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Ochre Idyls

Poems, Haiku/Tanka, Short Fictions

onyx paperweight
presses the hope of pages
before the swift wind

July 19, 2025
35 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

wisteria climbs
wraps and gnarls around itself
only to flower

July 18, 2025
17 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

the mellow of bull
under the azure of sky
as estoque settles

July 17, 2025
19 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

I don't use words
Like innocence
Or guilt
Blame or justice
They're not for me ...

July 16, 2025
17 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

It's just too much science. Too much to keep track of. Half of it doesn't make sense anyway.

Spoken like a true layperson.

Well, it's true! Take the lowly wormhole. Now they've elevated it to some kind of super-science time-travel mumbojumbo. A wormhole! ...

July 15, 2025
13 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Oh Miss Mary Mack
Why you all dressed in black
The day is young
Your tale's not yet spun
Yet here you are ...

July 14, 2025
16 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

I do though. I want to know her witchcraft. Her neopagan scene. I want to stand alter-side before the rocks and sky, watch her summon the threatening wind, worship in her church not built by man, b...

July 13, 2025
14 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

I heard he's a bit of a deviant too.

I've heard that as well. No proof though. Probably just stories made up by jealous suitors of the women he's been with. But I will say, mind you, it's strange...

July 12, 2025
13 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

A bit of a divvy, they call him. Not sure how he packs all that knowledge in that scruffy head, but he knows his stuff alright. A real savant.

But only when it comes to antiques. They say his lov...

July 12, 2025
10 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Skirmish Mchayes
always dressed for the fight
that never happens

July 10, 2025
17 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

long play taffeta
held for special occasions
skips less than vinyl

July 09, 2025
18 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

rooks make better pies
ask any blackbird they'll say
rooks make better pies

July 08, 2025
19 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

It's just a little pea shooter. Keeps it in his cummerbund. Over dressed sanctimonious low life. Careful though, it'll sting, and depending on where he hits you, it could hurt, alot, like in the e...

July 07, 2025
8 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

She's like a particularly potent masala, truly exotic, and intoxicating. She defies being just sweetly aromatic, or a simple heady pungence. She is a complex flavor profile with spicy notes lurkin...

July 06, 2025
12 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Picture this, the old
Saying goes
A man,
It goes on,
Living a suburban life ...

July 05, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Lou, we're trapped in a prism.

Don't say it.

But... ...

July 05, 2025
0 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

docking in the port
of independence can be
a tricky maneuver

incremental navigation ...

July 04, 2025
3 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Hamartia, Hamartia, Hamartia!

With that, the fed-up sister ran off to her room. It was hard being the middle child. Never being first at anything like Hamartia always was. Never being coddled and...

July 04, 2025
10 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

A man stands alone
Proud defiant ready
He's prepared
Let's call him Coleman
He's in the spotlight ...

July 03, 2025
17 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

A beauty I thought
So I brought it home
A bushy mandevilla
Bloomy with promises
We wrestled a bit ...

July 02, 2025
17 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

my marching orders
are clear; step lively with cheer
patriot of the heart

July 01, 2025
9 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Sometimes
I set the controls
For the heart of nostalgia
I lose myself
On the journey ...

June 30, 2025
17 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Priscilla's new line of Barely There apparel included the return of the stole, a shoulder wrap worn with pride by ladies of distinction, and wealth. The Scintilla. Cries of mink, and chinchilla, w...

June 29, 2025
8 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Billie Jo's bridge
They called it
High up
Over muddy waters
On a clear day ...

June 28, 2025
0 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

A scream into space
Is but the makings of a noise
The mere notion of a sound
A boundless vibration
Endlessly ...

June 28, 2025
14 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

A moment suggests transience. An ephemeral state, a liminal place of brief awakening between past and future. A moment serves its own purpose. And this awareness of itself, in this moment's notice...

June 27, 2025
18 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Poetic intention
If there is
Such a thing
Is often disguised
As a vagary ...

June 26, 2025
16 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Ew, your starscape is lining up all wrong.

My what?

It's like a horoscope but closer to a biorhythm. ...

June 25, 2025
19 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

bamboo stalks green straight
tea kettle centered matted
missing one guru

June 23, 2025
23 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

There are more things
in your cosmology, Horatio
than vodka and juice

June 22, 2025
7 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

looking back at all the nuts
this family tree ever dropped
It appears I'm the only one
with enough guts
to say it's never stopped ...

June 22, 2025
16 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Something thrives
In this space this
Acrimonious departure
From everything normal
Like the wonder, the beauty ...

June 21, 2025
14 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

In tandem
we find quantum fluctuations
acquiring symmetry
across space, across time
there is a unison found ...

June 20, 2025
26 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

though plain or layered
a poem is a vortex
a single shot, spun

June 19, 2025
19 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

In this room
fiefdom becomes realm
and ruler I am not

with spare parries ...

June 18, 2025
30 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Charging into the room, he cried, what great susurrus is this?

The conspirators, siezing their chance, lunged at the now exposed despot.

Without his body guards, they rallied. And so the great chase began, ending at the town corral in a legendary shootout. ...

June 17, 2025
10 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

I've debunked your theory, Alfred. Life on earth didn't evolve on its own. You see, there's a fly in your primordial soup.

June 16, 2025
13 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

didn't say anything
to my former self about
how i got here

June 15, 2025
16 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

hearts of fire on sale
prices slashed one day only
get them while they last

June 14, 2025
13 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

I look forward to
when empty becomes hungry
then it's time to write

June 13, 2025
7 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Like a 70s disaster movie
A nuclear winter had begun
Weapons of unimaginable power
Changed the face of earth
Fools thriving on pride ...

June 13, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Ship shape, toute suite. Let's move it, people!

Oh, what a taskmaster. Give us five second's rest. Honestly just five seconds. Would it kill them?

Yeah. I voted for her, but I didn't think it would be like this. She was always on the ball, you know? ...

June 13, 2025
10 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

France has a saying
so profound it's etched in cork
C'est: mis en bouteille

June 12, 2025
2 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

There's a kind of sand
Consisting of the same properties
As what you'd find at the beach
An ocean of tiny particles
Packed so closely together ...

June 12, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

They were all fragments, pieces of pictures torn, papers twisted and ripped, their meanings attacked, defaced; but he heard them still, tiny voices he needed to lose, to drown, to push so far away ...

June 11, 2025
5 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

even the finest hair
scrapes against the sunburnt skin
finesse is not less
perhaps abstinence is key
when fun becomes misery ...

June 11, 2025
15 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Images of height fill me
Of scale and import
I dream in measured
Incongruities
At times I feel surrounded ...

June 10, 2025
5 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

It's such a small thing
A bit of an ask
Not that I should tell you
What is or isn't
In fact ...

June 10, 2025
14 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Industrious maybe, but I wouldn't say luminous. That's a quality of light.

Like saturation?

Yes. Although luminous can mean "stands out," but you need to be recognized for whatever you're standing out for in order to be considered luminous. ...

June 09, 2025
3 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

there was a time when
to mourn was
a relief
a release
more than just a gentle sigh ...

June 09, 2025
5 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Fresh mints
slip from newly torn wrappers
thumbed out among the group
they're all the same
no shortest straw here ...

June 08, 2025
28 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Midnight calls around again
Curtains undrawn rooftops
Bathed in darkness yet
Somehow alight
I turn, toss ...

June 08, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

I turned circles in the shower, emulating the rain, the spray splatter feeling and all its increments toward soaking, with joy, abandonment, myself outside me, the speaker with no words, spinning ...

June 08, 2025
13 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Bridges hide something
Something essential
I just can't name
From here to there
I get that much ...

June 06, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Down the Caernarvon Road
There's shops there
For second-hand wear
That'll take you in
Indulge you in someone else's sin ...

June 06, 2025
1 like ❤️ • 0 comments

And unto this day a daughter is born.

Manny's feet never touched the ground. Not for hours. Some say years.

A baby girl. His first. Fated to be his only, not that he would stop trying. For by degrees, not suddenly, the same strange magic that brought him here, turned dark. ...

June 06, 2025
10 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

narcissus poeticus
innocent optimism
one wraps the other
memory's spirits in bloom
so early sprung, so long gone ...

June 05, 2025
2 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

There once was a bubbling spring
Nature's gift
They used to bring buckets
Bottles, jars, hands to mouth
The water was clear ...

June 05, 2025
14 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

We had talked about lifestyle changes, the doctor said. I'm sorry but the damage has been sustained for too long.

How long I got left?

Six months, a year? Hard to tell. ...

June 05, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Softly spun song of lies, meant to draw in, then to prise, to keep disguised, let no one know the truth within, the starving light, the withdrawn shame, that double-edged shard of animosity, of ha...

June 04, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Back in the day, am I right?

Whacha mean?

When I was a kid, the world was all sunshine and possibility. Now it's all dark and you can see the wall they're building. We had progress, day glo colors, double knit suits, and anyone could become president. Guess that last part's still true. ...

June 04, 2025
6 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

It feels so real it almost tingles
There's an extra heart beat
Syncing up with mine
Something's not the same
A ripple, perhaps ...

June 04, 2025
7 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Watch him. He's going to swan.

Swan?

Yes. It's his thing. Too much drama growing up, I think. ...

June 04, 2025
6 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Oh you wee little strait
I see you there
We all do
Yes you're wee but also mighty
Slip of a thing, really ...

June 03, 2025
14 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Morning shade creeps
To afternoon sun
Full on with no relief
Patio containers
Of vulnerable tenderlings ...

June 03, 2025
8 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

He looked down on the beautiful walnut burl, the patina of aged wood once assembled into a writing desk. A tear began to form in the corner of his left eye. He only wanted a bargain. Just for firew...

June 02, 2025
19 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Geoffrey's new oversized couch was a monster. It could swallow you whole. Sheila, his date, struggled to right herself in it.

This is great, eh? Super comfy.

Not so much maybe. ...

June 02, 2025
3 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Hello little sunbeam
Come to brighten my morning
You slip past my curtains
To reclaim me
From the land of dreams ...

June 01, 2025
35 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Little things remind me
Of a life left behind
Not of choice but force;
And that reminds me
Some things aren't worth ...

June 01, 2025
7 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

They look at me and say
Why are you absent again today
If only they could see
All the things I get to be
Even just some of the places ...

May 31, 2025
6 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Ok, we have your buddy on the line now. 30 seconds to discuss!

Ready.

That was fast. ...

May 31, 2025
14 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

An android staggers down a rain slickened alley, its cortisol levels peaked. A street light at the end of the alley flickers out as the whisper of a silenced pistol hits home. Vision doubled, it t...

May 30, 2025
22 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Pools of brine
Little more than puddles
Waiting on the tide
To rinse and fill
Settle again ...

May 29, 2025
19 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

There are 139 steps. That's about one hundred more than i need. I go up. I go down. Under heavy branches that smell like Christmas. And alternately through a crispness that blanches. I am a child. ...

May 29, 2025
2 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

No, you're not protective your possessive. Maybe protective of your own things, your own possessions, but she's not a thing, and you don't own her. She's got two eyes and she's going to see for h...

May 28, 2025
11 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Bartleby program's not working again.

What happened?

Nothing happened. Kinda the point. Just ignores any commands. ...

May 28, 2025
15 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

flowers bloomscrolling mood EastCoastKin photography nature petalpower magnolia bedewed

May 27, 2025
25 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

She needed help, divine inspiration. Downtown bohemian chic or midtown luxury. Cafes and bookstores with fire escape writes, or the latest fashions with dinner dates and romantic escapes. Anywhere ...

May 27, 2025
6 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Would this hand not wilt
At the touch to your face
Lovely behind compare
Could this appendage bear
To frame the asymmetry ...

May 27, 2025
5 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

No, despite how it sounds, they're nudibranch, a species of sea slug. Which is exactly why this is suspicious. Why would a beer filled tin, sitting in a vegetable garden, at the base of an inland ...

May 27, 2025
6 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

In the end, there were no winners
nuclear winter sheltered us all
an ice planet seen from afar
perhaps more desirable?
the earth provides, man decides ...

May 26, 2025
3 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Poaching is when predator becomes murderer, hands dirtied with the blood of protected innocence. The lowest form of predation, it acts surreptitiously, not out of instinct but from greed. The lowe...

May 26, 2025
9 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

In the backyard, George's parents were grilling, along with his younger sister and older brother. George was generally not missed and after watching The Sound of Music alone, decided they all need...

May 25, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

I knew it would be toxic, even from the way the phone rang. Used to it, I guess. This time could be dealt with, without my own anger, without me yelling, talking over, shouting down, insisting tha...

May 25, 2025
16 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

This cabin is awesome!

Well it's not much but it'll do.

What? It's perfect! Very Autumn. Porch, fireplace, freaking loft with a four poster! You don't see that every day. ...

May 24, 2025
5 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

The pinnacled cone of light gave no relief to the sweating face under it. All it revealed was a frightened yet defiant moxy, up to the detective's grilling. After release, the interrogation scene ...

May 24, 2025
2 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

"Narwhal, narwhal
Swimming in the
O-shun"

She has no idea what it means. A childish song, fun and funny in its imagery. But for him, it's a hand reached deep down to the dark place he's pushed himself. The lightness of her repeated notes, the innocence of her tender age. Transforming. ...

May 24, 2025
12 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Almost everyone left town after the cave-in. The mine, declared unsafe, filled with sea water, and sheered off along unpredictable fractures after the explosion. Some still wait for husbands and so...

May 23, 2025
8 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

how does one walk, talk
its way into existence
whose foundling furrowed eyes first landed
on the physique form
given rise through unexplained ...

May 23, 2025
6 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

down to the marrow
the real meat of the matter
exchange can begin

May 23, 2025
16 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Oh, you spicy pickled pepper, come over here and pucker up.

Jana's alliterative come-on did tickle the furtive fancy of her future beau, and with a quick flip of the lip, homed-in like a missile ...

May 22, 2025
3 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

corks that hold bottled high spirits tight
ancient gods who strum up mischief
between these two lies me and you
and from each, my dear, we take our cue
to each, my love, we give our due ...

May 22, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

pebbles on shores of distant reach
soothing stones of lives remembered, a dream
a twilight folding two worlds in one
an ache in her core, a split, a tear
and a semblance of fear ...

May 22, 2025
16 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

I won't cry break down or die
I'm stronger than that
and my heart knows how to love
I've been a lot of things
not all I would remember ...

May 22, 2025
6 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

a show of strength
on what endangers least
lays bare the coward

May 21, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

All signs point toward stormy weather. I get to prognosticate because I'm the only one who knows her signs. The sudden chill, the eery placidity, a sort of thunder building somewhere unplaceable bu...

May 21, 2025
8 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

feathered dinosaurs
learning to fly took them years
but mutate they did

May 20, 2025
5 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

protest songs abound
red doors painted with black joy
pink wants to party

May 20, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

last line of defense
devilish details persist
clean break, losses cut

May 20, 2025
7 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Velocity tearing
Wingspan shearing dive
Into immortality

The greatest of nectars ...

May 19, 2025
2 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Dude, you caught an anglerfish.

Look at it! So freaky!

They're supposed to be deep sea creatures, not hanging out in the bay. I wonder what caused this little guy... ...

May 19, 2025
11 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

A single red balloon lofting down the street, haphazard, capricious as the wind. It could be the opening scene in a movie, or more sadly, an ending scene. There's a different power in each. But i...

May 19, 2025
2 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

In Barnes and Noble she fashioned a scythe
From a plastic fork in the café
She needed no prompting
And showed no hesitation
Clear and deliberate creativity ...

May 18, 2025
3 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

sunlight dialogue
is nature's steadfast guidance
inwardly turned on

May 18, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

I painted the colors of the morning sky. Brush strokes of cadmium red and dioxazine purple, jagged palette knife smears of hansa yellow. It's violent on the canvas, but you gotta make do with what...

May 18, 2025
10 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

He called it a wraith, waiting in the corner of his room. Then again in rec.

Sure better than the banshee Eleven saw last week!

Seriously, he's scared. He says the darkness wants him. That's all he'll say, "They sent the wraith for me." ...

May 18, 2025
14 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

The familial matrix which spawned the three of us also shaped our proclivities. One's nature was not the others'. The twins were both bent on a vengeance without origin, and I in either preventing...

May 17, 2025
10 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Fruit, ladies! Get your fresh fruit.

His words were on repeat. Every syllable, every infection. His stand had the reddest apples, the most orange oranges. Too shy, Sydney's passion ran just hot ...

May 17, 2025
2 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

A mother holds her child loose
not with force but with light
through the growing of the night

A cloud slips past the pale bright moon ...

May 16, 2025
3 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Water stirred swirls
Clear water allows for transparency
In its swirl

Dirty water conceals ...

May 16, 2025
8 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

It's so under rated. A good night's sleep is huge.

We shouldn't even have school tomorrow.

He knows what that means. From the glow of her iPad, she wants to stay up late. He knows what the morning will be like. ...

May 16, 2025
6 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

She called them balustrades
I winced, knowing I'd never have thought that
railings, I suppose, spindles at best
But she knew
She knows the word for the light ...

May 16, 2025
6 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

immunity rhymes with disingenuity
one often leading to the other
for they say there's a problem
with ultimate power
and those on the flip side of that echelon ...

May 15, 2025
17 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

And he shall be called Hiraeth.

What's that then?

Hiraeth. It's Welsh, means deep longing. ...

May 14, 2025
8 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Johnson swept the area. Only casualties. He radioed back. Moving ahead. In the stairwell, a flash of blue. He moved slow. The day was hot and he was dripping, finger loose over the trigger. He nee...

May 14, 2025
2 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

This clock in the hall
Chiming regular chimes
On hours, half and quarter past
Is the bright sentry of time
The here the now ...

May 13, 2025
2 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

The agent blinked twice. The sign that he understood. Bound and gagged, he couldn't twist or turn. And he had as yet no idea how his diabolical nemesis intended to do him in. With each blink he sli...

May 13, 2025
13 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

I hear your bias
and I'll raise you another
this kind of thing
we can do all night ...

May 12, 2025
5 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

This too will dissolve, the gypsy said. A lark. Renee didn't believe in prophecy, but she was unsettled none the less. Outside the tent, the carnival rambled on, raucous and full of smells, from f...

May 12, 2025
8 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

To all the moms
whose presence
is still felt

May 11, 2025
72 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

The giant wanted to grind them bones, make his bread. But his heavy handed methods might not work on actually firing neurons.

Jack was full of himself. He didn't take into account the sheer physi...

May 11, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Oh no, this eclipses that, Junior. By a megamile. You ain't even in the right time zone.

Yeah? Well, we'll see when a hundred man army of flame throwers takes on your zombie horde and crisps them...

May 11, 2025
9 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Robin's fight with Laura was serious. She even said that was it. So he hit the bar outside of town to blow off steam. Texas summers are hot and he was sizzling, inside and out. The stranger scratch...

May 10, 2025
5 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

You can't fake facts like you can feelings. Facts are the genuine article. Period.

Have you read the news lately?

The fake news? I refuse. ...

May 10, 2025
6 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

What's that one from?

Those? He looks at his knuckles. They're the ones I'm proudest of.

They look rough. ...

May 10, 2025
12 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

years away
in lands ago

May 09, 2025
16 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

There lies a sudden pallor
Behind her eyes
A quality of light
That's just not there ...

May 09, 2025
9 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

now now close your eyes hush and dreams will float you by once when the moon was full bright eyes did still away the fronds of thought and so shall you when all the said is done and through this al...

May 08, 2025
2 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Spandau Ballet wrote a song
I know this much is true
What I didn't know was
It would be playing
The day I met you ...

May 08, 2025
8 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

I got a heart full of sutures
micro cracks and schisms galore
it must look like a slinky toy
and a velveteen Frankenstein
had a love child ...

May 08, 2025
12 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Susie moved to the sound of her own drummer. She'd been called different before, and that was a banner she flew high. She drove too fast, talked circles around circles, and smiled at everyone every...

May 07, 2025
3 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Johnny's bashful ways left him time and again on the sideline watching life play past. He would say it was true, life moves pretty fast, but he preferred a slower approach. Then he met Sue. Super ...

May 07, 2025
3 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

I could trace our route into the past. I was the only one with the memories to do it. Data points plotted, that's all it amounted to. A time map. But that's not what scared me. And not the unteste...

May 07, 2025
12 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

What river runs
Dappled, delirious
In constant flow
That doesn't tribute
Its source ...

May 06, 2025
15 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

All movement, ever
Corresponds to consecutive niches in time
They can be strung out and repeated
Through memory's lens
At any time of day or night ...

May 06, 2025
14 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Ella G, you get over here right now.

Aw, Ma.

Get your scrawny butt over here and leave that boy alone. ...

May 06, 2025
11 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

especially beware
especially take care
of the selfish men who
would diminish heart and soul
to gain it all, pieces of silver ...

May 05, 2025
10 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Vellichor reigns in confines
Tight
An aisle, a chair
A heady mist of possibility
Swirling, tempting ...

May 05, 2025
20 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

"So you guys are the word police. I've heard stories but have never seen you. I don't know anyone who ever has. And now you're here. You're real. How selcouth."

"This one checks out, Lenny. Let's...

May 04, 2025
15 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

It came from the water, they said. Our team was called in. We had all the equipment. We'd get to the bottom of it. And we did. But there was nothing to be found. An old lake was drained and there ...

May 03, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Stuffed Islands of Greed
The last play to be performed
In the now defunct
Theater of the Absurd v2.3 ...

May 03, 2025
5 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Through the lens of time
Her insensitivity became
A form of echolalia

Reverberating ...

May 03, 2025
9 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

hearts tire over distances of time
over differences of place
and will not release without leaving a trace
where yearning once lived
cast hammered and twisted hot ...

May 02, 2025
3 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Instant karma's a real thing. You see it in parking lots and high school halls. You see it in chameleons and police. Everywhere it seems. But it's got a second trick. Not so obvious as the first. ...

May 02, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

What on earth?

Joey looked up at his mommy. His chocolate smile did not dazzle.

Oh you did it now, young man. Time to wash up! ...

May 01, 2025
3 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Nirvana is the goal
Gotta get there
Gotta make do
Break on through
To the other side ...

May 01, 2025
13 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

We are tied
You and me
Along adjacent planes
We climb
To stand ...

April 30, 2025
3 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

What I seek, intrinsically
Is always the same
No matter what it is
Or how presumptuous
Or frivolous ...

April 30, 2025
9 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

No, it's brand new. Still sparkles, look.

He hands the ring over the counter.

It's shiny for sure. But can't you see the tears on it? There, and there? ...

April 29, 2025
17 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Nana pulled her shawl up. The air was warm in the attic, but she wore the shawl everywhere. Georgie opened the trunk and began lifting things out. Nana said something about each. As he held up a wh...

April 29, 2025
5 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

there is a whisper
falling along
this line of light
from dusk's settling
and on into night ...

April 28, 2025
5 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

conversion change
reversion change back
version all for one

April 28, 2025
14 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

I cannot lie
Honestly, I can't
Not without bad things happening
as you can see ...

April 27, 2025
7 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

she sat in fury
soggy toast politics
unspreadable
yet doing just that
cold flame fire ...

April 26, 2025
2 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Jenny tossed aside the bi-monthly newsletter thinking it a waste of natural resources. Someone would come by and collect her office bin and that would be that. And it would be that if that newslet...

April 26, 2025
12 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Her soul protest
Would have been defiance
Had she let it out

April 25, 2025
3 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

He scoured the website page by page, link by link. He was looking for anything that might lead him to her. She'd been missing for a week. An eternally frayed week. If she needed him, he needed to ...

April 25, 2025
20 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

It's a toss up today, as it would be on any given day, but right now, favorite lyrics:

"How charade you are."
- Pink Floyd ...

April 24, 2025
8 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

The newly dead don't decompose anymore. They linger. And if they can, they roam. We've had cases of roamers in our town recently. Sheriff has to round them up and return them. They don't actually ...

April 24, 2025
16 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Once we moved out, the neighbors fought the flames we left behind. I pictured them watching the rear-end of our faux paneled station wagon jaunt its merry way down the road. If it wasn't the earlie...

April 23, 2025
2 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Back in the late 80s, we used to tool around NE Philly. The Roosevelt Mall was a favorite haunt. Most of that time we just drove with music up loud. My buddy, funny little guy, would come up with t...

April 23, 2025
11 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Moving into a new house should be exciting, right? Full of smiles and visions of a future perfect plan? Sure, the weight of maintenance and repair is high, but surely it's balanced by an imprimatu...

April 23, 2025
14 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

reverse engineering
garden of stone
ends in pebbles

April 22, 2025
3 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Kookaburra climbs into flight
Laughing at the unseen stream
Where a sharp trajectory becomes more than it seems
A glimmer, a glint, fast into the light
Prompts madcap peals for no reason at all ...

April 22, 2025
5 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

riots of color
bombs of blooms
nature's promotion

April 22, 2025
21 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

against the will
in crimson clouds
the blush did bloom

April 21, 2025
5 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

This is not the time, Louie, and this is not the place. You're out of line and you should be ashamed. Say you're sorry. He's sorry, ma'am. He forgets even himself sometimes. I'll see to him person...

April 21, 2025
17 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

The cost of sin is death, they say. What they don't say is what death is like, or how quickly it can take over your whole, well, life. Just like that and your answering to another power. I'd a liv...

April 20, 2025
14 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

eyes on the product
as opposed to producer
selling different things

April 20, 2025
7 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

I said I'd meet her in the cave we'd carved out as kids in the giant waratah on the hill. A lifetime ago. We'd kissed, once, there on that hill. So I sent the note but received no reply. I went an...

April 18, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

This segmentation is anything but equal. It takes only the best for you and leaves the rest for me. I know this is something you're not blind to, how can expect me not to see? Redistribute, do it ...

April 18, 2025
11 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Take him in, take him in.

Mother, the back is full. We need to move some of the 'merchandise' before adding more.

Oh, you worry. You old like me? ...

April 17, 2025
11 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

on consumers and
the evils of marketing
seduce to produce

April 16, 2025
9 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

I do seek anon for favors unto you
None such as trivial, my meaning
Will be clear; exemplar to strive
into that beacon, that sun traversing
eternity on the brightness of thine countenance. ...

April 15, 2025
2 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

In the land before time
There was no water around
Carbon life was still elemental
The spaces between
Were not as dry as they seemed ...

April 14, 2025
1 like ❤️ • 0 comments

What are those?

Wrath presents.

What presents? ...

April 14, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

"And what of the end, eh? You think it's so defined, set in stone, this makes that and that what you're thinkin' is the only thing that can happen, well, what if you're wrong and all this time the...

April 14, 2025
10 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Phil ran wild. He had them and he knew it. This chance didn't come around often. He knew he could milk it and did just that. He bolted out of obscurity, ran circles around the crowd, and posed for ...

April 13, 2025
7 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Where to start? At the beginning? No, too predictable, too linear. Let's just say that because of her past, she blamed everyone but herself. Secluded and isolated, she schemed. Vitriol for love. W...

April 13, 2025
11 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

A waffle pattern
Is not
A honeycomb

April 12, 2025
5 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Her ringtone was set
To a riff by queen
--Not vanilla ice
It alarmed her of
Her mother calling ...

April 12, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

I used to envy you
There in that house
Behind that fenced yard
You were the ideal
Binded by propriety ...

April 12, 2025
6 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

"It's coming."

"I know she is."

"It. It's not her anymore." ...

April 12, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Hold fast to dreams,
for if dreams die
The day weighs light-less
within your eyes. ...

April 11, 2025
5 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

You do challenge
with such ultimatum --
I'll rise to it
but should it be verbatim ...

April 11, 2025
2 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

There between dreams
And the valley of reality
Sits a rock
On this rock sits a man
And in this man ...

April 11, 2025
19 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

In totalis
there is no more
some suffer to reach its peak
paramours to the latency of greed
slopes found slip ...

April 10, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

George covered and ushered Elizabeth inside but birds streamed through the windows. The noise was deafening. The air dark like night, hot and choking. George got them to the study door and closed ...

April 10, 2025
8 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

George leaned on the railing fighting the urge to speak his mind. No, they wouldn't get married yet. Across the lawn, toward the hills, he watched a flock of rooks take flight. They murmured and v...

April 10, 2025
3 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

coin faces Janus
sees only one side of pride
Janus or other

April 09, 2025
7 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

What brings you joy?

Life.

What about life? ...

April 09, 2025
21 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

"Such piety is reserved for the offering, my dear boy. Until then, all life is sacred, even your own."

"All I said was...."

"Stop. I know what you said. And I know you didn't think first. You used his words, verbatim. You even chanted them." ...

April 08, 2025
8 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Christopher is in his room again
Horizontal and transferring ideas
Through open spaces
In the contours of his mind ...

April 08, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

In the years after the bombs fell, life as we knew it ceased to exist. Forgotten ways, people and places unrecognizably changed. A substitute world, a facsimile, a simulacra pastiching a reality w...

April 08, 2025
11 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

blueskymonday

April 07, 2025
5 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Death is not the end
Death is not my friend
Barrier to those I've loved
Uninvited divider of realms
Death, hold your dominion ...

April 07, 2025
13 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

I did find you again
Right there beside me
A magic reappeared
To a soul bound in grief ...

April 06, 2025
13 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

You've got to toe the line around here, mister.

Oh yeah, and what if I don't want to?

Then you got another thing coming. ...

April 05, 2025
1 like ❤️ • 0 comments

Such a rare thing
Dying in measured starts and stops
Fits of memories
Stitched linerally
Consisting essentially ...

April 05, 2025
25 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Jim's time in a bottle
Is now missing
Sweet dreams
From fascination street
Call me ...

April 05, 2025
13 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

She thinks in concretions
I'm all abstraction
Subtlety, nuance, seduction
Propositions lining enactment
All the shades of grey to be made ...

April 04, 2025
16 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

There goes my hero
just walked on by like nothing
I buoy above
this trail of heroic wake
whisping, wasping, and unfurled ...

April 03, 2025
6 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Getting the band back together.

All right, man, seismic!

Yeah, it's going to be. ...

April 03, 2025
7 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

So bounce is a funny word
I didn't need to look it up
But another meaning came (un)bounding through
Just this morning, from
The T's to the Ta's ...

April 03, 2025
12 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

What is beauty but a common thread
In a woven tapestry unique in all
But the observer, for within the lie
Of material, deep beneath the skin
Is a light, surrounded by darkness ...

April 02, 2025
12 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

You know that antiquey dealer down the end there?

The one all stuck on 'imself? Yeah.

Well, heard 'e got done over. ...

April 01, 2025
3 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Blonde ringlets bounced across the hotel lobby. With each step a down bob before pertly rising. Gold Jimmy Choos clicked against polished marble; Chanel purse taking it all in stride. Swift and cle...

April 01, 2025
11 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

The light lit the arid ground like a lantern on the wall of a barn, glowing with deep shadows. He hitched up his horse and started off again, his tobacco juice staining the roadside sign. Bounty ti...

March 31, 2025
14 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Well I'm out there a-havin' fun
In that warm California sun

Platform shoes
And velveteen pants ...

March 30, 2025
9 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

In suit replete
The waiting, simply stated
Was a numbing feeling
Of life ending and
An insouciant priest ...

March 29, 2025
6 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Read it, just read it!

What?

The review, the critic! Oh, I wish I never had lunch with him. I exuded strength and charm, grace even, under the circumstances. What does he call me? ...

March 28, 2025
16 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

It's just not normal.

Of course it's not normal, Helen. But you're right, they're really pushing it this time.

Her gaze remains out the window, his on her profile. He can feel her thousand yard stare from across the table. ...

March 27, 2025
5 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Some ghosts are my mother's
They move up stairs and onto landings
They look to clean, to tidy, for children
Long since grown,
Grown and moved on, but for me. ...

March 27, 2025
11 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Done is done
There's a sense of simplicity there
The truth is usually simple
Smugly assured in the right hands
Until you question it with ideas ...

March 27, 2025
3 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Whatever happened to tradition?
A line echoed by Zero's gusto
From all generations past
To portend love across barriers
Of time, circumstantial navigation ...

March 26, 2025
2 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Torrid, rampant
Insatiable...
Unquelled, redolent
Spectacular...
How do I describe this sensation ...

March 26, 2025
9 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Strange word, desire. Bright yet elusive, so often unsatisfying. But with desire riding high before him, Vernon picked up his lunch box and headed to the construction site. He'd see her again. He ...

March 25, 2025
10 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Quite the sermon today.

Yes, an inspiration you might say.

Oh yes, do please. ...

March 24, 2025
10 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

She used caution at the turnstile, surreptitious looks in either direction. She was alone. At this time of the morning, the walkway was always clear. She had planned well. Her testament to him woul...

March 23, 2025
8 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

They're indivisible.

They're what?

You know, like the song? ...

March 22, 2025
15 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

How long does something
stay radioactive
How many memories pulled
crackle with the same energy
still ...

March 21, 2025
16 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

so rarely put on
compassion plays were the vogue
all the world's enraged

March 20, 2025
6 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

He looked up into his creation's face as he lay dying. He smiled as he saw a tear form.

It looked down on him with its expressionless, sempiternal face. It knew he was dying. It also knew it coul...

March 20, 2025
7 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

The music of the spheres
Waiting for a beat
Gives infinity pause

March 19, 2025
15 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Nothing rhymes guilty:
Crimes that stand alone, each owned
separate but whole

March 18, 2025
18 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Death holds you now my friend
As I hold onto what should have been
This corporeal fainter without;
There is beauty but for this war
My eyes kindled it within the light of yours; ...

March 17, 2025
18 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Cerulea, an ode to thee.

Oh,shut it!

Heathen, philistine, have you no couth? ...

March 16, 2025
16 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

The dark forces gathered. Order they said, their order. And they took. We fight back. They are not winning. Neither are we. Atrocities are heavy everyday. Our skies dark with irradiated daylight, o...

March 15, 2025
12 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Conundrums

It's the premise, overall
that holds the contexts
In obsteperous ...

March 13, 2025
12 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

After the wind stopped
Dangling charms cast dark shadows
We still push to chime

March 12, 2025
13 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

May Fairs

Stripey booths and cotton
candy smiles
Ticket strips, flocculent ...

March 11, 2025
9 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

"Poppycock," cried the Major, "poppycock and boulderdash!" His marching boots glistened in the early morning sun. Snapping his heels and turning toward the old soldiers' home dining hall, he furthe...

March 10, 2025
5 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Snagged by his jacket's shoulder on the edge of an old weir, with feet dangling downstream, the priest's body swayed in the gentle but lively current. Andrew laughed. "And I shall make you fishers...

March 09, 2025
9 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

The couch held her multitudes, each day, all day. Every day, enthroned, while he worked. Once home, the nothing done while away glared at him. As did she should he mention it. "What're you going t...

March 08, 2025
5 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Involuntary Involution

Rage, he said
Against the dying of the light
Implored, actually, ...

March 06, 2025
12 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

living in abstract transparencies
obvious reactionary tales
defenses become penumbra
dealing with the likes of you

March 04, 2025
8 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Hindrance to the Thing

March 04, 2025
4 likes ❤️ • 0 comments

Wander Thoughts

Read more at: longer.blue/posts/FXzH8q...

February 28, 2025
2 likes ❤️ • 0 comments