Author: lbstowe

Overexposure is an inoculate notion.
Just a little poison in every drop of potion.

They will refuse this vaccine as a sacrilege.
They’ll even burn the healers for assumed sortilege.

For what will they use to set spark to our effigies?
Paintings & pages of expressive necessities.

After pyre smoke clears, herds will be weaker & bleaker.
Not having been armored by the novels of seekers.

Many creatives will willingly martyr themselves.
The rest disguise & hide…
 hoping for free future shelves.

Don’t scurry squirrel, don’t hurry wren.
It’s me, I’m your faithful forest friend.

You see me daily; I know your name.
I would never think of you as game.

Don’t scamper chipmunk, don’t scatter fowl.
I am no hunter with fang wreathed growl.

I know your stripe, your quack & your song.
Be not afraid; I won’t keep you long.

I just want to hold your gaze a beat…
Nod & acknowledge your native seat.

Yes to reincarnation…I just don’t think you have to die.
We can build ourselves many times anew with a fresher lie.

A shell of deceit becomes a truth if only we would molt.
The fight for growth that carapace cracks is personal revolt.

We strive to make our falsehoods true…these cocoons that we outgrow.
Who’d believe a leggy worm who claimed the sky was his to know?

We use some credit claiming goals that are only just in sight.
The forebears of aeronautics never saw a plane in flight.

My theory is this…theories are truths that haven’t shed their lies.
 To die just shy of validation makes dreamers no less wise. 

I find myself so jealous of all your ink.
The cartoon images taunt me with a wink.

They’re with you under clothes & the shower.
They watch your dreams & stay when your mood’s sour.

The pictures have better views than your shadow.
They know whether or not you rock commando.

They carry a feeling only you can share.
They remain even when nobody is there.

I’m green with envy at their intimate lives.
You committed them to skin…beloved archives.

“Hurry up & wait!”, said the sun to rise.
“All in good time for the most watchful eyes.”

“So, keep time & observe while stage sets are changed”.
“If it all moved faster; all would be deranged”.

“See, we cleave to our clocks without quite knowing.”
“The world lives faster than boredom is showing.”

“One hour is sixty seven thousand miles.”
“But, does that make waiting more worth your wiles?”

“You notice your pace in relation to goals.”
“Have patience & perspective…there are no controls!”

Even the shadows graze my face.
Caressing with sun dappled lace.

Peaceful light in corridors green.
Canopy filtered marbled scene.

All seems possible, even flight.
If not, hearts flutter at the sight.

Bright emerald walls closing in.
They’re leafy muffs for big smoke din.

I’d haunt these wooden halls always.
Alas, these are spring’s fleeting days.

You’d prefer a feed on the inside of your glasses.
Yet, I still find charm in the flowers & the grasses.

I know, it’s hard to hold space for the actual world.
Especially when, each day, its horrors are unfurled.

Though, beneath the strife of men, the natural world breathes.
Exhaling despite of how our hate & drama seethes.

After all, pan out & we are no more than a glitch.
We’re just brief byproducts of evolution’s scratched itch.

So, doom scroll or engage in life…whatever your wills.
But, lives lived are the way to square the fact that life kills. 

Let’s hear it for the Mothers!
Both blood…& fated others.

Always offering their care.
Ones who give & ones who share.

We count on them to remind…
Who in mirrors we should find.

Wherever they are is home.
No matter how far we roam.

They nurture our better parts.
They’re how every story starts.

For

E + H

Tears are the ecstasy of the soul.
They are the emptying of a hole.

Tears are the lance of a spirit’s boil.
They’re the hot bath for empathy’s toil.

You can’t heal til you’ve shed some ocean.
The only physical emotion.

Those moist sacrifices of the heart.
Your evolution is what they chart.

There’s a reason tears come from your eyes…
So they’ll wash away rose tinted lies.

For

J

I see schools of stingrays behind my eyes.
The Milky Way Galaxy’s starlit skies.

A biolumined river flowing up.
A universe of thunder in a cup.

One million lightening heads each time I squint.
All blackest jet & the children of flint. 


Fuzzy as snow on a vintage T.V.
A flash of light thru lids…something to see!

Science murders magic; it’s no less right.
Photons & phosphenes reacting to light.