E.E. Cummings But... I Carry Your Heart

From Mizdi

Variations on the Word Love by Margaret Atwood

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

By: Margaret Atwood

Cityscape by Brandt Campbell

By Brandt Campbell



Via 500 Pix

Love by Gwylyn Cane

love

by Gwylyn Cane

there should be one hundred words for love

just as the peoples who have lived in snow so long

have so many words for snow. love

can be cold. difficult to walk on. slushy. mushy.

it will trick you. betray.

it can fall so silently on you that it mystifies ---

soon everything is quiet

a blanket under which even the cold streets of your city

are warmed. clean. it can also sting.

invariably, it melts. often, then, it smells.

and each particle is different and you know no two

are the same, so never fear, lovely people, love comes

again.

Nighttime Walk

Love at 16? Of Earthworms And You by: Todd VanDerWerff

OF EARTHWORMS AND YOU

sun's misplaced in the universe

galaxies fade

and planets disperse

every day is dark and drab

find my pleasure in

science lab

gone from the hope of your embrace

i stop and find

myself emasculate

dissect and earthworm

with a knife

and strike a point for

animal rights

saggy ascus and liverworts

i'd buy you back

but i'm afraid

iwishiwere

Omniscient

(don't ask me what it means)

sweatsocks and urine overpower me

as i walk into the rancid heat

you fell for gelboy and his hair

davy crockett shot a bear

i loved you and you loved me

gymnosperms grow inch by inch

(i suppose you wanted atticus finch)

after all, gregory pecks a

hottie i guess)

disjointed ramblings

from a twisted brain

are all i have to hide the pain

in a perfect world

x always equals three

if memphis is in tennessee

overwhelm me with self-pity

as mormons move to salt lake city

(i was never very good at history

but i'm worse without you)

give gelboy all my best

as for me I remain

Obsessed.

Todd VanderWerff, age 16

Painting with Water Colors

Rough Draft 1 you and me

Its this ebb and flow
and back and forth of what we know
to be right

That mutual understanding
which doesn't have any groundings
in reality

Because what I see,
you see differently
Or as you want it to be

Moments turn into days
and what felt like just an ache
turned into a throbbing pain

Five years has made few steps
towards progress
or what you'd even call a success

Full relationship
of empty promises
and half lived dreams