Author: juliette

“Silence – a lost art”

Megha Sood

Silence is neatly tucked
between the layered wings of the soaring eagle
the shifting angle of his wings
holds the distance between
the spoken and the untold

Silence has its own semantics
the lexicon of the unspoken
I can carry the debilitating
pain in my marred soul for eons
before you see the
tears trickling from my eyes

Silence, a deep soliloquy with time
you press ears to the
throbbing heart
else would miss the pain

Silence is neatly tucked
in the palm of a stillborn
dissolved in its muted stench

Silence is the only conversation
for the reticent mind
as the moon brushes across my face
dripping the verses
picked neatly by the time

Silence is a lost art
so sublime.

Megha Sood

Bright sky

Carol Alena Aronoff

dispels black thought;
fear slips away–wisps of cloud
dissolving into azure silk.
I look south for solace, search 
for sun’s fire in my waning
inner life, seek to rekindle
a clear path to spirit.

Threads are still there–
frayed from trying 
too hard or not at all.
Confusion has been woven
in my outer fabric
yet I know there’s a clarity
that shines from the heart,
so close, so luminous,
it is easy to overlook–
to look elsewhere. 

Opening past habits of dead 
wood, the voice complaining
like lazy wind blows 
this way and that
without saying anything.
I find space to breathe,
take flight with geese
in endless lemon sky, 
soar blissfully
back into my self,
knowing that I never
lost anything. 

Carol Alena Aronoff

Country Boy

Jack M. Freedman

Tapping in his Tony Lamas
Wiggling in his Wranglers
Stimulating in his Stetson
The wind propels him
Twisting and spinning
As the guitar strums
He is a centrifuge
Defying gravity
Never succumbing
To earthly limitations
This cowboy soars
Grabbing his belt buckle
As if launching himself
Into the atmosphere
Propelled in alignment
Embraced by acoustics
Born in the USA
Stature of the
Colossus of Rhodes
Love child of deities
Product of divinity birthed
As if Icarus and Terpsichore
Conceived him
As he glides across dancefloors
He could make himself
Levitate in midair
Knowing full well
He was born to fly

Jack M. Freedman

“we wait for something beautiful then we destroy it”

Stuart Buck

lying in the inch of fairy floss snowfall in the car park
of the abandoned hardware store but we don’t feel the cold
oh no, we are boiling mercury in our veins and the beautiful
thing is that the sky isn’t falling, we are soaring up to meet it
so I kiss your hand as we hit the screaming brilliance head on
becoming fractured perfection for those endless seconds but
oh god, we wake as only dust on the pavement and your frostbitten
fingers curl up as a dying plant in a desert of unanswered prayers

Stuart Buck