The floor’s gone out.
I just thought you should know.
(more…)Author: michael raven
The floor’s gone out
Photo by Kelly Ziesenis Carter on Unsplash seems
Photo by Suzanne Rushton on Unsplash sometimes the then seems
are not really any things at all
but other seems unconsidered
that beckon with their call, so
now back to the la-z-boy and
the rocking and the nights, dreaming
new oaks from acorns alone
but no, no, don't let seams show
keep all those seems deep insidetossing a rune — 15sep25
dagaz she waves at the threshold
waiting to close the door
until i finally show sense & cross
over to her stone winters withinA poem prompted by a randomly selected Elder Futhark rune.
Today’s rune is dagaz, which has been translated as “daybreak”, that transitional moment between night and day. By extension, it might also be interpreted as “twilight” and is representative of liminality, transformation, the space between worlds, and suggests walking in both the material world and otherworld.
Please visit my Elder Futhark pages at sceadugenga.com for additional interpretations of the runes based on multiple references and personal reflection.
broken days
turning towards headstones
these broken days we, under
the curtains green falling
& lost in the dream
stolen kiss on the cheek
in the nip of first frost
woolen the warmth
given your arms aroundlarking
another nordeast night
chasing phantoms
through busy streets
hands in hand
feet never touching ground
as the crowds gather 'round
for the samhain fires
would the i could
i would be larking
there stillredemption
Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash i wonder if a part if me
is lost there on the path
seeking blaze left behind
either to or away from
recalling both nervous
and tremble hands
she wore over coffee
at the allnight café
cigarettes smoke
staining the dim lights
as stained as either's
reputations unsaved
i wonder if this dying
had any point at all
save for another branch
lost on a meandering path
leading towards
redemption or nonestone twilight grey
Photo by Cornelia Munteanu on Unsplash dead or not dead
does it matter?
these are ghosts lost
to the mists of time
filling in the wake behind
i drank river water
tasting of whiskey
so very long ago
with autumn leaves
i skitter towards my
stone twilight greyechoes
these words are just echoes,
pebbles thrown to the pond—
brave sakura riding the rippleswire
Photo by Adarsh Kummur on Unsplash to go back to mud
root in and ashen
rest awhile & slumber
winter in the long
dark come
this scrimshawed heart
slenders back to
a lingering song
playing on the wire
in the windHalf-penny thoughts — 12sep25
While I do have other regrets in my life, I think those that cut deepest are those times that I acted cruelly or unjustly to someone as a defense mechanism against all the times that people treated me cruelly or unjustly in my youth.
I was bullied most of my childhood, by extended family as well as by my peers.
By my mid-teens, I was starting to be mean to certain people with the justification was that then I was doing it before they could do it to me, especially when we started drifting apart after being close. Always “as jest”, of course. Plausible deniability…
By my late twenties, I wouldn’t even let most people get closer than superficial interactions with me.
There are people, both living and deceased, that I wish I could apologize to for treating them the way I did. But how to find them? Even social media is useless for finding some of the people most owed an apology. And not everyone wants to hear an apology from me anyway. Those are the kinds of knives I used to stab people.
And while I try to not live in the past or in regrets, I do wish I could at least try to repair as best as I am able those moments where I was unnecessarily mean to another person out of avoidance of risking feeling pain myself.
Instead of avoiding pain, I now carry this poison with me with nowhere to set it down.
You have to laugh at the irony.
