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 still
larking
2 comments on larkingredemption
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 greywire
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.
tossing a rune — 11sep25
ansuz to spell you a song
of under dusk breath
of under branched canopy
we tanglelimbs wending
through winds these twine
riding old ash tonightA poem prompted by a randomly selected Elder Futhark rune.
Today’s rune is ansuz, which has a core meaning “a god” (intended to be Odin), “mouth” or “breath”. Odin is representative of many, many things… in this case, ansuz is most representative of the mouth/breath (speech) that gives life to poetry, magic, song, language, and spirit — largely inseparable in the Viking worldview — and Odin is considered the supreme master of these intertwined concepts.
Please visit my Elder Futhark pages at sceadugenga.com for additional interpretations of the runes based on multiple references and personal reflection.
restitution
my jawbone in hand
waving away at wraiths
i offer this token for all
the insults & cruelties
it is not much, agreed
but it may yet yield
glass satisfaction at
the end of your fistHalf-penny thoughts — 11sep25
Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels.com One thing that has nagged me recently is the concept of blue pills and red pills.
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