|
|
| Normal | |
 © The Swartzentruber Studio | all rights reserved |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
| Normal In the beginning we come in after the big bang, after the six days, after the dream, after the good was still suspended, inviolate, among the clouds, a hot air balloon filled with hope and surety. Not much later, in a room next door, the creation gets going in earnest as she juggles the proto-types of creatures as yet unnamed, stomps her foot in anticipation of their dancing while the three-headed scarecrow in his motley straitjacket pleads for an extra dose of mercy. She may be listening, but she can not see his suffering, only sense there is a ripple now in the distant sky, where memory has been seeded, that covenant whose remembering shall lift us out of the wasteland of boxes tipped and tumbled, forgotten. This side up if you are to see through the mayhem to where the bow is strung between the clouds. Bees are in the honeycomb, sweet and misery ordered together, puzzles yet to come. If I knew the way I would take you home. Marc Harshman, (poet & children’s author), Wheeling, West Virginia Normal Where is the beauty? Where is the calm? Sick with rage, my thoughts running on. Loss of sleep, consumed with anxiety. That nagging voice continues to drown me. Decisions and choices … coming out of my skin. This line I tread on continues to grow thin. The voice gets louder. Banging and screaming is all that I hear. The torment is binding, leaving me with fear. I must seek freedom from this hell in my head. Life offers more than constant dread. Searching for peace, searching for answers … What is right? What is normal? Heather L. Gambrell, Belton, South Carolina Normal HELL, YES! in words MY normal they keep trying to patch it up I won't let them. HELL, YES! Rebecca Moll, Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania Normal For fourteen years I guarded the house, but never went inside. I'm talking about the terror house where Picasso lived and died. I knew the story but never ever tried, to prove there within those silent walls, strange beings continued to breed and thrive. One day I heard a sound, it chilled my blood and then maybe more,it made me enter like a fool,to walk along the corridor to the studio type of room. In there I found the latent surreal spirits in bloom from old canvas bold or maybe deeper from Picasso's mind damaged by work or gold. I saw the exciting siren, sister,temptress, a wondrous creature of thought supreme,she clapped away content within my surreptitious dream. And her audience laughed, the three lofty deity woven into one, sportsmen with buckle, patched wounds all healed but still vibrant with the zest of lust. I gagged to see the fly crawl across a head so exposed, a patchwork full of tortured gasps that mild Jung never ever read. And in the sky, the alien eye riding the oriental rainbow gay display. Lastly I looked down at my feet,saw normal on a box but by then I lost control as my body linked forever with the canvas to tease her pagan soul. -Cleveland W. Gibson, (Author of Billabongo) Faringdon, Oxon, United Kingdom |