Tremble not
when the forest of extreme
desire
becomes overgrown,
when the trees pant and beg
for eyes that never
blinked
during
a moment of caprice,
when pulsating
worlds became intertwined
and flowers laced
with
traces of virgin earth.
Art: “Beating Heart”
SarArt Sari
Quickened by
faint remembrances
of a void
desperate
for her touch…
Art: Odette Hayon Itah
In love with weightlessness and shadow.
Figured with nothingness and unmolded light.
Dreamt once, but never fully conformed
Unto this world or the previous.
Sing tonight, or rest among the giants
Of solemn defiance,
And know thy specter within my dying glance,
Infinite to naught, porous in every direction,
Seeping blindly out of captivity.
Art: “Pisces”
Oksana Zhelisko
Excise me from your womb
And guide me through
Shifting plenitudes of dust
Redolent of those jagged moments
When fiery wreaths were hung in silence
But still ruled the day.
Sift me, then scatter me on all sides
As your lips begin to blow and cast
My name into deciduous glass
And candied trees that refuse to melt.
Make way for tomorrow
When toothless gnomes make love
As universal peace awakens,
Walks to the Sun and back,
Sits down and thinks itself blind.
Art: “Scissors and Butterflies”
Francesco Clemente
Felt, but unseen.
Once again the
Striated beast moves beneath us,
Looking for new angels
To face down some demons of old.
Withered knolls creep quietly
And settle in fixed space,
And we wonder why the galaxies roam
And multiply so wantonly.
Hear the song of the legend
Who
Didn’t die,
But whose passion transports us
To newer and gladder tidings.
It never occurred to us that
We hitchhiked on their tails
All this time.
Behold a summons to possibility
And a calling to account of new thought,
Of hands marked with perfectly aligned
Veins of experience
Clasped in prayer, trembling with delight
As the eyes face down unpaved roads
Lush with unbridled verdure
Punctuated by sinewy vines that crawl
Slowly, marking out each inch with
Perfection, love.
A posthumous love letter tumbles freely
Amid an unsure wind, but hopeful.
Time will surely read it, and in
The cool of a reassuring Dawn,
He will run impulsively until out of breath,
Stopping besides a lowered branch
To weep a little.
And to smile.
And live a little more.
Art: “All Things New”
Karen Whitworth
It never really felt much like home again.
The sun-kissed meadows of my youth
were now replaced by a tawdry and vulgar juxtaposition of
discount furniture stores, blaring neon 24-hour checks cashed signs,
and eldritch lofts hastily adorned with
skeuomorphic Victorian-era window panes
sometimes doubling as
psychic’s offices.
Where the ferns once blossomed now sits
a ghastly array of pastel-colored houses with no windows,
overgrown gardens with no flowers,
and sinuous dusty streets endlessly teeming with decrepit cafes
emanating sounds of droll laughter
from patrons with no bodies.
But I still had her.
Art: Justyna Kopania
Expand undefined
Until these brittle forms
Leave no
Trace of
Original grasp.
Contract when
Light gives you
Every reason to
Suffer and
Not to see.
Invert your sorrows
Upend every regret
So that you die only once,
Knowing.
Art: “Abstract Painting, Suprematism”
Kazimir Malevich
Restless brocade
Lucid under my palm
Faded borders
Art: Silvia Kleyff
Blindfolded. Restless.
Everything is disjointed
As breathing subsides.
Art: Giovani Zanolino
She was always kind of a public guru,
the poor man’s barroom Socrates.
Her answers were always more questions
that inevitably led to seemingly inane quibbling over the obvious.
Or was it so obvious after all?
At the end you left realizing you knew infinitely less
about that which we all thought we had ever known.
Art: “Morning Light”
Dan McCaw
