Category: writing

  • casting runes — 21apr25

    mannaz
    with eyes returning
    to campfire's flickering
    old grey relations welcome
    back without performance
    to sit without a word to say

    sharp skull the tap
    wake up wake up
    he croaks today

    A poem prompted by a randomly selected Elder Futhark rune.

    Today’s rune is mannaz, a rune that translates to “man” in the sense of “humankind”. The rune is associated with family and the social order, and in trusting the intuitive process or seeing clearly — both from within and from without. Mannaz influences relationships of all kinds, including those of a romantic nature, and encourages compassion, for oneself as well as for others.

    Please visit my Elder Futhark pages at sceadugenga.com for additional interpretations of the runes based on multiple references and personal reflection.

  • stones become doors

    strange days when a fiction
    confirms a reality and
    stones become doors in
    the heather on the heath
    and ravens give to crows
    on the edge of bedsheets

    there is not-song in head
    and not-fire between
    and everything's burning
    at the crux of the seams

    blink becomes stutter
    we give fat, we give bone
    we skin give to we

  • Episode 4: Elsewhen, Part 1

    Vengeance, My Heart is a work of serialized fiction. Jump to key story links to read earlier content.

    It was with an explosive frantic fluttering that the quail broke from the scrub, barely registered before the gun’s thunder broke the twilight calm, before any thought of the bird came to the fore.

    Only after the bird had dropped to the twisting shadows of the mesa, had the stranger known she had made a kill. There was no magic in the act, although it might have seemed so had anyone witnessed the event.

    (more…)

  • box

    too simple for words, and so
    i point towards the moon
    before gathering my heart
    folded into ink-etched bone and
    send it in a ribboned box
    to her

  • wear my eyes blind

    we've the path of ashes
    bringing forth in reds & golds
    burning october in our summer
    etching shard ice in dreams

    soon i will shift under
    perhaps you bone stay—
    to the elsewhen all go
    in the eventual

    you will wear my eyes blind
    slipping to burning october

  • entanglements

    no more fingers
    outstretched because
    we can see our 
    only use is to please
    some illusion of touch
    arthritic entanglements
    become slender thorns
    pressed under tender
    skin

  • Episode 3: What Walks On, Part 4

    Vengeance, My Heart is a work of serialized fiction. Jump to key story links to read earlier content.

    As she made her way to where the crow perched, it was clear that Fallow was not the only equine casualty of the shootout. One other lay dead on the outrider’s side of the camp and the other two had panicked at the noise. The stranger could see the silhouette of one against the backdrop of the last of the failing light. It was looking back at camp, but seemed disinterested in returning. Of the other horse, there was no trace.

    Dee was resting her back against the base of some mesquite once the stranger found her. She was pressing one hand firmly against her thigh, blood staining her fingers dark to match the growing shadows. Her other hand rested near the holster without quite reaching it. Her gun was not in the holster and it took the stranger a moment before she spotted the revolver in the gloaming, left almost under the wain.

    (more…)

  • VMH Progress Report — 18apr26

    I’ve been steadily jabbing at the keyboard for Vengeance, My Heart, this serial gothic western (/not-western) fantasy bit of writing some of you have been kind enough to read. Thanks go out to you who have. Your readership and comments are much appreciated.

    As of last night, I surpassed the wordcount of my recent return to writing serialized fiction, a bit of occult noir that is part of the Vivian Locke world, which I may or may not return to — I haven’t decided yet, as my head is entirely in this world right at the moment. The posts haven’t quite caught up with the written wordcount, but that’s by design. It gives me a chance to go back and fix continuity issues (usually only a sentence, maybe as little as a change in a single word), something I neglected to anticipate when I first started writing serial fiction in 2001, which resulted in an insurmountable hurdle at the time for a truly rotten story.

    (more…)

  • Episode 3: What Walks On, Part 3

    Vengeance, My Heart is a work of serialized fiction. Jump to key story links to read earlier content.

    Dee turned to the stranger and nodded to the gun at her hip.

    “That’s a fine bit of hardware you’re carrying around,” she said. “Old. The kind that means something. They don’t make them like that anymore.” She tilted her head and took a sip from her flask. “Lone woman on the road, carrying a piece like that around… Eventually somebody’s gonna make you an offer on it.”

    She took another nod at the flask, spit into the fire and watched the whiskey flare up into a darkening twilight as it kissed the flame.

    “Might as well be me.”

    (more…)

  • casting runes — 16apr26

    jera
    spinning, burning
    dancing, turning
    the catherine wheels
    in ribbons & gold
    come along
    that may night

    which has love
    surrendered
    in kissing
    a goddess?

    mead drunk,
    &
    a forgotten ask

    A poem prompted by a randomly selected Elder Futhark rune.

    Today’s rune is jera. Jera is translated as “year”, and has also been translated as “harvest”. This rune is representative of cycles, the “wheel of the year”, the union of opposites (implied by the summer half of the year ending, winter half of the year beginning), balance, as well as cause/effect relationships.

    Please visit my Elder Futhark pages at sceadugenga.com for additional interpretations of the runes based on multiple references and personal reflection.