How Edison and Tesla warred
To be the first to capture light.

A replacement for fire
And an ode to the sun.

Guiding travelers
Across sky, land, and seas.

Balming my hungry skin with rays
When I’m jonesing for the sunshine.

Bringing life to what was once still
Shadows dance across glowing plains.

Illumination to our world
No longer constrained by dawn and dusk.

The power of storms harnessed
To fuel our weapon against the dark.

Transcending to be hopes beacon
Against all fear.

Miniaturized to be as small as a dot
Oh how we hunger for our light.

I came to you, oh mighty land
Asleep to everything at hand
Lethargic from more southern air
Not yet awakened, unaware
The panorama I beheld
Composed a view unparalleled
A pastor with his best endeavor
Could preach forever and forever
And never say with words as clear
As the aura of this atmosphere
In the awe inspiring craggy peaks
And the chasms as His silence speaks
Where His creation stirs conviction
That brings a balming benediction
To one that hungers for a proof
Here, upon the planets roof

The magnificence of trees
The bumbling of bees

Flowers show grace
I can almost taste

The colors they share
I breathe in that air

Grass holds presence
With stable resonance

Birds sing melodious
Beholding to all of us

Rivers thunderously moving
Their essence behooving

Snowflakes fall like a gentle kiss
Delicate, wondrous and full of bliss

Air is so cleansing
Oceans mesmerizing

Herbs are survivors
Ospreys are divers

Ants are intense
Their strength immense

Clouds drift by
Drawing pictures in the sky

Skies are forever
With all kinds of weather

Mountains have stability
With a sense of humility

Rain is calming
Quietly balming

Deserts are mystical
Winds are whimsical

Sunsets are amazing
Well worth gazing

In awe of mother nature
A wondrous creator

The aliveness it brings
Resonates within

I am grateful for that wonderful gift
Of creating a connection and an inner shift

(campfire poetry) WE ARE FIRE, WE COULD BE WATER

Flickering, fluttering, licking all it touches
Through another log it goes;
Spreading warmth, consuming everything,
Atoms and particles
Splitting and shifting in throes.

Fascination, energy at its purest.
An open flame, made malleable
By the hands that feed it or quench it.
There is no greater exhibition
Of something as infallible
In its awe-inspiring might
It is an eternal fight
Between that which is to be consumed
And that which is to be construed
Into something new, and different.

And so, we are one with the element
That awes us and terrifies us at the same time.
Our life is built
On the graveyard of our ancestry;
Our homes are powered
Through the sacrificial burning of past lives.
The food we eat is life from our perspective,
Yet it is death itself for all else.
The trees we cut down, the animals we torture,
The lives we take, the populations we uproot;
Our way of life is an endless reenactment
Of an ant being crushed by a boot
No life is sacred, all can be loot.

We are fire, we could be water;
A more gentle element than most.
A soothing, balming agency
Like the overachiever who dares not boast.
Both are harmful in excess,
Both can be destructive,
Only one is restorative.

And so, we choose to be fire;
We torch, burn, consume,
Until all that is around us
Transitions to its post-human state.
A lifeless mass of black and grey,
An emotionless, bottomless decay.

Alas, as these ruminations grind to a halt,
I find myself desperately looking for the fault
That has created the chasm that brought us here.
Where exactly did we go wrong?
How did we go from being masters of our fate
To this dark, ominous presence
That shrouds all there is?

The Renaissance, the Enlightenment,
and all the revolutions that were and will be;
The great men and women who dedicated their lives
For a better future.
To you, we should apologise - although it wasn't all in vain,
There still is a thousand-mile journey
One that has not gone very far.

And so, we choose to be fire,
When we could be water...

Rebirthed into cold waters,
with saint Sebastian's arrows falling on our foreheads,
leaving a penitent blood dripped on my lips. You kissed it off me like it was honey.
I wanna meet you again on a desolate hillside,
with a punctured bicycle
without a Salford lad narrative.

Splitting my lip,
on your ivory messages of total control
and I love it.


I want to ******* while you're wearing figure skates
until marble floors grind down to Henry Moores.
You are paradise, found.
Dante's balming embrace.
It was a bright and soothing daytime.
You were ticking the right boxes so often that pencil went through paper and stained my knee with graphite while I was left figuring out a composition,
of a portrait of the artist as a young fan of your beauty.  
as we fell lips-first and made head on collisions look like speedbumps.

I weep for the breakers of things.
I cry for the destroyers
I mourn for the burners,
the crushers,
the warriors;
My heart breaks for the breakers of things.

From some timid landmark of dawn
From some futile cry of a mother in morning
From one tired yelp at the breaking of day
Arising despising the darkness descending
From some sparrows soaring
Where mansions are shining
And we with the warmth of hellfire opining
Weep yonder, we breakers of things.

They bled their red, their lines drawn deep
They poured their pots to wine
They gave the evil lonely sun
some bricks to bake
some backs to burn,
They sizzled, swaddled, and in air remembered
what life means to the withered, breakers of things.

Tarry not longing for some Ebenezer
Tarry not healing and balming the wicked
Tarry not over these dreams of ash
forming cracking among the sickest
secret heros of these verses
Won't weep for you, you breakers of things.

We fly with the fortunate
We jet high on the vastest expanses
a geography of sorrow
charting the grief of the waters
We dive deep down among broken things.
We lament holy breakers of things.

My arms flung wide
Head flung back
And my eyes are closed
I'm floating in black
I'm waiting for that hand
To pull me out
Of this strange land
But I'm also fine waiting,
Here is smooth and calming
Not bad, or mad like passion is
But rather a darkness balming
The sores from the last man who tried

In infinite stories,
And in beats I hear,
Across the street,
In your memories.
Oh, what I'd do
To keep you, forever,
Closer than all,
Farther than the truth.
In the scorching heats,
And in breezes of summer,
And in pooled up tears,
And your ringing laughter.
And in all those
Delicately shining trinklets,
Rubber bands that you stole,
I'd keep you.
Close, and closer,
Each day, more,
Idly, on the top shelf.
In my favorite read,
In the eyes of,
My favorite poet,
I'd keep you.
If not silently,
If not tonight,
If not in my longings,
And dark selfishness,
I'd keep you.
Even when you do not
Falter to stay,
I'd still keep you.
Softly wrapped,
In the warm blankets,
Of my balming words,
And my promises of love,
Hidden in these lines,
Your essence, and you,
I'd keep you.
To let you not,
Keep me, hold me dear,
From far afar,
I'll let you go,
And still,
In all my breathes,
And blinks of my eyes,
I will, yes,
I'd keep you.

In the sun
An uplifting run
Friends having fun
Massaging waves
Healing sand
Heartwarming
The spirit...charging
The soul..Solar powered

Relaxing evening
Stars soothing
The moon balming
The night...calming
Under the sky
The night passing by
The soul...Lunar cooled

Outside the darkness
coiling and cold;
Inside - the garden,
balming and gold.

Sheer walls of obsidian
no structure was higher
Gleam’d black and unyielding
To petrify endless chatt’ring liars

Through dew dappled verdancy
sweet laughter sings soft in the air
bucolic days drifting, hazy and lazy
(ignoring the shadows that aren't really there)

From thunderous flashing torrent
Plucked from the devil’s maw
Under the Aegis of Truth
you can’t hurt me anymore

With warmth, sun, soothing rain
We sow ageless golden seed
From when you stopped mattering -
is when I was freed.

When you look away
Your eye
Whiplash.

When you open
Your gaze
Lash goes to my soul.

How, so cruel,
So balming both

The covering of
Your magnificent
Eyes

I am a writer
aloneness is nothing to me
rather it helps me horn my trade
a time to sleep with words and ram honeyed verses
tenderly skim the hot skins of panting sentences to hear soft moans
breathe in the fire of raging expletives as they surrender conquered

I am a writer
I traverse the minds of others
meeting the nobles who show me great heights
while adding to me the wisdom encased in knowledge bouquets
and lesser's whose limit are the closed sewer pits of literary demise
they the beggars mired in the crippled minds balming words infirm

I am a writer
attuned of a mind beholding no evil
knowing that words maketh  the man or woman
from soul to mind lies paradise or hell as words finds their nests
paying homage and dues to the masters who offers the fitting abodes
in the poisoned minds lies airily thousand poisoned words in refuge

The snow goes away.
You call me out to play Lord.
I feel joy at last.

Temperatures rise,
Spirits dance in the daylight.
You catch me spinning.

Tomorrow gives way
to a dream. A warm balming
wafts my soul about.

You melt my winter
like icicles in the sun.
I run toward spring.


Caroline Shank