Tag Archives: romance

Kinder Hours

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New flash “KINDER HOURS”  and one of my illustration’s “UNIVERSAL WIZARD” together
Words and art keep each other company during this magical holiday season
Published in an excellent zine, FREELIT

Kinder Hours

Across the bridge where snow meets the sea, I comb my hair while wishing I were a swan.
 His broad hands stroke my delicate neck, gentle and curving on the point of a star.

I wake. Those same comforting hands are strangling me in the emptiness of shadow. Moonlight gives him the power to see my neck breaking, my jugular turning deep violet like the purple bed sheets of his new lover.

There was a time I would have gladly fallen beyond salvation. I’d have welcomed the pain. A tailspin drop to his bed, his mouth, his body. He touched my flesh and treasure books lost their gilded words. Warm gold lines melted into my bones. His shield of dragon horn turned silk upon our pressed bodies. He was magnificent. Those beautiful lips once whispered, “I love you.” 

The simple act of survival taught me to fight back. How many times must I do battle. I’ve grown weary. One weakness bests another. Pain rouses conviction, but I no longer possess the courage to face morning upright.

If my wand held an ounce of magic, I’d demand my mind dismiss its owner of memories. Dreams collect in a thick midnight veil, and waking hours are cloaked in cold light, light we once practiced magic in. A barred owl screeches as it lowers for a kill on the dark flattened tracks. The silver train streaks across the sky, but I’m not in a rail car. Trapped in a place that’s damning me, I will not adjust to the light. The sun is much too bright. It scorches earth and steals water. Charred holes open up into blackness and I watch all the white rabbits disappear. 

In darkness, I might remember the moon in kinder hours. Gentle arms cross my body where we lay together. Gold melts into my skin. His hands caress my neck. I scratch at his eyes then fly away.

Universal Wizard illustration

created with prisma pencil

Myrtle Lee sang with a barefoot saunter…

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New flash piece, character drive and I do love Myrtle Lee. “He relished Putty Cat’s pancakes flipped in the tiny space devoured up by her curves.”
I’m again so very honored to be included in NowThenMagazine, in their wonderful WORD LIFE section. Thank you.

Myrtle Lee “Putty Cat” Jameson

Myrtle Lee “Putty Cat” Jameson lived in the years where many tried making a go of it, the in-betweens of lovemaking, family gatherings, breakdowns and slumber. At the tender age of eighteen, Myrtle Lee joined a long journey shipping crew to transport rail goods and collect inspiration. Assigned to the cargo ship, A4 Sunset, her form cut a proud silhouette against the sky. Broad-shouldered men, not admitting to inebriation by the mere presence of her coconut flesh, found themselves dreaming of her with their vigilant eyes open.

But it was ‘his’ mad blue ocean eyes that were deepest. Their stolen moments together when Putty Cat’s warmth flowed down his back to the soft underparts of his toes. “You are burned into the very chest of me,” he’d groan to heaven.

In the bright kitchenette, Myrtle Lee often sang with a barefoot saunter to choke out the Apocalypse. He relished Putty Cat’s pancakes flipped in the tiny space devoured by her curves. Here, syrup poured from her sweet veins. How the vision of her in his dark wide eyes, hushed him quiet when the day had been long and life rolled hard. He wanted nothing anymore, save for the treasures, to keep Putty Cat joyful.

Sometimes Myrtle Lee cried herself to sleep. Whenever his back sweat reflected a cargo ship moon, and night breathing summoned waves against the Sunset’s bow, Putty Cat remembered. A shadow dream of the man with the mad blue ocean eyes. The well-boned hands of his sliding from the tips of her satin ears to her blushing thighs. The mountain of a man sleeping beside her, who loved her more than she loved herself, could never fill the sand hole. Memories spun invisible lines holding afloat her sinking heart. Her heart near an ocean bottom too deep for light.

A southern belle from the South Bronx was Myrtle Lee “Putty Cat” Jameson. She sealed her peace the first time she witnessed heaven’s orange flames spread across the Atlantic–like warm peanut butter on burnt toast. Beyond the great blue, she expected to meet all her shipmates again. And ‘him,’ her lost lover with the mad ocean eyes. The man who’d died too young holding her heart.

AM Roselli

ocean god

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a week at the ocean is exceptionally inspiring for a hand hugging a pencil

another love poem published on the ever-inspiring FOXGLOVE JOURNAL – please share if you enjoy the read – humble thanks

cup the calm

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time to relax the mind, heighten the senses
take the fingers for a stroll
haven’t let them loose in the Egyptian sheets lately
are we getting too closed in, devolving perhaps
like caged beasts and fishermen lost at sea
remap the stars
navigate to him–to her, across bombarding waves
intoxicate the glands, harden the resolve to coexist peacefully
the way temporary humans should on a temporary planet
back to whispering a sweet name in a fit of honest passion
a return to thanking the nakedness of the night
where muscles unhinge from scabbards
and time levels no orders
cup the calm, drink its sanity, inhale slowly and with much purpose
walk into the fray and remain unchanged
purple-wild-hair-edits

magical words, miraculous changes

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it has been said
passed down from yuletide lips
Charles Dickens saved Christmas
not the man, ’twas the book
his story, we all know
if you don’t (your library copy might have gotten jammed in an 1843 chimney)

Industrial Revolution spinning at warp-speed
factory holidays are ghost shadows
we are living in the fast-pacing present–more is better
our dull, simple past soiled with slumming traditions–less was less
one floor above sweating basement workers, the future appears bright and shiny
a young boy’s father gets locked up in debtors’ prison
the child Charles, now forced to labor in a “rat-infested boot-blackening factory”

these formidable memories haunt Dickens

I imagine Charles back then
beneath winter’s moonlight
childhood terrors like bony hands slamming rusted leonine door knockers
he summons these all-too-vivid specters to do battle with his benevolent muse
the war won
A Christmas Carol is born

“…in 1867 Dickens reads A Christmas Carol. One of the audience members,
Mr. Fairbanks (a scale manufacturer) was so moved that he decided to break custom
and give his workers Christmas Day off and not only did he close the factory,
he gave turkeys to all his employees.”

magical words can inspire hearts to make miraculous changes

Little Tree

Little Tree

Charles Dickens, true to his words became an exceptional philanthropist. “…the welfare of the nation’s children was at the top of his list of concerns, and he used his pen and his considerable dramatic and oratorical powers to raise awareness of the plight of poor children and to raise money for children’s charities…”

sources in order of quoted appearance: Uncle John’s, Christmas Collection (yes, the Bathroom Reader, please don’t judge where I sometimes read😉), charlesdickensinfo.com, hharp.org

if my little poetry book love of the monster helps one heart, that would be a gift I’d keep trying to give😘

My first

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author-shot-full-b_w-1Well, what can I say? My moment of truth has arrived. Come mid-December, my first book filled with my heart and dreams will be out there orbiting reader-land. I can only hope it will alight upon many a curious traveler. I honestly don’t know how love of the monster will be received. I’ve created a little book (spine is just shy of 1/4″) filled with big monsters. The monsters are paired with love poems that I think best represent their personalities. So I have these passionate words married to fearsome images, other times, the images are not so fearsome, maybe a smiling, pretty ‘vampiress.’ So it’s anyone’s guess if my little book will have any bite;) At the very least it will be an interesting experiment for my off-kilter sense of humor and love of all things monster. And now I must practice what I preach. I must be as brave as I’ve taught my children to be.
Here goes…
cover-image-jpegmy exceptionally talented sister-in-art, Grace Roselli took my author photo