Poets and artists published in Spectrum Online Edition: Love Lines are invited to read at the Saturday Afternoon Poetry Zoom meeting on Saturday, January 21st between 3 and 5 pm PST. For more publishing opportunities, go to: http://spectrumpublishing.blogspot.com

Saturday, January 7, 2023

Fee Thomas


It may have four sides and a top
but careful my love,
that does not make it
A box
and in your haste
The road to liberation
ultimately could go missed
Over your fear
of tight spaces
Red and crimson may look like the same color
but careful my love,
Red is the color of lips painted
the smudge left
After a kiss
but a kiss ain’t love
Crimson is the  color of bleeding
 can’t be in this life without it
bleeding is life
bleeding is death 
Scream! —
that no one hears
After you've walked out the door
the last time
The pain! The pain! 
That shatters and makes its own noise
Be careful, my love
There is no nobility in suffering
hold on to it only as long as it teaches
and Serves
Then be done with it
Give it its own freedom to move and roam 
let it go!

A deep exhale on a spring morning.




Yeah, I hit rock bottom. It was probably the best thing to happen to me. There is something about the immense desperation and suffering that brings about an awesome rawness and purity that otherwise goes unseen. No, it's not pretty and it sure ain't elegant. But it's fierce and it's honest and it's real. The to the bone of rock bottom - we people- no longer care what others think, or what others say, because there is a fight or flight to simply stay alive. And rock bottom people will love you. No matter what you've done or what scars you have. We say, "come, I have room for you here”. We will hold you when you are shaking and will use our sleeve to wipe your tears. There is something Holy that happens at rock bottom. Knowing, being humbled, in such a way. Realizing that your very breath depends on God. Then you look across at your brother or sister and you understand that what is breathing for you, breathes for them as well. Soon...you are breathing together. Here is where one has the potential to relearn what it means to love one's brother or sister as self. You may see rock bottom as the gutter or the end. I see it as sacred and the beginning. So, yeah, I hit rock bottom. However, I didn't leave there the same way I came. And for that and so much more, Thank You God, Grateful.

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Alicia Mathias

    for: J.A.F. MY LATE GRANDMOTHER'S  LONG-LOST PEARL returns  to its  setting