Cicatrices
Scars are everywhere
Thank goodness bodies don’t last
Our souls are perfect
Isabell VanMerlin
*****************************************************************************
Possibilities
How high is up?
Is there a way to measure
the endless?
Why is the sky blue?
Forget the fancy explanations
of light’s spectrum and refraction.
Consider more exotic possibilities
that defy science, like earth circling
carpets of blue butterflies.
If the earth is round,
then why doesn’t my marble roll?
The world surely acts flat to my experience.
Perhaps I can devise that
bike ride that is downhill
in both directions.
Why stop here?
Consider how the clouds are
pushed like cotton into many shapes.
When I look out from a plane,
I am sure I could walk barefoot
on that soft layer,
but they just won’t stop the plane
to let me try.
Think of the Sun and its constant
repetition. Will it ever tire.
How about your song,
the one that carries
your soul on wings?
Will you sing it loudly
or ever let it out?
How about your heart,
can you open the door,
or have you ever tried?
Oh, so many possibilities.
Paul Redstone
********************************************************************************
The Rough Draft
The life with question marks asks
The boiling ambition in red and white
Blood cells under the millimeter thin
Brown skin about its goals and meanings.
The color-blind ambition continues to percolate
Smoothing rough edges in search of a window
For the soul to look for curls of music.
Too rough to be fitted into an ever changing
Form now, but the time always has time to wait
For the square to be whittled down to fit
Into a round hole.
Have you ever asked why the square
Peg has to fit into a round hole?
Ask the good earth where the square peg should go…
The breeze plays bare branches like curls of musical
Notations; up and down the scales, pausing to rest
And music goes on even after the percolating crescendo.
See if there is any difference in the color of blood cells
And reconsider before asking the goals and meanings
Of life based on the skin-deep value judgement of color
That includes a rough draft of any color.
Yenna Yi
*****************************************************************************
A Haiku
To Ocean Vuong on Logo Phobia
You are changing
your voice
from the fear
of those blurred
bones, to your entry
into your stronger life
a winged flight
from that bullet
that rests now in words
turned clear
and takes away fear
giving you the power
to find a new voice
phobia over come
words that fill your poems
with
the magic of the light
of your red dark.
Phyllis Katz