Old Growth

The wind may shake the leaves,
Rip them from the tree.

Some to blow away,
For anger never stays.

Others gently do they lay,
Upon the ground,
Around the base,

It's loyalty and sacrifice,
they know,
that allows the tree to grow.

-By Jamie Knight

Pen-itential (Poets’ Apology)

Here it unfolds…
A thousand centuries within one petal scrolled
Hope among the stars who’ve lost their zest
Dreams captive in my heart have hurtled from my chest
Moonfire sky ignites the stars into chrysanthemum sparklers
I’ve been waiting for something that I never knew I wanted —
And I dive
Into this waterfall of an ancient ocean’s visions in caramel eyes
There you are…
Strange and dark, stark and beautiful
I fell fast instead of rushing slow
I held Time —
Reached into eternity to steal what was obviously mine
Love’s been murdered constantly by all these poets
Pen their words as if they’re mystics and precious when they show it
Fill our minds with their nicotine mythologies
Glamorizing what they believe was never meant to be
Love’s gestation barely ascends before left in sooty ruins
No lovers’ cosmic coupling, ferocious, fetishized, feral swoons
No latticed lavender elixir running sweet through darkroom arteries
No equinox embalmed souls, eucalyptus twined, and thus —
Graven wounds morose no longer outlive time
Did you send me spirit blooms in the raven’s tongue?
Messenger with your eyes, whispering of love and madness…
I’ll plant them in our cemetery garden, beneath the moonstone circle topiaries
I’m so sorry that you didn’t know
I’m so sorry that you told yourself that no one
Would ever want to see your soul
Glimpses of layers, grey into blue
Outlines of shadows in sanguine-tinted hues
Come lay with me on the crest on the hill
Sky of rose-tinted marmalade, light mating with shade
No need to search for further clues
I’ll take your hand right on cue
Among puffy cumulus cloud animals —
I see you

-By Fall Fraust
I write dark, poetic surrealism for beautiful, brooding eyes.

Her Name is Rapture

Shining, glaring blindly in caverns of midnight reflections.
Piercing, impaled by a Blue Moon.
This autumn eve crashes into a cotton oblivion, steel blue, hazy tinctures & browning ochre blisters upon my cheeks. Dissemina, in narcotic dementia, causing fevers to break, dead fluids to gush, denying my lovelorned & last slippery grip for hateful rainbows. Where are my promised juices of delight? Flowing like waterfall Eden through my veins? & so the night melts her silence & loud, languid fermatas shriek through streets I don’t care, created by her sickening frown, furrowed, evil brows, gnarled mouth dripping venom & spittle. Narcissistic blubberings of lies & retribution. 10 doses of this cosmic, psychotic sponge, bleeding pure blue blood across our twilight, magenta, weeping hell. Caressing it for one frozen moment, sculpted into molten, dizzy clays, asphalt creamy decay, like nothing blue, caught in a paralyzed, empty continuum of bliss.
Her… love… loss… ferments…

-By Richard J. Balog

Main image: Invader Soup by GalaxyCuup