Spread Eagled

Denitsa Stoycheva

Spread Eagled

I am the lost loser in this tangle of lunatic endeavor

I tread a milky way of mind lost amid spinning planets,

lashing language spilling sinister soliloquies–as toxic rain

falling ferocious from the spacecraft in which you hover 
cutting incessant circles-as day finally falls surrender to night 

you send even my angels to scurry I watch them rise in a 
flurry of anguish – I sob as I hear them weep with their gentle 
bewildered frustration – confused, at their inability to say or 
do anything to loosen the tortured tangle by which I am 
forever bound, hostage to your hurt, to your rage, to your 
vilification,all in the contorted, distorted, name of care

Yet, I shall continue, forever, to seek sense

even as I know that I am the lost loser

in this tangle of lunatic endeavor –

we call love

~





The Sunday Whirl

The Cave of Sweet Oblivion

Petr Kratochvil

The Cave of Sweet Oblivion  

I lived in a cave wrapped regal in a velvet cape

peeking through a haze of love-light glowing.   

A few threw labels as rotten tomatoes splatting 

“Deranged” they might call out – “Ridiculous”  

they sneered my belief in light, love and peace –

But, these were but a few. Easily, dismissed nay-
sayers who would have me in chains bound by 
behavior, age and stage, constrained by convention.

Unknown to me, their drive to sustain, to feed, to 
enflame the anger at my perceived rebellion raged. 
They ran, wrote, raced. Dressed in damning despair, 
on tip-toes did they traipse sipping coffee, clinking 
glasses of sweet wine served with tidbits of soured 
 charges – As, I lived happily on, in my sweet cave 
of oblivion, wrapped in my cape – breathing easy 
in the sweet air of certain love–love already invisibly

bleeding oxygen. Peeking, now and then, through a

haze of glowing light – breathing deep and calm,

believing myself invincibly loved I ignored the odd 
strain of cacophonic voices drifting from the others …  

Until one misty day a child crept to the mouth of my

feather-bedded den and whispered that I wake and see –

See, that as I slept they had deboned the legs on which

I had always stood – Tall and strong, safe and invincible. 

I smiled sweetly at the child, unbelieving, not attempting

to rise. As proof, she knelt in all sweet innocence before me,  

and in her hand held a small long mirror. And, I looked.

In the soft golden glow I could see the filet of me – as she

with soft sad eyes retreated back to the others. A chill began

to insinuate itself through the filigreed crevices of my cave 

crushing the delicate pretty designs into jagged cracks. 

A cold hard wind blew and away flew the haze. In that glare 

of awakened light – I found – Myself. – Impotent, 
Unable to exchange nor feign my boundless belief in love 

for this new normal of shattered legs. Crippled, I lay alone 

listening to the howl of the wind as in the distance familiar 

voices cackled in cruel laughter – and I in a tumbled whirl 

of time found enough strength in trembling fingers to pull 

my cape around shoulders shaking in the winds of isolated 

indifference.
Waiting. 

The Sunday Whirl

Difficulties

Difficulties

There are shoes that come untied

As you are crossing the finish line

Tumbles and mishaps falls and spills

Jealousies, envies,cries of this is mine

There are word problems with letters

Or numbers jumbled whirling all about

There are sureties that with an eyebrow raised

Turn a stomach flip-flopped with sudden doubt

There are grim faced doctors opening doors

As you sit chilled with fright in a paper gown

There are those you thought you trusted who

Cavalierly- just as you need them – let you down

Knots that tie your mind, start your head to ache

Betrayals personal and streaming to the Universal  

Chests pressed with boulders until hearts begin to break

There are those that scamper by catastrophe without a single pause

Until they are effected personally and then take up screeching cause

From shoe laces tripping at an awkward time, to the dying of the planet

Difficulties on parade in all shapes, sizes, consequence and fame. Humans

rise, fall, overcome, ignore, pray, reframe, laugh, repress, stumble persevere

around, up, over, and through. The wise ones knowing it is all a simple game  

From womb to world

From womb to world

Rocketed from womb into the world

Eyes bright, deep and warm – seeing

already a future ribboning like satin

Unspooling into aquamarine frangipani

Air

Nursed and nuzzled, rolled, stood, walked

and ran on strong legs browned in the sun

Shining

Days tumbled into monthed years –

Joyous

Rocketed on two-wheelers and Jeeps

Picture books to legal tomes –

Eyes bright, deep and warm seeing

Sharing, loving, leaving, skipping

Across campuses and country

Writing his own name for himself

In a firm hand with a dimpled wink

Rocketed with steady sureness of step

Love whirling – 

eyes bright, seeing his child to come as did he

Rocketing 

Loved, held, and released unfettered by any  

Difficulties   

Soaring 




~

Sweet Adelaide

Ken Kistler

Sweet Adelaide

Grandmother A. had always been a plain woman.

Her gaze steady, able and implacable even as that

young girl who stared back through  the scattered

memory of those who knew her then – Plain, solid

“not one to rattle anybody’s cage” Uncle Ed said, yet

in the back of the chapel there sat a white haired gent

bent, back aching on the hard, hard pew, and remembered 

in the midst of the droning secular service – remembered the

splendor of that harvest,  and Adelaide’s skin, luminous, satin

velvet under his trembling farm-roughed fingers – mystic skin

gathering each cloud of his storm troubled mind sweeping it all

away on the stiff breeze cooling them lying together in splendor

Oh that harvest, of the splendor long ago – as Adelaide blossomed 

in his heart as no other ever would or did. 
On the service droned to its end. 

Her grandchildren safe-grown, scurry-filed past –a parade of condescending ignorance – Smirking at the dozing bent gent, sated smile, mouth open, head flung back, arms opened.

And finally. Alone, in the emptied chapel he rose, walked to her coffin, held the edge of the smooth wood –  under hands gentled with age and bent in open reverence to his forever secret Adelaide 

He, un-named, unclaimed lover of his Adie. Keeper of their stupendous scattered harvest splendor. 
His luminous Adie, only  now rippling his title in the dancing dust of memory sunbeams. 
Her voice now, 

clear as then, 

releasing 

their secret 

smile

swirling
on the moving breeze, her hair lifting, tousled again as she lay on 
satin-smooth-as-her-skin 

back on that harvest plain – 
Sweet Adelaide chuckling now, at the young fertile farmer 

above her time and time again moving,  moving,  moving 
where her earnest husband could find neither time nor place

Finally -trilling on the moving breeze, clear as a songbird, his rightful title,
In their rightful time. 
Now.

Grandfather. 

~

The Sunday Whirl