Runaway Horses
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Delayed
Loyalty:
Truth
Promise:
Mondays
Edits
A sea of red ink,© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
Patton was Right
Tempting
A Thing of Beauty
American Fork
© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
Bowl
Give the ball a spin,© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
Pretend
Gliph
All I want:
Keeping Watch 4
© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
Final Draft Struggle
Memorial Day
© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
Whispers
© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
Ghosts
Hyper
So, last night, I had an interesting dream.
I was in a park, and climbed a hill to where there was a
Library Box filled with books, and before I could look through the books to see
if there was anything good, I found a package inside, and it had a handmade PVC
pipe pistol. I wanted to keep it, but John Travolta walked up, flashed me his smile, and talked me into throwing it away because I “didn’t actually wanna risk having it, right?”
So, I begrudgingly tossed it in the trash. He said Thanks,
and that he owed me one. He shot me the double guns and grinned again.
Later, I am sitting at a meal with the family, they are
chatting away while I am lost in my own thoughts trying to figure out how I am
going to make ends meet, when My wife says that the bank shows a deposit from
John Travolta for 3.5 Million Dollars. It was noted as “Thanks”.
I excitedly started calculating the pay off of my debts, and the purchase of a small fixer upper home for the family.
Folks, I tell you that waking up without the 3.5 million that you were going to use to change your life was...rough.
So, as I am getting started this morning, crying little tears into my coffee, all I can say is that if John Travolta asks you to toss a gun for him in real life, try it and see what happens....
Native Blues
© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
Land of the Wholesale
Carpetbaggers
The West
© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
Sleep
Birthday Wishes
Action
Chaotic Mourning
© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
Can you smell it?
© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
Troubles
Ancient
Every ache and pain
feels like it could be the end
when you hit forty...
© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
Mother's Day
Liberating
© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
Puffery
Killdeer
Idiot
Primaroj '26
Keeping Watch 3
Thomas sat awake with his back leaning against his father’s chair, his stomach felt like it was in a knot. He faced the door and the window beside it. His eyes bounced from one to the other, half expecting the deer looking demon creature to lunge through the window or force the door open, crossing its threshold to do God knows what to him and Jessy.
On one hand, he was jealous that Jessy was able to fall asleep in front of the fire so easily. Yet, on the other hand, he was glad that she wasn’t awake to share the same fear that gripped him.
She lay curled up under a half-finished quilt that Ma was working on. Maybe its warmth, and the warmth of the fire had lulled her to sleep.
A lullaby that was withheld from him.
Try as he might to close his eyes and keep them closed in the attempt to force himself into sleep, they wouldn’t stay closed. After a moment or two, he would swear that he heard something, and they would flutter open and focus on the window and then the door.
He had put the bar on the door and pulled the rifle from the mantle. He was ready for anything that dared to come in. Or dared to gaze in for that matter.
A loud thump came from above him on the roof, and he sat bolt upright, scooting further back against the chair as if he were trying to disappear into it. The thump was followed by what sounded like a pair of hooves slowly and deliberately walking across the roof to the south side of the cabin, before going silent right over the door. He looked up, holding the rifle close, not sure whether to shoot blindly at where the sound had seemingly stopped, or to hold his breath.
He held his breath, ears straining to hear anything over the pounding of his heart in his own chest and the crackle of the fire. Swallowing hard, he pushed himself to his feet. He crouched down, and walked bent over towards the window as quietly as possible. Pushing himself against the wall beside the window, he peeked out. There was nothing on that side that he could see. He crawled under the window to look out the other side. Nothing.
The outside was well lit by the moon’s silver light, but he couldn’t make out anything out of the ordinary.
Until he heard it.
It wasn’t the hooves on the roof, though. It was a gentle and yet earnest rustling that he heard. Not of leaves or weeds, but something else. Something he couldn’t quite place, though it sounded familiar. He pushed the side of his face into the cool wood of the wall as far as he could, straining his eyes as he looked every which way out the window that he was able to as he tried to see where the sound was coming from.
He saw it as it rounded the corner of the cabin and came into view of the window. He squinted at it, blinked, and squinted again. He had no clue what he was looking at. It looked about as tall as their old Billy goat, but it moved across the ground with the poise of a bob cat on the hunt. Thomas couldn’t see any legs on the creature, but rather root like tendrils fluttering back and forth on the grass pushed it forward. It’s body appeared as a mass of clumped up silt, and out of its back were a heap of reeds and cattails. A knot of reads and dripping algae formed a head roughly the shape of a dog with elongated muzzle, two blue glowing orbs flickered and danced within its head like small fires. As they slowly danced from one side to another, Thomas understood that these were its eyes.
“What the…” Thomas whispered.
The creature stopped moving and dropped to the ground so quickly that if Thomas had not been watching it, he wouldn’t be able to tell where it went. Even it’s eyes dimmed to the point that he didn’t know if the orbs were still there, or if it was the glimmer of the moonlight shimmering on the mess of reeds.
An ice-cold wave of nausea washed over Thomas. What had once been prowling just outside looked like it had been there all along. He swallowed hard and allowed his eyes to drift around the window a bit to see if there were any other clump of weeds or reeds in a place that he did not recall seeing them before. He heard the rustle again, and his eyes flashed back to the creature, that was now slithering slowly in his direction, tendrils spinning out, as if growing and retracting as it pulled itself forward. Its pale blue orbs no longer dancing but fixed upon the window.
Thomas pulled his head back from the window and pressed himself against the wall. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to steady his breath. This was not real. No more real than the deer demon he had seen earlier.
“Just a dream…” he whispered through clenched teeth. “Just a bad dream…”
At his words, the rustling stopped again.
Thomas forced himself to slide his face to the corner of the window just far enough that he would see with one eye a mass of weeds and reeds sprawling on the ground just in front of the porch railing. He slammed himself back against the wall. Trembling, he pulled the hammer back on the rifle. He didn’t know whether or not a bullet would do anything to whatever this thing was, but it was the only thing he had.
He took a breath and stepped away from the wall and turned towards the window. He almost dropped the rifle before he could bring it up to aim. The reed creature was at the window, its muzzled “face” now flattened as it pressed against the glass, its orbs trained on him and flickering fast.
He stared at it for a moment, unable to think, or move.
A hole appeared between the eyes and a godawful and warbling screech came from within the creature, its reeds and weeds shaking and vibrating with the screech as if amplifying the sound.
The window cracked and snapped Thomas out of his stupor. He screamed and brought the rifle up to bear on the creature, and pulled the trigger.
***
© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
Exhausted
See it
A win is a win
Pick me up
Father to Father
Hopium
The Abyss
Mining
Open my eyes, flick on the light,Good Morning! (Or evening if you stumble across this page then...)
This is my attempt at the Clogyrnach style poem. It is a six lined Welsh poetic style that structured as follows:
8 syllables with an A rhyme
8 syllables with an A rhyme.
5 syllables with an B rhyme.
5 syllables with an B rhyme.
5 syllables with an B rhyme.
8 syllables with an A rhyme
That being said, how do you think I did?
Hobbled
Sorrow
Morning Prayers
© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
Forecast
Where is Iustitia?
Fragments
A hometown visit,© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
Wistful
Stolen
A Father's Burden
© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
Keeping Watch 2
Corvin leaned against the charred porch post that once had
his name carved into it, and looked out over the smoldering ruin that had been
his cabin.
That had been his home.
They had broke camp and rode through the night towards the flickering
orange glow, hoping it wasn’t the cabin.
The only thing left standing was the brick chimney. Once
red, now blackened by the fire that had consumed everything else that he loved.
And maybe everyone that he loved.
“They may have gotten out, Corv.”
He turned and looked at his father, still sitting on his
horse. His voice was gentle and reassuring, but Corvin noticed the old man’s eyes
kept darting from tree to tree, and he never took his hand off his gun.
Corvin didn’t say anything but walked to where his door used
to stand. Brigit had begged him to use an unbroken piece of oak and then had
him carve the intricate image on the front of it. Loops, and circles that went
on and on in one continuous line, with a bulky and odd looking cross in the
middle of it all with a shamrock in the middle of it.
He had never been terribly religious, and it wasn’t a
traditional cross, but Brigit had been insistent and said it was named for the
saint who she was named after.
So he sweated from the labor, and the fear of messing up the
carving under her watchful eye. Between her drawn lines, and his steady hand,
he was able to get it done to her satisfaction. He then at her insistence nailed
horse shoes over it.
And now it was gone.
The horse shoes blackened and scattered in the mess all that
remained of the doorway. He stepped through the openness where the door had once
stood, his boots crunching on the still smoldering wood. His eyes scanned the
floor, around the fireplace, and in the kitchen. Twisted items that he could
identify, some he could not, but none of them were Brigit or the kids.
“You seeing anything, Corv?” his old man hollered out.
“No,” Corvin replied after a long sigh. “I..I don’t think
they were here.”
“We probably shouldn’t stay too long.”
“I ain’t going nowhere till I find ‘em.”
“That ain’t what I meant, son.”
His dad looked at him, and Corvin knew that he was right.
“Alright, I just…”
He paused, eye catching a glint in the charcoaled rubbish.
He knelt down and carefully plucked it from the ash. It lay in his palm,
surprisingly cold given the heat coming up from everything around it. He rubbed
his thumb over the medallion modeled after the Brigit’s cross that held her
initials. His old man had made the medallion, and Corvin had given it to Brigit
the night that Tom was born. She had given it to Jessy when she turned five.
“What’s that?”
Corvin almost jumped at his father’s voice. He grit his teeth
and slid it into his chest pocket as he stood up.
“Best get to your place and get some supplies, pop.”
He mounted and as they turned the horses to ride towards the
old man’s cabin, he pulled his horse up short and stared up into the tree line
where his cabin door, lay in the boughs of the oak tree.
The door looked as though it had been plucked from the cabin
and positioned carefully in the tree, its iron hinges and handle shining in the
morning sun.
“How in tarnation…?” His old man followed his gaze. “How ya
reckon that got up there?”
“I don’t know,” Corvin said. “But I damn sure intend to find out.”
© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
Auf Dich
Fear
Busy
© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
Endure
The Shoal.
Black ink, swirls inside circles.
Words stripped bare
to the letters,
merged not to read, but to see,
shapes reshaped until pleasing…
Cut in perfect form, circle still binding,
Shoaled and stacked
With solemn focus,
Folden into yellow paper.
Red ink to form the link.
Formed in duplicate,
rite repeated.
New set destroyed
as some folks call for.
Documented, as others insist.
Now to forget,
the hardest part…
until such a time remembering
is prompted with delight.
© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
Thoughts
Highway Hypnosis
Interpreting
From out of nowhere:
horn, brakes screeching, cold steel, dark...
I wake with a start!
© Jeremy L. Heath, 2026. All rights reserved
Linking
Transparent
They call for cease fire
Not for peace, but the time
To bomb someone else.
Dreaming
Starting Point
One measly pull-up,Proper Sleep