Monday, November 06, 2006
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Crimson
by Ryan M. Parr
Pennsylvania was 50 miles down the road, with nothing in between the lengthy excursion through a wooded interstate. I was a traveling salesman making another trip to shake the hands of clientele, a path of regret for skipping Graduate School. It was just another day, and another venture through life, to expect the unexpected; another look -- another stare across an executives table -- only to relive the excitement of expecting it to end.
The sky was beginning to darken, shrouded in an overcast of rain, pelting the ground as it proliferates through the oily surface of the roads. A jeep pulls out from my side, revving its engine as it escapes along with a screech against the pavement. The tarp was pulled back, with bungee cords suspending moving boxes and a nightstand. Wooden boards, with nails protruding from their sides, dangle off the edge with the suspended load. The wheels pummel the ground, vibrating a nail from its sockets as the jeep hits against a bump in the road. The nail spins in confusion, lifting its point into the air, as I pull my car inexplicably with a resounding pop.
I swat the steering wheel in anger and pull the car to the side of the road. Stepping out of the car, I check the trunk for a clutch and a spare tire, unknowing that the rain was starting to soften the soil. I attempt to pull up onto the pavement, only that the car wouldn't start up again.
I look up towards my right where a dark-foreboding house appears, standing before me out of familiar reality. With gables on each corner, and a stone chimney, several drapes conceal the mysterious contents of this house, seemingly of listless age. A life-like image propels itself onto the curtains of a window, defined by what must have been a lit candle in the back of the room for it became difficult to make out the figure with there being such a shortage of light. The grim shade of the figure gave it an eerie appearance against the sun-bleached curtains. The thin frail image reminded of the appearance of death -- depraved of the blood that gave it life -- and the thinning of the body. The hair seemed easily visible along a shrunken head outline, and the time froze as the study continued onward into the night.
For why was it so grim that night? For it was difficult to understand why it was raining and for why the car had suddenly stopped. Being as I had no other choice but to seek shelter, I figured the night might only be an illusion when confronted with such odd an incidence as this. I walk up several stairs, sounding a cacophonous creak, as I slide my hand along the wooden railings. A sharp pain penetrates my hand as though an ominous warning not to continue onward. The blood refrained from seeping through the skin, so I subsided from worry, and still I make way towards a door to the house, only a few steps away. I hit the doorknocker a single knock at a time, for every second that my heart pounded up until the door opened. A frail woman glared straight into my soul as though to intimidate my welcome to the old home. I look back at her un-intimidated to deflect the sturdy glare so I could bring up the courage to ask as kindly as possible, "May I please take refuge?"
She softened her eyes and smiled like she hadn't since she was born, appearing as if all of life's burdens had been uplifted from her. She opened the door much wider and stepped back to let me into the dusty abode. Life was set back as I entered the house, with furnishings as old as the 19th century and nothing the least from the 20th. It amazed me to think how could it be? The women didn't appear more then 60 years old and I would figure that she might have bought at least one type of furniture in her lifetime. It dawned on me that the house could have been willed to her, though why would she give all her life's possessions away in her other home that she would have spent her earlier years in? I glance back towards the door where she was still standing and I wanted to ask, but instead simply said, "Where are your pillows?"
As though all my signs of appreciation seemed to be overcome by the weary night, I couldn't help but feel sorry for not adding signs of appreciation. She then strides over to a trunk layered with thick dust that she opens, pulling out a pillow along with a blanket, and closes it down to watch a swirl of dust like a working automaton wander endlessly in the room. She moves back to me and hands me a pillow with what appeared to be red stains and moth holes all over it.
"Is this blood?" I ask.
Not replying, she walked over to a lamp with a flickering of a flame deceived as an actual light bulb. She places a metal, somewhat of a coffee measurer that I've seen before, and sets it over the flame to let the smoke fly up and die out. Just as I thought that it was pitch black in the room, an oil lamp hinged to the wall along the stairs had been remaining, and so the old women walks up to the creaking stairs and up to the oil lamp. She turns slightly towards me, waiting for me to get ready for bed as though she had all the time in the world to see her last remaining company seeming to end for an eternity. The oil lamp had went out just as I lay down on the bare floor leaving me starring towards the ceiling, watching the darkness above me tunnel inward, as I decipher meaning to the cryptic images throughout the darkness.
I awaken to an empty room with tanned walls and nothing but bare curtains on the windows. I had still been lying on the ground with the bloodied pillow, along with the moth eaten blanket, as I realized that the house seemed different. It appeared older and less structured at that time. I noticed a black shaded spot against the curtain. Pulling the curtain aside; I realize that the house was boarded up. With a gust of air coming through the shattered glass, the house appeared vacant with no one living in it.
What had occurred last night could not have been a dream, but rather a real experience, suspended in time from another world that dwelt in the un-living. I pause for a while staring back up towards the mansion from the outside, deciding whether to turn around and slowly walk back towards my car were it reluctantly started up, so that I could move on.
Pennsylvania was 50 miles down the road, with nothing in between the lengthy excursion through a wooded interstate. I was a traveling salesman making another trip to shake the hands of clientele, a path of regret for skipping Graduate School. It was just another day, and another venture through life, to expect the unexpected; another look -- another stare across an executives table -- only to relive the excitement of expecting it to end.
The sky was beginning to darken, shrouded in an overcast of rain, pelting the ground as it proliferates through the oily surface of the roads. A jeep pulls out from my side, revving its engine as it escapes along with a screech against the pavement. The tarp was pulled back, with bungee cords suspending moving boxes and a nightstand. Wooden boards, with nails protruding from their sides, dangle off the edge with the suspended load. The wheels pummel the ground, vibrating a nail from its sockets as the jeep hits against a bump in the road. The nail spins in confusion, lifting its point into the air, as I pull my car inexplicably with a resounding pop.
I swat the steering wheel in anger and pull the car to the side of the road. Stepping out of the car, I check the trunk for a clutch and a spare tire, unknowing that the rain was starting to soften the soil. I attempt to pull up onto the pavement, only that the car wouldn't start up again.
I look up towards my right where a dark-foreboding house appears, standing before me out of familiar reality. With gables on each corner, and a stone chimney, several drapes conceal the mysterious contents of this house, seemingly of listless age. A life-like image propels itself onto the curtains of a window, defined by what must have been a lit candle in the back of the room for it became difficult to make out the figure with there being such a shortage of light. The grim shade of the figure gave it an eerie appearance against the sun-bleached curtains. The thin frail image reminded of the appearance of death -- depraved of the blood that gave it life -- and the thinning of the body. The hair seemed easily visible along a shrunken head outline, and the time froze as the study continued onward into the night.
For why was it so grim that night? For it was difficult to understand why it was raining and for why the car had suddenly stopped. Being as I had no other choice but to seek shelter, I figured the night might only be an illusion when confronted with such odd an incidence as this. I walk up several stairs, sounding a cacophonous creak, as I slide my hand along the wooden railings. A sharp pain penetrates my hand as though an ominous warning not to continue onward. The blood refrained from seeping through the skin, so I subsided from worry, and still I make way towards a door to the house, only a few steps away. I hit the doorknocker a single knock at a time, for every second that my heart pounded up until the door opened. A frail woman glared straight into my soul as though to intimidate my welcome to the old home. I look back at her un-intimidated to deflect the sturdy glare so I could bring up the courage to ask as kindly as possible, "May I please take refuge?"
She softened her eyes and smiled like she hadn't since she was born, appearing as if all of life's burdens had been uplifted from her. She opened the door much wider and stepped back to let me into the dusty abode. Life was set back as I entered the house, with furnishings as old as the 19th century and nothing the least from the 20th. It amazed me to think how could it be? The women didn't appear more then 60 years old and I would figure that she might have bought at least one type of furniture in her lifetime. It dawned on me that the house could have been willed to her, though why would she give all her life's possessions away in her other home that she would have spent her earlier years in? I glance back towards the door where she was still standing and I wanted to ask, but instead simply said, "Where are your pillows?"
As though all my signs of appreciation seemed to be overcome by the weary night, I couldn't help but feel sorry for not adding signs of appreciation. She then strides over to a trunk layered with thick dust that she opens, pulling out a pillow along with a blanket, and closes it down to watch a swirl of dust like a working automaton wander endlessly in the room. She moves back to me and hands me a pillow with what appeared to be red stains and moth holes all over it.
"Is this blood?" I ask.
Not replying, she walked over to a lamp with a flickering of a flame deceived as an actual light bulb. She places a metal, somewhat of a coffee measurer that I've seen before, and sets it over the flame to let the smoke fly up and die out. Just as I thought that it was pitch black in the room, an oil lamp hinged to the wall along the stairs had been remaining, and so the old women walks up to the creaking stairs and up to the oil lamp. She turns slightly towards me, waiting for me to get ready for bed as though she had all the time in the world to see her last remaining company seeming to end for an eternity. The oil lamp had went out just as I lay down on the bare floor leaving me starring towards the ceiling, watching the darkness above me tunnel inward, as I decipher meaning to the cryptic images throughout the darkness.
I awaken to an empty room with tanned walls and nothing but bare curtains on the windows. I had still been lying on the ground with the bloodied pillow, along with the moth eaten blanket, as I realized that the house seemed different. It appeared older and less structured at that time. I noticed a black shaded spot against the curtain. Pulling the curtain aside; I realize that the house was boarded up. With a gust of air coming through the shattered glass, the house appeared vacant with no one living in it.
What had occurred last night could not have been a dream, but rather a real experience, suspended in time from another world that dwelt in the un-living. I pause for a while staring back up towards the mansion from the outside, deciding whether to turn around and slowly walk back towards my car were it reluctantly started up, so that I could move on.
Saturday, November 04, 2006
Friday, November 03, 2006
Human (for the lovers among)
by Nathan Hays
graphics by Michael Corrado
Arryn paced the floor, wringing her hands. She didn't have much time to act, but what she contemplated was always either lethal or led to insanity and the ethicists had long decided it despicable. The green that ate away at Hanson's frozen body was spreading so fast she could almost see it grow. How long before it reached his cortex was anyone's guess, but he was certain to be unrecoverable before the week's end. His clone would have been ready for the transjection, but it too was showing signs of space rot.
"Damn it, Hanson!", she pounded on the suspension chamber that would soon be his coffin. "All those lives of waiting and you have to blow the biocide protocols."
Her own clone was only just pubescent a few months ago, but it had excellent bio-stats and could take the transjection. The problem was, her own bio-stats showed pre-tumors forming too rapidly to be stemmed. She would need the clone long before another could be grown. Often the price of one's immortality is the death of another's, but she'd come too far with Hanson to give up now.
For over two hundred years since their first cyberlink Arryn and Hanson had forged a deep bond even though the parsecs between them had made it an anachronistic intimacy. Hanson had lain in suspension for nearly ten years as his transport crossed the void. They had wanted to run the transjections at the same time, side by side, but that was no longer possible. Two dying bodies, one clone.
------------------------------
The fog slowly lifted from Hanson's mind. He noticed something strange almost immediately. He remembered the numbing cold that he went to sleep with and knew he should feel violently hypothermic now, but instead he felt quite warm and cozy. Instinctually, he tried to take a deep breath, but found it awkward.
A voice came through, "Easy, my love. It's Arryn. You're going to be all right. I had to start the transjection while you were still hibernating."
Something must have gone wrong, he thought. Well, he was beginning to be conscious so it couldn't have been all that bad. He started the litany to orient himself to his clone, but again something was not right. He should be feeling a powerful erection as the clone responded to activation, but there was nothing. In fact, it felt more like he was strangely naked and yet potent in a way unfamiliar to him. A sudden realization poured over him as he put together the signs: the nakedness, the softness of his flesh, the inner potency, the pervading sense of love.
That's when he noticed he wasn't alone in there.
------------------------------
Arryn's mind was darting everywhere. "Hanson, I know how you feel. We share glands after all. It's just that, well, I like being female. I'm not sure I'll be able to inhabit a man's body. It seems so icky."
Hanson was slipping again, "My love, I can barely stay aware these days, you know that." He shook their head to stay awake. Arryn let him, though she could have easily overpowered him. "I feel so dependent on you and I'm fearful your love is turning maternal."
He sure had a way of hitting the nail on the head. "Yes, you're right of course," she thought. "I often confuse my instincts. I know that we must do this, I'm just putting up some resistance so I'll have no regrets. I do love you for who you are, not as a child."
She stared at the masculine figure in the clone chamber, her eyes tracing the powerful build and naked manhood they were about to inhabit. He was like a Greek statue in his alabaster skin. An old feeling stirred in Arryn that she'd almost forgotten.
"Hanson my love, when I rewired the transjection machine to merge our minds, I knew we were inextricably linked and we would never share a lover's carnal pleasures. But this next clone is exciting me."
He of course could feel the adrenaline. "Yes. Perhaps I understand a bit of what it means to be taken," but he had never experienced it. For all their years in their female body, Arryn had remained celibate out of respect for Hanson. This was the first time he got an inkling of what female submission really means.
As their female body got even more aroused, Hanson felt a new invigoration. Though the clone's body was behind a glass wall from him, he felt in control. "Arryn, I love you as no other. I cherish you and will not let you fade. I am your rock and you are mine."
"Yes, I know that now," she replied, her mind giving in to his. He stepped into the transjection machine, its probes and sensors lighting up as it began the scan. She wrapped her love around him and he beamed with joy. Their minds held each other in a way no other human had ever known. Love eternal, a race made whole.
graphics by Michael Corrado
Arryn paced the floor, wringing her hands. She didn't have much time to act, but what she contemplated was always either lethal or led to insanity and the ethicists had long decided it despicable. The green that ate away at Hanson's frozen body was spreading so fast she could almost see it grow. How long before it reached his cortex was anyone's guess, but he was certain to be unrecoverable before the week's end. His clone would have been ready for the transjection, but it too was showing signs of space rot.
"Damn it, Hanson!", she pounded on the suspension chamber that would soon be his coffin. "All those lives of waiting and you have to blow the biocide protocols."
Her own clone was only just pubescent a few months ago, but it had excellent bio-stats and could take the transjection. The problem was, her own bio-stats showed pre-tumors forming too rapidly to be stemmed. She would need the clone long before another could be grown. Often the price of one's immortality is the death of another's, but she'd come too far with Hanson to give up now.
For over two hundred years since their first cyberlink Arryn and Hanson had forged a deep bond even though the parsecs between them had made it an anachronistic intimacy. Hanson had lain in suspension for nearly ten years as his transport crossed the void. They had wanted to run the transjections at the same time, side by side, but that was no longer possible. Two dying bodies, one clone.
------------------------------
The fog slowly lifted from Hanson's mind. He noticed something strange almost immediately. He remembered the numbing cold that he went to sleep with and knew he should feel violently hypothermic now, but instead he felt quite warm and cozy. Instinctually, he tried to take a deep breath, but found it awkward.
A voice came through, "Easy, my love. It's Arryn. You're going to be all right. I had to start the transjection while you were still hibernating."
Something must have gone wrong, he thought. Well, he was beginning to be conscious so it couldn't have been all that bad. He started the litany to orient himself to his clone, but again something was not right. He should be feeling a powerful erection as the clone responded to activation, but there was nothing. In fact, it felt more like he was strangely naked and yet potent in a way unfamiliar to him. A sudden realization poured over him as he put together the signs: the nakedness, the softness of his flesh, the inner potency, the pervading sense of love.
That's when he noticed he wasn't alone in there.
------------------------------
Arryn's mind was darting everywhere. "Hanson, I know how you feel. We share glands after all. It's just that, well, I like being female. I'm not sure I'll be able to inhabit a man's body. It seems so icky."
Hanson was slipping again, "My love, I can barely stay aware these days, you know that." He shook their head to stay awake. Arryn let him, though she could have easily overpowered him. "I feel so dependent on you and I'm fearful your love is turning maternal."
He sure had a way of hitting the nail on the head. "Yes, you're right of course," she thought. "I often confuse my instincts. I know that we must do this, I'm just putting up some resistance so I'll have no regrets. I do love you for who you are, not as a child."
She stared at the masculine figure in the clone chamber, her eyes tracing the powerful build and naked manhood they were about to inhabit. He was like a Greek statue in his alabaster skin. An old feeling stirred in Arryn that she'd almost forgotten.
"Hanson my love, when I rewired the transjection machine to merge our minds, I knew we were inextricably linked and we would never share a lover's carnal pleasures. But this next clone is exciting me."
He of course could feel the adrenaline. "Yes. Perhaps I understand a bit of what it means to be taken," but he had never experienced it. For all their years in their female body, Arryn had remained celibate out of respect for Hanson. This was the first time he got an inkling of what female submission really means.
As their female body got even more aroused, Hanson felt a new invigoration. Though the clone's body was behind a glass wall from him, he felt in control. "Arryn, I love you as no other. I cherish you and will not let you fade. I am your rock and you are mine."
"Yes, I know that now," she replied, her mind giving in to his. He stepped into the transjection machine, its probes and sensors lighting up as it began the scan. She wrapped her love around him and he beamed with joy. Their minds held each other in a way no other human had ever known. Love eternal, a race made whole.
day’s mask
by Karyn Huntting Peters
night again.
the common and staid mask of day
slips off my face to rest beside me as
i stare into the nothingness of my tears.
it is only here, beneath the tiny, thin layer
of film that floats on the waters of my mind,
that the aching soul resides in silent anguish.
it holds its thespian face up, ever-stoic, hand
steady even as it is lanced by the piercing
bite of fine steel. encore! encore!
there is a chill in the air, and i am
cold as the curtain falls.
night again.
the common and staid mask of day
slips off my face to rest beside me as
i stare into the nothingness of my tears.
it is only here, beneath the tiny, thin layer
of film that floats on the waters of my mind,
that the aching soul resides in silent anguish.
it holds its thespian face up, ever-stoic, hand
steady even as it is lanced by the piercing
bite of fine steel. encore! encore!
there is a chill in the air, and i am
cold as the curtain falls.
castaneda
by Karyn Huntting Peters
castaneda spoke once though a surrogate
revelation. it was written. the napkin upon which
it was inscribed in blue ballpoint was carefully lain
to rest in the corner of my lost place,
just where I cannot recall.
but napkins don’t hold up well in the rain,
especially when curious would-be wisemen pluck
at them, trying to decipher their treasures in
haste, lest the rain’s tears cry all their blues
away before dawn’s first cameo.
castaneda spoke once though a surrogate
revelation. it was written. the napkin upon which
it was inscribed in blue ballpoint was carefully lain
to rest in the corner of my lost place,
just where I cannot recall.
but napkins don’t hold up well in the rain,
especially when curious would-be wisemen pluck
at them, trying to decipher their treasures in
haste, lest the rain’s tears cry all their blues
away before dawn’s first cameo.
lying stars
by Karyn Huntting Peters
from this vantage point,
in my thoughts alone i venture out,
walking silently along the parapet wall,
running my hand along its wet roughness
in the beginning twilight.
beyond, lights glow and flicker in reds and blues,
and music rises and climbs to meet me on the hillside,
a strained, haunting version of its harmonious city self.
nothing passes the barrier of this aging stone wall
that is not but a shell of itself, a copy of life,
a haunting of time gone by though still in view,
as a long-dead star shining hollow in the night.
as twilight ebbs and dies,
i venture now from my thoughts
and still in them rise, self joining my contemplations
on the thief of time, and on this barrier stay as stone
as lying stars appear in time in black skies.
lying as staid stars, i stay and steal time
over that which has stolen so much from me.
from this vantage point,
in my thoughts alone i venture out,
walking silently along the parapet wall,
running my hand along its wet roughness
in the beginning twilight.
beyond, lights glow and flicker in reds and blues,
and music rises and climbs to meet me on the hillside,
a strained, haunting version of its harmonious city self.
nothing passes the barrier of this aging stone wall
that is not but a shell of itself, a copy of life,
a haunting of time gone by though still in view,
as a long-dead star shining hollow in the night.
as twilight ebbs and dies,
i venture now from my thoughts
and still in them rise, self joining my contemplations
on the thief of time, and on this barrier stay as stone
as lying stars appear in time in black skies.
lying as staid stars, i stay and steal time
over that which has stolen so much from me.
baroque
by Karyn Huntting Peters
baroque men once
sat
composing in spring.
baroque trees now
stand
decomposing in fall.
stand
decomposing in fall.
thief clouds
by Karyn Huntting Peters
distant clouds
steal the mountain’s peak—
petals float to the ground
distant clouds
steal the mountain’s peak—
petals float to the ground
misanthropes
by Karyn Huntting Peters
oh, to gather these misanthropic
souls all, sticky with hearts of tar,
to tear them from us and cleave them
to one another, unseen hands fashioning them
into a concrete pedestal in the barren steppe!
oh, to lighten humanity’s load by even
one shade of blackness.
oh, to gather these misanthropic
souls all, sticky with hearts of tar,
to tear them from us and cleave them
to one another, unseen hands fashioning them
into a concrete pedestal in the barren steppe!
oh, to lighten humanity’s load by even
one shade of blackness.
scent
by Karyn Huntting Peters
open blades of grass
inhale the changeless seasons—
remember love’s scent
open blades of grass
inhale the changeless seasons—
remember love’s scent
circle of time
by Karyn Huntting Peters
we move forward in time, propelled, a
force from behind, rush of water, wind, flying free
until we slow, slow, and are borne back into the current
once again,
back until our arms tire and the tears rise
once again,
an endless loop of time, where
forward and backward,
yesterday and tomorrow
are all endless illusions of time circling
around and around and around again,
caught in the grooves of a broken record playing
over and over and over again
on the dusty phonograph of
deep, still waters
we move forward in time, propelled, a
force from behind, rush of water, wind, flying free
until we slow, slow, and are borne back into the current
once again,
back until our arms tire and the tears rise
once again,
an endless loop of time, where
forward and backward,
yesterday and tomorrow
are all endless illusions of time circling
around and around and around again,
caught in the grooves of a broken record playing
over and over and over again
on the dusty phonograph of
deep, still waters
Thursday, November 02, 2006
the willow
by Karyn Huntting Peters
the willow weeps today,
head bowed in black,
bereaved silhouette on the
horizon.
the dying sun
spills its crimson blood in
adieu.
the willow weeps today,
head bowed in black,
bereaved silhouette on the
horizon.
the dying sun
spills its crimson blood in
adieu.
Sonnet I: Know Thyself
poetry by Nathan Hays
graphics by Karyn Huntting Peters
In all the world are strewn the litter of burning mind,
Scraps of journals torn in desperate hope to find,
A glimpse of Hermes' tablet, the jigsaw's missing piece,
The Word was lost so long ago, no one rests in peace.
"I found it!" proclaims the prophet who waves a patchwork page,
"It lives!" declares the scientist leashed to monster's rage,
"Eureka!" cries the thinker, his logic a world entire,
"My God," assures the pious who forsakes his true desire.
Each in turn will falter if ever they pause to see,
No key they have, no passport, no chalice to set them free,
For once they cage the candle, the light will fade away,
Their charred remains will fill the wasteland that will stay.
Follow not the guides whose flocks are led astray,
Only from within you will be found the truest way.
graphics by Karyn Huntting Peters
In all the world are strewn the litter of burning mind,
Scraps of journals torn in desperate hope to find,
A glimpse of Hermes' tablet, the jigsaw's missing piece,
The Word was lost so long ago, no one rests in peace.
"I found it!" proclaims the prophet who waves a patchwork page,
"It lives!" declares the scientist leashed to monster's rage,
"Eureka!" cries the thinker, his logic a world entire,
"My God," assures the pious who forsakes his true desire.
Each in turn will falter if ever they pause to see,
No key they have, no passport, no chalice to set them free,
For once they cage the candle, the light will fade away,
Their charred remains will fill the wasteland that will stay.
Follow not the guides whose flocks are led astray,
Only from within you will be found the truest way.
Sonnet II: The Playwright
by Karyn Huntting Peters
Midnight's velvet curtain obscures the ancient stage
Avon's murky waters still lay in silent wait
Slowly actors gather for their long-awaited wage
Stratford's dusty pages their hollow yearnings sate
The moon's orb rises higher, commands the star-crossed sky
Lumens flooding Avon, its secrets hidden still
The curtain slowly lifting, the stage's hemlock dry
Players take their places, the playwright grasps his quill
The pulsing night's blood quickens, the scenes to pages flow
Breezes coyly shifting, plays ending far from sewn
What tragedy lay waiting, no earthly spirits know
Stage borne into reality, its martyrs still unknown
The audience is fading, far stars now growing bright
And we are now the playwright, the ink our mystic night
Midnight's velvet curtain obscures the ancient stage
Avon's murky waters still lay in silent wait
Slowly actors gather for their long-awaited wage
Stratford's dusty pages their hollow yearnings sate
The moon's orb rises higher, commands the star-crossed sky
Lumens flooding Avon, its secrets hidden still
The curtain slowly lifting, the stage's hemlock dry
Players take their places, the playwright grasps his quill
The pulsing night's blood quickens, the scenes to pages flow
Breezes coyly shifting, plays ending far from sewn
What tragedy lay waiting, no earthly spirits know
Stage borne into reality, its martyrs still unknown
The audience is fading, far stars now growing bright
And we are now the playwright, the ink our mystic night
Sonnet III: The Muse
by Karyn Huntting Peters
Return to me o muse in dreams redeem thy course
By sleep the dust of stars doth carry thy embrace.
In raging tears of angst doth thou with no remorse
Full baptize hand of mine and bathe my pen in grace.
Thine eyes ensconce long-darkened tomb in golden light,
Illumineth thy sweet advance my most demure.
Disquietude thou dissipate by veil of night,
Thy softly-whispered words my mortal fears abjure.
And offer thou apothecary’s potion nigh
That i should drink with certain hand and toast to thee.
To winged flight ascend thy poesy or die,
In death as life to lie beneath the judas tree.
From dusty headstones hearts are lifted from their strife,
From ashes rise unbound to soul’s immortal life.
Return to me o muse in dreams redeem thy course
By sleep the dust of stars doth carry thy embrace.
In raging tears of angst doth thou with no remorse
Full baptize hand of mine and bathe my pen in grace.
Thine eyes ensconce long-darkened tomb in golden light,
Illumineth thy sweet advance my most demure.
Disquietude thou dissipate by veil of night,
Thy softly-whispered words my mortal fears abjure.
And offer thou apothecary’s potion nigh
That i should drink with certain hand and toast to thee.
To winged flight ascend thy poesy or die,
In death as life to lie beneath the judas tree.
From dusty headstones hearts are lifted from their strife,
From ashes rise unbound to soul’s immortal life.
Aurora Borealis
by Nathan Hays and Karyn Huntting Peters
graphics by Karyn Huntting Peters
A magnetic shudder precedes your long-awaited arrival. You are all around me, ethereal aurora borealis, hues shimmering violet, green, blue, white. Entrance your nascent victim, aurora. Sway enticingly, cascading down like waterfalls from the right hand of Zeus. Lance Arthurian swords of ancient waters through the heart of the blood-red earth. Fall from the skies like fire into the yearning hands of Prometheus. Burn through the writhing bodies of the eternal stigmata-marked. Siphon from earth's molten core its darkest pain to quiet the wandering of your ghostly lights above. Hear the unspoken whispers of dervish souls escaping into the night air, and quill their rapturous embraces and anguished tears on eternal palimpsests with night sky's blackest ink.
- Karyn
Far from burning sands and steaming jungle is an arctic silence screaming in brilliant hues. While the wide world wipes dusty grime from its salty brow, Merlin's fire lances through the icy forms frozen in the endless twilight. Deep into the earth the unearthly power streams. The dynamo throbs in rhythm with the pulsing rain. Sol's secret wind replenishes the occult flame.
- Nate
Infused anew with the mystical fire, overflowing now with white hot embers, the earth dances slowly across its starlit ballroom, slain through by the unearthly dynamo, hypnotized by Merlin's sword of light. Prometheus slowly closes his now-sated hands and draws them close to his breast. It is done.
The dervishes whirl and whisper in the ether, somewhere between the molten core of earth and the violet flame of the aurora. There is electricity in the air and the occasional sound of scratching quills. The aurora borealis has never burned this brightly, this deeply.
- Karyn
How mundane seem the mechanics of graphite and fiber, ink and vellum, oil and canvas. Carbon infiltrates the matrix with inextricable randomness. Turbid solvents flow into tiny cracks only to evaporate to the winds leaving their flotsam residues. Ordered colors are smeared together with entropic fineness. As might a meteor smash perfect quartz into a billion fragments or a star radiate its fusions across the spectrum.
And yet, coursing through these dying movements is fire! Ripping through the dust is a searing wind that leaves mere whorls and traces, but will entrance the djinns to come. In vapid grit lay forms meaningless to the universe, yet fuel the divine flames that dance upon it.
Grasp the clays, for they are the veil and the portal that lay between us.
- Nate
Promethean promise unbroken, gift delivered, the fires of the kiln are stoked. Arctic ices begin to melt, mirroring aurora's ancient dance. The scalding breath of Olympian spectators rouses the sleeping spirits. Magmous caverns, awakened by the scent of warm gases, await their metamorphosis.
The hushed voices of the ether grow louder. The djinn are stirring in adagio, crossing over from their eternal dream of auroras and waterfalls and verdant glades.
The sky pulses with life. The earth seethes in the heat of the growing pyre. The mythical bird marks another half millennium gone as he circles the dancing flames. The clays will soon be cast.
Hands of the Moirae descend in a pas de deux, but the veil will not yet be lifted. Whispers from the zephyr: porta eterna.
- Karyn
While vast preponderate clouds of frenetic atoms coalesce in galactic proportions, the silent mirror begins to stir. Eerie colors like oil films on an unseen ether swirl and knot. Soon globules of Promethean fire condense and separate. Into the lifeless clay the light presses like singularities in dimensions beyond ken. Olympian hands seal each in geodes of hardening slime. Globs of oozing mud are molded around them.
As the heat of the great furnace penetrates into the argillaceous mass, threads of the divine flame grow from within in fractal venation. Capillary fineness continues to bifurcate until the dimensions entwine on Planck's scale and the melding is complete. Soul mirrors matter in a Yin Yang of intimacy.
Infinite mind veiled in portals of clay. The breach is open though few see it or pass.
- Nate
graphics by Karyn Huntting Peters
A magnetic shudder precedes your long-awaited arrival. You are all around me, ethereal aurora borealis, hues shimmering violet, green, blue, white. Entrance your nascent victim, aurora. Sway enticingly, cascading down like waterfalls from the right hand of Zeus. Lance Arthurian swords of ancient waters through the heart of the blood-red earth. Fall from the skies like fire into the yearning hands of Prometheus. Burn through the writhing bodies of the eternal stigmata-marked. Siphon from earth's molten core its darkest pain to quiet the wandering of your ghostly lights above. Hear the unspoken whispers of dervish souls escaping into the night air, and quill their rapturous embraces and anguished tears on eternal palimpsests with night sky's blackest ink.
- Karyn
Far from burning sands and steaming jungle is an arctic silence screaming in brilliant hues. While the wide world wipes dusty grime from its salty brow, Merlin's fire lances through the icy forms frozen in the endless twilight. Deep into the earth the unearthly power streams. The dynamo throbs in rhythm with the pulsing rain. Sol's secret wind replenishes the occult flame.
- Nate
Infused anew with the mystical fire, overflowing now with white hot embers, the earth dances slowly across its starlit ballroom, slain through by the unearthly dynamo, hypnotized by Merlin's sword of light. Prometheus slowly closes his now-sated hands and draws them close to his breast. It is done.
The dervishes whirl and whisper in the ether, somewhere between the molten core of earth and the violet flame of the aurora. There is electricity in the air and the occasional sound of scratching quills. The aurora borealis has never burned this brightly, this deeply.
- Karyn
How mundane seem the mechanics of graphite and fiber, ink and vellum, oil and canvas. Carbon infiltrates the matrix with inextricable randomness. Turbid solvents flow into tiny cracks only to evaporate to the winds leaving their flotsam residues. Ordered colors are smeared together with entropic fineness. As might a meteor smash perfect quartz into a billion fragments or a star radiate its fusions across the spectrum.
And yet, coursing through these dying movements is fire! Ripping through the dust is a searing wind that leaves mere whorls and traces, but will entrance the djinns to come. In vapid grit lay forms meaningless to the universe, yet fuel the divine flames that dance upon it.
Grasp the clays, for they are the veil and the portal that lay between us.
- Nate
Promethean promise unbroken, gift delivered, the fires of the kiln are stoked. Arctic ices begin to melt, mirroring aurora's ancient dance. The scalding breath of Olympian spectators rouses the sleeping spirits. Magmous caverns, awakened by the scent of warm gases, await their metamorphosis.
The hushed voices of the ether grow louder. The djinn are stirring in adagio, crossing over from their eternal dream of auroras and waterfalls and verdant glades.
The sky pulses with life. The earth seethes in the heat of the growing pyre. The mythical bird marks another half millennium gone as he circles the dancing flames. The clays will soon be cast.
Hands of the Moirae descend in a pas de deux, but the veil will not yet be lifted. Whispers from the zephyr: porta eterna.
- Karyn
While vast preponderate clouds of frenetic atoms coalesce in galactic proportions, the silent mirror begins to stir. Eerie colors like oil films on an unseen ether swirl and knot. Soon globules of Promethean fire condense and separate. Into the lifeless clay the light presses like singularities in dimensions beyond ken. Olympian hands seal each in geodes of hardening slime. Globs of oozing mud are molded around them.
As the heat of the great furnace penetrates into the argillaceous mass, threads of the divine flame grow from within in fractal venation. Capillary fineness continues to bifurcate until the dimensions entwine on Planck's scale and the melding is complete. Soul mirrors matter in a Yin Yang of intimacy.
Infinite mind veiled in portals of clay. The breach is open though few see it or pass.
- Nate
dinner companion
by Karyn Huntting Peters
engine sounds, he tarries
nothing save impatience
his lunch, a banana unwrapping
spotted skin, hard and sinewy
passing child hears a snort as he dives
into the ripeness, nostrils filling
with diesel as the truck throws up a black
dinner companion
engine sounds, he tarries
nothing save impatience
his lunch, a banana unwrapping
spotted skin, hard and sinewy
passing child hears a snort as he dives
into the ripeness, nostrils filling
with diesel as the truck throws up a black
dinner companion
the garden
by Karyn Huntting Peters
if i should return upon a morning’s pink dawn
to our secret garden to sit beneath the shady palm
and feel the wet moss slide between my toes
and if my love should not be there to sit beside me
if i should walk among the purple flowers
inhale their heady perfume, drink of their opening beauty,
and caress their soft petals in remembering
and if my love should not lay with me in fields of violet
if i should pluck the perfect ripened fruit
squeeze it longingly to my naked breast until it weeps
and feel its nectar as it drips slowly down
and if my love should not drink of me to quench his thirst
then i should carve the name of fate into our palm
and lie prostrate in its nightshade at day’s end
gaze in grave face upon the stars and their cruel gift of desire
and bid my soul eternal rest without my love’s sweet kiss
if i should return upon a morning’s pink dawn
to our secret garden to sit beneath the shady palm
and feel the wet moss slide between my toes
and if my love should not be there to sit beside me
if i should walk among the purple flowers
inhale their heady perfume, drink of their opening beauty,
and caress their soft petals in remembering
and if my love should not lay with me in fields of violet
if i should pluck the perfect ripened fruit
squeeze it longingly to my naked breast until it weeps
and feel its nectar as it drips slowly down
and if my love should not drink of me to quench his thirst
then i should carve the name of fate into our palm
and lie prostrate in its nightshade at day’s end
gaze in grave face upon the stars and their cruel gift of desire
and bid my soul eternal rest without my love’s sweet kiss
borne of fire
by Karyn Huntting Peters
Fire deep indigo doth burn
O'er past consumed this eve
Rise again o birds of death
Emblazoned flames to cleave
Vestiges of separate flight
Eternal memory leave
Risen now from fire as same
On pyres did gain reprieve
Never-ending two this one
Entwined this essence weave
Under light of full moon's glow
Star born such timeless eve
Fire deep indigo doth burn
O'er past consumed this eve
Rise again o birds of death
Emblazoned flames to cleave
Vestiges of separate flight
Eternal memory leave
Risen now from fire as same
On pyres did gain reprieve
Never-ending two this one
Entwined this essence weave
Under light of full moon's glow
Star born such timeless eve
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Postcard #1: From Land of Purple-Blue Skies and Tractor-Trailer Brains
by Karyn Huntting Peters
But what if, in this infinite intelligence, they realize that their imaginings are actually reality? The reality of minds that can propel themselves through the universe, visiting Venus, finding themselves in parallel universes where the sky is purple-blue and little black birds drive railroad cars off on the horizon? Where memories and reality meld, where there is no more talking, where the ones we would talk to are already there inside of us and part of the same eternal whole that we understand so well with these tractor-trailer brains of ours, where all that is needed is to think to each other? Where smiles are something ethereal that permeate the parallel atmosphere, where dreams and reality blend as the conscious and subconscious and the driver's seat and the tractor bed? Where tomorrow has already happened in our memories and we knew today way back when? Where we see more clearly with our eyes closed and our minds open than with our eyes open and our minds closed?
Why conclude that we have such bounds at all? Indeed.
And thus we conclude Postcard #1 From Land of Purple-Blue Skies and Tractor-Trailer Brains.
But what if, in this infinite intelligence, they realize that their imaginings are actually reality? The reality of minds that can propel themselves through the universe, visiting Venus, finding themselves in parallel universes where the sky is purple-blue and little black birds drive railroad cars off on the horizon? Where memories and reality meld, where there is no more talking, where the ones we would talk to are already there inside of us and part of the same eternal whole that we understand so well with these tractor-trailer brains of ours, where all that is needed is to think to each other? Where smiles are something ethereal that permeate the parallel atmosphere, where dreams and reality blend as the conscious and subconscious and the driver's seat and the tractor bed? Where tomorrow has already happened in our memories and we knew today way back when? Where we see more clearly with our eyes closed and our minds open than with our eyes open and our minds closed?
Why conclude that we have such bounds at all? Indeed.
And thus we conclude Postcard #1 From Land of Purple-Blue Skies and Tractor-Trailer Brains.
music
by Karyn Huntting Peters
Music. Silent sleeping in tombstones
of forgotten graveyards, quietly breathing in
voiceless statues as they stare without
eyes along worn boulevards trod once
by laughing youth and tearful love.
O thief of all mother tongues! Language
seeping through cracks in finest mortar
between all peoples to bind beating
hearts afar in timeless passion and
angst for words without home.
Music! Incessantly tapping at some
tiny fortress within, louder and stronger in
adagio as its tendrils reach with a practiced
whisper into tired souls as they seek
only night's air and dreamless slumber.
Music. Silent sleeping in tombstones
of forgotten graveyards, quietly breathing in
voiceless statues as they stare without
eyes along worn boulevards trod once
by laughing youth and tearful love.
O thief of all mother tongues! Language
seeping through cracks in finest mortar
between all peoples to bind beating
hearts afar in timeless passion and
angst for words without home.
Music! Incessantly tapping at some
tiny fortress within, louder and stronger in
adagio as its tendrils reach with a practiced
whisper into tired souls as they seek
only night's air and dreamless slumber.
antarctica bound
by Karyn Huntting Peters
like the wind you passed through me as
i stood high upon the bow
arms outstretched, yes, and yours fell through mine
upon the sea’s lulling waltz.
i threw my magic shoes of oz overboard
into the tangled surf. we darted among the
deckchairs, my salt-watered dress clung
to me in the dark and we laughed.
the glaciers shone under the smooth
skin of the moon that night.
the smell of antarctica filled our veins as
we fearless sailed past icebergs.
strains of music from below and a
wave threw you against me in the salty sea spray.
pulling you into me, feeling your
heat the length of my body through the wet silk
i whispered, again passing through, eyes
floating in a lonely sea with your own,
a moment, an hour, this night, eternity, no
matter how little, how much time
no matter what freezing depths sleep
below, what death lay near
at hand, what dawn may never
come to my heart again,
without your presence, your heat,
there would be no life within my
breast, no beating of blood in my
heart, no breaking day in the east…
and with that, i tasted your kiss and
danced with you in under the heavens and
cried at the pain of how you felt
inside of me in the moonlight.
as the dark waters thundered over
us where we lay, signaling the coming of
antarctica, i pulled you deeper into and through
me and our tears were one with the ocean
like the wind you passed through me as
i stood high upon the bow
arms outstretched, yes, and yours fell through mine
upon the sea’s lulling waltz.
i threw my magic shoes of oz overboard
into the tangled surf. we darted among the
deckchairs, my salt-watered dress clung
to me in the dark and we laughed.
the glaciers shone under the smooth
skin of the moon that night.
the smell of antarctica filled our veins as
we fearless sailed past icebergs.
strains of music from below and a
wave threw you against me in the salty sea spray.
pulling you into me, feeling your
heat the length of my body through the wet silk
i whispered, again passing through, eyes
floating in a lonely sea with your own,
a moment, an hour, this night, eternity, no
matter how little, how much time
no matter what freezing depths sleep
below, what death lay near
at hand, what dawn may never
come to my heart again,
without your presence, your heat,
there would be no life within my
breast, no beating of blood in my
heart, no breaking day in the east…
and with that, i tasted your kiss and
danced with you in under the heavens and
cried at the pain of how you felt
inside of me in the moonlight.
as the dark waters thundered over
us where we lay, signaling the coming of
antarctica, i pulled you deeper into and through
me and our tears were one with the ocean
Postcard #2: From Spirit Antarctica
by Karyn Huntting Peters
graphics by Michael Corrado
Dead of night in Spirit Antarctica, time rolled to stillness as the voices of Neanderthalensis faded into soundless echos of memory. Movie reels in the projection room began to hum and two surrogate suns appeared within a shimmering, bounded rectangle of flickering purple light, cast low on the horizon against the ancient snows of the polar caps of the mountains of pseudo-existence. The crunch of quiet feet breaking through crusted ice became louder as it neared, and I tossed some buttered popcorn your way knowing just who it was came to see the movie. Thanks, you said, laughing. Raisinettes? There was an empty seat.
Movies, even in Spirit Antarctica, end too soon for the price we pay for admission. Soon the suns were but tomorrow's memory and yesterday's foreknowledge, as they must always have been. I heard the squish of popcorn under your feet as we got up to leave, and remembered the sound of the Neanderthal's cry. Raisinette? Here, the last one is for you. No, bite off half and we'll share. Sated by raisin thoughts, we were ready for winter's sleep, but never for the uncertainty of what lay beyond the mask of death.
As you turned to go, you stopped. Crunch went the ice. I opened my eyes so that I could not peek, and held out my hand. From the blackness came one glimpse of a dog-eared photo postcard. A daisy! For me? Here, in Post-apocalyptic Ice Age III? Remember me, you said, frozen tears in your eyes and the smell of Raisinettes on your breath.
Reaching out, I grabbed the rough canvas of your Spirit Antarctica patrol coat. When, I asked? Remember you when we're asleep, for God's sake? Yes. Yes. Asleep, awake. Just always. And the wisps of hair around your face fluttered as you turned to fall into the snow and to the center of the earth.
Would the suns ever rise again? Would we ever feel the popcorn beneath our feet? It didn't matter. My best friend was gone. All that was left was a daisy from a postcard, freezing now as the projector bulbs cooled. The purple-blue of dawn's first whimper began to peek out above the drive-in screen and soon, the suns began to rise, coloring the sky pages with their tawny pink glow.
I reached a cold hand under my Spirit Antarctica patrol coat and gently nestled my postcard daisy next to my heart to warm it. Closing my eyes, I took one last look at the suns, turned, and fell into the hole you had left in the snow. The brilliant, bright blackness of the center of the earth engulfed me as I spun forever downward, listening for the crunch of popcorn and longing to taste the other half of the last Raisinette in Antarctica.
graphics by Michael Corrado
Dead of night in Spirit Antarctica, time rolled to stillness as the voices of Neanderthalensis faded into soundless echos of memory. Movie reels in the projection room began to hum and two surrogate suns appeared within a shimmering, bounded rectangle of flickering purple light, cast low on the horizon against the ancient snows of the polar caps of the mountains of pseudo-existence. The crunch of quiet feet breaking through crusted ice became louder as it neared, and I tossed some buttered popcorn your way knowing just who it was came to see the movie. Thanks, you said, laughing. Raisinettes? There was an empty seat.
Movies, even in Spirit Antarctica, end too soon for the price we pay for admission. Soon the suns were but tomorrow's memory and yesterday's foreknowledge, as they must always have been. I heard the squish of popcorn under your feet as we got up to leave, and remembered the sound of the Neanderthal's cry. Raisinette? Here, the last one is for you. No, bite off half and we'll share. Sated by raisin thoughts, we were ready for winter's sleep, but never for the uncertainty of what lay beyond the mask of death.
As you turned to go, you stopped. Crunch went the ice. I opened my eyes so that I could not peek, and held out my hand. From the blackness came one glimpse of a dog-eared photo postcard. A daisy! For me? Here, in Post-apocalyptic Ice Age III? Remember me, you said, frozen tears in your eyes and the smell of Raisinettes on your breath.
Reaching out, I grabbed the rough canvas of your Spirit Antarctica patrol coat. When, I asked? Remember you when we're asleep, for God's sake? Yes. Yes. Asleep, awake. Just always. And the wisps of hair around your face fluttered as you turned to fall into the snow and to the center of the earth.
Would the suns ever rise again? Would we ever feel the popcorn beneath our feet? It didn't matter. My best friend was gone. All that was left was a daisy from a postcard, freezing now as the projector bulbs cooled. The purple-blue of dawn's first whimper began to peek out above the drive-in screen and soon, the suns began to rise, coloring the sky pages with their tawny pink glow.
I reached a cold hand under my Spirit Antarctica patrol coat and gently nestled my postcard daisy next to my heart to warm it. Closing my eyes, I took one last look at the suns, turned, and fell into the hole you had left in the snow. The brilliant, bright blackness of the center of the earth engulfed me as I spun forever downward, listening for the crunch of popcorn and longing to taste the other half of the last Raisinette in Antarctica.
Postcard #3: From The Splitting Pane Window
by Karyn Huntting Peters
It took time for my eyes to adjust to the fact that the only light came through the splitting pane windows from the hazy twilight, showing every dancing particle of dust in its path as it fell to the floor at my feet. His harpsichord began to take shape as it sat quietly on the green shag carpet in the darkened corner beside the 1959 Kelvinator Electric Icebox.
I used to play concerts, he breathed, stroking his graying beard with one hand while the other held a chipped mug of Folger's. I nodded, taking a sip from the only unchipped mug. But that was so long ago. Still stroking, as if he were keeping time to some unknown metronome in his memory. I nodded again.
Raisinette? Thanks, I said, taking three from the painted purple candy dish he had gingerly placed between us on the couch. He pulled his hand from his beard, and the shock of it caused my metronome to stop. Silence, yet the dancing dust kept on as if the music had never ended.
It's getting dark out. I really must be going. So soon? I hardly ever have company, you know. Yes, I really must. But thank you for the coffee. Oh, and the Raisinettes. I was hungry.
Will you visit me again soon? One hand on the grey beard, still in anticipation. His eyes stepped into the dust dance as he rose to see me out. I saw the tiredness in the brown coffee saucers as they blinked at me.
Of course, of course. He no more believed me than he could play concert harpsichord. I slipped into his outstretched arms and held him. Trust me, I whispered in his ear. His head nuzzled my neck and I stroked his hair over and over. The metronome was such a jester.
As I walked out onto the freshly wet street below, I was haunted by the brown coffee saucers. What day was today? Oh, yes. Thursday. I looked down at my watch. Reaching my left hand into my coat pocket, I pulled out the crumpled receipt from the electric company.
Yes, Thursday. I turned and looked up at the darkened splitting pane window on the second floor. He was there, watching, hand still on his beard in the darkness.
Two silent waves. I spun around, still waving, and began to walk away, heels echoing off the pavement. Just then my shadow suddenly appeared before me, backlit by the warmth of incandescent light.
The paper fell from my fingers. Goodbye, I whispered.
It took time for my eyes to adjust to the fact that the only light came through the splitting pane windows from the hazy twilight, showing every dancing particle of dust in its path as it fell to the floor at my feet. His harpsichord began to take shape as it sat quietly on the green shag carpet in the darkened corner beside the 1959 Kelvinator Electric Icebox.
I used to play concerts, he breathed, stroking his graying beard with one hand while the other held a chipped mug of Folger's. I nodded, taking a sip from the only unchipped mug. But that was so long ago. Still stroking, as if he were keeping time to some unknown metronome in his memory. I nodded again.
Raisinette? Thanks, I said, taking three from the painted purple candy dish he had gingerly placed between us on the couch. He pulled his hand from his beard, and the shock of it caused my metronome to stop. Silence, yet the dancing dust kept on as if the music had never ended.
It's getting dark out. I really must be going. So soon? I hardly ever have company, you know. Yes, I really must. But thank you for the coffee. Oh, and the Raisinettes. I was hungry.
Will you visit me again soon? One hand on the grey beard, still in anticipation. His eyes stepped into the dust dance as he rose to see me out. I saw the tiredness in the brown coffee saucers as they blinked at me.
Of course, of course. He no more believed me than he could play concert harpsichord. I slipped into his outstretched arms and held him. Trust me, I whispered in his ear. His head nuzzled my neck and I stroked his hair over and over. The metronome was such a jester.
As I walked out onto the freshly wet street below, I was haunted by the brown coffee saucers. What day was today? Oh, yes. Thursday. I looked down at my watch. Reaching my left hand into my coat pocket, I pulled out the crumpled receipt from the electric company.
Yes, Thursday. I turned and looked up at the darkened splitting pane window on the second floor. He was there, watching, hand still on his beard in the darkness.
Two silent waves. I spun around, still waving, and began to walk away, heels echoing off the pavement. Just then my shadow suddenly appeared before me, backlit by the warmth of incandescent light.
The paper fell from my fingers. Goodbye, I whispered.
Postcard #4: From The Liquid Mirror
by Karyn Huntting Peters
(The Continuing Tale of Spirit Antarctica)
Falling to the center of the earth can be endless and dark. I reach down, pick a flattened kernel of Jiffy Pop from my left shoe. Italian leather. I inhale the memories of the gourmet pesto and the serviettes that kept the wine from staining the marble floors. So long ago. We saw our reflection in the window, smiled, and it was almost enough. Remember how we didn’t wear rough canvas then? How the feel of silk, of warm skin, quieted the screaming agony of Neanderthal’s cry in the forest?
Falling, falling. My mind jests at scars freshly feeling wounds. You’ll wake up soon, it chides. The ice age never came. You are sailing, the lighthouse off the foredeck. One sun only, and it is the lighthouse. I see it in the window, too, but how? The fire, its reflection the same? We touched our fingers to the reflection that night after dinner. The window wasn’t entirely solid. We reminisced about looking glasses and ships sailing through the cool clear.
Falling, falling. Slowing. I open my eyes and I am awake. Relief, nostalgia. It’s gone, all gone. My alarm clock must have jarred my dream. I have to get dressed for work. Italian leather shoes, I think for some reason. Slipping on the right one, then the left. How annoying! What’s this? She stuck in her thumb and pulled out a kernel of Jiffy Pop. Flash!
I hear you whisper: Close your eyes now and wake up. Where am I? Cannot see. Adjusting to the light of inside earth’s blackness. Is it you? Yes, you say, reaching out half of the window reflection. Your skin is warm, fingers long and gentle. Are we close now? Mmm hmm. No vowels. I shiver nearer, encase my coldness in the rough canvas I know so well.
It is here, that last vestige of Raisinettes. I look up. Into your eyes. Is this the way through the looking glass? Your breath tumbles over my face. Yes. Stay where you are, listen for an alarm clock, and you will forget this place forever. Taste the Raisinette and there is no turning back.
I remember the projection room. What was that purple rectangle, who were those suns? You once gave me a birthday card with a daisy on it. A single transparent daisy. I carried it with me always. There is nothing under my feet now. No snow. No popcorn. Neanderthal’s cry. The ancient pain. Lost. At once I understand it. No. No! I will not forsake what is real!
I clutch your canvas sleeves as they begin to fade to silk. Wait! Yes, yes, Raisinette! Kiss me now, full and gentle, let me taste the other half from Spirit Antarctica. Your mouth is warm, soft upon mine. Slide shows of eternity, Neanderthal, Antarctica. The white grows brighter, brighter still. I swim in crystal lagoons, deliquesce in your kiss. Patrol coats melting, I hold you close. I see your heartbeat. Gravity is drawing us closer to the inevitable. Light of the liquid mirror fades in as the projector bulb, warm again, grins onto the Cheshire screen.
Our restaurant window reflections reach out. We smile. Touching the liquid of the looking glass, ripples flow out, surround us. Can you breathe it in, live without the oxygen? Yes, I think so. It will be different on the other side. I laugh. I trust you! No fear, you ask? No. The drawbridge between us is lowered. Ripples closing in. We feel the pressure as we begin to melt into the mirror. No fear.
I’ll count, you whisper. Then we breathe in. Don’t fight it and it’ll be easier. No, no, I won’t. Three… time bending. Two… heartbeats drowning Neanderthal cries. One last kiss, the taste of Raisinettes... ONE.
Down the rabbit hole.
(The Continuing Tale of Spirit Antarctica)
Falling to the center of the earth can be endless and dark. I reach down, pick a flattened kernel of Jiffy Pop from my left shoe. Italian leather. I inhale the memories of the gourmet pesto and the serviettes that kept the wine from staining the marble floors. So long ago. We saw our reflection in the window, smiled, and it was almost enough. Remember how we didn’t wear rough canvas then? How the feel of silk, of warm skin, quieted the screaming agony of Neanderthal’s cry in the forest?
Falling, falling. My mind jests at scars freshly feeling wounds. You’ll wake up soon, it chides. The ice age never came. You are sailing, the lighthouse off the foredeck. One sun only, and it is the lighthouse. I see it in the window, too, but how? The fire, its reflection the same? We touched our fingers to the reflection that night after dinner. The window wasn’t entirely solid. We reminisced about looking glasses and ships sailing through the cool clear.
Falling, falling. Slowing. I open my eyes and I am awake. Relief, nostalgia. It’s gone, all gone. My alarm clock must have jarred my dream. I have to get dressed for work. Italian leather shoes, I think for some reason. Slipping on the right one, then the left. How annoying! What’s this? She stuck in her thumb and pulled out a kernel of Jiffy Pop. Flash!
I hear you whisper: Close your eyes now and wake up. Where am I? Cannot see. Adjusting to the light of inside earth’s blackness. Is it you? Yes, you say, reaching out half of the window reflection. Your skin is warm, fingers long and gentle. Are we close now? Mmm hmm. No vowels. I shiver nearer, encase my coldness in the rough canvas I know so well.
It is here, that last vestige of Raisinettes. I look up. Into your eyes. Is this the way through the looking glass? Your breath tumbles over my face. Yes. Stay where you are, listen for an alarm clock, and you will forget this place forever. Taste the Raisinette and there is no turning back.
I remember the projection room. What was that purple rectangle, who were those suns? You once gave me a birthday card with a daisy on it. A single transparent daisy. I carried it with me always. There is nothing under my feet now. No snow. No popcorn. Neanderthal’s cry. The ancient pain. Lost. At once I understand it. No. No! I will not forsake what is real!
I clutch your canvas sleeves as they begin to fade to silk. Wait! Yes, yes, Raisinette! Kiss me now, full and gentle, let me taste the other half from Spirit Antarctica. Your mouth is warm, soft upon mine. Slide shows of eternity, Neanderthal, Antarctica. The white grows brighter, brighter still. I swim in crystal lagoons, deliquesce in your kiss. Patrol coats melting, I hold you close. I see your heartbeat. Gravity is drawing us closer to the inevitable. Light of the liquid mirror fades in as the projector bulb, warm again, grins onto the Cheshire screen.
Our restaurant window reflections reach out. We smile. Touching the liquid of the looking glass, ripples flow out, surround us. Can you breathe it in, live without the oxygen? Yes, I think so. It will be different on the other side. I laugh. I trust you! No fear, you ask? No. The drawbridge between us is lowered. Ripples closing in. We feel the pressure as we begin to melt into the mirror. No fear.
I’ll count, you whisper. Then we breathe in. Don’t fight it and it’ll be easier. No, no, I won’t. Three… time bending. Two… heartbeats drowning Neanderthal cries. One last kiss, the taste of Raisinettes... ONE.
Down the rabbit hole.
Postcard #5: From The Shape-Shifting Dreamplate
by Karyn Huntting Peters
Down so, so far it shimmered and waved. The copper drain was never a circle at all. It would never be one. It would never be anything but a shape-shifting metal dreamplate swimming down in the turquoise.
What things to ponder. How could I know what shape the dreamplate really was? If I assumed a circle, did that make it so? Look up, look up! The bamboo trees groved together along the far end of the pool, all the way to the fence. The sky so blue. Cumulous clouds were white. Was there a heaven like people said there was? Was it above the clouds?
My hands clutched the rough concrete, held it tightly. Don't fall, they say. Don't fall in. You'll drown. Kicking your feet in the water is okay, though. If you stopped kicking for a few minutes, the water slowed to a wave tank. All the cumulous clouds were there, the blue, and maybe a reflection of a maybe heaven? It was all transparent. Less real than the shape-shifting dreamplate, and it wouldn't stay still. It was all moving. Look up. Look down. Close your eyes. Mmm. Yes, maybe that's it.
It's dizzying. I have some ideas now. I can see … wait! Falling, cold, turning, screaming. Open your eyes. Now. This is reality. See it, dammit! This is it! The water no longer moved. The dreamplate was a perfect circle, shiny copper. Everything placid until this moment-bamboo, sky, cumulous, concrete, house, fence-now shimmered and moved. Nothing was solid anymore. All of it, a grand illusion! A façade! Laugh if you can, fools! It's not solid!
But nothing came out of my open mouth. I knew now that tears were just like warm water, that they were only natural and lost in the heart of it all. In reality. The copper was smooth. I could feel it with my fingers. I cried. I asked why, but I knew not to whom I posed my question.
Answers came to questions not asked. I sat for the first time in some Antarctic movie theater to watch a film of strange progression. Pictures, and pictures of answers. But the plot was tragic, senseless. It was all wrong, I screamed in silence. All wrong!
But nobody was listening. There was pressure, so much pressure. So sad to have to go, now that I knew the secret of cotton ball clouds and their reflections. Say goodbye to your self, say it in silence. Nobody else can year you. Or maybe everyone can. Yes. I felt a bit of a smile.
The answers are so tragic and simple. Everyone. One. Yes, that's it. It just didn't matter. Those who understood the secrets of the tragic answers would hear me even if I never uttered the words. Goodbye. Goodbye. I'm not afraid anymore.
The voices were far away and growing louder. And then there was the pain. Choking, gasping, a stabbing pain in my chest. They were talking to me. Open your eyes, can you hear me, breathe, oh God please breathe….
Down so, so far it shimmered and waved. The copper drain was never a circle at all. It would never be one. It would never be anything but a shape-shifting metal dreamplate swimming down in the turquoise.
What things to ponder. How could I know what shape the dreamplate really was? If I assumed a circle, did that make it so? Look up, look up! The bamboo trees groved together along the far end of the pool, all the way to the fence. The sky so blue. Cumulous clouds were white. Was there a heaven like people said there was? Was it above the clouds?
My hands clutched the rough concrete, held it tightly. Don't fall, they say. Don't fall in. You'll drown. Kicking your feet in the water is okay, though. If you stopped kicking for a few minutes, the water slowed to a wave tank. All the cumulous clouds were there, the blue, and maybe a reflection of a maybe heaven? It was all transparent. Less real than the shape-shifting dreamplate, and it wouldn't stay still. It was all moving. Look up. Look down. Close your eyes. Mmm. Yes, maybe that's it.
It's dizzying. I have some ideas now. I can see … wait! Falling, cold, turning, screaming. Open your eyes. Now. This is reality. See it, dammit! This is it! The water no longer moved. The dreamplate was a perfect circle, shiny copper. Everything placid until this moment-bamboo, sky, cumulous, concrete, house, fence-now shimmered and moved. Nothing was solid anymore. All of it, a grand illusion! A façade! Laugh if you can, fools! It's not solid!
But nothing came out of my open mouth. I knew now that tears were just like warm water, that they were only natural and lost in the heart of it all. In reality. The copper was smooth. I could feel it with my fingers. I cried. I asked why, but I knew not to whom I posed my question.
Answers came to questions not asked. I sat for the first time in some Antarctic movie theater to watch a film of strange progression. Pictures, and pictures of answers. But the plot was tragic, senseless. It was all wrong, I screamed in silence. All wrong!
But nobody was listening. There was pressure, so much pressure. So sad to have to go, now that I knew the secret of cotton ball clouds and their reflections. Say goodbye to your self, say it in silence. Nobody else can year you. Or maybe everyone can. Yes. I felt a bit of a smile.
The answers are so tragic and simple. Everyone. One. Yes, that's it. It just didn't matter. Those who understood the secrets of the tragic answers would hear me even if I never uttered the words. Goodbye. Goodbye. I'm not afraid anymore.
The voices were far away and growing louder. And then there was the pain. Choking, gasping, a stabbing pain in my chest. They were talking to me. Open your eyes, can you hear me, breathe, oh God please breathe….
pegasus
by Karyn Huntting Peters
pegasus! o beloved horse of muses
who silent plead in cloak of night
to heart’s sharpest darts
of longing unfulfilled!
light outside my
darkened window this eve
that I may climb astride thee
to stealth in starry night
to that verdant glen where
purple irises wave in the moon
and my lover lies naked
in the yielding grass
pegasus! o beloved horse of muses
who silent plead in cloak of night
to heart’s sharpest darts
of longing unfulfilled!
light outside my
darkened window this eve
that I may climb astride thee
to stealth in starry night
to that verdant glen where
purple irises wave in the moon
and my lover lies naked
in the yielding grass
an empty space
by Karyn Huntting Peters
an empty space seemed
to appear just now
where yesterday
no such place existed.
it is shaped like you.
an empty space seemed
to appear just now
where yesterday
no such place existed.
it is shaped like you.
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