Month: January 2022

Benevolent Battle: Move Me Poetry and From One Line

~ LA Fogle ~ 4 Comments

Last Friday night after work, my husband was cooking dinner and I was checking out the writers on Twitter. Our big plans were to have a nice meal, curl up with the pups, and watch Nobody on HBO Max. It was snowing hard and we were homebound on yet another Friday night, trying not to catch the Omnicron strain of Covid, that every third person we know has caught lately in Columbus, Ohio.

I scrolled Twitter, sorted by vss hashtags, and saw a writer I respect, Helen Laycock, post about a poetry battle, a collaboration between From One Line and the Move Me Poetry groups. Then I saw Arliden The Bard was involved, another very good poet I know of from Twitter. I hadn’t done any battles in years, but had fond memories of hitting various clubs in Chicago like the Green Mill. Problem is that I’m no slam poet and slam poets get people’s adrenaline going on the stage, which, often, makes for livelier entertainment and engagement. I always thought of slam as the air guitar of poetry–hey, I agree that we all need to write, creatively vent, express, rent our garments like suppressed maenads ritually releasing oppression in a bloodthirsty frenzy; this is not dissimilar to endless accounts in folk culture, right up to modern needs to cast out demons, connect with source and spirit, and shake the almost biocentric vent of every person/soul’s emanating tension. But slam is not my way. I never connected to the inner voice that way.

The crowd-pleasing nightlife effect of rant poetry is not too different, to me, from market research showing that enraged social media posts get the most engagement while posts with excitement run second place. This trope may have lessoned now that we understand the extent of interference from a world that understands psychological control. This understanding is required learning for powers of governance and marketing. People hate being manipulated. But just watch an Adam Curtis documentary to understand that this has been driving the world for a long time, and it works. This understanding was the basis for the first public relations firms and the first commercial firm marketing strategies and has only increased in acuity over the last hundred years. Ignoring it and contributing to a prescribed fantasy of give-a-fockless stardom might make for a better socialized day, but doesn’t do much for awareness, breakthrough, and change. Riding the status quo was never the drive of our young idealized hearts. My generation, the groups I grew from anyway, shared active experience—better than reactive—to connect. TO CONNECT.

Shrugging off new contemplative art to gush over trend ignores the profitable machine of art, with its statistical understanding of what moves human hearts, or better, drives human hearts to spend in the search for divine connection. Corporate brands struggle to appear genuinely interested in humanity instead of in their bottom line of profit. With this understanding of what spirit seeks, it is so encouraging to see the younger generations hold brands accountable for standards and sustainability. The youth that do it anyway.

I talk about this with youth I mentor. There is a very natural bucking against parental authority that is often needed to move on to independence, especially when there has been a caretaker with unhugged and untreated mental disability, mood disorder, or a deep unembraced shadow. This can translate to offspring feeling confused. And, notably, in cases where protective parents have not released containment of their child’s free will and individual soul. These understandings happen incrementally and are challenging to reframe, but greatness leads to greatness and it goes both ways. I have explained to my few mentees that understanding the intentions of your elder’s guidance means seeing their soul and forgiving human error, which can set you free to be a forgiving, grateful adult.

One brilliant young mind I mentored railed on about the boomer distraction. Ie, “Ok, boomer.” I get it. Did the same thing at their age, believing that the world would evolve if new voices were to rail against or wait out the outdated mindset and influence of former generations. But a scapegoat is a scapegoat, and early family controls nothing but a seem/seam shadow haunting our independence. Most people are not born with modern idealism. Modern ideas evolve, so there is important history/belonging in acknowledging the struggles of former generations that led to your own enlightenment. Saying “boomer” flippantly can erase past equality efforts, such as the suffragist movement, the civil rights movement, and many others. Not that everyone does this, but my point is that respect is an evolving contagion. As a united humanity, we have to figure out how to be motivated by positive emotions that are stronger and vivider than spite.

I regularly digress, but my tangential point is that life is about minimizing regrets. And while there are many cases where abuse is about a criminal level of sickness, many others are about tracing threads of subtler abuse to free themselves from the knots. See the human faults of caretakers but try to understand and forgive souls.

Wow, what is this post about again? Right, From One Line and Move Me Poetry poetry battles. I got off on the other stuff, but hope it relates a bit of why I love the freeform expression of poetry. And music. These are powerful expressive processors of primal conflict that, for all, may not be covered by the logic of western psychology, the exorcism of religion, nor the slogans of art.

Gosh, back to the poetry post. I was moved by their line: “I have a hunger” and riffed on their one line prompt, noticing that others posted documents and images unlimited by character limits. Character limits have been the biggest twitter challenge and here was a chance to stretch out. I was in. I flowed, uploaded my piece, and went to sleep.

I didn’t understand the difference between quoting a tweet and retweeting, so it wasn’t until the next day that I saw this response video. It was stunning to wake up, in the low light of the morning, to this dose of grace:

This is JD Greyson from Move Me Poetry. She is unbelievably open, unblocked, supportive, and like a rejuvenating springthrough breeze. I have been so tired of tension and the void, in this territorial, non-inclusive arena I landed in, so this was a breath of much-needed oxygen, reminding me of who I want to be despite the Covid- heightened isolation. I want to build here and move others like this…extend lifelines to isolated poetic minds.

A few days later, my husband and I are enjoying the evening in our living room, each with a dog and an instrument on our lap, talking about changing the lead counter melody on a song and wondering what instruments would work best. I checked to see what the Twitter writers wrote that day and stumbled on this poetry battle highlights link, Poetry Battle Highlights: A Special Edition, Medium post by JD Grayson:

https://medium.com/move-me-poetry/poetry-battle-highlights-a-special-edition-aa3086d9264b

I can’t seem to embed it, but will try again. Anyway, my boo and I gaped at each other with big WOW faces. What she wrote about my words was more than I needed to keep going. For years I’ve been telling myself that I only need a few people whose work I respect to respect mine. But everything got so heavy the past couple of years, so it nice to be seen. I took a screenshot of what she said to put in my “Keep Going” folder.

I still have a wow on my face. Then the YouTube audio on the page started playing automatically. It was a narrator reading his entry choices to sound design. The first one he read I’d seen and noted, as it mentioned “ambrosial cup.” My piece mentioned the red-winged blackbird’s first flight being a search for ambrosia, the food of the gods, in that the bird flew. I imagined a great mystical cause evolved into wings and thought of the storytellers who penned the myths that formed our words (I’ve been studying Proto-Indo-European words lately to understand even earlier communication). So I noted this poet’s synchronous use of the word ambrosial to describe a cup and questioned what was in that cup.

The narrator, Ethan McCaffrey, kept reading on and I kept wondering on. On his fourth and final read, he read my piece! My husband and I both did a Home Alone gesture, clapping the sides of our wowed faces. And then? The narrator used an effect on the side line voicing of the piece; it sounded almost like a vocoder speaking the imprint words like one might in the counterpoint of song. We were stunned. It was this interpretation of the kind of reference we use with lyrics on songs! Here was someone we had never met understanding the lyric notes. What?!

This writing group is great. Conductive. I am wanting to sing again, to rosin up my bow, write, and see if I can grow. This is something good to be a part of. And I want to encourage others the way they encouraged me.

A poet’s insight into word choices: witches, midnight, adders and newts. misdivision

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

I wrote this poem on a prompt of the word midnight and wanted to share some insights on the word choices. Without getting too deeply into it at this time (though I wish this was my job), I’d like to share a short key.

At midnight,
the witches gather
and abdicate their veils,
revel by the sconce
of fearless perception
on the winged misdivision
of the adder and the newt;
sing basilisk elegies and play,
then fly away when lore
gives way to darker hours.

The Witching Hour is from midnight to 1am, and the Devil’s Hour, the darker lore, is from 3am to first light. The 3am time is thought to be an inversion of the 3pm time that Christ was crucified.

Veil refers to both veiled feminine insight, personified by the goddess, and the veil of perception between worlds, most notably the mortal world and the preternatural world. Veil of perception also refers to mystical insight, studied and learned on the quest for transmutation. Females were long kept from study, science, sacral roles, healer roles; and the female alchemist was moreoften referred to as a witch. They don’t explain this well on the CW channel. Popular culture puts a lot of more work to put into fetishizing the feminine and nurturing generations to assume gender roles.

[I hope this explains to a certain friend of mine why I trailed off when he referred to my work as “witchy shit.” I study all kinds of things and have been writing a long time, so it is annoying to hear my efforts dismissed as being some kind of misunderstood mystical lunacy. Many have hemmed me into self-doubt over the years, by implying or directly saying that my work is too opaque–Dense! Confusing! Baffling! Weird for the sake of being weird! Perplexing! Cryptic! A word spell striptease! You have to slooowly arrive at a plain, relatable idea: the arrival!]

It took me many years to realize the gift of outer critics and how their energy frees up my inner critic.

Okay, it feels like a weight is lifted every time I post about the slights that have chipped away at my energy, enthusiasm, and motivation. I will get back to the short & sweet key. … And not go on about how gender is weaponized, consciously or unconsciously (please do wake the fock up), to reduce competition. The gloves fit differently but they are on.

Sconce refers to light, illumination, discovery, revelation. From Abscondere! Abracadabra!

Hello, Los 😉

Regarding nadder and ewt, the misdivision reference is about bracketing, or metanalysis. Nadder lost the ‘n’ from spoken ref to ‘an adder’ and ewt gained an ‘n’ from ref to “an ewt.” Spelling mistakenly recorded. I liked how the imagery conjures the idea of treacherous witches stirring their cauldrons and adding eye of newt or tongue of asp. There’s more on why misdivision is winged, but it is work to clarify, and basilisk is next.

Basilisk, adjective, means spellbinding, and as a noun is a lizard; and as noun in lore, a lizard known for its lethal stare.

Kinda cool, right? Cool to reflect and consider language and poetic reference. I do understand the need to give some context and always read the Norton Anthology notes, etc, especially with James Joyce. How cool! But I don’t have a whipsmart publisher. Yet. I’m standing between critics and breakthroughs to new levels. And I am hungry to spill gold.

Time still for gold to spill: the fleece, the bough, and the ratio
All those mysteries alive at your fingertips
Above as so below

(from a song I lyricized and sang years ago with a talented artist who hasn’t released it yet, probably due to the pandemic. It refers to the golden fleece, the golden bough, and the golden ratio. Did I need to say that? We’ll never know.)



Forlorn and tired of weak sauce on my word salad

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

Lorn and forlorn are words I can get behind.
____Forlorn is more common nowadays: to lose,
_________________forlost to the point of completion;
________________________________lost or left behind.

I am           solorn
lovelorn      hopelorn
sadlorn          greedlorn
thricelorn    sixpencelorn
anxlorn    neurolorn
sublorn    lostlorn
hatelorn gherlorn
deathlorn
lifelorn
alorn


A psychic messaged me on Twitter to say there were snakes posing as my friends that would like to see my downfall. How cool is that?

I don’t think so, though. Thanks to two years of Covid, I haven’t spent much time with peripheral friends. I’m at an age where loyalty is no basis for overlooking weird tensions or getting involved in pockets of social hierarchy. Many artists are looking to connect, but you can’t find simpatico vision if you’re maxing out your time/energy with the wrong people. You can tell the wrong people because they will ignore your work. If you work hard at writing, they’ll ignore it. If you sing, they’ll ignore it. If you make a video, they’ll ignore it. Whatever you accomplish, they’ll ignore it.

I had a couple of nut sandwiches barely try to conceal that I was on the menu as they were trying to show off for each other. I almost burned the gymnasium down with my mind but got out of there before my face dropped too far. Can you imagine winding up to be surly with someone the moment they appear? Being so scrambled into caricature that internal reflection is not something your icons would have done? Hawking the scene from within a bad novella? One bumbler actually told me I was not in my place: “Blah blah shiny blah, I was surprised you got that bone of recognition because we didn’t sanction it and also so and so is so much better at what you do, don’t you think?” All I could think about was how they were going to dress up such a lame story when they retold that yawner to their sycophants, while trying to insert themselves as a bold VIP in some weak game of broken thrones for The Great Hierarchy of Mediocrity. #hierarchyofmediocrity.

I had to get out of there fast as well, before my face fully morphed into the wolf-woman who feeds on outdated social roles. I had to get Hel, Baba Yaga, Kali, Keres, Eris, Nox, Scylla, Charybdis, all the Banshees, and some chimeras to talk me down. Why are these two so threatened by me? More accurately, why do so many women behave awfully toward other women?

No thanks! I’ve seen this kind of thing a hundred times and every single time it results in a loss of time. No one cool acts like that. Talent in your arena helps everyone grow to the size of the tank. It is crucial to being in an actual arena. Stand by your vision, keep on with your work, and spend thy limited free time with people who appreciate you authentically, and not because it furthers their brand. You don’t need a train of people as you work on growing and understanding your artistic talents. Artists can determine if something is subjectively good without being told it is or because it is gaining in popularity. Music-poetry-art circles, by the very nature of art, could imply an intimate or transcendent connection, not some self-aggrandizing starfuckery.

Between stars and celestial starfuckers, orbiting weak-on-weak gravity, debris attracts debris.
Don’t be shackled to any false hierarchy. Honor yourself. See clearly.

Return Sigil: Create a Return Sigil to cast off haters

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

The universe is merely using your organism to watch itself. Alan Watts

Organ-ism. Heh. Who got by with making up that word? Were they paid by the word or hourly? I’d like to make an NFT for the word organ, but rent the ism.

It’s been almost two years of Covid and everyone is losing their shit. Pandemic breakups are at an all-time high as the anxiety levels rise and rise. Hear that sound? It’s a friendship folding.

I already vented about my close friend of nine years sending me a breakup text on New Years Eve. There was not one mention of a problem is our relationship. It is hard to discuss resentments. We got together weekly for smiles, yoga, strength training, and hugs goodbye. Years of walks together and hangouts in what I considered a valued, healthy relationship. Well, I was very wrong, and some of the things she texted me are stuck in my brain and messing up my focus across the board. I decided to make a return sigil using some of the resonant words from her texts. Is that dramatic? Maybe, but let’s look at her words:


I never knew her to be this ugly. None of those things apply to me. I have a healer’s drive with perspective that has reached individuals in the over 2,000 yoga classes I’ve taught, and in talking with highly intelligent minds. This is my truth. I don’t like controversy or relational aggression, and prefer to be known for the quality of my work. That may sound overly positive or naive to someone who doesn’t have to bring in their own work, but my intention is to show respect. Anyway, the level of rage that crosses boundaries this hard might be better reserved for someone who stole your identity, peed on you, talked smack about your pets, or stabbed you. I suspect a bad reaction to medication. 

Do I need this? I already struggle with feeling a part of this community due to the cool school headupass antics of 0.0000999999000001 of the community. That’s essentially 0 people, but they are heyday buddies who would rather mark their territory than give a decent welcoming. But this was a relationship I had put a lot of time into and nurtured. It hit me very hard and I can’t seem to shake the malaise. So I made a Return Sigil to release these toxic labels from my subconscious. I have a personalized system with sigil spelling, using swift focused energy and sealing with both logic and melody. Many use frenzied states of release, but I am already talking to the subconscious with a foot in the realm of the unconscious.

Next, I do the standard article and common word strikethrough:


Followed by the repeat letter reduction:



To come up with the remaining condensed sound symbols: narcistlgherfuyopdmg


Ironically, narcistlgherfuyopdmg, jumbles to “unhysterical god mfp” which shall be her new decretive nickname. Oh wait, maybe her shadow name? Hmm, I also see the words “supernormality,” “malnourished,” and “slaughter.” Slaughter gnomic? 

The next step is to make a sigil out of those letters:



Separate that from the outer directional sigils. Separation is very important, because you are returning what has been sent. The cast is the return and not related to the contents of what has been sent. It is not some kind of mirror spell, there are no reflections; it is a re-turning of a continuous motion to the intender. Combining them suggests you are placing the sigil on them, but you are turning a container back to its creator. The outer directional sigils say “these words belong to _.”

Funny part is that “these words” becomes “the swords” when you strike the extra e. I went with the sword concept on the name sigil:

Final Result

Now the tantrum returns to its generating lobe and has no power over me. I emailed my sigil with her contained content through the material world. It has entered into muscle memory.
If thoughts stray back to having any charge, I’ll do an emanation meditation using this image.

There you have it. Good luck with your relationships during this pandemic! It’s bringing out some new levels of deep aggression. Shadow work, where one examines their darkness, is an important practice for cognitive coherence–to let yourself honestly know–but shadow work can’t be done while blaming a persecutor. Blame-shifting has to be sorted so it doesn’t lead to a disorder. You can’t hide from either your inner monster or inner therapist.

Next sigil will focus on setting some new goals on track.

writing prompts: new to full moon in Capricorn 2022

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

prompts: infinity tranquil solar perspicacity pop yawn hugs crisper dollops midnight

January 2, 2022 to January 17, 2022

from the new moon to the full moon in Capricorn


You soar from sky
to infinity in Blake’s
grain, glisten like snowflake
prisms, vapor altered
states: ruby bronze
azure chartreuse
copper violet-rouge;
Ephemeral bloodroot
mulls on leaf mold
and dew—Listen
for the tap
of bones when
the fertile earth
is ready for you.



For each harsh word,
I gained another tranquil
ruffle on the lake, a solar
marvel raring from a grayer day.
I am the end intended, take in
infrared, hug back the rays,
appreciate the symbiotic
interplay. You are the link
that breaks these atoms
into different shapes,
my blood picks up the relics
takes them to the places
where they ionate to give
my heart and marrow all
the strength you could not
spare to spare me. Take.
Your best aim.


“It’s called perspicacity. You explore, learn, reflect, and create with a comparably divergent drive. You’ll starve there. Actualize who you are and step into the light.” Maena crisply pierced the apple’s skin, tearing into its pulp before eyeing me. “Hungry?”


Honesty grabs one hand, loyalty the other. Vertebral seams pop, the serpentine column dances toward a new center, landing in perse moments of exchange: phosphene stories of love and pain ignite the mind.

The next words are butterflies.



She yawned and threw the message into the icebox. Yowls, crackles, and hisses flooded the moment before she slammed the door. The icebox kept words chilled and sentiments on ice. Hugs from the crisper were non-existent. She cupped her hands under the faucet and splashed water over her eyes. From what she’d seen, this one could take some time to cool off.


He felt the dollops of ink release and flow from some great telepathy of the sky; heard the phonological claps of thunder and mortal shock rain fractal words of the weary and fallen onto the page, like tears washing particles from a collective mind’s eye.



At midnight,
the witches gather
and abdicate their veils,
revel by the sconce
of fearless perception
on the winged misdivision
of the adder and the newt;
sing basilisk elegies and play,
then fly away when lore
gives way to darker hours.

A letter to Kenneth Patchen on his deathiversary

~ LA Fogle ~ 1 Comment

A few weeks ago, Erik Van Loon of LA Poetry Beach asked the poets of LAPB2021 to write a poem to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Kenneth Patchen’s death on January 8, 2022. I had written a poem to him on his birthday with the theme of “Get Ready To Die” and felt that piece might be better served for a death anniversary. So instead of doing a second death-themed poem, I opted to write him a freeform letter. I think he would have approved:

Happy Deathiversary,

I imagine you’d like us writing poems for you. To shake the trees with the breeze of words read aloud. In this you never left. When the flowers return, I’ll pick a Tiger Lily for you. It is my favorite flower, as the symbology means “For once may pride befriend you.” Sounds sweet, but what of pride and tigers is nice? When respect teeters on arrogance, dignity on conceit; which angel became devil and how could that battle reward the meek until the winner was determined? Reeks of a propagandistic maxim to me. Behold! The tiger has no spots! Look on, Cheetah Lily. Look on, seed. You be the rain if we must cry. You be the thunder if we must roar. We be the laughter in this undead tragedy, watching trash TV, calling idealists naive and the hopeful prideful; but spare the stars not in the sky.

Ken, I like talking to you because what I just said was probably more freeing than odd. I too want to speak all the words; for the angels to be more than sightings of intrinsic phosphene firing from the mind’s magnetic sight. We ride in the hands of a godlike child flying ghost planes through a more visibly sick world. Each night, grown offspring fold their robe of slights in sackcloth palls and sheets of dread. Their causes have waned and with them go covenants…

follow the link to LA Poetry Beach’s website to read the full letter

https://www.poetrybeach.com/2022/01/08/happy-deathiversary/
https://t.co/1OHzMunv8O

Stream – Mourning pages 1/12/22

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment

I’ve casually collected royalty cards for about 20 years. I like to study the differences in the faces. You know, take meditative mini breaks to gaze at images, as we do with art.

I recently posted a mention of the Suicide King’s head stab as being a lost-in-translation situation. I’ve met a handful of artists who associated with the haunting self-sabotage of this image. Just as I did and do. How funny to find out it is all a big misunderstanding stemming from generations of artists lightly tweaking what they see from worn copies (prior to the printing press). There’s something about the subtle decisions on facial expressions from deck to deck. The Queen is worried, determined, glum, drunk, manic, cherubic. There is one card where she has a teeny smile. Jack looks like a young boy who smelled something that turned him into a mustached man whose lip brow sits between himself and the kingdom, thereby proceeding him.

I know I’m streaming into my blog and therefore should explain that last bit, but it is already a lot that I’m forming sentences. No one really thinks in sentences except maybe TV characters like Carrie Bradshaw. Also, I explain references to the Book of Thomas and even Montessori in a video I shot last year using these cards. It’s a series of face morphs from card to card, shot to accompany an After-Death Plan song. We need to release that to the world…of course, ADP has been sitting on finished videos from just before the pandemic. I haven’t felt like sharing anything, except writing and that’s because I’ve been exposed to a supportive group of talented creators. One day we’ll all be okay again? Post-pandemic sages full of appreciation.

The power of the cards, to me, has to do with our developmental visual processing of high contrast colors, black and white with the flashing red. Yellow after we get out bearings on the first three. Then there’s the archetypal logic system, the four seasons divided into weeks totaling a year, a royal for each month, and a suit for each solstice. Basic highly metaphoric symbols that correspond to the four elements, then resound as one’s folds of vision and insight develop.

I’ll save it for the linear notes on the After-Death Plan video.

When I hunted for this picture, I found it in an email I’d sent to a writer friend last year. I’d gotten up early to write and was still stretching my brain waves out of a lucid dreaming state. Sometimes you can find a writer to correspond with who understands creative flow and you can say just about anything to them without it sounding weird. So I told him of the serpentine nature of my dream and what Jung said about the separation needed to birth new consciousness…and something about the order brought out of confusion in a process similar to the birth of the cosmos out of chaos. And of how several myths describe creation as separation.

I’d helped a friend move a lot of stuff after decades years of marriage and my lat muscles were spasming in my sleep, which probably translated to snakes in my back, which probably translated to the deeper processing about the destruction of a tribe member’s relationship and stability. I never did process the loss of my friend’s partner as tribe; I had to choose sides to help my person through the pain. Honestly, they’d nested in a way that had all on autopilot and something had needed to change for some time. As friend, all you can do is take notes for your own relationship, unless the person asks to hear what you think. Then hope they remember that they asked your opinion, so you aren’t used as a scapegoat once their anger/hurt recedes. Best of luck in those situations.

Anyway, the dream was a reframing; it broke a ouroboric cycle and from that came the divine creation of transcendence to greater meaning renewed from the rubble. Or something like that. I’m not currently in the thick of it. There were some million militia march madness dumpster fires everywhere then, as the shadows of a blaming world came online in their isolation, flooding the solitudinous with that brand of high school bestie posturing and not “overthinking” anything…in the least…except for perhaps ranting on how they’ve been wronged.

The worst shadow attributes of blamers were everywhere. Even a few people I’d liked enough to invest time on became negative peekers who lurked around policing people’s actions, rolling their eyes at their expression, and overestimating their importance when it came to the lives of others. Tragically, not as much good comes to people who do not celebrate fortune (unless their own). It’s basic law of attraction: fortune avoids those who avoid fortune, and their bitter pills. Envy is about low self-worth, which can be hard to dig into and heal. A lot of people turn to mantras or songs to generate a balance of wavelengths. It beats sitting around nodding about how narcissists and toxic people hurt them, when often they’re comfortable and didn’t want to read any further into looking at themselves or their projections. Too much effort! Overthinking! Or, someone scolded them as children for being too precocious or high-and-mighty. Told them that their forming opinions didn’t matter because they had not yet formed. Anger at this is a necessary stage, but forgive the souls behind such bad handling of stress, responsibility, and sometimes resentment of lost youth. Free them, free yourself.

I’m still trying to get the book FutureYou together, speaking of explosions and rubble. I need to bring in Cere’s ex sooner but can’t do flashbacks because it would further confuse the sequence. Think I’ll introduce him early via text.

[Cere is hanging out with Maena and Emma. ]

My phone buzzed. It was him.


“Everybody shut up.”


I’ll have to take you back several years for you to understand the psychic poverty I feel when I hear from him. Only thing worse is the constant feeling that I’ll never hear a thing from him again. None of these intense feelings of abandonment are even his fault. Most of them anyway and the rest is on me. I made a joke about it: Two anxious attachment styles walk into a bar and ignore each other. Rim shot: Ba dum tssh.

I looked at the text. There it was, short and sterile like a note to pick up milk on your way home—whatever hole or hearth you call home these days. I hate uncertainty. It’s like locking everything down in a waiting room. It’s like airport security when you’re late for your flight. It’s watching a train coming and not knowing if jumping in front of it would cause more or less pain. I’m so bunched up at this point that the preoccupation is all I have to move things forward past suppression–suppression that feels as if it is about to walk into detached repression and never look back. Rumi wouldn’t take that shit. You say what you want to say even if it’s crazed; no, before it gets crazed. Why am I so nonexistent? It’s probably that S&M pincushion he’s hung up on. I get that we feel nothing and hurt our bodies, but do you really want the mentality of a petulant and disconnected child for a lover? I realize I just described myself but my obnoxious discontent is wiser, seasoned…I daresay endearing? I mean, we keep the childlike state—keep the inner child’s freedom intact—but you have to curve the tantrums and the general qualities of an unexamined, immature human being. 

She said as she stereotyped someone she’d only seen one picture of—fuck, this is some sophisticated posturing.



That’s enough of that. I’ll soon figure out a subscription button that doesn’t need a lot of extra steps. From there, I want to bring in some guest writers. Reach out if you want to get in on that action.

Sing Along

~ LA Fogle ~ Leave a comment
Image pictured: The King of Hearts was recopied by hand over time until his battle ax turned into an uncanny sword in the skull, from the fascinating article on the Suicide King by Simon Wintle on The World of Playing Cards website.

I keep coming back to the same melody, like the one in this piece that just poured out. So today, armed with what are now eight verses, I will work on the song and whittle it down to two or three verses once the music bed is laid. I haven’t had a song knock this hard on my brain door in some time. Then again, I’ve never gone this long without singing. What a strange few years this has been, navigating the pandemic and trying to come to terms with who I am, what I want out of life, and what no longer fits my self-actualization as an independent thinker and artist.

Sing Along

I searched epochs for a muse
like you, the pen sequences
from this hand. Fits.
Natural patterns move,
send nurturance along a thread,
rebuild the scaffold skeletonic
comprehension.
I love you, too.

We’ve no control. Intolerance is
worry fortified by stress, we
targets show resilience; our childly
needs were never met.
Encouragement spurred
from bereavement, celebrated
those achievements acted on
behalf of their own neglect.

My heartstrings tighten, tune
the songs that mourn rejection,
search the faults for reassurance
from the past, scrolling ghosts,
and casting shadows
on the places where love reigned,
cut off the arms that shouldered
blame. You fills the pages
where your mark is honored
in a future song.
I hope you’ll sing along
I hope you’ll sing along
I hope you’ll sing along