Balancing the giving and the taking,
Measuring the changing and the growing,
Coming… going…
Patiently waiting, quickly accelerating,
That careful toing and froing.

Our movement merges together
In unison rhythm like waves,
We caringly form our landscape,
We patiently carve out our caves.
We carefully set our intentions,
Dream of the wonderful life we will have,
In this space of connection we’ve nurtured
Our hearts cans do nothing but laugh.

Time passes changing the balance,
Tilting the scales, roils and disturbs;
I try to rise to the challenge
But in your mind thoughts do perturb.

My soothing no longer is wanted,
My arms around you no longer are craved,
My essence under your pressure relented,
Destroyed are the paths that we paved.

To hope I whispered my plea
but the waves continued to slam.
How can one halt the forces of the sea,
When in these turbulent waters we can’t even manage to stand?

I tried,
Oh, I did try…

But no longer can I be that wave that follows,
No longer shall my swaying match your motion.
Enough of these murky waters have I swallowed,
Enough of being adrift in your emotions.
I change from drop, to sea, to ocean.
Far from those shallow, stormy waters shall I be,
Released from its injurious erosion,
I have let go of what was us, was ours, was we.

Viviana Doyle is a Venezuelan-Irish who tries to creatively translate the rawness of emotions to poetry. As a constant seeker of new experiences she aims to deepen her understanding of our complex world, delicate human relationships and the resilient interconnectedness between the two.

Alive and, well, crowded.
Peck or scratch about in dirt,
make a meal of almost anything,
poop out some foul response
that splatters, that hardly matters.
Try not to lose your head.

Originally from Saskatchewan, Allan Lake has lived in Vancouver, Cape Breton, Ibiza, Tasmania, Perth & Melbourne. Poetry Collection: Sand in the Sole (Xlibris, 2014). Lake won Lost Tower Publications (UK) Comp 2017 & Melbourne Spoken Word Poetry Fest 2018 & publication in New Philosopher 2020. Chapbook (Ginninderra Press 2020) My Photos of Sicily.

Freestyle, free of constraints, let yourself go,
does it make any sense, who’s to know?
Express yourself, let yourself be known.
Let others feast on the words that you have sown.
But there are those who choose a bizarre form,
something way outside the norm.
They call it Freestyle.
If you have some kind of style, or no style,
it doesn’t matter you can get real wild.
Some can get real crazy, maybe even act like a child.
It might mean something to you,
but for anyone else does the meaning come through?
Would there be any touch of reality,
would it ever mean a thing to me?
With seemly no rules and no real structure.
Trying to find meaning or sense of it is torture.
Random words in some random composition,
mere ravings with no relevant revelation.
To be complex, intellectual, and “deep”.
It moves me not, instead it puts me to sleep.
Freestyle, what does it mean to me?
It’s got to be so mindless and quite easy,
putting any words down in any way at all.
Just throwing words out, let’s see where they may fall.
Freestyle, the weirder the better,
the strangest is prophetic, the “smarter”?
Viewed and sometimes read by the Elite, the “Top”,
-the cream of the crop!
Exclusively they eliminate the rest,
they’re selections are only for the best.
The commoner might care their emotions to share,
the commoner might enjoy common words to hear.
But for the ones who controls the pens,
or at least where their word ends,
this realm is not accepting new friends.
No, no one is allowed in at all,
don’t call them, they’ll call you- not at all.
Don’t tell them your words, upon deaf ears they will fall.
Freestyle so much the rage they say,
it’s what’s hip and in vogue today.
Still, trying as hard as I could,
no matter how many I read I found not one that was any good.
I couldn’t understand one single one,
and I could only be left with one conclusion when I was done.
It appears that the real meaning of Freestyle,
is ultimately having “no rhyme or reason” and no style.
Some people have some gall,
but I don’t care, Freestyle poetry to me isn’t really poetry at all.

After a successful career as a Senior Designer working with international mining companies, William David is retired now and living in Tucson, Az. He likes spending time now devoted to his passion: writing poetry. William writes for his pleasure and for the pleasure of those who might read his poems.

Off this shore
the lake is deep.
The loon’s cry floats
like rune of ruin—
startlingly close—
the cry of someone
who shakes the bones.

Paulette Callen has returned to her home state of South Dakota in retirement, after 30+ years in New York City. Varying degrees of culture shock in both directions — but always, the space she returned to has been made home by a dog.

When you say this poem,
Know you will read it when you know nothing of how you will say it later.
How it will feel under a cool sky of clouds in twenty years.
How it will edge along the bone.

Kate Bowers is a writer based out of Pittsburgh, PA. She has been published previously in “The Ekphrastic Review,” “Rue Scribe,” and “Sheila-Na-Gig.’

It strikes my soul
with crackling voltage,
leaves me trembling,
lost in space.

I feel you pass
and without looking,
I magnetize to pull
the current back.

You shoot through me
—shock and polarize
my power source;
suspended, still….

I search for pulse
for energy, a slight vibration
—your touch—at last,
regeneration.

Suzanne S. Eaton is an author and marketing consultant. She has written many corporate stories and marketing materials. She authored “Chinese Herbs,” and has written for various magazines and anthologies. Most recently, Down in the Dirt Magazine, Writer Shed Stories, Seaborne Magazine, The Purpled Nail, The Silent World in Her Vase (TSWHV), Scarlet Leaf Review, and Rue Scribe have selected her work for publication.

I’ve no reason to think he ever really left,
For the soil doesn’t allow us to rest,
It puts our bodies to work
As undersecretaries for flowers and oak trees.

I get to check up on him each autumn,
When his beard turns the leaves russet
And I imagine him being belched out,
To be mixed with the mid morning air.

Christopher Ware is a poet from London, England. He writes under the sobriquet, Charlton Poetic – an ode to his South London roots. Poetry is something of a therapeutic exercise for Christopher, who began writing again after suffering a breakdown a couple of years ago. As a result, he work uses the narrative of personal experience to explore wider themes, with an intense focus on the lyrical.

They are tying ribbons
on the trees now—
for the first responders
and emergency workers,
the caregivers, the doctors and nurses,
for all the healthcare providers
and essential workers
wearing their masks and their bravery
into the fray.

So, I tied a ribbon to the nearest tree
to honor those serving on the front lines,
only the ribbon wouldn’t reach all the way
around the trunk like I wanted it to, like a hug.
Instead, I tied the ribbon around a branch,
one that looked like it was reaching out to help
or to comfort, maybe a neighboring tree,
only there weren’t any other trees nearby.

Even at a distance, this tree could be connecting
deeply through its roots—together though apart,
as we write to long-lost friends, sew makeshift masks
for neighbors, and inquire whether we can donate blood,
all while gathering up our ribbons or perhaps some yarn,
braided & homespun, to tether to the nearest tree
or fencepost or latch—wondering even whether
our shoelaces would suffice for showing solidarity,
in times when we do our small part by staying home.

And this tree will wear its ribbon as a signal of aid,
like medics have worn during past pandemics & wars
because snow is falling on field hospitals this winter,
and the front lines feel like wartime—
and for us all, this is a time for love & grief
and heartache, and reaching out,
and digging deep.

Jenevieve Carlyn Hughes teaches humanities for university students. In her free time, she enjoys birdwatching, rarely with binoculars. You can follow her on Instagram @sea_thistle.

Another version of this poem was previously published in Front/Lines: Nurse Poets & Pandemic Perspectives (Jun. 2020) under the title Red Ribbons.

I’m so lucky, that’s what everybody has said.
The car was going too fast, and that tree too still.
Far worse has happened to those without intent.
I’m so lucky.

Dressed in starched blue,
I circle around my white room.
They check on me every ten minutes.
If I show promise it will become every fifteen.
They’ve taken my shoe laces.
I’m so lucky.

Mica Kanner-Mascolo is a student of creative writing, sociology, and French at The New School in NY, NY. Her writing consists of poems and short stories aspiring to give pause to her reader. Mica is currently waiting out the pandemic in Boston, MA with her dog, Willoughby.