I'm pacing the dusk dark
Of my backyard,
Feet sinking in the
Winter-softened ground.
One headphone in,
Singing to me of summers
I never experienced,
Ignoring the sirens
The next street over;
Stanching the fire,
Calming the blaze.
I glare at the blossom-less
Magnolia tree;
The absence of the flowers
Screams yours too loud
In the forced quiet.
Strip me from your branches
Like winds ripping
Away
The rotting white petals
Clinging to life.
Does my scent cling,
To your clothes,
Your skin,
Your lips?
Or does it leave,
Rippling off you
In
Curling
Smoke
Blossoms.
Did you know
That the heat of
Your finger tips
Leaves cigarette burn scars,
Coiling galaxy spirals on
The small of my back,
Pressed against
The spaces of my ribs.
On my autopsy they will discover
Marks from your lips
Seared into my bones;
My knuckles,
My neck,
The curve of my shoulders,
The sharpness on my collar bones.


k.f.

What is our maker, why does it put us here to die
What is Life if it must end,
What of our sense of beauty,
Of mesmeric minster air?
Or the way light bends on a summer afternoon,
The way the mourning dove croons,
If it must be taken all away,
When some of us must go and some of us to stay?

What is the love we feel,
For one another—deep, fearsome and real?
Why put it there for us to overcome,
Since the tension of love is not for some.
Or why take it into our hearts,
Only to wrench and stab us as we part?

Especially those who love only a few?
They open themselves to one or two—
Pour every part of their being into one soul,
Ignoring those who can't make us whole,
If only to watch it drain, or disappear as they depart?
Taking with them all our mind and heart?

Why do we expect an explanation
Of this cruel phenomenon,
The findings, trials and accommodation
That we build our lives upon?

And yet, with hope, however weak,
Stanching up our wavering hearts,
We tell ourselves we’ve found what we seek,
Something deeper than knowledge or art,
Until we are torn apart.

No religion can explain it.
Psychology tries and fails to name it.
We are creatures of mist and desire,
Of logic and deliberation,
Whose desperate brains whisper “Find a cure!”
And we wait only to have experts demur.

But deep within our harrowed souls,
We know that, for only a few,
Does this equation work,
And for the rest of us, it pales.
We plummet toward the hangman’s ****
And yet thank him for his gruesome work.

For our few bittersweet tales of life,
And that relief we feel comes at last,
Though we’ve no reason to believe it so.
We merely seek an end to the heartrending past,
Even if it just marks us as life slows.
And watches us as we go.

Does anyone care what happens to the lonely,
Or especially the aggrieved?
I doubt they do; they care about only
Themselves, their desires and taking leave.
Then they swiftly exit, and discard us—the bereaved.

Sharon Talbot
August 11, 2015

Loneliness is here again,
smiling to my face to mock me.
It's presence is so chilling,
you can almost hear it's breath.
Sending the chills down my spine.
Who can take it away from me?
Connect me to the one who
has the power to
quiet my heart to this
overwhelming emptiness.
The pressure of it's presence
is almost consuming me.
It's foul breath stanching my nostrils
I almost choked.
I can feel it within wrapping
it's arms around me.
But the comfort of the
Holy Spirit can do wonders.
He is the only one
who settles all things.
His presence within heals.
The warmth of his unfolding
embrace is soothing,
he subtly nudged
this yoke away,
like the gate of brass,
breaking it's jaw with
his anointing presence.
This loneliness folded
his mat like the proverbial
Arabs in the lonely desert,
quietly in silence flee
with shame unnoticed
from my presence.
And now my heart is
eternally forever grateful.
©2018,Emeka Mokeme. All rights reserved.

If you're reading this from the end
stanching the unfathomable river bend
please unclamp your hands, the fae is a friend
to all life of all the lands

Her royalty is only signifying
the fairy princess; her tears are drying
they worship their loss-born deity
a majestic tree of negativity
upside down, roots penetrate sheer stone,
to grow into another world entirely
as dark as a ghost in a graveyard on a new moon, alone
as vibrant as ****** glee, jubilation and rejuvenation in proximity
her people glimpse this foreign past with awe
they revere their dear mistress, a phantom love
her people run and play alongside her in the visions they saw
they are equal and share alike, life is lived laterally, none below or above
they bow and pray for her to appear, to hear her speak
she is captured and enslaved, forced to grant wishes
she is a goddess among them, her attunement made her weak

The dark fairy, both ancestress, sister and corpse of the fairy princess of yore,
summoned to another time and world, where magick is inverted in a way she has never seen before
worship at the tree that grows on all planes calls out and gives back her form
a cold butterfly flitters back to life, leaving its cage and smiling warm
and the stump that it died on grows back to a forest, as all the stones and steam engines turn to deer and foxes
little bunnies and mushrooms and logs, hounds and cats, fish and frogs, bees and bears and dogs
all the people stop fretting about all their material needs and stop thinking of places to be
and slowly forget of wishes and kingdoms, dragons and gold and even the fairy
they experience true care-freeness in the ecstasy of joy, o, true bliss
that only the pure love of a powerful heart can plant such seeds with a kiss
as they are so content they don't need to eat, or sleep or drink
the people forget to live, they are overwhelmed at her return and thus forget to think
and all of those, the little girl who caught her and everybody who used her to make a wish
die one by one, as her heart breaks into pieces, crying, while every human succumbs to a final, ecstatic paralysis

Without people, the forest overtakes the continent  
idyllic to a fault, over abundant animals and insects, predators and prey
generations passed, the dark fairy becomes a leader, quite prominent,
before the fairy princess is lost in her own entanglement of power, unbalanced nature, unjustly you might say she once again fades away.