Clouds consume the sky; blocking any visible light from resurrecting the imperceptible memories that keep me going

Rain floods the sidewalks; threatening every living soul from leaving their house

…and then there’s you

The blazing star,
fostering over me and harboring me from nature’s cruelties
reminding me that compassion and love does exist in lieu of atrocity dictating humanity
You, my dear, keep me going

Red,
She had the reddest lips I'd ever seen,
Or kissed under the trees,
But now, they are cold,
And the one who gifted her demise,
Stands before me.
Blue uniforms scatter around,
Questions and more questions,
I don't know anything officer,
He had a cold heart, and a cold grin.
I must identify one of the five,
Four innocent humans,
Scared and nervous,
Staring at me with those childish eyes,
They tell me they have done nothing,
I don't know that.
One of them took her away from me,
Was it the short one with red hair?
He's nervous and cold sweat illuminates him.
Or was it the tall blonde one,
He's smiling softly under that innocent look.
Did you do it?
I've never seen them before.
All I remember is the grin,
That cold grin, bathed in her blood,
The grin that took her smile away forever.
This is a difficult task,
I can't get her out of my mind,
Did I tell you where I first met her officer?
It was a cold starless night,
And our eyes met in the moonlight,
Something clicked,
And my heart skipped a beat,
Her's must have too, she giggled
And blushed when she looked into my eyes,
Lucy,
That was her name.
And now the blush is gone,
And the giggles are gone,
Cold death swept over her and stole her from my embrace.
I must find who did it.
One of the five.
The tall one with the jet black hair?
He has a familiar grin,
I remember that grin,
I remember those cold eyes,
Shining in triumph of doing his Master's bidding.
I point, it was him officer.
They seem satisfied,
They take me away, pull me away from the mirror.
The grin is back,
My reflection smiles back,
I remember you Lucy,
I remember when you grew cold,
When your lips lost their color,
They used to be the reddest lips I had kissed,
They used to be red.

by Ashley Capps

Ophelia, when she died,
lay in the water like the river’s bride, all pale
and stark and beautiful against the somber rocks,
her hair an endless golden ceremony.
She made the water sing for her; it flowed
over her folded arms.

Not so my father’s sister Karen,
swollen in a day-old tub of water
when they found her,
needle tucked into the fold of her arm,
her last thing: a wing.

So everything went as nameless as the men
who lifted her naked from the tub,
or those who rolled her
into the mouth of the furnace,
which is what you get
when you don’t get a service,
when your mother’s years of grief turn
last to rage: I won’t pay for it.
Leave me out of it.

And even though they finally said
it wasn’t suicide; a mistake—
no one knew what to do
with all of that anger,
or in the end how not to blame her.

Even now, in her unmarked container.

*


People once believed a deeper reason, some dark secret
motivation to the way the lemmings threw themselves
en masse into the sea. Were they weary
of their lives; could they, too, despair?
Or like those second-vessel swine
when Jesus exorcised two babbling men of their demons,
driving the demons through a pack of bewildered hogs—
the way they plunged?

The truth we know now: they leave when food is scarce,
when they’ve grown too many;
believe the roads they follow
lead to new meadows, a place to start over.

I think of Karen, feeding
and feeding her veins, how it is possible
she saw us all suddenly there—miraculous
and festive on some bright and other shore,
like the life she had been swimming toward
all along, trying to get right.
Like those sailors long ago,
that tropical disease, calenture—
when, far from everything they knew,
men grew sometimes delirious
and mistook the waving sea for green fields.
Rejoicing, they leapt overboard,
and so were lost forever,
even though they thought it was real, though
they thought they were going home.

—by Ashley Capps

slogging through squelching mud or
trudging over frozen, terse, tundra or
wandering aimless featureless freeway
where are you now, what do you see?

how's the view?
                    
                                 how should i know? how could i know?
                                                should i know?  why don't i know? what am i doing here?

is it beautiful, this sky, or strikingly malevolent?
do these colors mean roiling heavens
brimming with destruction
                                            or is that just the sunset?

do you tread lightly and enjoy the stroll,
sprintunstoppabledown the ravine
grapple with impossible terrain?
do i climb at all, move at all, progress at all?
                                                                                No. Too Lazy.
                                                                                           Too Weary.
                                                                                                  am i not? what if i'm not? what if i'm just
                                                                                                                  s    t    a    g    n    a    n    t
                                                                                                                                                                 ?
         Dead Weight. am i dead weight?
                 am i dead?
                                                            

The Trees were once beautiful here-
until I feared                                          fungus
rotting on the inside
eating out the inside
retching from the inside
                                         The Trees were once beautiful here.

"Am I at a Crossroads?" how could i know?
                                       i follow where my fear will let me go
                                                                my fear will let me know
                                                                if it's safe to go
                                                                                                                            only safe to stay, don't go.
Fears, Worries trip down the path,
                        strip away the path
                                           heigh-**, heigh-**, it's off to work we go

was the way always so barren?
what happened to my shoes?
what happened to my walking stick?
what else have i to lose?

Though mountain I would climb
glorious stream I would hear
see swooning vine clutch lover tree;

though valiant travels I would make
                                                  --crossing marsh, scaling peak, battling desert, traversing valley,
                                                     fording river, drinking lake--

bind my eyes, blind my eyes
no pathway i may take.

the way is broken when Fear and Apprehension rule the road.

i have not tried to crash my car in nearly three weeks,
so i guess you could say i'm doing better.
my mind sometimes refuses to resist
the need for liquor that my body screams.
my lips are constantly searching for yours;
with every bottle i press against them,
i can never seem to find yours.
all of my jeans are too big now,
my ribs are prominent and my collarbones
sticking out like they are misplaced on my body.
i guess a diet of popcorn and stale cigarettes will
do that to you.
i find myself constantly tempting fate in the worst ways possible,
in a desperate yearning
to find you again.
i have gone absolutely mad from missing you.
i write poem after poem,
they are all unfinished.
hours later, i will read my words,
repelled at how they fail to do what i want them to.
i still sleep on the left side of the bed,
refusing to touch your side in fear that i will wake you up.
i swear sometimes i will wake up to the sound of you in the shower,
and then realize it's simply
the rain battering at my window,
mocking me.
i remember asking my mother
three weeks after the accident:
"will i ever laugh again?"
"of course you will sweetie,
when something is really, really funny"
that was the first and only time my mother ever lied to me,
and i know she didn't mean to
because she genuinely thought it to be true.
two years, three months and fifteen days have passed.
some things are really, really funny.
i do not laugh.
i only feel guilty that you are not there to laugh
with me.

I don’t need you

You left me in the dark once

and now, I don’t need you anymore

I’ve reborn

into a world without you

I am now living

another life without you

I realised

I don’t need you

Even if it gets harder

I’ll live through it

without you

No, I don’t need you.

I like you;
Simple enough to say, but a feat only few dare take.
I’d rather jump off an airplane.
I’d rather climb Mt. Everest.
And I’d rather surf with Great White Sharks,
But then reality smacks me across my face.

No, this is not a poem.
It wasn’t written with the hand of Shakespeare,
Nor conceived from the mind of Socrates,
Or engineered by the algorithms of Einstein.
It’s something simple enough to say,
But in my case, it takes the discipline of a marine.

Point being, you make me stare off into your sunset hair.
Your laugh sparks flares that grow my smile,
And no matter what, you’re going to sit in front of me and there I go into wonderland.
It’s like the ticking on my watch,
No matter what, my watch is going to tick and then it’s going to tock,
And when my alarm rings, I’m going to open my jittery mouth.

That being said, a light bulb rose out of my hair.
Love was something you hated as I preached it before our seats.
I didn’t see you much then, but now you blind my eyes.
You break the shores of my dreams.
You sit on the lap of my thoughts.
And you dance on the edge of my eyes.

I don’t want to dress up words to make you swoon,
I want to make you smile when you gaze at stars.
Because, **** it girl, you’re the brightest star in my eyes.
No, I would only jump off a plane to land next to you,
I would only climb Mt. Everest to meet you at the top,
And I would only surf with Great Whites to…
So I like you, simple enough to say right?