What does your passion look like?

Jun 2012

John Mahoney

an incident involving beach glass, in winter, 2012

i.
the lake has opened
several places where the ice
has come unfrozen
two idiots drove their
pickup into a hole
last night

ii.
the emergency vehicles
woke me with sirens
racing to drag these
drunks off the
ice before they froze

iii.
the beach sand has been
    uncovered
by the blowing wind
which has driven the snow
into a drift over the dock which we
have stored by the
     treeline

iv.
walking the sandy shore
i stooped to pick up
a piece of green, bottle
     glass

v.
the glass is weighty in my hand, and rounded
     smooth
its edges shaped and polished
by the working of sand, water and time
         like an olive,
         like a cherry,
         like a memory,
              of you

Grateful acknowledgement to the Rose & Thorn Journal for first publishing this poem in their Spring 2012 issue.

Jun 2012

Lauren Christina Pearson

Dear Lillian.

I never got to hold you,
and I never saw your face.
I didn't even know you were
inside me, until it was much
too late. But darling never fear,
for I once heard it said, that
a love like what I have
for you, is never truly dead.

Sleep soundly my dear child,
wherever you may be. If there
is a heaven high above us, or
a nonexistent sea. I live my life quite
differently, ever since you left. I
like to think I'd make you proud my
love, if you followed in my steps.
For you see I'm training, so that
someday I'll be strong. Strong, and ready,
and proud, to hold someone, much
like you, in my arms.

Inspired by a quote. "A baby is something you carry inside you for nine months, in your arms for three years and in your heart till the day you die." - Mary Mason.
And of course, Lillian.

Jun 2012

Lauren Christina Pearson

Glass Boxes

We live in Glass Boxes.
Made up of love, joy, and
happiness, anger, pain,
and hate. We knock on windex'd
walls, shouting for
someone to break our
boundaries.

No one's box is made
the same. Everyone's glass
cracks different ways. The
sun sends patterns across our
skin, staining us with
experiences that build who
we will become.

I press my nose to the glass,
fogging my walls with
the haze of heavy breathing.
My eyes squint for you,
searching desperately for your
Glass home...but no matter
how hard I try, you're
always just out of sight.

I hear on the wind that your
glass is changing. Chipping
away to the pressures of
******. It's all I can do not
to claw my walls. I know these
bleeding nails would be
my only triumph.

So I sit in my Glass Box, bitter
at the rays of color that
turn my home into a rainbow
prism. The paradox of it all
enough to make my head pound.
Is it even fair to be happy?
When you're off, all alone,
drowning in you're own pain?

I think about you every day, I don't know what to do. It feels as if you're already dead.

May 2012

mûre

let daisies decide

I gave up on astrology
when you gave up on me.

       these stars will never align

doomed to a quickened heart
when every other year
you tell me I'm
beautiful.

you're a devastating black hole
I've wary watched the effortless pull of
galaxies into your guile
invisible webs gilded with your smile

infinite universal promises of nothing.

having fallen sick with the brush of your hand
(careless earth-shattering connection)

          he loves me... he loves me not
                 he loves me.... he loves me not

"your old friend"- how dare you?
at the origin- ever aliens!
you never obeyed the customs
when every look was all a kiss
and every touch a secret question

"we never were just friends," I muse-
fleeing on my gondola down the milky way
casting over my shoulder your cordial invitations to love you
from this millennium onward, you've changed the font but kept the paper
into the nebulous reality you've tried to gather
I don't. I won't. I would not rather.

let daisies decide.
leave me alone.

May 2012

Lauren Christina Pearson

Skinny

I hate my body.
All my angles and lines.
And I hate them all
because of you.
What are we trying to accomplish?
Pitting body type against body type?
Why is it wrong to love
my bones,
if it's encouraged that you love
your curves?
I am healthy.
I eat every day.
My body is different,
why isn't that okay?
I get called
twig,
anorexic,
and sick.
But I can't call you
log,
fat,
or thick.
Don't tell me to gain weight,
and I won't tell you to lose it.
Why can't we accept that people are different?

Apr 2012

mûre

Blessed Crescents

Dark eyelashes
That flutter at my clavicle
Alight upon stepping stone freckles
And whisper-paint my canvas
With nothing-everythings of orange violet red
(Realizing reveries of your pretty head)

What blessed crescents

The sigh pumps slowly though my veins
The colour of sky after summer rain

Apr 2012

Lauren Christina Pearson

To Kiss An Angel.

Iridescent bubbles pop,
an explosion of shimmer in
sunlit soap drops.

Magic wands in blinding
colors give life to miracle
sphere-shaped fairies. Meant
only to exist for brief
moments, disappearing at
the fingers of
earth-bound angels.

Tiny imprints dot the
shoots of green, that carpet
my angel’s feet from harm.
Leaving in return medals of valor,
earthy marks of bravery
from her romp through
tiny forest worlds.

Golden rays say goodbye
as they sink softly down to rest.
She lets her weighted eyelids close,
Whispering a melody so divine
it could only come from her mouth.

My lips touch her porcelain cheek,
Fingers dancing on her moonlit hair.
To kiss an angel, my angel,
this is what I live for.

Enjoy. This was inspired, again, by a title generator that gave me the title "Kiss of an Angel", as well as some feelings about how I would see a little child if I had been able to carry my own to term. Any input is welcome, as always. :]
Edited

Apr 2012

Shashank Virkud

How Minds Are Lost

Silk in a serenade,
each second becomes a day.
Just stay for the blink of an eye.
Now I have a reason to lose
control of my breathing.

Sympathy in the strings I play,
not so much in the things I say,
no matter how hard I try.
Unaware of the passing season,
am I staying or am I leaving?

Cornerstones crumble,
I don't trust my senses enough.
I've got a feeling nothings' real.
Now I have a reason to
really start screaming.

Polished brass,
shattered glass in the garden.
Examine the facts yet abolish
the past, a history lesson isn't
something I'm going to believe in.

The creases in time are
seamless in my sleep.
A fragile frame of mind,
I hate to suppress it. I'm inclined
to ask, am I awake, or am I dreaming?

Apr 2012

Shashank Virkud

The Vibe

Something about the vibe.
Something I can see is true,
something electric in the wire,
you're the medium it's running through.

First the surface,
then the inside of your mind.
Our own world, kept intact,
now we're falling back.

Something about the vibe,
something I can't see in light so slight.
Something I can't describe.
you can wake me in the afterlife.

It's where I want to be, this is where I want to be.

Apr 2012

Shashank Virkud

Tequila Mockingbird

The wind blows hard tonight. The wind takes every bit of warmth from my marrow and doesn't bring any of it back. No, this is not an art that you have mastered exclusively, as much as that may disappoint you.

Ninety six days culminate and rot within my intestines. The feeling, well, the feeling is like ****, but the images interpreted are more than appealing, beautiful I would say.

I don't stay at home anymore; I go to other people's homes and stay there because it fascinates me. It fascinates me for so many reasons, expressions, to name a few.

Keeping true to the convention of keeping true to the convention, I shed a layer of skin when I threw the old tea box full of photographs from the terrace this morning.

The air smelt of coriander and fresh mud, fresh rain. I took it into my lungs as a restatement of my existence but it felt smug and in vain when winter's wisdom slapped me as I exhaled. The pain was a harsh reminder; I was real. My face was red more from the shame than the sting of it.

The whole occurrence was organic, and the memory makes me laugh. Some say to me that I'm made to laugh easily, that I laugh like a fool. I'm a bad hand out of a deck of cards. I am dealt with. It's all in my stars.

In comparison, sardonicism has never known a friend, but I've had one or two. Most people are hopeless to me; I am unplugged.
You speak to me, you want me to be connected. You have a longing in your voice, not so much for me, but for the thought of me rejected.

I had stars in my sights the nights you ignored me and made my hands your ******. Time, and time again, you justify keeping me pressed against your window, believing every inclination is adored.

Time has passed, these creases will stay forever in my corduroys. The fragmented fire wood we never got to burn and those forgotten chapters of childhood still litter my mother's yard.

Maintaining a reserved tone, tensing those muscles in your face, for what? Try dying twice and then you will see that there is no magic, no mystery behind the way things are happening, especially here.

Happy to be hurt, ironic, the pain in my neck reminds me of you.