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 #dark An old one, about a school friend…
Scattered (Near Fowey) A simple rowing boat, oars crimping the flatness of a thoughtless sea while only the sky’s dwarfing prayerfulness can upend or capsize, you coddle those ashes, warm and dark, with hopeless urgency as if a carried bird, and pouring out your sister-dust, a pearly cloud of memory is raining.
February 12, 2026 at 5:43 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo #vss365 and to #touch
Touch I thought before touching you, fearing and expecting my falling fingers might self-combust: the way meteors burn-up before even reaching Earth.
February 11, 2026 at 6:06 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo @dragonslayerma.bsky.social and to #promptcombo #ectasy
An old one which popped up in a religious anthology.
Lourdes Rain so hard, each of us confounded by our own black clouds, absorbed in the tightening queue: a wet swaying caterpillar. Forced to wait to view a statue, a story from a child like me, a ghost sent down from heaven to France, though unclear from the mosaic of many postcards in rows of holy kiosks, if the figure will talk. Too scared to look up in the shuffle past, but hearing the breath of a rolling collective gasp, and fragments of rushed foreign sounds, as if the winds of the world are here and speaking.
February 10, 2026 at 2:40 PM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo. Just put this up on the other side for #roots as a theme for TopTweetTuesday. #poetry
They Don’t Just Grow On Trees The antithesis of roots is wave-eaten sand, surreptitiously digested under ignorant toes, the coming topple imported, shark-like, through water: harbinger within a last perfectly complimented summer; then being told one parent had died, my news, screwed into a ball and kicked-around an open-mouthed school; too young for a burial, though still hearing the thud-thud percussion of mud striking a never fully closed lid; our ghosts don’t have roots so can rise through wood, with lassoing strange and strangling tendrils; occasionally disguised as that old childhood car, half-glimpsed, small-hour circling; the one you find you’ll always be a back-seat passenger in.
February 10, 2026 at 6:17 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo #vss365 and to #ache Apologies, but another old one today.
Signs And Junctions Driving away on a midnight motorway the lateness intoxicates, I listen to your unraveling then to my own: passengers both. The darkness is gilt-edged by passing traffic, and time not slowed but prised open before us, as spot-lit junctions wax and wane their tantalising. Next to me, light-years away, you scintillate with the fission of everything I have lost, so even words are soon left behind as I rocket back to those far away constellations, where stars burn with the fierce blueness of a new igniting and briefly, freed from the gentle ache of gravity, I am weightless this is how it all begins, I think, before the fall, yearning, back to Earth
February 10, 2026 at 5:40 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo @fromoneline.bsky.social #fromoneline and to #thequestionrepeateditself
The Question Repeated Itself The question repeated itself. “So, tell me, do you deserve to be here?” God stared, entirely fairly awaiting my answer. I trembled and sweated then finally spoke. “No”, I said, “I really don’t.” “Exactly”, said God, before smiling and adding: “You see, I rarely need to make the decision myself.”
February 9, 2026 at 9:10 AM
hool415.bsky.social
Hullo #vss365 and to #bones An old one today.
Loss I used to dream of your grave, the cemetery undayed kneeling my fingers running through sickened grass: clumps nourished by your cancer, scrambling downwards, a crescent of mud waxing under every nail, my hands are bloody and blackened, they must match your own, this dream reaches wetted wood, your lid now weak as rushes and as I tenderly part the softened splinters, only bones distant traffic pounds like a subterranean heart then sizing up the choice, I strike tibia against fibula hard, just to make you spark again.
February 9, 2026 at 5:14 AM
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
Reposted by Julian (Hool)
victoriaspires.bsky.social
@hool415.bsky.social Such has been my consumptive state this week, I've only just managed to turn out the slightest of trinkets for your #tracks #PromptCombo. But here it is, and within the stated deadline 🙃

Hope you've had a lovely week hosting !
February 6, 2026 at 2:21 PM
Reposted by Julian (Hool)
fhpowellwriter.bsky.social
A musical one for Friday.

@hool415.bsky.social
#promptcombo
#tracks
February 6, 2026 at 8:34 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
Reposted by Julian (Hool)
fhpowellwriter.bsky.social
My very early Thursday morning offering for #promptcombo #tracks

@hool415.bsky.social
February 5, 2026 at 6:40 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
Reposted by Julian (Hool)
fhpowellwriter.bsky.social
This is my late night Wednesday ramble

#Tracks #PromptCombo

@hool415.bsky.social
February 4, 2026 at 9:42 PM
Reposted by Julian (Hool)
emteepoetry.bsky.social
Inspired by a poem by @fhpowellwriter.bsky.social earlier this week, I thought I'd inflict this on @hool415.bsky.social and the #Promptcombo Massive for #tracks

I have loads of these almost-poems in my archives.
February 4, 2026 at 8:02 PM
Reposted by Julian (Hool)
mwplovesmusic.bsky.social
Her tracks
disappear
like a ghost
as she folds
and folds
further into
herself
seeking escape,
terrified
mortified
of the vast
deep dark
oceans of
the lonely life
before her

#promptcombo @hool415.bsky.social #vss365 #emoetry #poetry
February 4, 2026 at 1:51 PM
Reposted by Julian (Hool)
thewombwellrainbow.bsky.social
Morning @hool415.bsky.social Ju. Here's my third response to your marvellous #promptcombo #Tracks
The Solitude You put one foot in front of the other. I observe you watching them put one in front of the other. I observe all three watching as one foot is placed in front of the other. I am infinite regression. Alone in being the watcher watching. Never alone. Lonely in a crowd of watchers watching. Aware of being watched is not solitude. No solitude with all these eyes inside my head.
February 4, 2026 at 9:10 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
Reposted by Julian (Hool)
cieloceano.bsky.social
Dear @hool415.bsky.social
For #promptcombo and #tracks I leave a dialogue between Rilke (he’s in italics) and me.
February 3, 2026 at 11:52 PM
Reposted by Julian (Hool)
matthewmcsmith.bsky.social
A love poem of sorts.
@hool415.bsky.social is hosting #promptcombo on the theme of ‘tracks’. Hope you like the poem and you’re welcome to share. Thank you
February 3, 2026 at 8:21 PM
Reposted by Julian (Hool)
ignorantfairy.bsky.social
A second contribution to #promptcombo #tracks

@hool415.bsky.social

#Spokenword version in replies

#poetry #poetrycommunity
frosted window pains letting my words catch up with a landscape in continous transition molding verse from the speed I barely register illusion of safety within a metal cylinder I write in strides ephemeral snowscape while I keep watching thaw water race across frosted window pains
February 3, 2026 at 1:15 PM