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.