We are not
unlike serpents:
at intervals
we must shed
our skins and
enter new lives.

Are you uncomfortable
in the comfort
you have created?
Do you itch for no reason
you can think of?
Do you long
for the scent
of flowers you
have never seen?
Do desire flesh
you have not met?

Lives wear out.

Someone new
longs to be born.

It may be time
to molt and bolt.

New lives,
new roads.

The Dharma
wheel spins
trailing wonders.

Live or die,
we must follow.

  ~mce

Total shock, I say, what occurred
At our local aquarium in recent years.
Some call it the type of scandal
That violently shakes two hemispheres.

Henry and Roxy had been an item.
Much older than she, Henry was bound
To guard and protect his little lady.
A more loyal penguin was hard to be found.

How they loved to sing together!
He would belt out and she would intone.
The happy couple frolicked and preened--
Happy not to be alone.

Molting season came and Roxy
Experienced her catastrophic molt.
Henry stood by and guarded his sweetheart.
Of attentiveness he lacked not a jolt.

Roxy's feathers soon returned
And there she was in all her glory.
Then poor Henry started his molt.
That's when Floyd entered the story.

While Henry hid from penguin view,
Floyd caught Roxy's eyes.
His feathers were back in abundance.
What happened next? You can surmise.

When Henry's feathers finally returned,
Floyd had become Roxy's new mate.
They did what penguin couples do
While Henry sadly accepted his fate.

The new family soon multiplied,
And Henry eventually found a new friend.
What started out as an outrageous scandal
Wasn't so horrible in the end.

Scandals come and scandals go.
Some of them are hard to avoid.
Aren't you glad that you don't molt
Like our friends Henry and Roxy and Floyd?

- by Bob B

embers like the roasting of firewood
rocks you would find deep in the mantle of the planet
turn to royal purple
to a deep midnight blue
Mystic origins

fades and fades
into immeasurable darkness

I often sit and wonder:
why must I always say bye
why can’t it stay a while longer
why is it so unaffected
so glorious
as I molt and molt in misery
I’m ranting now

Its like the tighter I hold on to it
Squeeze him to myself
The more it flows; he flows
metaphysical.

just like hands full of sand grains
draining from both wrists
loosely like the dark unfathomable waves
I miss you darling, but is it really
you I miss

Oh sunshine?
Dimming over a limitless horizon
Reaching infinity
as I approach zero
I’ve always hated calculus.

can’t see the clouds now, they’re turning darker
strange shapes they take on
tears roll near the rims
of kohl stripped eyes
Traditional, perhaps .

they flow now
rolling loosely like ocean waves
As I watch the night take over

The air is crisp.
Crisp, that is the word my dad used to describe Gwen's voice after the No Doubt concert. I was eight then.

Crisp, the word I thought of, when I was flicking that brown lighter I thought it would be funny to buy, sitting on the stoop. Striking the wheel, careful not to hit the little red button. The air swept against the sunglasses I paid too much for with the lenses that are mismatched and the sweater my mom bought me two christmases ago that originally I hated.

Falling leaves drift by those little windows to my soul but I am too distracted by the thought of him coming to pick me up to try to attach them back to the tree. Too bad too, because with every leaf detached, comes winter further on my face.

Thats when the crystals fall from my dreams, and cover the once adobe hills in spells of skyscrapers. Those are the guys who form tools out of my can of hairspray and chip at the ozone trying to scrape off the blue, and see what all that paint is covering. Icarus is horrified.

In rows like crumpled paper set,
The way one might design a brooch,
There sets a sparkle down so purely
Capital, beyond reproach and sure
She is the blackest flea who sits
Upon an old green dog, now should

You query, her name's a pond.  In Gaelic
It's pronounced: Baile Átha Cliath—
But in Irish she's plain, mightily named,
Dublin.  Where broods the dove, linnet
And swan.  Now take them pi'jons, they got
Dank habits and linnets lament the silent

Stones.  Sure, the goose gave out and took
To the air, but the swans, they've landed,
To roost, enchanted as 'Children of Lir,'
And so becomes a changeling child's
Fair city, for in her anointed proximity,
Gracious white birds do bathe and molt,

Supplied as I can tell, she looks black-
Pooled in clusters, long side her creases.
Stout nectar flows in near every nook
And cranny, but yer man, he's never
Busy, that malty fish, daftly avoids,
Swimming spirals round like buggies

Do on petals, he'd rather grace gardens
By drinking their dew.  O Dublin town,
She wends her ways and rows her houses
Round-a-bout on cobbled shores in tribute
To sprite, deary and fey, Anna Livia—
Who like a stem of blood, stabs right

To the heart of Dublin Bay— and proud
As a crowned thorny, who once had reeked,
She's bloomed large, into one grandeous
Beauty, like a céilí so finely fiddled—
A sandy, spirited, bombastic beach-
Flower, she is, a flag so fitting upon

The doons.  In dream, I flocked to her
Like the wild geese and saw her coy'd
Repose and there I spied, from mackerel
Skies— one monstrous, Irish rose!

Molt

Did your wings get heavy with the rain?
Did you toss the morning dew back to the air?
When did it start to burn?

Though the morning sunrise curled your hair,
The silence of two thousand sunsets left you
Sheared
Shivering
Until you couldn’t stand to hug yourself anymore.

Your rags are little more than a veil,
Yet they chewed through the fiber of your skin
Biting
Binding
Until you became inseparable.

At some point you have to realize what’s going on.
Is it slow? Do you even have time to look down and stop yourse—
Calm down


and breathe.

Feel the future pelt your neck.
Feel the present fill your lungs.
Feel the past ride up your throat.

Take one last step into the edgeless expanse.
And fly.
Even though you can’t feel it.

Listen.
Listen to your wings quiver in the storm.

Only friendship.
You made yourself clear - clear as glass - that it could never be more.
But as I too am glass, a small shard of me broke off and shattered.
And why did it ignite my spirit to be in your presence, to be enfolded in your warmth
Why, why did it set my heart aflame, burn me with such flammable, incendiary envy
To see you lust after another, to want far beyond friendship with them
Why did that melt me
I was already committed to another, no matter if it was a dry, barren whisper of once-existing love or a forest of endless rain
It was commitment
Yet in spite of this, I continued to melt
Melting, right down to my core
Where I am just sand
Vulnerable, exposed, walked-on sand that could, at any second, be picked up by the wind and taken to another pit of uncertainty
But you
You dropped the empty attempts
And you began giving me your time
You showed me the naïveté that I am, and you took my hand and led me through a dark room
It was cold, and I was afraid
And you could not tell me that "everything would be okay"
Because this was real, unfiltered life you were motioning to before me
And though it was not a fully comfortable realisation,
The cold slowly thawed, from the outsides into my core, my sand
And as I thawed, as you too made yourself more vulnerable,
I at last began to take shape
Perhaps I have a calling
Beyond this fragile shell I consistently run back to for shelter, return to when it yearns back for my unearthed body to be protected again
But I knew better,
That when you molt from your armour,
Its purpose has been used up, and it is now just an empty shell, and it is time for that shell to be discarded.
And now, in my infantile flesh,
I trust that you can be my protector until my new shell can learn to harden
I am still unsure today if it has solidified,
Because I am focused elsewhere
Focused on you
My heart's every beat feels light at the remembrance of you
My mind's every thought a whirlwind
From the dissonance of reaching for you and being tempted to go back under the comfort of my old shell, from the knowledge that these two cannot coexist
But my soul, my soul is nearing soundness at last
Because with you here, I feel that my honest identity is at last coming to life
With you here,
Your breezes blow, but I do not fear that I will be carried away
Your shore arrives, but I do not fear that I am going to wash away
Though it was you who dared grind me down to my initial state of innocent sand,
You have sculpted me, even with the uselessness that I've felt I am
Shown me my potential
And made me a flourishing seashore.

Becoming myself
Rising from the ashes of a girl
Into the fires of womanhood
I am between
Slowly, gradually
I am finding things about myself
that I never knew
Was it that I never asked?
Or is it newly hatched?
That I'll never know
But surely I am becoming me
Flaming feathers of confidence rising every month or so
As I molt my childhood fears
My body shifts to accommodate for life ahead
And make me beautiful
Victory comes closer
As required schooling gets closer to ending and college creeps in
Drama is soon to taint my crimson
Pressure increases
But I will continue to transform
Despite all this
And become the brightest phoenix I can be