"Adam and Eve" by Leonard Beaumont

The man's blue eye peers out from the dark, while the woman's red lashes advance with confident stride. This place is an ancient, Martian paradise. A time when the red planet shimmered wet and blue, and naked aliens waded through thick and stylish foliage.

Romance abounds in these vintage postcards, these myths that sharpen our vision, yet cloud our good sense.

As these two move toward me I long to open my arms, give them both a good, firm embrace. But they will break apart and rejoin the abstract lines, shapes, and rhythms of the background before I even get close.

There will be no evidence left behind from these visitors. Nothing except the persistent memory of their having come and the nondescript yet powerful sense that without them life is no longer worth living. They are blood-sucking predators disguised as peace-seekers. Flat, empty, vessels parading as beauty, truth, and hope.

"Prisonier" by Norbertine von Bresslern Roth

Why were you just standing there, silent, for so long? I knew you were there, loitering beside the trashcan. I've longed to knock over that trashcan, examine its contents, day after wretched day. Handle a half-eaten pretzel, sniff a soggy, empty soda cup, just for a change of pace. Just for the sake of something new. It's not that anything inside this cage is bad. But, oh, the tedium!

I noticed you there, but I dared not stare back at you. I know what annoyance it is to be stared at, and didn't want to frighten you away. You stood so long, I thought you might be aiming at something. Perhaps, after all the gawkers had gone, you might do something interesting. But you just hung around for such an achingly long space of time, and then slipped away, passing into the crowd, nameless, like all the rest.

Day after day these faces, these figures, bleed into each other and become like wallpaper in the most abhorrent of rooms. Curse this insane asylum. I no longer know my own voice, or preferences, or temperament, for all that is unique is lost in this sea of identically miserable days.

"Hanami - Coming to you" by Mara Cozzolino

Image posted with the permission of the artist. See more of Mara Cozzolino's artwork on either her Etsy store of her Blog.

This is one of those moments when I lose my sense of not only place and time but who I am. The weight of things doesn't matter. We might as well be on the moon. We might as well be in a dream. I see you moving toward me. Now I hear the swooshing sound of your skirt as you walk. And now I feel the air being pushed around by your movements. Wait, I'm being pulled back to earth, back to the waking world. I feel my feet hitting the pavement, smell the crisp, cool air, hear the pleasant chatter of people. But I don't want to leave, and I don't want to come back. I just want anonymously to drift in the spaces in between.

"Cats In the Trees" by Eileen Mayo

Are we one or two as we slink around the trees?

Up one, down one. Where is sky and ground? I cannot see. The leaves obscure our vision. But gaze on, we do, as if we have a view.

Shadows patch the branches like floating ghosts or overgrown amoebae. And as we move, our stripes slither as if they are their own living beings.

"Outside Stood An Old Fellow Chopping Wood" by Betsy Bowen

Image posted with the permission of the artist. This print was published in the book The Troll With no Heart in His Body by Lise Lunge-Larsen, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston, 1997. See more of Betsy Bowen's artwork on her website here.

A great troll, camouflaged as a towering evergreen, wrenches over, hands curled, eyes set with focused urgency. Is he looking at something in that hand? The sound of steady chops breaks the quiet stillness.The rest of the forest is set in aqua-blue like a whisper in the background of this dramatic scene. Indeed, the troll, flanked by pillars and with an arch overhead, seems to stand on a stage. And though I momentarily feel I am a member of an audience, his anxious leaning over and the shape of the rectangle which encases him cause me, too, to lean over. It is as if I am peering into a shoe box I had stowed under the bed and forgot about a long, long time ago.  

"Lake Spirit" by Dale de Armond

Yah! Hop, skip, like a stone over and above the waters (splish splosh, splish splosh), but you, you owl-faced sea-monster encircle me with your claws. This seems to take hardly any effort on your part. Those mighty talons, they churn up, swoop down, all at once, yet so calm and serene are your eyes. Oh, how exhilarating this hopeless flight! The cool, crisp air! The claps of waves against waves! The most wondrous dance I've ever done. You have me, yes, this I accept, and all I ask is that you make it quick.

"Fügelfjell i mitnattsol" (Birdcliffs in midnight sun) by Frithjof Tidemand Johannessen

The laughs of the seagulls invade my imagination. I run in circles asking myself what it is that I want from them, myself, or anyone else. I find no answers ever, but I keep asking these questions. Keep returning to the same places over and over again as if it is my destiny. As if I have no control over how my vacation time is spent. Let me lay here overlooking the restless waters; rest a while, alone, surrounded by such painfully beautiful geometry. I need a breather, just for bit, before the next lap around the track that has been set begins.