4 am is the witching hour the time bridge between life and death I almost knew you had died right then
4 am I awoke curious about why? something had happened something significant but there was nothing clear nothing specific just a deep sadness a knowing of loss without an idea of what exactly I even returned to sleep after turning it over in my mind for a while who are you? what happened? where are you? why me? why now?
the next day I heard 4am you died
you were sending me a message of parting to ethereal to understand at the time but I get it now you wanted me to know after all these years after long disconnection our love had survived and I was the last person you wanted to say that to to say good bye too
I will not go back, I will not go back I will not go back because my mother died when I was a child and my father became so absent he might as well have left at the same time
it is not as if there was a family left around which to gather and share lives, hurts and hopes because looking after myself became my only hope
it is not as if there was a safe front door I could walk through any time of day or night because the front door was closed and I was not offered a key
it is not as if there was an alternative refuge which I could call my own because he gave any potential space away along with everything else
it is not as if there was a paternal welcome ever awaiting me because he usually didn't even bother to show up
no, I will not go back. I will not go back I will not go back because now he is dead even the false hope has gone
Pip: poetography.ink — where the color blue does more emotional heavy lifting than most novels.
Mara: Today we’re sitting with a single poem by seanatbogie that moves through blue as landscape, then intimacy, then grief — and it earns every shade of that journey. Let’s start with the poem itself.
deep dark blue
Pip: The question this poem asks is deceptively simple: what does blue mean when the world is still beautiful and the person beside you is leaving?
Mara: The poem opens in postcard serenity — water, mountains, a wooden jetty, a cotton dress — and then turns. Here’s where it pivots: “your eyes are blazing iridescent blue when I gaze into them I’m suddenly drowning cyanosed lips bruised blue blue finger tips touching you cold with the bleak blue fear of no longer having you near.”
Pip: That shift from picture-perfect to clinical is the whole poem in miniature. Cyanosis is what happens when the body stops getting oxygen. The poem borrows medical vocabulary to say: this is not metaphorical dying, this is the body registering loss as a physical event.
Mara: And the poem sustains that register all the way through. The line “pumping vital red to sluggish dying blue” frames the heart itself as a system failing — red is life, blue is what life becomes when it slows. The warmth of the day never leaves; the poem is careful to keep the summer intact around the collapse.
Pip: Which is the move that makes it land. If the weather had turned, the grief would have somewhere to hide. Instead it sits in full sun on a pretty jetty, which is a crueler place to fall apart.
Mara: The closing image pulls everything together: “deep dark blue and frozen to a jetty pretty above turbulent water dark deep blue I discover your love is no longer true.” The turbulence was always underneath the surface. The prettiness was always the trap.
Pip: Blue as a color word usually signals sadness and stops there. This poem makes it do six or seven things — geography, eye color, bruising, hypothermia, cardiac output — and the accumulation is what gives the ending its weight.
Mara: It’s a single sustained image system, and it holds.
Pip: Blue as a color, blue as a diagnosis, blue as the moment you realize the water was never still.
Mara: That’s the kind of poem that stays with you. More from poetography.ink next time.
The water is still a deep deep blue giant distant mountains are blue too there’s a pretty wooden jetty for me to sit on with you in your light cotton dress broad bands of blue
the sky is picture perfect blue there’s an old rowing boat tied up too it’s blue
your eyes are blazing iridescent blue when I gaze into them I’m suddenly drowning
cyanosed lips bruised blue blue finger tips touching you cold with the bleak blue fear of no longer having you near
you knew
a chill wind blew an icicle dart straight through my heart pumping vital red to sluggish dying blue
the world around me turns dread blue I feel it mind and body through like a heaviness I can’t escape a smothering blue oppressive weight
on this warm picture perfect blue summer’s day sitting beside you deep dark blue and frozen to a jetty pretty above turbulent water dark deep blue I discover your love is no longer true
My name is loss I come to you when all you have had is crumbling when all you have given is riven with me loss is humbling
my name is grief and I bear the pain of loss when you are humbled beyond belief when you thought you would be always proud and strong I am here to tell you that you were wrong
my name is relief when comes a day you realise that grief will eventually deliver a clearway a freedom from regret at losing what you had gained losses your mind held and retained these burdens your cross until you find you can accept loss
my name is acceptance where past material possessions and anxieties prove hollow where a hopeful path is a worthy path to follow where reflective plans present themselves as many possible futures where eventual understanding of loss the future nurtures and our transient presence can still be an enriching presence a new time we have in which to live to love enjoy feel touch smell hear see and give
I am attaching a trigger warning here. This poem is about witnessing a death under horrible circumstances. All too often such deaths are afterward referred to as part of a generalised experience that denies the raw truth of severe witness trauma. A truth that is embedded not just in loss, but also in living with the graphic detail.
I remember that awful December, when bushfire turned our world to cinder. Ah yes, I remember, I saw her surrounded by brilliant embers, alight on the burning grass. With shaded eyes I approached her, willing the fire to pass. But her eyes repelled me as she was torched, boiling as she screamed. I saw them dripping, down scorched cheeks they streamed in streaks that never made it to the ground. Only then did she fall. Only smoke for a pall. Never again to be around.
God bless my daughter. I’ll never forget her. To her spirit I remain eternally bound.
I meet her every Sunday morning we have two cups of tea I haven’t been sure why I go but she seems to like to see me
I guess it’s because she’s lonely and I’m the only one left around with any sort of connection to her for her it’s a pretty empty town
she always puts a face on and she has two types of tea would I prefer black or green? a nice gesture but it’s all the same to me
maybe a couple of biscuits? shortbreads or Chocolate Royals artfully presented on a floral plate immediately after the kettle has boiled
we start with a chat about the weather during the previous week we could talk about it forever but actually that’s not why we meet
she was ninety last December you wouldn’t know it though all her friends and rellies dead and gone I guess that makes my visits a special sort of show
me, her brother’s son’s son I didn’t even know we were related until she called me on the phone she said she had something to give me since her nephew was now also gone
I was hesitant, but I went around choosing right from wrong and we seemed to settle into a pattern after great great grandad’s medals she passed on
it’s interesting I guess hearing about her life and she asks about mine too I think she wants to check I’m not in any strife
she was in a war too you know New Guinea at the bottom of the Kokoda Trail a young nurse waiting for injured soldiers she has many stories that make me smile
..... and she has lots of horror stories too
one day she let on one of those soldiers was her dear oldest brother he didn’t make it to the hospital tent she told me he was dead by the time they got him down she says the world lost a rascal and a gent he’d been stabbed in the stomach and hit by a round they gave her a morning off to grieve and to see his body sent in the tropical heat the Japanese bayonet wound had gone septic
she became a union activist after the war was over the women had been doing the “men’s” work but when the men returned working women were just seen as a bother she saw her job as helping women stand up for what was right she was then regarded largely as a teacup without a storm but she was really a true pioneer, one with great foresight because even though inequality for women again became the norm still she stood up spoke out and fronted for the fight
she says the women had proved their worth nonetheless she says she has never been bitter even if society again reverted to the patriarchal curse it just encouraged to try harder for more jobs and equal pay sad she says though that equal pay for women is still not a reality today
she has outlived her husband and three children now sometimes she talks about them sadly then she always perks up when she says how she can still recount their quirks and talents I learn ever more about them quite gladly
my parents are divorced and always hostile and angry consequently I don’t want to see them much however I do sometimes wonder if they ever talk about me with such a loving parental touch?
I tell her about my partner and my favourite things in life she listens intently to my prattling and often offers up good advice
come to think of it I kind of like it this tea for two with my great aunt in fact I can’t think of a better way to spend a Sunday morning if I’m honest I really can’t.
All work is my own unless otherwise stated. I do not use AI.
The last time I saw my mother she sent me a kiss across the void. Two fingers touched her puckered lips, then cast into the air was a kiss at the mercy of the stiff breeze blowing everyone’s hats away. Was I meant to catch it? I have never really been sure. One reason was it appeared to be barely cast in my direction, the other was that she was in fact looking at her new husband as her hand regally flicked yet another token on another impossible journey of placation. She, number three plus stupid yappy little dog were on a boat to somewhere. Ten year old me? I was left standing on the dock unaware somewhere meant this was our last almost acknowledgement of each other. One thing I learnt that day to believe forever is lips forget what they have kissed.
For today’s dVerse 144 word prosery challenge, Mish chose the following line from Toni Morrison’s evocative poem, “Eve Remembering”. “Lips forget what they have kissed.” Besides writing eleven novels, five children’s books, two plays and an opera, Toni was the author of “Five Poems“, first published in 2002. You can read them here (well worth a read). I chose to respond to the challenge with a work of flash fiction that hits the 144 word sweet spot precisely.
If only you had stayed, I would have learnt to love black days like bright ones with you. Why wouldn’t you? We could have learnt together. Such contrasts are about opportunities, about understanding different perspectives, about understanding each other and how to live and love together. All sorts of days come and go. All types of moods. There are enough days for everything we could imagine sharing - good days and bad. If only you’d waited to see how bright the future could be. If only you had taken the time to see through the clouds to the clear air beyond, to project us into that space of hope and optimism. Instead you allowed us to falter at the first hurdle without even thinking to explore how we could make the dark days bright again. You succumbed to the transient storm as if it would last forever.
This week Kim’s dVerse Prosery Prompt comes from Walcott’s Dark August , “I would have learnt to love black days like bright ones with you.” The task was to write up to 144 words of prose incorporating this line. I chose to write a flash fiction about the disappointment of a short love affair quickly lost to stormy weather – in 144 words.
In the Valley there are few trees now since white settlement the river gums have bled steadily back into ever depleting soil the dehydrating sap bleeding red
some majestic sentinels remain on final watch across the floodplain of gritty dust and cropped introduced grasses as the parade of indigenous extinction passes withdrawing from the flats retreating across the hills ascending to heaven after suffering grave ills
and the broken remnains of centuries of trees stand skeletal or lie shattered on the ground as if awaiting a last chance for redemption after each falling whoosh and final thump of sound in atonement for overseeing the loss of forest they crave to protect their young who escape the cut of plough or chainsaw or grazing teeth they
enfold survivors in fractured parental branches fostering the roots beneath attempting nurture of trunk and leaf but they have nothing left to bequeath to young individuals left standing exposed to sadly age in grief witness to a parasitic human occupation a relentless quest by the future’s thief
I watched him as we sat upon the deck of the sinking ship the stern about to dip our chairs starting to slip our hands white in their grip he wondered where we would be tomorrow
he stood as fires erupted upon the tilting deck walked around the wreck sought every way to check for escape that he did seek only to find himself on the rails of sorrow
the water now was rushing over both our cold wet feet with no sign of relief in sadness and in grief life’s surging wild thief he told me he wished well for his wife and children
I looked at him I took him into embracing arms no protection here from harm just wishing to disarm anxiety and alarm one last moment of loving calm when going under the waves was the only given
we held each other standing there on the edge of fading hope to the horizon we did look to the water of our grave cold and churning were the waves then into each others eyes resigned to our good byes we held hands before stepping forward
the last things I remember are treading water in my doubt the water in my mouth the imminent blackout wishing I’d never roamed my loved ones left at home wishing I’d never sailed slipping under as strength failed his tired smile as we fell that I forgot to tell him how much I loved him
then came the wings of rescue they winched me up into the sun I the chosen one the sky it turned to gold but I had lost my hold on my brother and my friend who supported me to the end all I could think was how much I’m going to miss him
it’s been ten watery years passing underneath my bridge I’m wasted and I’m damaged with nothing left to salvage I relive our time together the fractured brother tether brothers ever a pair ever together everywhere and here I am still left with no way of knowing
how I can go on without my brothers song days are dark and long I think it’s time I must be going underneath the waves my lonely soft parade in hope that I will find my brother left behind always on my mind I want to join him on death’s seas a rowing together across the waves nothing in it brave just our watery grave and our time together saved
All work is my own and subject to copyright. I do not want AI to use my work.
What can you say our young assertive one with the voice of an innocent and every reason to come to the land of the people with the frozen tongues did you hear the voices trapped in the throats of the speakers the truthsayers the protesters the dumb and the seekers
what will you say my naive one as a voice for the reticent who want to save their home where no voices are heard and no listening is done did you crack the blank shields of the riot police abashing when your truth and your statements of the obvious were clashing with the public dialogue of denial that’s in fashion
what do you now see my prescient soul a world that is scared yet loudly condemning your role contradiction abounds around what’s believed and is told but you won’t close your mind your mouth or be controlled because the need is the need of a world being sold
where ascendant rejections of science’s findings carry weight disproportionate to tomorrow’s unwinding and the hope that was youth falls to systemic undermining I hope that you stand up to the relentless grinding for across the world there are still people who need you to attack all the arguments of denial so feeble they still rise to smother the planet in chaos and evil but for your pluck and your courage your ability to needle it does provide a check with words that are real and challenges others to rise too and reveal the lies and deception the denialists conceal I hope and I wish you can change how they feel
what will you say next our young assertive one
If you didn't pick it up the rhythm is sort of set to Bob Dylan's A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall
Where did that government find such murderous intent imprisoning and shooting their own wherever they went exercising ruthless summary force while advising its citizens they have no choice
venomous lies from forked tongues they let rip their smirking mouths toxic with poisonous lips vile spittle sprayed from the lips of autocracy blurs the vision of the masses with talk of democracy
all the while weaponising the rule of law where justice is now held in the tight grip of a claw a new dark age is coming where information is missed where manipulated voters are swayed by each Judas kiss
Secretly we meet as separate, boy and girl but take each other’s hand for company and together in our own world forget their world which has split us, violently we tarry a while, for our regret is felt both deeply and silently
to give up our child before our prime when all we wanted was decency all we needed was more time to be a family and only to be with each other as three together instead of separate and lonely
Poetry days #34.
All work is my own and subject to copyright. I do not use AI. I do not want AI to use my work.
At evening when the sunsets vary when the birds settle in roosts far and wide when the lowing cattle lie down to cud I reflect on days toil and try to decide will I stay on here with Mary will we try another place far away will it change anything really? or is it just another run and hide no loss can transport you to such misery no grief can claim you so deep inside like the death of the most precious to you the loss of a loved first born child
The people are raining in bits and blobs the rain is red bled tears and sobs the people are flying up through the sky arcing like rag dolls to heights very high the thunder is frightening the lightning is death the people are dying taking last breaths fleshy lumps are dropping back to their berth with fractured bones falling to rattle the earth the children are worst as their bodies burst with each new detonation another curse as the soldiers wade through the carnage they create claiming it’s orders no difference can they make instructions come from those sitting above but the executioners fit in with them hand in glove while mothers cry and fathers weep some bodies may heal but other scars run deep and the harm ensures an eye for an eye more and more people will rain from the sky
Melissa’s dVerse prompt for we poets today references the surrealism of Rene Magritte. I chose the painting Golconda (1953) of raining men to address the terrible wars around the globe and our repeated failure to learn the lessons of history.
Angel carry your heavy payload until god asks for it one day Angel bitter, discard your halo throw it worlds away
Angel fly to heaven above dive to hell below Angel receive peace from a dove or scavenge it from a crow
Angel weep soul deep until your very last breath Angel sleep the long sleep pray yourself to death
Angel just Angel lust Angel thrust Angel sing Angel cling Angel wring Angel must Angel bust Angel dust Angel wing left wing right wing broken wing
Angel nothing
The dVerse prompts from Melissa today were inspired by Kurt Cobain’s birthday. I chose to take one line from a Nirvana song and reflect on the feelings that might drive a suicide. It was a harrowing exercise and I am sorry if it causes hurt. https://dversepoets.com/2024/02/20/happy-birthday-kurt🎉/
Somewhere in France. I can’t remember where, but it had a profound effect.
It’s an old adage I know, but if everyone declined to go, if every decision- maker said no, if every arms maker built only ploughs, there would be no seeds of war to sow. Forget the patriotism of nationalists. Strike to stop the weapon fashionists. Vote out war mongering communists and capitalists. None of it is worth the risk.
To the battlefield fallen, most unknown, dead eyes to the sky, ground to the bone, lost to family, lost to home, forgotten souls of false hopes grown, ploughed into fields of woe and sighs, lost to memory, without good byes.
Soon out of sight, out of mind. Innocent victims of war’s relentless grind. Pay some mind, pay some mind.
It was only one bird, I saw was missing from the sky. And then I realised there was another missing that I could not deny. Then,the flocks and gatherings I saw were missing from the coast. Where had all the birds gone? That flight, that wing, that multitudinous host?
I saw the water washing clear upon the beaches of rock and sand. I saw the water empty there, devoid of life it flushed the sparking strand. There was one ragged crab as dead could be, it was wedged in a scaly crust. Where once there were shellfish diverse and plentiful, now all were ground to dust.
Summer people walked and played in the waves, they paddled close to shore. Unaware of the teeming life, that was there no more. Where the water touched the land, the interface was sterile, But one could still splash and be cool, with no inkling it was puerile.
Save Our Strathbogie Forest supporters gather amongst the giant trees.Helen McKernan introduces the SOSF chuffed.org crowdfunding campaign.Wild Hearts express their support and get everyone active.Giant Messmates dominate the scene.Sally Mann talks about the reasons for the campaign.Sue Ablitt explains the structure of the organisation.Bertram Lobert fills us in about the legal requirements and action to date.Bert answers questions from the gathering. Supporters pay close attention to the discussion. On Sunday we gathered at the giant Messmates in Strathbogie Forest to launch the Save Our Strathbogie Forest Action Group’s chuffed.org crowdfunding campaign. This campaign is in support of the Save Our Strathbogie Forest legal challenge to stop DEECA and FFMV burning endangered Greater Glider habitat. Strathbogie Forest is amongst the best Greater Glider habitat in the country. These Victorian Government Departments want to burn precious habitat there without reasonable justification.
I got what I wanted lost everything I had what can I say What can I do? the faceless ones took everything including you
From the heights of the mountains behind oslo to the depths of despair inseine enparis to be redeemed after death alone leaves me faceless faithless
the impressions that i left kept me away from you reducing you to faceless along with your faceless crew
Today Lillian prompted we poets with works by an artist rejected by his country (Norway) Thorvald Hellesen. I chose this portrait of Mary Alice Eckbo because I felt it had great detail where there is none overtly apparent – as symbolised by the faceless Cubist impression that has been created. I really liked this artist’s work. It is hard to see how it was not recognised by his fellow Norwegians. You can find the prompt here https://dversepoets.com/2023/05/23/an-artist-gets-his-due/
