where i sometimes go for comfort and courage

whisper sweet green enthusiasm 

from your naive youth 

i know you mean it 

i know you want the best for me 

for us all 

sweet 

sweet 

boy

i know your heart will remember the toy trains and the laughter and the snow

Photo by Angela in Kansas.  Words by Dustin in Singapore.

Tuesday in the Yard with Fam

a dream that we had:

wedding, Florida, and July

magic; the result

Photo by Angela Shields.  Haiku by Dustin Whitehead.

Happy Beach Day

A beach.  A day.  A birthday, not mine.  A lot of sand.  A new suit.
Wondering if the wedding is truly a week away, already. 
Asking if my life is beautiful.  Sometimes it is. 
The blues & greens.  The joy of pink.  Not the sand.  Not the salt.  But the beauty of the day.
Some like to run.  Throw a Frisbee.  Bath in the waves.
I like to sit.  I like to watch.  I like to admire the beauty of the day.  
My brother.  My son.  My sister, her fiancee.  My mom.  Brandon.  A foreign friend.
My little girl.  Playing.
Discovering something small in her corner of the towel.  Probably sand, or a grape.
Thinking about the day...the beauty of the day.  
God made this.  Amazing. 
Wanting some color on my white skin.
Missing Everett. 
Wishing he was here with me.  To sit.  To watch.  To enjoy.
The beauty of the day. 

Photo by Sadie Myers. Words by Angela Shields.

The Two Girls on the Beach

The sun and the sky

Provide the perfect backdrop

For a happy scream

Photo by Angela Shields.  Haiku by Randy Conner.

She has his eyes.

My daughter wears her mother's necklace and calls me Pappy.
Pappy was her Irish grandfather on her mother's side.
He had a thick, Irish accent.

"Pappy was like a leprechaun, daddy, and so are you,"
she replies to my question of why she's recently taken to calling me Pappy.
(Side note:  I'm German, but I can do a pretty good Irish accent that makes her laugh.)

He used to bring her four leaf clovers.
Where he'd find them, I don't know.
Luck of the Irish, I guess.

She has her grandfather's eyes.
Her eyes look nothing like mine.
Or her mother's.

A stereotype Irishman who drank himself to an early death, laughing the whole way.
He was a great man.
It's nice to see him in her eyes.

Photo by Angela Shields. Words by Steve Brian.

the buddha smell

 

The universe does:
But the flowers the dog has brought to me
Slack and dangling
In snout.

The flowers never had to pay a mortgage

The flowers have never played Hamlet to a full audience yawn

The flowers have never snorted boy in the hopes of a lighter tomorrow;
But we’ll stop to smell them anyway.

Maybe the flowers are old reincarnated buddhas
In the face of the sunshine.

Buddha eating Buddha playing Buddha snorting Buddha,
The universe does
Anyway.
b

Photo by Angela Shields. Words by Justin David Koontz. 

WHEEL

 

To the man who invented the wheel,

Thanks.

You gave us all whiplash.

I would let anyone 

punch me in the face

right now.

Photo by Angela Shields. Words by Randy Conner.

Future Well

When it ended we had it nothing. 
We had each other by ourselves
When it ended, 
it all ended
by each other 
by ourselves

Photo by Angela Shields.  Words by Lear Bunda.

Mostly Undefined

“I'm not sure what I am,” her words tangled and coursed tighter around her than veins.

This phrase was her blood of the time.

She repeated the mantra till it filled her lungs,

recycled through her body

and flowed vividly through the pale of her cheeks.

“I'm a mess I don't know what I'm doing I dont know where I am going who I am turning into I dont know where I start what part of me is real if I lie to people or if I am lying to myself if I can change and be better I dont know how to even begin I know something must be a miss because I am not me but I want to be because me is the only me but I dont know me anymore Im such a mess that I cannot be anything more but I want to be because I am me and me is not a mess and I have no idea what I am doing I dont know who I am”

With each ambiguous phrase the poor girl entrenched herself

further into obscurity.

She was creating her own un-definition.

Poor girl.

She turned to me, poor girl,

hoping to catch pieces of a mirror,

wanting a reflection.

But in me she would only find a pond, rippled and mirky.

And only my love for her lie at the bottom.

“You wont find anything steadfast here. Im so sorry”

“I know”

She wanted to redraw herself, take any bent pieces and straighten them

she wanted to untangle, deconstruct, add color, sharpen 

and chase/embrace the ever-elusive idiom, “let go”

“Isn't that what I should do? Let go?

Let go of any chance of finding myself?

Sorting it out? Stop putting so much pressure on myself to really be me?”

I didn't know what that meant.

So I tried something else:

“What do you see?”

“Huh?”

“What do you see? When you look at that, you, what do you see?”

“I dont even want to look”

(We are all sculptures wanting to be reshaped by our own hands,

But we cannot wet our hands and mold the world that reforms us)

“You want to be the Maker and the clay

and poor girl, that simply won't do.

In some chances it might. You could probably hold destiny at bay

and carve yourself”

“Huh?”

“I see flowers.

When I first looked at that, you, I saw a vase on the left and maybe flowers made of twine or ropes and I saw sunshine. Do you see that too? Maybe you dont, but regardless of what is perceived, it is the ability to carry all the unknown that is most important. If you cant tell what you are, know that I see flowers. Beautiful black and white flowers and no matter how undefined you may want to pull yourself towards, I will always see you, see that,

I see flowers”

Photo by Angela Shields.  Words by Jordan Shappell.