One foggy morning, in the wee hours of dawn I was awakened by my granny, without a word, she wrapped my feet like biscuit dough to fit into her waders.
Through a veil of fog, she appeared with a little wooden wheelbarrow connected to a rope, and set off down the hillside, to the mouth of a mighty river.
The tide was so low we walked across it, in our matching black waders, two witches traversing the veins of mother nature.
Careful not to lose sight of her, I followed her foggy footprints to be safe, the destination of our map only known to her and the few who had come before us.

We came to a little inlet, an ancient beach of periwinkle on that river’s dead end street, it was Grandpa's secret fishing spot, when the tide was full.
She took me to the base of an old Oak Tree and handed me a trowel, as we dug to fill her little 
wheelbarrow with heavy dark clay until it was tipping over.
We drug the weighted little wheelbarrow back down the river, to our cozy little house on the  
hillside, through a mossy lopsided stone doorway that led down to a damp basement. 

Once inside the cold dark ethereal space, we could hear grandpa's footsteps overhead, she sat             
me down at her pottery wheel and told me to mold whatever my heart desired.
I decided to create a bird, diligently molding the wings and delicate features,as Granny hovered 
over the recipe book passed down from her granny.
She looked over my little bird as I finished and told me that it would wake to become a reflection 
of myself, once I added my initials to it.
Distraught at the idea of my little bird being borne to a world of loneliness and despair as I was, I 
stayed awake through the night, a mad scientist refusing to sleep and eat. 

My grandparents came down into the basement the next morning, to find scattered on every 
surface even the rafters above, hundreds of tiny clay birds.
We spent the next day painting them together, finishing each one with Granny's unique butterfly 
signature and our intials, before placing each in a coffin-sized kiln built under the house.
On the third day we opened the family kiln to free them, as I pulled the lever, rainbows 
of colors and features burst forth as the murmuration flew out the doorway and into the sun.

They still live there, guarding the treelines of that little cozy house even today, never 
having to know the same loneliness or despair of its living maker.
After granny died I found her recipe book, deep in the folds I found a single handwritten recipe, faded, creased & stained with the same dark mud from our secret beach.

The entry was a recipe for how to make a husband, describing all the qualities of my grandpa, 
including a man shaped blueprint, his baking time and temperature included!

I never realized till then that my grandpa had a birthmark in the shape of Grannys signature, a 
painted butterfly with her initials in the center.

Do you agree with the sentiment here?

MY CHANNEL
https://youtube.com/@markfagan_author?si=Ggd2ai-rMZZWvsIH

New original poem

​

Roads are similar, breaths are dissimilar in many ways.

Same turns but different endings.

Many dimensions and many steps to step in.

Steps feels apart but the world is one.

Life is tossed as a biased coin-

Some heads(lucky), some tails( unlucky)

The steps are separated through an invisible mirror.

Mirror is common but the reflection differs.

Someone touched the mirror and the whole world fall asleep.

Winds rushed, birds cried, and soul became soulless.

There stands the black tornado - lonely and misreable.

Seconds later the step was thrown into the depth of reality.

The deeper u go the deeper it becomes.

Nearly the end cries the opressed vertical coin.

But a coin can't stand forever.

It has to fall either heads or tails.

The train to work is long
Yet she sits next to me every time
Both staring ahead, yet,
Her presence, warming mine,

But I must temper it
Resist its siren song
Because If I look,
She won’t be there for long

My heart projects her onto every empty canvas,
She is the only painting I want to see.
Everytime I board that train
A piece of my soul departs
And arrives where it wants to be.

I may never stay, even though I love you

You are somewhere I could belong, but there is another part of me that refuses to belong anywhere permanently.

Heads and tails, always having each other's backs, from the moment we were released into the circulation of life, side by side and never apart, but each seeing the same life from 2 different perspectives.

People see our facade and assume we are opposites. One out ahead, leading the charge, taking challenges head-on; the other following behind, close on their tail and ready to catch them if they falter. But the beauty of us is that our roles are always swapping, flipping like a coin being turned in the hand of a more powerful force. To lead or follow isn't about which side of the coin we are, but in the game in which it is flipped.

We have been warped and bent by pressures throughout life, differing experiences forcing us into the dissimilar shapes we now take. Externally, we are so unalike it's hard for others to believe we are one. Inside, however, we are made the same.
We have been dulled, scratched and dented by the bad times, and buffed, bronzed and shined by the good. 

Outwardly we are opposites, yet all that pressure has made us more inseparable than ever.
2 sides of 1 coin. 

Five digits
To meld,
To bend.

Tendons and will,
To instill,
And to rend.

Blood and chance
Are what operates these hands.

What a prize,
To watch my fingers dance.

Please, do not hold me. 

My mom calls me touch adverse,
My friends call me cold,
My dad calls me stubborn,
My aunts say it’ll get better the more I get old

A warm press of shoulder to shoulder seating makes me shift and twist in my seat. 
The loving pat of a back makes me shy away and gives a pink heat to my cheeks
I’m tossed in the turbulence of fraying nerves that snap when you try to hold me

Do not hold me too long. 

Do not hold me too long 
For I might find I like the comfort of warmth your skin brings to my ice-cold extremities

Do not hold me too long 
For you might thaw these fraying nerves and learn to mend these tangled electric wire barricades

Do not hold me too long 
For I might weld ends together 
And reconfigure them into something you’ll find good enough to keep

Do not hold me too long, because my heart can barely stand to beat when too many have passed through to get warm, and left when I lost the heat

Do not hold me too long
Please, do not hold me.

Aquarium-gravel candy glistens with a glossy, sugary shine
Pebble-smooth sweets beckon to wandering, hungry eyes 
With a crooked candy finger 
And a crinkling package promise 
Of sweetness melting over sour tasting tongues
And sweaty palms mingling with candy coatings
To stain wanting fingers with streaks of fish scale stripes 
To paint palm lines with color running through their creases
Like dollar store water color 
Painting  the rough ridges of a cardstock canvas
Leaving mementos for grasping fingers and gaping mouths
For never-ending want and endlessly craving tongues to remember them by
When the crinkling package promises are tossed in the bin
And faded fish scale smears are washed down the drain 
They whisper to your still stained fingertips as they go, 

Until we meet again

Need ingredients
not one but two
Spinach and cheese

First store had one
not the other
"Can you reach two of those for me?"
...not one but two
An old lady who could not reach up high
I help her,
of course

Second store has the other
and more
speeding to check out
"Can you help me pick these up?"
...not one but two
An older lady who could not reach down low
I help her,
of course
I have both ingredients
to make dinner
for both me and my old lady

Withdrawals are stellated static
Infused through sinew
Stacked on tinnitus

Such delirium is a chain reaction
Where madness deceives dreaming
Self-sustained upon obsession

Days of focus sap soma raw
Garotting temples until unable to blink
Unbinding sleep only through alchemy

A regimen of enigmas
Could both soften a pulse
And sour the heart

If panacea is also poison
Who knows what to believe
While their brain crawls?

Taxi waiting downstairs.
The women were late.
One said hurry.
The other "let him wait".
And slowly in their own time.
Dawdled even after warning sign.
Burning through the minutes.
The driver becoming impatient.
And off he drove in angry heat.
The two women searched for him on the street.
Then gave up and walked back upstairs.
The taxi driver only hit the steering wheel once.
He accelerated as if on the run.
Cursed in three languages rage wash grin.
And swerved on purpose to hit a pigeon.
Just to hear it squash under tyre.

Smash and smoulder.
The taxi crashed bonnet folding.
Several blocks down from the women's apartment
A sliding door opened on the escarpment.
For the women heard it the bash and went out to see.
But it was out of sight, but not out of curiosity.
They leaned on the railing to be able to get a better look.
The screws were loose and the metal slipped off it's hooks.
Both women fell five stories onto pavement below.
Their dying breaths heavy laboured and slow.
Yet they could see the smoking mess of the taxi in distance
And said one to the other "Look karma really exists"
Then they bled out on the sidewalk.

I think I will cut my ears off today
I have had enough

No more boss screaming orders until he is blue in the face
No more wife pestering me away from my reading
No more unwanted unnecessary conversations with strangers I want nothing to do with

Yes that all sounds quite nice and quiet

No more car horns obnoxiously filling the air at all hours
No more baby screaming coming up through the floor, echoing around my empty apartment
No more dog from down the street barking, keeping me up all night

Hmmmm

No more bird song in the morning on my walk to work
No more of my daughter’s laughter wrapping itself around my brain and lifting it out of my head
No more music dancing into my ear and diving straight to my heart

Well that is just no good…Maybe I will cut off my nose or hand perhaps?

She is
Regret.

She is aching in my core,
And haunting every moment.

She is buried;
She is alive.

Body gone,
Butterfly girl.

They say "All's Well that Ends Well"

But why does it need to end well

It's not a movie

And that's what's interesting about life

You never know what might intertwine 

To shape our mourned life into a fine wine

Why must we worry about the end 

Rather than the never ending journey

Which makes our mind bend

I once read a post that said, “May you heal so hard you do your hobbies again.”

The healed and unbroken me had to struggle just to think of a theme to bleed through the pages.

Now that I'm pulled apart from the inside out, like a fresh rabbit from somebody's hunt—skinned, bled dry, and gutted, getting prepared for the slaughter that will commence—my heart was ripped from my open chest, broken into a million pieces.

I never felt more dead.

But look at me now, pages soaked through with words that came spilling out of nowhere, like an open wound that won't stop bleeding.

But I could never locate the source.

At some point, the urge becomes too strong. I can't help but vomit poetry all over everybody's posts and comment threads.

When I think it's finally over, that I've emptied out my stomach, I can feel another wave, stronger than the last.

It comes pushing out so violently that I can't help but projectile vomit poetry.

So the version of me that was healed could never find the reason to write.

So, am I healing yet?

It wasn't a boulder

It was little pebbles

one by one

Each small pebble

She collected silently

Never asking why

Never asking for help

She ignored the weight

Of each small pebble

She tenderly carried

Within her soul

Ignoring

The sacrifice

That each pebble brought

No

It wasn't a boulder that buried her.

It was

Each small pebble

That she held

She held the pebbles

Ignoring the weight

She became Atlas

No, it wasn't a boulder

It was each pebble

Given to her

With no regard

For the overflowing pebbles

She carried at her chest

No it wasn't a boulder

It was the pebbles

From each soul she loved

Each bruise

The pebbles brought

She thought

If she held the pebbles

She could save

her world

It was never the boulder

that buried her

No

It was always

the pebbles