I cannot take it; I can't ignore
The desert just inside the door.

I want to go out now, please let me go
To places where the waters flow.



Photo Copyright Bente Agerup

Spin Spin

Inside my head a whirligig
Twirls with ballerina grace,
Its drunken joy unabated,
All sound and color and
Exquisitely vibrant dementia.



Photo copyright Mark Warnes

Waiting

Alone is not an adjective
But a State of Being.
A cage of impregnable force
With a might beyond belief
Harder than a diamond
And as impossible to imagine
As a better day on the horizon.
A fortress of solitude
With a plethora of eternally-empty rooms
Made-up and ready
But housing only me.



Photo Copyright Jamari Lior

Drawn

Sweet damnation.
Sin by association.
Yet something more
Keeps me coming back
To you.
Drawn,
Like a moth to a flame.
Self-destruction
Most sweet.



Photo copyright Jessica Tremp

Vegas

This city has stolen the wind from my wings
And promised me plenty of wonderful things.
Yet nothing to gain here,
and everything to lose
To the blitz and the glamor
and e're-flowing booze
The ring and the chimes of the metal machines.
The gluttonous nature of coin-eating fiends.

Wasteland

I have to go back to the land of the lost.
To places of hot air and never-seen frost.
Where tortured and beaten the mundane live lives,
And to the hot climate where treachery thrives.

To jealousy, envy, and festering rage;
To the back-stabbing dramas of this city's stage.
Los Angeles awaits me, a slumbering beast
My hopes and my dreams its delectable feast.

Broken Mirror

I can't bring myself to get up and to look
To stare in a mirror and to read like a book,
The troubles within me, the aches of my soul.
The sadness, the torture I've faced all alone.
I can't stand the sight of my hideous face.
The scars and regrets that are sprinkled and spaced
Across the expanse of my weather-worn skin.
Reflecting the turmoil without as within.


Photo copyright Cheryl Syverson