The Three Graces

Artist: Elizaveta Repko (Lizave) Source Malefica67

High Contrast

I want you in high contrast In sharp lines

Don’t Blur or blend Don’t complicate this Afternoon

I want you

Later you can Be obtuse With messy mascara And vague regrets

Later when you return To him.

-Skye

Image source: Personal work inspired by the Vastra-Haran housed in the National Museum New Delhi

River Bathing

Bathing women are both vulnerable and dangerous Clothes undefended on the shore Bodies unfurling among the reeds.

Pysanky - Ukrainian Easter eggs - photographed in 1981.

Preparing for Easter

I wonder who thought of this to take an egg and blow its guts out

To pass the yolk and white into a bowl discards for morning scramble or cheese omelet

Then with wax and fine brushes decorate with exquisite patience an empty shell

Source: Darren Almond Refractive Index I, 2018 aquatint 18 ¾ x 16 inches edition 25

Refractive Index

Waking in a rumple of bedclothes With you And the morning sun

The suncatcher Spins slowly on radiator updrafts

Bending light Into broken kaleidoscopes That travel across our Mingled skin.

-Skye

Image Source: Charito

Lotus Bringer

Insistent grey eyes Come from the twilight bearing gifts Bearing flowers

I cannot look away

The lotus bringer In twilight’s silky aubergine Proffers the abyss in dewdrops On periwinkle petals

Her placid porcelain face Softened not by innocence But apathy

I am already dissolving into darkness Thinned out Unfurling

-Skye

Image Source: Kurrusu

HAIKU- Bite Me

Crash into me hard Pull my soft lip with your teeth Taste my blood on you.

-Skye

Image:The New Bedford Orpheum Theater, Massachusetts Photographer:Frank Grace Source:Ruinationstation

Elegy for the New Bedford Orpheum Theater

The Titanic sank The day you opened

Your gilt was fresh and tableaus bright

It was April 15, 1912 World war had not come Flu had not come World war had not come again

Merry patrons settled into indigo velvet

900 miles east northeast The cold water swallowed thousands While a different band played

Your opulence faded fast Dust caked, peeling, Stripped mostly Bare

You were sold and sold again

The rain came in leaving Plaster puckers, mildew stains, Mushy boards

For-sale sign clouded by rust You are eternally empty

Swallowed whole I tread gently on your aching abandoned bones Lighting candles And singing For the dead.

Kuutar

Shimmering moth dusted moon maiden

Her skirts spun from the last of setting sun at the nether of day

Dripping dew tossing up a wake of mist obscuring stars

Night soft and certain bows beneath her slippered feet

I sleep her light upon my cheek knowing nothing of her innocence.

"Moth Queen" by anniestegg.

Image Credit: Max Scheler, Border of Heringsdorf, Usedom, 1964

On the Heringsdorf Border, 1964

Barbed wire strung along the Oder-Neisse Line carries on right into the sea In ‘64 East Germany to one side and Poland to the other No good choices One side as poor as the other One side as occupied as the other One side as cruel as the other

We stood ankle deep in the Baltic Contemplating the sea and the exchange of tyrants At the Potsdam conference in ’45

As far as borders go The fence was slovenly and careless You could crawl under here and there You could swim out into the sea

Steal around it and cross easily to

The other side

But patrols caught no one crossing here Cause neither side was free.