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 Jun 2016 DJR
Axiana
Loosen the noose,  I'm ready to live
Unlock these chains I once begged you for
Collapse the walls I've had you build
Release the animal, it's tired of hiding
I'm ready to run
Headlong into the shadows
Away from the other one
I'll devour all I've withheld from
My crumbling spirit has decayed
Replaced by something raw
A ripened, dripping rage
And blood I will draw

Ready to show this true nature of mine
The dominant monster
A shiver up every spine
A nightmare unfostered
Beneath my heel you'll find
The weakest imposters

A vision of blackest beauty
I am everlasting insanity
Every demand followed
Every heart hollowed
Ecstatically

I'll make you crawl
I'll pull you down
You'll heed my call
I'll watch you drown

Well beyond the depths
And through our cores
I'll go to hell
Unlock all doors
Gather an army
Of oaths unsworn
My will unleashed
A chaotic force
 Jun 2016 DJR
James Leggett
professional phone calls
seeping with the excess of formality
much like the strangers in your living room
who call themselves family
and the only room to breathe exists
in the interludes between conversations

in this limbo
you're sometimes caught
thinking about a girl who doesn't
love you
or the rugged edges of a face
resembling your father's

laps of repetition
dial, pause, voicemail
scripted dialogue left
from the same lips
which never found the right words

sometimes the steady ring
summons expectations of an answer
a voice without a body
to meet your work demands
or the simple silence
drawing you further into the void

marking progress
in tally sheets
tangible records of what you
have and have not done
measured by the 10-5 hourglass
before you're allowed to leave
 Jun 2016 DJR
Alex's Pipe Dreams
Wash your eyes
And say goodbye
It's just another day

Nothing lasts forever
Keep holding on
Turn the other way

Enjoy the moments
For moments pass
And time won't wait

Dry your face
You're the writer
Don't believe in fate

Close this chapter
Let things go
When they can't stay

Wash your eyes
And say goodbye
It'll be okay
 Jun 2016 DJR
Elisa Maria Argiro
On the bridge
between waking and sleeping
I met my father's eyes.

So beautiful and dark,
filled with quiet trouble,
and with tender invention.

Here in this nature park
green branches reach out
to one another, embracing
the air and the sky, touching,
sending chills down each other's
bark and trunk, meeting overhead.

You, my youngest brother, have
our father's eyes, and they are eyes
of pain and tenderness, of caring
every day for our beloved, ailing planet.

Above our heads, just now, down at the bottom
of the road to Ely Ford, sycamores carry thousands
of backlit leaves, each a green window into its own reality.

Who could have known that after so many months of silent solitude,
giving up completely on the illusory version of love,
a new beginning to life would begin as clearly and simply
as the moment when a butterfly, shoulders hunched in the final stages
of imprisonment within its sacred cocoon, knows unswervingly that
this is the day to bust loose, to slowly stretch wet, untried wings,
gingerly begin to flex her coloured, powdery, armature:
learning the way trust in truth and goodness
frees one completely.

*And sheets, and sheets of white light wash over me.
Sheets and sheets of white light wash over me.
©Elisa Maria Argirò
 Jun 2016 DJR
Denel Kessler
Frogs
 Jun 2016 DJR
Denel Kessler
I can’t help but mourn the frogs, flattened
like Wile E. Coyote after the inevitable boulder
plummets from a great height, leaving him
mashed on the pavement while the Roadrunner
speeds off -  vroom, vroom, beep, beep.

I try to steer around them, but they blanket
the road in biblical numbers during the rain
and it’s like some impossible video game
weaving through masses of randomly hopping life
a certain amount of death is unavoidable.

When I walk the road I can’t stop
counting one, two, five, ten, twenty
cartoon-flat bodies littering the pavement
where I extinguished their glittering
copper and golden-green existence.

Last night, on the panes of every lit window
frogs of all sizes and colors gathered
outside, they covered doors, watering cans
even lined up single file on the coiled garden hose
like they were climbing the ladder to frog heaven.

Through the glass, I admired their rhythmic
throats and soft, creamy, underbellies
one, two, five, ten, twenty
fragile creatures seeking warmth
in the hastening darkness.
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