W. Darling
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daily-w-darling.bsky.social
W. Darling
@daily-w-darling.bsky.social
310 followers 560 following 54 posts
Poet, or something.
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daily-w-darling.bsky.social
1/14/25 unimportant people

(A quick write I mostly don't like, but I absolutely adore those final lines! I may recycle them into something better, we shall see!)
unimportant people by W. Darling she liked the little balcony/ on the left, all ironwork/ a little rusted at the edges/ would sit with coffee/ in a tiny cup, peep to the street/ below her, watch the men/ in their dusty shoes/ and expensive watches/ avoid puddles I don’t think it would be fair/ to call her agoraphobic/ she spent all summer in the sun/ warmed her neck and called down/ to the shopkeepers at lunch hour/ chatted with Mrs. B of 5C / greeted the night air/ with slippers and aperitifs/ capers in the jar I wasn’t there when they tore/ the building down/ and nor was she, a fragment/ in the memory of that place/ the brocade of her robe/ long gone, the dust settled/ a ring of ash swept away/ she left this world quietly/ and didn’t leave a stain
January 14, 2025 at 8:28 PM
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1/13/25 Tea Time
Tea Time by W. Darling Photo: Rachel Bingham of the Women's Voluntary Service serves tea from her mobile canteen in London 1941; the man photographed was one of the volunteers cleaning rubble up on the streets after an air raid. The photos, gathered by the Imperial War Museum, were held under the Crown Copyright, which has since expired; they are now public works. Bubbles in the cup Stain on the lip I struggled and stuttered and stumbled to this On its axis, the world pauses, settles 100°C, a dash of cream, the tear of paper packet Dye a dress, soothe a throat, patch a fingernail With one little package make it happen Sip. Breathe. Begin.
January 13, 2025 at 9:50 PM
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1/9/25 morning mist
morning mist by W. Darling Image: Fontainebleau Forest, Eugène Cuvelier French, early 1860s, via The Met digital photography project Borrowed wellies. Hat slung low. Across the field, a herd of grazing warriors wait. I’ve brought the tin of paints, not that it matters. They scatter, sure feet and flashing tail. Dew - the kind of damp that makes things cold, more than the wet: a ghost. I mark an old path, watch the treeline. Birds dive and call. I am not Interloper here. If I have lung this is my home. When I have not, it is my rest. Quiet feet, and all the rest a Vibrance. I’ll bring the dog next time, find afresh the same old trails, succumb to this Oneness again.
January 10, 2025 at 12:03 AM
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Writing produced a garbled mess today, so have something from the IG archives!

I’m working on a series titled after the song names from the Lord Huron album “Strange Trails.” Playing with stacking media/meaning etc…

This is the first, written in May(?!) of last year.
Live Like Ghosts by W. Darling Begin a day without her. Wear your favorite slippers. Drag across the floor. Thermostat on - rumble, whoosh. Click of lock; a heaving push. Seed in feeder. Sparrows on the lawn. Fill the belly. Wipe an eye. Pour a cup without her. China grinding on a platter. Oat on the tongue, seed in the eye. Record player - find an empty sleeve. Rinse a dish. Lean against the sill. There’s new weeds in the garden. Fill the lungs. Wipe the hands. Greet the lawn without her. Overalls and bucket hat, garden glove abandoned on the picket fence. Feel the dirt find old grooves. Ignore the ache. A sparrow lingers, watching. Peeks between the greens. Fill the day. Wipe the brow. Walk a day without her. Make it taste like sweat and earth and sun. Feed the garden, feed the birds, feed yourself. Tend. There’s pickles in the pantry. Make a sandwich. Darn - remove the holy from your sock. Fill the gaps. Wipe your workspace down. Wear the space without her an old friend in the soft light speaks low in the wall phone at the stair. Let night greet the house. Find the old lamp still works. Putter after dinner. Paper and slipper and well-worn pajama. Piano - fill the hour. Wipe your smile. End a day without her. It’s too warm for a hot bottle, but make one anyway to tuck between your knees. Take your medication. Dim the light. Say a prayer. Close your eyes. Hold her pillow in the dark. Fill the heart. Do not wipe the eye.
January 9, 2025 at 2:03 AM
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1/7/25 space cadet
#PoetrySky #Poem #BlueSkyPoetry
Text states: space cadet by w. darling Image: the shadow of an Apollo astronaut, photographing the moon's surface. Beyond, on the top third, the emptiness of blank space. Image from High Res Images from the Apollo Missions, uploaded by NASA for the public under creative commons Moonboots. Dry rot. We left the whole place to spacedust and squalor: our eyes, cosmetic; our tongues numb; the water boiled over. Dreamers. Dropsy-turvey. We fed scraps to the land beast, giggled when he growled: drool on the maw, drool on the hand that feeds us. For three whole days our atoms did not move, then vibrated all at once: a thousand energies released, cracked the ceiling of our glass coffins. I watched you with betrayer’s sight, for all around, it lay: star shards and spiderwebs, my universe a cosmic crunch before me, while you remained phlegmatic. Should I blame you for finding the eyes we did not know we had? I did then. The sky was lonely, after; for Eve did not kiss Adam, but left the apple in his throat. Moonboots. Dust bin. The empty fall of space. Did you know how far my arms could stretch? I’m wider than gravity’s pull.
January 7, 2025 at 8:58 PM
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1/6/25 Holly

I'm working on a series of cinquain ladies (titled with various plants). Definitely keeping the middle line in later drafts! We shall see about the rest. :)

#BlueSkyPoetry #Poem #Poetry #Poet #PoetrySky
Holly by W. Darling rime look fades in porchlight a touch of rouge in snow you crept upon me, vined my door found home
January 6, 2025 at 10:29 PM
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I'm getting bored with my own work, but at least it was easier to write today. I need a new poetry collection or a new format.

I get itchy for growth so quickly these days. Do you ever get that way, or is this just my goofy brain?

1/5/25 Borrowed Glove
#PoetrySky #Poem #BlueSkyPoetry
Borrowed Glove by W. Darling Closeup of ice coating a branch... the water has dripped and formed a partial icicle as it froze. Minor cracks can be seen within. Photo Courtesy of PtrQs on wikicommons (twig with buds covered by ice, 31 Jan 2021) Gloves and hat and all the rest; you remember it, don’t you? Spinning on the lawn, sliding down the gentle fields on cardboard; ice glittering a hundred different ways in all that winter sun. I remember your red ears, the lines of your childhood teeth, your arm and how you disliked its shape. To me, you were made perfect: sunny curls and family smiles, and the yawning world before us, refractive. It was hard for me to breathe in those years. I didn’t have an inhaler, and you were a whole wide meadow of what could be - or could have been. My heart was like the ice that did not crack below our bundled feet. Where have you gone? I hunt you in the coffee shop I left you, wishing I had stayed, or visited, or noticed. Your life has wrapped you up, made you feel small, bundled you out of reach. Let me go back to gloves and hat and all the rest; your smile so wide, your curls so wild, and you so perfectly made: beyond me, spinning on an icy lawn.
January 5, 2025 at 5:40 PM
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Today, writing was like pulling teeth. Hopefully the evening prose goes better than the poetry session did.

(It needs another stanza? I think? But I don't know where yet.)

1/4/25 The Skies Beneath Us
#PoetrySky #Poetry #BlueSkyPoetry
Text: The Skies Beneath Us Image: Plate XIX Glass Globe Cracked Under Internal Pressure, J. Nasmyth, from Photographs of (models of) the moon (1874) [a shattered glass, lit from the side, on a black background] Before you were thought in my sister’s heart, before she was song in her mother’s voice, the world looked up. The sky was vast. Some Soviets abused a dog. War painted heaven. We made manifest a great beyond, we argued, we profited; made the formula you drank, the rubber of your shoes, the thermometer that caught you before the heavens could, that one awful summer. We became and became and became. We became until the becoming ran out, until every red light lit our eyes so bright that new was old, and war was a human sport again. Heaven was a land for rich men and young dreams, and fodder fodder fodder for the state, as it had been in times Before. And I see dreaming in your eyes, but baby, watch your feet. Thirty seasons ago, when you were a new moon, a woman in smart slacks and sleek hair danced for me in a half amphitheater; danced of dreams. Of stars. Of Mauna Kea. “In order to see the skies up close,” she sang, “we need the earth snuffed out, for in the dark, we find the stars.” Thirty meters: wider than Babel, and Arab Spring had knocked the desert out. They needed Mauna Kea. When a person dances like buzzing, their hands shake. “It’s difficult,” she admitted, aflutter, “you have to work with the local population, who have Their Own Agendas.” Agendas meant graves. Agendas meant bones. Agendas meant the bodies of our loved ones. But they needed Mauna Kea. They needed earth snuffed out. To find the dark. To find the stars. I find it hard to see in the land of Become; the light is much too bright. But maybe you, with heaven in your eyes can find what I could not that day, watching a woman buzzing in an amphitheater that she would claw down gladly for a chance at the Beyond. You are stuff of heaven, or close as can be found; you will know what I cannot. Perhaps your eyes will stay with the skies, but baby, careful of those feet.
January 4, 2025 at 10:06 PM
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1/3/25 where I come from, the wind smells like vanilla
On Hampstead Heath by James Hamilton American, 1856, currently on view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 774; a impressionnant windy walk in black and white, with rolling hills and blowing grasses (this image only shows part of the view) text overlay reads: where I come from, the wind smells like vanilla where I come from, the wind smells like vanilla homestyle heartbeats sound like cinnamon ancient loaf with the ends cut off or burnt up we’ve walked this same road more often than living breath I’ve spent these years dreaming of something in my own garden buried at the root of this sycamore where they will lay me Who Was I? Chipmunk. stowing food in my own home for the winter we are what we eat or what we repeat can you listen? Have You Ears? our melody plays over the hills on wind that tickles the fox’s nose I’ve walked this same road more often than my own sharp breath we are more than marrow, and for that price raise up mole-hills, burrow under the roots of the sycamore where I am buried or - Will Be? the snake won’t find me yet, or the lawn mower, his hat low on his brow we are the earth beneath our feet we are the earth beneath our feet you’ve walked this same road more often than I’ve heard breath and still, I hadn’t noticed you though now I’m glad to find you here our feet in sycamore our eyes to the wind - W. Darling
January 3, 2025 at 6:21 PM
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🔴 Tonight’s Live Book Updates 🔴

Gone by Michael Grant

Copy courtesy of a friend who insisted I read the whole series. It was a favorite of her younger years.

I’ll keep you updated.
Gone by Michael Grant
January 2, 2025 at 10:14 PM
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1/2/25 Too Late
#PoetrySky #Poetry #BlueSkyPoetry
Too Late by W. Darling her thin hands are weak fold the newspaper slowly there are clippings on every surface and the wall, all the little moments her world is made of I wonder where these moments go when she is gone when they were young, they went dancing every weekend in the summer when they were young and could be called a ‘they’ I’ve never met him I know his name through the music of her voice she always eats the same things wears the same sweaters her house is full of useless little lovely things they ended in a charity shop when she was done with them and it was time she hates life - not the living, but the waiting the long-sought reuniting out of reach it scares me to imagine a world where I could be the last when all the rest had left a single light alone I stopped being able to visit very often she stopped being able to visit at all I wonder where these moments go when I am gone her hands on the paper her world on the page - W. Darling
January 2, 2025 at 7:14 PM
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I have no shame so I’ll start.

Spotted it facing cover-out in the book shop. It is not the queer representation we need or deserve. It is, however, a book almost entirely about what it would be like to live as a protagonist in a pet-fish themed simulation.

Which is. Um. Amazing.
The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish by Xue Shan Fei Hu. A man in historical garb feeds a fish, splashing out of the water on the cover. Art.
January 2, 2025 at 5:03 PM
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Going to cross-post my little cleaned-up draft poems between here and Insta, so you never have to go to Insta again. :)

What you get here is unpolished and edited the same day as it is written, so… take that as you will. 🤍

1/1/25, If So
#poetsky #poetry #poems
If So, by W. Darling A view of trees in winter, covered in snow, with a white, clouded sky beyond. The trees stretch from all directions as the observer looks up. (Cover art from Forest in snow, Ehrenbach.jpg 8 March 2023 Gerda Arendt. Creative Commons license) If you are alone in the wood - if the snow is heavy: thick canvas - know that we are buried there. Epitaphic, the trees sketch great cathedrals of bark, ragged to the sky that cracks above us. If the light is sharp in winter, piercing a barren landscape that isn’t, remember the Beneath. Rattle the lung to take an even breath, and make a lie of loneliness; full, the forest hides life. I am the eyes that follow you, the sound of ice-crack in the pond, the place you rest your boots on the porch, after. Consciousness beget the trees; from them is born. I am the Memory, the phantom hand stays at your back. If you are alone in the wood, if the snow feels heavy, emptied, forgotten. Know that you are not.
January 1, 2025 at 8:38 PM
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Day 6

[Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.]

#BookSky💙📚
#BlueSkyBookClub
#BookChallenge
The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner; the book cover features two clasped hands holding a circular stone necklace with an opalescent center that seems to be glowing with its own internal light
December 3, 2024 at 2:45 AM
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A first draft from yesterday that isn’t so bad, upon today’s reflection.

Maybe I’ll scrub her up someday, make her pretty. Until then, here she is raw. 📖

#Poetry #Poetsky #Poem #Poems
Part of: December, Grief Scrabble for a five-letter-word: failure. Pick-up-stick artist, hunting for a win, only to play again. It’s childish. I’m childish. The lines I write are anthem, anathema. They print behind my eyelids, streaked in sun. Flicker in the shade; passenger-side-drive. Overlettered, underripe, I’m lonely. I’m rooted. The sun shade is too high up, I can’t see. I’m still so childish. I don’t grow. In the travel-games box: six pencils, a loose button, two tiny stacking pigs. They could not be without the other. I cannot find my parts. If the game were letter-head, hunt me out in the margin, too high up. And flattened. Churn me to pulp, make me again. I don’t have her eyes or her pen. I don’t have anything. Whatever was left of the past has shredded in a garbage can. The truck is full. Head to the dump. I can’t find her. Where am I? Who was she? Where are we? Rooted and forgotten. Empty breath. She spent her whole life in the margin. I wonder how old I am in breath. How far the red twine unravels. Back to the road. I won’t find her in the shade, or in the sun. I won’t find myself again in the loose page, or the mountainside. I am pieces, tiles, letters to no one. Change my name, I’ll still be a five letter word. Burn my blood and let the ash remain. I’ll pour it on the letterhead, give you scraps of solace, when it counts.
December 3, 2024 at 2:28 AM
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Day 5

[Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.]

#BookSky💙📚
#BlueSkyBookClub
#BookChallenge
righteous dopefiend by Philippe Bourgois and Jeff Schonberg
December 2, 2024 at 12:14 AM
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The easiest way to find poets that change you is to find an anthology. Go to your local charity shop and find an old copy of a Norton anthology, or any collections of regional poets.

For specific works I loved this year see below (and alt text)

#Booksky💙📚
#BlueSkyBookClub
Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith is hands down the book that hit hardest this year for me. The poems are focused on the experience of gay black Americana. SUCH powerful language. Smith is a true craftsman, and there is much to learn from a read (especially if you annotate along the way). Lorine Niedecker is a challenging writer to read; I’m personally focusing on surrealist and abstract writing styles this year, and she definitely fits the bill. If you want to struggle a bit, her writing is stunning. I think I’ll come back to her body of work every few years, ready to learn more from her art. Crazy talent, and a slice of middle America. Frank O’Hara’s “Lunch Poems” is the collection I’m reading currently. He has a style that is very loose and conversational, changing subjects seemingly at random, before tying everything together at the end. I’m enamored by his mind, and reading his words has definitely changed my own. New York; lots of city life images, the gay 50’s experience. Again, very avant-garde. I have to recommend Sylvia Plath; it feels like a crime to omit her! Find a chronological collection, and read her early writings especially. She grew very melancholy in her later years; and while lots of folks love or hate the melodrama of her later life, the early days were something special. Deeply personal, raw, and fresh-feeling. They’re not as polished as the other recommendations (or her later writing), but there’s a vulnerability that is deeply moving (and may inspire you the most).
December 1, 2024 at 12:52 AM
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I’m learning to write again by reading Frank O’Hara. His poems have the core of what I was afraid to create. He was truly an abstract artist with a pen.

[Below, Poem (1954), from Lunch Poems]
Poem, Frank O’Hara, 1954 I watched an aromory combing its bronze bricks and in the sky there were glistening rails of milk. Where had the swan gone, the one with the lame back? Now mounting the steps I enter my new home full of grey radiators and glass ashtrays full of wool. Against the winter I must get a samovar embroidered with basil leaves and Ukranian mottos to the distant sound of wings, painfully anti-wind, a little bit of the blue summer air will come back as the steam chuckles in the monster’s steamy attack and I’ll be happy here and happy there, full of tea and tears. I don’t suppose I’ll ever get to Italy, but I have the terrible tundra at least. My new home will be full of wood, roots and the like, while I pace in a turtleneck sweater, repairing my bike. I watched the palisades shivering in the snow of my face, which had grown preternaturally pure. Once I destroyed a man’s idea of himself to have him. If I’d had a samovar then I’d have made him tea and as hyacinths grow from a pot he would love me and my charming room of tea cosies full of dirt which is why I must travel, to collect the leaves. O my enormous piano, you are not like being outdoors though it is cold and you are made of fire and wood! I lift your lid and the mountains return, that I am good. The stars blink like a hairnet that was dropped on a seat and now it is lying in the alley behind the theater where my play is echoed by dying voices. I am really a woodcarver and my words are love which willfully parades in its room, refusing to move.
November 30, 2024 at 11:01 PM
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Day 4(ish)

[Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.]

#BookSky💙📚
#BlueSkyBookClub
#BookChallenge
Penguin Classics cover: Pamela by Samuel Richardson Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded. In a series of familiar letters from a beautiful young damsel, to her parents. (etc)
November 30, 2024 at 10:37 PM
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We lost my aunt this week. She had the heart of her grandmother and the strength of mine. She spent so much of her life so, so sad.

I learned today, after the awful parts were done, that she was a writer for a local paper. Reading those words, I knew her truly. I found her.

We live on in ink.
Do not go gentle into that good night A Poem By Dylan Thomas Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
November 30, 2024 at 2:20 AM
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Day 3

[Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.]

#BookSky💙📚
#BlueSkyBookClub
#BookChallenge
Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata
November 30, 2024 at 1:44 AM
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Day 2

[Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.]

#BookSky💙📚
#BlueSkyBookClub
#BookChallenge
Lorine Niedecker Collected Works
November 26, 2024 at 10:50 PM
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If you haven’t read Seamus Heaney’s “The Skunk” (which I hope you have), read it.

If you HAVE read Seamus Heaney’s “The Skunk” (which I hope you have), read it again!

This is what all the boys in your English Lit classes never understood about love poetry (and all the girls too).
The Skunk Seamus Heaney, 197- Up, black, striped and demasked like the chasuble At a funeral mass, the skunk’s tail Paraded the skunk. Night after night I expected her like a visitor. The refrigerator whinnied into silence. My desk light softened beyond the verandah. Small oranges loomed in the orange tree. I began to be tense as a voyeur. After eleven years i was composing Love-letters again, broaching the ‘wife’ Like a stored cask, as if its slender vowel Had mutated into the night earth and air Of California. The beautiful, useless Tang of eucalyptus spelt your absence. The aftermath of a mouthful of wine Was like inhaling you off a cold pillow. And there she was, the intent and glamorous, Ordinary, mysterious skunk, Mythologized, demythologized, Snuffing the boards five feet beyond me. It all came back to me last night, stirred By the sootfall of your things at bedtime, Your head-down, tail-up hunt in a bottom drawer For the black plunge-line nightdress.
November 24, 2024 at 1:29 AM
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This is a fantastic idea.
#BookChallenge
#BlueSkyBookClub
Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith - Book Cover features two black silhouettes on a white background the figure on the left holds the hand of the figure on the right, restraining him from floating away with a single balloon.
November 23, 2024 at 6:11 PM