Not much is alive around here now other than the Marigolds and they’re struggling.
It seems everything is struggling, including myself. Heat will do that to a living thing.
It makes me think of poor Ishmael.
But…
Hallelujah this heat wave is on its way out. 🤞🏼
In the meantime I will sit quietly & enjoy this little Fritillary aka Gulf Fritillary & know that this too shall pass
✌🏼
Art imitates life, life imitates art…. Either way.
Below is the gruesome photograph that inspired the title [and first book cover] for Once Upon a Dead Gull. That was roughly a decade ago.
Once Upon a Dead Gull is an odd – nay peculiar short story anthology, but in my defense it was written for the horror genre.
Even more peculiar is that none of these stories are about a dead gull.
I know, right?!
The poor seagull’s parting gift to mankind… to me, was simply to give life to a book title and cover I had been struggling with.
Fast forward more years and tada. The dead gull was resurrected and a new cover was born.
This is not really a tell-all, nor is it a secret. I am not just a curious individual; I have a morbid curiosity.
Yep. I don’t stop with ghouls, ghosts, hidden places, locked doors, etcetera … Death amuses me.
And dead birds as witnessed by the above & below photographs.
I couldn’t save the beautiful little bird but I did (in a poetic way) paint him back to life.
My skill level does not do him justice.
There is no poem or story to commemorate him, I think it’s because I used the creative energy to paint him back to life.
It all started with a simple photograph of an old dilapidated door. Throw in an ounce of imagination & tada!
Happy Friday Y’all.
1998 About the Author was literally the bio I picked for my first book of poetry Pose Prose & Poems (My Thoughts Exactly)
Ahhh I was so naïve. In hindsight even my most sinister & darkest moments at that time were no more than a cloudy day.
I was cursed with curiosity
Blessed with being poor
The fifth of seven children
Who could ask for more?
More fun than one should want for
More fights than one could win
More plates than food to go on
Yet I’d do it all again.
A SPECIAL THANKS TO all who have touched my life and allowed me into theirs. Remember, light casts a shadow, so stand in the light.
IT’S TIME TO GO to bed little man
Cover up your head little man
I’ll see you when the sun breaks in the morn
Say your prayers and close your eyes
I’ve locked the monsters all outside
She’d sang those words to him since he was born
He grew to be a brave young lad
And followed after his ole dad
Beneath a flag of pride his oath was sworn
They brought him home in silk lined wood And all around him soldiers stood
While Butterfield’s Lullaby played on the horn
It’s time to go ahead little man
I know that you weren’t scared little man
My heart breaks, I can’t see you and I mourn
I’ve said my prayers for your closed eyes
I’ve tucked my feelings deep inside
She sang into a folded flag of thorns.
I have kinda sucked at posting for some time now; I’ve even sucked at sharing poetry for National Poetry Month. And I feel like I should feel bad about that – but I don’t.
Does that make me a pitiful poet? An absent author? A bad blogger?
Hold on, I need a moment of affirmation.
Alrighty. I feel better.
It’s a hazy, damp day here in Texas so I feel like something a little—
Have you ever noticed how much people talk about how the feel? Lawd!!
Anywho, here’s a NPM contribution from Getting Me Back (The Voices Within).
Torn [first] from the pages of Horror Writer’s Association Poetry Volume 1
DID YOU SHAKE HIS HAND –?
the hand of a man’s man?
Did you see how his eyes searched the space around him as the world grew smaller?
Did you learn the secrets of Africa or discuss his tomes over drinks?
Of course not.
You could not for we were mere children –
our wedding day marking the twenty second anniversary of his exodus… his rise to immortality.
He won the Nobel Prize for Literature the year you were born – did you know that?
I was but two months in the womb when he placed the beloved twelve-gauge inside his mouth and obliterated the ciphering pheasants once and for all.
Did you see how he caressed her?
How her cold, soft metal against his finger was as pacifying as the perfect daiquiri… how she (his beloved) alas cured him of the demons.
In a flash she rooted them loose one by one
from their hiding place – a place liquor nor currents could mole; a cavern so deep no joule or watt could grasp.
Ahh, but she did.
She exorcized them, set them to flight riding on soft grey tissue laden with hemochromatosis and fragments of bone.
Christ might have offered the fiends a swine but not her or better yet not him…
A sacrifice for the Bay of Pigs?
It was all such folly—such unholy madness for a simple man and a literary saint.
*Hemingway’s Beloved was republished in Getting Me Back ( The Voices Within)
For hopes that hung on a chicken bones
For hearts that lived in chains
For pods of green that died unknown
While waiting for the rain
For dreams left bare on empty prayer
For souls that wished in vain
For tears unshared in mute despair
While waiting for a change
For you and I and all mankind
For worlds where peace was slain
For faith and mind no man can bind
We wait and wait again.
Remember, it’s National Poetry Month. Get out there & enjoy the journey.
Poem from Getting me Back (The Voices Within)
The Real Janna Hill in 