Table of Contents
Bang! You're Alive!
by Eve West Bessier
You are here.
A red pin in the swirling spin of a galaxy.
Remnant of the Big Bang in the golden egg.
DNA strands wrapping around in profound perfection.
Every molecular rind in line seems
to define a master plan. The mind desires order
in order to feel safe, while the heart seeks stars.
Reality, a fickle fabric of cyclical perception,
as beguiling as time and matter. What matters
in conclusion is the way you approach
the subject matter of life: like a challenge, or a joke,
a riddle, or a mountain, a dream, or a land mine.
And how easily it all unwinds at the first signs of trauma,
or the crashing of dogma, the thrashing of new birth.
It's worth more if you savor the moment with an afterglow
of trans-spatial contentment. We are more than we know.
Why do we try so hard to make everything jell and fit,
when life chews at the bit to run free of convention?
Kick ass! Jump start the steed of inspiration. Hot wire
stolen moments in the back behind the seat of authority.
Attention! The tension is the juice. Make it nectar,
thick and sweet. Meet the day with unmatched socks
and shock a few habits to death.
Paradigms of Pestilence
by Phillip D. Collins
Virulent strains of thought,
No mind is left immune.
Quarantined consignments,
In this diseased commune.
By ignorance infected,
By wisdom immunized.
The wise remain united,
As fools are polarized.
Through mass indoctrination,
The disease swiftly spreads.
Divergent strands of thought,
Merge into single threads.
The disease has dominion,
Where free thoughts are crimes.
Ideologues become the hosts,
Of pestilential paradigms.
Why am I me
by Tina Marie Thomas
Have you ever wondered who you are,
or why you're the person you've come to be?
Did you ever wonder why you think like you do,
or why you do things a certain way?
Do you know why some things seem important,
and other things just do not?
Have you any clue why?
Have you ever thought about the way you sing,
or why you like a special song?
Did you ever wonder why some people are artistic,
and others can't even seem to draw?
Do you know why you like your favorite foods,
and why you dislike others?
Have you any clue why?
Have you ever wondered about your feelings deep inside,
or why you can be so emotional?
Did you ever think about why you save certain things,
or why your memories are so important?
Do you wonder why you do things so differently,
or why you can't do some things at all?
Have you any clue why?
Have you thought about any of these questions,
and do you know why you think them?
Do you search your mind endlessly for the answers,
Or do you already know what they are?
Have you any clue why?
Well, I know, and I'm sure you will agree,
it's why you are you, and why I am me!
All answers are there, just buried you see,
beneath the roots of your fine Family tree!
Remembering
by Prasenjit Maiti
It so happened that that evening was
like your full lips in bloom
I have written about your lips elsewhere
and yet cannot recall them anymore
or even the evening when those lips were so
there is now only your nothingness
that likes to hang around with me
and so we would walk cozily together
in easy camaraderie into an evening
that is so very mindless
of all those holidays spent with you
like prayers in rains and lovemaking
we can now only look back
your lips and I
in rage and rage
that are but grey eyeless men
twitching in envy
while the skies and the seasons
may well recall your pouting lips
that were so nearly once
or twice in bloom
The Panther
by Ward Kelley
The strongest, the fastest, the most clever of runners,
wondered why it is no one, no one of earth, has ever
outrun the panther. Nobody has ever won this race.
But why? Could not one train the body, and then
the mind, in exquisite strategies, to develop a way
to beat the panther? So the runner trained for several
years, and at last felt himself at the top of his powers.
The challenge was given; the race began. At first it was
all exhilaration, and the runner far out-distanced the black
beast, whose breath was far, far behind, and could not even
be heard. Yet by mid-day the runner came to doubt, feeling
the muscles in his legs begin to groan. Looking back he saw
the panther in its familiar lope, but nearer. Soon the runner
began to fear, for it was clear the panther would not tire. This,
the runner noted, was the worse part of the race, this fear which
lasted until dusk when abruptly the runner heard the panther's
breath there behind his ear, and could feel the panting cat's exhales
on his hair. It caused him to burst forward in a reckless spurt to run
away from the panther. But he now saw no one could. Really, the only
thing to be done was to simply accept his fate and allow the panther to
devour him. And this thought brought an odd peace, and the end of the race.
Cetacean Creed
by Richard Fein
Imagine our fantasies about them are true,
that they really had refined their songs
into a melody of words,
merged their herds into tribes,
invented politics, became aware of death,
and now yearn for a faith.
All their feelings are expressed lyrically
and through the flux of pressure waves.
Comrades swim in tight formation.
Soon a whale messiah, a supreme bard, summons the wayward,
singing that none should swim alone,
each should buoy the other in his slipstream.
In a world of motion,
this messiah's call travels the deepest currents across the oceans,
and all whaledom gathers and sways as he moves,
and is anointed by the gentle touch of his fluke.
The common prayer, a breach into the air.
They feel the winds which, by their creed,
sail upward to the inverted blue sea.
The clouds are worshiped as the sprays of ancestors.
Purgatory is the rocky shore,
the shoals pressed hard against their breasts
in a world where hardness is unknown
except at the end of their lives.
But their bard sees
beyond the dry terrain to the most distant shore
where the heavenly sea curves down to the land.
He sings of their loved ones who have washed ashore,
those ancestors who crawled on earth,
their sins scraped away by sand and stone
till they reach the horizon of the heavenly sea.
There they rise again, swimming upward,
breaching, spouting, filling the air with clouds,
while below those left behind
swim together with their bard.
In their world the living and the eternally living
swim in tandem across parallel seas.
Letter to the Editor: Cherie Staples (skyearth1@aol.com).