Black Pearls

February 23, 2023

Thirteen years as Captain, and one hundred years of service down below.

When did I make that bargain, how many years do I have left at the tiller?

The deal was imperfect, and I've forgotten what I agreed.

Even while I get to play Captain Jack Sparrow, I still must pay my keep.

Fate will not wait until my true toil begins.

These tears silently spilling down my face are all black pearls.

Hard earned through experience, life, pain, and love.

Hard birthed, tearing me wider with the loss of every one.

In front of me grows a pile of pearls, nacre glistening black, beautiful, and tragic.

How many have I earned, how many will I get to keep?

A wave crashes the stern, and the black pearls spill...

Off the deck, little parts of me, falling into the storm swirled depths.

Lost again.

Remember Me?

December 16, 2022

Remember me? Robin Hood appears over my shoulder.

Remember me? I look down at my feet, and see his boots next to mine in the forget-me-nots.

Remember me? It's been so long, I don't know if I remember.

Remember me? I try hard to look at his face this time. I see only his hat. I'm face blind.

Remember me? I'm at a festival, and he tells me to try the oysters.

Remember me? We're dancing in a ballroom, and his hands convey his anxiety even if I can't see his face.

Remember me? Standing at the foot of a dying woman's bed, I'm scared but not alone.

Remember me? I'm holding my dog, she snaps at his face.

Remember me? I'm sorry, I can't lose them too.

Remember me? I wish I could remember more.

Remember me? Yes.

Remember me? Every day, like a dream forgotten on waking, a part of me is missing. It's in Robin Hood's pocket.

Men Don't Cry

January 31, 2022

Not on the Saturday battlefield
All testosterone and bluster
Camaraderie enforcing masculinity
Despite protruding bone

Not at that drunken gathering
Where your love leaves with another
You just sink more beer and smile
Despite a shattered heart

Not at the cemetery lawn
As a loved one is lowered
Instead, bighting your lip for distraction
Despite the crushing loss

Not in the delivery room
Where the being you co-created
Takes their own first breath
Despite your flood of love

Not when simple questions
Test your failing memory
And you hide the symptoms in humour
Despite your growing unease

Not even in times of utter solitude
Despite guaranteed privacy
Because you were taught that men don’t cry
Instead, they slowly drown in tears withheld

Memories of a Night

March 2, 2021

by Roy Duffield

at the table
smiles and looks of contemplation
ecstasy and misery
and resignation

on the table
every glass
bottle
half empty and
half full

on the streets
going somewhere
going nowhere
going
going
gone

on the floor.

The Dejected

October 28, 2016

Eyglo

A lonely tree in the dark,
is all that remains
of what I once was.

The white stem is lit up,
though I can’t see the light source
and everything else is covered in darkness.

A lonely mountain lion screams in despair,
but in my mind it's the wail of a wraith.
It’s the sound of grief,
and the echo of my darkest desires coming alive,
my sweltering passion becomes one
with the nature of everything around me.

Walking up to the tree is easy,
but I dare not touch it.
I see little of the colourful, majestic crown,
but each leave represents a dream that has been implemented,
filled with the hopes of the hopeless,
filled with the lust of the spiritless,
filled with the tears of those with stark desires,
but with holes in their hearts.

And I am the wraith.

The mountain lion cries again,
the sound is hardly audible,
still it pushes the dim thoughts away
and they vanish into the surrounding darkness,
darkness that's all inside me,
and I brave the world and touch the stem of the tree.

I feel how my heart refills,
with hopeless dreams and inexplicable joy,
I see your face before me,
I hear your voice in the cries of the mountain lion,
a soft calming whisper this time,
and you tell me that you were never out of reach,
never far away,
never gone,
but always right there in my heart,
slowly swaying to the music of my life,
to the melody of my sorrows and of my victories,
and now I have this tree to show for it,
a tree surrounded by the comforting darkness,
winter’s harness.

I cry out like the mountain lion
when I feel your hand touching mine,
reaching out from inside the stem,
pulling me close.

And I will never be liberated from this embrace,
nor do I yearn for freedom.
It’s energising,
being caressed by my own forsaken ardor.

Pareidolia

January 7, 2016

By Chaz Brenchley

This perished ground has long forgotten rain.
The petrichor is buried deep,
So deep we would need storms and floods to find it.

You point at a cloud and say bear.
Or was it hare or here? Were?
The were-cloud encompasses the lot.
Each shapeless shifty thing becomes a metaphor
For mind, for mindfulness,
For change and time and art and words and us.

Forgotten rains seep out of sodden turf
Beneath a sky that’s clearing.
Whatever words we use, the storm’s the same:
Portentous, overbearing, long-delayed.

Never mind that rising smell; we’ll say it’s drains,
Or damp. Decay is universal.
Point at clouds. Say things.
Before we’ve all forgotten how to speak.

The Road

November 3, 2015

by Eygló

The mountains are dark,
the peaks smooth and impossible,
obsidian.

They surround me on my journey,
I see rivers,
and floods,
and the waves of an ocean crashing violently on the shore,
colliding with the rocks
and my conscious mind.

The desert is dark,
the sand smooth and warm and black.
I watch the icebergs floating in the lake,
small flowers in the myst.

And I see you suddenly,
standing on the other side of the lake,
you smile,
forever that smile.

The howls come from all around us,
these unknown screams
of monsters prowling the earth,
or just birds in distress.

I look away,
I can see your agony,
but there is no way to cross this body of water
and now I can’t remember why I stopped.

I should be on my way,
I should be on the road.

Music spark by Michael Marshall Smith

Run

September 19, 2015

Robin Wyatt Dunn

running into the black lagoon
running to be right next to you
in your dark arms
in your dark waves
beneath the skein of stars bitter beautiful strewn over our dark:

let me hold the truth inside your dress
and I'll regress into the weight beneath your feet
the loom and loam and the wet black night

run me
run now
and now

Ours Not To Reason Why

August 3, 2015

Kate Chandler

Communicating how I feel
Would mean admitting it as real.
If anger, sadness, hurt and dread
Were really what were in my head
Then surely I could reason why?
But no; I simply sit and sigh
And wait for time to drive away
The latent source of my dismay.

Tomorrow — by the break of dawn —
The chances are I’ll be reborn.
Recalling how I feel right now
Will leave me with a furrowed brow
If I attempt to reason why.
For ponder it until I die,
I'll never know why I was low
And so, I guess, I'll let it go.

In 2011, Kate Chandler turned in her badge and scanner gun, leaving an eleven-year career in librarianship to become a Mother and Armchair Philosopher-Psychologist. She enjoys observing, pondering, analysing, writing and curating interesting web links and aesthetically pleasing pieces of art, and sometimes manages to bring these things together to create something that she deems worthy of sharing. UK born and bred, she moved to Vancouver, Canada in 2005, thence to the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, where she currently resides in the sleepy seaside town of Sechelt with her husband and four-year-old daughter. http://kchandler.wordpress.com/

Kate Chandler (@kateycanuck) | Twitter

Untitled

July 22, 2015

Lydia Mulvey

Seven years crumbling to dust.
A car crash in slow motion.
A never-ending fracture of love and devotion.
Safety-glass not included.

Seven years tumbling to the crust.
A churning black ocean.
An infinite storm of faith and good notions.
Life-ring not included.

Lydia Mulvey is a screenwriter whose short film, ZONE 2, directed by Anna Elizabeth James and starring Anne Ramsay, is scheduled to show at festivals all over the US. She's a BBC writersroom contest winner, a Page Awards finalist and is currently working on several script projects.

IMBD / Twitter

© Lydia Mulvey 2015

Ghost Train of Youngstown

June 20, 2015

by Joseph Robertshaw

Not long ago our earth was rich and black
Then the trains came on earth hewn, fire wrought track.
We burned hope in our fires and sold molten earth
For greenbacks and ale draughts; far more it was worth.

They dug in their spurs and rode us into the mills,
With hot blood and cold sweat the tall orders we filled.
Rail-cars stacked high with sheet & tube dreams
Rolled heavy away in dark waves of steam.

The spurs are now silent but tempered we still
Mourn empty orders that no one can fill.
The trains used to stop at each mill’s back lot
Now they roll on, already full, and no need to stop.

Our children now ask for guidance and vision
We’ve nothing left here to reach in and give them.
With our pain they were raised and handily fed
Now we’re old dried up husks and more use to them dead.

We made them a life of steel, wheels and coal,
Now away like our dreams on those rails they will roll,
To seek better fortunes and dream their own dreams,
Never seeing nor caring that they ride on our beams.

My name is Joseph Robertshaw. I like poetry and prose and try to write both. I was asked to leave my high school English class and my high school but all these years later, I have just written a fantasy book. I have dropped out of high school and have earned two master’s degrees. I have taught cooking, safety, customer service and now, for the past five years, First Year Composition. I am a husband and a father and, in my life, I have killed turkeys, cooked chickens, thrown crabs, siphoned salmon. I have been a stay at home navy spouse. I have sailed the Bering Sea and rolled through Europe on the rails. I currently live in Ohio and I expect to earn a PhD in Rhetoric and Writing in 2018.

A Keyhole In The Sky

June 7, 2015

Joseph W. Robertshaw

The light pokes through a keyhole in the sky
To show us what we think we know is really a lie.
Many say the end has finally come,
But I can’t help but ask where the light comes from.
And if I might return there with it someday,
Perhaps if I am good and don’t bother anybody that much.

Star fall and light rage for night has come to call.
Surely soon we must die but what if this isn’t death at all?
Not destruction but a concerned parent peering through the bedroom door, As we lay sick and dying, they pace the hallway floor,
And we are rocking gently in the embrace of mother earth,

Waiting for the fever to pass and those soothing promises to become truth.

Oft In The Shadows

June 7, 2015

Joseph W. Robertshaw

Often in the shadows you will find me, patiently waiting for my moment in the sun, Watching his inexorable
march across the sky.
Slowly drifting over
the treetops and
opening blooms,
Like tiny drops
of sunlight
along the way.
Now and again I may creep out and catch a warm ray
Only to dash away again
Taking it home to ward against the night
Like a blanket in a cool wet misty May morning
For now I may steal my moments of fun fearing to stay too long in the sun,
But soon the day will surely come, when in summer’s warm embrace,
I will stride with upturned face and drink of the golden light.

The Deep Wood Path

June 7, 2015

Joseph W. Robertshaw

Everyone at home is asleep at the close of day
The soft scent touches my mind and I am away
On winged memory I flit along the shrouded path
Careful to dip beneath the heavy green boughs
They shall be none the wiser.

Have you come also to walk in the quavering pines?
I’ll walk with you but slightly out of time,
Perhaps when you return in your memory
We’ll walk again along the deepening path
And we will be none the wiser.

Here have I been and here I long to return.
In the wood, I was grown from the earth
And there I shall again dissolve in the end
When the dappled, muted light fades away
I shall be none the wiser.

In The Silver Light

June 7, 2015

Joseph W. Robertshaw

In the silver light we walk alone together
And meet to talk in any weather

My body thinks that I should be in bed
Still I come to drink your thoughts instead

Late into the night your words transport
Until morning beams come to report

Eyes cannot close when magic words engage
I should leave you now but still I turn the page.

In the moonlight
of the darkest night
my vision seems most clear
In soulless forest deep
your faithful company I keep
and that’s what draws me near.

Curving Path

June 7, 2015

Stephanie M. Wytovich

Winter is a dust-covered palette,
a cumulus memory
in diluted ink;
it survives in blacks and grays,
in crows and fresh ash,
and I paint a forest of trees as barren as I am,
their branches like arthritic arms
holding me against the wind
but it hurts and
I cough on icicles,
see my breath on its canvas,
an impasto of sickness and age;
I use its solstice brush to smear
charcoal against the sky,
a chiaroscuro background of
feathers and soot
yet while blended and blurred,
a path evolves towards Spring
and I curve it out of darkness,
make it bone,
virginal in asylum-white,
but this blank madness is a snow bank,
a chest of clouds that hold the secret to rebirth
to second chances,
but it’s too bright for my sorrow
so I cover it, too, in shadows
of storm,
in a thunderous moor
uncontained by page
by season
or by art,
and now I can sleep,
sleep sound and sleep tight,
hibernate with snowflakes
that kiss my hair like serpents,
curl up next to winds that
scream my dreams
into nightmares.

Stephanie M. Wytovich is the Poetry Editor for Raw Dog Screaming Press, a book reviewer for Nameless Magazine, and a well-known coffee addict. She is a member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, an active member of the HWA, and a graduate of Seton Hill University's MFA Program for Writing Popular Fiction. Her Bram Stoker award-nominated poetry collections, Hysteria: A Collection of Madness, Mourning Jewelry, and An Exorcism of Angels can be found at www.rawdogscreaming.com, and her debut novel, The Eighth, will be out in 2015 from Dark Regions Press. Follow Wytovich at stephaniewytovich.blogspot.com and on twitter @JustAfterSunset.

The Mountain Stream

June 7, 2015

Joseph W. Robertshaw

In deeper pools and eddies whirls time can stand near still, To nourish and revive the wood
Before it babbles down the hill.
Opportunity breaks the surface and just as fast is gone Tumbling along in the frolic of the flow,
A rolling rock, a mossy rolling stone.
Time slips away, liquid, cool, insistent,
Beneath the verdant shroud of circumstance,
Unerring and unending, unhalting downward to the sea.
Chance may bend the course of time and wrest her from her bed Spilling out to feed new lands
Or revive some forgotten desert sands.
For now the rushing torrent sound as it runs across my face, Reminds me that the river soon in other forms,
Will return again to this place.
I am just a mountain so I must stand and wait.