Vernon Mooers writes

Cebu Island Girl  

She bears her name

like Magellan's cross

ties her hair up proudly

steps out in her finest

and her hips swing

and flow like lava

when she bares her breasts

on coconut covered hills

an angel just descended

from mountains in the sky.

She prances to the beat

A Leipzig thoroughbred mare

her mane tossed back and flowing

she steps in high heel shoes

and the soldiers stare like stone

as she dances up the road

the sailors only whisper

of her coming down below

her dresses like fair winds

spread full out in the breeze

saddled with her mission

her veil of trembling lace

a shroud across their dreams

they can only stare in wonder

as she spreads her wings and flies

toward the cloudy misty sea

into heaven's virgin face

Lavandera -- Fernando Amorsolo

Vernon Mooers writes

Walden Two

Up on the mountain in slug city
just a kilometer from the beach
I built a small house of cardboard
like the roadside huts in Africa
covered it in vinyl
before the rain came
and fetched water from the spring
tried to stay alive -
the water deer, fleet-footed and protected
the pheasants startling, uncatchable
the only game - rabbits
cute and furry, park pets
not wild woodland snowshoes
I snared as a kid.
Picked sesame and wild lily leaves
dug around for ginseng, fallen chestnuts
tried my best to stay alive.
In the night the sounds of lovers’ cars
tour buses gunning to the top
up the winding road to the lookout
firecrackers from the beach
like a war zone
birds in the quiet morning.

Rural House -- Shandor Alexander 

Vitaliy Mashchenko paints

Shade of Summer Evening 

Vineetha Mekkoth writes

Here in Backstreet Alley

The flowers on the walk
Are brighter than ever
Here as we traipse the streets
The trees are greener
The skies bluer
Here in Backstreet Alley

This is the place where
we peel off our skins
Where bone and marrow
grind into one
Psychedelic lights dim to grey
As we fall into exhausted slumber
Here in Backstreet Alley

And tomorrow we walk
the walk of the dead
For all around to see,
as we dance without masks
In the light falling rain
Here in Backstreet Alley

Wayne F. Burke draws

Yasmin Hemmat writes

The Entrance to the New Womb

When I blink out, the whole universe disappears
and all I can make out is
encroaching darkness,
the utter loss of warmness,
a plain which is abandoned by its sun.

When I blink out, I feel the disappearance of
the ponderous burden of being
and all I can perceive is
my weightless soul
raging against the dying of the light.

But what about the eternal light which I should see,
the entrance to the new womb,
the emptiness,
the shapeless void in which is
shaped a new life.

New York Street with Moon -- Georgia O'Keeffe

Yasmin Hemmat writes

The Barren Field of Requiem

I was born in a distant and solemn 
Kingdom of hatred and destruction
Near the silent sea of fire
In a city crowded with gloom

My life was written in the
Book of the history of grief
Chanted by scops
In interminable deathly hours
The world must know the
Blind witches of time
Turned my lofty flower bed of dream
Into the barren field of requiem.

Blind Witch -- Miklos Ligeti