Welcome

I enjoy late nights

when no one's up

The silent feeling

when the moon's out

I don't know

when I became so fond

of the night

Nothing manmade

Just silence and nighttime

Tyriq Robinson is a writer, poet, and student based in Washington, DC. 

Resurrected

I find myself attracted to the thickness of the woods as I drive home. The tall spring trunks shiny 

and wet. They bring me joy. The multitude of pine trees arranged in nature’s order bring me peace I find no where else today. The tree knows what it is, accepting itself as a growing legacy, a counterpart to creation. It exists humbly and wildly. It does not beg to make itself more than it is. It does not curve its body left or right, or arrange its’ branch to be more pleasing to the log beside it. It neither hunches over ashamed of its’ great length or sags its’ branches around its’ broad trunk afraid to be seen. A tree is a tree existing purely from the seed it sprang from, nurtured by the provisions of life itself. 

I find enjoyment in trees because unlike them I resist who I am at every moment, always looking to mirrors to tell me who I am. In the eyes of people I search for myself wondering why my bend is so odd, my branch so crooked, my bark so thin. 

Like the ugly duckling, I search for my broad, my nest, my root, my kin. As a young child I was like the tree, branching forth in green in leaf, unafraid of my place in the world. My color, size and shape were of no question to me. I was the grass, the rock, the root, a tree.

And so it is I find myself wanting to stop and venture in alone. This world seems cold and lonely today, and I am tired of bending my branches to hide. For if I am a pine it seems much better to be a maple. If I am in woods it would seem much better to sit high in a field with sunlight. I have spent much time wishing I were a different tree. Carving into myself, surgically reconstructing the natural rhythm of my own soul. Never quite right for myself, I question my action and inaction endlessly, trying to reconstruct the sacred self, I have twisted and turned in ways that are unnatural, ill-suited, uncomfortable.

It starts when we are tender and green, not far from the soil. “Turn this way my dear, your bark looks a bit pale, should have a bit more color I think. What an odd looking leaf you have growing there, well, we’ll just pluck it off so no one will see. She’s a bit quiet that one, never hear the wind blow much through her branches . . . Why look at his trunk it's’ so wide! He’s going to take up so much space we’ll all be cramped!

And look at that one over there, so odd isn’t she? She has that twist in her belly and goodness is she spindly . . . ” 

Unlike the tree in the wild we are inspected, arranged and corrected until we no longer 

resemble the whole trunks we were meant to be. Bitten off at our own branches, we sulk silently, 

making due with un-stretched limbs and quiet leaves. It will be in quiet places and in voices 

that seek same solace that we may begin to know again who we may be. Unhurried we could 

stretch a branch or two. Given water. . . we could renew one root. Given love, the clean, pure,

unfettered kind, we could breathe new life into wilted leaves and cumbersome trunks. 

The world needs more trees . . . healthy and vibrant and growing into the majesty each

one was meant to be.

Cut down too early, we can repair the damage. Nailed and driven into, we can be resurrected.

Soil, sun, water await, spirit enters willingly. Places prepared, wholeness will be provided.

Centered like a tree 

which breaks forth with bony prominence

I could return.

Rooted deep in well fed soil 

I stretch my limbs out to the sky.

Only me, 

who bursts forth 

from scrap to seedling 

will I be, 

like I was in the beginning. 

A map of charted water,

pre-destined to swing and bow to winds delight.

Showing palms of green and golden, 

brushing sunlight past to other branches, 

that touch my tip, that I will share. 

Rooted firmly in the soil I can stand

Surrounded by life’s burst of tender seeds, 

and they will spring up all around me . . .

and that is good

and new 

and fresh.

To please the wind we sway to gentle music,

I will know just who I am.

 Donna Secour is an artist living on the south coast of Massachusetts. She tries her best to balance her time between her art studio and her work as a psychiatric nurse. In the space she finds in between, she finds sanity in writing in her journals. Her poetry has been published in Blue Heron Review,, and her artwork has been included in the Manhattan International Arts online exhibit, “The Healing Power of Art.” 

A Sufi Star Jump

I am not like the younger among you —
I am a distant star in the motion of emptiness.
I burn up as if a meteorite;
I weep as a sailor without his ship.

Pain comes not from my heart,
but from the absence of a second;
I need no shahada —
I am a star in His singleness.

A beacon of the space between the sun and moon —
this is the fullness of devotion;
a star beyond itself.

Adam Robinson is an emerging poet and short story writer from the UK whose work focuses primarily upon the intersection of science and spirituality. 

An Atheist Reflects Upon the Purpose of His Existence

The Atheist lay on his deathbed and on the point of eternal oblivion, in a Godless and random universe, a lucid vision surfaced from within the depths of his mind. It came from a primordial place, a place which had been long forgotten and it was here, at the very beginning, as fate would have it, when memory and perception emerged, enabling the mystery of his consciousness to flash into life, that he lay listening, enraptured, to the rhythmically sibilant pounding of a thick and warm, red-rich liquid pumped into him, with its satisfyingly sweet and sugary rush. He was bathed in a miraculous and fecund life-force, which was holding him secure and safe from all harm, protecting him within the walls of a powerful muscular cavity. It was a place of peaceful bliss, of blessed beatitude, of rapturous and joyous awe. 

Drifting in and out of the preternatural borderlands between wakefulness and sleep, he could sense an irresistible and overwhelming, almost crushing, physical presence, before he sank into a deep and languorous, torpid sleep, like drowning in  a darkly unfathomable ocean. He was dreaming of the myriads of shifting shapes, with colours that seemed like they might have been sounds and there were sounds that might have been colours. Everything kept changing, becoming interchangeable and all mixed up. It was a great confusion of scintillating and shimmering colours, weird shapes, and haunting eerie sounds, which seemed like distant echoes. There were other times when he had clear and coherent, weirdly evocative dreams, which might repeat themselves later, and in different ways, but in essence were always the same.

When he was not sleeping and dreaming, he would listen, enraptured and spell-bound, to the cryptic words of a song-like, lyrical speech, of a poetical language, spoken softly to him. Sometimes he could hear, very faintly, the speech-sounds of those nearby, who might come and go, according to their own purposes and desires.

When he was still and resting, he would sense a pulsing beat, a musical and mellifluous, harmonious, rhythmic heartbeat, coming from deep within his being,  flooding his mind with seraphical raptures. There were other times, when the sound was not rhythmical, but random and spasmodic, loud, and close by, or sometimes faint, as if from some far-off place. When it was like this, with its accompanying melancholia and feelings of anxious confusion, he longed for the quiet and dark serenity of his nightly slumbers, where he could envelop himself in the gentle movements of a slow regular breathing, while listening to the susurrating sound which surrounded him, quietly thrilling him, coming from the beating of a pulsating heart. 

But this ecstasy was not to last. He had become swollen and agile and was becoming too large for this nurturing cavity. The appointed time came, decided by fate, when he was harrowingly and abruptly forced out of this place of bliss, this sanguinary heaven, mercilessly and relentlessly, by the great contractile muscles surrounding him, and after a titanic struggle, accompanied by the sound of loud wailing and high-pitched, excruciating cries, he emerged suddenly and violently, into a bright, harshly lit and cold, sterile place, with its echoing voices and weird iodic odour. That vast and limitless space, this outer world, which seemed to him like a fearful void of endless nothingness, into which he had been cast. He looked into the staring eyes of those gathered around him, those searching and inquisitive eyes, bright with wonder, carefully examining him for any possible imperfections or deviations from an arbitrary norm.

Held up high by his feet, like a wet dead fish and with a piercing primal scream and desperate gasp for breath, cold fresh air was forced into his flaccid lungs, inflating them for the first time, like a pair of pink spongy balloons, amid the clattering and clinking of the cruel and blood-splattered silver instruments that had so remorselessly torn his incipient body, wailing piteously, from that beauteous place. He was now bereft forever from the all-encompassing, all-embracing love that had been given to him so freely. With one last evil cut he was severed, with a terrifying finality, from the coiling translucent tube that was his pulsating lifeline, brutally cleaved and disconnected. He was now free, an island unto himself, free to taste his first bitter taste of loneliness. He was just one among many, wounded in mind and indelibly scarred by this expulsion, this harrowing and traumatic struggle .       

Although he was cruelly cut free, he was kept warm and close, his hunger and thirst periodically satisfied by a sweet and rich creamy liquid that he had a powerful instinct to suck into his stomach. When not suckling, he was swaddled in soft and silken blankets and lovingly laid to rest in a special place, in a small cradle, in a tiny room, with walls coloured like a sunlit azure sky, which was filled with drifting clouds, like bulbous puffs of white smoke. It was here, in this diminutive room, that he would listen, in enraptured awe, to simple songs of sweet innocence and gently rocked into profound slumbers.

But this wider world, into which he had been cast, by the imponderable vagaries of fickle fate, grew more and more insistent and he was taught to make the sounds that were the naming of things, people, and feelings, good or bad. To make the proper connections between words and other words, between ideas and other ideas. Thus, he had been given the means to understand some miniscule part of the emerging reality of this world, as it was revealed to him, in all its wonderous mystery, day by day.

When he had acquired some simple words and suitable habits, there came a time, an auspicious time, when he was taken to a strange place, a special place, away from his home with its comforts and comforting familiarities. Thrust together, with others just like him, in the chilly morning air and bright Autumn sunshine, as he would remember it and would never forget it, as he watched with deep dismay and unforgettable unhappiness, of being abandoned, being left in that intimidating place, with its polished echoing corridors and inhabited by smiling strangers. It was a place where knowledge was gently coaxed into as yet unadulterated and uncorrupted minds; a place of many and varied rituals and inscrutable mysteries. Mysteries that he would have to learn to decipher and analyse, disfiguring the awe and wonder he was gifted with at the emergence of his conscious mind. Some were frightened and wailing pitifully, some stoically suffering in silence, hiding their fears, while others seemed unconcerned and indifferent, in this disconcerting place he was left at, on that fateful day.

Thus, he began another part of his journey, a fearful journey, a journey of unknown dangers and insoluble puzzles, often losing his way and wandering aimlessly in dark and endless forests of mystery, encountering others like him, beguiling him with their evil wisdom. These were often desperate and hopeless times when the way seemed irretrievably lost. 

So, he continued his journey, through half-remembered places and half-remembered dreams, through changeable states of mood and mind. He was shown how to acquire more and more knowledge and ideas: to dismantle things, to unlock their hidden secrets. He was taught to create mathematical order; to make sense of the chaos of his experience.

So, it came to pass, that he was once driven by fate, to conquer a giant, snow covered mountain, though it might just have been a terrible dream. In this swirling and tumultuous dream, he had to ascend a mountain, held sacred by the superstitious, which was riddled with sheer rocky outcrops and hidden gullies and the summit, his elusive and final destination, being covered in opaque storm clouds, with loud thunder and flashes of lightning. The ascent seemed impossible at times, the way ahead obscured and temporarily losing all hope and with shameful pusillanimity, he took refuge from the world, with those who were also fighting the encroaching dark and menacing spectres of despair, despondency, and depression. In the end, after conquering the snowy mountain of his dreamscape, did he emerge into the bright and warm, sunny uplands of a new Spring, his hope and purpose restored. 

Later, and at a time determined by fate, he was blessed with union with another and in their mutual passion, their sweating bodies becoming as one, his metamorphic journey had reached its completion and conclusion. Another journey into a dangerous future had begun; another chemical code of life, another throw of the dice, by inscrutable fate.

This new precious presence, this new life, emerging into the world, like a fat and greasy, pink sausage, being utterly helpless, had to be nurtured and lovingly revered, like a god. Swiftly and with great subtlety, it made its journey into its conscious sense of being and becoming, shaped by a different, ever more dangerous world. Thus, the biological imperative has been accomplished and with ever decreasing pleasures and a frail and failing body, the fearful darkness loomed on the horizon of his clouding mind, when he would finally relinquish his hold over the forces of life and sink into the eternal silence of death. 

Steve Birch was born in England but grew up in South Africa. He came to live in England as an adult and has lived there ever since. He went to Essex University from 1980 until 1983, where he gained a degree in History. He has been writing for about four years. 

Direction

A quiet spark begins to grow

New knowledge

changes how we see

past shadows

A stronger voice 

begins direction

for tomorrow

LaToya Young is a writer, poet, and student based in Washington, DC.