Echo and Narcissist

He stared into her life
It enveloped him, metamorphosing his reality
Sometimes we are changed until we dont remember
those quaint things that we pretend to adore
and lose ourselves in the Medusa’s gaze
of a life
trans-formative and different.

The ogre that I am, I sit in my man-cave.
It’s bathed in light from my TV and laptop.
Each is a portal to our ugly world.
Regulated crystal-city skyscrapers
Form Giant’s Causeways.
Aircraft eagle overhead
Reminding me of vultures
And 9\11.

Cars beetling about the suburbs,
Some Beetles, Ha Ha.
River highways cascading cars.
Ants rush everywhere,
A seething nest.

So many an ant,
Holding a conch to the ear,
Or staring mesmerised at that tiny screen.
Yoda fingers his phone…

And me I sit here,
Metamorphosing metaphors
For a while
Before I visit Facebook Land
Once again.

Paul Butters

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to
Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being ***** by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

Thich Nhat Hanh

billboard's calligraph --
past the haze of Manila infested
by car sprawls and belching machines.

magnanimous treatise of tarpaulins,
people chin-up asking God
with askance

something like this
"o god make this bearable
like a mound of fresh fruits
from ****** labour."

maniacal sensurround:
earth-shattering frequency
of footsteps trampling the mouth
of monolith shadows - the peak
of this quake is our complete silence.

rain's catharsis in effect
sousing us in the blood of unreal light.
this diastolic shrinkage
jamming the beat of constricting vessels.
the adrenaline surges
within the dermis of this pretension.

a collective of tired beings heeding
the recherché of voice metamorphosing
into form, a dagger-butterfly
paring us skin to bone, cranial
to visceral, soul to nothing -

catapult of a trajectory spit
plummeting in eased-up pace
from Taft Avenue flyover
to a subjugated wagon of scraps
and empty wine bottles.

today's paper reads:

"Palace hits hiring
   of **** dancers"

fancying to fall right in the
spanked curved of this
insatiate melodrama - something
  prayer could not save from
this land's mutinous ignominy.

   we resume to fulfill our madness,
hundreds of tack-headed people
  rolling down the streets of Makati,
drenched with rain's trilling aftermath.

squinting to look at
  no sun, only the grieving of skyscrape,
thumbing down unidentified objects
  in the depth of loose pockets,
    desperate for home.

Clouds
drifting across the sky
in imaginary forms

Clouds
making imaginary images
that only the mind
can put together

Clouds
of varying shades
and shapes

Clouds
metamorphosing

Clouds
morphing
into the unknown

Clouds
metamorphosed

Clouds
floating
like the Goodyear blimp
off on the horizon

Clouds
lost
shapeless
meeting
and reforming

Clouds
like foam on the ocean
endless and everlasting
but empty in their
subtlety

Clouds
like cotton candy
pink then white
shifting shades
of gray

Clouds
filled with rain
or as
ephemeral
as infinity
ethereal
everlasting

I have little thought for these days
As the future evaporates
And the past grows fat and vivid
I amuse myself with games of flashback
Faces and places flickering
Across an empty mind
Dragging their stories behind them
Dead memories metamorphosing
Into living visceral dreams
Where the flowers of love and loss
Are intertwined so closely
That with the passing of time
They each rob the other
Of some pain and glory
As reality gives way
To a realisation of truth

                                      By Phil Roberts

"...WHEN THE EVENING IS SET OUT AGAINST THE SKY..."

She stood
as if the world

were a mere
bit of scenery

backdrop

a prop in a play
designed for the sole purpose

of making her
look good.

Gorgeous is
the word.

She a universe
unto her self.

She spoke in italic.

Her voice changing font
from word to word.

She had a strange up
and down CaPiTaL accent

that was slightly dis-
concerting.

A simple "How do you do?"
metamorphosing into

hOw Do YoU dO
and without a trace

of punctuation
her voice a melody

upon the air
like music set free

invisibly.

She spoke excellent
French deliciously

which one
understood completely

even though one
had only schoolboy French.

jE m ApPellE mAdAmE mOrT eT
mAiNtEnAnT aLlOns y

She held out a hand
the sun itself

a mere jewel
upon her finger.

The world had run out
of itself.

I followed Madame Mort
into the nothingness

that had suddenly
opened up.

"Qui...merci!"
the last thing I

ever heard
my self say.