I wasn't expecting to include any poetry in this magazine, but this short offering
from Ian Thomas changed my mind.
A small black LCD projector casts a beam of cold blue light
On a polished granite wall
In an empty and windswept cemetery
Joy, Wonder, Hate, Regret flash rapid fire across the screen/timeline
The shape of a life, an abstract, to which no form can be assigned
Until observed or given context
A silver wire running tight and parallel to the other wires
So tight and so parallel that it has no choice, but to weave among them
Taking its place among the muted gray coaxial
Its ending lost in other beginnings
And always the fear of sent information, always the fear of completion
When ghosts and echoes light up memory
Strawberries, first kisses, betrayals, and failures
Will all taste differently than they did on
The solid, reach-out-and-grab of the present
The past still visible, but increasingly less so
The vapor trail that follows a jet
As it makes its way across a cloudless sky of ultra-blue
The yet to come stretched out ahead like perpetual threat
A promise that intrinsically cannot be kept
Standing against the empty gratifications of nostalgia and hope
There is no match for the vividness of here
Here where you sit, stand, love, hate, and live
Here where everything is happening
There is only here
And there is only you
© Ian Thomas 2007 All Rights Reserved
