I breathe this crisp
clean Fall air
I sensed the calm
surround Me
Envelop Me in it's
colorful embrace

Thought I was loved here
Safe in Heart
Safe in Home

Now the colors are blurred...
Not because of the
magic of a season
No...it is because I
Was not prepared
for the changes to come

An ice storm hit when
I was not looking.
Shards of sharpness,
embedded deep
An Ice Pick, uninvited...**


Copyright © 2015 Christi Michaels.
All Rights Reserve

i.

the quiet of the meadows
as wildflower listens to the
babbling stream,
stones washed by the silvery
water,
the sun pressing the land into ghosts.

ii.

dusk sags like a balloon
remembers a darkening sky.

iii.

it has grown late,
poetry quivers on the
windowsill,
taps nonchalantly at the door.

iv.

the clouds turn emptiness into dreams
like morning frocks billowing on a line,

the moon walks over
sings of darkness and blue smoke,

the cold starts to sink into
the crevices, conjures its ice
like brittle honeycomb.

v.

tomorrow waits like
a hungry child,
she eats our fingers
and our hands
and we let her
for we can’t bear for her to go hungry
as she carries everything of us
forward with a little push.

it felt good to leave the tourists behind
---with their cast-iron grated stairs
and photo-flashing-falls,
question-comments cookie-cut---
embrace the woods:
soaking wet approach,
brinks of shivers in the dripping wind,
an old, broken filter
   slurping bubbles from a cardboard tired puddle;
whisperlite stove finally working,
the first cous-cous dinner warms our little white dog
   dreaming on my rising falling chest
   pressed by sleeping bag and snort and sigh;
we sleep our psoas sore--
unknowing we have just begun...
haven't yet begun!
yet bodied abject pain to shock our senseless raw
   with scoured glimmer-vasts of love beneath
a frozen fly on Frosty Mountain
zippered hail in midnight breath,
i *** in numbness gusts--
i bite my smile ice,
whoop the sleeting world for we are here at last.

can i give thanks
any impossible way
for wholly grace?

You, whose soul
beats in every heart
in every poem

futile words flail
their feeble reach
to grasp your beauty

a simple man
whose simple thought
cannot encompass Your All;

i am alive
because Spirit of Life
breathes within me

may that simple life
be fully spent
exalting Your glory.

Waiting for the sea she sits
writing with her fingertips
setting down herstory on the sand;

waiting, with a wistful eye
watching for the rising tide
wondering if stories can be drowned..

Do you remember the night
I translated a dream for you?

You agreed and later that night
we began to put your pain into perspective

You're sending me letters
signed, sealed and delivered
from your new home

I'm saving all your letters
where only longing lingers
we've not known each other long
but waves of your scent
are already mapped on my mind

In your stories you write of
an explosion in your chest
bats burst from hibernation
forcing your ribs to break
your skin ripping apart

You tell me of a whistling in your chest
a candles been blown out
smoke rising from a darkened hollow cave

The emptiness feeds off flesh
you're scratching at your skin
the remains tipping into your chest

It's filling-
filling every day

And that is when you wake
choking, gasping for air

Your letters end as abruptly
as your night terrors
bad dreams leaving you breathless
waking up drenched in sweat

Your last lines of this weeks letter read;
When I lift my tired body
from the bed
the bedroom light illuminates
my skin
I see I'm real
I see I've not clawed my flesh
no track marks from my fears

We're sat together with
the letters all telling
the same story, again and again
you voicing your dreams,
dreams spawning nightmares

Do you remember I was going to
translate these dreams for you?

How the bats are actually butterflies
how butterflies are subjected to
a caged darkness before the light
How the whistling in your chest
is fertile ground for growth
How the suffocating filling
is the abundance of love
this world can give us
if,
if we only subject a change
to our perceptions

Love and fear cannot exist
together within us
with fear is suffering
with love is healing.

Do you remember the night
I translated a dream for you?

The night we set fire to the letters
imagining the crimping paper
as the disintegration of
each and every
fear.


© Sia Jane

An empty coffee mug.....
  
Could evoke impending sadness
between you and the empty vessel,
are some private, reflective moments

It could mean,
it is time for you to stand up,    
away from the coffee table
and start your daily grind
face another day in your life...

An empty coffee mug
could lead to
the end of a long exhausting day
the end of a conversation
the end of a relationship :(

Coffee is gone,
lots of things have to be done
maybe, It is time to leave an old life
old beliefs, give away old clothes, old books
some goodbyes have to be said
to old friends gone...old self, and
to old pricking, stabbing pain...
move to another house, for a new life
new opportunities, new friends
new surroundings, await

Each season segues to the next
yellow-green, brown, fuschia pink
red-orange, purple, even aqua-blue
slowly, but surely, they all turn to gray
the lovely colors of Spring,
Summer and  Autumn,
become ashen...and die
but... after a while, they surely give way,
a springing of new life
could never be held at bay
.......................................
out of the coffee shop
or maybe, outside your room...just stop,
it could be a stretch from your scope of view
you are faced with the birthing of everything new
there is sun shining
for sure.....a moon rising
.........................................

An empty coffee mug
could mean,
the end of your break time
stop wallowing
quit postponing
focus back on work and
things to be prioritized
now is the time...got to move on.....


Sally

Copyright September 2015
Rosalia Rosario A. Bayan

The very worst of demons are the ones that can't be destroyed because they are a part of you

I have medicine.
Am being kept alive by progress.
Little pills like droplets of pale blue
Doctor-nectar.

I have been inside women so beautiful
I nearly gave up
Ghost.
Their confidences were instruments

Of classical composers.
The creative pleasure of the
Universe manifested. Aesthetics. Pure.  
Their bodies were salty

Words longing to be
Poetry.
They did it.
Made flesh immortal.

My hands were dead upon them; my
Heart skipped beats in the name of
Glossiness.
Twig fingers upon dead silicone.

And I grew around their hearts
Like a tree around a graveyard light post;
Watered with tears and appreciated at times  
When any

Grieving heart throws itself at anything
Beautiful and
Rigid.
For something.

I know love.
It tickles and hurts.
And I know death.
They're related.

Sisters separated at birth.
I know Poetry.
She says to Death and Love:
*Do you guys have the

Other two
Thirds of
This
Medallion?

I have no room for new scars.
My heart is more glued seams than pieces of
Hope and muscle.

My smile is as pale as the back of a
Dalí painting; all canvas and
Dirt.

I have opened my arms for a hug and
Stood accused of impersonating Christ.
Meditation rendered me unsocial.

As misunderstood as Latin, yet
I yell at the walls of common reality with
The dead language of my innersoul,

Cursing and blaspheming for the attention
Of deities. Some may listen; not one needs
To reply.

All I want is to break down the wall
Between myself and any creator
Listening,

And say Thank You. The Love
Of my Life is
My life.

What I love the most about my
Life is  
It.

Love is like a raindrop,
delicately formed by the vapors of time,
inherently achieving its perfect shape,
before gently falling through the atmosphere of life,
dispersing into oblivion as it hits the ground,
lost forever as though it was never there.