The next Morning after a stormy night,
I wake up to peeling fresh ginger and lime,
How beautiful it is to see this new day.
As i sit on my bed with window open and the blue sky shining bright while this summers sun is beaming naturally against the green leafy trees, i gently sip onto this fruit filled spiced water of purity.
The breeze of the summer floats through the window and i feel it brush against my delicate skin.
Longing to taste and smell Summer's last few pieces of nature's breath air.
Cool and windy, i can see that Summer in slowly coming to an end.

Walking through the town today
I thought I crossed you on the street
With your sand storm hair and empty eyes
And anxious vagabond feet.
Your pretty teeth were crooked
Like bricks forced under pressure
Your shoulders, they sagged tiredly
Your head hung with displeasure.
My heart leapt at the sight of you
And music filled my lungs
With a longing to sing with the loudest voice
All the songs 'til now left unsung.
But when your eyes met with mine,
You were just a man I did not know.
Just a man, like the man I once loved
One thousand cold Augusts ago.

The staircase looked to be painted green or something meant to be blue but ended up green
The green was chipped with flakes of brown hardwood poking through the crevices
Of the emerald color. I stepped on the first staircase remembering the warm Augusts there but mostly the fall. His coat was still hanging on the pole connected to the railing I glanced at it and it glanced back at me. Staring into my soul but my weeping eyes as I remembered what it felt like to be in love. His coat smelled of cologne and dried rain. I put it over my shoulders, tears falling into place.
This staircase in our home belonged to us and only us, but then he left and now it is only me, It is only me with all my faults and ripped jeans too big to fit my withering waistline as I count the days gone by. I count the days on the calendar marking a tiny X in the corner hoping still he might walk through the door. I hope still, that he would greet me with the same expressions he once did before, always first asking me about my day. Now I enter my home with empty dreams and dark memories with no one to call out my name. The staircase was for us, it was the road map to our dreams. The staircase carried our first boxes all marked and packed with things that belonged to us. The staircase carried our long nights after staying up late, talking about things only we knew.
The Staircase who was once emerald green carried what I thought to be our future but ended up as a memory from the past in only a matter of seconds. I never knew why he left me sitting upon that staircase, my head buried in the palms of my hands atop that staircase . He left in a fit of rage with the idea of never coming back, I didn’t think that was so.  But now this staircase carry’s regret, for I shouldn’t have said what I said but the staircase knew I only wanted what was best. The staircase may also carry my future, I just haven’t discovered what that might be yet.

Once (not that long ago, perhaps, though we likely know better)
The summers were languid, liquid things without end
Each day fully equipped with a high sky,
The blue so all-encompassing, so all consuming,
That lazy fly ***** seemed to disappear
As if God had scooped them up like so many routine grounders.
We played, in a field long since abandoned
To crownvetch and scrub grass,
Twenty one--five points for those *****
The celestial powers had bobbled
And we were able to catch on the fly,
Three points if we took it on the hop,
One if we safely trapped it before it rolled stone dead,
And so our Julys and Augusts fluttered by,
Every bit lazy and aimless as butterflies or knuckleballs,
With the exception of the de riguer tribunals
In which the assembled debated and determined
Where bounce ended and roll began,
Where shoestring catch was reduced to single-point trap.

It all came to an end, of course;
At some point, we crossed a line
(Undelineated but firmly established nonetheless)
Where it was no longer advisable to attempt this at home,
Mere joy no longer an acceptable substitute for proficiency.
Find something else to do, kid, we were told,
And the bats went to the back of the closet,
The gloves and ***** consigned to a spot
(Where we would surely remember to find them)
Behind some canned tuna and Christmas lights,
The fastball blurring by us now,
The field a warren of subdevelopments and cul-de-sacs.

And so you’d forgotten,
Or perhaps just suppressed, the whole notion;
There were, after all, a gaggle of coupon books
With return addresses from an ever-changing confusion of banks,
Sales on pasta and milk, other fees and foundations
Politely requesting ones attention,
So you couldn’t be sure
That it was really the crack of an old thick-handled Adirondack,
Or the comforting thwick of the ball landing squarely
In the pocket of a Wilson A-2000,
Yet when you wandered to the window and peered out,
There they were, looking straight up at you,
Waving their hands like childlike Prosperos
Gesturing to reveal some fairytale glen.  
Come on back, they are saying, and you go down,
Powerless to resist, even if you had wanted to,
Returned instantly, seamlessly to a time and place
Where a shout of I got it! I got it!
Was all the prerequisite or vitae that was required,
And you are unable to bring even mock-edginess to your voice
When you insist I got that cleanly on the hop.  That’s three points.

Holding on
For years;
Dangling
Fighting
Struggling,
Through snowy Decembers,
Lights strung up
branch to branch,
Through awakened April's
tulips reaching skyward
Through smoggy Augusts
Blonde beauty's sunbathing in the grass
The leaf had seen it all
But in the blink of an eye
The tree became old
The roots became withered
As did the leafs grip on the branch
And a final autumn
Came to rest in the air
And the leaf began
Reminiscing of being green
And full of life again,
It continued to let go
More
And more,
Until one day,
the leaf fell from the tree.
Brown
And shriveled
Falling
And sailing
Through the breeze.
Once the leaf changed its color,
It did not go back.
The leaf will never be attached
To the branch ever again.
So there it stayed,
Lying on the ground
Tossing and turning,
For another eternity.
-----------------------
He seems happy
I should just let go

I'm starting to think God loves me better when I'm in stitches and scars,

It's 3pm on a Saturday afternoon and I've ditched a warm house  warm soup and am now in a cathedral whispering " Hi, I'm Allie........ and I erm...I've got an eating disorders"

I'm 50% silk and 50% shards of glass but Somehow I've carried myself past the stairs & now I'm here feeling like the walls are mocking me...

I've spent the past 7 Augusts draped in bulimia and anorexia like a coffin and I'm ready to change clothes because I'm tired of wearing black and I'm tired of how it feels like I've been dressed for my funeral all since I've turned 13 except I'm already there watching myself get lowered into the ground but I never get there.
I never get there

I find my mother in the strawberry field
Not far from the river, kneeling in the dirt

the sun beats down her back
gray hair ruffling in a hot wind

It hasn’t rained in a month
and the earth is an old woman’s face,
cracked with longing

I kneel beside her, our hands on the dusty earth
This earth that she has dug every spring
kneeled upon every summer

Barefoot and sun burnt, plucking ripe red fruit
For pies and jams

Juice-stained lips and tired backs
My mother and her mother, on the porch
Sipping Sherry in sunsets of July’s and Augusts, year after year
Comparing blisters, freckles, wrinkles, lives
Buckets of strawberries overflowing in the kitchen sink

This year the strawberries are withered
*****, red raisins on my tongue
That taste bitter and sharp

I watch my mother, keening softly on the ground
Her heart peeled open and raw

I whisper to her, The dead don’t live very far away

Her swollen grey eyes search the field across the river
As if she expects to see Grandma standing there
Waving, mouthing soundless words on the air

I know when it’s her turn to change worlds, it will be me,
Kneeling here, in the sun’s bright assault
My own daughter by my side,
Witness to this grief,

Her soft, comforting voice, telling me,
The dead don’t live very far away.

A little less
Than a year ago
I picture you:
Your leg wrapped
Around my torso
And propped up
By my hand;
I have a purse,
a drink, and you
adorning my body
Hanging onto me
I am small
You are smaller
A cigarette
Dangles
From your
Left fingertips
Coffee and
Champagne
On your lips
We both wear crowns
Atop
Our seemingly
Stubborn smiles
Happiness
Will not
Relent
I have known
You
For so long
Now
Almost half
Our little lives
Tonight,
I am proud
Of you
It is New Years
You haven’t drank
Too much
You know
This year
Will be a good one
Enough
To tell me so
Enough
For me
To believe
In you
Again
Already
Making changes,
Setting promises
Nothing is the same
Since you
Came home
Two Augusts
Ago
Tonight,
Had never before
Fulfilled
Its cliché promises
But as of tomorrow
We have our chalkboard
Of rainbow colored erase marks
At midnight,
We get to Start
Anew

I.
a calm darkened room, curtains drawn
outside, the sky is crying-- its tears
slamming white noise on our rooftop
there is a mattress and blue cotton sheets,
a cloud for a comforter and two bodies
clasped together like refrigerator magnets
as icons dance on the screen of our
static television minds

II.
here we are again, hands intertwined within
the streets of Rome, ivy crawling across
yellow edifice recollections, Italian
sun scorching her liquid tongue upon
our baking shoulders-- home
is across the Atlantic, a plane in the sky,
my head on your chest as a passport
to a place forever engraved on our eyelids
and in photographs where love
never fades with time


III.
our hometown has our hearts memorized,
the coffee shop at the corner where past
Augusts had melted our whipped drinks
into fumbling infatuation, the trees
we kiss madly against, the empty grass fields
that know the shape of our spines as
we gaze up, fingers tracing wispy trails
of our blue sky canvas

IV.
do you see that cloud? the giant one near the sun;
what does it look like to you?
like you, like you,
like proof that God adores me.

I began with verse about Wyeth's Christina
but I couldn't see her face, and I've never been to Maine
though her twisted body pains me

then I flew to the opposite coast
summoned by the memory of a ghost:
my best friend at Bodega Bay, one fine day
forty Augusts gone

he threw a Frisbee to his Airedale
and we ate sprout sandwiches, avoiding the foul
karma from the slaughter of beeves,
hogs, he said

I would like to relive that day,
with its blue dusk, but the clock can't be rewound
and he is not to be found on the great Pacific

kin who barely knew his face
chose his final space--a hot hole on Oklahoma
prairies, not far from his drunken father
and others who never saw him watch
the sun sink gold into the sea

in my head I'll exhume him,
maybe return him to the waves
that reclaim all things

or introduce him to Christina
a continent away--he could help me know her
though her eyes face another world

our romance began when nobody
wanted to start one
i remember it like it was a while ago
on a day when the leaves were yellow
and the times suggested
parks that are far away from the road.

my heart felt something
and it remembers
in a quite unfamiliar sense.

it is just like the first time in a long time to
witness the sunrise again in this dull life
the wind blew. . .
and changed its direction

i followed it and i knew it’s
that time again.

there was no way to tell
if it was the same before
but to splash my frail body in there
for a leap of faith

but i was sure though seemingly different,
i convinced myself
it was going to be all worth it.
and when it was about to happen,
i didn’t give admission to my doubts.

as

i played the bull
on a rampage
to be killed
for its desire.

it made me forget the pain of
the thousand scrapes and wounds
of trust
i succumbed into
for what seemed
like many years
and you were there,
                  
                   you
        
       came;

you
      
      found
                  
                 me.

I miss that muddy creek
where we snuck under
the bridge, cut a
trail in the blackberries
(they always caught
my ankle, tore the
bottoms of my jeans)
where a rusty car
sat by the water
and I watched you catch
water skippers and
we talked about "the plan"
if a cougar came
from the hills for a
drink.
Where we abandoned
bull frogs and threw
rocks into the water.
Where Augusts last forever
and where we never parted
ways.
I miss you more than Deer Creek
and those rainless, summer days.

We are in an empire of a thousand sons,
but in the end we all count as one.
We will do our best to not act glum,
but when push comes to shove there will always be one.
Spontaneous heartache,
a natural disaster.
Poverty stricken nations,
A dictator for their master.

In my heart and in my mind
I’ll still find the time,
to teach every bird how to fly,
and every person to live the perfect lie.
We will wish for better days,
look to the skies and we will prey,
but in my heart and in my soul,
life’s love lost moments eat us whole
as we engage in our final goal.

If she even remembers me
for flying off the handle,
for broken picture frames
and a life that’s been dismantled,
then she’s like a flame,
flickering forever on my candle.

Like my mother used to say,
the days remain bright but the sky always grey,
a reminder of the past time
a substitute for the right way.
We set our stage on the shore-line,
blankets laid beneath us,
gazed at the endless night sky,
waiting for Augusts rush.

My mother was never a swimmer,
she signed me up for lessons when I was nine
so I would never drown.
That summer, I did learn how to swim,
but no one prepared me for the sinking that would come
10 Augusts' later.
I can smell the whiskey on your breath
as you touch my cigarette mouth.
I've never missed anything as much
as your hands meeting every crevice of
my body during those winter nights
in your twin sized bed.
Half-clothed, pressed against each others bodies,
holding each other like the last life jacket on the Titanic,
we decide we'll never see stars like this back home.
Seaweed entangles our feet
and I throw mine up around your waist,
because I need you so much closer.
Forget Death Cab.
Transatlanticism is real but
I don't need you to be across the ocean to know
the distance between us stretches for miles,
though I'm staring at your apologetic eyes in front of me.
I fought to stay afloat that summer,
reminding my limbs the motions of the backstroke,
the butterfly.
But with one glance, you had me at the bottom of the deep end.

On the streets with no money in pocket
cold November rain spits in your face
it starts to get your back up
it's time to play

Play for today, play for tomorrow
make a scenario with warm heart
liken to April in lambing promise
sweet joy of new birth, time to play

Let's go back a few months
like erm, my January birth
in sweet darkness did I come
straight from heaven to earth

Uniformed conformity
foolish child of October pity me not
banish ill thoughts to one like me
for I am not your July Judas

I will befriend February freedom
and March on to glory of spring
let the winds of May's kind winds
take the heat out of Augusts fire

Let love in June say her name
and get September to say
come my sweet love
for it is time to play

For December calls
the night does come
call all to childhood
and let's play

By Christos Andreas Kourtis aka NeonSolaris

It smells like September outside
The cold weather is setting in
We sit and we wait
and we speak and relate as we wait for Augusts end

I walk alone in the cold soft rains
in the shadow of the clouded day
And i stare and observe
till everything blurs
except for the thing i chase

I watch as it passes bye
and the fall brings back bad memories
but the months speed away
September, October, November, December
all gone with the fray
and i take a look outside

January passes next
A cold depressing beginning for the year
I wish i could say this was the last
Of the sad months that would come to pass
But happiness seldom appears
So ill sulk in self pity
Ill sit without pride
till once again
it smells like September outside.

I was a ghost in an old haunt, something like 2 AM on a January night living out feedback loops of talks meant for Augusts past when I heard the news -
David Bowie is dead
The man, not the character, not any of the characters
Hero king of the underworld, patron saint for the androgynous and pale, the mad shaman of an age of prophecy, scribe of divine message from the gods of distant worlds, burning rebel heart in drag, bleeding soul at the crest of the first wave that broke down the walls and sent all the young punks marching to war against the world with a switchblade tucked beneath their coats and a steady hand to hold the wheel,
If not for the shoulders of giants we would never see another horizon again,
If not for the madmen with astronaut dreams and bleeding hearts we would never know the beauty in the disorder,
If not for the train that came to take a man to someplace less boring, we would never reach the end of the narrative
And with ties cut and the world at his back,
The man departs, confident he has done all he can do, and that there will always be those who will carry the torch,
And all the freaks in the freak kingdom weep, as only they know how,
And the stars look very different today

Augusts' sweet rain
Dancing down window pains -
September yesterday dissipates
                 into languishing thought,
Like a glimpse of a dream;
A snap shot
Through the broken eyes of morning,
A wisp, a glint of memory
From midnight's rapid eye movement, and
Tomorrow's ever extending chance of death.

Life is an adventure
And here I am in the roller coaster
Of being older than 25 and being rushed to accomplish tasks before I turn the despicable 30 augusts.
Love is an adventure
So it is to look into your eyes
If I am to swim in stormy waters
I would pleasely risk my heart in the blue ocean of your eyes.
Life and love are both adventures
But we must take the ride
We may panic, we may cry, we may win or feel like we are going to die
Yet here we are and we will
Living through the speed, the anxiety and adrenaline
Living life and loving love
Is always being in an amusement park.
I love the adventure to live but I want to live it being love my favorite ride.

in mid-augusts breadth
the last gasps of doomed stars

like lions lacking breath

he is watching
as history repeats itself;
damns itself

the solipsist; the progeny
who cries under his mother's wing

the exodist
to exist
unfortunately, in shortage of sleep

where asphodels crouch
long cut from life's thicket
free from time's gouge
painless, from the thick of it

cast into tartaros
on the cape of ouranos

to fall from his ipseity
so long was serendipity

his father's testament;
the panegyric on death

his debt, his deficit
of what he is bereft

summer feet cross the border
to touch the winter sleet in its corner

and skin meets skin
the solipsist's gravest sin;
the sophist, where he sits,
sips on the blood of collision

more sure of "self"
than his mothers hands

the solipsist, to exist
in the shade of earth,
who inhibits

I want your sweet turpintine musks,
and a sunny Sunday in Augusts ambers.

Glaring at identical indigo’s,
sitting in cognitio cognitions.

I want sharp shooter pupils,
diving for overthought opportunity.

Waking up and checking the battery on your unplugged phone
(why did I check Facebook at 3am and not plug it back in?)
74%
The start of any relationship at blistering pace then the brakes apply
(It happens to us all and we don't know why)
74%
That dream holiday, the arrival, the meet the people, the leaving to head home as youve just had enough now
(With the bragging that just ends up in a row)
74%
Discovering new shortcuts on that upgraded mobile phone, I'll never get bored of this!
(A month now gone and someting better already on the list)
74%
Augusts new car off the line and youre proud to say its yours
(January hits and its now become a bore)
74%
Netflix has a new hit and its grabbed the worlds attention
(It's now series six and its falling to bits and needs a formal suspension)
74%

We all seem to plod on at this number on a daily basis, and it does us all well.
You don't need to be one hundred percent all the time, or we'd all just mope and dwell.
So raise a smile when needed, and speak to those who sometimes need it.
For life is too short to for hang ups and woes, it's just led how you see fit.

JJB