cunningmosswords

[cunningmosswords]

#12 The Trees That Go Walking  

Roots to Red Crown

“Redwoods had grown too much into their home,

Could not upset their roots

And walk away from all the this damaging war”

Issue twelve cuts through a season of celebration, new starts and the bloodfall- where Redwoods pick up abandoned swords, craftsmen cut rings of heartwood hold, and Princes chase after bloody red crowns. Red cycles, red leaves all falling and generations all hoping.

Wind roars 

Storm grows

Passing home

*

Roots pull

Twigs fall

Leaves lost

Hands broke 

Branches fold

Sleeves morph 

Winter coats 

Snow shows  

Autumn left

Conkers set 

Shells rest

Grounds blest

*

Wind roars 

Storm grows

Crying home 

*

Rain stumps

Dirt mucked 

Puddles drip

Slumber breaths 

Rivers freeze

Fauna sleeps

Crafted dead 

Trees bend 

Twists tend 

Carried ends 

Hollowed beds 

Branching stem 

*

Wind roars 

Storm grows

Warning home  

*

Gails bellow

Winter struck 

Bark snaps 

Wood spinsters 

Stroke whispered 

It timbers

It tumbles 

Tree falls

Tree fell 

Earth hit 

Grief strick

Decay sits 

*

Wind roars 

Storm grows

Empty home 

*

Trees grieved 

Carried leaves 

Gathered sticks 

Broken things 

Scattered hearts

Body parts 

Wooden rust 

Rings roll

Stump remains 

Stumped toes

Aching days 

Past ways 

*

Where trees

All danced 

The same

*

Wind roars 

Storm grows

Calling home

*

Trees of Redwood grew where past giants bled and time made new threads. That blood bled into the soil, bled into the roots, bled into heartwood, coated red the sapwood and splattered that paint on the bark too. Redwood was a home for lost blood, where war-torn bodies spilled their many red shades in the summer heat and the winter white-coated freeze. Even the flowers were stained during deep dirt slumber, blooming in red bursts around the bodies who became one with earth's wonder. The colour leaked from flora to the fauna, all of which ate the berries, made their bed in the trees, branches, rooted dens and soaked in the bloody battles of the aftermaths. Metal swords and guards rusted into bronze, morphed with the trees into their extended hands and arms, moving up in their towering height, where the trees watched down with patient eyes. Watched all while man turned on man, blades sharpened, bows drawn, strings snapped, horse galloped aimlessly with slumping masses, stained coats, stained fabrics, all mixing into low aims and flames that burnt with no one but the dead to warm in their shimmering, tired, angry state. 

So Redwoods watched and huffed out the smoke, patted down the burnt patches, burying their own wooden brethren and spared compassion to bury the fallen humans below, cradling a tomb for the ones lost within their wooden hollow home. They watched and listened well to a Prince, too eager to be King, look at past battles and desire his own crimson stream, forge a path for earning battled crowned titles, forgetting- ignoring that which has willingly bled and will continue to bleed after his hands have gone a purple cold tone, sword discarded in the thorns. Forget and erase that under all of the Redwood framed fights were fallen bodies gathered, bodies planted, bodies staining roots for centuries onwards, sat above blooming red beds that will burst in lines like gravestones markers. Redwood stories weren’t well read, for the Young Prince did not care for their witness of the bleed, the bleeding, the bled- he cared for a Redwood ring to be crowned on his unprotected head, and a throne made from core of Redwood strong, cut a heart of a tree in exchange for a coronation sworn melody bond. 

The Young Prince didn’t wait or let the conquest thought wither, he armed himself with a virgin blade and metal plates, cried for war and soldiers followed with all their weapons drawn forward. They left their oath, turned their backs to their King, and carried the empty promised words of a Prince, who thought old ways were too tired for the future state. Where Redwood forest floors had calmed to a steady hum, they once more became a battlefield of men fighting men, greedy famished hands all becoming fallen leafy branches in single speed and hurricane breeze. Whilst they held blades, men also held carving grains, knocking at trunks of trees, testing Redwood for the crowning seat, unearthing them from their rooted feet. Between lost screams, galloping steeds and metals discarded with all the rusted sets of forest’s pasts, trees glared with moving hands, tripping roots in discourse to the soldier's dangerous themes, slapping bone of crafters hunts, running roots through the pools they leave. They could not scream back words, protest in script, just shout the noise of a forest’s tune, saddened by the moves that humans choose. 

The Prince ran through the earth, ran through Redwood wides, bringing up its red dirt, following close to his Father’s steps, marking him in the forest long, trailing when the night got long. He was chasing down his Father like a hungry hunter after a deer, ready to pull off its antlers, join them to his own head, and wear them smirkingly until the day he’d be hunted to his own end. The Father was known for his killing ways, could kill any who brace his path, all but his own beloved son, could not calm his exploring thoughts. Proudly and sadly he loved his child’s power desired embrace and cried inside for the Prince’s destructive fate. They ran parallel till roots tripped up hooves, blades banging, points shakened, as two huffed up from aching joints and continued their chase on foot. Branches reached out and pulled at armour, pulled at flesh, cut faces and hands, stuck knives at the Prince who kept running and running with no sign of slowing. 

Redwoods had grown too much into their home, could not upset their roots and walk away from all this damaging war. They were frozen in the solid winter soil, where white had coated their sleeves and the dirt below, where it was easy to spot fallen soldiers like sprouting red flowers, getting gently lost in the winter flurry that numbs their pain and lets their feelings fade away. Though the trees could no longer walk, their roots moved past red dirt into fairer meadows, touching earth that hadn’t known the scars and haunting roars of those striking blades to flesh, nails to skin, teeth grinding out grief. They could not easily walk away from the carvers that came with sharpened blades, that tore and tore, until they found the trees that only bathed in red soil, grow in the start of endless blood. Roots moved, branches flew, ravaged what could be met, but it didn’t stop the Young Redwood from the cut, the carve, the sap, the bleed, the drain of coloured red to greying rings. 

A Redwood fell and redwood fluttered, hitting hard cold dirty snow, with its reds and rotting leaves- floating out into the air, making its fallen presence known. 

Drips sprayed, painting bark as last loves were whispered and eyes rolled back with breath lost. The Prince stood over his father's body that went limp in the frost and setting dark, where a crimson set shone across the forest and smeared across his thorn armour. Blood stained his uncrowned head, tears slipped from red shot eyes, tears for the past he killed, the blood of his own roots that he stabbed, cut and spilled, running under his feet and passed-down boots. The pain that followed didn’t matter, Prince was now a King with his wounded hand, an army cleared to none and a virgin balde dipped in blood, dropped to add to trees hands, used, tainted having met its mark. Regret echoed through his bones and his Father’s flesh became pale as the blanket of snow, only a red frame to note he had been breathing before he fell forth. 

Prince-The King slumped and moved his way through the snow with sluggish steps, boots crunching over all the twitching bleeding ends. King had forgotten why he started this fight for, started this war, started the notion that things had to change at all. He felt cold, he felt shambles, he felt he let the world fall off course and the trees were following his trail. Hands brushed away branches, stepped over roots, followed until red dust floated like fireflies. He was surrounded by abandoned carving tools, abandoned fruits, and abandoned parts of a tree dissected into sections. There in the glaze was a throne carved from the stump and a red weeping crown for his head to hold up strong. The throne was cut from the hollows, peeling back the morrows with no carvers in sight, just a throne and a crown for his life. The new King left the Prince behind and took his place in the graveyard line, sitting with only the forest to crown his victory, as trees peered closer in their watching. 

They watched as the King smiled for a pleasant moment, watched as he slept on his carved red throne, made all and well out of the heartwood rings gifted on his head with burning ease. Redwood became deadwood and deadwood became a dead spot as King's eye closed and his head refused to lift for the first bird song. Died in his pursuit is what they will say as trees merged in hold braces and took slow splintering lengths to wrap his arms, wrap his face and let the crown fall from its place. Tree stump, amongst the dead things, slowly regained its shape, swallowing scattered parts back to its place. King’s body broke within the pieces, wooden and red as flesh turned to splinter frets, blood to the sap, metal armour to the bark at hand, hand branching with the branches, lines growing through his mouth and out from the closed eyes. 

The Trees cleared, the flowers bloomed, and the forest ate and bathed in red hues. The Young Redwood from its stalk to its crown, took a view of the land around, for a blood brother was crowned and the Tree waited patiently for the next battle to sound. 

.

© 2023 Cunning Moss Words - Written by Anayis N. Der Hakopian

[cunningmosswords]

#11 A Cat Named Bones  

Fallen Feathers and Broken Paws

“All for Death to strip, trip and shed away,

Take from night before it leads to the day”

Issue eleven follows themes of given title roles, Death’s hold- tired paws that wander far, finding where the broken fallen feathers fall. Can we change our handed roles, face the failures that may occur when changing what we know to what we could be after all? Far off dreams of the living kept closely to our souls, silent to our own… 

In the lapse of a quiet cold hour 

Where skies part with the start of stars

Birds know better to hide than squawk 

For Death walks in his night long strolls 

Jumping over aged crumbling walls 

From fences of forgotten garden homes

To pass the lines of dipping planted souls  

Where earth fields have begun to frost 

To melt into dew when morning knocks 

He steps only where Death has walked before

Where the last of pushed up daisies begin to fall

Shedding their petals like plucked feather wings 

And have learnt to sleep with buried dead things 

Wither with the unwanted forgotten headstones 

Blooming around Death touched frozen toes  

In chill blazed reds and crimson’s leave 

With a bed of ivy, oak and sumac leaves 

That stain a poison stinging sting 

They call to blanket what's left of Death’s taking 

Marking those with an ache of never pace  

Pulling, pinching at flesh that bleeds to marrow 

All for Death to strip, trip and shed away 

Take from night before it leads to the day 

Before they notice that this is ending lines 

Where frost's reach breaks veins to mine 

When guided pads would like to trade 

The dying for a reviving stake

Their remains are a trail of held birds 

That have danced their fluttered songs 

In all sorts of desperate panic bursts 

Folded locked talons in a blooming perch 

Before the press, before the air leaves 

With Death crying where he ought to be lying 

For it is all crept with braid, weeded string

Entangled where the living once breaths 

And where the dead have taken a final leave 

Hooked reminders of striving flights 

In broken scattered murder sites 

Where Death begs to feel the breeze

Of less taunting cold haunted seeps 

Tied to the grief of all passing seeds 

Bones, claws, and all guts gots 

Grass forever strained with its regrowing mark

When can one of the dark bring life?

-Crossing roads into street light 

x

Death's hands extended into the paws of black and white Cats, charcoal shades to greying strays who held posts where numb streets and forests meet. They were paw dealers, destructive thought stirrers and night watchers, stalking till dead nodded and whiskers shuddered- looping into moulds of would be kisses and set marked claws on doors for the last dark's visit. They took to handling sun falls’ orders whilst the Birds ringed up the sun's hello braces, to shine where Death was not wanted. A fight of who is to live and whose time has passed by, by high fly eyes and low fanged strives. They, the Birds, move in symphonies, all wings fluttering in their dances, staying out of the strolling hold of Death's ground reach- the ones that are plucking souls, cutting marks, taking from the ending threads of life's beating heart.

Not every hand follows every spoken order and muscle twitch, for a Cat named Bones, who had been the longest of Death’s left hand, tended to forget the doors that had to be clawed and instead of walking along he took to watching bodies as their souls moved on. Watched when Death visited and parted, watched as grief tumbled and turned, as bodies were taken, sheets were burnt and new leaves emerged. He’d even watch the Birds, as still as he could, with a longing eye- as they stood side by side on power lines, not so afraid of electric shocks or the passing winds that could pull them apart. They perched together, Birds of a feather, as storms of cold blood huddled them closer, and all closer together. Bones thought he’d like to travel across power lines, if he’d lie and tie a bit more of truth he’d hide how much he’d like the idea to fly in dances- in sunshine rim instead of shadow stalking in alleyway stalls, in quiet corners passing torches for when Death’s hand returns to body, head and mass at last. 

So Birds perched and perched in these overcrossing moments, sending silent cries to open windows, hoping people would shudder away from the passing Cats, not to stop to stroke and play with their deaths. It’s not that Bones parted clowder of Hands’ took needlessly, they took from the ill, they took from the broken, they took from those who hardly had any life left in them. They marked and let Death question the much more living than embracing well known and sudden seen endings. Bones didn’t like it much, following guided palms when he himself felt dragged and drawn to huddled Birds, drew and watched in the slithers of dark when their perch then turned to a dance of song in light's warmth.

But that night, between darkened rooms with nightlights, window ledges shedding ageless tints, people shaking from sleepless strife and children crying from nightmare fright. Bones walked, carrying on with some of his titled jobs, debating for Death on who should be marked or not- 

When the Little Bird hit the window glass and fell to the ground below, below and below with a SNAP.

Bones stopped. It had been a long time since a Bird had flown so close, he'd forgotten the feathers marks, the smell of fluff and the tweeting sound that fell apart. 

So Bones paused and Bones jumped, down to the ground he followed, landing with a soft soundless sound, a tingle of bell-like halted note. Bones' paws picked up feathers and his eyes got wider and sadder, taking small gentle movements to the mess that cried loud like the nightmare fared children. Blood dipped, dripped and tripped into nature's turning shades, decay of reds in frozen grasslands, where abandoned memories lay melting into scape. She was screaming, aching, engraving, it was night dark and she was cold soil with no other to hear her foil- stuck with just Bones to listen, Bones to question- Bones who wants to hide this happening, lend himself to landscape and never see this passing. 

Death somewhere nodded, whiskers shuddered, this Little Bird was dying, and there was no light of living to reach this shaded fallen place. The Bird would cross over in this fold- injured, broken without her kind to huddle her close, to heal her broken bones. His tail curled, his ears flat, this was a dangerous thing, a dangerous thought. Was he to mark her soul for Death’s collecting or let it float, here, grounded away from the sky she searches for. It, looking down at her falling grace, her calling up asking for its embrace. Her body would slowly frost and she'd be broken lines with a Cat whose paws only knew Death and nothing about reviving light. Maybe he should free her, cut the suffering short, what is left of a grounded Bird, begging the sun to rise and carry her home. 

She wouldn't reach light, she wouldn't pass the night, she'd die, die there, die in minutes, die in spoiled surroundings, daisies blooming, caged in earth's making- and the sun will be too far from waking, too far to mend the broken tendering. There was a crack in Bones’ bones, a crack opening up wide, a crack knowing the look of someone wanting to live past the night. Part of him knew his hands only marked and took- but still he walked closer, bent down cautiously, a reflection of Death engulfing her sight of the sleeping sky. She was tiny, a Bird in hand, fidgeting, twitching, begging to stand. He was Bones, tired, deprived of both breath and a place flocking onto power lines. 

So instead of a mark to cut, he cut to mend, not breaking muscle threads, but braiding them with new ends. Bloody, messy, screeching madness, he cut and remarked her with a chance of seeing the day and waving the night away. It felt like a lifetime- it felt like just a moment, but Death's left hand sprouted a chance, pushing away daisies and crimson blanket leaves, pushing away Death's motifs and offerings. Somewhere within the unknown of Bones’ past, Bones’ last and Bones’ wishful thought, Little Bird's cries turned into a hopeful song. They broke the forked path and made a wish out of halved held bones in each claw and talon hold .

He turned away when it was -ment in betterment. He didn't absorb the creative change his Death marking had brought, he pretended this fate of events didn't happen at all. Just faced his back to Little Bird, listened to her sing, flap her wings and fly off into the sky in the start of morning bright. He didn't need a thank you, didn't need to check if her flight was not the last, he could not deal with the hope and the crushing of a failing chance. Bones just stalked off at the ending of night, listening to Birds breaking away from power lines.

© 2023 Cunning Moss Words - Written by Anayis N. Der Hakopian

[cunningmosswords]

#10 A Whisper of Fright  

Descendants, Presence, Remanence

“While their past haunting was fleeting,

My future ghosts were striding and weeping”

Issue ten plays with the ideas of the past, present, future and stuck in time feelings, places and people anchored to one space, the same ways and whether you can change your seen fate.

They are all filled with ghosts 

Worries knotted to their toes 

Holding onto past thoughts 

Struggling to house them alone

With their bracing biting visits 

They come and go in shuddered cold

Till it seems they lost track of being bold

For time was breaking rhyme

Dragging up things- that were not fine

While their past haunting was fleeting

My future ghosts were striding and weeping 

All broken frames of things to take place

Knocking on doors with an echoing stay

Aching joints for pain I had yet to brace

Singing melodies, ringing out at its strangling pace 

Louder and angrier with each passing belt

Ghosts of past became trophies of troubled delt

Future ghosts are the living drowning spells 

Reminders- That my present is an empty shell

Focused fully on what ifs and could be blitz

Rather than the living sense of ignorant bliss

So future ghosts continue to shift their ghostly shape 

Shimmering in and out of fixed uncertain future states

Regardless of their deafening tasteless taste

They leave a shiver every time I’m to be scrapped

So I leave my ghosts in painted canvas stains  

Of future worries smudged out from past burst veins 

Painting over the promised recurring reign of pain   

Not noticing when my present becomes the past

When my living become the dead peering back 

Haunting of where my living self woke 

Amongst all the whispers of fright 

That all felt for time that had yet to arrive. 

Eerie was a mild word for the eroding state of Everlast, a soulful place sinking deeper into the earth with every year that passed. It was a capsule of gilded dances and fitted feasts for kings and queens, left slightly unfinished, slightly emptied. The edges were murked with dirt and dust, marked, losing shine where curtains undrawn let the sun burn back layers of glory felt brushwork. Gilded parties that belonged to the living became rather matched to the brace of death, for the last breathers sways wished to stay in a never ending stretch- lapsed into a place with no indefinite ends. So Everlast continued to host its balls every single night, dancing for the dead in a riot spark of clashing time. Bands kept on playing their broken retired strings, spirits worked with fitting floating gowns, all drinking mead that soaked right through and out, screaming together in a chorus of melting muffled sound. The after-living kept their lively ways, knowing secrets that should be buried deep in the ground, shifting through whatever remained and meant for time now.

She did not want to know about ghost stories or this ending place, she was out to follow doubted mirrored truths, a visit for those brink of death knowers. Styled in a dress of ribbons, with a grip held tight to spirit swirling sticks and lantern light, well known to stomp out wandering thoughts in deathfelt homes. A mask perched on her face hid a trace of a grimace as she stalked over uprooted ends, out of the gaze of teasing youth gathered whispering at the gates. Though fables had properly warned them of troubles, there was an overwhelming excitement of drawn-out hollow night dares and what the endless fright knew about thriving in death. But childish voices grew quiet as the young girl walked through the wild fields, shoes finally hitting old buried roads that had not met the feet of the living folk in many moons gone. Head held high she walked a straight confident line, past the outer viney walls, where shadows floated upon muddy window views, through the dirt path where the earth had left rings around loose stones, carefully distracting from remaining bones, sturdy walking up the cobweb steps and waiting under the glimmer of curved stain glass doors set. She, for the first brace of the path, hesitated for a beat, as that errieiness of Everlast made itself known in a static of silent known things. Silent breath, silent head, silent where the weeds had stilled and out of sight crickets held their notes, where owls didn't nest so close. It held her for a moment, before raising a free hand to thump a steady, loud, clear knock on this side of oak. 

Knock…. Knock…. Knock.

The manor may have just stayed dead in its reply. What was a worse greeting, the silence of the silent or the silence of the dead who clearly were waiting and watching. A small gulp could be caught as she stood still as a plank, patient for what was a few seconds felt like hours peeling from her flesh. Without an indication or said invitation the door creaked open with only a gentle breeze to give a comfortable squeeze oh you may walk amongst the dead here, please. With a forward step, a resetting blink, what looked like the sinking picture of past glory days whirled to life of its makeshift original state. One side lived and grimm, another living with cheer, portraits full and bright, others missing the people who lived within its borders, floors semi littered with past offerings of those who used to visit in early dawn lit Everlast vigils. Candles woke to match her close held flame and the ghosts of the past had yet to make themselves known- so she did one thing she knew about fabled Everlast, make your way to the ballroom for a dance.

The walls here had seen many things, heard many words, stored many thoughts but had no tongue, no eyes, and no mouth to speak but to shake and scratch stories into their own skin and bones. Though they tried, the girl didn't hear their stories, didn’t notice their warnings, didn’t see ribbons vanish on the corner’s edge, she kept on walking, light guiding the way, losing reflections under dust built mirrors and trying her best not to let the cold shiver. All halls and thought missteps guided her towards the ballroom’s best, with bursting light under its doors and sounds of party floating close. She did not see anything out of place or out of fear, maybe the oddity was her sense to welcome the warmth of the cold restless dreams she hadn’t dealt with before.

This time she was braced with a wide room that was more packed than she thought it could, with guests in different gowns, cloaks and bootstrap shoes, different tones of blue and dash of angry red, ages of the past and something she had yet to see and ask. Curtains were half drawn, half burnt, plates half cracked, candles half lit, glasses half filled, half empty with liquid honey bliss with a crisp of crimson tinge. A line was drawn split between their consuming ways, guess the dead needed to trade their all consuming faith. Masked drawn bodies were left to wither to bones, lay pushed to the end of table throw, stained with fallen goblets of whatever poison they swallowed in accepting endless tomorrows. The girl wondered why they would give up on living lines- maybe to leave the feeling of heartbreak behind, never deal with the suffering that they'd be marked to know or to forget that things always change in the living world- that's why these dead state's stick to their unageing unshifting ways. She wished she could find discouragement in their delt price, but these fright looked happy for being lost in loops of strung by time. They were shifting through the walls, playing their jokes, dealing cards, working on their songs, dancing on and on. Worry latched on when she saw a familiar knot in the crowd of shimmering-

"What brings you here?" a whisper spun her over as she faced the blue pale eyes of a pale faced young boy, who would have been a becoming young man. "A drink, a game, a story to trade?" He said with a charming smile "I'm here only to speak with the host, I assure you if you tell a fib and cut a deal- I'll know", better not make a deal with the dead who forget the fragile lines to keep one alive, not to barter with the gone who forget what living once was. His cheerful gaze turned into a knowing smirk "Host is that way, next time, you'll say yes to a game" Point, stir, shift, vanish, the next time left a painful burn. Instead of allowing the words to sink like the sinking place, she followed the host with their black mask, black cloak, black ribbon best, ignoring the splashing of blood coloured liquid and the stains on the wooden ends, ignoring the shivering that the happy fright smile leaves with a taunt of devilish flare, ignoring that she knew ever step though she’d never been here, in these wall before this night, not that she knew of. Just knew the voice, knew the words, knew the wait, knew what had to be checked, left and be done until passing decades returned the knock. 

She was only a step behind the host's quick walk, knocking through spirits who touched a nerve each time, all when reflections caught her eye. In the ballroom, the glass was clear, unlike the lonely hallways she’d passed to enter here. That small gulp from earlier, the one hardly noticeable, became extremely clear, not once but twice, thrice in the same second of time. She was definitely seeing double in the mirror frame, double sets of ribbons, a double set of lantern light, double masks and a missing set of spirit sticks that shouldn’t have left her hands. She turned on her heel, turned to see nothing of herself behind her, or ahead of her, though the glass was clearly showing something she couldn’t grasp. With a shrug, with a blink she kept on walking, her hiccup meant she lost the host, lost the pale eyed boy, lost the thought of who she was looking for, it was all stranger things with nothing to hook onto but let the energy fade away, seep in like mead. 

It took a few steps, a few breaths to see the past was catching on, that the present was running on when she spotted her spirit sticks dropped to the floor. For not so physical souls, spirits had energy, a stabbing buzz- it was like pushing through a festival day crowd, with stomping spinning sound. The band played louder, the fright got thicker, the past got broken and the future was watching. Orange pale dressed girls with cut fox masks, reached, tripped and restood. Was she also tripping? Standing? She wasn’t sure. She just felt hands reach out to hers and pull her into a spin, into the dance of the dead. Her head was getting heavy, the faces were getting blurry, the bruises visible on different versions of her mask dropped faces, mask hitting floors, dress pulling up dirt, someone’s passing glasses around, blood seeping out and I can hear them shatter and cut before she has had a chance to hold them. She is spun, spun and spins, joy absorbing, cold, painfully reassuring. Her ghosts might just be taunting her before she knows the meaning of being dead, soul sucked in ghostly stay. Everlast time is endless happiness to the dead but its effects on the living are like glass pieces getting tossed across the ballroom floor, reflecting too much into one's own, all at the same time until-

Until it stops, rooted, future, present, past in tangent. The spirit sticks strings were placed back into her hands with a chord strung to whistle home, pushing away ghosts who left a wide circle for the Host to haul this young girl up onto her feet, greet her with a gentle, tired, well known smile. She’d say it was another reflection, but she felt the hand in her’s, felt the energy shimmer the same, no longer painful, just numb, the same. The host was older, mask identical with repainted brushstrokes, eyes all knowing and head held slumped instead of high, slightly broken, as if put back together when once badly fallen. “You should be heading home, the present can’t be traded and healed here for you” that is all she had to say, one to one, present and the future one, all in looking, peering to see why the dead would trade their past for everlasting nights in joyful fright. “No, I came to find myself, that bit that died and never revived” she said sorrowfully to the alike. Speaking back she duets “It long passed- can’t be found lingering with the dead, not borrowed or traded, only found deep in our own breathing flesh”.

Hauntings take place from the past, past mistakes, past breath and the future selves were cut and clear, all possibilities seeping into one end. Was there healing in one’s self if this future soul looked more broken than her present was. She wondered if a sip of spiked goblet would make it all disappear, kill the rest of her living state so that she’d meet the bit that had been torn from her waking days. The host, herself, became sad and sunken, spirit stick disregarded, present wondered what had happened, what had spilled across the soul to make the dead so happy but leave future living self full of dread, worry and painful kindness, steady and divided. 

All burning emotion in one self splits miles of time in a flicker of shared place, here face to face. It felt like a loop to embrace no matter the wish, the change, the chase in a healing space. “No, this wasn’t the answer, this isn’t any better, one glimpse, one check, I might as well have found myself dead!” This place's trade felt like prison bars, better dead elsewhere then stuck never moving forward, not in this foreverness of everlasting. “It gets better” is all the future-the host had to say, masked returned to face, music returned to play. 

The girl stood codly. Maybe present now trips and falls, maybe she was dead when she walked through the door, maybe she had messed up somewhere, someplace, sometime from now. This host had aged, this host had lived, this host was lonely in a room full of thriving unbeating spirit, herself becoming a future ghost who knows her place and all. Wasn’t future better than all this? The young girl wanted to shout and scream, change everything, she could not muster any words to match the ache. The past was haunting but the future was crushing. 

So she left, fright whispered scattered visions, spirit strings strung loud and clear, walls lines deepened, and mirror shattered selves faded with every step taken to strive out of this neverending place. Passes the halls, the ghostly empty frames, the dusted mirrors who hide her fated ways, all until she stood to take the first step out of stained glass doors until she felt the need to knock to leave this world. Knock, leave the pain, knock leave the future behind, knock leave the guilt knowing the loneliness that’s inscribed. Everlast is an eerie place, well versed in casting light in your future place and leaving you in depth of hate. But she could not really hate herself for giving up and not being able to move on, but she can hate her present who let future handle it alone in these lines, while everything felt joy in the lapse of death and time. Maybe future ghosts change and the present won’t stay a daunting place, wouldn’t know until you break the loop in place. 

“See you all the same” Whispered pale blue eyes for the decades that will pass by.

© 2023 Cunning Moss Words - Written by Anayis N. Der Hakopian

[cunningmosswords]

#09 Hunt of the Departed 

The Ones Left Wondering

“Cinder hounds peeled from cinder remains”

Issue nine is for all that remains in spooky long darkening days. Isolated, cold, and eroding away are those who stayed and those who lost their way. Follow mares, cinder hounds, the departed dead and what they will share and fare in death. 

I watch as the ground gets too close 

I watch as my head hits the dirt rock 

I watch as the words slip out of reach 

I watch as muscles flinch and chest flutters 

I watch as crimson bleeds in pools and stutters

I watch as it stains and the deep pains stay

I watch as the feeling leaves a tasteless taste 

I watch as it all moves in its raw decaying state 

I watch and watch 

and I watch- struck stuck 

I watch till I forgot I was lost,

What was lost?

I watch till I watch no more 

I depart to wonder on  

Looking for whatever it was 

-

Somewhere, they left as dead 

Flesh gone, bones sunk 

Broken, morphing stated songs

Shells of the wittering wants 

Are all the departed ones 

Searching for what once was 

She visits under a moonless sky, a dark pitcher of watered mist and driftwood twist, leaving dips in the earth as she strides. Walking with the dripping clip clop of hooves through village paths, she passes where candle lights are hushed and folk people pretend to sleep, eyes folded blind, feet cold as ice, waiting for the hunt to arrive. Their homes have stopped to a peculiar still, where fire cinders still weep and dinner tables are left prepped with a makeshift feast, which is more than the contents of their rationed fed howling stomachs. Food is better spent on the dead around these parts, the dear and the lost, holding out offerings for the Mare in her yearly gracing, appearing in between ending winters and before the sprung of waking spring. 

Between the dips and enclaves of hollow hills and carved trees, the Mare shifts her weight at ley line points and waits for the winds to rise and burst out from the dark. Waits for the touch, the grasp that life is wandering and the bodies are sitting, rotting, waiting, lying for the answer of her shearing cry. There is a gasp of grief, a gasp of care, they’d exchange fortunes for last visits for the departing was so unfair. Mare waits in their waiting for the precise moment, head tossing back, the moulting river of mane splashing and muzzle screeches aloud, those light cinders weeping turn to a burst of murky fire. 

Cinder hounds peeled from cinder remains, roaring to life on the brink of the once dead flame. Their reach is in the whiff of smoke and char on wood and stone, table corners, cracks in plates and the furs singed in curled ends, they wake in homes of those waiting for departeds and storm the doors in all its cracks, creaks and open window breeze. They run with silver eyes and navy miles, through the village paths, and the narrow stacks, looking for the molded dead to remake at last. 

This sleepy wake had more bodies than you would think, lost in hollowed out trenches, young in the broken open bed of the woods, children who had been stuck in devil tree gaps and maidens who lost too much heart, found hanging in their threaded ending veins. The folk had lost a lot of souls in many different ways, whose vessels had not turned up in searches, crumbled to the jaws of animals’ wilds, sunk in the bottom of river streams, and left by greedy hands who picked tokens from the remaining and forgot respect to mark the bodies with clear naming. 

But cinder hounds knew their names, knew them from those who waited hungrily for the departed to return to the memory of glory days. Mare reared up to the winds and hounds answered the hunting call, searching through the slips of time that had wrecked the remains of the waiting dead and all. They rushed at their hands, arms and toes, pulling at boots, sleeves and skirts that had worn and merged with the moss and dirt. Pushing heads forward and dragging those detached from their form, pushing and pulling in packs of charcoal cinder lights, crisping bushes on their hurried minds. The souls hooked back into their bodies with aching joints, propping and folding to the wave of welcome and following into lines of somewhat mortal fines. They were guided out from the trees, the rocks and the rivers and aided to a better shape, though it were to be a disturbing mix of soulful spirit and the open fleshed bones that remain. The clothes were a finishing courtesy to hide the worst of their ending eroded state. 

Mare waited for the stomp of shoes, the click and clatter of half filled glasses, the smoke of cinder hound paws, watching longingly at the parade of bodies who could finally walk their way home. The dead’s memories started to tip back into their heads like a drink of water to a dying flower, the searching and the forgetting had been healed in this sudden youthful waking. And these dead, these dead wanted nothing more than a meal with their families who did not get to lay the lost of them to rest. So they huddled together with Mare singing a song, guiding the brood to what remained of home. They swayed, crumbling and remending with smoke and fire whisks, nature clinging to them, growing aided limbs and sticks, and hiding the stench of death's best scent. Cinder hounds bounded at their hunted finds and they knew the reliving would all pay a wealthy price to their shining eyes. 

Candles unlit became lit again, as folk gathered behind doors, eyes folded and hands jittering to hear the voices of those gone, lost from last spring's wake. The dead greeted them ecstatically knocking at doors with a dance of knowing they could finally be home with precious loved ones. Cinder hounds walked at the heel of their feet, observing as families spoke lively though their eyes could not see, all well to spare them of such gruesome looking things. But they knew, they knew they were not tricked, that their loved ones would walk through the doors and eat a meal, sit together, parting words and wisdom before a final goodbye must be said and done.

In all their greeting joy, one soulful body lay headless, his head gone, his memories flattened, he did not know who he was or who was waiting for him. His cinder hound whined and shuffled aside as Mare stalked forward to his side, pitied him in his lonesome state, with no call of memory to end the searching pain. She looked and wondered whether there was anyone here at all to call him. The cinder hound could not sniff out the home, no candle was re-lit or left alone, and this body wasn’t to be named properly after all. He began to moult and slip and sink into the ground, for what use was waking to know that you aren't truly found? But instead of allowing him to fade the Mare did something unusual, she offered him, the soulful lost, a ride. It would not be nice, it would have a price to live in death unknowing of what was but she too was lonely in her watching and waiting role. Hesitant on such a notion the headless strangler absorbed, assured, that nothing here knew him or wanted him home, there was nothing to him after this call. 

The only answer left was a binding yes, I'm sure.

Darkness was fading when families wished their last goodbyes as the parade of bodies returned to door frames and cinder hounds followed out with scrapes of meals and burnt firewood in their bellies’ stay. The dead slipped tokens into hands as blinded eyes let tears spill, they held small touches and shared soulful words before doors sorrowfully closed and the dead stared motionless. What was next, they did not think that ahead but the strangler knew it wasn't going to be such a pleasant end.

Cinder hounds waited for candlelight to die before bursting with sharp smoking teeth and darkened eyes. They did their job to hunt and find, now it was devouring feeding time. They took to the bodies and tore into flesh remaining, pulled apart bones and fabric that was swaying, tore them to bits, singed and waffled, destroyed what was of the departed till there was nothing to say they had awoken. The pair of lonely watchers watched together as Mare's song rang on, overshadowing the cries of those regretful of trade and saddened that things will never be the same, sparring the ache of those now fast asleep- who will think of their past loves happily so. Cinder hounds are quick to strike, grabbing at souls before they vanish, sinking teeth into that spark, holding on, not giving up till dawn breaks the sky above, they don't dare give them a chance to escape without paying their part.

For cinder hounds and lingering caught souls don't simply merge away, they together dive into their master to remerge again as tasked hunters before the following spring has sprung its first flowers. Their smoke dispirits, bone’s crush to ash, and I assure you the act alone hurts, diving into pitch black waters to form small split stars on the Mare's surface of misty murk. The strangler's body flinched, without a head, the sight was buried but the sound was strangling, for the night has been unpleasant and there will be many unpleasant nights to follow, where hounds obediently follow and souls trade the last of their bodies' marrow.  

Mare didn’t reassure him, didn’t give him a chance to think- just trotted on knowing pain had been taken from hurt hearts, grief had been swallowed and buried in her own heart. They’d sleep less cold, food would return warm, and less broken was their home that had been missing the departed wandering souls- it was a moment we lost things adore. Mist followed, mist left, remains of this year's dead were long vanished from these valley’s lengths. 

© 2023 Cunning Moss Words - Written by Anayis N. Der Hakopian

[cunningmosswords]

#08 When Wild Geese Chase

And the Chaos That Follows

“A single fault seeker becomes a group of chaos bringers”

Issue eight is dedicated to new starts and confused hearts. Where things feel like a mess even when you believe you’ve done right, your stuck looking where to go and feel hopelessly behind. Here’s to upcoming fresh starts and those building to past wants.

Follow dreamers following the seams of hopeful hopeless dreams, chasing hoping souls, till the stir, till the fall, crash whiffling, till there's nothing to guide you home.

He stretched his aching wing 

Up to the misty skies 

Where birds flew in Vs

While he drew lines 

Floating in his lonesome 

Waiting for his skein 

To ground to a gaggle 

Haggle for his heath

Push him on his flight 

Instead, he is surrounded 

By duck, duck and ducks 

To his self, a single goose 

Watching fellows fly high 

And dreams shrink to a hide 

Like little tweeting songbirds 

Singing madly on powerlines 

He listens well to their melody 

Till there might be a familiar honk

With the plump of flapping wings 

And the snap of snapping beaks 

Saying “Coming home! Finding hope!”

In the ones we left behind and lost

Hopefully dreams have curves and daggered drops, but those who stay in crumbling messes know the fight and want, even when the world has grounded you, dreams will pull you through. Dreamers need each other's dreaming ways, the ones who believe even when those seams don’t seem to intertwine and beam, even when wings have ached and no longer remember the failing pain.  

Puzzle pieces swim in her head like the first falling leaves that glide onto the lake, colours unmatching in their early autumn shades, green turning to a yellow blaze. They have started falling through her windows at home, sticking to socked feet and dancing in the returning gales of a season's change. By the pond, her distracted thoughts are broken as a bold goose snarls, snapping at her shoes, aiming to untangle already loose laces from their places- not like much help was warranted in their process of undoing. The young woman's hands flap around at the hissy goose before opting to give him no attention, just one bat of a cold glare to spare. He shuffles, returns to pretending he never partakes in not so good goose deeds, waddling astray, eyes still glued to her bag full of not so bird friendly snacks.

“You have better luck eating my laces, see how you fair” she mutters, propping down tinted glasses to do their job of filtering out the confused rays of a sunny and freezing day. Head tries to build pictures of the splintered snippets that make her mind knot over words and displaced movements. All while little goose continues his bully status, annoying humans and otherly beings, pecking at dogs tails, pulling at the dirt ends, overturning fallen dummies and trying to grab strawberries from birthday picnic baskets. The earlier mutter becomes a chuckle as girls wail with smeared cake paint, phones on selfie mode, gathered, squabbling to protect their unattended strawberries and cream. They are like geese chasing after hopeless things as their lunch spread gets blown back and forth, numbered balloons escaping hands, gift wrapping dotting the grass pink with curled strings while one goose honks happily at the chaos risen in his stead.

He continues his routine in circles, stopping by, eyeing her then a honk goodbye before visiting the others. Dogs growl, grass is pulled, mothers panic, girls haven't forgotten picnic baskets, a stir of stomping feet, glaring eyes, jotted text, a baby wails and leaves continue to bleed.

It takes less judgment and more time to notice his acts of chaos are acts of caution, pinching dogs from going astray, pruning dirt for plants to grow in before they wilt and fall, attempting to hook lost dummies to return to mothers with tearful darlings and pulling back strawberries from picnics unmatched to today's weather forecast, teasing those who don't have a care for the mess they leave after. The young women's judgment faults and flattens, replaced by sympathy rising for a bird being shoed off with more of flapping hands and strong tied lace shoes, kicking pebble dirt and air to empty air. He waddles away in a hurry, hissing and snapping, to a space green where little goose is alone in his stay, odd against the shades of feathers out here today. Searching, craving, seeing that which goes unseen, like catching when those leaves start to change their theme. 

With a sigh, she reluctantly zips open the bag and searches for an apple, her gut answers with a brewing grumble that had gone amiss in her daydreaming tangled head. Eye raised at the goose, who decides it's safe to join her, sits humbly by untangled laces. They share apple bites, one with slow mouse like nibbles and the other gobbling with a loud munching beak, tomia flashing bright like jurassic knives. So there sit two misunderstood beats, perceived as mean angry burning beams, chewing up words, tagged for the seeking of faults, causing chaos of their own.

The munching dies down and the goose huffs his feathers, he is alone and searching, head turned to the sky, long and misty, putting puzzle pieces together with far off eyes. She knows the mirrored feeling, thinking how does one get here and decides where one should go now? Does he wait alone because he desires it or has the world left him in his fault seeing lenses? Chase, chase again, till one learns to let go of such things, thoughts, people and hopeless dreaming things.

The quiet moment ends as a honk sounds through the air and multiples in its burst of momentum. Alone, puzzled looking goose turns into a gathering, for geese join him from the skies, shimmering at water surfaces and pulling mud and earth when on the grounded surface. They chase him with a wild happiness in their tone and those who get too near or curse loud enough that it has reached their ears know the result. A goose and a girl questioning hopelessly hoping is left as the latter, wondering if there is hope in a hopeless search if little goose can stand merely alone and strive such noise when around flocking feathers, making unliked friends in held places.

A single fault seeker becomes a group of chaos bringers, faults forgotten and worldly wordy responses desired. This young woman hurryingly packs up for her departure for no one should await the carnage a group of chaotic voices can bring, especially where they are desired not to speak or scream. On her departure she lets out a mock up terrible honk and they bellow a vigorous response, waddling on their course and little goose through havoc is building unseen bridges with feathers left as a calling reminder of the time spent in the last hour. The young woman leaves her puzzle pieces behind forgotten like leaves that float away in the growing gail, better for both their goods that they are left broken and scattered to a mess then locked in her head. Just a thinker of faults, looking to carve the calm and carry on even though others might feel the electricity of a storm.

© 2023 Cunning Moss Words - Written by Anayis N. Der Hakopian

[cunningmosswords]

#07 Rest the Dog Days

And the Weeping Stars

“All this, whilst Dog Days ends, and Dog Days song bares its tune from dusty speaker sets”

The seventh issue of Cunning Moss Words is focused on the ends of summer days, ghosts of space explorers and shining stars. Learning to live through the heat, the sticky beats of summer end amid the greed and fall of innocent souls.

She met Sirius in the Sky 

In the turn of autumn fall 

As he was readying to set 

After high held summer long 

She greeted him with such joy 

For the world she knew shifted away 

From the cold streets of home 

To the walls of burning metalwork 

She had been so fearful alone 

In the increasing warmth and dark 

Being torn from what she had known

It was all suffering with a breaking heart 

She must have cried and howled

When shot up from the ground 

To meet the sky without a goodbye

And say infinite hello to marble blue light

She had not known when she passed 

But the stars glowed with their smiling 

Hiding their weeping at her floating place

To keep whole in her innocent gaze

She looked around and around 

But nothing was familiar up here 

It was full and empty and so unclear 

No map could guide her spirit here 

So Sirius took pity on this lost little dog

And dug to hold onto the spark of Laika’s soul 

Leaving her body stuck in a loop of time

Vessel waiting for the blaze to strike  

She ran across the dark with dog stars 

In the company of glowing hearts

While her body fell back towards earth 

Slowly falling apart in its arc 

Her form took to the blaze 

As her soul played in space

Bidding the past away 

And greeting ghosts of later days

The sky is full of ghosts, shimmering dying lights even in the blazing day and the dark of midnight rain. White streaks against the night, like the stars are shedding their last tears. The type that can only be seen in glimpses, until they simultaneously brew over into a full on grieving shower. One raindrop to a painful show of a storm, set against the galaxy’s endless growing walls, in the deep depths of old. In their thriving dying ends, they look living and clear from our outer world view. What we don’t note is before we get the chance to properly meet them- death has long reached many of those twinkling stars, and even in death they look breathlessly beautiful in their endings and echoing weep song. Just small reflections that barely meet our eyes, a slowly sinking light. 

Though the sight might render one blind in dark or delight, I wish I could see them, in their best, their mess and their worst dressed night. For here, on the surface below, the clouds are storming on earth and have drawn a curtain from their shiny window view. I hardly see their living light let alone what remains of their dying times, but I imagine it is like cliff jumping in the darkness, pale and shimmering of a moving spirit, missing where they may land in the wide deep ocean. Lost in the movement, just for a moment. Diamonds be in the sky, diamonds be in the water, diamonds be even in the rock below us, jewels to be plucked, locked, hoarded and some painful times lost and refound in healing seconds. So stars glow and stars fall, rocks and light in all, dust and dirt in iron bold meteorites falling to us in their burn or lost in the ice orbiting years of us, when we ourselves, be earth of bones and spirited ghosts. 

So somewhere in the poetics of falling clouded, dipping, dripping sky, the stars continue crying in their floods for tonight. All this, whilst Dog Days ends and Dog Days song bares its tune from dusty speaker sets, dancing with the smoke that lingers from first and the last chance of the month BBQs. This is the revival of dog day people who have been stuck in stationary living and want to break from the sticky hold. The stick of summer motif humidity, with choking breath and wandering strands, the smell of earth-drenched heat and the lack of a refreshing breeze. I am left wondering if living is good enough if stuck to one place of the month, or the season gone, stretched, watching shadow follow sunlight glare till the moonbeams make their way through the window pane. 

So while the street celebrates into the dark, I keep my eye on those moonbeam lights, asking the sky to part on the one night it is most alive in months. Let them be clear enough for me to draw lines of constellation forms, and if not, I may have to part them myself and draw a net from silky spider webs to catch the stars that will fall. Catch them and shut the reviving dog days souls out and stay in my stationary living spot. Return them stars to my own ceiling walls so that the galaxy can be in my window view alone with a company of moths dancing to their flickering glow. 

The thought is lovely, but the starlight is dipping quicker than it should, quicker than the moths who haven’t finished their quick ends and have found better things to dance their deaths to. I caught tears, I caught angels, I caught spirits from heavens that went astray from their place and resting stay. Here, they cry and whine with a painful sound like flies on sticky tape that know they want out. When they fall, that glow goes too, plucked, lost, without the sky they are sunk, just become rock. Not bobbing up from an ocean cliff dive, just sinking, drowning, lost in the sand dust floor. I keep them till the thought of their stationary living hurts my soul, breaking their resting days and temporarily stuck stay. 

As learnt, stars can not be plastered to man made ceiling walls, they must be thrust to the sky like fledgling birds who just need to remember instinctively how to fly. While the dog days people continue to celebrate their living unstuck future days, I return these falling stars from whence they came. They stir alive as quickly as they fell, returning to the cliff edge, jumping far and high, living out their ending days in dimming light that from here shines ever so bright. Waving an echoing goodbye, living in their long lasting sway while it takes years to see that they are happily safe till the next dog days wake. 

© 2023 Cunning Moss Words - Written by Anayis N. Der Hakopian

[cunningmosswords]

#06 A Poppy In the Field

Lone Brace the Winds

"It stayed in its neon tones, a tall tower in the midst of dying thriving urban decay"

The sixth issue of Cunning Moss Words is focused on striving alone and thinking anew. A shout out to those who believe in good changes and accept their truths rather than listening to bitter words that are sprung sharp to keep you quiet. Scatter the seeds and plant a new field.

Somewhere, in nowhere

In the middle of fields 

Bloomed a poppy 

In prince orange peels 

Above unnamed roots

Of soil and spoken truce 

It grew where it was not wanted

And bloomed before it could be struck  

By anyone who noticed its unweaving heart 

For before, poppy grew with poppies 

In all their safely samely paper petals

Swaying in their orderly stem fashion 

But one started to stutter in its pace-

Even those poppies grew unsure of poppy 

And poppy grew tired of trying 

Trying to sway and glow the same 

To be delicate with paper petal veins 

With all their pinks, reds and orange stains

That bleeds into a smear of paint-

The flower meadow was not happy 

They swayed to poppy to stay the same 

For poppies belonged to grow together 

Not single, unlike their gathering ways 

But no words could change the thought 

Poppy blew off course and grew on its own 

Thrived alone surrounded by unfamiliar thoughts

In what was once considered a weakness

Became poppy’s strong growing strength 

Overrun and over swamped 

Here there was room to stretch above 

So Poppy later became Poppies 

In a field of its own bed of things 

All weeping in raw uncertainty 

Tougher against the winds 

Turning seeds, all scattering free 

Spreading across the fields green 

For the earth to paint a new sea 

In poppy's passed down dreams 

Nowhere is somewhere for everyone who is told not to change or that they morph too much in a day. For small spaces, odd spaces, crowded spaces, and clear spaces become a balance of words and safe cocoon turf when you fix yourself to be the thing that you factly certainly are. There is no undoing or deleting, just reshaping and breathing, not a want or a need, just the base of existing. Regardless of how you decide to reshape yourself, a simple change makes you become that bead against the current. There is no guarantee there will be a place to stay and be held, be loved at all in that moment. No necklace to be threaded on, just waiting on string to be broken. For the people all around, growing to their wilted stop- will always be focused on I’s instead of We’s, only focused when you become a tirelessly annoying out of sync thing. 

Odd how we do not turn to tear each other apart every second of every day, for we are all too different in our own thoughtful right bearing ways. All believing we are budding buds in fields of grass when we are in fact a wall made of bricks and mortar. Set and built on a rank of ideas that must be torn fixed when we don’t follow a constant line of the collective mind. Should we be punished for seeing differently or knowing what is right from wrong? Our shifting ideas and identities are stuck together no matter where we turn to breathe alone. Stuck on I’s until we may become a US, then are indefinitely stuck on We and no I or You to think separately. Choices, thoughts, feelings and words are truest to yourself even though others might not care to see or accept your truest thing isn’t against the crowds flowing I(‘s) think.  

We I see it, just like that. It was a splash of colour amongst dumped work rubble in what felt like the middle of nowhere (which was a somewhere for someone). Sat growing on a busy winding road which made its tough small self, tremble in the dry warmth. A poppy, alone to brace the winds of the motors that were breathing and burning petrol fumes at sensitive noises. You grew in harsh dumped stones and metal bars of someone's rubbish dump, it didn’t stop you from thriving where you shouldn’t have to be growing. Did you choose to plant yourself here, did you get a choice or did you follow where the winds go or planned to give a messed up place a chance to sort your own messed up hopeful thoughts? 

It stayed in its neon tones, a tall tower in the midst of dying thriving urban decay. It stayed standing tall when it rained down a storm and when the tarmac baked in a span of a week and a day. It stayed as I passed it in ‘let me take in the world’ walks. It stayed until that single poppy died, broken, dry and tumbled into the rubble it once bloomed in. But in its demise, several more poppy strands started sprouting in its staying place, its story passing through its seedy window beams. Furthermore, they scattered to the petrol engine generated winds and blew to more discarded disregarded places to bloom within its brash conditions. What a wonderful thing. 

So let me breathe, let me think, just cause my right doesn’t match your left doesn’t mean my words are all thoughtless and wrong spoken. I just can’t see the I when you have forced me to think always of Us and You, God enough. Let me cry! For you don’t seem to know the hum it leaves for me to rest in the pain that freezes in tears. Don’t scold me for leaving to breathe alone and not relying on someone else’s heartbeat to be in sync with a living beat. Don’t make me acknowledge every aspect of You when you can’t seem to meet the middle to see Me. I want to be a poppy with a field of poppies who would follow me with fair grace, even when we disagree. We’d all be boring if we glowed the same shade and bloomed the same way, let the poppies grow into their different things. To each their own, there is somehow wrong and right, but let me learn to brace the winds and know what is my right and left, correct choices and mistakes to be made and met. All broken string beads with our scattered somewheres leading to I am there- I am here.

© 2023 Cunning Moss Words - Written by Anayis N. Der Hakopian

[cunningmosswords]

#05 The Wolf With the Red Roses

Thorns Cut, Petals Bleed

"Would you fall for him, the way his eyes swallow you"

The fifth issue of Cunning Moss Words is focused on themes of hesitation, crushes, and prom. This one is for every wolf who offered flowers and either wanted too much or didn't even know how to ask for your hand to dance. You all deserve someone that equally admire you the way you admire them.

When he comes calling 

Running on fours to twos 

In his slick black suit 

With a banquet of flowers

Shimmering crimson petals 

Calling forth to you

Would you fall for him

The ways his eyes swallow you 

Will you offer him your soul 

The way he offers his own paws

To the cutting blades of lost traps

From the ones who before him snapped 

Would you hold him up in all his cuts

Until the wounds fade to scars 

And say yes he is enough

For the wolf with the red roses 

Would offer you more 

More than red roses 

Rabbit feets and feather wings

Winter's first spring 

And moon drop beams 

But one wrong step 

May lead to fallen flesh 

Being torn to unrecognisable pieces

By you, or him 

Who knows? 

When both carry sharp claws 

And a stirring silent pause 

For he howls to the winds 

And you- you crumple your emotions 

To only stomp on them forgotten red roses 

And carry on like he didn't hold the world in them

Love comes and goes anew whilst others beg to die in love's cinders. Ravens chase after never aging romantic dreamers, Juliets' write letters never sent to star-cross loving and gods miss damnation of muses eyes by parted seconds. Dates are asked, time is set, flowers are picked and crushes wonder if their beating, flirting hearts may lead to anything but awkward glances, with words left falling from thoughts before they have the chance to become spoken sonnets. Schoolyard kids tease, girls carelessly flirt unaware of the effects, rejected boys don't learn the dagger of their words- shielding their bruising egos. Teenagers get to celebrate getting wasted in the bushes whilst some lips stay pure from a drop or the need of a hangover cure. Whilst others are far from untouched, half filled by roaming souls and the other, the atoms of their own.

A crush desire turns one on their head wondering what is real but a fever of curiosity moulding to one another's hands. All leading to rehearsed narratives and sudden panic of wanting-unwanting while wanting to be wanted. Too many fires put out, too many letters unsent, too many daydreams that some outgrow and others infinitely power their sleep with. One’s crushing love that is crushed isn’t the factor- but too many hands happily picking and handing out flowers. How would one know to trust a smile and all the touches and the thoughts behind pretty words and growing advances. 

;

A bare throat stings from the summer night heat and quickening heartbeat that pushes and pulls at the skin. Eyes are smeared with deep black liner drawn by clumsy hands who are not used to such a ritual. Worn, is a navy blue knee-long dress and converse sneakers that match it. Worn down are the soles that are grass stained but still strong enough to dance the night away in. Hair is held back and untamley brushed to tame as eyes look for any misplaced strands that have lost their way. Once clipped back a bag is packed and repacked, shoelaces are tied and a silver chain clicked in place around her stinging neck. 

Her foot jitters and hands play with the chain that might just break from her anxious strength. She wonders why she said yes to a night of nervous fluttering, party shouting, loud music banging. This was a social gathering, talking, dancing, nothing to be fluttered by, yet the air clutches at her as she clutches her skirt. White dogs' hair stick out on the navy fabric and fall to the floor in her movements. Squint and small visible red skid marks from football pitches shine on her exposed legs that turn dotty, like strawberries beneath the blades. Their bleeding dots cloth and vanish with the fading redness, still they sting like that stringing neck when brushed against the fabric of folded slipping socks. Instead of slumping with them, a knock on the door pushes her to pluck a smile, loosen her grip and meet the boy at the door. 

He has scrubbed and cut his face in a similar red and tried to tame his own messy long hair. But those efforts don't leave an impression or the white rose flower in his hand- it's the look in his eyes. Smiling, honest and fearful of making some dreaded fumbling mistake tonight where he can't hide. She suddenly wishes she had waves of fabric to hide her face from that swallowing look as his arm reaches for her and they step to a walking. The sky is still bright and his hands touch cold as hers make her skin feel burning warm. Their eyes steal glances at each other and the air falls awkward with small introverted chatter that takes place in minds then spoken out loud in the quiet night. 

Somewhere they join their way into the crowds of teenagers, teenagers who spent too much on a night that they won't remember, new dresses, hired tuxes, hair done up in salon sessions, with the drinks gathered and attempted to be hidden. They make it through the halls, prom decorations, ticket handling, photo swapping, phones flashing. He smiles at friends he's known and her face becomes stiff, she doesn't recognise any of the energy filled people here. The drinks are spiked, the music loud, getting louder, groups gather left, gather right. Is she supposed to survive the whole night? She wishes she had more than desired fabric sleeves to hide behind- maybe she should set up camp under the stairs with blankets to wrap herself in. Excusing her from him, she wanders to the restroom sink for a splash of cold water, hearing girls whisper triumph and tips to ruffle under blankets with. Suddenly the idea of a blanket doesn’t bring comfort nor is the drink passed into her hand when she returns into the hall. 

Their voices follow as she hears the gossiping hiss of girls who know him and don't know her. Don't know this attempt at a dressed-up girl with a white flower at her wrist, untamed hair that's gone astrayer, face splashed to rid the panicked flush away. Their glaring eyes are burning and poisoned words dripping though they should be lost to themselves then on her oddness out of place here, standing statue still. She sees hands travelling, clothing slipping, drinks with other things swimming. She's lost but the crowd is loose on themselves and suddenly dancing seems too much with a stretched out hand-other meanings laced within it. The boy departed from friends, stands, hand out, an offering to dance- eyes hungry- but her appetite is null. The flower on her wrist is starting to drip red, petals falling, pretty gifts with not so charming intentions. 

This was wrong, this is wrong, she is odd, odd be unwanted seems better. She holds it together at the door, through the crowd and the loud panging sounds, holds it together when he follows and moves to hold her hand. Holds it together as his eyes fall to familiar orbs that are lost in her fleeing. Holds it together when he calls to calm her. Holds it together till she realises- she doesn't hold anything at all as no such event has occurred. She didn't enter the hall or step out of the door for he never said the question aloud.

No deep looking eyes, high skipping smiles or prom lights. She had not gotten up that evening dressed for a party. Instead, she wondered what she had done wrong and he wondered why he didn’t brave himself to ask and she wondered further why her thoughts are stuck negatively frightened on things that have not and won't occur. But she can’t help to think he doesn’t want to know her the way she wants to know and be known. She had sat waiting in their usual spot in drama club, sat on thorn chairs circling words on poetry pages when he appeared beaming nervously, sitting down into their weekly routine. Asking question after question, attempting to invite her on dates with badly chosen words while their core meaning seemed to be so obvious and oblivious to her, a paradox of un/said question marks. For words missing in his sentences are pouring from his eyes. Punished she feels, for the ache grows in his lack of straightforward questions and her lack of asking him bluntly to get to the point of it. She just nods, smiles and the conversation moves on. 

Today though, he brings up Prom, asks her about the colours, if she likes dancing, if she has been asked by anyone yet, if she is going- there the words get caught in his tongue. She can see it like the clearest ocean, will you go to prom with me? He turns away, and doesn’t complete his asking, resulting in a smack on the shoulder from his friend as he stirs the conversation in a different direction. The nodding stops, and her smile drops. She never thought he’d want to ask her or that he was going. But that chance thought, that look, a story tied together in her head like a blooming flower- shed apart, petal by petal, non existing thorns digging into flesh. 

She went from hopefully admiring any alternative possibility that he would ask and she say yes, to unravelling anyway he'd stay the person she has known. A boy with absorbing eyes, not one hungry for more than romantic loving thought. Playing a deeper game she wasn’t fully sure she wanted to be a part of. 

The aftermath of the dropped question plays out in her mind

Her "Why didn't you just ask?"

Him "Because I was scared" 

Her  "Scared I'd say no?" 

Him "Scared you'd say yes" 

Her “I’m tired of boys whose words stay stuck shut”

Him “Why did you not turn to ask me?”

Her “I am scared to buckle and fall”

Him “I wouldn’t have said no”

Her “Yes, and maybe you would have asked for far too much” 

For she wasn’t to give more to someone who may turn out to be a collector, handing flowers to other pretty blooming souls. So she should keep to growing and sharpening her own thorns till someone would prove to her, she means something more. Not locker room talk, not be chased like prey, or a lost romantic thought.  

Is it bad to ask someone to bare their soul if they ask you to bare your throat? Just to know someone isn’t asking because everyone before said no? Or that someone won’t drop all their flowers once they know your answer may be a yes? Pursue to be pursued, picked to be pricked, cut to be bled of some truth. 

© 2023 Cunning Moss Words - Written by Anayis N. Der Hakopian

[cunningmosswords]

#04 Hail to the Golden Hour

Sunbeams and Shadow Seams

“My shadows don't wander far, they shimmer and stutter"

The fourth issue of Cunning Moss Words is focused on themes of sunbeams, sunflowers and strawberries. This one is for those who weren't fond of following the sun and preferred to hide in the in-between. Here is a bit of summer's past and competing to grow strong amongst all the other seedlings.

This home is full of sunbathers 

While I be left as a shadow seeker 

Looking for ways to escape the rays

Like a vampire who can’t stand the sunny days

However, the others thrive under sunlight

And sleep peacefully in moonlight glare 

While I stay awake with crescents under eyes 

Fingers counting time as day slowly arrives 

I wonder why the shadows frighten me in the dark 

And save me in the light of the high up sun 

Seasons change and weather changes quicker 

Turns on you next before you notice 

They hail a storm while sun burns in its setting 

Clouds parting like heaven veils

I become awe stuck with its golden hour 

Hands rise up like my muscles know nothing more 

I’m catching the glory sun 

Embracing, facing just a small touch 

And my shadows don’t wander far 

They shimmer and stutter 

But they are there 

Watching sun meet flesh 

To dance with it as it sets  

Shadows still- cast into darkness 

Leaving the lapse of the living and the dead 

In fractions of burning fire till it all rests

Left me awake, bones cold 

Forgetful and suddenly eager for the warmth 

Sunbeams spread across many days that summer and for many summers after. I could have sworn the sun wasn’t that warm before as I hid from the beam's reach under oak tree shade, parked, sitting on a dirt ash bench. I am dressed in a blue chequered dress with threads that itch, my hair tied back in a high ponytail guarded with brown elastic, dinosaur cap on, eyes protected with pink sunglasses, a colour I later happily disown. In the shade I stayed, squinting at the girls who soaked in the sun- how they could stand its warmth I wasn’t too sure, all while the boys played football in summer shorts, which wasn’t allowed in the girls’ uniform code. This is where my dislike for dresses certainly grew, and my like for chequered things rose with it. 

At some point I took to digging at that ashy dirt with my shoes and found discarded sticks, digging at the earth that had dried expecting to find gold in the cracks left behind. There were odd things to find but no dinosaur bones to match my stegosaurus hat, instead I pulled up odd pottery parts and abandoned vegetable roots from a garden long lost. I think about how they grow and grow and where they all go, into the dirt like nerves and still stay after the growing stopped. Lost within that ashy dark soil, far from the reach of the sun.  

Our school tasked us with growing sunflowers that year. Grow them tall, strong and steady so that they reach up to the sun. I was small and severely unsure what good came from the sun that burned, what was the point of reaching up and following it like a god without any thought to draw off course. In biology they pointed out that sun and light meant life and the dark and cold will be the fall. The dark side of the moon would kill you in its darkness but somehow the shade was mercy in the heat of the beams that were burning shoulders and frizzling hair, sun leaving marks on skin where the lotion hadn't done its job, where the skin was bare. People looked for the shade and shadow to cover their skin in the desert warm, bend their time and thrive in the dark rather than in the scorching life giving/taking light. 

So with scattered small seeds we were tasked to make something. They rolled on my palm across my own life lines before being planted into the dark soil beds. Mum and dad supervise as soil spills across the table and to make sure I know not to drown them in water before they have a chance to breathe in the shadows. How the seeds knew they were meant to grow to the light in all the darkness, I could not say as I was clueless on the matter. I don’t think I paid attention to the process in biology that year, just at the colour of petals that little seed was meant to thrive into. The seeds were planted and the pots sat, left on the window sill where the sun high could reach them.  

It was a late day, further down the lane, a slow low sun sitting type of day, where things blur, light stirs and takes its time to bid goodbye. It was that type of day when I visited the neighbours house that's down the street. I'm there to play games with a girl my age who is as cold as the fall month she was born in. She is not shy or nervous, she is straightforward and stands tall, and is for a fact taller than me and acts years ahead then the one she's born in. She has a mum with a kind smile, a dad who always looks tired but hides it behind his laughter and there’s an older brother who is immersed in playing video games but occasionally chases us down the stairs with cheer instead of daggers. 

We spend what is left of daylight hours venturing through the rickety gate in the garden that leads to an open field where plants are growing and the sound of trains echo, rolling by on nearby tracks. The field is better than the one at school, here- trees surround all the edges and it feels cooler and calm in the low setting sun. Amber hues fill the air and make their way through the shadows right into the centre. The path is made of loose dirt kicking pebbles and the sun haze murmurs in the view. The sound of crickets make their way through the long grass and if there was a time to find a garden snake, here would be a fitting spot. My thoughts are wandering and absorbing when she stops and points to our summer class project. 

My eyes want to squint and look away, not from the typical summer blinding light but at how tall her sunflowers have grown here in this patch of grass not far from her home. Her coldness turns into a proud smile. My sunflowers barely grew, maybe it was the limited sun in the window spot, unlike hers that have grown metres tall and are out here absorbing every drop of skys warmth. Without a doubt her sunflowers match her eagerness to grow and the years that she wants to pass her by so she can shoot up as quickly as they do, find, latch onto the beams of the sun and continue on the constantly looping growing song. Maybe I don’t have green thumbs to grow such tall flowers or it is because her flowers grow like her, to envious to be taller, older and off on her own then at home with a family who smiles but hide their disappointment that there child doesn’t care for her youth and any sweetness in her has spilled like the overripe strawberries in this field. 

The girl’s smile from proud becomes cunning and leading. She tells me what I’ve done wrong, why I ain’t growing like the flowers grow and in part, I think could not stand the height and repeating cycle of waking with the light and following it upwards and onwards. My eyes stay downcast watching the shadow’s of the sunflowers tall shoots move and merge with mine, hugging me or mocking me, they somehow equal in height while my nostrils fill with rotting strawberry juice. Pink, red spills on the pebbles and I imagine tongue stringing and knees bleeding. I want to curl up like my single sunflower. She continues her talk and corrects me on every wrong word and I wondered if she wanted to play games at all. I don’t feel keen to follow her orders or burning words.

The sky starts to set and we rush inside, but I miss not seeing the amber fall and that day I realised not everyone wants to stay young when they are in such a rush. The sunflowers move and their shadows wave goodbye, we reach the front door and move to part with our own goodbye. Her mother comments on how kind and sweet I am and I can see the girl's proud, cunning, leading smile drop, eyes glare- I think she may never have had any sweetness in her, just strawberry rot.  

Her words stay with me though, nag at me. I replanted my sunflower in the front garden patch the following day. It withers on its own. Head lost to follow the shadows, struggling to capture the sun. I sit with it in a shady spot and hope by growing I won’t easily collapse, collapse and fall apart. The sun still burns and part of me thinks the bare sun was too much for a sunflower who got along better with the shadows. I am up as soon as the amber fall returns and dad calls, I watch the oranges hit the corridor and smear white into gold. 

I still think about the sunflower vs the sunflower patch. The height, the heat, the burning and the sun so high up that the world follows it gladly in its setting. It’s odd how few sunrises I have witnessed and the amount of sunsets I’ve seen but don’t remember clearly. I can recall the rise and fall in small moments and flashes, maybe because that’s how they really last, dawn and dusk, just seconds of the rising and falling sun before night floods the orange pinks to navy blues- to become the dark. 

So when the golden hour catches hold of me, it strikes me with its light that I feel an indefinite peace. Then it was lost as soon as it had arrived, the noise returned in its wild directions and I forgot the world had a hold on me just for a minute. Continue typing, walking, working, breathing, living before the thought of sleeping. 

© 2023 Cunning Moss Words - Written by Anayis N. Der Hakopian

[cunningmosswords]

#03 Cut To Dandelion Fluff

Weeds Grow Into Flowers

“Seeding with sharp beads that scatter, scratching at palms and catching ankles"

The third issue of Cunning Moss Words is focused on themes of garden weeds, hair cutting and fluff. It is a second person POV narratives looking at the energy of shedding, cropping and untangling. This one is for letting gardens grow untamed and cutting locks that have lost their ways.

The garden grows into a jungle overnight 

I don't remember when it exactly bloomed 

But its neat-cut grass became waist high 

Seeding with sharp beads that scatter 

Scratching at palms and catching ankles 

It is growing quite wild and unruly there 

In the increasingly brewing summer heat

The gardeners have even abandoned the space 

Left their tools behind for the hedges to grow

For their fingers to wonder and hold them close

While the weeds sprout in every centre, edge and corner

Calling on the blades to be handled and reshaped

Cut and pulled out of its endless reaching place

Thorn from the roots that etch deep below 

Dropped, coated with paint, poison and lemonade 

But the lands unruliness doesn't listen to man

It will keep on regrowing and expanding 

No matter how many times cut and touched 

For the weeds must flower to the sun 

In white Daisies and yellow Buttercups 

And Dandelions who transform their manes 

To shed them into white wisp strains 

Becoming wishes for children that chase them

Crowns for those who try to braid them 

Or shinning glow torches held under chins 

They will, with their weedy weeding flowers 

Return with folk and drifting cheer 

Uninvited, undesired- there is no cutting away 

What is always there ready to sprout and stay

Summer air has started to stick, though spring has still a lot of catching up to do with its late bloom. You sit on the old cold tile floor holding a jacket close as the air picks at your arms though your bare feet are warm. Your hands continuously run through your hair that’s gotten too long for your head and weighs you down with its broken ends. The strands split and cut like petals being pulled from a bud, they gather unknowingly, in growing heaps on the floor. It reminds you of days when you sat crossed-legged on schoolyard grass, pulling up strands and tying knots. Pulling flowers for love sick songs and crushes that won’t last long. 

Those cuts don’t vanish here- into the green fields, they stare back at you like black ink to a page. It doesn’t calm the worry or the need to chop it all off, as if all the anxious energy will disappear from your thoughts and fidgeting hands will stop wriggling once it is all gone. Better yet you should shave it, start anew, leave it bare and wait for the hair to resprout again as it all looks too broken, misshapen and has started moulting in places- miscut, mismatched strands. You don’t know if it's the thoughts or the heat of the season that is making it all stick and ick and feel so wrong, but its presence feels constant, tangled and strong.

Your hands move in different itching cycles, they go through clawing at nails that feel easy to cut, peel bare from their hinges, strings of spare fabric to pull from jackets, making more continuous knots to unknot- your mother says Stop, that is in fact bloody well enough. She pulls you up from the floor and brushes you off, looks at your hair and sees where the worry and boring jitters are visibly showing. She pats the strands down and tucks them behind your ears with a slightly worried smile before declaring it is a day for cutting hair.

You peel yourself from your stuck place and meet your knees on the cooling side of the bathroom tub. Hair gathered and shower head held, you bend your head over to the water where your wild hair flows down into a twisting waterfall. The cold water oozes into your scalp and over your eyes, drowns your ears without drowning you. You feel immersed in the water stream though the rest of your body be dry. It only becomes drowning when the water spills across your nose and you quickly pull away from the water’s grasp. With a shake and eyes flinching, a dry towel becomes wet, hair becomes less soaking, with droplets falling across your neck and shoulders, trailing down wrists and hitting bare feet to those cold tiles to where you finally sit down on a bare ageing chair.

The heat is still on a high as your legs stick and snap to the chair legs and strong sunlight beams in bright, reflecting off the buildings of the other side. You stare straight out of the window glass, wondering how much of the world could peer in and see as you rest in the shadow curved by the burning midday sun. Is it cooler on the pavement in front than in the room where the sun has yet to directly touch? You attempt to sit still like a statue, stiff, unmoving as mum draws out clips and scissors from a stripy drawstring bag. Combs and brushes out the strands that still knot no matter how many times you brushed them off. She twirls your hair and gathers them in sections, pinning them tight above to be cut into layers and layers. They twirl around two crowns that cause your hair to never know its direction. The tightness hurts and tugs in sharp pains that numb and your head goes from somewhat wet and cold to a low dry burning warm. Feet start to bruise blue from the pressure in your legs, though you don't notice the tension you've placed to keep them still. They hang ever so slightly above the ground, toes crossed together hoping today's result won’t go horribly wrong.  

Snip, nothing comes down, Snip, a sparkle of rain, Snip, a light rain shower, SNIP, a thunderstorm. Hair rains down on your head like incoming rain clouds, it sticks to your arms, your shirt, your legs and rests on the arch of your feet. It feels like a world of time is being chopped off from short seconds to minutes, to long overbearing months. Mother cuts and cuts, cutting off locks of damaged splitting hair that morph away leaving short fluffy strands that dance ever so lightly from a gentle open window gust. With it follows fluffy wishes of moulding dandelions from the garden below, drifting in a similar motion. It is the time of day when pollen rises, hay fever burns into the eyes, nostrils and itching down throats. You try your hardest to keep your head still without tilting or urking in movement or from sudden explosive sneezing-allowing your eyes to follow the fluffs as they dance. A small sharp breath leaves your mouth and sends them spinning back right out, one however stays out of reach- slowly sitting down on open faces of palms. Eyes downcast you watch the single dandelion fluff strand rest in its shedding, wondering how convenient it is that it has found its way to you on your own cutting day. 

The word done is uttered, the floor is a graveyard of different fragments, the chair has burnt marks into tights and the clips are placed back into the striped drawstring bag. Your eyes dart away at the strands that fall forward, when they return to your palms that fluff is gone gone gone. Lost to the strands or the air that flows. Your hair does not look too different from those shedding dandelions, for the minutes that pass- hair still rains down, rains down when you walk, rains down when you sit, rains down when you shower and even when you turn in your sleep. Hair seems to still follow you till the wind blows all the loose snipped strands away from the short mane that remains till you forget its length. Blow them like dandelion fluff, out to the unknown in odd places and trapped spaces, not to return home. Only for you to remember them when your hair regrows into weeding ways and flowering days.

© 2023 Cunning Moss Words - Written by Anayis N. Der Hakopian

[cunningmosswords]

#02 Twenty-Four Candles

Melting Wax and Years that Pass

"Can you hear the flames' small screams? Melting and mixing with piped icing"

The second issue of Cunning Moss Words is focused on themes of ageing, olive pizza and birthday wishes. It is a mixed diary format highlighting how the years can mix and become memorable or forgettable with each candle that is lit.

Make a wish, blow a breath 

The wax is bleeding over the buttercream 

Can you hear the flames' small screams?

Melting and mixing with piped icing 

From a match to a candle wick 

Trigger lighters and sparks after 

The flames are burning someone’s flesh 

Blistering in sharp drips and reddening skin

Anger shot and bruised days after 

Prep, take a step and smile  

Breath well deep in and blow a gail   

Set the blazing candle men to their death 

To meet a quick insightful, less painful end 

For their sacrifice will grant a high-up wish 

Moulded and stripped from shooting star promises  

Only granted if kept safe in one’s own head 

Till we count them blazing men again and again  

Wait for the coming of another candle to join the list 

As with every year that we manage to live 

Is us, slowly staggering closer to death

Fizzling out like the merry broken candle sticks

Stripped and striped, simmering less bright

With the melting buttercream and piped ice 

Make a wish, blow a breath 

i

The baby sits happily blowing bubbles and smiling with eyes constantly wandering and absorbing. The room is full of people of different heights and tones that murmur and talk, and that room after will never be as full for the years that will come. The walls are smeared in buttercup yellow and the room is neat though three big dogs wander around legs, licking hands that might pass snacks and finding free spaces that would let them curl peacefully within the crowd that has gathered. There are children of young ages running and joking, those who are blood and non blood related, all eagerly waiting for a slice of cake and to peer at the toys the young babe will get during the aided unwrapping. 

The birthday girl in question continues on a giggly flow not letting any frowns or tired eyes change her thoughts, let alone the heavy cast on her leg that weighs her down. That’s what happens when one tries to dance before they know the meaning of walking, but this girl definitely will grow to not accept that lesson easily.  

She sits on her mother’s lap and smiles at her dad with his camcorder as they all sing her birthday wishes in different languages. A burning candle’s flame licks the air with its small but warm form over a yellow custard cake, that is a shade lighter than the walls. She sits confused when they finish her song, so her mother leans forward and blows out the candle as they begin to applaud.

ii

green marzipan, yellow sponge, white flowers, chequered dress, bubbling words, less crowded, candle flame, two instead, scratch that, candle flames, still just one wish.  

iii

Flight overseas / greying skies / dark scarfs / hidden faces / smiles at the door / grandpa’s face brightens / his hands pulling jewels from pomegranates / shared food on the kitchen table / running behind curtains / hide and seek in emptied out cupboards / playing with green marbles that match both our eyes / walking slowly with his slow steps / feeding stray cats milk with deep bowls / hanging by the balcony where the ivy tangles and grows / stickers from Rugrats in Paris go missing / so does their green robot dinosaurs / only Chuckie is left with his red curling astray hair / my hair is cut and my curls die with it / gone missing like those stickers / suitcases are in mid packing for when the trip comes back to home / we share birthday candles on the cake / surrounded by a family close and apart in a land I still have never turned to return to / I would never know his smile again / but the images still play in my head / I wish I can lay flowers where he rests. 

iiii

Dippy stands tall and whole in an echoing hall, cast from different parts to make one version of their spices. The little girl in the red jacket and navy puffer coat doesn’t take much notice of the fact the bones aren’t real, as much as the feeling that she is in the presence of fallen monsters. Her shelves at home are decorated with dinosaur books, videos and figurines, she wonders if she can dig up wonders lost in dirt and stone. 

Her mum and dad guide her through the exhibitions and move her on when she is stuck staring. Moving her through the jerky animatronics and feathered raptors, left wide-eyed from the T-Rex dripping with bloody red teeth and thrown flesh. It is safe to say that even with her admiration, nightmares of sharp teeth would always linger. Maybe some monsters are left lost to the passing years, even with all their wonder. 

iiiii

Five years brought five things with it, five candles on a cake with a dragon flying across a deep gloomy castle, with a rim of multicoloured lollipops to snuff out its darkness. I get sick of their sweetness and instead of hoarding them like gold, I share them with those who would better admire them. 

The room is plastered with banners and balloons in big round five letterings. They are tall and hit the ceiling multiple times with a bounce. It is the only time I get to keep balloons at home because our oldest dog hates their relentless squeaky sounds. He barks a few times but leaves them for me to keep for just this day, though tomorrow they will quickly be deflated for his sake. 

I get my first bike that was not so well hidden in the corner, its bars a deep maroon accompanied with a set of training wheels too. Me and mum try biking in the path in the front yard, she says it is important I know how to ride a bike like she used to in the streets back home. But the streets in London aren’t like the ones my parents used to know.

We hold a pizza party with all the extra olives and invite the girls from my class, by the end of the night I decide I can’t deal with the screams and chatter of the kids in the car, I tell mum this is the last party I want to bring home, better yet only bring the pizza back with us. 

Cake cut, balloons deflated, bike set aside and extra olive pizza well eaten, we play music on the stereo and there is peace from once there was chaos. 

iiiiii

Arcade racing cars / bowling at 10 pins / knocking down only six / the bowling balls are heavy for small hands / it is a bit too loud / the shoes a bit too big / she is not sure if she is meant to bowl with the right or with the left / a bit downcast when she doesn’t hit anything at all / but it’s okay- everyone is happily smiling / McDonald’s fries and birthday cake are delivered / extra ketchup and extra candles / she gets a music box with a fairy / the tune seems to become engraved into her head / she doesn’t remember what she is meant to be wishing when they light the candles / does she ever make a wish? / can she just keep on playing the melody again and again? 

iiiiiii

She doesn’t remember much, apart from unboxing presents, playing with Nintendo dogs and running around the park, playing dress up with not-so-digital dogs and happily eating cake. She could have been at Snakes and Ladders or watching a film in the cinema, that year’s birthday was a bit of a blur. Presumably, her wish was made with seven candles, what she wishes for I can not say. 

iiiiiiii

Martina talks for everyone at the table, though it is commonly known that I am the one who doesn’t know when to shut up. But I am glad for her words since she releases strings of sentences when I feel I don’t have the air to speak them. She is few years younger- our toothy neighbour and a thorn in my side, probably the closest thing I will ever have to a human sister. 

We argue for most of the day and she never seems to leave when it gets too dark, she talks about sleepovers and midnight sneakiness and about all the things she wants to see and absorb in our world. It is quite exhausting. We even argue on my birthday, bickering as we- not gelable people, gel perfectly well together, sparkling and sprinkling like a match until we reset the flame and continue to bicker about lighting the candles and whether she gets to blow an extra wish after I make mine. 

We share halloumi, chips and salad in a Mediterranean restaurant, surrounded by glass lamps and colourful walls and return home to stick even more colourful foil on felty sticker packs that are a mural on the cupboards, the drawers and luckily not sticking on the dogs. I give that set to her when they move, after arguing on her birthday and arguing week to every day. I still have her photo and a scribble of misspelt words thanking me, for what, I don’t remember. They are quite out of shape that I am still not sure what she was writing in her talkative manner or what she wished on that day.  

iiiiiiiii

She spends most of her evenings practising music on a toy keyboard, when she comes home this time around she finds 61 gleaming keys. The keyboard with all its functions and buttons becomes part of the room for the coming years, hurled along for music practice and grade exams, even when the keys are not sitting right and their noise becomes jarring. She will aim for their cheerful notes and broken chords, taking them to bits and rearranging them, accompanied by howling when she plays them aloud and all the anger and sadness when she wants to shred the sheet music apart. But at that moment there’s no focus on breaking, ageing, or not-so-well playing, just the feeling of the possibility of keys that she will spend years playing.

She quickly records a theme of happy birthday and runs back to the cake with its candles, her parents sing and she smiles as the music and the words all go together in time. She blows out a wish as it ends, for what? I am not sure, it is lost to the music that the keys might only know it.

iiiiiiiiii

Christened in Italy in a church with a painting of a knight slaying a dragon, I hate that the artist painted the blood dripping from him. I hold Grandpa’s cross tight and Mum pins my hair back with a fabric rose. I spent the day nervously clutching to Mum and Dad when I can and thinking about how I am doing this for Grandpa who can’t be here. 

Pizza in Italy was dinner and gelato ice cream for dessert and spending time seeing if I can follow the lizards that skitter across the hot pavements here. The day is usually full of the noise of dubbed and re-dubbed telenovelas that sound odd on our tongue, but Grandma loves them and I am not allowed to change the channel at all. So sadly the passing of time is stuck with my cousin who is four years older. 

We argue every day but not a good type of arguing. Not even bickering siblings argue, we fight over how I can not play on the play station or the computer, create evolutions in Spore or skate in Kingdom Hearts. He hogs my Nintendo DS and I wonder when will it all be over so I can return home to my dogs. We plan to go see the sinking city and instead do a 180 to the theme park for he will not stop his crying. I can't even play music on his keyboard or have a meal cooked just for me without him throwing a fit. 

Note to self don't grow up to be such a dick. Is it bad to use a wish, to possibly wish someone away as it seems more tangible than to wish for someone to show care and kindness?

i - i

It is a rainy day at London Zoo and all the animals stay in their sheltered spaces, leaving the guests uninterested and feeling that the day is wasted. The rain however doesn’t stop the birthday girl from running to the glass and the rails, stepping and reaching on her tiptoes to see past the bars. As she is full of a complete sense of wonder for the animals that aren’t human, she is allowed to borrow her dads’ camera and take pictures of the world around her for her eyes can not make out the details of the faces, claws and tails that are hidden in the shadowy sheltered spots of the gloomy weather. 

In particular she stays in what looks like an astronaut helmet to chill with the Meerkats and has to be asked with great patience if she is ready to go to see the next kingdom. She spends the rest of the day jumping and excitedly wanting to learn everything but also questioning the walls, the rails, the bars in the journey. Mum asks her how things are and the girl says “I think I want to live where the wild grows” for the wild seemed a lot more like home than what was built to save them.  

She sleeps for the first time in the car that evening when they drive home, I think she was off dreaming and wishing about running with the wolves, swimming in the sea and learning to climb tall trees. 

i - ii

M&S Rose sponge raspberry cake / no taste of roses / first time horse riding / the horses name is Gizmo / I don't break a bone / or have a fall / though it isn't like riding a bike at all / no training wheels to remove / this bike has a mind to jump the fence / or chuck me off and leave me for dead / cowboys make it look too easy / with the prices bikes might be a better investment / I’d rather turn to talking to horses then trying to ride them / maybe wishing to talk to animals would be a good one / not sure they would want to talk to us though.

i - iii

Sick teen / sleepy eyed / veggie burger dinner / car ride home / tucked under covers / watching trashy tv shows / candles on cake / wish the ache’s away / head against pillow / turn my phone down / warm dog snuggles against feet / decide to ignore the messages I got / is it mean? / I don’t have the energy to question what is what / just played my favourite song and let it wash the light to dark.

i - iiii

The girl leaves giddy from the cinema after being so worried that the movie would suck and her birthday would head down with it. Though that is easily done when the two boys she invited to join her tell her how wrong and odd they think she is, how odd their mother thinks she is, for playing football, for avoiding girly things, for inviting boys out on her birthday rather than the girls from class. She tries to avoid the jabs and takes the shotgun in the arcade and hits the mark on each duck and prays for she would never want to shoot actual ducks. The ticket machine winds up and spits out rolls of tickets. They play for a few hours and she keeps thinking how nobody asked those questions when she was younger or maybe now they have finally started hurting her.

i - iiiii

The girls gift me funny cards, including ones with lots of dogs. We debate what type of half and half pizza to get at the hut and what ice cream to eat after the marvel movies end credits roll and the day is up. We walk around the arcade and make jokes about coming of age. I say ageing isn’t that great, especially when people want you to fit in all these different boxes and chuck you when you don't. They say growing up is great, they can’t wait to move out, to leave the house, to go to uni, to start their own life away. Maybe I am odder than I thought or my box is different from everyone else’s.

I return home for cake and pick another film for family movie nights. Can I wish to not grow up and stay like this forever on?   

i - iiiiii

That year she has no candles, just a lighter that takes too many tries to light as it sparks out each time. Her fingers though they have been playing melodies for years don’t have the strength to spark a flame and hold it in place. Instead she burns her fingers and runs them under cold water. 

She spends the afternoon at a restaurant with her mum, her aunt and her grandmother. Her dad is away making sure his mum is okay, but all she can think about is how he is not here, on her 16th and how empty those digits feel. She tries to put it aside and focus on making it through dinner and not letting bitter remarks hurt her and to keep a smile plastered, if not for herself at least for her mother.

Grandma talks about not eating anything but eats everything, she piles her fork into the girls plate and steals lump sums from the risotto. The now sixteen year old knows the meaning of sharing and caring but she didn’t even get a proper bite in before her plate was half finished for her. Grandma takes offence and says she isn’t diseased for the girl to abandon her food. This time when the chocolate ozzzzing fondant is served with vanilla ice cream, the girl moves her plate far from grandma's reach. It would be the first time she would try one and she wasn’t having a bite stolen without her even offering. People are good at taking when not even asked.

i - iiiiiii

College days means working hard on catching up on all the software I didn’t know before. Tired working eyes, dried from being glued to screens, drawing, writing and editing things. Mum and dad pull me aside and say it’s your birthday no more working endlessly tonight. Sit down, eat dinner, cut the cake, make a wish, get some rest, you will work tirelessly another day. 

We sit down, eat dinner, cut the cake, blow out the candles, get some rest, I wake up and keep working the following day.

i - iiiiiiii

Grassy hills / deers sprinting and munching / walks with dogs / muddy lakes / white swans that bite / this is closest thing to a Londoners countryside / we drive / the window wide open / so the breeze can fill the car / can you wish to get lost in the air like this / in the warmth of springs midday sun?

i - iiiiiiiii

Banana, walnut and cream custard cake loaded with raspberries, is cut a day or two early. It became a tradition to blow out candles with lighters for we somehow keep misplacing the candles and never remember to buy them when they are needed. The birthday itself was spent mostly in and out of classes, presentations and mopping over how long the days are and waiting for the hours to pass down the last few minutes, the sprint back and lock the world out.  

ii - /

The ageing girl holds a smile on her face though her hands are crumbling napkins as she sits in Bella Italia, expression falling, watching her partner ask her to split the bill. She spent the week planning out her birthday, where to go, what to see, she picked a ballet at the Royal Opera House and made sure to get the tickets on sale, she got a coupon on the meal so that her partner wouldn’t have to spend too much, though he insisted it would be alright, he will pay the lump sum. So she eats the mushroom risotto and this time shares the chocolate fondant with its vanilla ice cream as he complains about not wanting to buy two though he could eat three. 

Turns out as the bill is given, the coupon won’t work for that branch, it doesn’t take him a second to spit out let's split the bill now “Excuse me?” She says with a glare, it is not that she has not paid the many bills before but that her birthday lunch gift is completely forgotten about. He stares back deadpan like she is crazy for such a reaction “I thought you said… it’s my birthday?” He returns the glare and suddenly a light goes on and he apologises and stutters, asking her to forget what just happened. 

She pushes the exchange away and focuses on the joy of the day. But everything about him is starting to bite at her. 

ii - i

Locked in, world spiralling, me happy and smiling, twenty one spent thinking the world might end but I am my gladdest curled on the couch watching movie marathons and making dinner with mum. I put worry away and push back any sadness I feel being stuck inside the walls and cast bright looks at the flowers that are booming for the spring. How can I be unhappy when nature seems to be returning to its glory. We have three candles, enough for years 2 and 1 and bake a banana cake with fresh cream. We spend the evening playing UNO cards and arguing over who is cheating and who should have won. I sleep soundly. Wishing this happiness will always stay catching. 

ii - ii

I don’t remember shit, just sadness, irritation, emptiness and wondering when did I or should I fall to bits. I laughed, I smiled, but what was it for, I don’t even recall it just became one blur. I sleep next to my old pup and hear his breathing going on and off, wondering how much sand there is before time tickles down to none. I don’t try wishing for him to live as much as I wish he’d go easily in his sleep, I whisper to him to let go- but I know he is far from wanting to leave. I don’t blame him as I struggle to turn away, desperately, wanting to keep holding onto his paws. 

ii - iii

Third year in a lockdown and dad brings back orange roses for the table, orange as the shade of sunsets this season, they sit beautifully in the room and no matter how I take the photo it doesn’t catch their shade clearly. The cake this time around returns in the same flavour and style and we laugh how the piped chocolate letters are misspelt. That day it snows, ever so briefly and I can’t help but reach my hand out of the window to catch a touch of their cold before the snowflakes dissolve to water drops. Their presence wasn’t meant to last at all. We order take out and I try and not think of loss as there’s one less dog at home this year round. Candle wishes won’t be able to bring back what I want most, and my eyes wonder whether the wax burns the cake like my tears do to my face. 

ii - iiii

2 to the 4 is started with late morning waking to dreary skies, walking with what little glimmer of sun shines beyond those set mood clouds and sit heavily with the birthday girl. She spends this day, with its usual laugh and cheer quite tired and numb, she holds a smile when cutting the cake in the same place the last few years, this is the first time her smile seems fake. She blows out the candles but doesn’t utter much of a wish as a promise to feel better and do better. Her thoughts are too much, crowded on those not here, and what happens when numbers dwindle down to one, she can’t explain why that ache appears, just that it exists here. 

In all the birthday years that pass, from happy ones to the forgetful ones, she wonders if she can collect all their wishes and swap them for a better one. Lay all the candles of the past and re-spark the joy birthdays had for it feels like she is only starting to realise their burning, waxing ways and that their memories dwindle just like the candle flames. 

© 2023 Cunning Moss Words - Written by Anayis N. Der Hakopian

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#01 - Overgrown and Lost

For Moss Grows in Anxious Ways

"Moss had found its way onto their coat, In overgrown patches whilst they were lost in thoughts"

The first issue of Cunning Moss Words is focused on themes of Anxiety, Spring and Train Tracks. It is about finding confidence after a lap of sickness and trying to retrace and regain your senses whilst the earth seems to be waking up quicker and stronger from it's own winter slumber.

The fox slept sickly through autumn fall and winter frost

All whilst the temperature dropped and dropped

Hoping spring’s rays would warm its bones

And lift them from their leafy unmade throne 

To seek out flowers in their blooming week 

For spring revives all that had been sleeping 

In the depths of dirt, grime and the weeping 

But the little fox was a wobble and a worry 

They’d been gone too long and forgotten their song

To jump through all the fields and over fencing logs 

That kept the world out there away from want 

That moss had found its way onto their coat 

In overgrown patches whilst they were lost in thoughts 

It would not leave in big panicked shakings 

And embedded itself deep into their empty growling gut

That it all became cunning moss, overgrown and lost 

Part of the little fox, who had now started to relearn their song

In jumping steps through the melted ice of winter gone 

Returning to the den, curled, when it all gets too much. 

Daffodils line the grassy partings of the pavement path, all at different heights and dripping lengths, growing in their own timely ways. They sprout tucked in tight to wide open bunches, with white pearl petals to the deepest of yellows that litter when broken like scattered confetti crackers. Every year they arrive on time and light the deep growing hill with its crumbly pavements and wobbly tiles that tilt with the weight of my steps in new year's sneakers that I have hardly worn yet. They sneak a smile on my face, one I had yet to draw that day for my sluggish morning wake leaves me empty till the day starts its moving.

I wonder if I walk close enough, would I be able to catch a whiff of their smell with my broken nose that in itself catches very little from the spring fever air. The smile stays on me while I skitter carefully down deep underpass steps, skipping over puddles from the rainy weekends and slowing down for cyclists who don’t know the meaning of a bell. My steps do not stop once until my oyster card hits the station scanner with the flashing of “seek assistance” for a first, second and third time before I wrestle with the cardholder and play with different motions to quickly cross the barriers onwards. The station is quiet for the lunch hour and I stop to a calm on a platform that is longer than I recall since my last visit. I don't wait long for the whistle and wosh of train tracks, boarding quickly when the first doors open past the yellow worn-out warning line. My hands strangle my shoulder bag, whispering parting love to my mother who’s heard every breath and breathless word through long wired headphones that tangle and twist to my phone, buried deep in a winter warm coat pocket hold.

Then the phone beeps and dips into a silence, greeting me to nothingness. It doesn't take a second for darkness to replace the bright sky in the blurred scratched window glass, with smeared graffiti and rustling abandoned newspaper pages that flap with the little air that flows in the carriage. With the dark, is the jumping 5G/4G connection that snaps to a cut-through circle and empties staircase bars like music keys that halt to a grand stop.

The jittering starts with pressure in my chest, I twist the lines of my already tangled headphones as I shuffle to play music to interrupt the silent end. My saving grace is downloaded as “Train Tracks” with a turquoise tint cover of two heads with their own mind the gap line struck through between them- a tap leads to a country beat that fills the noises of my internal dread. I calm the hammering of my heart and dig my nails into my palms. I should feel comfort in small silences but it is all somehow blinding here, and I've become too vary of how ugly everything is between my distracted thoughts and mind-filling music.

For my journey was cluttered with beauty that I highlight in yellow like study notes that blur out all the other useless words. My smile is drawn, though my eyes are tired from troubled nights where sleep has not been my friend for a while. I focus on the beat of the card against the scanner then the flutter in my chest that thinks I may be stupidly stranded in a place I've known for ages, I skip over puddles glaring for I do not trust to not slip and fall in their presence or hover my hand over underpass rails and slow to see what may be lurking in the shadows of the dim-lit corners. My shoes are new and clean, for not that they have been hardly worn, but that I have hardly stepped outside to walk with my chill-blazed toes, cluttered and bruised in colour from my unmoving. I think of daffodils in their glory but see their buds pulled out and trampled by the clinging hands of children who enjoy picking from the thriving. And I think someone pulled me from my stem in the first bloom of the ending winter glaze. For reliving is a hard song to relearn when you have let worry grow to stay and are not sure how to get rid of its ways but to accept the change.

So my heart calms and the song takes over trying to hold off the overwhelming screech of wheels and flash of lightning that strikes below the carriage windows. My fingers count the stations down, calculating how many songs may play before I get to my destination- five stops, maybe 15 minutes worth of song might tumble along until it trickles down to one, as people shrug on and off. Though my legs feel weak and heavy, they fly me out of the door once the rustling robotic voice announces in static  “Tottenham Court Road”, only looking back when sneakers are firmly planted on the platform floor, just to see for a moment the train wind up, doors shut, staggering to a passing go.

Songs keep playing in the hustling of the crowd, over busking ukuleles where the beats mix into a different sound of the outside and inside bounds. As I move up escalator steps, the bars return to my phone connection and the Gs join them in the moment, and I suddenly feel more relaxed than I have been for the last hour, less alone with my sos call at hand. I don't take a second to ring my mother and say - the journey has been okay, I am doing okay- for I know that though I tell my white lie, she knows I panic. It's not the train but the unfamiliar darkness and the ache of worry that won't leave me, clings to me and has morphed with me. It is like lost crumbs that will not leave your pockets, dog hairs that do not leave your jumper after washing, worry has bloomed in me during sickly winters and it will be staying for some time. 

As my sneakers get more worn, mucked with dirt, headphones twisted and broken and bag strap less strangled I might get used to the motion and the stuckness in leaping out the door of home with worry in tow. In the meantime, I stand at the exit and I take a breath, headphones departed before I continue my walking with worry following.

© 2023 Cunning Moss Words - Written by Anayis N. Der Hakopian

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#0.5 - The Start of Cunning Moss

Blinking Words to Overflowing Verses

"watching lines of words cut and grow across the ceiling until all I could see was nothing"

This is the introductory letter to Cunning Moss Words Blog which can be read below or on the substack site here. This piece is focused on the random bursts of night writing and abandoning words that don't leave your thoughts through the passing days, it is the origin and note on the birth of Cunning Moss Words space.

The author sleeps at 3 am settings

Abandoning story pages in different stages

Eyelids finally drifting, sitting, closing

While the horns of night trucks

Bleep and bleak in the navy dark

With cooing foxes who shout alarm

In their soul call for the spring heart

The author lets out a held breath

And curls into the layered blankets

That hold back the light cold breeze

In coloured stripes and curved petals

And the words she wrote are left unaccompanied

On both low-lit screens that slowly sleep

And ageing wilted pages that stain and crease

They seem to be growing in her absence

For the words have started spinning and splitting

Morphing outside the lines and forming new vines

They are reforming a story for our sleeping beauty

Thinking up cunning things as the foxes continue screaming

All to return to their original shape with a hint of something

That it would be hard to notice that it has shifted slightly

When this author decides to wake, up in a dazed state

She will find the words all seem messily the same

But there is an air of difference in what has been written

Like a map to add and subtract from the numerous verses

Clues typed and underlined in sequences of short quick motions

But never fully completed, for the words are always growing

And the author is always writing and rewriting with it…

My phone lay blinking with a long unfinished sentence (and many spelling mistakes with it) on a dimming doc, with words that most likely would not make much sense in the coming morning. As the screen dies, the only source of light can be found by the tiny nightlight, omitting an amber glow each dipping day for my late sleeping. The words behind the blacked-out screen didn’t do much for my thoughts and dreaming while the nightingales started their singing. 

My head was scrambled, watching lines of words cut and grow across the ceiling until all I could see was nothing. The words were there in the morning, they were there in the middle day, there in the afternoon and the evening, and the night the same. Sometimes they were added too, crossed out in fleeting minutes, but the words kept waiting while the day was passing. 

Each night it repeated in the same cycle, sleeping, eyes dropping, then a sudden urge to be writing- pulling thoughts and all the overwhelming emotions out onto any writable surface that could be found. Dotted on spare note sets and tapped into keyboards speedily, I felt I could not sleep until it was written, even if the sentences were all unfinished broken curses. 

I imagine they’d grow and move across the pages, like my dipping vision- blur and merge- different emotions scattered and drawn back together with it. I wanted- I needed words to last longer than my sleep, the ones that grow and wait for me to find the final letters and full stops to end their sentences, no matter how they’d be rewritten and in return, torn to pieces. 

All typing blazing whilst foxes slinked by my window, watching me watching them- stopping my typing for a moment- as if our poses were frozen in similar thoughts broken- before the world moved on again, words were written, foxes continued night lurking and sleep was welcomed. 

Cunning Moss Words were sprung and found in a burst of emotions, growing lost and forgotten in broken verses, whether they collide and find rhythm in underground platforms, sunbeam chances, supermarket aisles, shelter in downfall walks, messy endings and most of the day’s last-second consciousness- when dream dust starts its working. Like gifted titles for those ghosts, whose words would always outlive their living, Cunning Moss Words is a space for disconnection and reconnection- with words abandoned, ageing, until somebody reads them and resumes to leave them. 

Subscribe to Cunning Moss Words for monthly themed poetic passages, drawn from personal spontaneous writings to forgotten pieces that are brushed off and remembered.

© 2023 Cunning Moss Words - Written by Anayis N. Der Hakopian

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Cunning Moss is Typing...