Category: themed issue

Multifaceted

Oculars, blue frame teeters

Hyaline wings flit.

Prey surface, skimming swamp, buzzing bog,

Dining Dragonfly, stalking skeeters.

Stunning, gorgeous,

Allay me with compliments.

Melt my heart,

Pour my mind into elation

Tingling, breathless

Sensations from the marvel of your words

Scuttle down to the tips of your fingers

From when you trace me,

To the moment we were expected to let go

You are a quest; a story to be divulged

My brand new home; with a smell of an old book.

And I am,

Forever yours.

 

Break Up- Hook Up

I could just lock my eyes,

And go flip into reverse

To a place where I misplace me

 

Now rather faintly be in a place

Where I can amuse my melancholy

With the same track over and over…

 

An indulging, grave echo that bawls

From my delicate lashes

And a brakeless stare reminding me

 

That little voice everyone talks about…

I shut it out that morning

Like you shut me out for months.

 

But that didn’t matter then

Cause all it was, just you and I

And the 7:30 sun flashing on us through

 

Though two pieces of the puzzle were put into place,

I could feel the rest of the picture just fall apart and break.

That picture that took me so long to formulate,

 

The pieces just flew, flimsy, weightlessly.

They broke like a flame dying

And the ashes expel to the sky.

 

If I feel like I am in the right place,

Then why is everything shattering around me?

 

 

 

 

“What do you know of demons?”

The Enchantress sat at the hearth, incense smoke tracing spirals in the air.  I stood behind her, silent, struggling to answer the words she had muttered.  I had stood there in silence for longer than I realized, and her words rung through me like a bell.

“Nothing,” I said.  She looked into the embers, the remnants of the fire that had burned bright when I had first arrived, and laughed.

“I figured as much,” she answered, lighting another stick of incense.  “No one who comes to ask knows them as much as I.  Those who know them as much as I do,” she trailed off.  “Well, they’re too afraid to ask.  Why’d you come here?”

I looked around the room.  Tapestries laced with knots and sigils in the form of beasts and wicker men stared at me from every wall.  The shelves were all laden with idols and trinkets, all turned toward the place where I stood, empty eyes fixed upon me.  I shook my head, wondering myself why I’d come.  “I was curious,” I said.  She was still.  “People say this house is haunted.”

“It is.”

“With what? There are rumors all through the town of this place. People are scared, but they don’t do anything about it.  There has to be a reason.”

“There is.” She still watched the embers die, and it struck me that I hadn’t seen her face since I came.  She hadn’t moved.

I shivered.  It was like time had gone into a trance.  I didn’t know how long I’d stood there, watching her light her candles, humming an off-key tune.

“This place is haunted,” she said. The sound startled me. “Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.  It’s not haunted with the spirits of the dead, though.” She laughed.  “No, even the dead don’t want anything to do with what’s in this house.”

“What, then? What are they so afraid of? I came here for answers, and all I’ve heard are riddles.  All I’ve seen here are tricks.”

“Tricks aren’t what scare the people away,” she answered, coldly.  “The tricks bring people in.  It’s the other things that scare the dead away.  The tricks are just to appease them.”

She lit another candle, throwing a clump of herbs into the fire.  Acrid smoke filled the room, and I felt as though a thousand eyes were on my back.  I turned around, and saw only the trinkets I’d seen before.

“Demons?” I asked, my chest hollow.  I couldn’t tell how long it had been since I last spoke.  “Is that what’s in this house?”

“You are learning, then.”  The woman snuffed a candle, then drew a circle on the hearth. A hasty hand etched a symbol inside it, upon which she promptly placed a pile of ashes.   Colored candles with colored flames placed around the circle’s edge, she began to hum again, and I began to feel faint.

“No one’s disappeared here.” My voice sounded distant.  “Nothing bad has ever happened here, and yet no one talks about it.  It’s a question everyone in town has had for years, but no one will even speak it.”

“Sometimes,” she said, scrawling symbols into the ash, and then scratching them out.  Scrawling, scratching, scrawling, and scratching.  “It’s the things no one sees that are the most dangerous.  Sometimes there are forces at work beyond the human perception that affect a man’s soul and make it at ease or on edge.  It’s those forces that inhabit this house, and they have been alone here for time uncounted.”  She placed a bowl on the ashes, covering the intricate symbol she had spent so long creating, and filled it with black water.  The room reeked of death, and I took a step back.  The candles had halfway disappeared by the time I realized it, and again, I wondered how long I’d been standing there.  “Sometimes, they live to terrorize.  Other times, they wish to be left alone, and will do anything to keep it that way.”

I tried to form a response, but I found myself mesmerized by the embers.  When I looked at them, I could see patterns appearing and vanishing—faces, creatures, images.  It was stunningly beautiful, yet somehow unsettling.  “Other times yet,” I heard her say. “They act innocuous, but have their own dark agendas.  Demons are beings of perception, you see.  They can be observed however they want to be—that’s how so many things go unnoticed here.  They can veil their appearance from you…” She waved her hand over the tallest of the candles. It went out.  “Or they can show themselves full-force.”  The candle exploded into green flames.  “Whether the plot is simple or complex, those affected will never know it happened.”

Terrified, I tried to turn and run, but I was transfixed by whatever magic she had created, pinned where I stood like an insect on a board.  I tried to speak, but my mouth went numb.  It felt as though my teeth were rotting in my skull.  The woman moved aside, and I saw the black water, churning, roiling, and then completely still.  I saw my reflection on its surface, but it wasn’t as I remembered it.  I had withered, body crumbling around me.  It was then that I saw around me—there were others in the room—other people, all standing around me, as motionless as I was, oblivious to the march of time.

I saw the enchantress’ face.  It was contorted into a hideous smile, her eyes black orbs in her skull, her skin pale and lifeless.  She erupted into a column of black flame before me, hand reaching out toward me, paralyzed, to touch me.  A lone, wiry finger touched me between the eyes, and I watched my body leave me, animated by some evil magic.  I saw it, young, eyes black like hers, leave through the door I’d entered through, and humming the same off-key tune the woman had been humming.  And I stood there, I suspect, as a soul, stripped from its body, powerless to move or fight the demon’s hold, knowing it, like everyone else in the town, would never speak of what had happened.  All around me were translucent souls, fixed in place like my own, watching with helpless anger.  A few sobbed.

Then, the moment the door slammed behind my body, the woman returned to her previous state.  She sat before the fire, lighting her candles as though nothing had ever happened at all.

 

 

 

 

 

Blank Pages

Empty lines

Seems I’ve been sitting for ages.

Points of pencils seem so fine.

 

Inspiration light

Mind bursts

The paper and pencil fight

My heart is immersed

 

Beautiful stanzas

Perfect breaks

Words dance with such extravaganza

Making my readers minds quake

 

Graceful rhymes

Feeling the tone

Revising takes the most time

I won’t stop until the lines flow

 

Scratched words

Side Notes

Changing words that sound absurd

And ending with the glossy coat

 

Rewritten perfectly

Final copy

Everything seems so correct

And no longer sloppy

 

Heart’s satisfied

Hands ache

But I hold with such pride

My words that are awake

 

 

 

 

We loved each other before we knew anything. When we were still just souls, drifting in another world where there is no gender or race or even species. We were content to simply be together.

Everything changed the day the messengers came to us. They told us that it was our time to fulfill our destinies, to be given physical forms and start a new life on a planet that the native species called ‘Earth.’ We knew nothing of such a place, and at first we were distraught. I remember comforting you in your fear.

The messengers told us that they would be kind to us and send us to Earth at around the same time, so that we could be together there. They warned us it would be hard, that they had no control over where we would be sent. Countries and borders meant nothing to us in the Otherworld. We would have trouble finding each other.

They sent me before they sent you, at my request. I knew you’d be frightened to go first.

But the messengers unknowingly damned us the day they sent you. They had no way of knowing the cultural customs of Earth, none of them having lived there themselves. How could they have known we would be shunned, that people would want to keep us apart? How could they have known it was a cultural taboo, that they had done the same to millions of souls before us?

For you see, they made us both human men.

 

 

That stare he uses.

That stare they all use.

Who?

They. The boys.

What boys?

All boys. The boys I know. The boys I’ve seen. Why do they do this?

Do what?

Stare. Stare at me with those daunting eyes. Those eyes that linger for just a second too long. Those eyes that tell me so much more than what their mouths are saying. Those eyes that…

What’s wrong with that?

Everything, Ignorance. Everything is wrong with that. Don’t you see?

No.

Then come look. Open your eyes for once. See them taunting you, craving you, telling you the secrets you’ve wanted to know, whether you’ve asked to hear them or not. See, my friend, the eyes are the gateway to the heart for these creatures. They are relied on to express what has been held back, what the lips will not permit to speak. And the longer the lips hold back, the stronger the eyes grow.

Do you understand now?

No.

See, the stronger the eyes become, the harder it is to resist.

Resist what?

You truly are your given name, I see. As once said, open your eyes! Can you see them pulling you into the pit of temptation? Confusion lingering in the question, “Is it love?” Only to bring you to a fork that splits down two paths, one of heavenly well-fed desires and one of deep despair? It’s usually coursing you down the second path?

Excuse my frustration, but do you see now?

No. For I apologize, Suspicion, but no. And never will I. Although Ignorance has been a given name to me, I often go by another. One that often means much more to the falling, to the hurting, to the calling, to the caring. I prefer to go by that name, if you will. And, whether you know this or not, you are my enemy. I can only doubt your ways, Suspicion. Those stabbing eyes are only welcoming in my perspective. Those eyes help me understand the aching, the hurting, the falling. Nothing else could explain the depth of these beautiful creatures as well as those stabbing eyes. Those stabbing eyes that express what the lips will not permit to speak. Those taunting, craving, secret-telling eyes. Those gateways into the heart.

So, if you will, refer to me not by my given name, but by my chosen name.

Call me Love, Suspicion.

Call me Love.

“What?” Penny said groggily as she opened her eyes.

“Aw, man! No! We missed the best part! This DVD must be scratched. I’ll try to rewind. Sorry, you missed your, like, favorite part. Oh my gosh,” Stephanie yelled as she fiddled with the remote. Eventually they figured it out and rewound to the part where Peeta and Katniss kiss in the Arena’s shelter, just before she leaves to get medicine to heal his wounds. They watched the rest of the movie, shed a few tears, and danced to the end credits’ songs. Penny set down the popcorn bowl, which was now full of the always unwanted un-popped kernels.

She turned on the news, and a reporter, a young blonde woman with crazy, bright red lipstick, appeared. “We have reports from all over the world; car crashes, planes falling from the sky, surgeons falling asleep during operations, and high death tolls from roadwork and machinery crews. Theories are pouring in on what happened to humanity from 8:00 P.M. to 8:03 P.M. During those three minutes, the world slept and nearly 15% of the population was killed, leaving another 30% badly injured. More to come on this as-yet unexplained international crisis. I’m Chelsea Taylor, and this is Channel 5 News.”

Once the report ended, Penny changed the channel, and then changed it again, and again, and again, until she was holding down the “channel up” button. Every single station – Disney, Bravo, Hallmark, Nickelodeon, HBO – every single station – had reporters; Disney stars, Kim Kardashian, all freaking out about whether their loved ones were okay.

“This is a joke, right? This has to be a joke,” Stephanie scoffed in disbelief.

“A joke the whole world is playing along with?” Penny snapped.

They each tried to hold down the fear rapidly growing inside of them, both refusing to bring up the elephant in the room; neither knew where their loved ones had been the moment the world fell asleep.