Prose

Thoughts from The Grand Canyon – Reilly Wieland

The Grand Canyon seems to become more and more transcendentally ‘grand’, and the word appears to be more and more precise. This road trip seems to have become fantastical, like everything we have seen thus far cannot be explained in words. I am waiting for the greenscreen to fall and the stage producer is about to pop up and cut the scene.

In my life personally, I’ve tried to focus on “pleasure”. That word has a singularly sexual meaning but that’s not it. This trip has seemed to show me a lot of extraordinary things and people (or at least different sides of family) that I had not seen before that remind me that every moment of my peculiar and transient life is something so spectacular and meant to be celebrated.

I’ve seen a lot of beautiful things and I know it’s cheesy, but something about standing in front of the kind of place that makes me wonder how I have the audacity to feel anything but hopeful when a place like this is here is really amazing.

On that, I saw my first real dome sky, the kind that writers can pen novels about and you see as desktop backgrounds. The Earth was so flat that I could see the exact horizon arise and the sky rise like a bird’s nest, encasing me in. Skies like that will give you a strangely acute sense of reference in what the world can be. It seemed like the smog parted and everything came to me, like the little puzzle that I couldn’t find the last piece to anytime before.

This cross country adventure has seemed to teach me relevance, or at least made me comprehend the importance of giving my attention to the things that truly matter. In preparation for this trip, I focused too intently on outcomes: upcoming injuries, gas station food, sleepless nights.

The things that I thought would be big events at the beginning of the trip are, in fact, non-events of everyday life, all which I am not in control of. These non-events have made up this trip and my life. The irrelevancy of these miniscule annoyances seems to be overwhelming as I think about it.

What is relevant are the things that have come along with the injuries, the seemingly already perfectly preserved memories of the trip: the exact feeling you get staring at Zion, or at the Grand Canyon, or a dome sunset.

But in that, it seems short sighted to mark these non-events as unimportant. The non-events are also the events that act as catalysts for me to see the major happenings around me.
And those happenings in these moments are my life, and I want to take pleasure in them all.

Poetry

there is nothing quite like the sound of I love you – Brooke Safferman

There is nothing quite like the sound of “I love you”;

So much promise in three little words

Yet not once did you even endeavor to prove them.

They are placeholders, conversation-starters ways to pass the awkward silences.

Words like band-aids, like a cherry lollipop after getting a shot;

The sound of your sweet little vows, lies or otherwise,

Somehow undo the damage that has already been done.

So I take your hand and I smile

Because there is so much security

In never having to believe a thing.

With you, I am safe in my euphoric world of denial

And with you, I have found my home in never having to expect sincerity.

There is nothing quite like the sound of “I love you”.

Uncategorized

People Aren’t Medicine – Alexis Robson

You were broken when you were five,
It’s no wonder you were struggling to survive,
When your only support is a crutch of self-doubt,
How can anyone expect you to figure yourself out?

You lack the tools to fix yourself,
So you tend to turn to someone else,
To hold and guide you,
Always coming to your aid,
You forget the loneliness you felt when you were eight.

But using people as crutches is naïve,
Because eventually they get tired and leave,
And now you’re ten, but left again,
Struggling to figure out how to fit in.

People come and go,
But you become wiser and grow,
Soon you’re sixteen and have loyal friends,
And you realize there’s no point in trying to “fit in”.

The years fly and you turn eighteen,
And realize time has floated by like a dream,
You’ve learned to be your own crutch,
And that you used to overthink too much.

But life has taught you a lesson,
That you cannot use people as your medicine.

-a.r

poem, Prosetry

Little Rectangles of Hope – Brooke Safferman

Little Rectangles of Hope

Anxiety.

It drips from your lips

Like some toxic saline solution

You always preferred for me to be the sweet one.

The unknown: the sun not yet risen, the butterfly still in his cocoon

I am suffocating from the words you will not say

Nervous and afraid, with those sweaty palms I love so much

Commitment was never really your style, no matter how painfully

I wish it was.

Worrying so strong, it becomes a tangible force

Quicksand, you laugh as you sink deeper within

I’ll play the role of the caretaker, you, the needy child

You throw your medication out when I look the other way.

Dull and numb, you say

You shake your head when I shove the bottle back at you

Commit to them, I plead

Commit to me, I plead

You shake your head when I shove the pressure back at you.

Whoever knew that an enemy could take the form of

Little rectangles of hope?

Poetry, Prose, Prosetry

Can He? – Bianca Stelian

Ode to the poet

Whose wretched insides

Ache to create symphonies

Concertos of rhyme, seasoned with reason

But keeps it a secret.

His voice, a flame

Of passion and vigor

Vinegar

Rubbing salt in the wound

Makes a particular thickener

Raw with anticipation

Elation

The creation of patience the world’s friendliest patron

Sensation

But if he calms down or slows then nobody knows

For the pros who use prose are just masked by the blows

Of the older yet bolder visionaries with line breaks

Oh shit, there’s no rhyme

He scribbles and scrabbles till he comes up with one fine

Enough to make sense without being too bent that no heavenly sent angel likes what he’s crying

Dying

A dead profession

Parents said doctor or lawyer et cetera

But his mind is awash with the words it’s a plethora

Line after line he debates if he’s trying so hard that his eyeballs might pop off their retinas

But he’s not a slacker, a cheat who’s insane

He’s just a poor kid with too much right brain

He yearns to make words that will serve all his purposes

Verbages swirling all over his surfaces

Fortresses built with the strength of a circus kid

Everyone hates how his nerves give him worthlessness

Murderous curses so urgent he swerves into learning concerning new tactics for perfectness

Fervently churning away what he’s working on

Soon he’ll be ruler of burnouts and mirthlessness

STOP!

His fingers won’t work, they’re refusing to write

He curls up alone, all his demons in sight

He needs to get help before his psyche ignites

A torrent of pain and percussion alike

See, he’s just a guy with way too much to fight

He knows what to write but just not what is right

So sad but he won’t give up, laugh but he won’t trip up, slipping and skipping is not for what he signed up

Sickly, he mixes the words of his wisdom with intimate diction so smooth it needs no clean up

Finally found it, his voice that resounds it so fine he’s astounded he’s no longer grounded,

It’s a fight, it’s a battle, a kick in the asshole, a call to the action that makes him an animal

Now he’s on top of the world he’s a natural

Maybe the fame will make his voice speak national

Rationally tactical, tactically radical

Practically casual, casually masterful

Now he’s infallible, crazy, unflappable

Not giving up was his key to the capital

Till he collapses his mind will spit rhapsodies

Badder than travesties, synapses snapping the

Aura of more than can ever be scored rushing in through his system so sonic it’s alchemy

Finally here, he’s made himself clear, there’s no turning back and no, nothing to fear

A life filled with obstacles, hardships galore

Has turned him into something he’d always hoped for

And so, when he sits down

He knows there’s no shit now

He’s on the right path, yeah, his life is his wits now

Dying had made him much more of a man

Immortality nearing, all part of the plan

A symbol, an idol, as big as the Bible

Survival his life goal, a poet’s last stand –

A poet, he knows it, he’s broke it, he shows it

From boyhood to manhood, he can do it

He can.

Poetry, Prose, Prosetry

Blurred San Fransisco – Casey Miller

In the earlier hours before the gates are open and lights are on
He stays back near the ocean, avoiding the sting of solid ground
But slowly he must creep forth, and envelop those beyond the bridges
Into the city before dawn, creeping down past Maiden Lane
Surrounding the chatty store owners of the Embarcadero
Confusing the seals, who look around for their mates through the haze
Then past the city, onto the mainland
Cargo loading dock crew members shout through his mist
And men on their way to work must push through his gloom
Can he make it over the Oakland Hills today?
But yes, he must push past Berkeley and climb the uneven mass
Traveling along the highway, he forces himself to settle dew upon cars
As young drivers struggle to make their way to school
But he must continue, on to Mount Diablo
And when he finally reaches the foothills
The fog knows he has done his job.

Poetry

Teen Angst – Iman Messado

I think I’d rather call it cognitive dissonance.

But the only thing about that practice

is that it’s wrong because it’s not fragments of my mind that aren’t aligning.

If I’m my mind then nothing is really wrong at all,

except that my body is my temple and

i’ve been forced to inhabit it.

But if my body is my temple,

who am I being made to worship?

If it’s my mind, then I’m even more upset

because that’s cognitive dissonance without wiggle room.

Tell me, who’s visiting the temple?

I’m somehow both my mind and my body and whatever is in between or whatever is higher than all of that and maybe i’m on some other dimension or plane of existence or state of being and–

The problem is that all of that doesn’t help right now.

What are metaphysical musings when

hormones or whatever are leaving you depressed beyond common conciliation?

I’ve got a decided mental dogma.

I know what I want and I know how to act and I know how to think,

but all of that doesn’t seem to matter,

in the face of all of this

(bland/nothing/self-pitying/why does everything matter so much)-ness

I kind of hate being a teenager because

it’s not as if anything is coming out of these

silly little down-in-the-dumps-horrible-miserable episodes.

If I’m still wondering if my body is my temple at 34,

I’ll be taking my morning coffee with a teaspoon of bullshit.

(metaphorically though).

Poetry, Prosetry

superfluous. – Brooke Safferman

I gave you a nickname but you didn’t give me one (yet)
I can picture you fingers, tender but unfaltering, plucking the strings on a blue guitar
You always had a knack for adopting things out of the ordinary,
Myself included.

I never found my place of belonging in this world
Until you showed me how I was wrong about home
Home can be a person, not a place.

Let’s circle back:
A meeting of chance,
Two broken hearts:
one fractured from infidelity but still pressing down on the gas,
the other from an Illusion of the Ideal
The latter was my own, yet you told me how I was always so
Grounded in Reality.

Your eyes were depthless, a safety net of compassion
That I never knew how to provide for myself.
You taught me what it means to trust
In the universe
In the truth
In another human
I would thank you for it all but you would call it superfluous.

The way each and every day
Brings us closer together
(And you love it)
Is hopelessly optimistic.
We are a paradox by nature
Because she found you first.

Hey! I found a nickname.
You can call me superfluous.

Poetry, Prosetry

Our Now – Harika Kottakoka

Now, we must stand!

stake our lives

for equivocal things

that our hearts certainly

Revere.

But our gazes steady,

our triumph ordained in diamond

even the finest

edges of terror

Will shatter.

Now, we must choose!

between eternities

embalmed with reticence

or seconds of compassion,

a sparkle of

Fulfillment.

Poetry, Prose

I Pick Me – Brooke Safferman

I longed for the days we used to have

Back when we were free from our shadows

And the things that existed beneath the surface

But quite subtly but yet so boldly all at once, you had

Changed.

You were always my favorite escape

Until I knew all there was to know about you

Or so I thought.

Or so I thought.

You imprisoned me, kept me in a cage with steel bars built of your emotions

Some metallic alloy composed of your cruelty and my acceptance of something Primitive and unforgiving

Your rules were Creed and Scripture and Rhythm

Every word you spoke dictated the very substance of my life,

All actions traced back to you.

But could you blame me, really?

Spellbound by the authoritative way your lips moved across my own

I lost myself somewhere

In between the “I love you”’s and the “You’re the best”’s

I knew who you really were:

A ruler and a tyrannical dictator

Control was your elixir, Power, your mighty Pandora’s Box

As much as I crave you, sublime in all your mercilessness,

There is something I must tell you:

I Pick Me.

And I must walk away.

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