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H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

270 followers 150 following 410 posts

Posting a poem a week to help us through our Interesting Times ~ also weird science, history, politics, tt/rpg games ~ don't follow me, follow @greenmtgirl instead ~ bruorton.dreamwidth.org ~ warlockofagnesi.tumblr.com ~ he/him/late for dinner

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H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

Come here, little one...

All Hallows
By Louise Glück
Even now this landscape is assembling.
The hills darken. The oxen
sleep in their blue yoke,
the fields having been
picked clean, the sheaves
bound evenly and piled at the roadside
among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:

This is the barrenness
of harvest or pestilence.
And the wife leaning out the window
with her hand extended, as in payment,
and the seeds
distinct, gold, calling
Come here
Come here, little one

And the soul creeps out of the tree.

October 31, 2025 at 8:27 PM

H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

Time for spooky season poems.

The Vampire

Madison Julius Cawein
1865 – 1914

A lily in a twilight place?
A moonflow’r in the lonely night?—
Strange beauty of a woman's face
Of wildflow’r-white!

The rain that hangs a star’s green ray
Slim on a leaf-point’s restlessness,
Is not so glimmering green and gray
As was her dress.

I drew her dark hair from her eyes,
And in their deeps beheld a while
Such shadowy moonlight as the skies
Of Hell may smile.

She held her mouth up redly wan,
And burning cold,—I bent and kissed
Such rosy snow as some wild dawn
Makes of a mist.

God shall not take from me that hour,
When round my neck her white arms clung!
When ‘neath my lips, like some fierce flower,
Her white throat swung!

Or words she murmured while she leaned!
Witch-words, she holds me softly by,—
The spell that binds me to a fiend
Until I die.

October 14, 2025 at 2:37 AM

H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

Let me remember.

September Midnight
By Sara Teasdale

Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer,
Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing,
Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects,
Ceaseless, insistent.

The grasshopper’s horn, and far-off, high in the maples,
The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence
Under a moon waning and worn, broken,
Tired with summer.

Let me remember you, voices of little insects,
Weeds in the moonlight, fields that are tangled with asters,
Let me remember, soon will the winter be on us,
Snow-hushed and heavy.

Over my soul murmur your mute benediction,
While I gaze, O fields that rest after harvest,
As those who part look long in the eyes they lean to,
Lest they forget them.

September 19, 2025 at 1:52 AM

H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

Mary Oliver.

The black honey of summer.

ripe blackberries hanging from a blackberry cane, with ferns in the background

August
by Mary Oliver

When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend

all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking

of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body

accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among

the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.

August 11, 2025 at 9:10 PM

H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

You could say anything.

Poem by Charles O. Hartman.

Ticket

I love the moment at the ticket window—he says—
when you are to say the name of your destination, and realize
that you could say anything, the man at the counter
will believe you, the woman at the counter
would never say No, that isn't where you're going,
you could buy a ticket for one place and go to another,
less far along the same line. Suddenly you would find yourself
—he says—in a locality you've never seen before,
where no one has ever seen you and you could say your name
was anything you like, nobody would say No,
that isn't you, this is who you are. It thrills me every time.

August 4, 2025 at 6:23 PM

H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

This cleft body.

Peach
By Dorianne Laux

I kneel to the ground fall peach,
its russet belly, its honey streaks,
touch its new tough skin, run my thumb
along its deep, sexy cleft. I pluck another
from a low branch, tug it down into
captivity like an animal caught
in a bramble, scooped into my arms
that open to return it to the wide field
of my cutting board where I lift
the knife, slice around the stony pit,
its purple edges bleeding into the gold flesh
in a starburst, and like a star
becoming into silence, miniscule
pulse of living light from this distance,
has been making itself over and over
from the fire within it, like the sound hole
of a violin that welcomes any dark music.
To think we can eat a sunset,
convicted, as we are, to the mud
of this earth, knees dark with dirt, hands
sticky with essence, to think I too
am here in this cleft body, a being
split into parts and seamed back
together, swollen with desire,
hungry for the sun.

July 23, 2025 at 4:10 AM

H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

We are so busy.

Tomatoes
by Joy Sullivan

I waited so long for love
and suddenly, here it is
standing in the garden, hands full
of heirlooms hot from the sun.

Soon we’ll make a supper of them.
Salted slabs between slices of bread.
Your beard silvers. My hips ripen.
The mail piles up.

Phone calls go unanswered. Forgive us.
Our mouths are full of tomatoes.
We are so busy
being small and hungry and alive.

July 15, 2025 at 7:55 PM

H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

maggie and milly and molly and may

E. E. Cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

July 8, 2025 at 8:23 PM

H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

Poem for the week.

The Year of the Goldfinches

By Ada Limón

There were two that hung and hovered
by the mud puddle and the musk thistle.
Flitting from one splintered fence post
to another, bathing in the rainwater’s glint
like it was a mirror to some other universe
where things were more acceptable, easier
than the place I lived. I’d watch for them:
the bright peacocking male, the low-watt
female, on each morning walk, days spent
digging for some sort of elusive answer
to the question my curving figure made.
Later, I learned that they were a symbol
of resurrection. Of course they were,
my two yellow-winged twins feasting
on thorns and liking it.

June 30, 2025 at 3:04 PM

H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

the bottom one...

June 15, 2025 at 2:14 AM

H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

Reporting in from our local No Kings rally today in northern New England, I'd guess ~250 people lining both sides of main street! Excellent turnout, and a lot of support from folks driving through.

People line both sides of a main street, holding flags and homemade signs.

my hand covers several stenciled letters of a No Smoking sign on a concrete barrier so that it reads "NO KING"

People line the side of the street, packed together, holding signs and flags, fading into blurry obscurity. In the foreground, the only legible sign reads "No dictators in the USA."

A man strides the edge of a street lined with people. Three legible signs read "A toupee is not a crown," No Kings, No Dictators, No Oligarchy," and "Trump can oligargle my balls."

June 15, 2025 at 1:58 AM

H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

You don't have to be dying to be held.

@lena-oleanderson.bsky.social

We Have Enough Dead Friends
by Lena Oleanderson

Come over. The doors are open,
my flat's a mess and
so is my heart
but the doors are always open.
Come over. I will make soup,
probably from frozen but
the important thing is
we will both eat.

You don't have to be dying,
but if you are,
or you feel like you are,
or if living's been hard,
call me, and I will show up.
It doesn't have to be that bad,
it doesn't have to be bad at all,
but if it is, please call.

Do you want me to do the groceries?
Do you want me to mop the floors?
Do you need to be held;
you don't have to be dying to be held.
If you want me to be there, I want to.

I'm on the bathroom floor again,
and breathing is hard,
and eating's been hard, and sleeping,
the world is a laden thing
rolling around on my chest lately.
Just being alive is heavy tonight,
but we have enough dead friends.
Come over.

May 6, 2025 at 4:54 PM

H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

After the rain.

from the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

When you are so full of sorrow
that you can’t walk, can’t cry anymore,
think about the green foliage that sparkles after
the rain. When the daylight exhausts you, when
you hope a final night will cover the world,
think about the awakening of a young child.

April 28, 2025 at 3:56 PM

H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

Fighting back.

Don’t Hesitate
by Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

April 21, 2025 at 8:07 PM

H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

Denise Levertov.

The Breathing

An absolute
patience.
Trees stand
up to their knees in
fog. The fog
slowly flows
uphill.
White
cobwebs, the grass
leaning where deer
have looked for apples.
The woods
from brook to where
the top of the hill looks
over the fog, send up
not one bird.
So absolute, it is
no other than
happiness itself, a breathing
too quiet to hear.

April 14, 2025 at 5:47 PM

H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

Still from a Monty Python sketch, with an official-looking British insignia and the title "No. 42: How Not To Be Seen"

April 11, 2025 at 2:13 PM

H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

A random midweek political data point: Democrats are outperforming in special elections so far this year by 10 points, about the same as in the run-up to the 2018 midterms:

(source: gelliottmorris.substack.com/p/democrats-...)

Chart showing 14 special elections so far in 2025, with an average swing to Democrats of 10 points over the 2024 election margin.

March 26, 2025 at 9:06 PM

H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

Me in the National Security team group chat

A screenshot from the X-Files episode Hollywood A.D.: a threeway split screen of Scully, Mulder, and Skinner each on the phone while relaxing in their own bathtub.

March 25, 2025 at 6:09 PM

H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

Everything flowers, from within:

Saint Francis and the Sow
By Galway Kinnell

The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don’t flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

March 25, 2025 at 2:31 PM

H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

So, you inspired me (lying awake in the middle of last night) -- instead of trying to track it down in its green notebook now likely stashed in some box -- to re-invent that half-remembered poem from college, based on the fragments still with me:

Catch, and Release

Following their scripts, the girls shrieked
and flinched and the boys approached
boots raised, but with short messy hair
and thick glasses you ducked in ahead
of them with a Solo cup and scooped
it up, heading out the door.

I have no idea where you’ve gotten to
but what’s stuck with me, what I’d still
like to tell you twenty-five years later,
was not just how decisively you acted
but the way your instinct drove you even
among people who hate spiders.

March 21, 2025 at 7:14 PM

H. P. Friendcraft

@starcravingmad.bsky.social

....the full preceding exchange I linked to, if you're a glutton for punishment / can't believe he really did his routine of "you're ducking the question" (to allow him to duck accountability for the entire conversation, natch) without (!) having remembered to ask the question first this time around