Setu 🌉 सेतु: Western Voices 2020

May 2020: The Fictions: A Selection. By the fantastic narrator Kelli J Gavin
June 2020: The Local Flavours. By the respected academic-poet-critic-editor: Jaydeep Sarangi
July 2020: Children's Literature. Reputed critic-academic-author Sutanuka Ghosh Roy

(The concerned guest editors will make open calls on these themed issues. -Editor)

सेतु, अप्रैल 2020

Setu Home - Past Issues

Guest Editorial: Scott Thomas Outlar (Western Voices 2020)

Scott Thomas Outlar

I must start off with a huge thank you to Sunil Sharma and Anurag Sharma for inviting me back this year to guest-edit the Western Voices edition of Setu Mag. The dedication they show for their magazine each month is highly commendable, and their intention to serve as a bridge across cultures shines true. It’s always an honor to collaborate and work with Setu.

A debt of gratitude is owed to the forty-five poets who contributed their wonderful words to help make this project possible. Each of their unique voices acts as a lighthouse of inspiration during this critical moment in history that will define what the future of civilization looks like. Just as a muscle must first be broken down before it can grow back in a stronger condition, so too must we pass through this modern crisis of chaos before we emerge in a state of higher order. I believe the spirit of humanity remains resolute and that renaissance is waiting in the wings.

May you live in interesting times. Was that phrase first muttered as a curse or a proverb? Let’s dig up the bones and learn what they sing. And others say that life is what you make it. So I guess we’re now swimming through a prism of perceptions and projections.

We all know the score in the Age of Wuhan. What is there left to say? A world consciousness seized by fear is as virulent as the plague itself. Fortunately, the best salve for troubled times is beautiful art. Luckily, we have discovered a wellspring. Dose up. Drink deep. Sigh pure.

Selah,
Scott Thomas Outlar

Poetry: Western Voices (April 2020): Authors

Setu, April 2020

Z.M. Wise (Western Voices 2020)

Exclusive: Western Voices, 2020: Edited by Scott Thomas Outlar

Bio: Z.M. Wise is a proud Illinois native from Chicago, poet, essayist, occasional playwright, seldom screenwriter, co-editor and arts activist, writing since his first steps as a child. He was selected to be a performer in the Word Around Town Tour in 2013, a Houston citywide tour. He is co-owner and co-editor of Transcendent Zero Press, an independent publishing house for poetry that produces an international quarterly journal known as Harbinger Asylum. The journal was nominated Best Poetry Journal in 2013 at the National Poetry Awards. He has five books of published poetry, including: Take Me Back, Kingswood Clock! (MavLit Press, 2013), The Wandering Poet (Transcendent Zero Press, 2014), Wolf: An Epic & Other Poems (Weasel Press, 2015), Cuentos de Amor (Red Ferret Press, 2015), and Kosmish and the Horned Ones (Weasel Press, 2018). His debut play, Bottles of Emerald for the Demon Queen (Transcendent Zero Press, 2019), was published in late December of 2019. His sixth book of poetry, Illinois Infinitarium (Cherry House Press, 2020), will be published in the summer months of 2020. Other than these books, his poems, lyrics, essays, and book reviews have been published in various journals, magazines, and anthologies. The motto that keeps him going: POETRY LIVES AND LONG LIVE THE ARTS! Mr. Wise will make sure to spread that message and the love of the arts, making sure it remains vibrant for the rest of his days and beyond. Besides poetry and other forms of writing, his other passions/interests include professional voice acting, singing/lyricism/songwriting, playing a few instruments, fitness, and reading.

Viral Spiral/Pandemic Epic

Brittle words on sun-bleached sheets.
Love in the time of papyrus,
love in the time of papyrus.
Writing verses, saccharine and sanguine, for mi querida.
Love in the time of papyrus,
love in the time of papyrus.
Scratched out edits on moon-kissed drafts.
Love in the time of papyrus,
love in the time of papyrus.
Midnight showings of one-woman performance in Kabuki theatre.
Polytheistic goddess rain,
shower our faces with blinding logic again.

Neck kisses from lavender lips, arise the bumps of skin.
Love in the time of the fire,
love in the time of the fire.
Quaking within tremors of intimacy.
Love in the time of the fire,
love in the time of the fire.
Two-backed beast caught in an inferno of frenzy.
Love in the time of the fire,
love in the time of the fire.
One second lost without defining touch succumbs to lunacy.
Drenched with the waters of Poseidon,
stiff white gold corpse of his trident.

Sea horseback rider galloping towards a desolate floating minnow school.
Love in the time of the virus,
love in the time of the virus.
Mayhem in the shrieking populace amidst the roots of the outbreak.
Love in the time of the virus,
love in the time of the virus.
Particle invisible, demon jaws decreasing the once-thriving numerical order of things.
Love in the time of the virus,
love in the time of the virus.
Unspeakable stubbornness and utter refusal, the universe’s final mistake.
Dying voices of the deathly sick and to those who panic,
help us to cease this abhorrent pandemic (before the hour of the tragic.

She stole my sacred heart to satisfy her secret soul.
Love in the time of denial,
love in the time of denial.
She pretends our unity was some hysterical mania depicted by the whitewashed media.
Love in the time of denial,
love in the time of denial.
Innocence lost to the wandering of a forest foal, paying woodland tolls.
Love in the time of denial,
love in the time of denial.
She leaves herself in a dehydrated corner to wilt like a pitiful gardenia.
Outcome unintentionally venomous, no sign of amity.
Let me breathe in exile as a shame-caked shadow in anonymity.

Fragile genius sings that they have left him behind.
Love was the cause of the virus,
love was the cause of the virus.
Black-eyed dog crooning to a milk-eyed cat of seasons.
Love was the cause of the virus,
love was the cause of the virus.
This upward prism spaghettifies into a downward spiral.
Love was the cause of the virus,
love was the cause of the virus.
Yet another madman’s blues, sinking seaworthy to the City of Blessed Heathens.
Judgment Days, reconcile and be damned!
Join us, silver refugees, as we mark our eight year out on the lam.

Love in the time…
love in the time…
Love was the cause…
love was the cause…
Compose newfangled myths
and love is the cure!
Compose newfangled myths
and love is the cure!

The Black Dreams of God

Pissant walks to the beat of a different drum,
reciting fragmented psalms to an empty congregation.
Insignificant singer dulls words down to a dim hum,
draining the lives of another twenty first century sensation.

And she finds herself falling from a rooftop,
purgatorial repetition on her skin, the circles of crops.
And he finds himself succumbing to the mundane,
death mask coming to life as a madcap insane.

Bat heads boil under cauldron bubbles,
supersonic screeches struggle with flightless wings.
Sacrifice the skies to thunderous applause.
Post-atomic hand bursts through the rubble,
bowing before an army of skeletal kings.
Greetings to the creatures of pacifism who retract their claws.

At last, acceptance comes to greet you
with the faces of angelic ancestors.
Avalon-like mists surround their guardian mouths
to choose your book of literary predecessors.
Gliding acrobats, the servants in white
blossom from the flower buds of ascension.
Traveling show, sir, kiss the seasonal ring,
belonging to a parallel spirit dimension.
We are but mere symbols tangled in some obscure affair.
Take the Black Dreams of God and turn them into a heavenly nightmare.

Like a sacrificial storm of Nile children wine,
I blush maroon in reply to her kiss.
Transcending the solitudinarian’s need to be confined,
I commit to eighty-eight more golden years of secondhand bliss.

Visions of watery deserts, making waves with sand monsoons.
Fields of lovers swept away by an envious typhoon.
One tongue of Albion speaks Blakean praise to Jerusalem.
Devils lost a morning star to the glowing heir of Bethlehem.

Walking across meadows of the blinding sky,
daylight turns a blind eye to a green pyramid.
Swimming under polychromatic kaleidoscope visions,
does this realm feel any different to those who lie?
A new motif for imaginations so vivid,
a new prison for a chaotic mind that lacks precision.

Wax and fog, fog and wax, grounded brume clouds
collect their followers, the earthen accolades.
Only one guru shrouded in bearded tears
will know the anti-climactic kiss of the cobra’s blades.
Stepping out into the fray of bloodlust,
the one who succumbs to glory, o’ resistance fighter.
“The pen was no mightier than the sword,”
so sayeth the lone prolific prophecy writer.
Date the continued end of a neo-futurist poem,
turn these Black Dreams of God to picturesque statue stone.

Blue Karma

Meditating…
Buddha’s head,
Vishnu’s body,
sapphire spirit guide.
Floating city above the monks’ village,
above this mountain.
Sane as they wish,
taming beasts of legend,
the ones mentioned in sermons.
And, then it came back to bite me.

Faith in what?
Faith in what?
Hovering aquatic women,
hovering bald heads,
chanting the same notes repeatedly.
Lovelier than the wind,
a tickling betwixt the neck and ear.
No good or bad.
I was born with a choice.
And, then it came back to seduce me.

Seduce you, how?
Did you wed her
before you bed her?
Traditionalist rituals, outside on a leash.
It is the eternal flame of love which penetrates,
not I.
Not I.

Grudge against the nature of meaning,
grudge against the calling of the wrong dream.
Collecting hateful deceits,
collecting hateful acts.

One does what one can,
so all hail the Dark One after the
country collapses into nix.
All hail the Dark One who
dwells under every metropolitan stone.
And, then it came back to show me who was boss.

Forest fires die down.
Sunken ships rise to the surface
from the slumberous crevasses.
The real treasure within was the
fetal beginning of our people.
And I thank you, monks, and
I bow to my master.
I kiss my mistress, but I
clutch my betrothed, the pen.
And, then it came back to wish me a less than fair salutations.

You fed her countless dreams, did you not?
Did you let her before
you wanted to forget her?
Sacred blue reminders wander off without me.
It was the chained heart of armor that let her go,
not I.

Not I.

Setu, April 2020

Sheree La Puma (Western Voices 2020)

Exclusive: Western Voices, 2020: Edited by Scott Thomas Outlar

Bio: Sheree La Puma is an award-winning writer whose personal essays, fiction and poetry have appeared in or are forthcoming in WSQ, Chiron Review, Juxtaprose, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Heron River Review, The Rumpus, Plainsongs, Into The Void, I-70 Review, Inflectionist Review, and PacificReview, among others. She received an MFA in Writing from California Institute of the Arts and taught poetry to former gang members.

Returning to Silence

Based on the article “A Caregiver’s Story: Kaz Suzuki.”

There is no cure. This is what it is. This is reality. As the heartbeat slows, breath becomes shallow. A slow drip of prayers. Pain, stretches out, taut like canvas, toe to mouth. Blisters ooze. Pink, White. Grey. In December ‘89, a place without trees. With his hand in mine, he finally decides to test the waters. I marvel at our ability to live so many/lies. I shouldn’t, but I find it beautiful. Positive. With a disease like this, symptoms not patterns. Somewhere in the world, a dry cave filled with secrets, ours. They say to expect a rapid deterioration. They say pills could buy a decade, but when they talk about heaven, I prepare myself for the possibility that there may not be anything but a river. We are drowning in the here & now. I have never watched breath so intently before. Life exhales before curling back into itself. As sun undresses sky, I am alone. You are a shimmering final act.

minimal acts of devotion

LA’s a fried chicken town, art, sawdust & beer. You are a monument & I am a wave

imitating a wrecking ball. Eager to be stars, we spend our first few days in line, waiting

for a pinhole portrait of the moon. I thought I could save you or at least peel back skin.

Wellness is a billion-dollar industry. I remember our bodies submerged in the Pacific.

I crawled into the shell of you like a hermit <crab> taking up residence. Quiet & dark,

your affection blankets me like a final resting place. But when the Santa Ana’s blow

wounds out into the open, you suck up girls like oxygen. I swim along the shore

drowning your name. I can’t pretend it doesn’t hurt.

Super Glued to a Hamster Wheel of Suffering

I want to scream, point my finger at your lips. Make Noise. Make Love. Eat from the wind.

itself. Find a body of calm <water> & create a new energy.

I think of you, daughter, at the nymph stage, Mommy bubbles on your lips. Tears like baptism, cascading down cheeks, your insecurity pooling at your feet.

Or was that mine? We were both feeding on the same pain, real & imagined. They say that the never-ending rain will wear down even a stone.

There was a time, before snakes & wounds; before the world stitched up your eyes, your mouth, your ears, that we both had the same thirst.

I saw it as you danced across the floor, pink scarf raised to the sky before heart, mind, breath & body folding into giggles. You were three.

What is the price of awareness? I tell myself that you are suffering, stuck on a wheel, going around and around to nowhere.

We can’t fix what’s broken. I sift through the remnants of a flooded house. All I have is memories & the waters of forgetting lapping at my door.

Lost in anger, we grow away from our roots. I am a stem. You are a bloom. We both seek a new life cycle.

Setu, April 2020

Ryan Quinn Flanagan (Western Voices 2020)

Exclusive: Western Voices, 2020: Edited by Scott Thomas Outlar

Bio: Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, Setu, The New York Quarterly, Blue Mountain Review, GloMag, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.

Why Previous Experience Appears on the Modern Resume

All male heirs

were seen as a threat,

so the sultan ordered them all killed

and young Ibrahim

locked away in a cage

at the age of two.

Placed in the dark

and denied all human contact

outside of being given food

and water.

22 years of this,

so that when the Sultan died

they came to Ibrahim as the sole heir

and he thought it a joke.

Refusing to come out of his cage

until they showed him the body

of the Sultan.

Figured it a ruse that would lead

to his execution.

And after they showed him the body

and proclaimed him the new Sultan,

the first thing he did was walk out into the courtyard,

his eyes having a terrible time adjusting to the light.

Then he went on a historic binge.

Ran through the harem as though making up

for lost time.

Ignored all matters of state,

choosing instead to have all the cats shaved down

and their fur made into capes.

This child who had been denied everything.

No proper education or training.

No light or love or encouragement.

And they thought it a good idea to make him Sultan.

No one taking the name Ibrahim after him,

which should tell you how well that went.

Drowning his entire harem

by weighting them down and ordering them

thrown into the waiting Bosphorus.

Before being dragged back to his cage

and strangled to death in the dark

from which he came.

Furniture Music

You are not even there,

doing all the things you are doing

around all the people you

are arounding;

edicts from steep rollercoaster rides

that scream their way back out of lava

flow bedrooms on the cool,

believable Sasquatch foot patrols

over this steaming Styrofoam coffee –

your eyes cut right out of their head,

placed in front of distracted appraisal jewellers

who wouldn’t know a cataract from a Kandinsky

which brings me to the fear of fears;

not Death, all those breaths before the last

so problematic, but rather what to wear

over the naked human body

which is why dress up becomes the game

of games and imagination

the only drunk in town.

Are You Holding?

He asked me in the dead of winter.

When snowbanks make fatal heart attacks

of men.

And I told him I could grab my balls,

but that the current chicken hawk market

demanded I charge monies.

Even though he was a friend

and I was not getting any younger.

No exceptions.

They were most adamant about that.

Just a couple dollars in pocket

so the hungry banks weren’t the only tight

bastards weighted down by the personal trainer armies

of the modern age.

Drugs!

he scoffed.

He seemed angry

like my father when he got home

from work.

Various attempts

to stay out of his way.

The smell of skunk weed three doors down

from the people just moved in.

That way his face lit up

with waving backyard sparklers.

The remote to the tv between 2^nd hand couch cushions.

My laced brown boots back inside.

These drunken brown stairs that will be the end of me.

Simple as that.

Setu, April 2020

Robin Wyatt Dunn (Western Voices 2020)

Exclusive: Western Voices, 2020: Edited by Scott Thomas Outlar

Bio: Robin Wyatt Dunn was born in Wyoming in 1979. You can read more of his work at www.robindunn.com.

- 1 -

the name of the dark is mine

whose right and reaches stem the iron of my thoughts

too deep for reason or regret.

the way the day folds into the break

street on metal

cloth on face

the way the body readies for the breach

against the peach of light streaking by--

all underneath

all underneath I can glue the pieces onto my face

some horrifying Jupiter

father of none but winds

no one but howling winds

each one my son

- 2 -
The work is a memory of death
Like a leash from below the ground
Moving my lips to recite the names:
Each one of them my family.

A leaden pole to measure the land
Plant seeds and sing.
The winter children dancing naked for the rains.

- 3 -
The name of the world

Like the name of history

Shuts out time

Shuts out the crimes of your hands and mine

It takes its time to say

How much it’s been afraid

How easy it’d have been to lie

And flee, and die

If only it could—

The name of the world

A passenger ship

A barrier slipped beneath

A diver perched on the edge of the rock

Your voice out of the canyon—

The sound of your feet

And the way you looked away

The name of love

Never to return

Or slow

Never to say goodbye

Hereafter and eternal

Bent out of shape

Stuck to onions

Running on empty

And muttering

Dancing around in circles

Trying to remember its name

Here is my name

Once again

Stuck out of frame

Trying to nudge inside—

The power of people to imagine the world

In seeing the world

Beneath purple clouds at evening

Blue skies

White light

The urgency of drivers on the road

Tucked tight under the burning of their teeth and lips

To run—

The power of people to work the world into being

Stack by stack

Word by word

Mile by mile

Dialing the phone

And digging their hands into the dirt—

The name of men

Pitched low

To burn

The name of women

Curved high

To burn

The names of children

Called out across the canyon

The name of mud

Stuck on the shoe

And the name of the truth

Hereabouts

Beneath your ear

Under your toes

Inside your hat

Inside your wallet

Over your head

Inside your hands

Inside your teeth

Your voice hovering around it

The melancholy reason of the truth

Nothing else outside of it—

A woodworn beam

Tucking gravely beneath the rudder and the flail

To beat the earth into a spume—

The name of my oath

Too bitter to utter

Of my devotion to you

Witch regarded and not able to speak but by eyes

Not able to move

But by degrees

To write the chapter of your deeds

Whatever they are

- -

Setu, April 2020

Robert Maddox-Harle (Western Voices 2020)

Exclusive: Western Voices, 2020: Edited by Scott Thomas Outlar

Bio: Robert Maddox-Harle (aka Rob Harle) is a writer, artist, photographer and reviewer. Writing work includes poetry, short fiction stories, academic essays and reviews of scholarly books and papers. His work is published in journals, anthologies, online reviews, books and he has three volumes of his own poetry published – Scratches & Deeper Wounds (1996), Mechanisms of Desire (2012), and Winds of Infinity (2016). Recent poetry has been published in Rupkatha Journal (Kolkata), Nimbin Good Times (Nimbin), Beyond The Rainbow (Nimbin), Numerous specific anthologies, Indo-Australian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry (2013) and World Poetry Year Book (2014), Setu Journal (monthly), Asian Signature (2013). His digital artwork is concerned with the technoMetamorphosis of humanity.

He is currently a member of the: Leonardo Review Panel: Manuscript Reviewer for Leonardo Journal & Journal of Virtual World Research; Member of Editorial Board of numerous international literature journals, and Australian – NZ editor for Setu Journal. Artwork, Publications, Reviews and selected writings are available from his website: www.maddoxharle.com

Myth Mongers

The obscenity of mediocrity

cuts across the boredom of melting chocolate,

as delusions of nature's ardent love

contract into an insidious digital invasion,

cool reflections of darkness

strut the moon to space

awareness contracts into frightened frames

in a transformation of whiteness

irreverently as blue cold steel.

Sorrowed leaves fall towards the body

turning angrily into frozen Freudian fragments,

the wall of the dream

prospecting the limitations

confirms the validity of the straight jacket.

The green leaf of minimum focus

tries to obey rules which could not exist,

the catechism fails all credibility

the lies of the liturgy, venomous

separating the skins of despots,

the deceivers myth mongers

who hide behind mantles of passion and deception

their journey one of insecurity and destruction.

Enmeshed with the taste of solipsistic rapture

hysterically we scream for signs

from the uncremated dead rotting with binary toxicity,

veering from lingering toxic visions

ancestral roots are severed by an eclipse

the silhouette of a foreign homeland

guarded by silent sentries controlling cyberspace.

The Opening

Searching for the illusive entrance

distorted pixels dance in my face,

invisible time-warp portals close

then open to reveal new worlds,

direct dynamic neural labyrinths

editing complex interconnections

harness the energy of data molecules,

they hint at the universal truth

a truth beyond all repressive doctrines,

sinister-like laser beams

bluish, hypnotise me

entangle me

my heart races erratically,

another unchartered time-warp portal opens

drawing me forward seductively,

I enter the Zero-point-field.

Sea Ghosts

False hopes, empty promises

the screams resonate inside her paintings

weathered by a surgeon’s scalpel,

those penetrating eyes perched atop a scythe

drag her bewildered mind back to her head,

the deceptive spirit of mortality

is a discordant dirge,

twisted strings entangle web-like

as the cracks beneath the White lies explode.

A butcher bird descends, perching lightly

the arms of anguish pulsate

as exotic distant voices echo,

an owl screeches in the brightness

spirits of the slaughtered indigenous chill her eyelids,

the screeching,

the death-cries of the sea ghosts

howl in deep blackness across the rocky foreshore.

Setu, April 2020

Mysti S. Milwee (Western Voices 2020)

Exclusive: Western Voices, 2020: Edited by Scott Thomas Outlar

Bio: Mysti S. Milwee is an International and award-winning poet, writer, screenwriter, and synesthesia artist (paints to music), from Southside, AL USA. Her works have appeared in over 1,500 publications, and has been used for academic and ministry programs across the globe. She is the editor of her journal Sequoyah Cherokee River Journal/Blog (www.sequoyahcherokeeriverjournal.wordpress.com). She is the “Poet Laureate” of Fire Eagle Ministries. She serves as an International Art Ambassador, and is the recipient of the 2020 International Artist of the Year, 2020 Global Arts & Humanities Award, and is the recipient of the 2020 Best Screenplay Award (“The Loner”).

Visit her page at www.mystismilwee.wordpress.com

Three Hour Seep

I hear the kettle

whistle,

but yet my thoughts

linger -

deepening,

as my mind stirs

and brews another

weeping story of

somber and

solidarity;

picturesque views

through the kitchen

window,

to feel the wisdom

seeping -

into my skin, darkening

from the brew

that filled my lines

of age;

three hours felt like

three years weeping,

filling the cup

with dark secrets,

and darkened rings

to stain my heart

with something

bitter and tart.

Prisms of Thought

Reflections in faces,

you see existence.

Some faces are similar,

equal, and of parallel

rectilinear figures, whose

sides are parallelograms.

Spectrum of light, surfaces

on faces who feel the

moods flowing through

thoughts of transparency.

The voice separates from

white light into color form.

Hues of yellows and blues,

infusion into mind to

parallel the faces

of existence;

reflecting

refracting

infusing

dimensional existence.

Transparent voices

shows its faces in

light.

Angled thoughts bounce

into the light,

shaking hands with

heaven and harmony.

Faces glow, effervescently.

Objects in the eyes

speak existence,

premonitions and

prisms of thought.

Shades of Sincerity

Traveling in transparency,

my heart beats fluidly

with reality -

a promise of existence,

pricking my finger

to show blood and faith

that trickles downward;

a journey of existence

and wisdom;

shades solidify in the

green pastures, a foundation

of what life is to me,

what life is built upon,

blessed be;

where the light meets

the shadows of beauty -

honesty, realism and

shades of quality,

a vision in my mind

of where faith begins

and the shadow of fear

ends;

where butterflies flutter

and life exists in the air

of my soul -

the equality of sincerity

in my soul feeds the

heavens, where halos glow

effervescently in the

dawn of the morning

dew,

sincerely waving an aura

of hallelujah into hearts,

left shaded.

A beacon of hope for humanity

Setu, April 2020

Mihaela Melnic (Western Voices 2020)

Exclusive: Western Voices, 2020: Edited by Scott Thomas Outlar

Bio: Mihaela Melnic is an Italian poetess that began her poetic journey a few years ago. She is inspired by the pureness of nature in this world and by all creatures that populate it with all their beauty and all their flaws. Her debut collection of poetry, Change of Seasons, was published in 2018 and is availablehere.

Escaped from the sheepfold

Give me a child of yours

in the countryside for some time -

said the Cow.

I'll teach them how to milk me.

What a marvelous way to spend time!

Send me your children in the wheat field - said the Crow.

I'll show them gold becoming bread

at some point.

Isn't it something to treasure?

Come to me, all the people - said the Shepherd.

I'll raise you like true sheep.

A promise fully kept.

Well, some lamb escaped from the sheepfold

and now reads the constitution...

Water for animals

We are animals from the first to the last degree

from sunrise to sunset

from the woods to the farm

we are strangely linked

to the fate of others

but nobody shall put words in my mouth any longer.

I don't know about you, but I’d rather

say moo, I’d rather roar, bark, neigh

but mostly bleat

and then go about my business

oblivious of sheepfold, unleashed.

Just give me a whistle

if you want me to bleat

the past memories

or a story of the future

never forgotten

which goes like this: Stray hearts

are wandering; steel pliers -

but what if in the wrong hands?

High voltage power points,

love no longer in the stomach.

Everything hurts, everything is numbed.

Damn, I want to be galvanized!

Well, drink, drink water

said the wise man

if it hurts you so much.

Of ham and light

I have fallen down my own hole

dug with dynamic spirit

and Biglinian reason

and news from history

delicate and timid

awaits me.

I’m still trapped in here

with the smell of recycled paper

in my nose;

It gets me so high

I need my daily dose.

Each turning of the page

takes off from my brain a ham slice.

Seekers of light

squeezed the truth

from the stones

digging, licking, kissing

the cuneiform tongue

but something yet to be measured

crawls in the distance

through the crumbs of the earth

with a diabolical smile

perhaps.

Too bad in there is too dark

at present

but I can smell

an ancient smoke

of a fire's tongue and light...

Setu, April 2020

Michael Murphy Burke (Western Voices 2020)

Exclusive: Western Voices, 2020: Edited by Scott Thomas Outlar

Bio: Michael Murphy Burke is a poet of a spiritual and mystical nature who writes from the heart for the opening of all hearts. He currently works at various treatment centers and wellness centers as a (VST) Vibrational Sound Therapist. Born in New Orleans, educated by an inquisitive and adventurous life, he now lives in Alpharetta, Georgia. He has one book published entitled Dancing With the Divine, his second book entitled Dancing With the Shadows, should be released later in 2020. Michael has been hosting an open mic poetry night for the past 15 years at Phoenix and Dragon Bookstore and is pleasantly and joyously involved with encouraging the abilities and prospering the talents of many in their poetic ways. His website is MichaelMurphyBurke.com.

CROSSING THE BRIDGE

It is quite necessary to balance the bridges we cross with the lands they separate

The land of before and the land of after are but earthly perceptions that bring us to the soil of now

There's a rich, spiritually filled, nutrition laced field that is Awakening in each of us

We, who are here now, alive during this pandemic, are part of the process

Each of us are a vital part of the foundation of the bridge crossing into a new land

And this new land, this new Earth, requires we leave the crumbling prisons that were built of paranoia and embrace the newly shaping shelters constructed from pronoia

The Temples of ourselves are now the sacred strands that shape our next steps

Steps that must be taken together

Together, we move from a sense of a Universe out to get us, to punish us, to demean us

Into a Universe that is out to empower us, to encourage us and ultimately, to redeem us

A Universe that is conspiring, no matter how strange it appears, to gracefully engage each and every one of us as critical components in the building of a new bridge that connects us all to our hearts

Our hearts are bonded already by the fields of frequency they produce

Now these fields, like the countless strands of cable that support a bridge, are being called together to entwine into a strength that can only be expressed when we are wrapped together

Supporting one another is the strength that bridges us into the new land

A land of pronoia, where we not only believe in the unfolding beauty, we become that beauty, by holding one another in the vision that we are in this together, not individual strands trying to be strong, but strands wrapped together, making us all strong

The weak links are empowered

The strong links are emblazoned

The sharing of our abilities is the foundation for a new and immaculate bridge that connects us all

Right here, right now, we are on that bridge

And it is our love, our love for one another, our love for ourselves, our love for all things that shall carry us across

From the paranoia of a past

To the pronoia of a present

Where we can BE the love we ARE, and not just dream about it, write about it or wish for it

Right now, we are on this bridge together, if we just stay here we will weigh it down and it shall crumble, if we go back we shall become extinct, but if we cross over, we arrive at the new land

If we persevere, then we sing a new song

A song of Unity

A song of Oneness

A song in which we all help one another

And we Become the Harmony we Seek

The universe is conspiring, in ways impossible for us to comprehend, for the most beneficial outcome

Let us do the same

Believe in pronoia

Believe in yourself

Believe in US

We are one mass of humanity

It's time to cross the bridge... TOGETHER.

VIBRATIONAL DIVINITY

{ The Song of Our Cells }

When our countless cells rub together

In the glorious dance of vibrational life

They give off Sound

This is the song of our cells

More unique than a fingerprint

Formed in the cosmic dust

More exquisite than a symphony

Composed by Haydn, Beethoven or Mozart

We sing our cells to life

And the song has no judgement, no expectation

No steady beat or inspired lyrics

Just sound

Vibrational Divinity

And it not only sings us into being

It's sings all things into being

We are all on the same album

And our thoughts are the needle awakening the grooves

with vibration that attracts the tribe

To the vibe

And as your vibe attracts your tribe

Your tribe attracts your form

From formless to form

From everything of nothing

To something of matter

We Become

And we sing

We sing of flowers that bloom as planets

We sing of stars that swim as dolphins

We sing of pyramids that point to Orion

We sing of redwoods that reach like our minds

To grasp the sound of ourselves

When, if we just listen, we can hear who we are

From the blood orchestrating through our veins

From the beat of our heart keeping time with stillness

From the delicate whisper of wonder that we call space

And in that space is every song that is

Every sound of the song of our cells

Began from one sound

This eternal and timeless sound

This vibrational divinity

Connects us all

We are never separate

Can't be

There is only one song

Sung by the infinity of cells

That each have their part to play

We are meant to be in tune with each other

But we are not meant to sing in the same key

Or the same voice or the same language

We are unique individual expressions

Singing of union in a Godzillion voices

We are here to bring awakening within ourselves

And in doing this we achieve harmony with everything

We become the most glorious luminescent song of our cells

And in that

We sing for the stillness

We sing for the tone of One

The Ahbwoon

The Aum

The union of sacred masculine and divine feminine

Lay in the song of our cells

Where there is no gender, no race

No right, no wrong

No shape

Just vibration

Just song

The beautiful song of our cells

They all sing to each other

As the Universal Soul

And this sound

The sound of the universal soul

Is the

Song Of Our Cells

We are the singing

Of our soul

And it is not our soul that leaves our body

It is our body that leaves our soul

We don't have a soul

We are a soul

Our Soul is the conductor

In the symphony that is

The song of our cells.

THE MAYHEM OF MYTHOS

The stories that we tell ourselves

Are some of the strongest Illusions we create

For there's a story inside every story

And there's a fate inside every fate

There's a way we think it should go

Then there's a way that it seems to come

And never the twain shall meet

Until we have unified as One

This illusion of separation

This sense that something is happening To us

Is but a confirming delay for our wholeness

As these persistent Illusions move through us

For until we see the illusion no more

Only the truth of the moment to be

Shall we realize that Nothing is happening TO us

It's happening FOR us... Eternally

Each character that we play

And every actor we've assigned

Play the roles that show us ourselves

Until we are no longer blind

Then... we see through God's own eyes

How the union is so complete

And every doubt we've ever had

Suggests a lesson quite incomplete

For until we see that we are all

Including every judgment we've ever made

We shall dance inside these illusions

Deliriously dismayed

Judging things with right or wrong

And labeling good or bad

These are the mayhem of mythos

These illusions that drive us mad

For each of us are Saints

Who often believe we are sinners

And though a thousand lives we've lived

We are forever just beginners

We are playing every role

We are the gist of every story

We are the Anger in our Agony

And the God within our Glory

For everything we need to know

Is already deep within our clay

Let's watch the stories we tell ourselves

And not allow them to guide us astray

For we are more than the stories we tell

We are The Source from whence they arrive

And Source has no need for mayhem

Or the Mythos that keeps it alive.

Setu, April 2020

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