Don't be frightened
Of my pet wound

Please
Don't
Back off
Or shy away

I love him so deeply
Despite all his pain
As he loyally
Follows me
Every
Single
Day

You see,
He is
A rescue case.
Somewhere in a
Forgotten past
Something painful

Something often
Too painful
To talk about

But he tries so very hard
To do it all right.

We are companions
Who traverse this
Tricky land.

And we
Would both
Very much love
To share
Our time

If you would have us.
With our tender edges.

I promise,
He means no harm—
He is just looking
For a missing part.

Looking into his eyes
You will see something soft
Not scary
Just insecure.

I know he has his hackles up,
Is a little bit yappy,
Even nippy...

But he means no harm.
Underneath all those prickles
Are feelings
So very sweet
And deep.

But honestly,
I understand—
If you need to walk,
No need to even talk,
It’s not your pain.

Because he feels
A little bit sore—
But he means no harm.

Though you stretch my heart
In ways so very profound,
I feel my essence
Spilling.

So I gently
Ask—
Please don't be frightened
Of my
Pet
Wound.

When everything is beautiful
and everything is strange
when everything is lifeless
and beautifully arranged

when everything is sorrowful,
and takes away your breath
when everything is living
but life's a silent death.

when everyone is laughing
but all you do is cry
when others are thriving
and you just want to die

when everything is passing
and you live in the past
holding onto strangers
that were never meant to last

always hoping
that reality will bend
and you won't talk to me
but I can always pretend.

always replacing
the void that's always there
so I won't be lonely
and I won't despair

something always changing
always inter-phasing,
I have many faces
for the many things I'm facing.

call me a kaleidoscope,
always cry and can't let go
I am a sad cube,
Inside a vacuum

These tears are hot and sting
I really like to sing
Whenever I feel like
I have nothing

It's all a silent death,
but it's not colorless
It's my internal void
that always gets destroyed


When everything is beautiful
and everything is strange
when everything is lifeless
and beautifully arranged

when everything is lifeless,
and beautifully deranged
and you're rid of your innocence
and wonderfully estranged.

when strangers marvel at you,
like a plate full of meat
and nobody loves me,
it's all just deceit.

when the world is so vast
but your room is so small
and the monsters are so big,
but your dreams are too tall.

when intimacy is formless,
and you're making love with ghosts
sitting in anger,
at a pain no one knows.

and with the simple pleasures,
you really mean the most
cause' although I'm suicidal,
I want to have a toast.

when your ex is everything,
but you're nothing but his muse,
and he calls you his 'friend'
after you were violently abused

when you forget your age,
as he forgets his
and your childhood is seamless
life's as if you were dreaming

but everything's a nightmare,
and everything is slow
and everyone is happy
and everyone lets go

but I move silently
I walk as slow as my breath
because time is passing
straight to the silent death.

By Marcela Guajardo- One Andean Sky  07.09.24

Tyres tread loudly on the tar grey road
Splashing water on the footpath
Heavy rain washes colour, grass pallid and a ghostly hue
Shivering, a pedestrian hurries past
Scurrying for shelter from the deluge
Only the ‘Die Hards’ are out
The ‘Big Bus Sydney’ open to the sky level is empty
Not even the tourists are game
No birds chirping. Taking refuge, somewhere warm. Clever!
Our Retired Doctors Desai, decide to wait for the weather to
clear.
Their daily walk postponed.
The food deliverers on bikes, hunched and pedalling against
the wind
Car honks as tempers flare. White knuckle drivers.
It is chaos out there as I sit warm and safe at the helm inside
at my desk
Ready to offer an umbrella or call a taxi

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

              Stopping by Literary Criticism on a Snowy Evening

                      From an idea by a happy bumblebee

Whose Deconstructionist Narrative this is I think I know
Their (because we mustn’t say “her” or “his”)
New Criticism is on their podcast, though
They will not see me applying Phenomenology here
To help fill up their woods with Neo-Post-Colonialist blow

My little solar car must think it other-gendered
To pause while I Conceptualize without a Starbuck’s near
Between Foucault and Derrida here
Next to the Sapir-Whorf Theory, and without a beer

They give their location transponder a Derrida shake
To demand a formal apology for this cultural mistake
The only other sound’s the Existential creep
Of Masonic Catholic **** Zionism on the take

Judgmental stereotypes are flying, shallow and cheap
But I have an Inner Reality to keep
And an Intertextual Analysis of Post-Structuralism to steep
And an Aesthetic Objectification of Dialectics to steep

Too Rare to Hide

Three months passed,
and I dared to ask
if the ghost of us still lingered in him.

“I do,” he said.
A dagger wrapped in silk.
A truth spoken,
then locked behind someone else’s door.

He misses me.
Yes, he feels it.
But he chooses the safe walls
of another life
over the fire we had.

I see it now:
my love was never a secret to him,
only a shadow he could glance at
without stepping into its light.

But I am no shadow.
I am not a whispered thought
to be hidden
in someone’s quiet, comfortable life.

He may remember the ache of us,
the weight of what he let go.
But I—
I will not be the heart that waits
behind locked doors.

I am too rare
to be someone’s secret.
And one day,
he will see the loss
that comes from mistaking comfort
for love.

folks gather at the  roadhouse when weekend comes around
its a line dance night. dance to the country sound
dancing in a line dancing all night long
dancing all together to a country song

hand clapping knee slapping dancing toe to toe
cowboy boots and stetsons putting on a show
dancing all night long till the break of day
to a country song they dance the night away

dancing in a line dancing in row
dancing altogether dancing toe to toe
dance away the night to a country song
dancing in line dancing all night long

hand clapping knee slapping dancing in row
dancing all night long dancing to and fro
dance away the night to a country song
dancing in line dancing all night long