blue black hours

you exhaust me

with your perpetual need

you who is I, I who is me

this hungering for solace

rubbed like frankincense

on pulse points

used to be said, a woman’s evocation

was found in the thread of her blood

tasting her, found, a salt and an admonishment

for knowing mystery is not permitted

you exhaust me

with your perpetual need

you who is I, I who is me

attempting free fall, finding balance in

tender pretend, the chime and rounding of days

a music without orchestra, still she sings

heal me from the want

expunge that holy desire for more

give me a reflecting glass

that I might climb through

touch my limbs as they break into fire sticks

combusting in torrent, the woman, the girl

the crone

she sits with sun on her face

careless of time

she has put aside her duty

listening instead

to the song of a bird

whose feathers remind her

of blue black hours

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The fixation & the vexation

susan seddon bouletSometimes there is an unbuckling of

temper and fear and loathing

mixed into indigo and strewn

in furied air

we pick it up as

a smell long forgotten

taps long dormant senses

and despite the years, regain

a moment mislaid

your arms doused with powder

glittering like another being, turning,

you, spectral and otherworldly

an afterglow of fiesta, a street

littered with signs of party goers

their tossed colors, a mélange of remembrance

we grind and mash and rearrange

clothes strewn in multi color love letters

on unpolished floor

seeking to find in electrified connection

that dizzying light

buoying briefly from surface

telling of depths few venture

where usually we rest, bobbing and sailing

absent of passion, thinking like the face of a clock

about slow steady movement, predictable pauses

spasms only in the imagination

or when a familiar song stirs a disquiet

whilst below, in regions beneath our reach

gained access through mutual need

briefly like the flick of a match

sets sulphur stalking cold corridors

only there, unbeknownst to the world

and her grave tick-tock visage

we earn closer, sloughing skin, molecules

separating individuals, ages, castles, skies

until on the windswept summit we fall

clutching each other in entreaty and relief

fading from sight, resisting wholeness

becoming starlight

only then, your damp hand caught

somewhere inside me, my bruised

lips smarting with the pressure of

cascading into earths center

do we know a place that is only ours

where we are pre-Denisovan and

holy, beneath the candle of a human’s

little watched life

that shallow wick, curved in entreaty

for meaning, for Gods, for monsters

and your rounding stomach, wet with tears

salt and oxygen and loss like a tableau

of everything, a table set for two

we sit obedient and fatigued

the lines of us, drawn before we arrive

breaking outside the cast, little cracks

small fizzures

with the fixation and vexation

of mortal love.

Always

Rorschach_blot_04Sorrow

You come from the juxtapose of joy

As I ate words of love

I had been starving for

Felt your surround like a glory

My body opening for the first time in years

To the rain of you and your outstretched us.

That safe place

Didn’t really exist

I had simply been running in diminishing blindfolds

Emptying myself of protest just as, in one glance, you fill me whole

Anything less is biding time before dying

And it’s not good enough! I want to feel FIRE.

I am

I said into darkness

A strange person

I spent my youth

Acting multiple roles

Watching the stage from ceilings

And words? You have none, I have plenty

But they mean nothing

The purity of your act

Holding my chin and neck

As only one who owns my heart

Tells me more than any soliloquy.

I am a writer

Who doesn’t believe in detail

I’ve had the most fantastic actors

And I’ve seen through them all

But your raw silent search

Slams me with its reality

And I open and open and open

Crying out my betrayal and my hurt

Your fingers beneath my arching

The feel of you, deep in my journey.

Like a wild wind

I pull hard on you

Because I cannot have enough

I want you to live inside me

Like a flower touching my soul, blooms in darkness

Our fingers interlaced

Things I’ll never be able to say.

I smell home in your neck

I touch pain against bliss

And collapse on the other side

Where all meaning resides and you …

You are my all

I want to stay here

Gathered into you and afraid

Because when you feel

You always walk the edge of a blade

Sharp and unknown.

I cannot say anything

But the feel of you against me, is my only sense

I am driven

Like sea is drawn magnetically, every morning

Thundering against shore or stone

Grieving its former peace momentarily

Before losing in the din and rage of passion

All ordinary sense, replaced with certainty.

I am unable to exist without

The burn of following

I follow you

As we are shadows separate and together

Watching me watching you, merge and turn like slivers of ink

Until one, until none

Indivisible we begin over

Unweaving what was you from my depths

Incomplete now

Stay

Stay

Stay please

Always.

Rune

They ran through markets

elms strung with sari’s

bedecked with jewels and

girls kenning their heads

babes at their breast

growing crowns of red and indigo

she pressed into my palm

the spell of her rune

smelling of Finnish water stone

rubbed over and over beneath time

leaves still containing their flung pigment

where slippered feet ran and picked them

casting their glass throng to glory

she has the shiny hair of a child and

cheeks full for her pressed size

she who is gone and now returned

talking in other languages with Irish accent

she who manifests and disappears and is reborn

doesn’t look large enough to give birth

or sing at the top of a road the song of her

we were

separated by water and fear and longing

broken in sea, put back together by current

I was always swimming in her direction and the

light tread of her spring

she is a carnival of paper-cut outs

wearing scarlet hose and rings on her toes

yet upward / yet down in earth where

roots inform her choices as well as ancestor

she is of me and I

am stranger and intimate

familiarity is a rubbed sleeve on silver

her thin knees beneath duvet

twitching dreams caught in muslin

tents in high wind holding their claim

sheared gravity, she is lifted from her sail

and through the tarot of her eyes

I see each snapshot and Rorschach blot

when they told us friendship will expire

they did not know

the language of ink and how

it leaves itself

swirling for paper

on which to draw

us

The blood of words

I am addicted

To the ever deep pool of your mind

Hearing boys say, to a younger version of myself

Don’t be too serious girl, lighten up

You look so pretty when you smile

I read, people gravitate towards humor

I move

In the direction of a bright mind

Illuminating darker recession

It is evident I will never, win popular award

I do however, seek eternally

Your inky thirsty thought

It has told me

To fuck off

Countless times

And hurt me

With the shards of a shattered cup

Pieces too finely crushed to piece back

But when I witness

Your pensive half smile and darkening eyes

When I read your words, smudged on page and hold my breath for wonderment

When I listen

To what you are not saying, in half turned observation, listing on margin

I ache

In a place I had left hallow

Hoping

Time would heal it over

And it may never

For your existence

Is a shape in my head

A girl with the blood of words

Urging me to remember

The wonder of thought