Noddfa Imaginings

Friday, July 3, 2026

Freedom

Freedom is

Like oxygen,

Like breathing,

You only notice

Once it's gone,

Once someone

Forces it to end.

This Life

I've spoken truth

As well as

Spun my lies.

Angry or artful,

Neither leaves

A deeper impression.

I know how to shape

My tongue to relate

This infernal tale,

I just don't know

If this life holds up

To its scrutiny.

Wednesday, December 31, 2025

Death Note 2

I never belonged

In your world,

So I seek

Another.

I've seen what

I needed to see,

Said what

I needed to say,

Except... (I'm sorry)

It's my turn

To be selfish,

To leave without

Saying goodbye.

Let my fellow

Wanderers

Comfort you,

Too late.

Silence

Every silence

Has a quality.

Anxious,

Cautious,

Conspiratorial,

Contentment.

Ominous,

Anticipatory,

Smoldering,

Stillness.

If every silence

Asks a question,

Then each also

Provides an answer,

Casting the long

Shadow of elusive

Truth, or lies,

You must embrace.

Friday, August 8, 2025

Amber

A friendship frozen in memory,

Drowned by resinous trauma,

Fossilized to golden crystal,

Agelessly preserved,

A yellowed relic of the past.

If only I could strip away

The ossified layers,

The friend within might

Re-emerge, hale and whole,

Ready to renew our time together.

Dreaming and Dying

When I was young, I focused

Signs and Spirit Animals

I was born beneath the stars

Of Pisces. When I was young,

I swam like a fish underwater.

But before I crawled ashore,

I lost my twin in the stormy sea

Of our mother’s womb,

Which may be why I

Can no longer drink like one.

My family gave us each a spirit animal,

Mostly for convenience at Christmas.

My grandmother’s was an elephant,

My mother’s a whale,

My cousin’s an owl.

If we didn’t choose,

One would be assigned.

I eventually received a wolf.

Years later, I was admonished

By a prospective girlfriend

To drop the lone wolf attitude.

That made me smile. Or maybe

It’s just my nature to bare my teeth.

Besides, if I had two wolves within me,

They wouldn’t fight;

They’d form a pack.

Earlier, my family had tried to give me a dragon,

But my dragons are fierce, not cute like theirs.

Later I returned to that mythological beast

As my screen name on a Taoist forum.

As Chinese luck would have it, the year

Of my birth is their Green Wood Dragon.

Which resonated like a personal koan:

Who would craft a dragon from green wood?

But were I to stain my skin with signs or spirit animals,

On one shoulder would perch a griffin rampant,

The heraldic symbol of my line and my brand,

On the other, a simple house cat

Gazing skyward in shadowed profile,

Felicia, Nyala, Smoke or Samarra,

Any of Bast’s Chosen I’ve been honored

To serve in the temple where I rent space.

I’ve always longed to be marked by something special,

Some tribe, some clan, some band of brotherhood.

Instead, I am destined to die alone and unadorned,

An imperfectly heard chord in this life’s ballad.

Friday, November 1, 2024

Shattered

Betwixt the episodes of dull exhaustion,

Between the gleaming shards of an imaginary life,

Beneath the spiderwebbed mirror of memory,

Before each dream cut like naked glass

Befallen from the gloaming of the underworld,

Beyond the glimmering cavern of illusion,

Bespoken by legion tongues of daemons

Belongs this poisoned curse,

I still believe,

In the one,

In the two,

In the ten thousand glittering things,

Beholden only to the frame

Of its shattered existence.

I Liked You Better

I liked you better

Before I knew you

Were a pedophile,

A murderer,

A rapist,

A thief.

Homophobic,

Antisemitic,

Sexist,

A bigot.

Liked is really

The wrong word.

Tolerated?

Accepted?

Admired?

Loved?

Or was I just

Mistaking

Attention,

Attraction,

Intrigue,

Or lust?

We reveal ourselves slowly,

Cautiously, seductively,

A shadow dance in seven veils,

Each slips or stripped away

Until all that remains is

An unrepentant scar,

Malignant as cancer,

Ugly as truth.

I no longer want to

Hang out with you,

Get to know you,

See you naked.

I just want to cover my eyes,

Hide from my misjudgment,

My shame at not seeing

Beyond your mask.

And yet, sometimes

I still miss the person

I thought might linger

Behind that illusion.

Wednesday, August 7, 2024

Loneliness

Loneliness is an orphaned lab monkey

Raised by the surrogate doll it clings to

For warmth and companionship

While a troop of white-coated

Researchers hide behind

One-way mirrors

Scribing notes.

Loneliness offers

A simple choice:

Embrace something broken

Or grasp at empty air.

Loneliness suspects

This life is a simulation,

One that violates all

Ethical standards for

Behavioral studies.

In a word, it is cruel.

In a second, sadistic.

But this Loneliness is yours.

You may hear voices

In your head but at least

They know you’re here.

Loneliness is neither

New nor modern.

It’s as old as Empire,

As ancient as the Flood,

The original Sumerian, not

The Hebrew knockoff.

Loneliness is now an epidemic,

An epidemic, like the 1919 flu where

They stacked bodies like winter wood

In snow-strewn Scandinavia,

Or Covid-19 in New York City

Where they rolled in train cars

Of artificial ice.

Loneliness is a community dying

From alcohol poisoning or withdrawal,

From opioids or other recreational drugs,

From gunshot wounds, malicious or self-inflicted,

Or from general stupidity,

Fast or slow.

Is Loneliness the key?

Or just a fashionable hill

Where we plant our banner

And make our final stand

Like the 7th Cavalry at Little Bighorn,

Or the Foreign Legion at Dien Bien Phu?

Loneliness is the adventure of a lifetime.

Loneliness is isolation, not a phase of the pandemic.

Loneliness does not have its calls returned for months.

Loneliness remembers it took as many days for someone to

Track down her son and daughter as she spent in an ICU.

Loneliness quietly closes the final chapter of that book whose

Denouement had begun a decade earlier.

Loneliness has friends

Who send a gift card

For wine or cognac,

Your low-dose adult poison of choice,

Not sensing the tragicomic irony

Of how she died.

Loneliness is knowing

They wouldn’t have

Done anything

Different had you

Been face-to-face.

Well, maybe, Loneliness

Is precisely that.

But Loneliness waits

To catch up with you

Years later like a friend

At a favorite coffee shop.

Loneliness is the day

You are released

From the hospital,

When, unlike her, you

Got to walk out the door,

And were driven home,

Not gurnied to

Cold storage until

Someone could dig up

Your next of kin.

Loneliness is your two best friends

Standing by the door,

Wondering where you’ve been,

Waiting to curl up against you,

Like years before when they

Kept you alive through

Another raging infection

Of isolation.

When Loneliness told other friends

Eight years earlier that all you

Could do was lie in bed for weeks

Watching stupid movies,

Their only response was,

Which ones?

Much younger, Loneliness revealed

A four to seven trump card hand

Of an ACEs high home life

Only to receive ten-mile stares

With no words of comfort,

Much less actions, before

Responsible adults turned away

Squeamish and uncomfortable.

Loneliness knows that

If few read that narrative

In poetry or prose,

Fewer still

Understood it.

Loneliness realizes

Iteration by iteration,

On the third or fourth

Descending spiral,

That it’s turtles

All the way down.

Loneliness is a conversation killer,

Approaching people at a party

And having them suddenly

Grow silent and drift away.

Loneliness is shut down

From talking about anything

Personal in no uncertain terms

By the people nearest to you.

Loneliness is solitude and silence

Becoming your closest friends,

Imaginary like the ones who

Disappeared.

Loneliness has

No tribe,

No clan,

No wingman at your back.

Maybe if you’d been

A better kid,

A better comrade,

A better confidant,

You wouldn’t be so alone.

Loneliness spends its days

Moderating expectations,

Predicting with precision

Each brief communication

And insincere offer.

Loneliness hears

We should do

Lunch,

Dinner,

Grab that beer

You can no longer drink,

Catch up.

Loneliness learns to

Echo back the same tone,

Yes, yes we should,

Just let me know.

Loneliness is eventually informed,

I’m sorry, the number

You have reached

Is no longer in service.

Please hang up

And dial again.

Loneliness says

If only you could

Text or TikTok.

Ain’t no one

Got time for that

Archaic email.

Loneliness just stops

Right there, at time.

Loneliness makes time

For what it values.

Loneliness always reaches out

To stay in touch,

Loneliness is no shit,

There you were,

Fresh off a near divorce,

Sick and alone,

With the people who cared most

Either half a state away,

Or you’d never met

Face-to-face.

Loneliness is stones

Piled upon your chest,

Crushing your internal organs,

Heart, lungs, liver, spleen,

Each crying out,

More weight.

Loneliness admonishes you,

Try to be less sick.

Loneliness is neither

Sick nor well.

Loneliness reminds you,

You will never leave

This place unless

Feet first.

Loneliness says

It’s not me, it’s you.

That in this life we all

Get what we deserve,

A three-course meal

Of broken glass.

Bon appétit!

But Loneliness doesn’t forget

To tip its server.

Loneliness is the irony

That you shouldn’t be

Lonely at all,

At least by any modern,

Psychological advice.

Loneliness is reading

A chapter on mental health

Advising that you focus

Less on résumé values,