The ends of my Cimmerian hair tint shades of tawny auburn in this aestival light. I flick away the residue of fore times bane and step forward, arms held so utterly high; poised tips stroking an endless reverie. My heart bounds: I am sanguine and sedated, this day.

I managed to save this little feather friend from my cat, earlier.

Watain - Casus Luciferi.

"I have come curiously close to the end, down beneath my self indulgent pitiful hole. Defeated, I concede and move closer. I may find comfort here. I may find peace within the emptiness - how pitiful. And in my darkest moment, fetal and weeping; the moon tells me a secret - my confidant. As full and bright as I am, this light is not my own and a million light reflections pass over me. It's source is bright and endless, she resuscitates the hopeless. Without her we are lifeless satellites drifting."

12 insipid days downstream:

And that pinching commotion has wormed its way back in, snickering; churning up my stomach with its beastly whisk of detrimentality - all opposing me. I fear brittleness in these states of nugatory. I fear dereliction.

Attraction I - Edvard Munch.

Tom Waits reads Charles Bukowski - The Laughing Heart.
It certainly is a beauty.

Each morning, I open my window and lock its peg onto its hook - it makes a small grating sound when I do this. My darling feline's ear flickers and her upper lip moves in sense as she inhales the sensuous, wholesome smell of ever-existing nature outside: the morning dew on each grassy blade or the wafting saccharine scent of the beehive colony over the way. She elegantly pounces from her dormant state to perch queenly upon her sovereign sill. I can't help the vast, sanguine smile that stretches my mouth and creates fine creases; I do not bother to neaten them. This beautiful, heart-stirring creature and I share a connection which, if observed by an outsider, might seem outlandishly singular or arcanely esoteric, as it certainly is. I love to feel the vibration of her purr against my skin - the most comforting affection.

Mark Ryden - Companion.

My thoughts are crabbed and sallow, my tears like vinegar, or the bitter blinking yellow of an acetic star. Tonight the caustic wind, love, gossips late and soon, and I wear the wry-faced pucker of the sour lemon moon. While like an early summer plum: puny, green, and tart, droops upon its wizened stem; my lean, unripened heart.

Jilted - Sylvia Plath.

A jocular interpretation of 'myself' - GEODUDE. Thanks to my dear friend Blastoise.

I laze and observe the clouds morph into far afield citadels with alabaster domed turrets and silken walls of swirled grey until my sight dwindles behind nebulous film. Oh, quiescence! My fingertips fumble inertly along my bedside dresser, across the spattered tea-stained circles; picking up remnants of the saporous fluid. I collapse on my side with arms outstretched above my head, resting languidly there, angled like a leafless branch against a sky from which the sun retreats. All at once, I feel an anguished tremble strike at my heart with swift precision. I foresee myself curving inward and alternating from side to side and as those fluttering images circuit my mind's eye, so it happens. I must ask myself repeatedly what has shaped and induced such deleterious pining and my immediate thought settles on you. The curtain breathes in and exhales in a vigorous fashion as if someone is standing behind it, string-attached and mastering its flux like a puppeteer, sending a warmthless draft surf athwart my skin. Goosebumps bristle on my forearms while my onyx-choked pupils wax and wane in my reminiscence of your tender word, your charming and most arcane way that has never once failed to leave me bound in open-mouthed desire.

"as a ship tosses on the ocean

in my besotted heart,
your adorable sobs will echo
like an ecstatic drum"

Finisterre: from the mind of Sylvia Plath.

This was the land's end: the last fingers, knuckled and rheumatic, cramped on nothing. Black admonitory cliffs, and the sea exploding with no bottom, or anything on the other side of it, whitened by the faces of the drowned. Now it is only gloomy, a dump of rocks - leftover soldiers from old, messy wars.The sea cannons into their ear, but they don't budge. Other rocks hide their grudges under the water.

The cliffs are edged with trefoils, stars and bells. Such as fingers might embroider, close to death, almost too small for the mists to bother with. The mists are part of the ancient paraphernalia - souls, rolled in the doom-noise of the sea. They bruise the rocks out of existence, then resurrect them.They go up without hope, like sighs. I walk among them, and they stuff my mouth with cotton.When they free me, I am beaded with tears.

Our Lady of the Shipwrecked is striding toward the horizon, her marble skirts blown back in two pink wings. A marble sailor kneels at her foot distractedly and at his foot, a peasant woman in black is praying to the monument of the sailor praying. Our Lady of the Shipwrecked is three times life size, her lips sweet with divinity. She does not hear what the sailor or the peasant is saying - she is in love with the beautiful formlessness of the sea.

Gull-colored laces flap in the sea drafts beside the postcard stalls. The peasants anchor them with conches. One is told: "These are the pretty trinkets the sea hides, little shells made up into necklaces and toy ladies. They do not come from with Bay of the Dead down there, but from another place, tropical and blue, we have never been to. These are our crêpes. Eat them before they blow cold."

Anja Franziska Plaschg.

I feel the once veracious, convincing attachment we've held flicker and flash and fade like a delicate beacon thrusted through blustery gusts of unseasonably chill December winds. I am losing certainty as in my absence, she creeps her way in.

I ponder the thought... I may eventually pine away.

"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life:
music and cats." - Albert Schweitzer.

Vacate is the word.

Soap & Skin.