i bring your soul where’er i go(i carry it in my soul)

as i am wont to splendor in your midst(i never want for you)my love

(i have your soul all ways)my sun(i port your soul with me)

my fears

are naught(for you: my rock) i lack

no realm(for you my treat are all: no need)

None can guess the unguessable-est (the quark of the nucleus of the atom of the molecule in the sea of life that rides higher than all universes which expand

higher than thought or being or life can reach)

and this sea is the wheel on which all the world turns

I bring your soul(i bring it in my soul)

I entered the above entry in the Prose Challenge of the Week CCIV: Write a short story in the style of your favorite author - dead or alive. Let others guess the author. Fiction or non-fiction, poetry or Prose. My poem garnered two 'likes'.

One Prose writer, @sohi, guessed the author correctly to be the esteemed e.e. Cummings and wrote that my entry could almost be a sequel to [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in]. I am still grateful. In case not everyone is (as) familiar with it, I will post Cummings’ masterful work here (below) to pay tribute to e.e.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

I closed the door but the windows are still open,

Put the lock on the gate but forget to close it.

See I talk to much but say nothing worth hearing,

I’ve been trying so hard to listen but my mind just keeps reeling.

I’m an open book but some pages are glued shut,

I try to let people in but I ran out of trust.

I write so much poetry but the words I want to say always get stuck, see this cage I created doesn’t really have a lock.

First, my apologies to those few who have asked that I not mass tag them. I promise you, this will be the very last time. And for those of you I may have missed, hopefully, you will run across this in your Prose travels.

From a deadly pandemic to a global movement for racial justice, the year 2020 has certainly experienced its fair share of world-shifting events.

These are some of the things up to this point that happened in 2020.

The country faced one of its most devastating wildfire seasons as the blazes continued from December 2019 into the new year and burned a record 47 million acres, displaced thousands of people and killed at least 34 people.

Say it isn’t so, but we all know it happened. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle leave the royal compound.

The World Health Organization announced January 9th, that a deadly coronavirus had emerged in Wuhan, China. In a matter of months, the virus has spread across the globe to more than 20 million people, resulting in at least 751,000 deaths.

The legendary Los Angeles Lakers player was killed along with his daughter, Gianna, and seven others when their helicopter crashed in Calabasas, Calif., on January 26th. It was a loss felt for quite some time.

The president faced an impeachment trial in January on charges that he asked Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. He was ultimately acquitted by the Senate on February 5th.

Harvey Weinstein was convicted of raping an aspiring actress and sexually abusing a TV and film production assistant. The verdict was celebrated by his dozens of accusers and their supporters as a watershed moment for the MeToo movement.

On March 8th, the Stock Market felt its hardest hit with a massive single day loss that plummeted and caused thousands of people to quickly rethink their finances and their future.

The police-involved killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor this year sparked a wave of peaceful — and sometimes violent — demonstrations and riots across the world to demand an end to police brutality and racial injustice.

More protests erupted in August when 29-year-old Jacob Blake was shot by a Kenosha, Wisconsin, cop and paralyzed from the waist down.

Biden becomes the Democratic nominee with Kamala Harris as his running mate.

Jeffery Epstein committed suicide while sitting in jail awaiting trial for pandering and sexual abuse of minors.

Millions of acres in Washington and Oregon went up in smoke with massive wildfires.

The death of a political icon—Ruth Bader Ginsburg—and on a person al note, what transpired after her death was a mockery smeared on her good name.

Trump tested positive for Covid and Eddie Van Halen dies at the age of 65 from Cancer.

The TV game show, Jeopardy will never be the same when Alex Trebek, dies from Pancreatic Cancer, and also the death Of Sean Connery, two ultimate icons.

The first Covid vaccines were administered December 14th.

Sadly, 2020 isn’t leaving to make way for 2021 on a good note. The Stimulus Bill and the National Defense Budget have been waylaid by Trump. This means our military is financially in trouble and also leaves the American people without any more hope of real relief.

But I want to end this on a good note if I can.

We have all struggled to make ends meet, to keep our spirits, hopes, and dreams alive for each day we face. My hope for all of you—may you find and continue to use the strength within you to persevere, continue to rise up, continue to love those you care for most, continue to help where you can. Find it in your heart to forgive those who wronged you and then move on to other things.

In the long run, there is no “I” in “We”—we are all in this together, and this means no matter what part of the world you are from.

“Friends are friends, no matter where, no matter what—they just are.”

Let’s do our best to make 2021, the bounce back year.

May your year ahead treat you well.

The snow is falling,

yellow sparks from logs fly high,

egg nog is the best.

*****

The stockings, stuffed.

gifts galore under the tree,

holiday songs, sung.

*****

It’s a snowball fight!

You can duck but you can’t hide!

I’m coming for you!

*****

Late, this Christmas night,

kids in bed, just you and me,

and the kiss lingers.

I woke up in the dead stillness of pre-dawn, suddenly and completely awake. As if there was something in the air that shook me awake. I took a moment to adjust to the fading darkness. There was no-one in the room.

Was it the smell of gas that had subconsciously woken me? I sniffed carefully and long. Nope, not gas.

I stayed cocooned in the warmth of my quilt, ears stretched out towards the rest of the house. Nope, no noises, so presumably no intruder.

I thought a while about the risks of snuggling down in the quilt while an intruder robbed my little abode of the almost valueless valuables I had stocked it with.

Warmth won the day. I rubbed my face, pushed my nameless dread away and burrowed my face in the pillow.

Come morning and I was thankful. It promised to be a bright, happy day. And a weekend to boot. ’I’ll get the tea,” I grinned at my surprised better-half and ran down the stairs, two at a time.

Only to stop short, horrified, as I reached the kitchen.

My jaw dropped, I could feel my feet turning to race back to the safety of my bedroom.

The tea was boiling, the toaster was popping toast.

‘Want some? There was a small fire in my house. I’m going to have to stay here for a few weeks. Do you mind?’ my ma-in-law asked confidently.

An almost silence.

The quiet, only a gentle hold with fingertips grazing your cheek like a subtle breeze. 

Sand, cold and damp lays underfoot to fall back and forth

Balanced.

You can hear a voice, smooth to the touch. 

Rounded words, dripping from their tongue, falling heavy onto skin. 

The sound wraps around you like silk, clouding your every thought. 

A lament that rises you to the soles of your feet.

A slow unconscious motion, as if sleepwalking. 

Brought to the water’s edge, 

Down dominating dunes.  

And now you ask the Ocean.

You ask the Ocean to help you feel, 

To envelop you within its waters,

To have its life pulse through you. 

The glow of a silver moon will 

Dance over skin 

Like ink on paper, the light touch ingrained 

in memory and meaning. 

If you dip your foot beneath the waves, they’ll welcome you, 

Flowing up your legs to fill lungs with the deep inevitable. 

Have you ever heard the ocean’s voice? 

It’s color copies the rise and fall of the sky, but it’s voice 

Always rings blue. 

Holds sharp with a calm resonance to ripple throughout 

As waves crash and leave foam in their wake.

This color comes with no demands, just Connection. 

Flowing through you.

No need to understand, 

For there’s no reason other than the want to

Exist.

there is a zipper at the nape of her neck,

a vein of black metal dripping between vertebrae,

and at night she reaches back,

taking the metal between forefinger and thumb,

pulling until her skin ripples like satin,

pooling around her hips,

a shroud of mortality cast aside.

she stands alone in the vacuum of her chest,

fingers moving with frightning familiarity.

hands twist between a ribcage of glass and silver-

the chandalier that adorns this empty place-

And gently she removes the corpses.

three doves, necks snapped cleanly,

the beginnings of sentances she never bothered to finish.

the butterflies that once danced among blushing cheeks and a shy smile,

wings torn off by a boy who liked breaking hearts a little too much.

a doe, all wide eyes and innocence,

shot five times in the chest by words she wasn't supposed to hear.

she buries them under her pillow,

prays their phantom screams will not wake her,

and with the tug of a zipper-

the stitching of a smile-

she is human again.

It took trains of waiting—

we unpeeled so many oranges

that we became used to biting

through the rinds with our teeth

rather than using a clean knife.

Our noses grew so cold on windows

that we were all touched red at our tips.

We found different ways to say tragic:

we’re running low on soap and apples,

I have it—it’s worse than I thought.

We spread more bad than good.

How could we not? We’d begun

to breathe grief like air—invisible

but there til it tuned our bodies to bottles

holding only warbles. Sounds worse than static—

so stuck inside our own murmurs

that we couldn’t hear the other tragedies.

And even if we could—would we have chosen

to listen? You must understand:

we were just so sick of bearing witness.

It's silent here

but we choke on the screams in our throats-

they taste of steel and sage

and standing barefoot upon

a too-thin skin of ice,

watching silver eyes

gaze from the black depths below.