W. Darling

And one more, for good measure. 😆
#PoetrySky #Poem #Poetry

I haven't tagged anything for days wow. This isn't a social account at this point; you've just stumbled into a journal entry. 😂😅
#PoetrySky #Poem #Poetry

I always forget to tag anything good grief.
#PoetrySky #Poem #Poetry

unimportant people by W. Darling she liked the little balcony/ on the left, all ironwork/ a little rusted at the edges/ would sit with coffee/ in a tiny cup, peep to the street/ below her, watch the men/ in their dusty shoes/ and expensive watches/ avoid puddles I don’t think it would be fair/ to call her agoraphobic/ she spent all summer in the sun/ warmed her neck and called down/ to the shopkeepers at lunch hour/ chatted with Mrs. B of 5C / greeted the night air/ with slippers and aperitifs/ capers in the jar I wasn’t there when they tore/ the building down/ and nor was she, a fragment/ in the memory of that place/ the brocade of her robe/ long gone, the dust settled/ a ring of ash swept away/ she left this world quietly/ and didn’t leave a stain

1/14/25 unimportant people

(A quick write I mostly don't like, but I absolutely adore those final lines! I may recycle them into something better, we shall see!)

Tea Time by W. Darling Photo: Rachel Bingham of the Women's Voluntary Service serves tea from her mobile canteen in London 1941; the man photographed was one of the volunteers cleaning rubble up on the streets after an air raid. The photos, gathered by the Imperial War Museum, were held under the Crown Copyright, which has since expired; they are now public works.

Bubbles in the cup Stain on the lip I struggled and stuttered and stumbled to this On its axis, the world pauses, settles 100°C, a dash of cream, the tear of paper packet Dye a dress, soothe a throat, patch a fingernail With one little package make it happen

Sip. Breathe. Begin.

1/13/25 Tea Time

morning mist by W. Darling Image: Fontainebleau Forest, Eugène Cuvelier French, early 1860s, via The Met digital photography project

Borrowed wellies. Hat slung low. Across the field, a herd of grazing warriors wait. I’ve brought the tin of paints, not that it matters. They scatter, sure feet and flashing tail.

Dew - the kind of damp that makes things cold, more than the wet: a ghost. I mark an old path, watch the treeline. Birds dive and call. I am not Interloper here.

If I have lung this is my home. When I have not, it is my rest. Quiet feet, and all the rest a Vibrance. I’ll bring the dog next time, find afresh the same old trails, succumb to this Oneness again.

1/9/25 morning mist

#PoetrySky #Poems #Poetry #BlueSkyPoem oops!

Live Like Ghosts by W. Darling Begin a day without her. Wear your favorite slippers. Drag across the floor. Thermostat on - rumble, whoosh. Click of lock; a heaving push. Seed in feeder. Sparrows on the lawn. Fill the belly. Wipe an eye. Pour a cup without her. China grinding on a platter. Oat on the tongue, seed in the eye. Record player - find an empty sleeve. Rinse a dish. Lean against the sill. There’s new weeds in the garden. Fill the lungs. Wipe the hands. Greet the lawn without her. Overalls and bucket hat, garden glove abandoned on the picket fence. Feel the dirt find old grooves. Ignore the ache. A sparrow lingers, watching. Peeks between the greens. Fill the day. Wipe the brow.

Walk a day without her. Make it taste like sweat and earth and sun. Feed the garden, feed the birds, feed yourself. Tend. There’s pickles in the pantry. Make a sandwich. Darn - remove the holy from your sock. Fill the gaps. Wipe your workspace down. Wear the space without her an old friend in the soft light speaks low in the wall phone at the stair. Let night greet the house. Find the old lamp still works. Putter after dinner. Paper and slipper and well-worn pajama. Piano - fill the hour. Wipe your smile. End a day without her. It’s too warm for a hot bottle, but make one anyway to tuck between your knees. Take your medication. Dim the light. Say a prayer. Close your eyes. Hold her pillow in the dark. Fill the heart. Do not wipe the eye.

Writing produced a garbled mess today, so have something from the IG archives!

I’m working on a series titled after the song names from the Lord Huron album “Strange Trails.” Playing with stacking media/meaning etc…

This is the first, written in May(?!) of last year.

Text states: space cadet by w. darling Image: the shadow of an Apollo astronaut, photographing the moon's surface. Beyond, on the top third, the emptiness of blank space. Image from High Res Images from the Apollo Missions, uploaded by NASA for the public under creative commons

Moonboots. Dry rot. We left the whole place to spacedust and squalor: our eyes, cosmetic; our tongues numb; the water boiled over. Dreamers. Dropsy-turvey. We fed scraps to the land beast, giggled when he growled: drool on the maw, drool on the hand that feeds us.

For three whole days our atoms did not move, then vibrated all at once: a thousand energies released, cracked the ceiling of our glass coffins. I watched you with betrayer’s sight, for all around, it lay: star shards and spiderwebs, my universe a cosmic crunch before me, while you remained phlegmatic.

Should I blame you for finding the eyes we did not know we had? I did then. The sky was lonely, after; for Eve did not kiss Adam, but left the apple in his throat. Moonboots. Dust bin. The empty fall of space. Did you know how far my arms could stretch? I’m wider than gravity’s pull.

1/7/25 space cadet
#PoetrySky #Poem #BlueSkyPoetry

The songs lied. Chestnuts are disgusting.

#BigChristmas at it again. #Nonsense! 😂

Holly by W. Darling rime look fades in porchlight a touch of rouge in snow you crept upon me, vined my door found home

1/6/25 Holly

I'm working on a series of cinquain ladies (titled with various plants). Definitely keeping the middle line in later drafts! We shall see about the rest. :)

#BlueSkyPoetry #Poem #Poetry #Poet #PoetrySky

#smallpoemsunday
Sweet and hot from me. Sweet and stupid from @jordandavis.bsky.social from Shell Game

Call for submission from Literary Revelations, Tranquility: An Anthology of Haiku. Please read and if you can help you spread the word🙏❤️

Borrowed Glove by W. Darling Closeup of ice coating a branch... the water has dripped and formed a partial icicle as it froze. Minor cracks can be seen within. Photo Courtesy of PtrQs on wikicommons (twig with buds covered by ice, 31 Jan 2021)

Gloves and hat and all the rest; you remember it, don’t you? Spinning on the lawn, sliding down the gentle fields on cardboard; ice glittering a hundred different ways in all that winter sun. I remember your red ears, the lines of your childhood teeth, your arm and how you disliked its shape. To me, you were made perfect: sunny curls and family smiles, and the yawning world before us, refractive.

It was hard for me to breathe in those years. I didn’t have an inhaler, and you were a whole wide meadow of what could be - or could have been. My heart was like the ice that did not crack below our bundled feet. Where have you gone? I hunt you in the coffee shop I left you, wishing I had stayed, or visited, or noticed. Your life has wrapped you up, made you feel small, bundled you out of reach.

Let me go back to gloves and hat and all the rest; your smile so wide, your curls so wild, and you so perfectly made: beyond me, spinning on an icy lawn.

I'm getting bored with my own work, but at least it was easier to write today. I need a new poetry collection or a new format.

I get itchy for growth so quickly these days. Do you ever get that way, or is this just my goofy brain?

1/5/25 Borrowed Glove
#PoetrySky #Poem #BlueSkyPoetry

I hope you continue to share your writing. You have an exceptionally clever pen! :)

Text: The Skies Beneath Us Image: Plate XIX Glass Globe Cracked Under Internal Pressure, J. Nasmyth, from Photographs of (models of) the moon (1874) [a shattered glass, lit from the side, on a black background]

Before you were thought in my sister’s heart, before she was song in her mother’s voice, the world looked up. The sky was vast. Some Soviets abused a dog. War painted heaven. We made manifest a great beyond, we argued, we profited; made the formula you drank, the rubber of your shoes, the thermometer that caught you before the heavens could, that one awful summer. We became and became and became. We became until the becoming ran out, until every red light lit our eyes so bright that new was old, and war was a human sport again. Heaven was a land for rich men and young dreams, and fodder fodder fodder for the state, as it had been in times Before. And I see dreaming in your eyes, but baby, watch your feet.

Thirty seasons ago, when you were a new moon, a woman in smart slacks and sleek hair danced for me in a half amphitheater; danced of dreams. Of stars. Of Mauna Kea. “In order to see the skies up close,” she sang, “we need the earth snuffed out, for in the dark, we find the stars.” Thirty meters: wider than Babel, and Arab Spring had knocked the desert out. They needed Mauna Kea. When a person dances like buzzing, their hands shake. “It’s difficult,” she admitted, aflutter, “you have to work with the local population, who have Their Own Agendas.” Agendas meant graves. Agendas meant bones. Agendas meant the bodies of our loved ones. But they needed Mauna Kea. They needed earth snuffed out. To find the dark. To find the stars.

I find it hard to see in the land of Become; the light is much too bright. But maybe you, with heaven in your eyes can find what I could not that day, watching a woman buzzing in an amphitheater that she would claw down gladly for a chance at the Beyond. You are stuff of heaven, or close as can be found; you will know what I cannot. Perhaps your eyes will stay with the skies, but baby, careful of those feet.

Today, writing was like pulling teeth. Hopefully the evening prose goes better than the poetry session did.

(It needs another stanza? I think? But I don't know where yet.)

1/4/25 The Skies Beneath Us
#PoetrySky #Poetry #BlueSkyPoetry

I hope the life you make for yourself in the new city is a joyous one, and that the people you love find a similar peace. 🤍

Home is a thing that grows with time… and spring is coming!! Rooting for you. :)

I will never, ever get over this.

whoops forgot to say #Poem #PoetrySky #BlueSkyPoetry
You get the idea.

On Hampstead Heath by James Hamilton American, 1856, currently on view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 774; a impressionnant windy walk in black and white, with rolling hills and blowing grasses (this image only shows part of the view) text overlay reads: where I come from, the wind smells like vanilla

where I come from, the wind smells like vanilla homestyle heartbeats sound like cinnamon ancient loaf with the ends cut off or burnt up we’ve walked this same road more often than living breath I’ve spent these years dreaming of something in my own garden buried at the root of this sycamore where they will lay me Who Was I? Chipmunk. stowing food in my own home for the winter we are what we eat or what we repeat can you listen? Have You Ears? our melody plays over the hills on wind that tickles the fox’s nose

I’ve walked this same road more often than my own sharp breath we are more than marrow, and for that price raise up mole-hills, burrow under the roots of the sycamore where I am buried or - Will Be? the snake won’t find me yet, or the lawn mower, his hat low on his brow we are the earth beneath our feet we are the earth beneath our feet you’ve walked this same road more often than I’ve heard breath and still, I hadn’t noticed you though now I’m glad to find you here our feet in sycamore our eyes to the wind - W. Darling

1/3/25 where I come from, the wind smells like vanilla

On Hampstead Heath by James Hamilton American, 1856, currently on view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 774; a impressionnant windy walk in black and white, with rolling hills and blowing grasses (this image only shows part of the view) text overlay reads: where I come from, the wind smells like vanilla

where I come from, the wind smells like vanilla homestyle heartbeats sound like cinnamon ancient loaf with the ends cut off or burnt up we’ve walked this same road more often than living breath I’ve spent these years dreaming of something in my own garden buried at the root of this sycamore where they will lay me Who Was I? Chipmunk. stowing food in my own home for the winter we are what we eat or what we repeat can you listen? Have You Ears? our melody plays over the hills on wind that tickles the fox’s nose

I’ve walked this same road more often than my own sharp breath we are more than marrow, and for that price raise up mole-hills, burrow under the roots of the sycamore where I am buried or - Will Be? the snake won’t find me yet, or the lawn mower, his hat low on his brow we are the earth beneath our feet we are the earth beneath our feet you’ve walked this same road more often than I’ve heard breath and still, I hadn’t noticed you though now I’m glad to find you here our feet in sycamore our eyes to the wind - W. Darling

1/3/25 where I come from, the wind smells like vanilla

The List of Famous Hats James Tate Napoleon's hat is an obvious choice I guess to list as a famous hat, but that's not the hat I have in mind. That was his hat for show. I am thinking of his private bathing cap, which in all honesty wasn't much different than the one any jerk might buy at a corner drugstore now, except for two minor eccentricities. The first one isn't even funny: Simply it was a white rubber bathing cap, but too small. Napoleon led such a hectic life ever since his childhood, even farther back than that, that he never had a chance to buy a new bathing cap and still as a grown-up--well, he didn't really grow that much, but his head did: He was a pinhead at birth, and he used, until his death really, the same little tiny bathing cap that he was born in, and this meant that later it was very painful to him and gave him many headaches, as if he needed more. So, he had to vaseline his skull like crazy to even get the thing on. The second eccentricity was that it was a tricorn bathing cap. Scholars like to make a lot out of this, and it would be easy to do. My theory is simple-minded to be sure: that beneath his public head there was another head and it was a pyramid or something.

James Tate with the best kind of list poem

before night arrives to congeal the day I want to smile once to observe a thing to speak, perhaps, with you to stretch a thread like a spider between past and future a delicate bridge arching over nothingness because of much doubt as death to death life gathers

therefore now before night comes to sever day with its knife of silence I want to smile once observe a thing speak, perhaps, with you

Isabel Fraire, tr. Thomas J. Hoeksema

Halfway report:

George Orwell meets Stephen King, but make it for middle schoolers. If I were a kid, I would be insulted by this depiction of kids.

The writing itself is good. Just because I don’t love the ethos, doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate good structure. It needed a better edit, though.

Nope. I’m back to full scale disapproval, honestly. This book adds the grotesque in to try to make us feel its weight, but it just makes the main character (and all of the others) transition beyond moronic into callously selfish. I remember being fourteen. It’s not like this.

Page 200. It’s starting to get good. I said “what!?” out loud and started pacing in my kitchen as I read.

“Welcome to Perdido Beach, where our slogan is ‘Radiation? What radiation?’” - best line by far.

More repetition in Chapter 9 that doesn’t seem to go anywhere.

To be clear - I don’t think that this is the author’s fault. These are things a team can catch, which is often not how modern lit is produced.

The writing itself is very good! It’s definitely an engaging read.

Three of the four descriptive paragraphs at the beginning of Chapter 4 start with “Perdido Beach…” seemingly without the intention of deliberate repetition.

…maybe the copy editor fell asleep? Or was going through a bad breakup? Or didn’t exist?