Echo and Narcissist

He stared into her life
It enveloped him, metamorphosing his reality
Sometimes we are changed until we dont remember
those quaint things that we pretend to adore
and lose ourselves in the Medusa’s gaze
of a life
trans-formative and different.

The ogre that I am, I sit in my man-cave.
It’s bathed in light from my TV and laptop.
Each is a portal to our ugly world.
Regulated crystal-city skyscrapers
Form Giant’s Causeways.
Aircraft eagle overhead
Reminding me of vultures
And 9\11.

Cars beetling about the suburbs,
Some Beetles, Ha Ha.
River highways cascading cars.
Ants rush everywhere,
A seething nest.

So many an ant,
Holding a conch to the ear,
Or staring mesmerised at that tiny screen.
Yoda fingers his phone…

And me I sit here,
Metamorphosing metaphors
For a while
Before I visit Facebook Land
Once again.

Paul Butters

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to
Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being ***** by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

Thich Nhat Hanh

billboard's calligraph --
past the haze of Manila infested
by car sprawls and belching machines.

magnanimous treatise of tarpaulins,
people chin-up asking God
with askance

something like this
"o god make this bearable
like a mound of fresh fruits
from ****** labour."

maniacal sensurround:
earth-shattering frequency
of footsteps trampling the mouth
of monolith shadows - the peak
of this quake is our complete silence.

rain's catharsis in effect
sousing us in the blood of unreal light.
this diastolic shrinkage
jamming the beat of constricting vessels.
the adrenaline surges
within the dermis of this pretension.

a collective of tired beings heeding
the recherché of voice metamorphosing
into form, a dagger-butterfly
paring us skin to bone, cranial
to visceral, soul to nothing -

catapult of a trajectory spit
plummeting in eased-up pace
from Taft Avenue flyover
to a subjugated wagon of scraps
and empty wine bottles.

today's paper reads:

"Palace hits hiring
   of **** dancers"

fancying to fall right in the
spanked curved of this
insatiate melodrama - something
  prayer could not save from
this land's mutinous ignominy.

   we resume to fulfill our madness,
hundreds of tack-headed people
  rolling down the streets of Makati,
drenched with rain's trilling aftermath.

squinting to look at
  no sun, only the grieving of skyscrape,
thumbing down unidentified objects
  in the depth of loose pockets,
    desperate for home.

Clouds
drifting across the sky
in imaginary forms

Clouds
making imaginary images
that only the mind
can put together

Clouds
of varying shades
and shapes

Clouds
metamorphosing

Clouds
morphing
into the unknown

Clouds
metamorphosed

Clouds
floating
like the Goodyear blimp
off on the horizon

Clouds
lost
shapeless
meeting
and reforming

Clouds
like foam on the ocean
endless and everlasting
but empty in their
subtlety

Clouds
like cotton candy
pink then white
shifting shades
of gray

Clouds
filled with rain
or as
ephemeral
as infinity
ethereal
everlasting

I have little thought for these days
As the future evaporates
And the past grows fat and vivid
I amuse myself with games of flashback
Faces and places flickering
Across an empty mind
Dragging their stories behind them
Dead memories metamorphosing
Into living visceral dreams
Where the flowers of love and loss
Are intertwined so closely
That with the passing of time
They each rob the other
Of some pain and glory
As reality gives way
To a realisation of truth

                                      By Phil Roberts

"...WHEN THE EVENING IS SET OUT AGAINST THE SKY..."

She stood
as if the world

were a mere
bit of scenery

backdrop

a prop in a play
designed for the sole purpose

of making her
look good.

Gorgeous is
the word.

She a universe
unto her self.

She spoke in italic.

Her voice changing font
from word to word.

She had a strange up
and down CaPiTaL accent

that was slightly dis-
concerting.

A simple "How do you do?"
metamorphosing into

hOw Do YoU dO
and without a trace

of punctuation
her voice a melody

upon the air
like music set free

invisibly.

She spoke excellent
French deliciously

which one
understood completely

even though one
had only schoolboy French.

jE m ApPellE mAdAmE mOrT eT
mAiNtEnAnT aLlOns y

She held out a hand
the sun itself

a mere jewel
upon her finger.

The world had run out
of itself.

I followed Madame Mort
into the nothingness

that had suddenly
opened up.

"Qui...merci!"
the last thing I

ever heard
my self say.

-Love-
The quintessence of my being ails for the novel; the liberating; the metamorphosing elements of the terrene.
The philosophy of life has always been to search for the sacred truths with the passing of time; tempus.
The answers have been right in front of me.

The concept of finality has been an ailment of my mind; this malady had a paranoia inducing effect on me.
A surfeit of noxious thought can subdue one into nonexistence.
Never, no, rarely should one create a permanent state of tumult within their soul; one must look beyond what they first believe to be true.
-Love-

Without the absolute love, what is one?
The Divine has the Transcendental Power to heal all wounds…
-One must first ask-
The words have been lying here; stewing upon my tongue; awaiting a release for what has seemed to be an eternity.

In my mind the horizon has flashed before my eyes; a vivid vision of the world’s beauty has enraptured me.
Doves gliding off into the sunset; this must be a symbol of all the splendor that lies in store for me.
Enamorment; affinity; affection and all the virtuous elements of humanity have been consolidated in my midst.
They have been compounded before my eyes; a physical form has now been granted.

My heart now has a tangible source for the Elixir of World.
Blinded for but a moment, I departed into an alluring phantasy.
Unsure of where to search for a comrade, I looked to another plane of existence for solace.
There was an explosion of lust for what was once a forbidden dream of the kindest sort.

This dream, it was kind enough to grant me the strength to plow through all the turmoil of a scathing world.
I have given birth to a new feeling; a feeling of hope over the horizon.
How?
By allowing my deepest fears and latent intentions to be cast aside and to fade away into naught.

Earth is a constant melisma of unforeseen occurrence, pain, and heartache but it can also be a beacon for valor, gallant-heartedness, and altruism.
-Delirium is fading away from my consciousness-
My greatest fear has always been to grow and to exceed what I believed to be my true caliber.
Now the day has arrived for me to supersede all trepidation and to transcend the shackles of rigidity.

The storm clouds, they have departed.
The blossoms have begun to bud amongst the tightly packed soil of the terrene.
The sun has arisen from a nocturne of anticipation; this has effloresced into the genesis of a new dawn.
I have emerged from my cocoon and now the world seems so brand new to me.

I am prepared to soar high above the clouds.
I am a dove.
The horizon is mine for the taking.
I am a symbol of love.

From now, until the end of time,
Iridescently Efflorescent.

What have you accomplished today?

If the answer eludes you,
perhaps you burn too much Life
without really going anywhere
with such precious fuel.

Seek that each and every day
you better your future Self
by shedding your Past Self
and metamorphosing.

Flinging those hairs,
Covered with goldens,
She was strolling
On the flames of hell
Metamorphosing it to
Paradise of love and warmth.
©err1585

The deliverance of life echoed into that of pounding death
This frozen tower metamorphosing into a coffin sealed and fated
That gorgon’s gaze did I meet and uttered not a breath
Lost in those frightened eyes, thoughts left me sedated

“You stare so... Father, what is it?”

There I sat, day circling into night
By the dawn light through a reflection
I caught through their tragic sight
Left me gnawing at my hands, objection

“You put this wretched flesh upon us and now you may strip it off!”


Calmed my soul and silence we sat, another moon waxing

“Father, why don’t you help me?”

Left your lips while your languid soul seeps
Blind now with no words to offer
One by one perished but never did I weep
In the end
Hunger proved more powerful than grief.

He drags his ****** feet through the forest.
An apocalypse of peace, now consumed by flames.

All that is green becomes black as the mighty
Transformer inches closer to the edge.

Metamorphosing  destruction at its finest.

He can only continue on as he is gently caressed.
By fire, death and the depths of the hell.

The morning sun takes its place in the heavens.
All that remains is darkened dust dancing in the wind.

At the door again,
It begins as a quiet scratching
And then a thick, abrasive sliding-down
Like a heaviness upon the frame.
Then a barely perceived close-breathing
That seems to creep like dull lantern-light
Under the door,
And around the frame,
And through the keyhole.

And there is no talisman to protect him.
No bust of pallas above the door
He is no metamorphosing cockroach
Able to **** the gaps
With oily-black chitin feelers.

The darkness brings no tools but fear
Thick and impenetrable as the night
The ancient lizard-brain takes over
And leaves him waiting for the first rays
That will pierce the window like lances
And dissolve the oppressive world
That leans so heavy against his door.

Perched high upon burl wood roost
dangling feet swing upon
          mossy girthed heritage
                                       maple tree
Her majestic gnarled scaffold
flinches not from my nebulous gravity,
nor the weight of her unraveling
                                       golden autumn gown

Her lamentable achings  
felt in the voice
of the ripening chill
             within the campfire
                                        scented breeze
For I have climbed so blindly high,
the clinging brilliant yellow leaves
metamorphosing like these fragile paper wings,  
opening palms born to soar wild as the wind,
                                         to just let go and fly free

Waiting here patiently,
wistfully as destiny,
for the final edifying moment
                                          of fate’s unshacklement - - -;

the surrendering to,
      the moment of love set free,
               stolen by the wanton
                                         gypsy breeze


                                                        ­               *wild is the wind

Flying above the clouds,
The elements beneath me are churning,
The Earth is metamorphosing into something greater than it once was.
I’m surrounded by a heady and heavenly bliss.

I descend from the azure blue skies in search of something greater, in search of fulfillment for my heart.
Time has bestowed me with the greatest gift of all; love.
Now I must search.
I reach out my hand; I push past the sea, the barren soil of the wasteland and the unknown thresholds of the terrene.

Pink ribbons envelop me.
Glimmering hearts surround my soul and spirit as the sky begins to turn crimson red.
Everything is changing so fast.
My eyes begin to gleam.

An ethereal beauty materializes in my midst.
Iridescent puffs of smoke form a silhouette of an animated vessel, a human of the most magnificent splendor.
Rose petals lie upon my barren and vulnerable skin.
As you are created right before my eyes, as I witness your conception, I come to know what forbearance really has in store.

I reach out my hands in the hopes of grasping your delicate skin if even for a moment.
You glow.
Your eyelids are formed.
And…?

You open them!
I’m gazing into cerulean spheres of rapture.
I’m magnetized by the gravitational pull of your body.
We’re both levitating above the ground, and like two celestial bodies we collide.

An eruption of passion creates a daffodil made of light.
It looms high above the clouds, in place of the sun.
We have effloresced.
Our bodies have bloomed at the moment of contact.

Our inflammation shall illuminate the night sky for the heavens have bestowed upon us the greatest benediction of all…
It’s love.
Just when our passion seems to be everlasting, the sky turns to darkness, ebony clouds linger and the ground beneath us begins to crumble.
We fall into an infinite abyss until the bottom swallows us whole.

Lying upon my bed, I awaken to find that you are nowhere in sight.
It is only I.
Me, myself and I.
It was just a dream.

I am forever alone…?

By, Iridescently Efflorescent

When I tell you,
I don't know what I would do without you,
I'm sorry, but I've lied to you.

I know exactly what I'd do.

There would be no more friend to tell anything to,
Or someone always seeing the positive and cracking the joke.
I would be a social butterfly metamorphosing in reverse!  
I would be a passing glance In the hall,
A name whispered in the roar of the world.
If I was without you!

I would go home everyday,
Lock myself away!
No contact, no pain.
I would workout until my muscles refuse to move,
Just so my heart would do laps on my lungs like it did when I was  around you.
So that when I passed you in hall, I would see you steal a glance, and know you miss me too.  
I would do it so my brain could dance on something other than the thought of you.
So that my soul could feel something other than the pain,
of being without you.

I would go to school everyday
And work harder than anyone may.
I would wrestle daily so your image wouldn't drive me crazy.
I would do everything possible to make our dreams come true,
Even if I was without you!

I would suffer more pain the Leonids the Great.
Just so I could protect thee,
My princess of beauty!
I would battle day in and day out!
As to keep my heart safe.
I would think of you more than a dessert thinks of rain,
I would long for you more than the wolf yearns for the touch of the moon!
I would continue to love you!
Always loving you!
Even if I was without you!

So that one day...
One day,  
I can say to you,
"I made our dream come true!"
To tell you that I live in a place,
In Oregon is this place.
Were for half the year it cry's, and half the year it shines!
To say to you I made it.
To the place we always hoped for.
A flower shop on Main Street,
So dainty and so cute,
With the door cracked open...
waiting for you!
Waiting to be with you!

I'll aways love you!
                                                [K.D.P]

Yes, I forgave you and asked forgiveness
Twenty-four years and more ago.
Yet, you continued to despise.
Metamorphosing into an Unforgivable.
Hater. Destroyer of family.
You made sure it hurt me.
I don't like what you did.
It was ugly. It was not called for.
I wanted peace. So I created it.

Here, this is yours.
It's your very own universe!
To create all the havoc you desire.
Way over there! Far from mine.
When your venom is spewed
And your heart is as light as the Dove's feathers
I will open my doors in peace.
Welcoming you in for herb tea
with a spot of honey and a few biscuits too.
Maybe, even some laughter and fun.
It is all up to you.

Remember to present yourself truly
Setting what you have twisted right.
I pray for you to develop courage
Needed to tell all that you have done.
Yet, I am not hopeful.
Won't you prove me wrong?
I hope so, dear sister. I hope so.

On a quiet night in late November
I fell in love with a sunset. I grabbed ahold and rode
him into the night, but gradually he shed his vivid garb as if
it clung too tightly to his celestial frame. It’s nothing short of a shame because
what I adored the most were the enthralling ways his hues danced
pirouettes with precision,
softly staining my skin and sinking downwards and inwards,
tinting my innards with his alluring, warm palette.

But temporary tattoos wash off with time and cold water,
and the most psychedelic of colors will one day fade to a prosaic shade of grey.

I wanted to stay

But the starless black sky that he raised before me was filled
with unknowns and I’d rather be left alone than let down,
because I am only human.
So mortal that when he abandoned his dazzlingly
colorful mirage, I sabotaged every flicker of light that I’d learned to hold on to,
heedlessly metamorphosing until his dispirited shades of blue
became one with my shades too.

But I want to thank him for letting me in.
Because before him, I never knew how a color felt
or how it tastes.
And as I chased him across the horizon,
he taught me that yellows and reds taste like eating candy for breakfast
and feel like soft skin, akin to his own.  
And when he let his blues and blacks linger on my tongue and
occupy my lungs, it felt like tumbling down the most precipitous ravine
where at the bottom, unseen, the flavor of dirt overwhelms
your palette.  Like choking
until you’ve a head bursting with fears and muddy tears in your eyes,
obstructing your view of the most beautiful sunset our Earth has seen
in it’s years of being.

Thank you for helping me see.

And I can only hope that one night when the sunset has begun to die down,
you choose to wipe the dirt from your eyes and
become the sunrise.

Because just as colors fade, with time,
mud will wash away.

Why something rather than nothing,
millenary questions mankind dwell
upon whilst witnessing existence
of surroundings, mesmerising

phenomena. Enthralling vibrations
we sense, sparkling myriad colours,
sounds, shaping textures emitting scents,
flavours tingling baffled palates.

Wandering on metamorphosing soils
ceaselessly reflourishing in springs,
celebrated by pagans and mystic believers
the same, for the goddess we call nature is

the only revealing
itself before us with no veils.

Bathing in fresh waters, rivers
streaming from icy mountain tops
to endless oceans of white
salty minerals balancing life,

in the depths of which all began,
cells melding to engender species
of omnific varieties, beguiling entities
curiously exiting to wander lands.

Juicy fruits on branches of rising trees
erecting to shield, shading creatures
from the scorching rays of a brilliant
star, circadian dawning consenting

earthly presence to evolve, for eyes
to rise contemplating space, in time,
notice the sparkling lights
on infinite black canvas, wonder

what they are, mirific excitement
while perceiving a unique
peculiar consciousness encompassing
all that ever was is and will be,

for intuition to question in beguile,
Why something rather than nothing?

You,
my loquacious tide
flow into my heart
then ebb into
evanescent dreams
metamorphosing
melancholy into
this new form
these eyes have never
seen

How are you so beautiful?

the heat arises
inside this vessel
when you are near
451 Fahrenheit
this palpitating page
burns for your words
burns
burns
burns
to hear you speak
to see you flow
through time
gracefully

How are you so graceful?

The curve of your smile
is contagious
if only while in the presence
of your vanilla scent
your skin,
your laugh,
your countenance,
how they are so radiant

How do I capture this firefly?

I left a puddle of my stress tears on the waxy paper
Clenching my own hands so tightly till I could feel my heart beating
Wishing I had a hand to hold,
At least my uncle did
The nurse called those fate-determining wires spaghetti
As if the fear that they instilled in my already clenching heart
Could provide some kind of sustenance
Trying so hard to push all of the air from my lungs
As if that would return a number that would save me
I did not feel like I was able to empty myself enough

A pamphlet across the room reads off the words to me “what and why” and that all I can repeat in my head
What if I end up like my uncle
Why does this happen
Maybe my heart, just knew how to do too much, in too little time
Too much love, too much anxiety, too much joy paralleled by terror
Too many palpitations already, all it can do now is clutch to the only thing it knows, my body

The thousands of prayers that so many people in my position must have fired off
On that hard sterile table
Must cause god to see a sheen of white light when he looks down on us
So many little candles lit in hopes that they will be seen

I know that my heart murmur is not just a murmur
It is almost as loud as my voice
But unlike my voice it does not seek for the well-being of my soul and my body
It seeks for itself
A flap of skin with a mind of its own
Sometimes fluttering out words of its own language
Friendly fire
“I love you, I live with what keeps you alive, I control you”
This thing grown within my mother’s womb just like I
A fusion, my partner in development
I pray not, that it has changed its mind
Metamorphosing from a quirk, to tell boys, who want to hear my heart beat,
Something that makes me who I am
Into something that may tear me from the arms of the lovers who pressed their ears in eager fashion to my chest
into something that will make me,
no longer
what I am.

Slowly but surely she crept in.
Her presence deemed imaginary until you truly stopped and stared.
Looking closer into the monotonous greens and browns.
Only to discover that the sea of green was metamorphosing into
its counterpart like it did each and every October.
Leaf by leaf, she made her presence known.
Seemingly saying, I am here.
I am the calm before the wintry storm
and the relief from the scorching summer season.
I am your favorite colors
and your realization of God's handy work.
I am, Autumn.

I want to relive
That moment why?

An eighth grader
I watched you
A full-brown
Chocolate rose
On the stair sashay
To a classroom
On the row,
While passing by.
That moment
Couldn’t forget I
Till I die.

I want to relive
That moment why?

In the dictionary of
My childhood
I added love
Observing a girl child
At her virginal beauty
Leaping into womanhood
What is more I understood
Bewitching, swing
From earth to sky
A man’s feeling,
And mood
A metamorphosing
Girl could.

I want to relive
That moment why?

I dawned on me
“From my love object
Could I win
A kiss?”
Is what revolves
A man’s axis.
Also
“How could I be
On  romance’s ball
Before her eyes
To stand tall?”

I want to relive
That moment why

That day’s
Fond memory
In the cherished corner
Of my heart
I want to carry
Along with my body
The immortal feeling
Men couldn’t bury.

I want to relive
That moment why

I found it hard
To study
Unable to control
The lower part
Of my body.

In the cancer museum
I imagine where mine
would rest in peace and ease.

My eyes scan rows of organs:
Disney’s lungs on top of
Newman’s own **** pair;

Ingrid Bergman’s left breast
bump Bette Davis’ right—
indiscreet voyagers;

Audrey Hepburn’s colon
nesting Farrah Fawcett’s
like Tiffany Angels.

I saw my spot next to…
but the doctor called me
back to look at the scans.

He pointed out my growths
grouped in a triangle,
told me of their plan/cure-

called them clouds but they seemed
caterpillars vegging
out on my intestines.

I imagined them cocooning,
metamorphosing to
surgical butterflies

or staying just rounders,
yellow earrings just for
Audrey’s and Farrah’s lobes.

Then the doctor turned it
and the picture became
more terrible things:

rats, sharks, wasps all vying
for valuable shelf space
in the small gallery.

Tourists and soldiers from
the plane crash/war museum
wander in wondering

why there are no jet planes
reassembling in slow
motion horror, dog tags

melted into the seats,
flesh in the torn engines,
no screams of real terror,

just the crowd bumping and
marching into me in silence,
sometimes taking pictures

while **** yellow chemo
solution runs down my
leg in pupae slime lines.  

The last one opens me,
looking for spikes of grief
or fury.  Finding none,

not even a cold tomb,
just a rip, tear, dim sounds
as the crowd echoes down

and surges out the door
for all the Holocaust
store souvenirs next door.

I hear my heart rustle
in the computer bytes,
the breath of trees

and swallows in my files,
a dusty cross inside
releasing butterflies

to the sky as I step
back and watch all
****** into the blue.

“Do you think I got it
all in?” the doctor says,
snapping my last picture

Crystalline waters enclose the rocks
Which ancient sailors swore to be,
The remnants of genesis leftovers
Of creation ****** deep, in the heart

Of the Mediterranean sea. Stones
Of philosophers mystic alchemy,
Metamorphosing mercury into precious metals,
Silver and gold, thoughts and ideas.

Blissful grounds of Magnum Opuses
In search of enlightenment where arid soils,
Nurture the trees symbolising peace
Delivering fruits treasuring divine,

A golden juice, a gift from Athena, goddess
Of wisdom gently slithering In Greek veins,
Inebriating essence with innate, gratitude
Towards nature and pride for roots profoundly,

Entrenched in concepts of liberty equality
Justice for all human beings, are equal by nature
Social animals responsible for,
Governing themselves within a civil society

Of free individuals. A land encompassing
A thousand islands, perpetual movement
Of tectonic plates under a blistering sun,
Caressing mountains a tireless breeze, whirls

The little white flowers off olive trees,
Now embodying the pervasive spirits of past
Conquerors standing on millenary blood-bathed
Territories ruled, yet by the twelve Olympians

A mythology while history is written
And narrates, the story of the men who fought
For pride and glory earthly vices
And out of Love.