squirrel

by Karyn Huntting Peters



summer breeze
sways the laceleaf maple branch—
squirrel covers his nuts

Arcadia

by Ryan M. Parr

From two large bodies of water, a once magnificent land is forsaken by the plundering waves and hurricanes, forgotten by time, with life enduring onward by colonizing throughout the heavens.

Sunlight cast a solar flare across the horizon onto terraformed mountain paths, with white foam streaming down its side as it is expelled from the mountain in disarray of existence, secured only in appearance by the surrounding ocean. A structure amidst the sky is connected from tubes, sticking up from jutted mountain cliffs, and a complex rhythm of tethered ropes dangle in discord as it wavers in the wind.

The human race has long lived on this planet, for as long as history can tell. Through the traveling poets and songwriters, legends of a time of prosperity exist as myths, ransacked from their origination to seize to be believed on account of limited proof.

It is a life like no other, consisting of everything needed for survival, in a makeshift product of ingenuity. It is a castaway vessel in the skies termed “Arcadia” for its beauty, floating apart from the aerial subgroup of the “Zeal” continent. Everything is constructed from debris of fallen forest, surfaced to the top of the ocean as lasting remnants to a land beneath the sea.

Bulwarks of triangulated shapes form a midsection of planks to support land, drifted beneath a large silk woven balloon with gas piped up from a fiery hearth centered in the middle of this town, allowing its uniformity within the sky, and an empty ramp for surface-to-surface contact with other landcrafts, leaning off the edge regardless of gravity.

Life itself is codependent on the belief, that in life, we are to exist independently from one another, not so much that other lands are said to exist. At age fourteen, a child by the name of Randle Luckenheim has believed since he was little that other land still existed above the waters depths. With blond hair and blue eyes, Randle conveys a gentle soul fueled with curiosity of the outside world. It is through the inspiring grace of visitors to Arcadia that Randles’ hopes for adventure might live on in pursuit of such famous tales.

Randles’ father owns a flight stable dispatcher, housing a small vessel able to travel with two passengers and a few items, by running off an engine propelled by a hydro-methane combustion fluid, he is able to deliver news and trade goods to distant landcrafts.

It a bright day filled with light shining throughout the heavens, and a clear sky fulfills the promise of an excursion to another landcraft bearing native bamboo. It is on this day that a planned trip to the capital Valhalla would be made in order to exchange for silk supply so that Arcadia’s air balloon could be repaired.

Outside of Randle’s house, his father pulls the air vessel out of its shed and looks at his son squarely in the eyes, asking, “Randle, why must you insist on listening to those songwriters, you do know they’re only beggars wanting people to feel sorry for them?”

“Why didn’t you believe the man?” Randle said, standing up from a sitting position to walk up to the air vessel, as he takes his hand and rubs it over the wooden bearings.

“One day Randle, you will find that the only purpose in life is to live it, for if you spend too much time wandering about like those beggars, than all you will amount to is a beggar,” he says as Randle walks away facing his back towards him, as he continues on with, “You have a perfect opportunity to obtain the most important job you could be handed down. Your grandfather was a dispatcher, and with it, he was the most admired man Arcadia has ever seen.”

“I know. It would only seem that we’re giving up so much for survival when we could just as well have some hope for a better life than this.”

“I want to tell you something Randle. There is no better life than the life of knowing you’ve accomplished something. The life you seek has been created by people, to fool them into believing something is truly out there. Neither have they truly seen it, because their minds have gone away with them, deluded by their own disgracement.”

They both look up towards a sound of rustling wind as a dirigible propelled by mechanically spinning fan blades, crafted from wood, pulls through a thinly clouded sky. A male voice sounds out from view as a figure is displaced against the white backdrop of the balloon, throwing out a rope to Randles’ father, yelling, “Alech grab hold!” as Randle succeeds in fetching the rope in time to pass it over to his father.

“Let it down! Let it down!” Alech says, pulling the craft down as the driver lets some air out of its balloon.

Slowly, the craft lands safely on the green terrain of Arcadia, next to an orchard of fruit trees and ground plants.

“Alech, I have news.” The man says followed by exuberant breaths that elucidate the importance of what he has to speak of. “Zephyr has run out of its main supplies as a route from Sirocco to the east has terminated due to a collapsing gas chamber beneath the ocean. We require at least enough supplies to feed our people for up to several days until connections with other traders can be established.”

“Adam, I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry your people are in jeopardy, but we don’t have any reserves on hand, and it will be hard to supply enough for our own people as it is.” Alech pauses in mid-stance as he looks over the man’s saddened face, followed by a relief of his tongue to find the right words to say, “I am in my debt to you because you have benefited Arcadia’s growth greatly with the importance of your supplies. I will leave my carrier here to my son in the case that anything happens to me.” Alech lifts his hand to stop Randle from interrupting him, and continues on with, “I will come with you to find the food supplies Zephyr needs.”

“Alech, I am deeply grateful, and I can only promise you that you will be returned safely to your home.” Adam says, with a hopeful visage in his appearance.

“Randle,” Alech looks back, “Since you are familiar with traveling to Valhalla, I want you to make sure Arcadia is able to fix the hole in the balloon, but if anything happens to this vessel, I want you to know that people’s lives will be in jeopardy. Take care of your mother for me while I am gone.”

It was not long after Alech said goodbye to his wife, and several of the people he was closest to, that he fled into the sky towards the north of Arcadia. The direction he was heading towards appeared like a speck from the distance, and Randle was alone now as he watched his father float away.

It was Randle’s first mission without the help of any other individual. Alech knew that if he entrusted the device to anyone else, no one would know how to operate it, yet alone risk their lives with someone as young as Randle.

In mid-day, Randle mounted the device in front of a long ramp stretching outward in an extent of half a kilometer. The wind was blowing past him from the east in a direction he was headed. Alech was surrounded on both sides with winged mounts for an updraft, structured to alleviate lost balance and propelled it by an engine cooled through a wooden shaft for air secretion. The engine is mounted and structured in a paddle-like design, circling one another in motion, in the shape of a turbine to draw air from in front of the craft and push it out through a rear hole.

Randle remembers rumors surrounding how Arcadia obtained the craft’s motor; Stories that the motor was found long ago. in tact, made up of a mysterious material unlike that found anywhere known in existence. Some would say that it was constructed by a legendary civilization existing before the continent of Zeal was created. Alech had always disproved of such affinity, saying that it was brought from another landcraft, although he admits he doesn’t know where.

The wind is soaring past Randle with nothing but the water beneath him rippling in motion as the wheels rotate upon touching the surface of the water. The water appeared shallow, almost as though he could reach it easily. Randle always dreamt about touching dry ground with his bear feat. Almost tempted to dip the craft slowly into the water, he lifts up from his ascent to prevent any chances he might make to sink the vessel.

He had been flying the craft for a long time. The sun moved slightly over the sky and was beginning to reflect across the ocean. A large, almost foreboding landcraft appeared before Randle in such a way that he had only dreamed about from memory. It was different, like the relation one makes to catch a glimpse of something out of the ordinary. With a fresh experience that had so long ago been forgotten, it was a relaxing sensation to rediscover he could now land the craft just as he had practiced with his father.

The craft lands gently touching against the ramp and slows down using a parachute. A wooden post presses against the wheels of the craft to help slow it down, and the entire vessel catches onto a sling, stopping him like a bird caught onto a trebuchet with a force like it was hurled against a wall.

The aircraft was docked in a stable deck, surrounded by numerous other crafts. Randle pulls a wooden valve from the engine to secure it against theft, and pulls a satchel of bamboo out from a side compartment to be used for trading. The city was magnificent, and is covered by numerous ropes appearing as though to reach up from the divide of mortals and the breach of immortality. Several buildings could be seen, as with the promontory point of the capital, the sepulcher to the saint of Valhalla as the main focus. White plaster gleams off of the sides of the city structure, casting light across the rest of the lower buildings.

A merchant identifies Randle after his last visit five years ago. Having been close to his father, the man was able to offers him a trade for silk on the account of supply Randle needed.

It wasn’t a long time through the town that Randle began seeing numerous songsmiths and poets describing stories about myths and legends of the cities past. Long ago, it is stated that a man wandered from a mysterious land, a land submerged shortly after being witness to destruction. A myth, Randle thought in introspection, would be unexplainable without the proof of existence, “Why else would it be created in the first place?” he thought.

Much of the people walk from business to business, shop to shop, on a familiar routine throughout the day, many times giving off an aura of knowledge that they have known an answer to something all this time, unwilling to share it with the rest of the world. Perhaps they have seen, or they have chosen to believe, their origination from land above the sea, to travel there and never be seen from again.

“Perhaps they had vanished,” Randle overhears from a bard, “or they have merely found the heaven of immortal men.”

After seeing a city founded on self-discovery, it was obvious that it had a past, a future, and a sense of reality. It wouldn’t be long that Randle would return home once again, to forget all he had seen, and to look forward to another day.

leviathan

by Karyn Huntting Peters

I am reminded today of things leviathan,
of Perseus and Andromeda,
of Andromeda Unchained and Prometheus Unbound,
of Fire and water, of air and earth
of grains of sand through the illusory hourglass of time.

The Moirae set free from the chains
with trifling effort what had been bound,
just as surely as the leviathan seduction
slowly sweeps the sand and salty foam
in circles about your feet,
just as surely as the muse draws from you
that which you have yearned to release into the universe...

death’s fingers

by Karyn Huntting Peters

death creeps ubiquitous in the
afternoon sun, across the church bricks, in the
silent cracks and corners, fingers slowly
lacing the mortar joints, crawling round the corners.

august’s midday sun beats round the mulberry bush
ashes, ashes, we all fall down.

death’s fingers grasp the posies as they crumble
to dust and shadowy flesh follows and falls down,
down to the ground below leaving a
gritty film on the pigeons and
happy passers-by.

brushstrokes of time

by Karyn Huntting Peters



echoes still against caverns of memory
resonance of a voice yet unheard
filling skies aloft in their blackness
with shadows of fortnights now passed
and shadows of dawns nearing in silence
to orange-hued canyons and blue mountains
and filling shadows with brushstrokes of time
that steal their existence as things separate

soul of aphrodite

by Karyn Huntting Peters

soul of aphrodite, flowing as
soft, warm spring rain into me
as you grow nearer, into a tiny
stream to course through me,
finding its way to the depths and reaches.

you wash over yourself, o
goddess, swelling as the stars appear
aloft in the summer skies, gently
tumbling to delicate white-crested
peaks and falling over rocks and
into beds as you search in me
for a sea, becoming even now a
river enough to carry your growing
swells and cool wetness in the
still-heated summer’s night.

o sweetest of olympians! you have
washed the dry deserts from my earth
and have flooded my veins. the river of
aphrodite pulses through me,
and i am alive again

moments ago

by Karyn Huntting Peters

just moments ago
he walked away and yet I’ve
forgotten his face

before I wake

by Karyn Huntting Peters

So many years I wandered those divergent paths,
those yellow woods, roads less traveled.

I slept, ached, wondered where it would all
end, when the sun might filter through the
trees to warm my shivering body. And now,
exhausted from my journey, standing
empty-handed, older, wiser, having lost so very
much and never daring to hope or dream again,
I feel something familiar in the air.

Have I been here before? Did I dream this?
Is this fullness I feel within and around me
another dimension of a road I’ve traveled before
in my most secret thoughts?

I say to you, o fate that has been so like a sword
in my heart these long years, if this is a dream
let me sleep but longer. Let me feel again, let me
feel what I have lost for so long, let me feel the
light and the heat of the sun as it streams through
the trees of the yellow wood. Let me lie in warmth
and remember what it was like to pause from
wandering, satisfied, and sleep naked in the grass.

And let me die before I wake.

sepia spirits

by Karyn Huntting Peters

silent scenes from wild and
sad futures floated
briefly, like feathers, light sepia
spirits over the darkening currents.

another day stolen by the
river, carried in secret, folded arms
of cold to unknown places.

leaves

by Karyn Huntting Peters



you shake the branches
and watch the leaves fall
to the ground below

and you crush them
under your steps
as you walk away

one

by Karyn Huntting Peters

tranquil summer pond
reflect on window and mirror—
gaze into the one

glass floats

by Karyn Huntting Peters



glass floats in the sea foam
hues of blue and purple, green
long have traveled distant lands
and floated home again

seaweed on the shoreline
borne of unknown living womb
drying in the sunlight now
apart from ocean home

sands that made the beaches
once stood hard and strong as rock
worn away by water's strength
now mold to mankind's walk

salty ocean waters
cold and murky 'neath night's sky
keep their hidden tears within
without the eyes to cry

continent meets ocean
place of song and sacred art
timeless hiding place is here
and here I leave my heart

30 Minutes From a Day

by Bob Johnson

Sitting in my kitchen
looking out the window.
Having a smoke,
and listening to Van Morrison
as he's asking some girl
not to go to New Orleans.

Outside, across the street,
they're building new apartments.
Trucks and tractors makin' a mess
in the mud that's been
frozen all winter, till now,
while Van Morrison
asks some girl
if he's told her lately
that he loves her,
and that there's no-one
above her.

While across the street
a worker stops
and watches a girl
who's walking her dog.
He's dirty and tired and wet,
maybe a little bit cold,
but for a minute he forgets
and just watches the girl
who's walking her dog,

While Van Morrison's wondering,
where did we go?
Don't ask me,
I don't know...
But whatever happened
to that brown-eyed girl?
Sha-la-la-la. She
took out her dog to shit
in the mud next to the road
where no one
would step on it,
by accident.

And Van Morrison wonders,
how he never
felt the pain,
saying I would be happy
if I didn't read
between the lines,
and that I'd never grow old again.

Maybe I should listen,
but now I'm just watching
the world from my window,
as a man gets out of his car
across the street.
With his hands in his pockets,
he walks around the corner
and out of my sight.
In an out of my life,
forever perhaps,
in three and a half seconds or so.
It's amazing, I think,
and he doesn't know
that someone was watching,
and has stolen forever
those three and a half seconds
out of his life.

But it's ever-present everywhere,
at least that's what
Van Morrison says
about that warm love.
I guess he's right,
but how would I know?
In one ear
and out the other.
I'm not really listening,
I'm just watching the world
outside of my window,
with my eyes closed
in the dark.

While Van Morrison is telling me
he's in heaven,
the worker just stands
there, getting wet,
with his back against the fence,
a cigarette in his mouth,
and wearing a hat that looks stupid
to me.

Behind and above him,
in another kitchen window,
someone else sits and looks
out at the world
from different angle than mine,
through different eyes,
with different thoughts.
Does he see more than I?
Or less? (Yes, Bernie,
he does).

And does it even matter,
to the mother outside,
walking
with her two daughters,
dressed in pink snowsuits,
and stomping their boots
in the mud?
One behind the other,
like dominoes.

And they don't even know
that 30 minutes before,
a worker stood watching
a girl who was walking
her dog,
which carefully chose
that very spot
to leave its mark
in the world,
outside my kitchen window.

Too many people
playing the game,
with dreams in their heads,
and dirt on their shoes,
who can't even tell
the shit from the mud,
and they don't really care,
'cause it looks all the same.

Do they ever wonder
that somewhere
maybe someone is watching
and stealing small moments
of their private lives
from a kitchen window,
while Van Morrison promises
it's gonna be a fantabulous night
for a moondance...

thief clouds

by Karyn Huntting Peters



distant clouds
steal the mountain’s peak—
petals float to the ground

origami

by Karyn Huntting Peters

Do not concern yourself with time—
it is only an origami figure in our hands.
Fold the wings of the bird inward—
yesterday and tomorrow are one.

We are at once the origami unfolded
and the origami nonexistent.
Let go of thin paper as the warm winds stir.
Gravity does not know us.

the pain

by Karyn Huntting Peters

tumbling down from above those depths of your pain on a
steep and quick trajectory is a pain all my own yet
somehow borne of the same river as yours.
listen! can you not hear the storm approaching,
feel its ions as it nears your own running, can you not
sense the pending crossing of our paths?

if only to luxuriate and lay in the heart of you, to soothe
the ache of your own open wounds as mine fierce burn
i would linger to touch you, our pain entwined at rest.
yet i fear i cannot stay here, for your own pain shall
cut no deeper and though i yearn to stay with you
through the darkness my own pain is carrying
me down, down to further places

garbage out

by Karyn Huntting Peters

just how i think i guess
you know
the kind of garbage that
flows out of a
caffeine-deprived
depraved
brain in the sunny
afternoon time

but i can't sing
these days i'm
sad to say
cause i burnt my sheet music
and woke up one day
not knowing
what an aria is
anymore

kind of a waste
but life's like that
and so is
garbage

sad eyes

by Karyn Huntting Peters

rest area

by Karyn Huntting Peters



Rest area bathroom.
Lemon Pledge topnotes with Folgers undertones.
Behind the broken lock,
visions of her mother’s coffee table.
But the face is too far gone to see, the voice to hear.
The freeway is waiting.

no more words

by Karyn Huntting Peters

my words just left me.
they went somewhere.
maybe they are hiding.
i can’t find them.
i am too tired to look.
there are more important things right now.
my words don’t matter.
what matters is what my words can’t say.
you, you who took my words away...
you know what that is.
the words were just extra anyway.
like daisies and kisses.
we never had to have those either.
but i thought they meant something.
they’re gone now.
gone with the words.
shall i be scarlett?
do you give a damn?
you make me so mad i could scream.
sometimes i wish i’d never laid eyes on you.
but i will be strong.
and god as my witness,
i’ll always remember...

the words.

the air around me

by Karyn Huntting Peters

his soul must live in the air
around me. I must have breathed it in a
thousand times and not noticed, for his
presence does not suffocate me, but feels
as light as my own.

on earth

by Karyn Huntting Peters




Why on Earth
do we feign constraint
of worldly bounds
and not accept truth
as it reaches through our souls?
Why on Earth?
The questions is the key
to the answer.

illuminate gift of fire

by Karyn Huntting Peters

Indescribable longing
Lightness in once-darkened night
Omnipresent essence ours
Vast worlds lay open
Exchanges effusively flow
Yellow gift of fire becomes illuminate
Open flames consume
Untouched reaches now alight
Together new shores approach
Omnidirectional journeyers
One soon will be

whispered good night

by Karyn Huntting Peters

quiet whispers
of words good night spoken
carried swift across miles of indigo night skies

breezes pass
to carry a voice on a memory
stars suspended let me forget not thine eyes

k

numbness

by Karyn Huntting Peters

perhaps when the numbness leaves
i might feel more of the pain.
my reason, when i can summon it,
tells me the numbness is good.
the edge of pain’s sword is so sharp.
the finest blades enter in silence.
then it is too late.
it is done.
a twist, a bend, a final thrust.
it cuts to the core.