Did you sense my emergence, good beak,

A gloopy shell dragging egg slime and sand.

To the waiting spume.

With clammy innards, I lumbered.

Under a morose sun

While you pecked my indifferent

Eyes to nourish your blood disease.

Adieu, good beak, it was mine to be

Momentary.

I’m better when you do not

Imagine me an honorable man.

You, with your breeding, your

alpine beauty and pluck,

are symphonically designed,

and I am nothing better than a rat.

Yesterday, in Reykjavik, the wind

Put pink in your porcelain features.

Today, you’ve dressed in assortments:

Flashbulb smiles, bluest silks, and

Embroidered Lotus flowers.

Tomorrow, you’ll forget me.

outtakes of distant sidewalks, noir

streetlights editing suggestion.

suggesting what exactly?

the average value of a snow event to a

snowflake & the forced symmetries of

a populous.

where it all evens out, as long as they

make it through.

nearer than perfection, someone wears

a purple & gold Venetian Jester Mask.

carefully observing the tracks of bicycle

tires--that resemble spines.

Reaching out
  Struggling
The Shadow

Sometimes I wish I was the moon,
distant but always watching, free from
this ruined Earth, slowly inching itself free
from it's orbit.

This life is like a burning flame,
it has left scars and wounds.

The moon is too far away for
people to hurt, they are too stupid
to make it back to it's dusty surface
on humanities footfall. AI is the survivor.

Roasting life here on earth, humanity
makes up stories to please their deprived minds, the truth is pushed far behind.

Freedom is farther away than the moon,
ruining the future and killing possibilities
like a stabbing knife.

This place is divided by your crimes.

Do you think ghosts cry?

When it's all a lie!

This is not death of the truth,
it's death of love and birth of lies.

The flies follow death, eating your crimes,
leaving ruins in its wake. Now ashes remain.

How does it feel to find out freedom
is a lie? It feels like a crime to be free.

©️ 2025 By Amanda Shelton

You are everything. There isn't anywhere I can think
and imagine to go where you won't be.
Inescapable. Even when I imagine I've killed you,
I curse the name given to you. There I see you
in the profane words, in the rajas of violence.
Where can I go? What shape
can I take to hide from you?

I quiver on the edge of Love and Hate,
yearning with pain and in vain
for mercy forgot me and relief
is a distant mirage in an endless desert.

I grow to love the shiny polish
from grains of abrasive sand.
I wait through a coarse, dry world
for cool deluge transforming
in a blink everything from sand to sage,
and slowly back again.
Who can do this? Who
can harness a power
perceived in between
the friction of fire and air?

even in the east
and in the west
light piled up in darkness

I look out and see
wolves and sheep
there is no difference

they can't keep it away
with fireworks
and breaking windows

immeasurably
in the distance
the little stars whisper

“please don't let us be seen?
In broad daylight.......”

sparks and shards of glass
do not become stars.

Bored little girl so long ago.
Red Keds and a sailor's
hat.

The roses grew by the
door.  Mother
didn't notice the lacey

frill of their demise.

Or hers.  The summer
of the song was hot.

Lions.  Teenagers fit
full of ***** and
Kent cigarettes.

There she sits behind
the school gym.  The
player piano

accompanying

the tap tap of the
ash.

Fourteen was a sepsis.

Was, was.  Was.
A heartbeat of
dark nights, taunts

gone wild.

Memories in the mind
now so
Long
Ago.

She sits still, her
pleas for please

to let go.

To my 78th summer
wires of time twine

before the tunes
played

Long ago still
fresh as the summer
behind the empty

school.
Over and over.

Plagues are breathing
still

In the wrinkles of

My

Memory


Caroline Shank
January 19, 2025