Literary Vegan

The wild rabbit and the water rat wait for me  wait - before the rustle into shadows, the under. I am silent. The see-through me hovers in that secret country plain where small creatures pause - leaving fear in the earth  for five of my heartbeats. Why are you rushing, really? When human footsteps  scare away the living soft, the underbelly of what you call good for your soul on other days. LJ Ireton 2024.

You have known daisy days; staring up at sunflowers who don't look down - they have their own things to talk about against their blue background. How forlorn you feel then -   like a necklace pearl in the grass, polished. But the moon sees you, it does; in the deep purple dusk,  small, perfect, star. LJ Ireton 2024

You pull me back down when I chase after stars:   moon tiaras,  then struggle to breathe - the oxygen place. Sometimes my brain blurs ghosts and phantoms on the road - I'm afraid to walk until you trace each tall, grey lamppost. I tangle myself into talented nightmares a lot, sparkling knots. you speak like a comb - I collect the glitter.  LJ Ireton 2024

My sunflowers are half-sun, half-rust ring unusual - the petals are starting to drift still beautiful, lone flyers like the bronze wings above them flying right over the sun -  a clawed kite, haloed fork tail stirring me from numb wordlessness.  I write of this flame that you might know  the yellow flower, look up - up, where prayers go, riding briefly on birds of prey.  That the hollow cold of not knowing can fill, burn with just a flutter past the eye, a kingfisher blur, like orange sugar to a curious mind  wandering in the shade.  LJ Ireton, 2024

The morning revealed rubble, burnt books - But on another building, artwork elephants. I grow sunflowers in the city - The city covered in soot. They summon you through dirt dripped lines, rust eyes imploring on stalks. Like the trunks talking to each other On the wall no-one stopped to look at Before. When others rage I want to make  replications of this earth in the night and wake to find more elephants.  LJ Ireton 2024

Poets wrote of eternity  being seen in a flower. I looked. And looked. Even in the wild rose,  white ghost-whispered pink tips amongst  its dry, brown withered sisters, I could not find it. But my seed I planted weeks ago, and have watched upwards since - all green leaf and stem and question,  has opened - one eye, coy under fluttering eyelashes of a landed goldfish Sun. And I feel like I nurtured a star that looks out beyond me - the oldest beginning, begun - calling all of today's wings to gather black and opaline under a silk fire  feeding tomorrow. LJ Ireton 2024

No man is an island,  No. But where I sleep is - sacred; I lie as Circe on green linen, felines sphinx pose either side of me their breathing a control of time  allowing mine to be cotton  while clocks and expectations  fall into the sea.  LJ Ireton 2024