here in the hills and in the pines and oaks
and the mid-summer heat swamp lolling off
your face at night, but you don’t care, because
a chance to hold lightning in your hand
was everything, this life ungrounded
in your palms, and you let them land
wherever they wished
because lightning does not ask
and you slack-jawed eyes in wonder
gave your body to the thunder.
We Call Them Lightning Bugs
Posted by tea parties on neptune on August 18, 2025
https://teapartiesonneptune.wordpress.com/2025/08/18/we-call-them-lightning-bugs/
Fox Fire
The hunger in the cold
and the butterfly’s kiss
from last summer
you folded under your tongue.
Sharp tooth’s amber eye
and the sky isn’t dark anymore
but you’re running
and running
because the cold wants to catch you,
but you flicker it a touch
too hot to hold.
Posted by tea parties on neptune on July 23, 2025
https://teapartiesonneptune.wordpress.com/2025/07/23/fox-fire/
You Thought you Could go Shopping for a Soul on Vine Street
There are no miracles in this backroom
only curses and band-aids.
Smell the liquor lacquer sweating
from the walls’ pores.
Desperate gestures for a trinket of hope
bought without your heart bone cut out.
She will know your hollow gift
and won’t press it to her chest,
because she can feel the cold echoes
bouncing off its stilted shape.
You also bought a curse there
black feathers singed and tied
without your blood and a contract
forgetting
that it stays with you
until you cut it out of your own bones.
The woman won’t tell you how to do that,
or that
she captured your soul sludge
in a mug mixed with fennel and dust
and tries to sell it back to you with a promise of emptiness
and nothing dark, but that’s just a bandage,
and ripped off will bleed everything out.
Posted by tea parties on neptune on July 22, 2025
https://teapartiesonneptune.wordpress.com/2025/07/22/you-thought-you-could-go-shopping-for-a-soul-on-vine-street/
The Straw Man Diaries Part IX
I found you heavy in the bog
cattails sprouting from your frog
nest chest and a hummingbird song
bursting from your throat.
You have a new straw skin-
shiny and crisp,
and I ask you how you got here.
You reply with a will-o-the-wisp
flicker from your eyes,
and I murmur a heart-filled
baby rabbit that I place-
fur-lined:
now your crown.
I kiss you a gale
storm, and drive it
deeper into the darker
waters for next time.
Posted by tea parties on neptune on May 3, 2025
https://teapartiesonneptune.wordpress.com/2025/05/03/the-straw-man-diaries-part-ix/
Pharmakon
Your nightshade honey tongue
waltzing
in my house of beggars.
I offer
a song plucked
from primordial
joys. Fresh bouquets
but picked now withering
and you slither your belladonna
sainted soul back into the cracks
of your crevassed molded existence.
Posted by tea parties on neptune on April 29, 2025
https://teapartiesonneptune.wordpress.com/2025/04/29/pharmakon/
A Seed Adrift is not Lost
Dandelion fluff
heart
sneezed
onto a plateau
of wandering wishes.
Posted by tea parties on neptune on April 21, 2025
https://teapartiesonneptune.wordpress.com/2025/04/21/a-seed-adrift-is-not-lost/
Are you Real
If you lie, are you real –
to yourself, to the mountains
to the sky?
He becoming a troll –
a gold melted down soul
now carbon iron rust.
She kept his silver tongued-
affections deeply stitched
into her garment mind.
Dream a little dream-
How many cuts until I find it?
The stranger wants to know.
His body on the chopping block-
Riddled with delusions and a clock
of caprice instead of a soul.
(NaPoWriMo day 19 inspired by in the Hall of the Mountain King and Peer Gynt)
Posted by tea parties on neptune on April 19, 2025
https://teapartiesonneptune.wordpress.com/2025/04/19/are-you-real/
Boots the Pirate Cat
She shipwrecked to her concrete destiny
dressed in splash of black cape
and miniature white boots.
Displaced but not deterred,
she settled onto her new ship (porch)
with unwavering bravery and fealty.
Yes she stole the hearts, but she protected her booty.
Never would the boy wander abroad without her
tailing him ensuring his safety.
She shivered her timbers too many times
and her mateys finally brought her inside.
These days she gets to live out pirate retirement
within the cabin, replete with tarnished tins
of treats with feathers and fins.
(NaPoWrimo day 18 )
Posted by tea parties on neptune on April 18, 2025
https://teapartiesonneptune.wordpress.com/2025/04/18/boots-the-pirate-cat/
Friends that Flock Together
Birds of a feather spring from fecund
tree hive minds;
Hatched aeons ago in hyphae hugged walls:
things of affection and enchantment.
The half sun, the half moon
in a cauldron.
We are the balance
and the flight.
( NaPoWriMo Day 17….inspired by art of Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington)
Posted by tea parties on neptune on April 17, 2025
https://teapartiesonneptune.wordpress.com/2025/04/17/friends-that-flock-together/
At Night in the Tulips
Ninna nanna she hums and strokes
her little Belle’s face
under the stars spilling from
their cup holders of dark matter
concoction.
Nina nanna in an intoxicating cup
of silk and soft breeze,
lulling her to sleep in
this bed of red.
(NaPoWrimo day 15. inspired by folklore telling of fairies cradling their babies at night in tulips)
Posted by tea parties on neptune on April 15, 2025
https://teapartiesonneptune.wordpress.com/2025/04/15/at-night-in-the-tulips/
Tea parties on Neptune 