So, yeah, I've been posting at Dreamwidth and echoing to here.

What I didn't realise was that this account got turned into a dumping ground for Russian spam - bastards - with the predictable result that my LJ got suspended. I even lost my primary userpic.

I've cleared it out now, but major apologies to anyone on my friends feed who had to deal with that spam.

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.


John Clare

THE JOURNEY - Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.

It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world
determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life you could save.


from New and Selected Poems, volume 1

Mo(u)rning
- Serena Mithane




you cannot grow daffodils
between brittle bones-
in ribcages worn down
from a heart beating against it
to break free. you hum
bluebird melodies to yourself
make-believing morning dew
makes it better. you have mistaken
eyelashes for the meadows,
fleeting visions running barefoot-
carelessly, spinning - hoping
spring will come early this year.
your fingertips have never learned
the meaning of earth: discovery
of digging nails deeper into surfaces.
trembling, underneath shifting skylines,
blanketed in wisps of dandelions-
early morning light will not heal
the frostbite creaking in your joints.

he is not coming home today, either.

via deviantart

Continental drift
- Marian Weaver



He started wearing new suits
and leather shoes.
She cut her hair.
They read different books,
and faced away from each other in bed.


Published in NFusion 50

let the dead rise
by Raya


paper sits on the wooden table & doesn't know what touch feels like.

& what of touch — indelicate, I didn't intend to cocoon it beneath a shell
conditioned not to break. a pen, I am thinking, touching: I can write

mother's body is not a sunday dress an ambulance collects
& hauls down the street for the examiner to unstitch, for the mortician
to suture back & breathless. I have to believe that

I can write:

mother's body is not a dead thing I watch others gently pack into soil

where above, someone erects stone that reads: she rests in peace.

my grandmother calls peace heaven, & I say what she calls heaven is earth
swallowing a person. I say we are Abraham sacrificing the son without lamb.



via deviantart

Poem

There's a star in the sky
that makes me think of you

That star shines so bright
that it light's up the entire night sky
Just like you shine so bright
that you light up my whole life

But then your life started to fade
you light becoming so dull
and you said that you knew that your time had come

As you started to go, crystalline tears flowed down my face
wishing that this was all just a dream, but it wasn't

Now whenever I look at the stars
I find myself trying to find that one shining star

When I look a that star I find myself starting to smile
remembering all the times you made me smile

So now that you're gone
here's my poem from me to you
a poem to let you know
that even though you're gone
and that your light may have faded
there is one little piece of that light
that still shines so bright
one little fragment that of your light
that I keep locked inside my heart
-Megan


Untitled poem, by my daughter Megan

The Mortician, by ~crooked-clockwork
(via deviantart)


january: when i was stupid
enough to embark down the
path of death.

mortician, teach me the ways
of understanding death
& listening
a bit too close
to the broken clock
springs nestled
in your equally as broken
mind. i have grown
quite fond of the
smell of formaldehyde,
of the citrus oxides
you deploy to
deter suspicious neighbors.

i want to sleep
& dream of a body all my
own (& maybe for you too), to forget the
scars that caress me, but what i
desire
isn’t always death’s
cup of tea. however, it always
seems like it’s your pleasure
to show me the books on
burials & committals & cults
skirting the ideals of the bible
to better under the world’s
bible of empathy.
so i sit,
split in between an existence
bent on our nirvana,
or an afterlife sewn
into the paper-thin-morale of
you, mortician.

july: when i finally realized
that love is real
even in the presence of death.

mortician, teach me how to
smile without my
skeleton wilting under
the moon’s
unforgiving,
courage-crushing grasp. i want
to know,
i long to break ties
with the leviathan
we call God. to rejoice with
your idea of
warmth, with
your idea of mortality.

the art of embalmment? you’ll
have to forgive me
if i flinch,
if i shy away at first;
i’ve only ever known
the familiar sting
of a needle piercing my own skin,
not forcing a tube
into the veins
of a child
blessed with escape.
why do we all have to be so fragile?
“it’s simple,” the mortician responded.
“because we are not meant
to outlast our forefathers. we, as humans,
are not meant to age
alongside the concept of time,
nor are we meant to
live through the war, the battle
we call life.”

december: when i noticed a child
trying to kick out my ribs &
i felt comfortable in the arms of death.

mortician, finally i ask
for your hand in
marriage,
under the sun of that
monster we call our guardian,
under the forceps of
a distinct, medicinal glove carving
out my philosophies that
you never taught to me. i’ve never
loved a man so
much, nor as violently
as i have you… entertain my
idiocy,
for all i have ever wanted
was to fall victim to your hands,
to your needles,
to your teachings of death
& to learn from you
how to deal
with dying.

the ice we tread is
weak, as we are,
as you have taught me
through the many nights your hands crept up
my thighs,
through the many times your heart beat
separate from mine
& you would let me
cry. but mortician,
can you explain life to
me? just this once
i’d like to know why my thoughts
go faster when you’re coiled around my mind,
around my body
like a disease weaving cancer
into my bone marrow.

“it’s merely because you are human,
you want to understand life.
i cannot explain, because i am a fool
that life never wanted.
i found solace in the dead,
in the art associated with the occasion
of death. but, with my child
beginning to live
inside of you, protected by
your bones,
& by your love,
i can admit:

death no longer needs me.”


The Mortician, by crooked-clockwork

For my DW/LJ friends who are Shakespeare and/or poetry geeks - the elegy for Richard III's re-interment, written by the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy and performed by the actor Benedict Cumberbatch (who will play Richard in The Hollow Crown later this year). It brought tears to my eyes. I've included the transcript below.


Richard

My bones, scripted in light, upon cold soil,
a human braille. My skull, scarred by a crown,
emptied of history. Describe my soul
as incense, votive, vanishing; your own
the same. Grant me the carving of my name.

These relics, bless. Imagine you re-tie
a broken string and on it thread a cross,
the symbol severed from me when I died.
The end of time – an unknown, unfelt loss –
unless the Resurrection of the Dead …

or I once dreamed of this, your future breath
in prayer for me, lost long, forever found;
or sensed you from the backstage of my death,
as kings glimpse shadows on a battleground.

-- Carol Ann Duffy