upon the hillside and granite outcroppings like giant sentinels.
The wind blows steady through the trees, sounding like the rolling tides of the ocean.
The moon hangs low and full over the rolling prairie like a polished rune stone,
illuminating an endless sky full of worlds a world away.
The nights here are darker, longer, deeper.
The distant echo of a dog’s barking seeming as a wolf to the imagination.
The ground shines like diamonds from the mica deposits exposed among the dirt like broken glass.
The crickets, grasshoppers, katydids chirp their songs in the underbrush,
which is entangled with wild raspberries.
We fill out hands and mouths with the tangy sweet morsels,
soft like velvet and delicate as baby birds between our red-stained fingers.
We trek with our packs among the forestry lane,
feeling as though we were the first European explorers to lay eyes upon this ancient land.
Every sight, sound, smell, and taste; a wonder.
Poetry Magnets [4-3-20]
New fridge magnet poem. More upbeat, not so macabre.
The Surgeon [10-2017]
The surgeon had done this many times before, for many years, and he loved this procedure more than any other. Paper had been lain beneath to catch the refuge, and the cold metal tools waited in a row, glinting in the harsh light. He drew the lines across the orange colored flesh with precision and palpable excitement. He held the knife as an artist does a paintbrush and made the first incision, the jagged blade penetrating through the outer layers of flesh and then deep inside to the hollow body. He admired the dark cavernous insides, where no eyes had before seen its hidden beauty. He whistled while he worked, his hands steady, the shapes of his carving taking life. The viscera lay around him in piles, and his hands were sticky with the wet bowels of his work. Upon completion, he stood back from the corpse and smiled. And the face of the jack-o-lantern, its jagged-toothed mouth, grinned back at him.
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