The Lunatrope

Bath 5

motherground:

If it’s one drink, it will be two. Wisteria tangling
around your wrists. Here is where you buried your

father. Here is where you buried your brother.
Here is where they will bury you, when the

time comes. No wonder you drink yourself down
toward the earth. Home is where the shovels lie.

Earth and earth and earth. Stones crowd your sleep.
Granite and salt, sand giving birth to

the fortress where even your lovers sigh. Silent
underfoot. You dream yourself toward them.

You are foxfire, you are phosphorescent. Your
mouth like whiskey. Your eyes like whiskey.

You baptize yourself in sorrow, again and again.
You baptize yourself with bourbon and brandy.

You swim downward, fast salmon, heedless, handsome,
death is in you, it has captured your ear. You have your

father’s jaw, your brother’s chin. When you were born
they bathed your small body with their fears.

Each scar they’d earned became manifest on your skin.
Their love aches like a badly set bone. When the river takes

you, it will be no new baptism. Just that same, ancient sacrifice.
Just that rush, that rushing, and then you are gone.

— jen silverman

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Forgiveness by Terence Winch

knitmeapony:

Father Cahir kept us holy.
He smoked cigars in the confessional.
He had a distracted air about him,
as though he wasn’t sure what
he was supposed to do next.

I don’t remember what he taught.
History, probably. It was his
liberal attitude as a confessor
that made him a legend.

No matter what you confessed to, 
he always barked out the same penance:
“Three Hail Marys and a Good Act 
of Contrition. Next!” So we tested
this leniency, confessing 
to rape, murder, burglary.

Cahir paid no attention. 
He knew we were a bunch 
of high school punks.
Puffing his cigar,
he’d issue his standard
penance and absolve all sins,
real or imagined, 
with godlike aloofness,
his vast indifference to 
or total acceptance of the darkness
within the human soul
exactly how I hope the deity
regards us. Take forgiveness
any way you can get it.

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untitled by lunatrope

untitled

by: lunatrope

I. 

Last night I had a
terrible nightmare that
my mother was dead.
I dreamed my cell
phone rang and my
stepfather’s voice
came across the line
like a babbling brook,
near incomprehensible
and only a few words
the worst words got
through. Breaking and
entering. Can’t find
who did it. Your mother.

I dreamed I called my
grandmother, and I
wailed, like a wounded
thing. Her voice was clear
broad, vast as a gale
down a canyon.

She said, “I loved her
too,” in my dream.
And then my mother
was really dead.
I screamed over the
line. I screamed,
pinched my thighs
in the dream and begged. 


II. 

I awoke. Relief was
cold and painful as my
sweat, as all that pain
evaporating in an 
instant. 

I was like a newborn
calf, all trembles, and
knocky knees on my way
to the bathroom. 

I barely comprehended 
reality and looked in
the dimmed mirror, 
wondering what would
happen if it was real. 
If that was a dream, 
what will become of 
me when it isn’t?

I laid in bed the rest
of the night, willing
the phone not to ring
counting the seconds of
silence like a poor
person counting
their very last pennies.

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how to be a writer - lunatrope

“how to be a writer”

by: lunatrope

step one:
find a tool and surface, make your mark
ink is cheap, but runs. blood lasts longer
skin and paper work equally well, especially when wrinkled
but most important, the marking
remember, you’re changing the tool, the surface, yourself
existence


step two:
be unafraid to throw down gauntlets
and stir words

be even more unafraid to pick up gauntlets
and let words stir you

kick, bite, throw your head like an unbroken horse
chomp the bit, throw the rider

be toothless and gentle as an old dog at the bed’s foot
sit close when invited, cultivate loyal quietude

break left when the group goes right, find wilderness ways
be always in rebellion

follow beside, keep up, stay with, lock step, get along
be always in harmony

listen to everything, consider all advice, take all comers
keep the doors open

shut out the noise, keep your own counsel close to the chest
shutter the windows, shush the world

stay young and agile and spring-green and newish and unmarked
emerge cocoon-fresh each day

get old while you can, press smiles into the skin of your mouth and eyes
be gray as owls and wintery trees

contradict contradictions, rule rules, catch and release
have everything, have nothing

most importantly: when you see giant footsteps, step up
do not be overwhelmed by the difference in size


step three:
repeat as needed; as possible. 

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touching you i say (it being Spring - ee cummings

    touching you i say(it being Spring
    and night)”let us go a very little beyond
    the last road—there’s something to be found”

    and smiling you answer “everything
    turns into something else,and slips away….
    (these leaves are Thingish, with moondrool
    and i’m ever so very little afraid”)
           i say
“along this particular road the moon if you’ll
notice follows us like a big yellow dog. You

don’t believe?     look back.(Along the sand
behind us,a big yellow dog that’s….now it’s red
a big red dog that may be owned by who
knows)
    only turn a little your. so. And

there’s the moon,there is something faithful and mad

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