"eye of the beholder"

Inside the iris, a soft glitch—
not failure, a doorbell. Dust
rings the bell of the pupil: enter,
bring whatever light you carry.
Every eye is a darkroom,
every blink a shutter fall.

You call my freckle a dead pixel;
I map it as a star that never learned
to quiet itself. Same speck, two skies.
Your lens likes the hard-edged truth,
mine drags its finger through the wet paint.
Neither of us is wrong. That’s the mercy.

We look at the chipped mug. You see fracture,
a hairline future of split mornings.
I see a riverbed, mineral and patient,
a place to wash the tongue of the day.
Some images refuse to choose between
wound and water. That’s where I drink.

When the frame tilts, colours misbehave:
violet stepping out of its lane, green
ghosting the edge of a leaf like rumour.
Chromatic aberration, the textbook says.
I call it the soul trying out new shoes,
refusing to walk heel-to-toe for anyone.

In your gaze, the city is all scaffolds,
angles knitting themselves into verdicts.
In mine, windows fog and write back.
Compression noise makes lace out of smoke,
JPEG artefacts blessing the brickwork
with reasons to be looked at twice.

Trust the blur, the image said,
and I do: not as surrender,
but as consent to the many versions.
Your blur is a fog I can swim. Mine is
a veil with fingerprints on it,
names smudged into revelation.

The child squints, invents a coastline
in the static of a late-night TV.
The elder polishes the cataract’s cathedral,
letting light arrive as it decides.
We inherit a thousand ways to see;
we choose which ghosts to feed.

Beauty is not a verdict but a verb,
rendering itself at different speeds.
In one eye, the face is chorus.
In another, it is a single bell.
We meet in the middle distance—
and call that distance human.

So, here: stand with me at the mirror
where mercy pixelates into ghost.
Let our grayscale longing lift its chin,
let nostalgia host our clumsy data,
and in the soft glitch near the iris,
find the world we’ve each been making.



.

On the ridge where borders kiss,
a lion learned the wolf’s quick heart,
a wolf learned the lion’s long breath.

They tied a city to their quarrel,
stitched an altar through a throne,
and walked the same ascent until
the feud forgot its name.

Brother, said the friend,
and the stones remembered.

Beauty isn’t verdict.
            It moves—
     slow, sudden.

One eye sees chorus.
      One hears a bell.

We met in the middle.
      Called it human.

          No greetings.
      No apologies.

Just the sentence,
already burning.

Silence held the shape.
        We stepped in.





.

cold in my chest where charcuterie burned
pages of lifelines now crackle and moan
prayers for a future never returned
and silence within, the loudest I’ve known

ghosted in comment box  
    where goodbyes decay, unread  
                I draft silence now—  
  syntax can't cradle absence  
nor data warm the soul

"A Clash of Crowns"


David bled into battle with teeth on edge,
a lion howling hymns from broken stone.
Wine-slick from victory, still on the ledge—
he danced half-naked, fever in his bone.

He loved without measure, ruled with a flare,
his wrath was quick, his mercy slow to end.
The harp cut deep in temple air,
his God a storm, his sin a friend.

Solomon, silver-veiled in scented halls,
spoke slow as rivers carve a path through rock.
He listened. Weighed. Where passion falls,
he built with mind, not blood nor shock.

No shout escaped his ivory mouth,
his kingdom stitched by threads of calm.
While David stormed from north to south,
Solomon ruled with wisdom's balm.

David, wild with want, tore love apart—
Uriah’s blood still cries beneath the gate.
His psalms bore thunder from a bruisèd heart,
a soul at war with prophetic fate.

Solomon dreamed in columns, golden rimmed,
a poet too, though less of flame than light.
His wisdom bled the edges—soft, untrimmed—
he knew when not to fight.

David died with dust upon his brow,
a king who burned too bright to last.
His son looked on and wondered how
a crown sat fast could be so vast.













.

"The Impossible Turn"



To hold what harms, to face without flinching,
                                      to shape warmth from wire.
To drop the name, to meet the eyes, to let edges soften.
To burn the mould, to kneel in ash, to rise listening.
Not conquest. Not perfection. Only forward motion.





.
© Now, Frederick Kesner