An emporium full of visual delights, moonbeams bounce and dance, around a pitted cloud clear site.

A shooting star shining, a whooshing sound if heard, lights the sky as it blazes bright, starting in the east, accelerating, disappearing out of pleasured sight.

Stars blaze illuminating dark, the galaxy forming its magical map of horoscopes in this glorious orb, Its North Star guidance for some who navigate upon our planet earth be it on land air or under the sea, a million or more miles the distance should we achieve the ability to or want to go see up close these glowing planets of rock, gas and ore.

Dying stars growing in their brightness, as if, a last attempt of holding life,
Glowing brighter than before their internal charges disperse, fading no longer able to ignite.

Dancing colours in the north and south, painted great abstracts wide and far,
Hues of fusing reds oranges yellows greens across dark blue,
Spectacular moments for those with time to sit, observe and view, these magical electrically charged special dancing hues.

Reflections distorting down below, hues shading, appearing blushed as oceans gush and light rides upon a moonlit magnetic heaving tide, a tide awaiting, a stage set for two

Only you can see the magic being created in front of misted, barely woken if open eyes,
Only you can see the rising spirits coming up to play upon the core of sphere,
Under the kaleidoscope twinkling melee filled bustling sea and sky.

Rise up, a beckon, a call to you, come join this light filled orb of invisible tunes,
Where a piano plays a serenade and the orchestra complements with
Soft sounds of Trombones, cello’s, violins, tuba’s, drums and flutes
A tempo set to sweep excited people off their seat and on into their dancing shoes

Rise up in your sparkly dancing dress and shoes for you are floating Imagination growing with every timeless move

Twinkling stars blinking approval, reflections in the agreeing tide as it ebbs and flows.

Rise up, move, dance, sway, step and jump to those imaginary magical tunes
A prince of darkness, a dreaming queen  
A loving scene, a glory electrically charged night time dancing dream.

riding in airplanes
the way everything is so small
because usually
I am the smallest thing
not just physically
but everything in my life
seems to stand above me
and for once
I'm higher than the clouds
and everything
just doesn't matter
everything
is just matter
just its simplest form
it's simplest idea
and I'm an angel in the sky
brushing the dust from the stars and the clouds and the planets off my wings

while eating some peanuts

When I was younger, I wanted to be an astronaut. I told myself, "I want to see the stars and the planets up-close." I think probably we all had that stage in childhood where we all wished to be space walkers like Armstrong.

But eight years later, now I don't wish to be an astronaut anymore. I wish to be a writer. Because I have already seen all of the stars and the nebulae in your eyes. I wonder how they all got condensed in those two small circles like the moon. I whisper to myself, "It's so lustrous."

I already felt the weightlessness of space in your kisses, and your hugs are like oxygen tanks -- I need them to breathe. And when I see you-- just looking at your gait and smelling your perfume is even more enthralling than being in a launching rocket ship that pierces through the clouds and breaks the invisible mantle that separates the Earthly skies from the cosmic tapestry called "the rest of the universe". And I float away from reality and just revolve around the idea of you and nothing more like how the satellites of Jupiter revolve around it almost eternally.

I don't need to see the constellations anymore nor the planets or the meteors because I have seen them all in your skin-- I painted them on your skin. Others might call it bruises, but they do not understand that your body-- your neck, your arms, your chest are empty spaces and it'd feel like a sin not to embellish them with love marks -- the bruises that do not scream pain but* I love you's. *And I love you.

More than all the splendor of space, I still find your hair and the arch of your back and the gaps between your fingers and your clavicles so much more beautiful. Even this galaxy we live in seem to be unfit for its name: Milky Way. I think that name suits better your complexion alone. And when you smile-- oh, your smile! -- it is more radiant than the brightest comet and more warm than the hottest blue star; even the sun in the most arid summer-- it just gives me sunburns, but your smile, only yours, renders my heart melted.

When I was younger, I wanted to be an astronaut because I wanted to see the space. But now I don't anymore. Because I learned that astronauts are just spectators and I want to write about the universe. I want to write about you.

I'm sure an abstract painter adores
the confusion of their
lovers.
Glass reflections on materials in a bedroom
E M P H A S I Z E
the EGOIST in every
sofa
and
actress
in a television set while it rains out
(creating pockets of water on the balcony)
Where is my foundation for times like these when
feet become LOUD ER in the daytime
and obstacles have grown their teeth?

Perhaps a dump truck full of nicely dressed mannequins
will finally be
ticketed
and my eyes
will see
as soft
as your
hair.

Quarry of bones in an office space
and the FORMAL TIE HAS DESTROYED ITSELF WITH
SOCIETAL EXPECTATIONS AGAIN
(LUCIDITY KEEPS INSANITY DISTRACTED)

Caffeinated Canadian Bohemian
daydream of firs showering adjacent
Manhattan batteries.
Tomorrow's rejections watch
bright and beautiful waves smile with false
inspiration
a n d a n o t h e r
concrete victim is created.

!MADNESS!
(the solar flare of the Neutral)
the ammunition in my coffee
and conversations blinking
LAUGHS          OUT
                           TO
                           THE
                           ABYSS
(gorgeous and hollow lineups in front of
a Vancouver bar 11:30pm)

Pale October energies and the
Dharma Radio
feathering my fantasies as this year reaches it's last quarter
CREATIVITY MEANDERING
NEAR NOTHING
anxiously I roll around on the mattress,
open window, listening in on the intricately staged
oblivion of trees
who've become infatuated
with coffins.

Gastown (as it appeared in my dreams)
has found it's dusk anthem!
Adriano Celantano's
"BUONA SERA SIGNORINA"
what a strange dream that was
the music was vivid to the point of
impossible recognition
and I'm awake and dizzy not from all that
but from love
(it's tilting my axis!)
Always has......

An untraceable eye
lingers in
malevolence to ALL city banks
where the late bop players
stand united and "free"
(Outside, by art on a wall with animals dancing in a hot air balloon, jealous of their own permanent state of painted euphoria)
Restaurants are consumed by silence
upon closing down,
but NOT the Fisgard streetcorner cafe
I frequent!
It's LOUD TRUTH and San Francisco weeps in
the decorated walls.....some far off dream of North Beach
Trieste evening with people who were once ALIVE!!
People that bleached
THE AMERICAN VISION
with sharpened language sleeker than
the polished jaw of Apollo.

Here I am again,
accepting the same sweeping misery
as those before me
(settled tombstones barely seen beneath a wild oak
while cars cry exhaust to beach-view apartments
and Winter's harsh wind drums against the window pane)
sure they were good people, but living plays no favorites.

I'm awake and dizzy!
forlorn with the morning.
Stars surrender to a sun
which often wonders
how we adapt to this asylum.
(Vanity makes me sleepy)

Warm in the delicate crimson light,
I lie in a temporary peace.
I am setting
as all else rises.

I don't know what to write anymore.
But I can't stop thinking about flickers of your lips
and splatters of your touch.
When the rain pours just for you.
Something has to flow.
When water runs over your shoulders and down the drain
like the wisdom of the world.

In the brevity of your light I stole a slice of the sun for my own.
Lying deep inside a dormant orbit.

As the rain begins to weigh you down like the gravity of Jupiter.
My light, my love will be all yours.

Lay with me and tonight we'll steal the moon once more.

It makes me mad that the person that has you doesn't even know what he has.
That he can even go even one day without kissing you
I'd do anthing to kiss you and to be with you
And the there he is, probably the luckiest guy on the planet and he doesn't even know it

This planet orbits a yellow sun like ours.
It is in the Optimum Zone to support life.
Sure enough it has a wide variety of flora and fauna.
Highly intelligent life has evolved in its seas and oceans.
Its continents, however, are dominated by a species of primates.

Over the past 300 of the planet’s years they have developed
Some fairly high technology.
But they remain carnivores
Who regularly commit genocide.
They cut down swathes of natural forest
To grow chemically protected
Genetically modified nutrition-sources.
And they mine their planet empty
Of its mineral riches.
The planet’s ecosystem is being rapidly destroyed
By them.

Socially and psychologically they remain primitive.
Yet they possess the means to blow their world
To pieces.

With heavy heart I have to advise
We sign this planet
“No Entry”
For the foreseeable future.
“Forbidden” indeed.
A planet we call MW Orion 8478-3
That its natives call
That ever so common name:
“Earth”.

Paul Butters

Suppose there is no life in space, just us. And we inhabit Mars,
air condition Venus. Hold family barbecues, national holidays
on Mercury. Fly to Jupiter for spas of ammonium nitrate.
And go farther afield in the galaxy and on to other galaxies
leaving behind map-faced men, crow-like women and open gates.

Who will be the first-born human on the moon? News
from the moon colony! And so on, on every planet where
we've visited and established dusty villages or vast cities
over thousands of centuries. Then, will we not have somewhere,
somehow, under some sun's rays become another species?

The Grand Canyon is like the brain
with deep, unexplored fissures and tributaries,
the main route well known by now.

I am walking, walking inside my mind,
a grand canyon, a planet of canyons, a system
of planets. The exploration may become dangerous

I might lose my job, forgetting to go or losing
sight of its importance. But the job is gathering
pinyon nuts and saguaro fruits, it is the main

river, deepest cavity, how I find the unexplored
canyons and tributaries of my neighbors
and my enemies. But is it a religion,

a reason for living. It is a marriage, for better
or worse, with all the other living. The concept
of life's brevity, temporary compared

with the time taken to carve the canyon, does
not interest me. Each moment has a weather,
is a mirror of all other moments. The naming

of things goes on. Cliff rose and wavyleaf oak,
new mexican locust and sagebrush among ponderosa
and pinyon pine, juniper. Once I know

who they are inhabiting the canyon, the raven's
flight is meaningful. The raven's rock cave,
search for seed and carrion, my home and job.

I am a girl that calls herself a planet.

I do this because I look around and I see that I don't belong. I first thought it was the world that was different, but as I grow older I see that it is I that differs. The things I like are deemed weird. I speak with blunt force and honesty- but in this society that is looked down upon. I am not what beautiful is defined to be. In fact, I'm the exact opposite. So, I choose not to be seen.

Yet, I want to be wanted. Though being wanted is unattainable for a planet like me. I have a house, but not a home. I have parents and siblings, but not a family. I have people to talk to, but not friends. I am alone. It's not that I feel too small for this world, it is that I feel too big. I'm not good around people. So, I must be alone for the better of society. And I'm afraid, that I will be alone for the rest of my life.

That is the burden of being a planet; remaining untouchable.