Collide Escape Written by Derrick C Brown & read by David Trudo
Whatever you dropped in the dark
can be recovered in the morning.
We will find the turquoise ring
that clutched the mud and grass
as I ripped your costly jeans,
down to your soft calves.
The night rain, beading upon your skinny spine.
If you were drunk, I didn’t know.
You didn’t say anything stupid.
Your tongue was blossoming,
pronouncing your kiss, cleanly.
I was glad your breath was hot enough
to melt the night resin off of me.
I read my hands down your simple gospel
and I no longer need 34th Street miracles.
Are you sure you want this mess?
I am a submarine
full of gasoline
and you’re waterproof matches.
I am suspended in the cinema of that moment
next to the house
collapsing in the dirt
where I needed you.
Fathoms under fathoms,
that’s how heavy I laid upon you.
What are you to me?
You are more than on my side,
you are the weapon on my side.
Safety off.
Rest under the shadow of my gut.
Unsentimental kissing.
A gushing reveille for strangers becoming victorious.
Walk through the valley of the 5 o’clock shadow.
Pyrokinetic honeysuckle, let’s boycott the hocus pocus
and get straight to the secret. . . .
Are you the one snarling in the family photo?
Are you the one crackling voltage in the yearbook?
Then you are the pearl I steal.
Your eyes, a kaleidoscope of collide and escape.
Navigate to me by the map of fallen stars.
Love rises back to you
like an escalator fragrance.
Struggle Written & read by Dan Chung
youth's powerlessness gives way to life's only task: to be in wholeness
standing beside you
who taught you to treat yourself
with self-punishment
life is whatever seeming hermetic fortress water wrung from stone
wild mind despairs
i don't need your permission
to love existence
constant tug o’ war they love me they love me not leaking energy
get your hands off me
control ownership release heart exorcism
guidance will happen
overwhelmed and unworthy
deep wounds heal with time
live full crack the shell alchemize the gold within transform the tin soul
borrowed suffering never yours to begin with it can be returned