Julian (Hool)
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hool415.bsky.social
Julian (Hool)
@hool415.bsky.social
910 followers 740 following 4.1K posts
Nominated for a Forward Prize, Best Of The Net (Twice) and Two Pushcart Awards.
Black Bough (Silver Branch Poet), East Ridge Review (Featured Poet), Frogmore Papers, Full House Literary, Dream Catcher, Starbeck Orion, Dreich, Broken Spine, Frazzled Lit.
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hool415.bsky.social
Hullo #vss365 and to #pale
Pale Once, an elderly neighbour, (who would die the next day), was placed by his upstairs window. He looked so pale: waxy as an unlit candle, his cream curtains quivering like premature, part-formed wings. It was summer, I was in my garden and we all knew he was dying. I sometimes climb back into that stare, to take his point of view: not seeing the trees, plants, or grass or me, only a bespoke armageddon.
February 8, 2026 at 8:03 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo @tomsnarsky.bsky.social #smallpoemsunday #poetry Thanks as always for your curating!
Old I know a few perfectly well elderly who can only look back, you know, the ones that forcefully reminisce at every point, as if they have a tilting mechanism which suddenly acts to cease their engagement with the current. These days I just think there’s something eminently sensible, even rather lovely in that. Enlightenment Stopped driving at a crossing, facing the other way: a packed city bus, the young crew-cut driver looked so serene, reminded me of a long-ago college visitor: a meditation demonstration from a Buddhist monk; both calmly following the prescribed path, each suitably unattached to their distracting internal chat.
February 8, 2026 at 3:46 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo #vss365 and to #blood
Another old one today.
Overheads When I was young the constellations were glints of bone, suspended skeletons, whose mythic forms loomed large as legends; the pinned sagas of my junior skies. Then a telescope brought the stars to me. Freed from their confinement by the sound of science, I understood something of the universe’s atomic roar. I noticed colours: odd drops of blood, the discarded flecks from a manhandled bullion and tints from the deftest breath of blue. For a time, these sparks scarred me as the furthest outriders from the pomp of a Creator’s blaze. Now my exploded theology has flung these thoughts aside and all my myths have died. With only science left, half a knowledge no longer enough to hear the birth of light; and the sky is mute again, the darkness, undisguised.
February 7, 2026 at 6:17 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo #vss365 and to #wound
Wound I’m not sure if any argument can ever be a zero-sum game, despite a pair of razor-tongues deployed, one always wounds the more effectively: a sudden silence when both know that invisible line has been crossed… Any immediate mutual-suturing, just stitching over an unhealing putrid mess.
February 6, 2026 at 8:01 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk and to #poemsabout #mouths
Three days after the hole reopened and astro-grass rugs lined a mouth of mud, and a hesitating coffin shone, gulping in its last light. Three days after the hired-driver’s mile-marker cough and that vaping workman with his too close shaking, fearful truck. Three days after such unseasonal sun lit a priest’s optimism and all that time you stood when it was done, rooted: taking up the casket’s shock.
February 6, 2026 at 6:41 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo #vss365 and to #lambent
Lambent Too claustrophobic to be ever buried, so, I’ll become an actual lambent flame. Not for me that trapping urn: (just screaming genie within a lamp!) No, pass me to a wayward gust on some uneducated hill for the needed bullying of my dust and soul.
February 5, 2026 at 5:10 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo #vss365 and to #ghost
Ghost Ghost: lighten up please! you can fully be yourself now… a new translucence for all (who want) to see; step though those fusty bricks, find again that still haunting though no longer living relationship.
February 4, 2026 at 9:11 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo. Just put this up on the other side for a TopTweetTuesday challenge on #karma #poetry
No Way) Calmer When young I strained to be strong as that Tiananmen-man who once held up a tank; a student myself less dramatically, I slowed the nibble of Brazilian trees by understanding the cries and the writings of hither-unto unpublished-cows. I still tend left yet only on well-trod highways, rarely these days driven off-road, loathing fascists but equally those who manifest or peddle any old woo. I’ll call it now: we were all short-changed by our lavender drawer-liners; that delicate, slightly Edwardian waft to counter the spilling-stink pouring out Pandora’s Box. Just hold on: there’s no balance coming wearing jittery and hopeless 21st Century shoes.
February 3, 2026 at 6:12 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo #vss365 and to #pain An old one today.
On The Edge, Opposite Porthmear Cove, Cornwall Sunning myself, perched on a glaring parapet, ribbons of colour before me like Alum Bay layers: the stepped-back hue of a cloudless sky, a sweating stretch of empty road, garish citrine sand. An American couple share this view: the Des Moines man, pinned down by a hissing oxygen line, curates his many hidden cancers. Europe, he explains, is a final trip together, as love and pain flow between them in the tiny tides of her gently squeezing hand.
February 3, 2026 at 5:48 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo @fromoneline.bsky.social #fromoneline and to the marvellous Meg!
#poetry
He Couldn’t Be Found He couldn’t be found there was no one there of course, decades spent as a conduit, fitting in, nothing more than an empty people pleaser. His coffin felt hollow, the eulogy generic but scrupulously polite, the few dutiful faces realised only then he had successfully managed to navigate an almost entirely ripple-less life.
February 2, 2026 at 8:30 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo #vss365 and to #soul
Soul You. Please hold onto the ladder as I climb back down to make the periodic check of my soul. The sump of sin is claggy and black, think: a seabird washed up from an oil slick, but us, as all our rottenness turned outside in.
February 2, 2026 at 6:34 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo @rfsmith.bsky.social @dragonslayerma.bsky.social @victoriaspires.bsky.social @thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social
everyone welcome till 4pm Friday,
use to post poems: @hool415.bsky.social #promptcombo #tracks
(rail journey? walks? music? or just wanting to get off them!)
Anything goes.
Have fun…
Night Tracks It always meant I straddled the tectonic plates of a train’s arthritic joints to gain position against the window’s immediate breathy wake, two, maybe three inches only lowered: the whoosh washing my face alive; a jet-sound, which played cat and mouse, racing hard with the carriage. Outside: the passing thread of lights looked like a thin linear landfill for broken up municipally claimed (and to be re-used again), constellations.
February 1, 2026 at 9:43 PM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo #vss365 and to #shadow
Shadow Walking through a dusk street corners sharpen while clouded gulls become just bullying playground screams. A glockenspiel path taken over tree roots and their gnarly tripping shadows. This allotment shortcut is a bad idea, its face dishevelled, a patchwork of unshaven bristles and overgrown briars; beyond houses half-emerge from the foliage, aflame bedroom windows curious: peering like a row of attentive dress-circle lorgnettes. And that far cathedral spire, now transformed to the eeriest maypole for those screeching circling demonic crows.
February 1, 2026 at 8:08 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo @tomsnarsky.bsky.social and to #smallpoemsunday
Thanks as always for hosting #poetry
Llancaiach Fawr Manor Ghost Tour So many similarities between a near empty church and a supposed haunted house, I think in both it’s about straining: being overcome with that overwhelming need to hear then understandably filling in what’s missing yourself. No single admission guaranteeing a spiritual experience and even if it did feeling the same things as anyone else.
February 1, 2026 at 3:50 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo #vss365 and to #soothe Another old one.
The Pitch All oily-gods offer heaven as part of the package. The best lure, out of focus, necessarily detail-less, with the scent of a softening balm a sickly aroma but one that draws in, the “Come, come leave the You, be part of this bigger thing” a teeter, a fall from that ungrippable wall, the minuscule splash, perhaps a few strokes in the dissolving, soothing wash giddy, still doused with the sweet incense of nectar, not noticing the charlatan’s hands, the sotto voce whispers eager to help, gently disrobing the Self. Call it an oblation, or a shedding of cares, trust in the arms of a confidante, the pitcher plant shrugs and sups, both it and the insect get what they think they want.
January 31, 2026 at 4:52 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo @thebrokenspine.co.uk @alanparrywriter.co.uk #poemsabout #blackveils
Three Hearses Only overtook the stretched and dislocated cortège as my mother waited… diminished in the over-boil of rain. The bereft did not know or care, that face against the glass was draining through a stare, but the caned director leading glowered like an Orangeman challenged for his road. Afterwards, when the service’s pounding certainty starves to an echo, in some hired place that now flowered name will be passed again, but more quietly, plate to standing plate.
January 30, 2026 at 5:48 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo #vss365 and to #thrum
Three Scenes From God Seeking Dreams I lie flat on my back under the river, scree careering and bruising me, open eyes fixed: imaging the constant rush of fluid glass one day shattering or in a black attic: tentative, banging into things, feeling along splintery beams, the promise of a window, the uncertainty of what might be seen or seated unbelted, in a plastic directionless plane and hearing above that relentless engine thrum, through thin taut skin, the sound of a soundless sky bothering.
January 30, 2026 at 5:23 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo #vss365 and to #obfuscate
Obfuscate Once, before godless dark obfuscated again I saw Halley’s Comet: the eyepiece catching too an imagined roar as it aimed like Icarus blindly, for the sun. Trading burning for a gawped at wake, like a candle’s siren-call to the hypnotised diminishing moth.
January 29, 2026 at 5:24 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo #vss365 and to #quiver Another old one today. #poetry
Grasp A cemetery at a glance made glass, see the nearly-dead (still clutching names after all), their arthritic bones shedding skin, that same power the branches hold of knowing how to push away leaves. But if the dead are unburied and burnt, the urned unpurgeable part must be lost in earth or sky: fire-dust so the air itself seems rent - some steaming gasket blown, a sooty ash teasing the stamen’s quivering tongue, till recoiling too late from this pollen’s choking embrace. Our dirt does not go away, and after the trample of insect wings and legs on poisoned grapes, we still can turn the honey grey.
January 28, 2026 at 7:42 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo. Sorry tinkered version 2. Goodnight.
#poetry #nightmare #nightpoetry
Nightmare Just awoken, jolted from a nightmare, think: satellite pictures of a lightning storm caught from outer space; a hemisphere seen soundlessly dealing with a fire. There should be a universal Richter Scale for such events, so I could just record a 5.9, you would understand and then I could return to the vagaries of a bed.
January 28, 2026 at 3:13 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo #vss365 and to #wane
Wane It’s good we only possess a general sense of our half way point: that shift over from arrogant wax to tottering wane, when we reveal a cancerous darkness in the ugly sink of our gibbous years.
January 27, 2026 at 6:14 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo @rfsmith.bsky.social
and to #promptcombo #moment
Will look for something else too but this is the sort of short write @victoriaspires.bsky.social delightfully calls a poetic ‘trinket’.
Have a great week all!
Sunbeams True story: knew a college-girl, said she was self-experimenting with a home-cooked joy when at the most moment, a sunbeam appeared. These two images for me cannot now be untied: those gentle, warming, first reaching fingers of love.
January 26, 2026 at 11:49 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo #vss365 and to #cusp #poetry
Cusp A moon, when most emaciated is just several strands of ghostly light, an ornate veneer for its sharpened fashioned cusps. Within for this eerie gilt-edged scoop, Earthshine: that clod of us, reflected so simply as only a dull re-dug lunar-brown.
January 26, 2026 at 8:10 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo @fromoneline.bsky.social #fromoneline and to #Iwasborninthesnow
I Was Born In The Snow I was born in the snow, in the howling treeless steppe of deceits, just a mere scintilla of a lie, then over time made my way down the slippery scree into your valley of shadows and slyness where unnoticed, I quietly fattened. Now I’m ready to head-butt truth to serve the many, not the good. You’ve occasionally beckoned me in, to bleat for you, to fill the gap, when made aware all kept stock of honesty had already been hung out and mercilessly slaughtered.
January 26, 2026 at 7:57 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo @tomsnarsky.bsky.social and to #smallpoemsunday #poetry
Beyond The Front Garden A buzz of late school kids are passing the house: they all joke so loudly, it’s a clear group-binding thing, though diffusing any sense of forward winged speed. For moments I can’t hear the television. A giant juvenile hive tardy on the way home, drunk on their own freshly discovered and freely shared around honey. They don’t need to understand the burdens of daily office or their gathering obligations yet.
January 25, 2026 at 8:14 AM