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kissedbyghosts · 2 days

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Isolated Incident

Always I am a stranger. Always an isolated incident. I am invisible, even when seen. I am the unlikely truth and the unfathomed consequence. I bear the ugly imprints of god and man in the scorched earth of my femininity. I am a sign, like a fallen feather or a burning bush. I am the warm pink omen of the world's inadequacy. A reminder that their God makes (beautiful) mistakes. © JM Tiffany 2024

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kissedbyghosts · 20 days

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Red Kisses & White Bones

All we are we are together, falling forever in delicate dissaray.

Sun and moon, separate but not severed, we encircle the sky.

Red kisses and white bones.

The wolf and deer exchanging skins.

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kissedbyghosts · 20 days

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Curious Things

In this spiral of endings and beginnings all things are changed.

Cut and stitched, the patterns alter.

Pulling the thread she ties a knot and seals the stars on strands through time.

Binding and weaving blood and light, she artfully crafts curious things

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kissedbyghosts · 21 days

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Unsolvable

Long ago, possibly in the late 70s, someone replaced a single piece of this bucolic jigsaw puzzle with one from another box.

This single piece is neither the right size nor the right shape.

Its colors are brighter, and it clearly belongs somewhere else.

The mocking lacuna reminds me suddenly that there are two puzzles that will never be solved.

Each is forever incomplete.

Each puzzle is missing a critical piece belonging to the other, and each piece is somewhere surrounded by others, yet utterly alone.

But then I consider that perhaps these puzzles willingly exchanged parts of themselves.

Conceivably there was an oath, and maybe they were in love.

I ponder how many pieces of myself I have given away and wonder if I, too, am unsolvable.

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kissedbyghosts · 21 days

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I write for hearts, not charts.

#writers and poets #new music #composer #instrumentals #instrumental music #orchestral music #symphonic music #emotional #sad music #emotional music #post rock #composers on tumblr

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kissedbyghosts · 22 days

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Black Body of The Void

Perhaps we live in a colorfully luminous bullet wound through the black body of the Void. Whole worlds living and dying in the expanding cavitation until the fatal collapse.

Oh well, nothing lasts forever. Probability and certainty offer only one guarantee. It doesn’t matter if you love someone, or how much you pray: all stories end. Yet most human aspirations are pinned to paper wings in the hope that they will fly forever. Mine are covered with stories of us. And everything is on fire. © JM Tiffany 2024

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kissedbyghosts · 27 days

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In Silent Depths

The way was steep, descending in tight shafts through sedimentary layers into the pulse-haunted quietude of dark spaces below. I hammered my anchors and tested the protection before rappelling deeper. As the rope spiraled away like a thin snake into the aphotic throat of silence, I lowered myself down. My lantern glowed amber, creating a thin blister of light around me that swayed with each movement. Precariously, I dropped further into the depths. I was squeezed through a maze of tunnels, down broad fissures, and out of claustrophobic cracks into wet chambers. Limestone, gypsum, and dolomite took strange liquous forms, carved as they were by the slow flow of water over time. Occasionally, when I raised my lantern, strange fossils and ancient relics would cast worrisome shadows amid the looming stalactites and stalagmites. As my footfalls echoed into the shadowed stillness the warm glow of my little lantern was my dearest companion. In a place that dark and isolated, time passes differently. Without the Sun and Moon to pull one through their days, time vanishes into a permanent Night in which the only stars are phosphene flashes in the optic nerve, the false lights of the so-called “Prisoner’s Cinema”. But I was no captive here. I had come in search of something. Something lost. Something precious. After several cycles of resting and moving (what day was it?) I reached at last a vast chamber hollowed out long ago by heat and pressure into a natural cathedral. My lantern sent waves of light shimmering through a sea of dancing refraction. I shivered in the vaulted womb and listened to the sound of my breath. Eventually, I found it: a low mound of dirt on a bald island in the center of the prismatic chamber.

Though tired and sore, my heart fluttered in anticipation. I set down my pack, adjusted my lantern, and set to work with my shovel. How long I labored there in that crystalline abyss I cannot say. My face dripped sweat and strained muscles weakened as exhaustion set in. On I went, giving myself fully to the task, until at last I uncovered a feminine form beneath the moist soil of that secret place. I was struck with a sudden fear, and for a moment, I was frozen. I could hear the subtle sound of slow moving-water as I set to using my hands to clear away the dirt. It was then that I saw her face. How long had she lain there? Gingerly, I wiped the mud from her eyes, my hands gently clearing the muck from her cheeks and brow. When she opened her eyes I saw myself in them, and taking her into my arms, we wept. When at last she would emerge into sunlight, it would be without me. My body slid neatly into the impression. As I lay motionless in the mucky indentation, I closed my eyes. “I love you,” I said. “I know,” she spoke softly. I smiled as I felt each shovelful of earth add its weight upon my body. It was strangely comforting. Finally, I could rest. I closed my eyes and dreamt of her. © JM Tiffany 2024

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kissedbyghosts · 29 days

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Nothing Here Is Dead

It was an early morning in late September and the monuments were waiting for the first blush of dawn.

I intended to visit a friend there but had brought my camera to shoot the rising sun.

I drove up a thin black ribbon past ancient stones and gnarled giants to greet the amber glow from the crest of a mighty hill.

The trees there were all fat and happy, their crooked roots sunk hungrily into the silent, sleepy tombs.

I hadn’t been well (and neither had the world) but I felt a certain vigor returning and the morning air resurrected me.

Unfortunately, I had been away too long and I could no longer locate his headstone.

It was just a small plaque anyway. So insignificant and unobtrusive. So unlike him when alive.

I laughed at the comparison.

The last time I visited I had brought his ghost a beer and some cigarettes.

A lot had changed since then and I was no longer a person he would recognize.

Of course, he would always be beautiful. And 27.

Had it really been so long?

Though the dead may rest there, there was so much life in that place. It was a green explosion, even with the new yellows of Fall’s intimation burning at the edges.

I passed a great old oak sporting an early burst of mistletoe.

It made me think of the god Balder and how the pretty, yet parasitic plant, had been used by Loki to kill the god of joy, a being loved by all. Oh how the nine worlds had wept when he passed away!

I told myself stories then about my fallen friend as the lens poured light from an ancient star into my insignificant little head.

Then I remembered that all of this is made of an endless fire.

Ashes are memories, I thought, but that flame lives on.

I was painting with light that morning while the light was painting me.

Nothing here is dead, I thought.

I packed my gear and drove home.

I smiled, because my friend rode with me, nestled warmly in my heart and sprouting from my head like little white berries in a golden hour.

©️ JM Tiffany 3/31/2024

#writers and poets #poem #poems and poetry #poetic #poetry #writblr #creative writing #prose #prose poetry #prose poem #prose on tumblr #prose writing #poet #poems and quotes #story poem

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kissedbyghosts · 1 month

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The Open Mouth of Time

I don’t want the ugliness of the world today. Please, don't make me. I don't want to. But it drips from everything. Crimson rivulets that run into headline horrors to fall and splatter from the lips of liars. I grip the sharp end in self-defense and pull the darkness close. Please, I say, make it go away. And so I cleave until nothing is left. This is not what I wanted. I wanted softness and warmth, and held hands in a house of hearts. I wanted a kind place to grow, a place unknown to murder. But the walls here, they are red and the dead, they are with us, and tomorrow stands in the open mouth of time. The trees are on fire and more babies are lost in the rubble. I drink my coffee, shout at my cat, and spend the rest of the day with my eyes closed. © JM Tiffany 3/25/2024

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kissedbyghosts · 1 month

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Branches

I remember feeling you as you drew closer.

You hung above me like a shadow over the face of the deep.

I could feel your breath in the valleys of my neck.

What did I smell like? You were like rain.

I remember the moon. It was so bright that I closed my eyes.

I could still see you with them shut, but memory or silhouette, I did not know.

Kissing you, I pulled you into my wound and like a seed, you grew there until crooked roots and twisted branches pierced me from within. You wore me like ghastly ribbons, horrible and beautiful, and utterly beyond repair. I clung to you then as I cling to you now, wispy remnants frayed by the wind, a ghost in the forest of your heart.

©️ JM Tiffany 3.18.2024

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kissedbyghosts · 1 month

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Disremembered

I lay with the lights off and whisper to the Night. “I feel sympathy for monsters,” I say to Her, “Because I know what has made them.” My wounds are invisible in Her darkness, but the cuts and contusions are everywhere. Little valleys and hills, amid coarse patches of lethargy. “Must those broken continue to break?" I cry. She is quiet. The Night is a good listener, yet she never offers me any advice. I bind the cracks with chemicals and sink away, slipping into Her belly to be disremembered until dawn. © JM Tiffany 3.18.2024

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kissedbyghosts · 1 month

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Ninety Seconds to Midnight

They displayed her to us, a sweet, battered doll. Coy and precarious, they called her uncertainty a victory. She was small and quiet. As I looked at the savaged girl, I watched her wringing her hands. A tired young woman, shifting and slightly broken, she was like a pink petal tugged and battered by the swift dark undertow of privilege. They promised us that she would return to the world what was stolen from her, and the absurdity of it curled my lips into a snarl. The stupidity of the insult drove a stake into my chest. but the subtle cruelty of the display was lost like the years trailing raggedly behind her. If they saw my tears, I do not know, but they bled like acid and burned as I swallowed each one.

I marked the time: it was ninety seconds to midnight.

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kissedbyghosts · 2 months

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The Egg

Single-minded, bare feet challenged by sinuous vines, his gentle hands prized one egg of three from a neatly crafted nest. Pale and blue as sky, he placed it in his mouth and gingerly descended the roughly knotted tree to squat at its base amid the tangled brush. Carefully, he dropped the turquoise ovoid from his chapped lips into his small, dirty hands. Sad furtive eyes examined the delicate shell. Turning it this way and that, he raised his treasure to a ray of sun that sliced like a white laser through the dense emerald canopy above. The backlit egg glowed, burning like an amber gem enclosed in the pale sapphire of its thin encasement. Gazing intensely, his keen eyes squinted and saw two ruddy, capillaried shadows: the silhouettes of a naked man and woman bound by threads of blood through the ovum of time.

The blue-amber light of diffused sun sparked a bright reflection in the boy’s dark eyes and he lovingly placed the egg back into his dry mouth. Within him, it hatched, and a bird took flight its broad wings, black and white, bore his sight upward in an ascending spiral. He rose above the world until he saw one great tree with two mighty roots, and a single mind that knew itself only as strangers.

He then saw himself as a fruit dangling from its burning branches where masks were hung in offering to the madness of life. When he woke in his mother's arms, he was crying. Large crystalline streams wet his cheeks as the soft lull of her voice consoled him. He saw his concerned father peering wordlessly over his mother's shoulder and the boy smiled slightly, reassured. Then, suddenly, he shuddered as a wild wind raked wooden fingers across the rain-streaked pane of his bedroom window.

The rest of that night the wind howled through the tunnels of his mind and he did not sleep, though he did dream until the sun spilled its warm yoke through the gauzy curtains of his room.

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kissedbyghosts · 4 months

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Red Bones

In my vision I flew as I fell and rode a great gray wolf through a vortex of smoldering antlers. My beast steered my thoughts until, like water in milk, we merged and became a singular ghost rushing like wind through the dreaming wilds. I was drawn to a sullen sound and at once saw a young boy’s skull hanging from ghastly strings. There was a mournful chanting nearby, a soft feminine voice that sang wordlessly in the night. I found its source: a young girl who was rinsing her ruddy hands in a starlit pool. She was bare, save for a wooden mask, its brow carved with a pale moon. Nearby, amid the vines and briarwood, a black bear lurked, but the girl showed no signs of concern. I saw then eight arrows of yew, each with a glinting green obsidian point, arranged like the spokes of a wheel on the ground. I looked again at the boy’s skull and saw that it hung amidst his red, excarnated bones. A gentle breeze rocked his remains in the gnarled tree, each bloody bit bound there by his own sinews to its misshapen branches. It seemed to me that he sprouted like macabre fruits from the sleeping, twisted limbs. His luminous flesh caught the light of the full moon and glowed dully in the darkness as the masked girl began toiling to stretch it tightly over a simple wooden rack. With her hands, she caressed his lovely ruin, and smeared the taught flesh with the boy’s own brains. This she did to tan and preserve his hide, but also to work his memories into the skin. “I will wear you in the Spring,” she lamented, “and you will rise again as the Sun.” I think that she wept beneath her mask, though its rough wooden visage was unchanging and stern. When she resumed her singing, I heard the rough sound of ursine breath behind me. As snow began to fall, I opened my eyes. © JM Tiffany 1.2.2024

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kissedbyghosts · 4 months

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Desert Rose

You said that you loved me but you denied me my face. You said that you loved me but you denied me my body. You said that you loved me but you denied me my clothes. You said that you loved me but you denied me my voice.

You said that you gave me the world but it wasn’t yours to offer. nor was it mine to receive.

You said that you would give me your heart but all you handed me was an empty vessel.

I longed to drink of you, but my throat grew dry and still I thirst.

I put my parched lips on yours and a desert spread between us.

I watched the sun go down in your eyes and bloomed alone in the dark as I waited for the world to end.

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kissedbyghosts · 4 months

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Soil

What did you hope to find here? An idol to worship? A thing to covet and to keep? You had love, and it bared its teeth when I sang. Was it me you wanted or just an escape from the prison of your choices? I could hear the voices in your head, your secrets gaped like wounds in my back, and the wife of your misery sat like a stone on my heart until my insides burst forth. I told you everything, and you took me for a myth. And still, you chose to worship me. You called me your angel even as you stole fire from my sky. I gave you all the mercy and grace I could fit in my fists until I punched that hole in your chest. I poured myself into that pit and swam in the dark. You drank of me and I drown in your mouth until I was spat out like something unholy. And that was your gift. I fell away from you like rain until brighter things grew from the soil of my life. © JM Tiffany

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kissedbyghosts · 4 months

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Chrysalis

Gasping for air in chrysalitic translucence, I am the liquous anticipation of transformation and the lucent opalescence of nascent life.

I am a new heart pupating at the edge of death.

See me as I hang, swaying from the Tree of All Worlds?

My markings shift like turbulent, melting tattoos, all dreams and memories of flesh mixing like blood in water.

My iridescent sarcophagus cracks and oozes: metabolic scars, glistening, drip the clear fluids of birth. As the luminous crystal membranes of new wings unfold, I am joyous in my terror and shudder with the paroxysms of my becoming.

As my bright wings spread in the darkness I am made again of living fire.

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