Breadcrumb #410

JARED BENJAMIN

300 years later I returned to the tower, a wasteland of stone mason rubble where my memories of grandeur were reduced to the fragments of aimless battles. I stumble through the wreckage like a blind nomad, cursed to live through the destruction, my petty desires helped bring about. Traversing through this terrain where sonnets morphed into elegies. Where the death of two star-crossed lovers festered and rotted the land, the people.

The ghosts of old, rose from the dried peat, like an army of Jacob Marleys whose only goal was to make sure my final years were spent in the splintered clutches of karma. Before my mind becomes another grave for this tainted kingdom, I grabbed a chalice, and poured a flask, shouting cheers to the spoiled fruits of my own unwelcomed labor.

As I sat in the misery of my own making. Staring back at a scenery of fallen castle walls, shattered draw bridge lumber, fossilized vegetation, all just the aftermath of one’s own selfish, pursuits.

• • •

Breadcrumb #409

ANDREW KUHN

After we learned the hard way
to quieten ourselves upon the earth
the Meadowlands became at last a meadow.

Vines claimed the stadium,
a shaggy beast stooping to graze on
volunteer trees—honey locust,
white birch, profligate maple.  

Decades after the storage tanks burst,
poisons dispersed and absorbed long since,
it is only the trees and the long sifting grass,
leaking their colors at dusk.

• • •

Breadcrumb #408

DR. JACK BEDELL

Feel her floating underneath the water’s surface,
moving slowly enough to lift a boat
with her swell but leave no wake.

She pulls scales from her hips, frees them
to float in the water like manta rays.
She drags her huge feet through wreckage

strewn along the gulf bed, has no fear
of lightning, no need for the moon
to pull her toward pain. She could

eat a thousand men and not sit still,
her hunger flowing like wave.

• • •

Breadcrumb #407

KEESEAN MOORE

Read as a round at 67 BPM

I should stop
smacking the sides
of my face soon -
My ears are starting
to bleed.
But I’m committed
to clearing up
the white noise now -
making sense of
this meandering.

I should stop
smacking the sides
of my face soon -
My teeth are starting
to shake.
But the ringing
has drowned out
the pain and
I can see pin-sized
lights of escape.

I should stop
smacking the sides
of my face soon,
but I’ve lost all
control of my arms.
My skull will be
crushed into sediment
and there’ll be
no breath left
to take charge.

I will stop
smacking the sides
of my face soon
and drop to my knees
and croon -
revealing muscles
and tendons a’plenty, 
pecked at by
white doves
under white moons.

• • •

Breadcrumb #406

LISA RHODES-RYABCHICH

The sea rolls it’s shoulders
onto the shores.
Are we the ocean, the trees
the bush, the swallow
the seat of the wind in the air?
We breathe in the sun glinting 
off the roof like electricity
zigzagging life
over glass—Life zigzagging.
Drawn back we see
the glass reflecting a silver
electric butterfly.
We are all camouflaged.
Who are we?
We are in all of it ...
Death and resurrection.
Like the rocks of life
we walk out slowly creating
a path to merge with wildlife.
We swim like the geese
letting the waves lap
onto their feathery skins
unabashed and unashamed.

• • •