Category: writing

  • Hollowman

    I’ve gone hollow, with dusty cobwebs occupying the empty space inside. If you were to loosen the black leather lacing that holds everything inside, you would be surprised at the void that greets you.

    I don’t want you to be shocked. So, consider this fair warning if you elect to look inside just out for the looking for any curiosities you thought might be tied up inside. Some other thief or thieves have already lifted the everything of what used to reside there.

    Ahh, is that disappointment I perceive? That long, gravity-trapped face dragging to the ground, where once a smile was to reside, turned to the upside down?

    It’s not my preference to be primarily hollow, I assure you. My clockwork heart was quite the thing, I promise, before it was taken from me. Even the spleen filled of ideal was taken from me. I am quite empty, you see.

    With all parts cannibalized for the sake of entertainment of others, only my eyes remain to reflect the void within. Waiting for something that long has a been and unlike to be again.

  • casting runes — 25jan26

    ingwaz
    oh sure, they said
    put your head inside, they said
    inside, you'll find a grand surprise

    it was all the rage, & so we did
    one cinch, one twist
    & we pushed dead

    A rune poem, based on an Elder Futhark rune selected at random.

    Today’s rune is ingwaz, a rune named after the god Ing or Freyr. It is representative of a channeled energy or transformational process. It is also be seen as the male component of life, and therefore a symbol of sexual passions and the contributed “seed” of life (and, therefore, an aspect of one’s ancestral ørlǫg, or fate/destiny). Some interpretations conceive the rune as a symbol of darkness, solitude or dreaming.

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

  • Are we there yet?

    Today, I am the child sitting in the back seat of a car on a journey to a place undisclosed by the driver. I jitterbug my legs, anxious to be set free from the confines of the speeding steel box hugging the blackened asphalt curves wending round oldgrowth pines, oaks, birch and aspen, the double yellow lines in the center of the road intermittently broken on one side of the other to indicate where a driver might pass.

    There are no other drivers to pass or following the road in the opposite direction. That give some allowance to cut some curves, bisect them as we speed forward to places unknown.

    But I just want to arrive.

    ”Are we there yet?” It is not the first time or last time the question has been asked. I wince, dreading the question as it is uttered, for I hate hearing it as much as I hate asking it.

    No one replies. There is no one to reply. The car drives on.

    I wish we could just arrive, for I am tired of this drive and am torn between wanting to run and laugh at the other end and just wanting to find a soft place to rest my head and cry. Boys don’t cry, so I will hide the tears as gemstones buried into the folds of the soft space and pretend those are treasures that will find refrain on your lips when you discover them after I am gone.

  • Carving

    Photo by Samuel Quek on Unsplash

    Black sands and dragging blades… Darkstone scattered with bright ice standing. The skies cast grey and still I drag heavy steel, carving sigils through the wave-rippled beach between tides. Some even recall a something of you and your laughter when you forget it should be broken, but the carrion drown out the song with their raucous calls, and so I must strain to hear.

    “You should leave those birds behind,” someone suggests and I remind, “Then there is only spiders, and spiders weave different signs than these.

    “And a fox, when they are so inclined,” I add, an afterthought. That fox has decided to be less inclined of late. So I hesitate.

    Back to: drag and recall, carving both glyph and secret names in those small hours when most are asleep.

    I should be lost, I think. Let them shibari my wrists in wire, lift me on wave and bury me deep. Our heart heavies this hurt just so.

  • casting runes — 23jan26

    isaz
    quenching raging flames to
    let passions give to slumber &
    burn low with eyes half-closed
    embracing winter beauty as
    ephemeral as the dream

    A rune poem, based on an Elder Futhark rune selected at random.

    Today’s rune is isaz, a rune that is translated as the word “ice”. Sources associate isaz with a calmness, present moment or stillness. As ice, isaz is sometimes associated with standstill, stagnation, stasis or contraction; even at times as pristine beauty with seductive qualities.

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