From the smoke where all are the same, come back.

Tread the time and war observation deck,
Scan the flat lens of summer off it.
Porcelain caps flinch asudden to flick the ash
And a washing wave, fading in its splash,
Rolls the skull of Oleg the Prophet.

Where ebbs are sipping a mix of bricks,
By the sunken town and ruptured bridge,
Pull the net of the briefly known.
It's the truth laid bare that makes us crease,
It is not a stone we shall squeeze but cheese,
But compress it to strength of stone.

Wind is carrying tire hiss from the dam.
Not by prompt of age we'll replay for them,
For all those who lost before us.
Throbs of catfish under the clouded stream;
Meet the cold light, meet the anxious dream,
Meet the end of the shielding forest.

A yacht in the spyglass is changing course.
Kitchen gas is twinkling at dormant shores,
Kind of early to us the older...
Sunset touches scatter the soft relief
Of the amber shine at a Baltic cliff
And the tan of a pine tree shoulder.

Thoughts glanced off me,
lying like stones in the sand
I ran
quick mind over quickened feet
hands ripped open by bushes;
rich thickets that sprung
from the very land
that my own soles scorched.

I chased skies
chased words away from mind
and wept imprisonment from inside,
howling at the chains that kept me bolted to the ground

I threw both time and space at my feet,
like the clothes of a slave.
As my legs lurched for length,
I swept eerie visions of my past away
like wind across my skin.

My toes pounded land;
my eyes searching the horizon
bleeding ears catching the groans
of the earth that my hands clawed at.

A ravenous beast;
my feet sought still to devour the world
as it lay sleeping like a lamb
woken only by the lush rip of my teeth
stopping its temperate pulse.

My lungs gasped the air that my sweat left humid,
no more was I condemned to life
my empty chains
cracked off
by pulsating limbs.
My insatiable teeth
gnawing at the very land itself
no longer was I able to sit amongst the trees;
or gaze up at the stars
I was not content to watch the world,
but eat it;
taste the bitter earth
and force it down dried gullet
drinking in the seas
to quench my geographical thirst.

And still
my wide eyes searched for their next slaughter
the next nation
to ****** the life from.

"You never cared."
A bird bath in California empties.
"Oh yeah? Remember Christmas Eve?"
A mountain in Greece chews through itself.
"**** that, what color do I match yellow with? Do you even remember?"
Everyone in Boston swallows Vicodin until they throw up and die.
"You don't even spell your name right."
Quincy's streets wish the water dry.
"You have a family. Do you know what I'd ******* give for that?"
All the colleges in New York shoot themselves up and down.
"Your mother isn't human. Shut up."
A small town in Massachusetts washes all its white skin off.
"This leaving, this is for good isn't it?"
A forest is consumed by the songs of an imaginary bird.
"It isn't as hard as I imagined it to be."
Every door shuts, all at once. We all go deaf. Deaf. Deaf. Echo.
"Where's my happy ending? Huh?"
Echo.

Lost  amongst familure strangers
Holding your foreign  curves
Like homeland  hills
Oceans have grown between us
But luckily i can swim
And i think i know the direction
Your in

Thunder aground  
when its
sound would
dock and
fill a
truck with
sea ****
but coast
was free
here that
fought her
way through
fog felt
tonight it
rained only
gerrymandered her
legs bare.

Imagine,
Imagine, heaven and earth,
Earth and hell.
Heaven?
It's up there.
Ionosphere, maybe.
Or maybe, Exosphere.
Think of Pangaea and Panthalassa.
Imagine, the lost world of Atlantis.
Geography students would know better.
Imagine,
Imagine good, and bad,
Bad, and worse.
Imagine, if your name were not,
What it is,
Imagine, if you were not,
What you are.
Imagine, delivering fantastic speeches,
Craft out, mesmerising poetries,
Look for topics,
Like you look for alloys,
In your wallet.
Everyone's a poet,
Poet, in their hearts,
They do write poems,
But the designer styli,
Defy to converge their thoughts.
Summarize life,
Felicity, will obviously be wrapped up,
And so will be your bad.
And try, and minimize your bad,
To the least,
Like you do with your savings,
On a rave.
And try, and amplify your bliss,
Like your cells multiply,
In every thirty minutes.
Imagine,
Imagine, and fall.
Fall, for every beautiful face,
Fall, for every beautiful day,
And moment.
Imagine,
And spread love.
Imagine,
Imagine, and fall,
Into an abyss,
Of thoughts,
Every single day,
Every single time.
Imagine,
The bald guy,
On our currency notes,
Smiling, at whatever number there is by him.
Smile, at whatever is given to you,
Smile, for whatever is given to you.
Smile,
And just that.

you are an adventurer,
constantly exploring the
geography of my
heart.                        l.r.

should have taken one

picture as i walked in

bed spread tight

all folded and straight



me dog tired

before a long hot shower

cramped in one tomorrow



with everything i own

spreaded wastly around

a colorful explosion



I will walk around

picking up the pieces

stepping on geography



not singing over maps

using a finger

to caress a route and  



the thought of you

limping from hotel to hotel

and a sleeping bag



go away

artists’ lives are messy

it’s a known fact



the walls are disheveled

would I have some glue

to nail you there and there



I will hop around happily

tattooing words about us

and hiding some

under letters

Terror-rium


We had an aquarium

A river, a lake, a sea.

On our desk—the ocean.

Our exotic fish, fished

from the very river, lake, or

sea which we have now.

On our desk—we provide forage,

food, plants, water, and fish.

The aquarium had us.

…

We had an insectarium

An arachnid, an insect, a butter

-fly. On our counter—the air.

Our countertop full of flourishing

flowers, fluttering wings of broken



butterflies, falling from feed, because

they drink—and we pluck their

wings, tape them to tapestries to

stare. Say, how pretty they are.

The insectarium had us

…

We had a terrarium.

A desert, a savannah, a floor of sand.

Our room is lit by a woodland, a

jungle, a place we’ve never been.

African violets decorate our reptiles,

all scales and shells and condensation.

It rains today—the lid which collected

our precipitation. Our pebbled floor,

formed over our marbled kitchen.

The terrarium had us

…

We had an arium,

and we destroyed it

to keep them on our desks,

nuzzled between family portraits and pens,

to remind ourselves of what

We used to have and

what we’ll never have

again, but at least they are

pretty, and no one needs

National Geographic to stare

anymore. We have our countertops.
...

This was read at the University of Kansas on May 10, 2013:

http://shannonathompson.com/2013/05/10/contest-winners-and-poetry-from-my-ku-reading/