Category: Uncategorized

Leaving behind my nan’s
embroidered tablecloth,
I find the garden gate has its own
weathered patina and that
the grass has stained my pumps.

Under giant umbrella plants
my childhood was nettle green,
moss stippled stones rested
at the nimble river’s edge,
beneath, a life swarmed darkly
oblivious to verdant light,
I rub the rock, finger tip-green,
my prints resemble a leaf’s veins
a connected life-force,
I see how the tall trees hold up the sky
with their birchen arms, while below,
a gentle dock leaf soothes me.

I hold a buttercup under your chin,
you smile,
you love butter,
all the same,
you are not green.

Brandon SullivanSo I had a neighbor who was from the Planet Xarc-Fabulacron.
You know the one, in the Arcturus Prime Nebula?

Anyway, one night he said to me,
“Brandon, inside every Flup (Flup was his species, you see)
inside every Flup live two Grickles.
One Grickle is good: kindness, love, humility, benevolence.
The other Grickle is evil: envy, lies, greed, arrogance.”

I stopped him before he could continue.

“Earth’s version has two wolves, symbols of the battle between good and evil in the hearts of all people. The one you feed is the one that wins.”

Bob’s expression was graven.

Yes, Bob. Look, just because he’s from Xarc-Fabulacron doesn’t mean he can’t have a normal name. That’s offensive.

In any case, I had a problem with the stories of the wolves and the Grickles. I said,

“First off, Bob, a plump wolf is a slow wolf.
Now keep that in mind when you picture a starving wolf.

Eyes bulging, lips curling, he will do anything to feed,
He’ll attack a grizzly bear so why the hell wouldn’t he rip out the good one’s throat?
Plus, I don’t just have two wolves locked in this ribcage, I’ve got velociraptors, chameleons,
I’ve got LIONS.
I have a zoo inside of me.
I watch like a hawk with eagle eyes who wouldn’t even hurt a fly because he’s letting sleeping dogs lie as they let cat after cat out of the bag on a wild goose chase.”
Bob opened his mouth to speak but I cut him off.

“Hold your horses, Bob! I’m as busy as a bee, mad as a hornet, opening a can of worms to wolf down the butterflies in my stomach, like I’m a pig headed guinea pig headed for a barrel full of fish I’ll shoot until the holy cows come home at a snail’s pace from the rat race in this dog eat dog world that also happens to be my oyster.
And none, none of these beasts are domesticated.

Even IF I could let the good wolf feast,
I fear the evil one may have a closet full of sheep’s clothing,
just so he can pull the wool over my eyes.

So how am I supposed to keep this wolf at bay if I can’t even recognize him?
Maybe I’m…the boy who cried wolf.
Because there’s just me­. Alone. Howling at the moon.”

When I finished, Bob looked like he was in pain, until his chest exploded and a Grickle with its arachnid appendages crawled from the gore, carrying the severed head of another Grickle.

Huh.
I guess it wasn’t a metaphor.

Performed by Val Cole

Drop Me Off in the Wilderness

1

Drop me off in the wilderness
By the river shore where we were before
By the abandoned shack by the railroad track
Slow down and I’ll jump out the door
And find my own way back, I guess,
From the valley of excess
And the Land of 10,000 Dances
No one can say I never took chances
The answer to all your questions is yes
I lost every game from checkers to chess
Can’t blame it all on the hands I was dealt
While I was tightening my belt
Nothing to do now but live with less
In another location
Drop me off in the wilderness
Call it a vacation

2

Or an excavation
Digging up an ancient mess
Remember when you begged to be
Dropped off in the wilderness?
What a scamp you were at 69
Sexting an heiress to millions
With a slithering tongue
Palavering a pubic kiss
In the throes of throttling bliss
Across the fields of intimate internet texts
From yesteryear, and yet.
That led you back to the sheer cliff
Of time, to pay a final debt
Another bad bet
You were so stressed
You wanted to be dropped off in the wilderness

3

Drop me off in the wilderness
Slow down and I’ll jump out
You said, but I digress,
No one needs to know what this is all about
I never saw you disappear
You were never there, never fear
The tourniquet is tight around the wound
The bleeding stopped, the nickel dropped,
The end is coming soon
Not soon enough to call your bluff,
You had me at hello
But nothing stayed the same as it was a long time ago
You were on a different plane, I was on the ground
The motel walls were paper thin, we couldn’t make a sound
You were like a little bird falling from a nest
When I dropped you off in the wilderness

-K. C. Wilson

Performed by Val Cole

DEATH, by FERNANDO MAGELA DA SILVA

From my most unbreakable certainty, I worship my most
visceral doubt, the legacy of death, day by day, in
seconds that drag on through my time, and to his
throne, now I am attentive, now I am careless

Death seems fair to me, it does not segregate, by any
race and age, in the most remote of places it is
projected

For any moment, it will be postulated in front of my
orbit, in front of yours, it will be made available,
it will have to be made unavoidable before the chosen
one.

It can be apotheotic, like that, well, still, who will
know, will be shy

It will make it heartbreaking, intense, the most
intrinsic of my pains, of your pains

It will amputate the presence, in a cutting act it
will empty the heart of hope and fill it with an
incognito and opaque void.

It will make us think about an envelope of revolt,
fear, anguish

Thus, it will be divinely strenuous, and will
sovereignly provide us with the most infamous of the
factors consigned to death, the warlike questioning
that kills us in responses that do not embrace, that
do not shut up, that do not stroke

As sad as dying is seeing someone in love die in
death.

Performed by Val Cole

A Mourning Hug for John Mendelssohn

A glowing day
hell-orange
Nimbostratus cloud
hovers here,
choking everything,
from plants to crows
to this disillusioned woman
as a hard wind
whips the cloying air,
from Northern California,
taunting an already-battered heart.
This time last year
I was intoxicated
by the joy of embracing
the promising lie
someone told
about a bright and shining
future life.
Today, even the earth
is pushing me away.
Arms stretched wide,
I’m running toward my mother
as quickly as I can

Performed by Val Cole

The emperor’s new clothes, by Grace M.

Submit to the view, submit to our view
The ‘new way’ is the way, the ‘only way’
To see, the emperor has a set of new clothes
Unless you’re BLIND, BIGOTED, PREJUDICED…. blah blah blah.

Humans for 2 million years, naturally evolving
The ‘new way’ is the way, the ‘only way’ and
To hell with science and natures laws
The emperor has new clothes……CAN’T YOU SEE?

Nature sets its case in evolution but
The ‘new way’ is the way, the ‘only way’ and
Says no to women with wombs and men with penises
BUT the law remains, we do not control it, do not own it
The truth is the ‘new way’ is ‘not the way.’
The emperor does NOT have new clothes on…….

Grace M.

Performed by Val Cole

“Morning Dew” by Kyle Leighton

And so it is, a new day has dawned
As here I sit to greet it right
A pebble, nay, a grain of sand
In the depths of space on this land
Tomorrow brings what we not know
But care at all is nay we have
For sorrow comes to those who wait
Who lie awake and worry their fate
For now I see the sky so free
Tomorrow brings a day of glee
And Yani sits and pangs about
For he not knows what teams around
In this head of mine, teaming so loud
Thoughts that wash and whisper aloud
Like clouds they pass and sway around
For that may come is bound to slither
Tither, hither, the grass it’s slender
Ready to show the day what’s wetter
Than a morning dew and a sunshine shimmer
In the crystal depths of water drops hither

Death is joy
Life is bland.
So I dip my feet
in water amd sand.

I feel the waves on my toes
as they come and go.
Welcoming me happily,
washing away my sorrow.

I smell the sea
it’s essence, intoxicating my mind.
I just want freedom and
the sea has always been kind.

I keep walking towards the sea
and with water surrounding my feet and me,
I lose touch of the sand.

You who have been driven to the end of
your existence through turbulence,
through not reading maps,faces or books

you who have been driven to a near
whisker of your life preferring to live with
real twitching whiskers who read fear
and are wary

You who have known love not hate now
learn to read maps, faces and books

You who now sit in your enclave like
driftwood sweeping down endless canals
to the birth of everything.

As winter kills all fragile life
Every beautiful tender leaf
Buries the soft hopeful light
Bleeds the heart ’til it’s white
So did affection with no shame
Killed the trust with none to blame
Leaving lust no one to name
And the passion with no clear aim
Why work so hard for a blossom
If the winter will not give its blessing
The flower however lovely and pleasing
Inevitable is the death of freezing

Genre: Hurt