By Stephen Mead
Shine Taken
Hole where you were, hole where smell & sweat was a well of warmth. To sip from there was having parchment abruptly become leaves growing right out of the page: The book of you, the riddle in a face so unconsciously itself, so innately expressive yet almost totally mute, summoned my inner plant, tendrils creeping, weaving green light… Today the trellis rather sags. Today the shine is a smoke screen of vague associations rubbing right through. Sure, the pulses conjure haze & that haze - Moon yellow, Nazareth star, David - indelibly corresponds… But the blood, the ink of it, the skin, its tattoo, hardly patches over or holds the chasm which once was luminous. Its veins are dark. Its rivers rush occluded as bruises & shiners under eyes. What force hit? What truck or fist with no ending this wind of a graft refused? Revocation, I reject you. Absence, I’m delving out, steamy with coals, their smoky streams, ‘til the book of me glows in any hand, any gaze who will pass word of this light, be its bright fever, & return, a conduit, with news of you.
Walking Through Sky
It begins around the body unrealized. Step outside & enter your landscape. What is air but the horizon closer on skin? Notice snow as mostly an all-over-cloud. There can be a rising even while huddled as it falls. Better for a spell to twirl with arms extending up to let the wetness be a baptismal of sorts. Still, in other scenarios, distance occurs & the world appears to be the vision painted with absolute clarity on an enamel brooch. Suddenly birds turn the telescope, tantalizing eyes for skies reverie-filled. Then the tree tips seem close, releasing blueness. Oxygen is the most heady of stuff especially at night when time forgets itself & you remember, a miracle, to lose the day's weight. Drift further & further - the spirit urges against any resistance, & that is to become one with these heavens shadow-carried at last as light.
Restless Tetra
The aquarium sizzles with drips: top of the pops----- fin reflections, green light, white, &, outside that glass, this room, this house-----darkness. Rain starts, the sought sound, the silver tongues coating earth skin, limbs lifted, & wouldn't it be good to belong? Who gives such quiet, heightened? Who gives these images: ripples, rings, singing throats of the night & a coursing towards sleep? Why not slip out, open from beneath easy as a Manta or umbrella tossed back, scooping waves while the head, quite unexpectedly, basks? Look, the tank's runneth over & this new element becomes a membrane giving forth the dreams of plants. Don't return to the glass confines. We need air, need to try feeling what others are afraid may very well kill us. Perhaps they are right, but perhaps there will be a miracle & us fish will grow legs.
Stephen Mead is an Outsider multi-media artist and writer. Since the 1990s he’s been grateful to many editors for publishing his work in print zines and eventually online. Recently his work has appeared in CROW NAME, WORDPEACE and DuckuckMongoose. Currently he is resident artist/curator for The Chroma Museum, artistic renderings of LGBTQI historical figures, organizations and allies predominantly before Stonewall, The Chroma Museum – The Chroma Museum (weebly.com)
Academy of the Heart And Mind 