I will smelting the scentest sweet
Smelt it over an 'I forgot' times
Smells the morningest freshness
Will smell petrified joy always.

I will stareding at the simplest complexity
My eyes saw the warmest merry
Seeing night sky spill over sight
Will stare at plainest intricacy.

I felting a sugar glaze
Felt it coat my moonest blue
Feeling his sugary hands
Had warmth so will feel it melt..

Will felting foreverness sticky.

Blank

Father was a quarryman, hands at home
On a welded wheel, fingers stiff waiting on sun
To clear the lip of the pit, an artist is his own right

Content to read the grain through an emery palm
Leave the rest to rain and wind.  Mother on the other
Hand was a chiseler with a syncopated mallet

No stranger to fluter and veiner, fine dust felting
Her coffee, laboring late, ankle deep in drifting flake
Humming as she whittled to the quick.  

One morning, seeing my chance, right hand freed
In the wee, wee hours, I hacked out feet and a face
Only a mother could love, raking footprints clean as I left.

I have seen the marble arch
and was not afraid.  The
comeliness of it's curved
surface paused me. Your
song whispered of birds

felting by, of fallen kings and
reasons.

I have time on my hands to
listen. Hallelujah.  For my
steadfastness in love has left
me

bereft.

I swore to all the kings in the
Bible. I offered my skinned
knees, for solace that I was heard.

Hallelujah

There are cracks in my head,
my ankles are shackled.  No
music but a laugh echoed
side to side.  

I will go down to the river to
find God.  Your repertoire
is complete.

Why a monk Leonard? The
music of the ages was written
without your melody and
I sank beneath the river
like a stone.

But you're not there.  Your
music sustains me.  I walk
out, wet and cold.  

Hallelujah.

I am redeemed from the
nightmare.  I step on your
music as a soft petal.

I am for a moment, relished
and shriven.  

Hallelujah


Caroline Shank

love hurts

Eternal chaos of day, strangled out by the night
Heads on their beds, as the owl just takes flight
The street’s heart beat, hums tranquilly just right
Tomorrow hates today,  forever jealous first light

I might burn bright
but without me we’d all be surely dead
So when you lose sight
Remember everything that I’ve ever said

Things weren’t always this way
I used to care, I had an immaculate companion
Until the galaxy made us stray
My heart’s bare, desolate as the deepest canyon

You can Stare at me but at your own peril
You could never see, and were always feral
A disaster pair like we, two fish in a barrel
What could never be, shooting blanks, sterile

You see me as yellow, but it’s only an illusion
Trying to stay mellow, on this new clear fusion
A rare cosmic loner, but you’ll see someday soon
There is no donor, not even your precious moon

Solar flare upset your ozone, ice caps melting
Polar bear regret, all alone, thinking of moving
Poker dare, bet all in, the white dwarf felting
Choker air, let the sin, begin to morph approving

As a new spawn rises, checking night’s defiance
A collective yawn surmises, on our true reliance
A plea for an extension, I pray we stay compliant
Humanities apprehension, dawn of the red giant