longing catnap spells
both eyes draw heavy
sunlight warms
my aged face
Author: michael raven
catnap
nightclubbing
Photo by Michael Starkie on Unsplash dreaming hazy
shadowed clubs and
all smoking cigars...
you look sexy as hell
wearing that smirk
with a stogie in handDon’t ask me who this is supposed to be or where we were clouding up the scene, but this dream lingered with me well after I woke up. Much better than the one about my daughter’s giant pet centipede she talked to in hisses, which is another dream I can’t explain.
Torture
Photo by Serena Koi on Pexels.com I probably shouldn’t reveal this in public, but I think I found the torture that might push me over the edge and confess to being an accessory to John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of Lincoln, should anyone want to force me to make that claim. I might even believe I was part of it, if someone were to focus on one tiny part of my body.
No — not the lower unmentionables.
Something much less in the manner of “naughty bits”. It would be: My teeth.
Yes. My teeth.
(more…)forest of spirits
Forest of Spirits card from the “Oracle of the Morrigan” card deck even dead things have their wild—
campfires hold no sway over their
bone whispers shrouded in mists
should you shadowwalk with me
we will slender through feral spaces
to find our the names and faces
we wore before we were born,
or we may lose our myriad selves
in the fogDisclosure: My use of those tools most often associated with divination are largely as randomized writing prompts, often with the intent of personal alchemy. They are not intended to be representative of traditional divinatory practice. My personal interpretations (and methods) will likely not agree with those found in popular culture.
all we need know
Photo by Suzanne Rushton on Unsplash she is twin crests
her rivers run free
that is all we
need know
she is the green
her cleft draws in
into the womb
under cairn
stone is all that matters
all words just
nattering on like
whispers on wind
she is wellspring
that is all
we need knowforgetting
Photo by Janke Laskowski on Unsplash shocked at the shock
whenever i make the claim
that forgetting might
actually be a desirable thing
or when i claim
to be forgotten might
be much the same
what is memory anyway?
ephemeral and fleeting
like a cloudburst in july
or that first vagrant snowflake
on a chill october daylacuna coils
Photo by Merlin Lightpainting on Pexels.com maltrusting and skirting
penumbral lines blurred
against falling rain
cutting lacuna coils
into the night
oh mortal you
trapped outside these
chalked white hills
a song in your head
given to boneWinter
Photo by Elina Sazonova on Pexels.com “I told yer ma, that’s a season — tain’t no name for a girl,” her father used to tell her when she was young, before he had choked on all that ash that started falling from the skies and died. He was never one to wear a mask, and refused to cover his face after the Ashfalls began. The particulates, buried deep under the earth until recent years, made quick work of his cigarette-ravaged lungs.
“I n’ver did know why she gone did that, but she made me promise to name y’that after you was born.”
“Maybe it was because my hair was white as snow?” she would always suggest, knowing the answer even as she said it. It was a game they played, this conversation of theirs.
(more…)gone to heath
Photo by Ovidiu Cozma on Unsplash my head has gone to heath
mottled stone of lichen
passing steel or passing sun
under rain and dampening
cold the wind whistles wending
through the heath stones
that make of my head
slender spaces shimmer quiet
thin be'twixt and 'tween
here upon my hillock of dream
