Every Crushing Step

Tags

Black and White, Fall, Floral, Florida, Hope, Introspection, Nature, Photography, Poetry

A humble path,
furry with
emerald moss
and splashed
in blue shadow.

A shiny-backed beetle
suns himself
on a cold
molar-sized stone,
then shuffles off
into a copper sea
of leaves.

So many
roving feet
traverse here.

A horse gallops by
bold and solid
his chestnut sides
heaving.
He is followed
by the stab
of deer hooves
swift in flight.

Now comes
my own restive shoe
hole-pocked
and pebble-filled
to bumble through.

Yet there you grow
tiny purple bloom
as if every crushing step
will always miss you.

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Sometimes, Silence is Reckless…

Tags

Addiction, Black and White, Depression, Experimental, Florida, GIF, Grief, Introspection, Nature, Poetry, Prose, Video, Writing

(Some experimental refractions.  Thank you for drizzling by.)

The clattering waves. The intractable sky. Mute again, with gloomy grey eyes. A bit of bone cuts into my thumb. A touch of wind whispers through decaying feathers. I do not remember the last thing I felt before the embalming.

Sometimes, Silence is reckless.

My mind is fossilized. As lively as the oldest stone. I lean back on the retracting cushion of Entropy, and gaze blankly toward the heavens. How dazzling is this thatch of scattering sparrows; how enchanting their dance of dewdrop shadows.

Thorny bliss is this mindlessness, oblique amongst the dried thistle and snapping bramble. I can vaguely hear it, somewhere wrapped in gauze; a little Life fizzing at the bottom of the quiet stream, beyond.

Like a mosquito, I insert a needle into it, now and then.

It is easy to forget the threat of a wave’s smooth caress, that its languorous massage of oblivion is still a form of erosion.

When I was a child, my favourite thing to draw was a noose.

He rang the other night. I could hear that his lips were cracked and bleeding. He wept and begged forgiveness, but I had never felt slighted to begin with. Yet, my response was blank-eyed silence. There was only the sound of the restive wind moaning through the eaves to answer for me.

How stealthy a foe is this stifling captor; like a cashmere cloud, its downy coolness yawned over me. Its strangeness seemed safe, nestled inside its gossamer embrace, bound in a world without senses or thought. I am far too gone to feel alarm, now.

Sometimes, love is just impotent rage that is a little too tired to bear its bulbous face.

What an obdurate knot Shame so deftly creates, twisting away, as the years smoothly slip by, pressure mounting against my spine.

Regaining a pulse requires resurfacing. To drag the bloated body from the turgid depths. To pry open its chalky eyes, exposing them to the bone light of the wild ocean sky, above. To kiss its mucid, slimy visage and blow through its cold stringy-white lips.

To let the cherry rivulets of pus and water drain from the self-inflicted punctures.

I do not know if I will dry out, chafe these wrists, and feel again. I despise the sound of my own voice, the rattle and scrape of my defunct brain and the trepid rasp of my rusty breath.

Sometimes, though, Silence can be much deadlier than the noose.

How I Wish There Were No End to Rain

Tags

Black and White, Death, Florida, Grief, Introspection, Music, Nature, Ocean, Pain, Photography, Prose, Quotation, Rain, Sea, Writing

I loomed beneath a dark feathering of sea-oats, pointed tips glazed with recent rain. I listened to the subdued murmur of little waves. The fetid and russet beds of sea-wrack had been washed away, leaving the sand barren and strange. A forlorn gull loitered at the swash line, analyzing the crinkling water as it fizzed in and out.

Distant lightning lazily branched from the moody-blue squall-lines and spidered across a sullen sea of herbal green. Coy ghost crabs emerged, removing dark masses of dripping sand from drowned burrows. They built little, lumpy mounds around the entrances to their small, black holes.

The storm was leaving me. How I longed for it to stay.

I was tortured the other night, seized with the memory of my little Siamese cat squeezing her eyes tightly shut for the last time. How swiftly she was gone, her soft, cinnamon cheek resting upon a colorful, flowing blanket that masked the metal slab beneath. I had never seen an animal euthanized, before. I understood, logically, that it ended the physical misery of her little, bony body.

Yet, how troubled I am by that last image of peace…of life tenderly released.

My mum died of a similar ravenous kind of disease. I remember that final image. Her face waxen and unreal, her mouth a small, black hole. She did not tightly close her eyes. She was not escorted quietly, through a warm wash of sleep, into the darkness beyond. Yet, I was not so disturbed by her image in death. And how vividly there lacked any look of peace…

I do not know what that reveals about me.

But I wish the storm would never leave. I want, forever, to hear its screams over this cold and fleeting sea of herbal green. How I wish there were no end to rain. Just as there seems to be no end to Grief.

“Darkness settles on the ground
Leaves the day stumbling blind,
Coming to a quiet close
And maybe just in time”
– From the song God Only Knows by Joe Henry

A Shrewd Grief

Tags

Abstract, Art, Black and White, Digital, Drawing, Experimental, Grief, Ink, Introspection, Nature, Night, Photography, Poetry, Rain, Thoughts

  Barbed malevolence

A shrewd and blunt Grief

That his somber Absence

Should foster such Relief

Drown in Sinuous Streams

Tags

Autumn, Black and White, Brooding, Hiking, Introspection, Melancholy, Nature, Photography, Poetry, Rain, Thoughts, Water, Woods

Dull eyes, like nail-heads

Drown in sinuous streams

Dusk in November

Dappled green slug skin

Raspy leaves tangled in wind

Accordion cravings

Smell of foggy woods

Staggering in solitude

Cold heavens asperge

Wood-fire tango

Tendrils of rain punch the flames-

Broodings, vespertine

Pursued by the Moon

Tags

Black and White, Experimental, Introspection, Nature, Night Photography, Noir, Owl, Prose, Story, Thoughts, Writing

Gritty steps reverberate the path, winding. Puttering along, the lone figure listens to the mosquito moon moaning behind skuzzy sky. Scraggly limbs cast sniveling shadow across his face, leather loafers glinting damp through lamp-light ripples. Rain hovers in misty summer air.

He stops, cognizant of Eyes upon him, lambent yellow beaming through the darkness. Then comes a muffled cry, a raspy whir wafting down from the arms of the great live oak- creature nestled somewhere in the down of rain-dappled Spanish moss.

Muted-still, the man waits, gazing up into the dripping tree, listening to the sound of life writhing and stirring in the dank and brittle grass at his feet.

With a flash of pale wing, the creature spills into view, poised on a naked branch, talons curling into deep fissured bark, glinting with rain. Those gawping eyes of lemon fire slit the darkness.

Then, a sudden gust of ludic wind flits through, brushing away the film from the moon. With a tossing steel mane, the man watches the little owl glide upwards and over the crests of trees, quickly dissipating into the darkness beyond, pursued by the lucid light of Sapphire Moon.

The man, too, hurries on, with bowed head, starlight stirring in ruffled puddles that swirl in his wake.

Embracing the Squirrely Kitten Within

Tags

Beauty, Exuberance, Healing, Hope, Inspiration, Introspection, Kitten, Life, Pets, Photography, Quotes, Reflection, Thoughts, Youth

“Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.”
-Victor Hugo

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.”
― Franz Kafka

“What happens when people open their hearts?”…
“They get better.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

(Saga captured whilst out kitten-walking amongst a sea of squirrels)

P.S. More of the model, Fyodor Kitten, in Sir’s lovely and charming blog post here:  The Kitten That Rescued Himself)

Many jubilant cheers,

-Smiling Toad

A December Walk with My Delitescent Self

Tags

Abstract, Abuse, Black and White, Introspection, Loss, Melancholy, Nature, Night Photography, Personal, Photography, Sea, Thoughts, Writing

December. The Sea has cooled, a bit. The sand feels like chilled velvet ‘neath my stumbling toes. Rubigenous seawrack trickles in. The seethe crackles and I suddenly catch a wee glisk of my delitescent Self abiding there in the reflection on the glass sand. It is the meek, quiet one within, the one that harbours all the pain and grief I have ever known.

An intangible being created long ago, and like a gentle chum, has ever-remained. It is there when I go sprawling, overturned, writhing in the spitting sand, rabid wind flinging shards of broken sea glass and shattered scallop shells into my eyes. It flits in and swallows every splinter of chaos, calmly, silently, so I may clamber back to my feet and stagger on. And then, I am reminded, Chaos is a Choice.

This service performed without complaint, little shamrock-infused Soul. Nothing spoken, lurking reticent and Daphnean- alone, without yearning. But I can feel it, ever-present, and am zapped with its vital energy- how can something dormant feel so ardently alive? Is this where Passion is derived? Attitude and Perception? Is this what converts Grief into Peace? Agony into Understanding? Despair into Art?

I amble on, in Memory, gazing through the Abstract: the hum of the fluorescent lights hovering over an infinite hallway; the sharp light polished on the gossamer surface of a muddy puddle; the buzz of a drill in the background, staring up at the pocks in the grey ceiling, tracing constellations of galloping stallions and peculiar faces; and the keening sound of the groaning flowers as they die on the frozen prairie, brushed by the aching wind-

Abstract memory has a way about it, washing things in a thrilling,
pensive kind of melancholy. Even the hideous and the terrifying can become
beautiful. The fracid and sulfuric scent of Death, black-red, sticky on the
sheets, is an oil-painting-flashback, a sad observation. Her vitative laugh, unique and impossible to replicate, is no cultellated recollection, but evokes joy recalling having known such a gorgeous Soul.

There is damage, but no distortion, feeling pain, but no torment; stumbling crippled, but not suffering. The wounded and mangled inner being that smiles coyly through the detritus of childhood abuse, of loss, and pain- I see it in the flicker of a blue shadow, the crunch of a dead leaf, and I know, I can feel it all, euphorically.

It provides Peace. It reveals fragile humanity, even in those others have named Monsters. Understanding comes, fear being vanquished. Is it the breath of Forgiveness?  How could it be, if I first do not feel wronged? Compassion and Love, the Beast with Gentle Eyes?

I wander on into the now dark, December night, Sea a distant hum behind me. Christmas lights and stars illuminate the way. I think about my brother, his addiction, our differences. I wonder if he has a hidden Self within to absorb the blows. I have seen him staggering in obscurity- searching for Beauty and relief in drugs, self-esteem in crime, atonement in masochism. I see him for what he is- a beautiful human being, worthy of forgiving himself. Aye, I think of him, as I ooze along, deeper and deeper into the lovely December night.

Trickle of Sea

Tags

Ambition, Black and White, Florida, Introspection, Muse, Nature, Ocean, Photography, Poetry, Sand, Sea, Swash, Thoughts

Slowly masticates the land, this little, rippled trickle of Sea; so similar to the furtive Ambition that patiently gnaws away at me.

Photography Teaches Tolerance?

Tags

Birds, Black & White, Children, Crab, Florida, Humour, Introspection, Lads, Laughter, Nature, Pelican, Photography, Sea, Sebastian Inlet, Smiles, Sunrise, Sunset, Tolerance

I believe one could be accurately classified as adequately tolerant if one is the sort that will allow onslaughts of slimy, smelly cadavers to be tossed onto one’s head in a great, heaving torrent from the heavens above.

Well, let me back up a bit.

It began as a glorious morn. The sunrise pinching the sky, rosy light playing on the edges of perfect little waves. Seagulls sailed above, pelicans lumbered contentedly along the swell. It was a fine and chipper morn, indeed. 

Then, I became possessed with the idea that we had to go romping to the inlet to get some pelican photos. This struck me as a most fabulous plot. So, after the usual tottling about with errands, we were soon humming along on our way to Sebastian Inlet. And how beautiful it was, smiling away, water scintillating, dinosaur-headed wood storks sauntering up to us like teenagers with their wings jammed in their pockets, hoping that we may be crawling with fish heads to bestow unto their clanking bills. A nice breeze tussled through the palms, and I noticed a gopher tortoise shuffle by, munching on some fresh, sun-baked grass. It was a fine day, indeed, but no sight of pelicans.

I meandered over to the rocks that separate the tidal pool from the channel rushing into the sea. Scrabbling onto the great rocks, camera almost colliding with shattering death as it oscillated back and forth from my neck like a pendulum (I always forget it will do this…), I became conscious of a permeating dead-fish odour. Promising. I clambered along, just below where the fishermen greatly enjoy cutting fish, and poised on the rocks were my lovely brown pelicans, blue-eyes smiling away at me. About 12 of them were clustered there, males, females, and juveniles. I nestled within inches, all crumpled up, and in position. The birds were a bit nervous, but overall, accepting of the giant, black eye clicking in their faces.

Was entering dream-camera-pelican-loving land, delightedly, when suddenly I felt something very small, very wet, collide with my head, and the eyes of a nearby pelican glazed over and seemed to be debating whether to lunge forth and swallow my head. He thought better of this, however. A sea of giggling also fell down from above. I began to gaze up, when another smelly little wet thing slapped me on the shoulder and then spilled onto a rock. I grabbed at it. It was the corpse of a little shrimp. Poor shrimp. I held it out to the pelican. Suddenly, my whole hand was inside pouch of pelican. This was an odd experience. I had always wondered what it felt like in there….rather rubbery…hand somehow made it back to freedom. Hmm…not slimy either. Shrimp was gone. Pelican looked at me with tilted head and backed away slightly. (This is one weird human, mates…) Huge guffaws of laughter spilled down from above. I looked up, only to be met with a sea of dead corpses sailing down, and squabbling pelicans all flopping about frantically to seize the things right off of me. It was fabulous.

“She’s taking photos!” the wee lads chimed from the heavens.

Yes, that’s generally what I do…don’t know why…look at all one must endure…

Harrowing world, photography.

I grabbed some stray corpses and tossed them to my birdly companions. The lads seemed to like this. Nutter crawling around snapping photos on the white-splotched, scale-glazed, slightly blood-stained, fetid rocks doesn’t mind having dead-bodies thrown right onto her head in a torrent at all, and even sticks her hand into pelican pouches- we like this one! Oh bother….

And following that adventure, I endured chattering youths following me about like those cheeping baby chicks that run along behind the harassed hen everywhere she flees. Ended up drenched, of course, rushing after phantom manatees that rush by like champion swimmers, and vanish, then being splashed by grinning dolphins. Almost bitten by a wee crab. Yes, he wanted to bite me, love bite I imagine. A wave nearly took me under as I was snapping away….more laughter from behind, above on the jetty, and all around. I guess I’m an ambulating sack of amusement.

Ah…

No better life than this. And to end it all, the sunset was glorious.

Cheers,

Autumn Jade