Lethe Beltane

a royal color

lethe-beltane@newsletter.paragraph.com (Lethe Beltane) — Mon, 08 Jan 2024 01:40:32 GMT

My grandmother has
a room in her house
dedicated to purple.
Lavender walls,
royal sheets:
I'd only need
you there
for it to be complete.
For eyes are the windows
into the soul,
windows I have spent many a childhood
gazing out onto the cold
dead suburban landscape.
How I wish I could take
you into my arms
and let you teach
this worn-out teacher
there is still warmth
worth searching for.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander

a birthday every day

lethe-beltane@newsletter.paragraph.com (Lethe Beltane) — Thu, 13 Apr 2023 01:41:18 GMT

every day, the universe sketches itself anew like an etch-a-sketch broken by accident from a cousin's fall if I am made of the same stuff as the stars then it is my birthday every day

but even if the atoms that make up my body all somehow- miraculously- came from the same ball of gas every day these days I keep reinventing myself so every revolution might as well be another birthday

I still suspect that others are lying about their birthdays an effortless reach for clout meaningless numbers on a screen that could all be extinguished in a moment's breath like the birthday candles you purport to require

but what is a birthday, anyway? just a day that marks one more year around the sun one more year of being on the run running out of time

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander

A New Page

lethe-beltane@newsletter.paragraph.com (Lethe Beltane) — Tue, 04 Apr 2023 17:03:38 GMT

the sun fails its checksum it doesn't feel the same as the blazing starry organ that once sent me sprawling for shade

I need a new story to occupy my head for I keep running my fingers through tattered shattered shreds

that have grown flimsy from folding and furry with mold and tired from touch sparkless, dismal, old

I pull out my ROMs and play one a while picked out from random one of a million files

but each of them fails to spark my imagination so I put controller away and continue furtive hunt

hundreds of fiction books but each one a reminder from when I was naive setting my ambitions higher

comics, I find, are few and far between either boring in their cliches or in a language I cannot read

an aged painting is sublime but its enchantment temporary, whether of trees, landscape, woman, or dancing rows of fairies

almost three years has taught my soul that is most powerful which I externalize but my body is weary, sky outside gray and I feel neither learned nor wise

so I build a boat from spare unused neurons and set out on my ocean to explore if there are stories worthy waiting out there, I know not but my adventure starts on this unmodeled shore

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander

Arrhythmia

lethe-beltane@newsletter.paragraph.com (Lethe Beltane) — Thu, 30 Mar 2023 19:51:38 GMT

When a person gives you arrhythmia, you may want to write a love poem.

That is, if you don't die of a heart attack first

or feel the implosion of a vessel burst

in your brain from a would-be lover driving you insane.

When a person gives you a stroke, you may want to paint a sunset.

That is, if you don't drop the brush first, if you don't spill the paint onto the floor from a misplaced curse of silence forevermore.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (c) Vane Vander