inkysphinx

[inkysphinx]

"The Missing Brother"

for my dnd!

[inkysphinx]

Even if unedited, it feels good to get this sort of stuff out into the aether. Making feelings make sense to someone else is the perfect sieve for what's real and what's just a weird tangent my brain is beating me over the head with.

Still learning the poetry ropes :>

Crisis of Faith

I.

Wolf down the scraps,

Snap for the marrow, what

Breadcrumbs one kind mother

Fashioned in her appraisal -

You are too young for lethargy.

There, on the plate: your heart beatless,

Roasted and dribbling.

Flesh breathes,

And all chairs lie empty.

I am not that beast, but matter,

Form bequeathed to meat.

If the good Lord smiles upon me,

His gaps outnumber the teeth.

II.

Atacama weather makes my shirt itch.

I can only watch, my fingers long possessed by boredom,

As lint falls, thread loosens,

And stitches unravel.

Red coins, rubbed to stubs,

Run across my palm, awakening

Muscle-memory - mine, or theirs?

Perhaps they recall the abacus.

I put them in the glove-box,

and make a wish.

[inkysphinx]

knowing you need but cannot afford clothes/ a diagnosis/ any sort of fun outing is making me understand why people turn to religion out of desperation

[inkysphinx]

I explained the concept of "blorbo from my shows" to my 71 year old immigrant grandfather because I referenced it in passing and I thought nothing of it, until today when he said "I think I'll watch peaky blinders tonight and see my blorbo from my shows" referring, of course, to Cillian Murphy playing Tommy Shelby

[inkysphinx]

it's ethical

[inkysphinx]

Navidad // Malaga

// Navidad //

Drumming. Pattering of 

feet upon grass, turned dirt, turned sand, 

their soles breaking earth and strand. 

Greedily, we heard 

whistling in the night, land kicked and dug, land 

unripe, unready, untouched, land

everywhere. Spilled.

Our hands latched upon each other - 

we threw pieces of home, bones 

of the mother that bore us. All

would deny it, even in

awful death; our wasted life given 

to the sea - land breaking upon itself, land 

without end, our temple 

burdened with offerings

collapsed - no more cockroaches, 

at last. Later,

we saw and carved it all. 

Our hands grew hard

and calloused, hands 

wrought of reddening work:

blooded. Standing atop the ticks, 

we rubbed our knives 

together. We cut ourselves 

on sun-bleached bones; the droplets 

drummed the earth.

// Malaga //

The midden looms; it accepts 

its place in the centre of our

tumble-down town. It grows and 

rots. Our hands quiver. Humility 

in nature; a start. Darling Uncle Ossian

would be proud. First steps 

staccato, always - you’ve 

got to learn to take. We dug 

our hands into the ooze,

touching the awful weight

of our humanity. We 

warmed each other, huddling round the gleaming midden, 

effigy of sand and rot,

gleaming like a glassy eye, witnessing, 

for once, 

a living history. 

A squirming in the midden. Someone 

cries out, you’ve got to learn 

to take - hands sink 

into the midden. More cries: 

you can’t show up empty-handed

learn without hurting

live without feeling

or feel the pleasant breeze

without grinding the sand

between your teeth - you’ve got to

learn to take. Calloused, reddened 

midden, blooded, worn and 

dirty. We are shovelling

filth away; you cannot see its size 

from there. Arms sink 

into the midden: Take my hand, 

old man - staccato heartbeat, stranger to this human percussion, a drumming 

denied by wasted life. The eyes 

widen to slivers of life. For the 

first time, he breathes. Feet 

patter against bone walls, 

then kick. I can hear the knife 

- mother that bore us - shuddering 

in the dark, cutting the empty, 

grabbing, 

sandy hands - take it, you fool, take it! - He falls.

A million lives 

taken, a midden burdened

with waste. 

Having had his little taste,

the old man draws the curtain 

'cross his wide and glassy eyes.

[inkysphinx]

The Barrow-Folk

In golden days the soil would sprout  with tansies, yarrow of the dying  knight, whose castle burned against the velvet hues -  night everlasting.  a screeching castigates  the yarrow of the dying knight - does it have ears to know? It pushes  Through the visor, oily tendrils slither ‘twixt the shafts, ‘till the yarrow of the dying knight  tastes the howl of endless, hollow night.  Tansy blooms throughout this little century - long slaked,  it grows as roses - we are too young to know them as they were, we  children of the realms forgotten, lost, we Saturated ones, we praising folk, scourged ones, watching, waiting, All the while. Here I am, sitting in a shallow shaft, whistling with  the wind, wishing  I was with them too:  the barrow-folk, whose castle burned  against the velvet hues - night  everlasting, trusting, fighting, burning; the  Barrow-folk, swallowed, broken, velvet hues protect them - dying page of a flower fed on barrow-children; a young student lays dying upon a field of tansies, yarrow of the dying  knight, whose castle burned against the dying light,  Last and final light of ages darkened,  Innocent, too innocent for burning pages, velvet words, flowers slaked  on children of the realms forgotten, children of the barrow-children. Pushing  through the visor, oily tendrils castigate the yarrow of the dying knight,  whose castle burns against the endless tendrils of  the dying night, the yarrow of the tansy; Barrow-children burning; scourged and forgotten realms, made hollow by the wind, whose wishes whistle through  a lost, innocent visor - a golden, burning light; an endless screeching,  howl of burning children night of everlasting burning.