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Sea Anemone




Sea anemone,

Swaying above the newly scrubbed

ocean floor of a tidepool home

Between glittery rocks, glazed with water

Slippery fingertips, grazing the top of a flesh eating petal

Family of a dozen daughters attached and unsettled


Cyclops mouth, hungry eyes

Be wise, and watch your step

Little boy, skipping curiously

Almost tipping


Watch your step


Family were fewer before

Grew larger with temperature

Bore flowery children

Unknown to science men

Climate speculations, merely an overture


They’re singing, sea anemones, chanting underwater

Silent chirping sounds, intuitive guesses, nothing is certain


Watch your step


She is sky blue, her sister is scarlet

Translucent vessels holding an invisible soul

Boy’s body is warmer, thickly clothed skin garment

Fumbling hands tightly pressed, between shell and rock

and his opaque chest


He likes being afraid, tickling every nerve ending

Hugging and crushing him

True danger is empowering, uncertainty is just not the same


Respectfully dying, or everyday transcendence

To lose all resistance, intentionally, to the sea

Rippling movements, sliding feet

pointy rocks cutting his toes from underneath

An oblivious dance

Billion marbles of glass built pavement


he is jumping now, up and down

performing polypian gymnastics

Sturdy and tough and flowing around

at the same time

Connected to the ground


Between flora and fauna, what is the difference

A boy turning plant, a hybrid,

Did he just fall in love?

Their disobedient sing-a-long binds him

Playing along with ideas of existence


For less than a second he giggles, sounding just like them

How bad could it be?

Tipsy from saltwater soon to be drowned

This prolonged excitement

Dragging him down

His love prayers answered


Goodbye cruel world, goodbye forest and beaches and teachers and fathers and dolphins and trees


Watch your step


A kingdom of queens and princessess,

with seaweed veil covered faces

A one time audience, a guest of the sea,

On the steps of the ocean forever a boy will rest and be free









Social media friends




We checked in to a hotel, with a thick bearded staff

Since we couldn’t afford it, we helped out instead

Washing the dishes, scrubbing the floor

Stitching the holes of old quilts, to keep warm

They were made by our ancestors, during a time

When everyone’s mind was on fire and dread


They served raw food and fruit, at the breakfast buffet

And porridge in bowls that were sprinkled with seeds

some making eyes turn and some turning heads

Giving them glowing and gleaming effects

A few of the guests had visions, the luckiest few

While others remained in a fixed state of need


The owner’s only son was a man made from a cat

He was often dismissed as retarded and weak

Stretching and bending, doing yoga all day

Making himself longer on the kitchen tray

Lifting his paws, rolling them back, turning into an orb

The cat man’s movements was a silent shriek


At dinner, a lady did readings for free with tarot

Sorrounded by therapy groups and animal parts

Animal beings, fuzzy handicapped kids

Woolly hedgehogs, bunny with synthetic ribs

Listened as she spoke of an ill-fated prediction

They all put their nerve cells on her zodiac chart


Outside, the garden turned blue like the moon

The sky was black and the hedgehog shivered

Running out on the lawn, freezing, whimpering

The sky getting closer, almost touching his chin

A red planet appeared, a cousin to mars

All of the hedgehogs weak spots were triggered


From planetarian beams, territorial lines were drawn

To protect the remains of a group situation

Softly scratching then tearing the surface

Removing the comfort that once held a purpose

If this was a war then we hugged and kissed

Before finally accepting complete separation









A fairytale princess




Once upon a time, there was a landscape.

Through the mountains and valleys ran a glittery river, succulent and majestic. It stretched from the beginning till the ending, where it married the big sea.

The winter was eternal and wrapped all the houses and trees in a sparkling quilt of snow.

The ground melted into the sky and the horizon was invisible.

From a distance it all looked so white and soft,

when in fact it was all unbearably cold and harsh.


The river was glazed with ice. But somewhere in the middle, a piece was missing.

On a closer look, you’d notice a hole. Inside of it there sat a former princess, waiting.


Her skin was gone.


She had been sitting there for ten thousand years,

pulsating with desire and lust.

She couldn’t remember much of the past, maybe she’d been born right here, nurtured by the black darkness, surrounded by seaweed and the suckling mouths of fish.  Or maybe, she once walked the earth along with the rest of humanity.


During the ten thousand years that had passed, the princess had been constantly occupied by spiraling thoughts, which had gradually grown out of her head so high that they had started to reach the sky.


Millions of spirals blazed out of the river and gave birth to millions of more spirals that pierced through the atmosphere,

with a force so strong it made the world tremble.


Now was the time for whatever was supposed to happen, to finally happen.

The princess had longed for and feared this moment, so badly.


Heaven collapsed and fell down to earth.

The river cracked wide open and out came the princess,

reborn.


The earth was now a toxic place where no air was left to breathe.

The princess felt so much joy and horror. Her skinless body would finally step out into the world and scare the life out of its entire population.

She looked forward to it.


First of all, she decided to rebuild her body and self into a more fitting format.

By scraping the bottom of the river she gathered the most beautiful trash she could find and built a full-body costume made from shiny plastic.

She then reconstructed her face by using only artificial materials, in an attempt to look as natural as possible.

Now, finally, she would be able to act out and behave in all the ways she had always wanted.

The effect the princess soon would have on the population was something she never would have guessed or even dreamt of.


Of course she was eager to find out just how strong her power was,

but maybe not at the cost of her own existence…


The princess behaviour was starting to stir up an emotion that the population had never experienced before.

It was called anxiety

and it could only lead to one thing: a loss of control over mind.


Suddenly the humans felt this craving, like they had all been hypnotized or fallen under an ineluctable spell.

Their eyes were fixed in a trance-like stare, all focusing on the princess body.

They wanted her.

They wanted to offer themselves to her, give her affirmation and praise so unconditionally that they forgot who they were or even where they came from.

They were hungry and impatient.


Everyone wanted a taste of this new extraterrestrial sexual thrill.

The princess wasn’t really that interested in this new form of communication, but she played along with it anyway.


Finally, after the great feast of consumption had ended, the princess was inseminated by the gluttony and thoughtlessness of humans.

She started to give birth to new creatures, half human, half plastic.


There was a surrealistic time that followed.

The plastic newborns lived in colonies on top of each other,


merging and dividing like cells. Sometimes in a quite aggressive manner.


They were milking each other, eating each others energies.

The old hierarchy of society that once upheld order and peace was completely disrupted and everyone had become each others intrusive slave.


The winter turned colder and harder and one day, all the plastic newborns started to freeze to death.


This must be a fault in manufacture, the princess thought to herself.

Frozen plastic limbs were spreading out all over the world, multiplying in numbers.

This all happened in the most unappetising fashion imaginable.


In desperation, the princess started to pet one the few still living creatures against her will.

At first kind of roughly but when the creature started to scream she realised she had to try something else.


She softly stroke its frosty dying body until it finally looked up at her, smiling with gratitude.

New hope had sprung from its plastic marble eyes.

It felt calm,

the princess felt calm too. Why had she not tried this before…


She then began stroking and petting all the creatures that were still alive, and they all smiled at her, bigger and more authentic grins than before.


They gathered in a circle and gave her a new kind of praise, a sort of submissive thankfulness,

like she was their saviour,

like she was good.


The princess felt something tickling her inside, she struggled against it.

These genuine emotions suddenly embracing her.

She felt nothing but disgust.

Nauseated by her own creations and the responsibility that followed.


I AM NO GOOD!!!

The princess cried.


She started to peel off her skin, throwing the trash all around her.

Then, she came on to the creatures, attacking them one by one,

peeling off their skin as well.


They made no resistance.

They just stood there, waiting obediently for their turn.

This violent touch was still something they craved,

even if it meant dying.


Suddenly, the world was quiet again.

Snowflakes fell sedately to the ground. The earth slept, covered in ice and plastic.

New tribes of people  was slowly starting to grow again, building up an old society, oblivious to the events that had just happened.

But out there, in the middle of the river sat a skinless princess, hidden deep inside a black hole.





































Copyright Siri Elfhag, 2024