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Sarah Horne Dec 2024
A Deer Priestess is standing on the sea, and
I watch as she coaxes jellyfish from the ocean,
to sing songs of oscillating neutrinos that crackle
and fizz with insatiable longing
to knit universes together from this briny sea.

Helios wanders across the sky, his sun-disk
neatly tucked into his chariot, smoking a cigar.  
Text fades and re-forms across the sky
and the sky starts to peel,
and words fall into my body and my body is text.
I edge closer to the stage,
yet I’m afraid of the sea, of the deep.
I don’t know what it means.
      
A dolphin swims below, outlined by inky black,            
ready to leap. “Come,” says the Deer Priestess,
beckoning.  I hear a steady da-dum, da-dum,              
realise it’s my heartbeat. Death shuffles
past — I think he’s in the wrong play.                             
The Cheshire Cat appears and disappears,
leaving only his grin flecked with froth from waves 
that flick and lick and I can taste the salt from
the spray. I teeter on the edge and time dissolves
into a myriad tiny suns.

“Get on with it!” someone shouts from the audience
behind me. “What does it mean?!” I shout back, but the
words fall from my mouth in paper fragments, as
Kafka floats by, atop a beetle.
The Deer Priestess is closer now and I realise that she is me.

Upon waking, I watch as my reflection,
shapeshift, dances, into the sea.
poem based on this image by Sarah-Jane Crowson:  https://sarah-janecrowson.com/writing/poetry/rattle-ekphrastic-results/
Maryann I Nov 2024
The air hums with a broken prayer,
twisted in the folds of a dying hymn.
A voice calls from the depths—
not quite human,
not quite lost.


The ground beneath you pulses,
soft as the heart of a phantom,
thrumming with a rhythm
too wild,
too distant,
to comprehend.


Waves of distortion crash,
a shattered glass ocean,
its pieces cutting the silence
like forgotten screams.
It is chaos,
but it is home.


A flicker of something holy,
something heretical,
clings to the edges of the sound—
like a dream that slips
through the cracks of reason,
where belief fades
and doubt takes root.


You step into the void,
guided by shadows
and fractured prayers.
The world bends and breaks,
but still you move forward,
drawn by the melody
that only you can hear,
and the truth that lies
in the shattered notes.


There is no salvation here,
only the quiet descent
into something new—
where the sacred
and the profane
are one.
Inspired by the song "Heretic" by the artist Oli XL
Artur Oct 2024
I see a disturbed landscape,
With undulating mountains and hills.
I see shepherds tending
To their flock
And birds flying in discord.
The hallways are packed
With ancient bodies
Who have forgotten;
Minds filled with loss.
All around,
Flowing and moulding,
Is the ephemeral breath
Of a creature eager to please.
He’s waiting for you;
Take his hand
And walk down these corridors,
Opening all the doors.
It’s time to leave our bony clothes,
And enter the forest.
Artur Sep 2024
I want to wander
Out into the cool
Desert by night.
Camels feasting on
Sweet water from lagoons.
Apparitions clothes in sand dunes,
Set on blazing fire
By the white goddess.
Children at play
Under the skies of pure May.
Impossible castles constructed
By an infant’s feeble hand.
Rain water
Brought by the tyrannical sun
Washes castles away to sea,
Towards Apollo’s pristine basin.
I want to wander
Back out there,
Wander back out there
Where there is no veil,
No table-cloth
To hide the mess.
I want to meet the lost boy;
I want to meet my boy.
I want to gaze upon multitudes
And vistas of Dionysian proportion.
And swim with beings out of time.
Where I can throw away all my dimes.
A fire is burning inside the Indian’s tent.
A green plague has come from the sea;
Our god is a mortal,
Who can we beseech for help?
I miss my boy.
I see crows feasting
And ravens weeping.
I must go now.
James Mc Namee Sep 2024
We are all bewildered dancers
Lost in an incomprehensible ballet—
Woven tightly through a rich tapestry,
Drawn from contrasting colors,
Yet forming a boundless whole,
Waltzing hand in hand—
In love and hate, joy and suffering,
Dark and light, death and life.

The universe—a radiant church window,
Fracturing light into polychromatic unity,
Drifting shards of stained glass,
Piercing through the drama of duality,
Rippling into a sea of endless complexity,
Wedged between the boundaries
of stars and the space that forms them,
A perfection found in imperfection,
Beneath this sea of contrast lies truth:
How could we be anything at all
Without two sides to make us whole?

Before the technicolor skies formation,
We were the loneliest deity,
Infinity alone in a room made of itself,
Where everything was everywhere,
And time unfolded all at once.
So we crafted ourselves a dream—
From the core of our mirrored soul,
A place where I am you and you are me,
So we may live and perish in grace.

So we may play a game with ourselves,
Performing on this boundless stage,
An intricate puzzle piece,
Fitting together in a dance of chaos,
Meticulously designed to deceive ourselves,
So we may treasure life in the face of death.
Navigators of the in-between,
Wandering the maze of nothingness.

If infinity could dream,
Its deepest longing would be
To grasp something real—
To feel the grass beneath its feet,
As it runs across the hills of our earth,
Savoring the fleeting bliss of it all.

The present is so precious,
It hints at a reason we call it so—
A split second glimpse of meaning
In the eternal dance of existence.
James Mc Namee Sep 2024
Humans tread this lonely universe,
as an ever-dispersing body,
but our I’s never meet.

Behind the velvet curtains of our minds,
within the iris of our eyes,
rests an endless expanse of stars,
refracting off a crystalline hall of mirrors—
a boundless,
eternal reflection,
devoid of every word.

Whispering so softly in us,
behind all thought, all form,
revealing everything,
yet ultimately nothing—
nothing at all.
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