24 Poems ~ 24 Hours
This is not the first time I’ve
escaped my capture in a bottle
on a dewy summer’s night
The air thick like a sticky porridge
A child trapped me once
She emerged from the nearby cottage.
I remember the heat of her sticky hands
As well as the strange look of her toothless smile
As she released me
Zoom! I flew free up up up into
far into the tree-line.
THE JONESES (A very loose emoji translation — spin off; my apologies)
Go there, ok? But don’t be a sheep, elevator up, after the Jones –that whole damn family.
I’m not amused but whatever. . . it’s ok; I’m just suspicious.
Don’t mean to pour water on your sheepish dull ideas.
But add dullness to dullness, and you might follow anything, even sheep.
Just saying.
Breakfast of porridge with a side of strawberries and heavy cream, cloyingly sweet
Resting on the porch beneath the canopy
Shaded from the northern sun
Hummingbirds zoom from feeder to feeder buzzing with each new taste of nectar
Knock knock knock
The woodpecker, somewhere along the treeline, his work echoing across the prairie
As the summer heat subsides into dusk fireflies flicker near the grass
Children run around the yard with jars to catch the moving lights
The full moon rises, bathing the night in a strange misty glow
It is time to go inside and rest. The summer day has come to an end
Firefly
Bottle
Mask
Porridge
Zoom
Lethargy
Treeline
Heat
Strange
Cottage
The zeal to write is dead.
I think lethargy pulled the trigger,
Or took flight on the wings of a firefly.
Or maybe, the intense heat of emotions
Finally turned my writings into a pot of porridge,
To be fed to the monsters struggling with my sanity.
I pull myself from my lethargy
Curled in the bed of my cottage
The morning is cold
I can see the mist on the treeline
Through the bedroom window
The wine bottle on the porch
Lights with the last firefly of the evening
Leaving to hibernate for the day
I wrap myself in the comforter
Still warm from the heat of my body
You are making porridge on the stove
Left discarded on the table
Is the mask you wore last night
When we decided to have that strange party
With all our friends
Via zoom
I walk out onto the porch
My toes curl inwards from the cold
You come up behind me with a cup of coffee
I wrap my hands around it and feel the heat of your love
You wrap your arms around me
And we watch sparrows zooming through the trees
You return to tend to the porridge
And I sip on my coffee
I walk back into the cottage
And sit at the kitchen table
I fiddle with the mask on the table
My lethargy still pulling at my bones
You kiss me on the forehead
And my heart skips a beat
Just as it always does
While alone with you
Oh how I envy, the firefly
Warm and snug in her cottage
While I mask my distaste and muffle sighs
Of a life above the treeline
Strange, abundant, providence- how she denies
Me, the warmth and heat
Of the firefly
Fireflies dance in the trees.
I climb branch by branch
trying to catch them.
They would fly just out of my reach
and I’d lean back to watch.
Up here, the world is far away.
I can escape
and enjoy the view.
My parents’ cottage is a dot on the horizon.
Trees of all sizes surround me.
During the breaks from bad days, I play by myself.
Creating an imaginary world of families and love.
Or doing what I am doing now,
climbing trees,
dreading when I need to go down.
Can I just live up here?
Stay here forever and ever?
Never have to go to school.
Build a tree house to be safe from the weather.
My friends say it would be strange to be so high up
and to live by myself.
I don’t care. I would have a fireplace for heat
like my grandparents do in their cabin.
I’d eat porridge like the 3 bears
and pretend I am Goldilocks.
I would be the happiest kid ever.
Translated from The Book of Lycan Poetry
Strange. Dost thou feel strange, Wolf? The shifting of the tides, mayhaps?
The time is near. Lunata, in her glory, rises into that endless, beautiful swath of black. T’would be your first vison of her since fangs were sunk into thee.
Dost thou wish to remove thy mask, Wolf? To reveal the riptides in your veins that are only bottled by this, your singular first moon.
Whence she rises you’ll be given free reign. The Wolf inside will be yours to master, from cottage to crest.
Hark! Dost though feel it Wolf? The heat, ever prevalent on a frigid night by the sea. Lo, there! do you see her!? Herself like a siren, with her silent song, beckons you to become what you were meant to be!
-Oryn
I’m just another poet
There’s nothing special about my voice or the words that my vocal chords produce
I’m just another person whose passion has been overturned
It spills over and covers the ground
I’m just another poet thinking thoughts
I cannot be bought
I look around and see this catastrophe that surrounds all of us
But I am not troubled
For I know this is only just the beginning of the end.
I am a person just like you
I am a poet
I’ve always known it
The only difference between you and me
Is that when I bleed it is with words that cause an unstoppable floetry
I’m just another person. I dare you to step forward and try me.
There’s a strange cottage in the woods
it lurks just beyond the tree line, out of sight.
Even the heat of summer cannot affect
the cool atmosphere around the cottage.
Sometimes when I’m overheating
I’ll zoom past the treeline to the lake
the cottage rests upon.
Sometimes when I’m overheating
I’ll eat porridge by its shade.
The cottage is old yet doesn’t age
Frozen in time it seems.
Sometimes I imagine light within;
It turns out to be fireflies among the beams.
A mask sits upon the hook
Where hats and coats usually rest
And on the table of the cottage
Lies a bottle full of liquid.
Sometimes when I’m overheating
I feel a little brave and enter
the cottage by the lake.
Sometimes when I’m overheating
I’ll empty that bottle into the earth.
The cottage doesn’t change at all
The liquid returns somehow
If the mask is moved it returns somehow.
I didn’t steal it, Just moved it over one.
The mask is green, with little spots
Up close they look like skulls.
They’re cracked and dusty, old from time
Unlike the cottage the mask is within.
Sometimes when I’m overheating
I put on the mask and grin at
the cottage’s interior
Sometimes when I’m overheating
I pretend I live here in the cottage.