A pale Iris sky

I breathe in the profound chill of seeing a lunar cycle behind your eyes.
The rise and fall of expectation hidden in the craters.
We used to bathe in Diana’s silvery light, but now our backdrop is sickly cerulean blue.
Each pulse of dilation seems to drink in the strength, leaving only disproportionate waning, in ever-diminishing orbits.
Where once the gravity of our entwined existence kept us giddily and circling, now it pulls us only to the ground.

I’m still searching in your eyes in hope of a new moon, but are you already seeking out something new?

© PickledSparklyMoosePrincess – author

more poems

Trees are meant to be wise..right?

I drew a tree.
I’m not sure if it is finished yet or not.
This is not the most inspired or technical drawing ever, but rather the crude kernel of my intention to shed off negativity and focus on the positive for a while. An intention that the majority of my brain has yet to receive the memo on.

A lot of people focus on the negative, on the obscene, on the sad and hopeless, and that’s just great. We certainly need a fair representation by cynics and naysayers, otherwise civilization would spiral into some kind of passionless unsustainable nirvana.
(yuck)
So what if, like me, you only step outside guarded by the twin dragons of sarcasm and skepticism and are getting a bit sick of pissing on everyone’s damned happiness and walking away with a smug grin. (what a bitch, huh?). What if you are tired of your internal dialogue sapping the life and meaning from everything and turning into dust?
What if you wanted, every now and then to take trust on a walk with you, or encouragement? Your dragons would be pissed, but how would you feel?

In such days of emotional awakening as these, such questions must be faced, because if I can’t control the dragons, then they will have to be subdued with pills again. And we don’t really want that. So how do you turn your thoughts around when they are spinning into a tarantella of despair?
For now I’m going to try thinking about this (albeit somewhat poorly crafted) tree and see what happens.

“Tonight I lie alone again and curse my own desires
Sentenced first to burn and then to freeze”~ carly Simon, boys in the trees

A rare transferace of joy via these peculiar tentacles

Some rare events have occured in the last couple of days, during which, I have been reminded how incredibly magnificent and affecting Homo sapiens can be.

I’ve had some lovely and silly, breif chats in real life and virtually, and said a sad farewell to a very talented and all-round  delightful student. I didn’t even get awkward about the goodbye hug. Imagine that!

I’ve been listening to the British band Daughter and finding their music increasingly intoxicating. Imagine my delight when I discovered they will play a gig in my city in the new year. Yay!

Anyway, I received a package this morning in the post:

Not sure if you can read that but the two handwritten notes say “ONLY GOOD VIBES X” and “ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE XXX” plus a big yellow thing with a giant smile on, all bundled up in forest green crepe paper and ribbons. You’ll be forgiven for thinking that this might be a mental salvation survival package sent by my mother, but it was actually something I ordered for myself. So cute was the encasement that I almost forgot to take out the items inside; a pair of handmade black tentacle earrings. The adorability of said earrings is immense but the sense of joy I felt was more from the effort that the artist had gone to for someone they had never met. I think I have smiled my way pretty much through an entire day, wearing clay octopus arms in my ear holes, pretending that I’m secretly part cephalopod, and generally thinking that maybe I’m not a total cretin after all for living my ever hopeful existence.

I spent a lot of time working on my latest scientific masterpiece, and I have to say that I’m pretty pleased with the way it is shaping up. My writing and ability to structure, it would seem, have matured into a form much more readily digested and assimilated (we shall see if the boss lady agrees).

We tried in earnest to acquire some jack-o-lanterns for tonight (at my insistence because a Halloween uncelebrated is a grumpfest waiting to happen) but I felt satisfied with the darling honey bear and yellow acorn squashes that a local farm shop had to offer. I presently diemboweled them and performed the necessary crude open surgery.

Shame about the raggedy carving but it’s good enough for me. Sometimes having emotions is a great thing :).

“You could still be,
what you want to,
What you said you were,
when I met you”~Daughter, medicine

Disenchanted dream

I had a dream that you were hiding behind my father’s face.
A steady stream of disappointment in spite of my striving,
Issuing from that angry mouth.

So I ran for the trees.
Barefoot, tearful but free.
My cream sequinned gown catching on the low hanging branches,
The chill creeping into my bones
and yet,
I would not look back.

A little girl came running after,
Sent to bring me home,
Or suffer the guilt of her abandon.
Yet I ushered her away,
And sat down to watch the sunrise
Of a new day.

© PickledSparklyMoosePrincess – author

Shadow puppets

I’m making shadow puppets for you,
But my left eye
Took a turn
About a hundred miles back
And I can’t see
If your shadow moves towards me or away.

I could have sworn that this was
Something more than
Fear and static.
Someone whispered in your voice
But you weren’t there
And it echoed in the hollows and the cracks.

I’m writing calligraphic nightmares
For you to touch
When it’s quiet
Enough to see the shadows
Dancing once before the lights can burn us out.

Storms through clouded glass

Not such a peaceful start to the week, chattering dreams, condensation on the glass, but maybe some beauty can be found. I trace my finger gently around the window pane, somewhere below the squeaking point, sways of idle swirls emerging from my heat. When the balance of clarity and mist is met, I step back and observe the view through my protective design,  It may not be art but I wish I could hold this moment in time, and say I made my temporary mark, but no such things exists in this space, and so I watch my design fading back into misty oblivion. No-one is here to see my scrawls, is there anyone out there anymore? Any more blurred faces on pinched frames pruning their roses and feigning indifference to the thought I cared? Repeatedly singed fingertips remind of my affliction, and so with sooted digits I systematically smeared all the faces, all the eyes dislocated from their sockets and spread around their sorry bodies. I had lost my spectators, and individuality was something reserved for myself and those able to show their fearless expression through even the murk of this clouded existence. I suppose somewhere behind the blurs there must still be a whole other world, but I have tasted its bitter fruit, and was beaten for spitting sour seeds to make a picture in my head. A matter of taste. Artless. Soul bleached yellow and mildewed beyond redemption, so I’m told, but how can small fragments of beauty spill from even such a thing as me? All this flocculant meditation before so much coffee has passed my lips.

I guess I took it pretty hard when something or some one who tickled my slumbering thoughts and graced poetic intentions bit hard when I was only playing tough to protect them. If only I didn’t care, but once someone pushes through my smokey screen, that’s it. I care too much. It’s too late by the time I finally focus on their features. I trusted them enough to let them see me. Too stupid to suspect a thief or spy in my house. I need them to hurt me enough that I can smudge their image from my castle gallery, but some spirits just won’t put their teeth in, leaving me to wonder if they even meant it. Well? Did she? My precious circle is closing in, the fog thickens and I have seen in dreams the storm circling me until only I remain in the eye right until it blinks out. If I could paint, I would capture the stormy smudged perimeter of my tornado the dust of some thousand strange faces, as the instant the lashes sweep me out. I’m staring into all those eyes, one behind the other, wondering what my protection has cost me.

“I swore that I
Could survive any storm”~tori amos, snow cherries from France

Fevers and Dust

I have, at times been my biggest disappointment,
Expecting the superhuman, inside and out,
But finding the dregs of a lacklustre animal,
Rolling their eyes and then rolling on over.

I guess I rolled over for you too.

The fires were bright for some time,
Burning out the rot,
And the stars inside and out,
Almost aligned,
So that I was almost content with who I’d grown to be.

And there was always you, holding my hand.

I don’t know when the cleansing fires burned out,
And the mildew enveloped me once more.
An organic tide change when it all started
To come apart.

But you thought I chose it.

That content so sought was buried,
The assurance drowned in the night,
And nothing but fevers and dust,
Could live up to expectations.

Not yours, and not mine.

Am I your biggest disappointment,
Your one big regret?
Am I nothing but a constant reminder,
That you are tethered to something so frayed?

This dust just won’t settle.

And unless your words are sent to crush me,
And keep me in the shadows,
Then why don’t you accept my failures?
Please help me mould them into something new.

And If you won’t,
Or if you can’t , then who am I
To trap you
In this perpetual monumental disappointment?

I know I will never be enough

Cockchafers, arachnophobia and quilting

What do they got?
A lot of sand?
We got a hot crustacean band!

Ah – Sebastian the crab, how I loved to sing along to those little mermaid songs in my childhood. Don’t know what  I’m talking about?
under the sea
Now you do!

I’m still pretty chuffed about going to the Boston aquarium again…can you tell?

Now. I expect you’ll be wondering what a cockchafer is…or…you’ll be imagining something that chafes one’s manhood, and I am here to tell you that it’s the name of a nocturnal scarab beetle, common in East anglia, and not a crude Nickname that I’ve aquired! The name probably means common gnawing beetle, according to Google anyway. I found one of these guys in the bathroom laying on its back having an afternoon nap…nudged to make sure it was alive, then gently ejected it out of the window…he might have a sore head when he wakes up tonight and wonder exactly  how much toilet water he drank to mean he didn’t remember leaving his hotel room.

He was no problem though, a dopey, sleepy harmless beetle.

Not like the killer arachnid that I found earlier on. That guy was definately deadly. I mean, it was clearly the ussain bolt of the spider world and macho with it…I’m still getting chills when I think about it…it was 28 degrees and I had goosebumps. I thought I’d go with the classic pint glass, card and out the window trick, and just about managed to slip the card underneath his legs without passing out but I’m not kidding when I say I think that bastard was on steroids. I’ve not seen a spider that big be so quick before and it freaked me the hell out….I spent nearly an hour going over, moving the glass a bit and seeing if my eight-legged prisoner had calmed down yet but he was still pumped. At one point I worried that he was actually biting his way through the cardboard…but I think he was having a drink from some of the residual water from the glass ( do spiders drink? I guess so or they’d dehydrate, right?)  Around this time I realised the following:

1. I could not pick it up without it going Bat-shit crazy
2. I couldn’t kill it without at some point either picking it up or allowing a gap to allow his escape
3. I didn’t want to kill it, it had trapped a greenfly for me

And most importantly

4. My boyfriend wouldn’t go anywhere near it when he got home so waiting wouldn’t solve anything.
5. Or worse, he might kill it in a horrific way, he previously killed one by drowning in boiling water then mashing it up on the bottom of the sink, leaving me the carcass to deal with 😦 I don’t like arachnids but I won’t kill them unless I can see no other way.

I finally plucked up the courage to pick the glass+cardboard prison up, walked the endless few metres to the window and threw the bugger out, snapping the window shut behind him and waiting for my heartrate to calm the hell down. I’m going to guess that when it finally came to transit time, spidey knew his bravado wouldn’t get him anywhere and that the epic battle for the black fleece blanket had been lost. He stood still and practically sulked. And to add insult to injury I put the blanket immediately in the washing machine.

I’m still jumpy and feeling weirdly itchy and crawly…

Everybody loves a good heatwave don’t they?

Now onto the arts and crafts section of this entry!
I went to new Hampshire and I learnt to quilt.
Exhibit A

Beautiful eh? Hang on, I’ll show you the back too

It’s Meant to have frayed edges around each square. Apparently you are supposed to pick random bits of fabric but I preferred to do something more planned (or boring).

Don’t ask me what it IS that I made, only that it’s 50% denim, but I will say that if you were after something with which to chafe your nether regions, then I guess it would do the job.

Sunsets

You know those skies,
The ones that beg
For would-be lovers,
To brush lips.

The molten amber orb
of the sun,
Melting into the horizon.

Smears of shameless light
radiating through
a glorious mackerel swathe,

With all the pastel shades
blended artfully
before they caress the ground.

I still see those skies,
I can feel the tangible beauty,
fearlessly nudging me,
towards rapture.

Aspects

My shadow stands in the echo,
of another man’s shadow.
I don’t fear that darkness,
his secrets, your lies,
It just stirs a
cruel hunger,
for fire.

Shivers,
Don’t feed me,
Nor compassion.
The fragment is lost,
In a wave of sadness,
from some other man’s peril,
But the echo rings around me.

And if you or he can worked out
what this is all about,
I’ll be waiting
right here.