The Sun

Easter Sunday

0418.2025

In the quiet of Sunday morning,

a soft light sings of beginning,

and then there’s the scent of wild tulips—

somewhere in the world,

a child finds its prize in an egg,

and this wonder fits their small hand.

I love the human hand—

lifting another from the dust,

offering safety to the damned,

the forgotten,

the afraid.

What is a god?

Perhaps a hush that moves between us all—

a voice in the blood

that whispers:

“love one another—

and mean it.”

If Christ ever walked,

let him be a man who fed the hungry

with bread and time,

who wept without display,

and spoke not to be praised—

but to remind us

we are not alone,

how we are loved

and love.

I do not need a rising of the sun

to know what it is to begin again.

But for those who do—

may this morning

open like a soft gate.

For the children—

may their laughter be real,

their baskets bright,

their eggs warm in their hands,

their fear vanished.

And for the rest of us—

the wanderers, the watchers,

the ones who love in quiet ways—

may the hush of this day

bring a small peace,

and the gentlest permission

to keep going in love’s light.

m.c.f.

Friendship

I’ve had many friendships in this life, but never imagined one of the most profound ties would come from a culture long portrayed as distant from my own. It’s remarkable how deeply propaganda—both political and spiritual—can shape our fears and close our hearts.

This friendship has quietly transformed me. It’s given me a reservoir of symbolism, emotion, and lived experience to draw from. I know, without doubt, this connection was meant to find me.

These poems are a tribute to that culture’s New Year—a celebration I once saw only in images, yet somehow felt deeply in my soul. I will never forget the beauty I witnessed, nor the quiet love that marked it. I am changed.

____________________________

❖

In the Shadow of Cypress and Stone

(For A.N.)

0325.2025

Somewhere in Persia’s quiet hills,

the earth begins to wake—

brushed with thyme and honeyed light,

stone warming under the weight

of memory and feet.

He walks among the almond trees,

their blossoms like shy confessions

to the sky.

His breath folds into the wind,

into the hush that gathers

between pine and prayer.

The new year rises not just

from the Haft-Seen’s sacred table,

but from the stubborn green

pushing through cold soil,

from rivers swollen

with what winter could not keep.

The mountains do not speak—

they listen.

They cradle the songs

of women long vanished,

and the dust of grandfathers

settling into root.

If I were there,

I’d carry silence like a lantern,

let the cypress trees

translate what I cannot say.

And maybe then he’d sense it—

not just the path beneath his feet,

but someone walking just behind,

quiet as breath,

and just as full of love.

m.c.f.

______________

The Gifts

(For A.N. & His Family)

0325.2025

And I,

gatherer of signs,

read his omissions like scripture—

do not need to be named

to be known.

I do not need to be touched

to feel him unfolding

in the space between the truth

and the one he’s not ready to speak.

He gave me his mother’s quiet gaze,

his father’s timeworn pride,

his nieces hands—

Glass-colored, aching with vision.

He gave me laughter in his smile,

and the dust of old men

gathered like roots in the center of the room.

He sent me the new season—

the soft riot of a New Year offerings—

pomegranate seeds and sweet wine.

The table was set with silence and grace,

amber glasses circling like moons,

around the weight of his lineage.

And he gave me himself,

not in words,

but in the shape of what he left untouched.

m.c.f.

❖

✵ Outside, the cypress trees swayed in slow confession, offering quiet comfort in place of questions.

❖

✦ AI-generated conceptual artwork

✦ Created to accompany poetry

✦ Not for commercial use or sale

Synchronicity

Dàimh

0427.2025

Have you ever glimpsed

the first breath —

and the final silence —

of a soul you were sworn to?

Then felt the instant

you vanished

into the knowing in their gaze,

as if the stars themselves

had charted the voyage

long before your name was spoken.

And the sum of it:

It was always written.

Soul to soul,

one eye,

one flame.

— m.c.f.

AI-generated conceptual visual ⊹ Edited in Photoshop ⊹ Created to accompany the poem ⊹ Not for sale

Evanescence

Dissolve

0415.2024

I’ve become something smooth

unraveling underwater—

a mourning fog,

a shadow folded

into another shadow.

I once held so much feeling

it spilled into the quiet,

lit the unmoving air,

and said, “I am.”

Now I watch the fog,

and agree with my life:

it is better to die

than go on kneeling

in shadows.

m.c.f.

AI-generated conceptual visual | Edited in Photoshop | Created to accompany the poem | Not for sale

Starborn

The Distance

0413.3025

“I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.” — Hafiz (translated by Daniel Ladinsky)

Who was I to the stars?

Was I once another poet, in another time?

A mouth of flame, a scribe of truth?

My being is pulled—this way, then that—

summoned by the pomegranate’s promise,

its madness, its ache, its unbearable desire.

How can I feel this one thing

as if I were the fruit itself,

pressed in someone’s trembling hand—

as if another soul has tasted mine,

and recalls the honey,

the meaning of me…

my breath.

Drawn to the depth of eyes,

as though they hold a memory—

a trace of a life once lived,

an echo of something once known,

a peace that speaks my name,

who was I?

The poets I venerate—

I carry their words like prayers,

as if they were spun from the same silk

that weaves my breath

and moves my hands.

And now my heart feels left behind—

not lost, but waiting,

hidden in the folds of some forgotten time.

Let my mouth open like light,

let my hands serve love,

and only love.

And still—

with sorrow stilled,

my breath silent into the dusk—

I ask:

Who was I to the stars?

❦

m.c.f.

Chromatic Divide

Color Theory

0411.2025

There are kinds of color.

Some go quietly—

sink in water,

drown in the painter’s grief,

brushed on to summon

love or shame or longing.

But others—

others are fugitives.

They vault the borderlines,

bleed through the page,

burn to get out.

Some mingle.

Fuse.

Grow gorgeous in rebellion—

despite the purists,

who hiss that mixing

is filth.

Contamination.

Some crust over—

unusable.

Others are branded:

too loud, too dark,

too melancholic to frame.

Not fit

(for what?)

the purists murmur—

to the others,

to the makers,

to themselves—

trying to stay clean.

But I keep stirring.

Even when they blister.

Even when the canvas recoils.

Because the color that runs

is the only one

that breathes.

m.c.f.

Fire to Frost

Poma dat Autumnus: A Triptych

0312.2013

❦

I. The Slow Burn

Autumn sets a slow fire to the land—

Carlina’s meadow burning into vine,

nightshade crawling up the arms

of trees that no longer beg the sun.

Stone and timber wear their habits—

honeysuckle, rust—

purple wood curling at the feet

of earth turned to hardened brioche

then cracked open by time,

eggless, and bare of bloom.

The wind forgets its voice.

A spider strings the hush—

the quiet silver pulled taut

from dusk until its dawn.

Flame comes like blades,

orange and yellow petals falling

from the hands of the dying.

II. The Shadows

Autumn favors shadowed places.

It runs fast-footed into sorrow,

steals the color from Rose and Cardinals—

and melts them into copper,

bronze,

the alloys of dusk.

It lends its metal light

to its red-rebellion

marching toward winter.

Its rivers are plum-dark.

Its waterfalls, lilac and frost.

The fruit of its womb—

Drunk.

Bruised.

Made to warm the teeth of bone.

Spice floats through corridors

of stone,

through chimneys that exhale

clove, ghost, and memory

into forgotten kitchens.

Where once a flower curled in bloom,

a sea of crystal prepares to sleep.

⸻

III. The Liturgy of Dusk

I watch nature turn her key.

A crow calls into sky’s quiet ruin.

A raven drags its soft black cloak

toward a blackberry crown.

The sparrow mourns—

sings light back through shadow.

Rain touches my window

with long, tired fingers.

It hums something almost-kind,

almost-remorseful:

“Autumn,

you glorious thing.

You brave and crumbling thing.

How precious your time is—

Ambrosial.

Vanishing.

Born to die.”

m.c.f.

Twice-Bound

The Man In Black

1229.2009

The man came to me

on a black horse,

his flask full

of black water.

He rode along

a deep black lake,

his ride cavorting

with its reflection.

He wore a black suit

that made his fingers

bone-bright,

and pulled his hat down low—

it smelled like bad meat,

like a million roads

heading nowhere far.

“You must be Earth’s daughter,”

he said.

I told him I was.

“How’s life

walking along her spine?”

“It’s like striking a match

on gasoline,” I said—

“beautiful bravo,

bitter blight.”

The man in black nodded.

“So I hear,”

he said,

spitting into the dirt,

grinning like a gentleman

carved from bad omens.

He stepped off his horse

to walk beside me.

There were banjos

in his eyes.

The grass between us

was waist-deep,

and the wind

sighed like a tired woman.

The sun

was a coal-speck

burning in my eye.

“I tell you, girl,”

he muttered,

“livin’ ain’t easy.

You got people’s pain

stacked against ya.”

Then he turned solemn:

“You got to reckon next time, now.”

We stopped

where a dirt road

vanished

into a hole of wire-twisted trees.

A dog barked,

somewhere far.

“Maybe from the Janus plantation,”

he said.

Then,

he took out his flask.

“Want some?”

I stared at it

a good while.

All these years

I’d been thirsty.

And I thought—

why not?

I was learning

to leave trails

with no scent.

I drank the black water.

There was nothing else.

m.c.f.

Life’s Winter

Crone (Winter’s Knowing)

0111.2013

She wears the almanac of her face,

keeping records—

maps of familiarity,

delicate roads

where disappointment and joy

ride together,

ending at the shore of her heart,

which has raced

a matron’s marathon.

There is a protracted shortening—

of spine,

of endurance—

a frame slowly collapsing,

no longer able to hold

all the wisdom,

the words,

the purpose

she once laid out

like careful plans.

But time knows.

She is bursting with sleep

and quiet quartets.

Age doesn’t rebel or beg.

It won’t implore another’s time—

not even its own—

nor question

any journey.

It accepts,

without reservation,

the course

of that voyage.

m.c.f.

AI-generated conceptual visual ⁘ Edited in Photoshop ⁘ Inspired by my ongoing exploration of symbolic duality in traditional oil and mythic narrative ⁘ Created to accompany the poem ⁘ Not for sale

The Soul & The Storm

“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.”

— Marcus Aurelius

I.

Take a look at your contribution to the issue. Is expressing the frustrated emotion of violence—toward self or others—ever worth it? I sometimes sense how difficult it is to feel sorry for those whose frustration consumes them, but more often than not, I don’t. I feel sorrow.

II.

Someone once taught me that Neptune frustrated Odysseus for a reason. Neptune persecuted him so he would be forced to think, to evolve, in order to achieve his teleology—which was Telemachus. If Odysseus had not experienced those trials before returning to Ithaca, the suitors may have outwitted him, and he may have failed in achieving his task.

III.

I agree. And it’s not an easy thing. But this single issue is the cornerstone of Western civilization—and older than the Bible, older than most spiritual texts themselves: frustration spurs growth. How you proceed is entirely your responsibility. Nobility is about taking the suffering and consciously not adding to it with a reactionary mindset.

I love you.

m.c.f.

❦

On Coincidence and Voice

My work—written and visual—is not reactive. It is not borrowed. It does not arise from imitation. It comes from lived experience, from discipline, and from an interior language that can’t be manufactured or reverse-engineered.

Creation, for me, is not about echoing trends or circling others’ expressions. It’s about responding to life in real time—honestly, and without pretense.

This isn’t a defense. It’s a declaration. A timestamp. A quiet assertion that truth in art doesn’t need to shout—it just endures.

I don’t create to compete. I create to witness and stay in rhythm with something real.

m.c.f.

Photo, 2025, Marni Fraser

Feminine Familiar

Grimalkin

0626.2013

There are two means of refuge from the misery of life — music and cats.

Albert Schweitzer

_______

When I was young, I crept—

silver and sinuous beneath the sun,

my backbone curving softly

in a meandering sway,

swinging to and fro without concern.

My mother taught me:

survival is a shifting thing—

a dance of swift arrangements

that play across the feet

like toccata and fugue.

And time, she said, is a virtue.

The trees would gather me in their hands,

lifting me to their green embrace,

where I would drape,

lazy in their arms—

then sleep,

and the day would vanish,

sunlight dusting my pelt,

warming my quickly aging skeleton.

I made friends with sparrows and doves,

studied their strategy and society

until they grew familiar—

comfortable in my presence.

And when I had to finish one (regretfully),

I gave thanks for their life,

careful not to desecrate

the delicate wings and breast—

burnishing their bones ivory

beneath my tongue.

Now I bask, wearier, dreaming—

of balled silk in a basket

on my mistress’s rocking chair,

of buttermilk in autumn light,

of human hands that fussed

over my coat

which thickens at the scent of snow.

(And I could speak of my fur—

its purpose and promise,

its calm, its serenity,

its gentle withdrawal from need—

and of the machine in my throat,

its contented hum

as fingers dance upon it.)

I remember the handsome Tom

who sat upon my windowsill,

and my six children

fastened to my belly,

their paws kneading

the milk into motion.

I remember

the hurried hunt—

a mouse, a lizard—

tokens of affection,

placed with reverence

at my mistress’s feet.

Now, these days—

some fire in my gilded eyes

dims, day by day.

My stance trembles.

I fall,

left or right—

a towel laid gently

to soften the landing

of bones tired and frail.

There is a temperate quietness.

And shameless, with indignant grace,

I nearly breathe my last—

until my eyes spark

just one more time.

And though humanized,

I am not human—

(as if I wish to be).

In all sincerity:

a cat.

m.c.f.

Originally written 06.26.13, posted April 11, 2025 at 9:36am PST

Photo 2011 · “Sienna” · Marni Fraser

Liminal Set

How To Love Words

0720.2010

Wait for the note—

then the hiatus between each syllable.

And when they wander,

go tenderly after—

When they return,

let them rest

within the question.

(And if they never return,

love the silence

they leave behind.)

m.c.f.

(Love the words of others tenderly,

because sometimes they are greatly bruised.)

❦

Convergence

How To Explain Peace

1125.2012

And there goes my sense of self,

a jester turned escapee,

carrying my unrest like a crown.

It found me

not in silence,

but in the moment

of a door opening.

m.c.f.

❦

Concept rendering • AI-assisted + digital post-processing • inspired by my ongoing exploration of symbolic duality in traditional oil and lens.

Nocturnal Labor

Inheritance

0410.2025 (5:51am)

I have known

something like love,

the way a flame knows

the shape of its wick—

brief,

then gone.

Loss arrives

without form—

a slow turning of color

left too long in water.

I do not speak

the dialect of daughters,

nor wear the surname

of belonging.

What came tonight

was not a break—

but a shift in the marrow,

a quiet consuming the room.

Nothing left but to feel

through pigment,

ghosts and echoes—

the things that do not ask

for understanding.

People pass through.

They name nothing.

And before they leave—

they unsee.

m.c.f.

Silence Ascending

Nobody Remembers the Dead

(For Yivannia)

0409.2025

At night, the heart eclipses

in the quiet of its own dark—

where hope, like a thread of dawn,

is the last small spark

in the failing arc

of meaning.

O day descending—

day that lost its love,

its faith,

its crown—

don’t sleep upon your stone.

And because the dead are forgotten,

let the eyes of the living rise—

let them sing the songs of spring,

let ribs bloom open,

and love sigh loose

through mouth and hand.

When the sun climbs

the ladder of the sky

and bursts at its peak—

its golden elation spilling

its purpose into you—

let its thread of light

run through your sorrow,

and not return.

Then we need no reason

to remember the dead.

— m.c.f.

Entropy

The Mercy of Dust

0407.2025

Why must I root myself

in a world that let go of me?

To hunger for joy

is to drink from a cracked chalice—

each swallow a vanishing echo.

I diminish

in the hush of hours,

folding myself into invisible,

bleeding quietly

into the mortar of unseen walls.

One dusk will come

and not retreat.

It will wear no blade—

only silence,

and the low call

of something gentler than survival.

Existence is the turning of one’s face

toward the locus of decay—

and worse,

the slow burial of the heart

beneath its own debris.

I do not remember

a mouth that spoke my name

with unburned vowels.

I do not recall

a hand that stayed

after winter.

What light waits for me

that does not beg for transaction?

What word dreams of my ear

without trembling into ash?

What heart

could swallow mine

without choking?

Have I not given?

My spine?

My unspoken hourglass?

My silence, dressed in gold?

In the end, there is no architecture—

only the memory

of fingers on disappearing stone.

I will unthread into

the constellations’ breath,

into the sleep

between atoms,

into that holy remainder

no instrument can measure.

I will go

where absence cannot betray me,

where the echo does not ask

who threw the first stone.

I will go to love.

I will go

to where the dust has memory,

mercy wears no face,

and sorrow cannot follow.

m.c.f.

Original photograph, 2009 (35mm / digital) • post-processing in Adobe Photoshop • Marni Fraser

Trace Memory

The Imprinting

0407.2025

(Something keeps returning to the page.

Not the hand. Not the brush.

Something older. Something I still bleed for, quietly.)

The hour stretches long

at the altar of canvas—

where color won’t obey,

and the brush trembles with memory.

Isn’t it strange,

how one ghost finds its way back—

not through doors,

but through the curve of a shoulder,

through a piano’s melody,

or the burn of wine

when a throat is already weeping.

You’ve secreted it away—

labeled and buried

under strokes of gold

and blues drenched in restraint.

But still,

it lingers—

a grasp dropping your heart

when no one is near

to hear its break.

You tell yourself it’s nothing.

You call it wine,

or madness,

or the weariness that comes

from chasing light

through the mouth of a night

that keeps folding in on itself.

But you know.

You always know.

It is a certain ghost

whose eyes you know—

the echo of a song

made from the same silks and teeth as yours,

a soul-thread woven through your ribs

that refuses to snap.

And every line you paint

bleeds a little more of that ghost—

not because you want to,

but because you don’t know how

to stop.

m.c.f.

Rotation

To Rise Anyway

0406.2025

This morning, the sun tried to kiss me.

It offered a road between love and hate—

The choice…

But day begins with resistance,

where resignation won’t stay in bed,

and truth burns brighter

than the will to rise.

Awakening mocks the healing.

A suture must be sewn

through the hollow in my heart—

but the thread keeps breaking.

Woe.

Let it be enough

to keep love’s last promise.

Then I’ll complete the rotation,

and meet the moon.

m.c.f.

Theorem

Quickened

0406.2025

Where is my brown-eyed boy?

I first felt you in the North—

somewhere near the bone of Scandinavia—

your figure cast against the rim

of your own lost homeland.

Somehow, I knew you.

Somehow, you were like me:

severed

from your half.

Where did you go?

Did you die in the quiet?

Sink into quicksand?

Did they devour you—

fail to see you?

We’ve never met.

Perhaps you never were.

And yet…

you came to me

when I drank pain

and ate abuse like bread.

When I was far,

and alone—

as always—

but could no longer

hold its singularity.

You arrived from the East.

I saw you—clearly.

And now you name yourself

coward.

Thief.

You took my hope into the night,

rode it off

on a white horse

until you vanished—

a pale speck

swallowed by black.

Then silence.

Ah, you are showing me

just how lost I’ve become.

And how hope—

is nothing.

m.c.f.

❦