Image by Luis Beltrán
The writer sleeps…
Her dreams are home
To stories of such wonder
That could she grasp their truths,
Her pen would never leave the page again.
Grey matter feeds
Encrypted hope,
Its secrets — yet to plunder.
The unexpected soothes:
A journeyman’s respite in the inane.
So strange this land;
Dispelled by dawn
Its debris — buried under
The roast of coffee beans,
Like every morning’s rite of the insane.
Yet all the same,
The writer sleeps…
*
This ashen tongue…
It slithers through deceit
Like dreams of silk
Over the morning mist.
Your mouth tastes of promise;
It shimmers over mine
Until synapses burst
And blind, I cannot sift
Away the beauty from its lies.
An angel born of darkness;
Your dagger rooted in my spleen…
Around its icy blade I twist
Until my bowl bejewels yours
With tears of ruby warmth.
Yours is the serpent bite,
And mine… the rift.
*
Painting | My Summer Wine by Adrian Borda
You carved into my skin
The promise of a bruise
And I have watched it bloom
Into a sigh.
My body veils in silence
Each indigo – a secret
That longs for your caress
To mellow,
Else to die.
And when the snow falls red
Onto my cheeks displaced
By kisses inked in rain,
I shatter days:
The ones replete of beauty,
Those fashioned into hailstones…
All left for you to salvage.
Your loss
To set ablaze.
*
photography: Dystopia by Ian Hemingway
I cower at your feet –
A docile body –
With no thoughts of its own
But those of your creation.
Identity depleted
Of jagged edges all:
I am like him
And he is like the next.
In this – our condition –
Of quieted un-freedom
We are amalgams of the same.
Are these the truths you seek?
Are we – such things of pity –
That you crave power over?
Yet know that yours won’t be
The only truth to reign
And we shall turn
The tide against itself.
And should our power fail us
We shall imagine sabres –
Or teeth of steel –
To give home to our spleen.
*
Writing Challenge: The Ray Bradbury Noun List Twist
2. Your nouns. Create a list of at least ten nouns. (If you can think of more, great, you’ll have more nouns to choose from.) Write a new piece using at least five of the nouns on your list.
My list: Modernity, Freedom, Identity, Creation, Condition, Action, Rulers, Power, Truth, Existence.
Starry Night by Jorge Maia
The night is late.
Waves flutter at my feet with memories of light:
Belated stars, perhaps elsewhere extinguished.
I’ve watched whole universes pass
Across the canvas of the sky
And melt away beyond the lake’s horizon.
And still you did not come.
Soon will be dawn.
The cricket’s song will die away
And the ravine whence they have made my bed
Will paint its shadows silent.
Beneath this bloodied scythe I’m set to rest,
Never to rise again or feel this life’s embrace.
And still you did not come.
*
Weekly Writing Challenge: The Ray Bradbury Noun List Twist
Moonlight Bay by MovingStill
Without the tempest howls,
Leaves rust: dreams claimed by dust.
The heart is fickle
And from this world of damaged things
It shies away, embracing in its stead
The promise of tomorrows. Endless lies…
For this one dawn may well be too, your last.
Weeks, hours, mere seconds –
The naiads of our age –
Are ruthless in their passing …
Take hold then of my hand, my heartbeat measure.
‘Tis hidden in the pulse within my wrist:
Here lies my time
In memory absconded.
I’ve gambled it away and now too late
Have learnt to prize its value.
Let go. No… Stay with me a while.
This, my diminished life, will presently depart.
How bright this moon…
Could linger here a lifetime
To feel its golden sheen upon my cheek.
How sweet the scent of lilies in the air,
And listen to the ripple of that wave…
Is that the sound of a paddle slicing through?
The ferryman will reach our shore anon.
A coin for the journey,
If you will.
*
baby sea turtle run by fyeah-seacreatures
New life
Enclosed in the palm of my hand
Burrowing through.
The shell
Of a love story hatched amid
Sand dunes and surf.
Alight
From my fingers’ grieving embrace
To the billows;
And seek
Under starlight, shimmied paths new
To guide your return.
*
White Feather by Stuart Lilley
A strand of life
Unhooked
From place and time;
It holds the secret of flight.
Green dew
Speckled with light
Crashed through distant horizons;
I twirled the feather
Between parched fingers
And followed the wind
To the edge of a cliff.
A whisper tangled its veins
Through the soles of my feet:
Jump…
*
I feel your body
Expanding next to mine,
Curdled into sleep.
Bodies linked
By inevitable stillness.
Secluded in your hopes,
Yours is the certainty of blindness –
Mine the despondency
Of broken masts,
Stranded in windless blue.
As an eyelash disentangles itself
From the weave of your dreams,
I taste its resting place:
My surrogate goodbye.
*
Caught on the cusp of a cloud
In wisps of pink ribbon
Not floating exactly:
Pummelling through unborn rain –
A dream of laughter.
I turn a grain of sand with the tip of my tongue
Against conch-teeth.
As my body dissintegrates into the surf,
Time swirls.
vic briggs 