art by Victor Bauer
In the mist of dreams the touch of your skin is tinder igniting a flare becoming a flame. Your eyes seek out the savage in me. Here we are still lovers and like starving animals we devour each other with weak bites never completely consuming one another.
National Geographic
Nights while you sleep
my lips are so close I can
draw your breath in like an
infant at its mother’s breast.
I run my fingers down the curve
of your spine lean in to breathe
your smokey scent.
I have entered that golden part of you
immersed the sea that claimed me in
oceans of fiery sunsets.
When our hearts grow mute we will know
we have drifted too near the sun
art by Karol Bak
Browsing my journals
I am reminded of the past.
The door swings open
releasing sleek eels of memories
where I am nothing or at best
a trembling leaf caught in a spring breeze.
Do you ever think of me
find me in constellations pressed against the sky
or hear me in the sigh of an incoming tide?
I would seek comfort in the moon but I am
so trivial and he is taken by the stars.
In dreams my tongue is a crimson snake that
flicks hungrily along the length of your thigh
curling around the catch in my throat.
You are god and have named me regret.
I close our door with pried fingers.
I’ve given up on prayer hands.
Art by Rita Hardy
I can watch butterflies
float weightless over gardens
Stained glass collages of
amber rust and brown
set in facets of sable veins
they hover over flowers
compound eyes and fluttery feelers
faces smeared flaxen
too fine for the eye to see
Free from all fear
death is not a concept on
their mystical journey
If I am silent I can watch.
art by Nature Works
On a thorny stalk
wrapped in leafy veins
heavy with the burden
of viscous dew
for the love of light her
corolla lifts upright
a broad faced still life
anchored to the earth
she tracks the sun across
an unpredictable sky
At dusk she combs the air
with sweetness retreating
at twilight into
pearly pools of the moon.
photography by heart
Then, wisdom grew from fruit
and time was a seedling.
All creatures spoke the same,
hymn of bats, breath of horses.
We were winged and freedom
was etched on the soles of our feet.
Pathways in the earth and sky were
known not charted.
We stepped naked into the blazing sun
bared ourselves to golden rivers and
awesome tidal thunder.
At the wharf I lean back against the damp stone wall, sip my drink and yield to the slippery salamander of sea. The moon is a glistening slice of melon, her whisper carries on the wind “moon child I love you too”. Sinking deeper in to my subconscious I watch a velvet sea bird swoop my reflection from silver waves where the sighs of lovers are lost in a monsoon. Old images flicker across my frontal lobe as I liberate sip by sip. That man with the golden veins doesn’t interest me anymore. Later when my pearl skinned body breaks the surface I’ll bring him back again.
art by Steve Hanks
I am a constellation
pasted to a smear of deep sky or
some god spun leaf drifting
a wintry blue pond.
My tongue turns silvery around
my words, do not take them
for sorrow I have named them
peace.
Do not forget me.
I still need you to carry me
over the pierce of thorns
My hands are good for nothing but
a plea do not forget me
I am still here my hair a tangle
of stars.
Autumn leaves have begun to fall.
Late October London is ablaze in hues of orange and purple.
On my bench by the river I daydream that I am an adolescent
reptile escaped from Kafka’s Die Verwanlung, laid back basking in the sun.
The air is layered in heavy cologne but men do not interest me now. I am content to casually observe. To my advantage I know all about them while they know so little about me. Thinking of you against my wishes, dying a little, dead all the sweet hope of dreams never realized, I imagine my earthly body padded, sat beside yours on a grassy knoll
breathing the scent of lilac and the mossy green River Delta.
In the dark I am nude but for a shadow across my torso.
You are so near and to distract my self from this burning desire
I let my thoughts linger among the lines of Roethke’s “In A Dark Time”.
Years pass and by chance we meet at the sad cafe. I sway in your arms like a fragile birch in an autumn tempest. The halo of my eyes glisten recalling how we gave away what we never really had. We hold each other knowing that love has died and we with it.
art by Fabian Perez
