Jane Hulstrunk

“Out for a walk”

Inspiration

Cecilia Driscoll

Response

“Wood Pause”

in a mountain wood

i learned to love the road

pavement leading surely home

along the golden vanishing

i learned to love the road

its dusty graveled verges

in the golden vanishing

safe from sudden steel speed

its dusty graveled verges

crumble walks in leaves and grass

safe from sudden steel speed

through the turning season

crumble walks in leaves and grass

old growth’s solid comfort

through the turning season

gaze is drawn above, away

old growth’s solid comfort

deep roots, long shadow

gaze is drawn above, away

beyond the moment’s stillness

deep roots, long shadow

pavement leading surely home

beyond the moment’s stillness

in a mountain wood

Jane Hulstrunk

“Wall of Windows”

Response

Cecilia Driscoll

“My House”

Inspiration

My house is pastel pink

and ivory

like the inside of a seashell

like new skin and

pale blushing.

My house is made of wood

a living thing a gift.

It smells of cedar.

My house is completely

open on one side

and has many windows.

My house has bookcases

around a hearth

and a chimney

flying to the sky.

My house has books

about hearts and souls.

One room

is full of ponies.

John Lewis
“The End of the World”
Inspiration Piece

_____________________________

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Jane Hulstrunk

Response

(Partially Fostered by Conks and Other Planar Groupings)

© KJ Hannah Greenberg

drkarenjoy@yahoo.com

Conks and other planar groupings,

Grow up suckling, rending coarse

Debris from flora-type relations.

Pores, spores, sundry bits of broken

Fiber, feeding filaments in concert.

Strange, yet absolutely staid, strands slough

For truffle hunters, folks seeking forest food.

Rangers, furthest remote persons, relay

Surveys, knots, first-aid, compasses, and scat,

Fire-starting, cloth-style signaling, maybe

Leadership. Such men avoid all grand mammals

Hungering for outdoor suppers; tasting,

S’mores, corn, coal-baked chops, ‘tater boats,

Bits, pieces, toes, fingers, fleshy parts.

Afterwards, upland dwellers, dying out,

Morph from fear to fright as malls,

Housing, highways, factories, schools,

Displace mating, hunting, itching, gathering.

Then furries without new gene pools grasp

Human nibbles make poor nutrition, taste salty,

Compost, nonetheless, to augment rising fungi.

On Not Believing the Merry-Go-Round’s One-Eyed Horse

© KJ Hannah Greenberg

The one-eyed horse of the merry-go-round,

Timber valent of midways peripheral to small towns,

Sang like a canary before he got recycled.

Not ‘bout fry fests, bake-offs, or golden-crowned queens,

‘Nere ‘bout darts, dunks, draughts, nor regarding games in between

Rather, he whispered folksy comments.

The wooden laureate, his glory painted with care,

Espoused motes of warnings to revelers who dared

Let their kin wander the fair’s bunged lanes alone.

Nonetheless, many teens, tots, grandpas, cousins, some others,

Heedlessly traipsed far from their aunties, sisters, and mothers;

They meant to exult in machismo.

No neon, no weigh-ins, no snake oil in bottles,

Deterred those y chromosomes, those intent on throttling

The festival’s flirting lumberjack.

Fisticuffs, guns, daggers, plus piss words,

Fell flat, crumbed, remained utterly absurd,

In the face of that colossus.

That giant, a tree trunk, an ax-wielding man,

In the vein of bulls, bricks, boxing champs, weapons since banned,

Demoralized new fellows with a glance.

Meanwhile, his smile, more than money, grace, or home cooking,

Brought the babes to his sphere, plain plus good looking.

Too bad he was built of tin.

Nights, after gaffers locked up all around,

Pulled plugs, fastened stakes, secured the compound,

The cyclops equus snickered to his pewter master.

Response

Nikolas Lotze

Inspiration

Old Man’s Refuse

In this picture,

an old man; his demeanor frail and outlook grim.

His journeys stored in lines etched across his face, cracks that disappear in the folds or clefts left by time in his skin. Wanting to sever the threads to his wasted past and to the memories that bring him nothing, his children speak of a past unbridled, beautiful, full of colours eyes naturally seek, but shadows fall on their futile ways. His eyes see everyone as a stranger, an equally shared gaze listed as distant, broken, sickly pale and alone. Sitting gathered beneath the realization that at this end of our lives,

days can be numbered until our ascension to wherever it is you’ll call your next home. Until then, he will bide his time, thinking of his end as another obituary in the news; waiting for the sound of all clear to leave behind the only signs of life in this picture. an old Polaroid depicting golden days in the years gone by,

crumpled and tinged with yellow, strewn across like his room in piles of refuse.

Jane Hulstrunk
Inspiration

Channie Greenberg
Response

Generations of Morning Glories: Dialoging a Changing Mother/Daughter Relationship

Quick maturity, in motherhood, allows for twining habit, also, attractive blooms,

As well as for a tolerance of rigorous circumstances. Morning glory’s vast tessitura

Remains despite her fragility of flowers, the total rapidity with which she perishes.

“Hold my hand and smile at me,

Sip the vial of life with me,

Be my friend a time with me,

Please stay around a while.”

Much energy gets consumed teaching kids to selectively invest, to choose wisely,

To mindfully hold to established strictures. Whereas constraints often well serve sons,

Plus daughters, during difficult occasions, offspring protest that boundaries chafe, stymie.

“I will make it to the top! I’ve no deterrents, no reason to stop!

I’ll extend to the big times! I’m one with purpose, soul, energy, rhyme!

Stand back world! I’m ablaze! I leap here, there, everywhere, especially from home!

See my peak, my apex, my superlative point, my heightened place, my incomparable zone!”

Convolvulaceae helps regulate temperature; their development forms needed insulation.

Yet, according to the Victorian language of flowers, such plants symbolize “love in vain.”

Witnessing a child’s differentiation, no matter how awkward, brings loss, besides pride.

“Suddenly, the world blurs in sunbeams’ waves. A spangled ceiling coronates me.

If I win, I have to be the champion, the one who claims victory.

Though, when sky high, if I fall, that death must be recorded as mine.

Good-bye leaf. So long tree. Mommy dear, set me free.”

Interestingly, the seeds of many species of morning glory contain ergoline alkaloids, i.e.

LSD-like compounds. Parenting has never been as altruistic as reported in the media.

No matter mothers’ or daughters’ relative awareness, shedding bits is less than innocent.

“I sparred, hurt, fledged, advanced. My heart’s thicket

Came to discern ‘worldly crises’ from domestic messes.

Whereas external validation remains important, I returned;

I grew up, fully morning glory.”

Along with the Doll
By Channie Greenberg
Inspiration piece

Too hastily, along with the doll tossed last year,

She rooted in familial stock, made pride in heritage.

Her harbor of helpful bits, that social sanctuary, mental

Vicinity, where bedrooms of critical thinkers dared not stalk,

Remained a place in which ambitions got written off.

Such a gal’s imperfect blathering of truth recalled no

Ongoing telepathic events or even fiduciary appreciations;

There, parental exaltations waited, as did isolated, yet fashionable

Ways and means for completing chores, excluding gleaning “hakobe,”

In other words, not counting the gathering, dicing of “star chickweed.”

Experiences around her table, likewise, most often separated

Squishy private parts from earlier suffered thirsts. Rubrics mattered.

Girly lingered far from ignorance concerning: sentience excuses,

Snarls in spider webs, antique musettes, horses suffering spavin,

Marital infidelities, somebody’s wee kitten pulled from the loch.

Similarly, she stored vegetables and whole grain crackers,

Utilizing tiny plasticware, proving entertainment for her kids, forgetting

Folding laundry, sweeping floors, fancying dubious enterprises.

Family function necessitated pairing individual slices, some greens,

Pulp, charif, wise guy remarks, dead flowers, also laconic talk.

After all, horrible, chemically-laden grocery store shampoos,

Usually obfuscated by general domestic mayhem,

Lacked no power to remove lice, even to clean properly.

Without associated fortifications, her toddlers stumbled.

“Time out,” minus toys, continued on important in shared life.

Morally Tall Friends: Eucalyptus’ Lessons

Sturdy trees, such as cedars, acacias, myrtle, oleaster, cypress, boxwood, elms,

Share no medical organizations, PTA committees, or scout troops with eucalyptus.

As fast-growing admonitions, the latter espouse desired boundaries, all the while

Urging foresters to reminisce, even to forfend, on big thrills’ less-than-sober realities.

Notable among green giants, those gummy providers of practical materials

Ride over small surfaces, contributing needed compasses in most civic woods.

Such economically-beneficial groves transport us, help we feeble-minded approach

Bits and pieces of human experience that show up on LinkedIn or on YouTube.

True swap drainers, they ground flighty veracities, skip clay, carnival glass, bubbles.

Their roots seek fresh structural archetypes, tap new means to stockpiled securities.

No matter our reading habits, intellectual ambitions, or level of self-dishonesty,

Mallee trees can issue constructive building blocks, ward against emotional “pioneering.”

Lignotubered or not, smooth-barked stands do: counterbalance empires’ “magnetic moments,”

Suck away rhetorical twaddle, set aright individual orbital motions, fix cultural slop.

Straight-trunked, “them wonders” stuff our waste into foil-wrapped packets of meaning,

Exclusive of stooping to romanticize regular railcars, chipmunks, out-of-the-box fancies.

Their cousins, rough-barked morrells, too, leave propulsion amusements lingering,

Flit us away from favor unreliable sorts like politicians, bankers, wholesalers, cosmeticians.

Either’s “normal” yield supplies enough kinetic energy to propel our populations,

To shoot kin past opining quintessence, salty balderdash, more patchwork beliefs.

True myrtles, tall friends teach satiation derived from climbing platforms,

Enjoying views, looking groundward, breathing, breathing, breathing, then dropping.

Those full-leaved, towering phenols frame social accelerations as neither good nor fun,

Question suffering möibus strips repetitions rather than deferring, honorably, to reason.

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying
or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or
artist is strictly prohibited.

Response piece

All of the Personal Fringes of Prayer

© KJ Hannah Greenberg

All of the personal fringes of prayer, those whispers, murmurs, rustlings, remain

For affixing appreciation to dandelions, nettle, the tubers of Orchis mascula,

Also Orchis militaris, in fighting bronchitis, maybe tuberculosis, and asthma.

Twilight’s stars, at alarming moments, seem distinctly removed from heaven.

Bogged down by candies, drink, hookah pipes, street drugs, fashionistas’ advice,

Many souls look away from others’ faces, suck television’s teats when sitting shiva,

Forget the wedding of man and G-d, the exquisiteness of the universe, the wonders

Typified by alley cats, kangal fish, capybaras, moreover, the musical insects of creation.

Emunah, rather than some spewed patterning of memorized, lame components,

Continues on as more precious than any soothsayer’s insights, sparkly fantasies,

Shiny things that bypass dissonance-causing events (setting off no personal glory

At the highest echelons of distrait worship). We’re dumb to stuff; truth hurts.

Added compassion, new tolerance, further dollops of imperfect courage, even small hope,

Allow individuals to disregard many hegemonic patterns, embrace dew, lick raindrops,

Herald the blooming of roses, violets, wild oats, escape beyond remote social strictures,

While tangoing in terebinth, lemon, and olive groves, watered by formerly dry wadis.

Trenchant bells, golden light, the whisper of brief zephyrs, a donkey’s bray, bleating

Sheep, too, bring tomorrow’s solidarity with yesterday, into focus, front and center,

Fan stilled bodies with aspirations, do introduce home cures to complex dilemmas.

From Jericho to the Dead Sea, humanity witnesses linnets overwintering in deserts.

Near my doorway, white agaves thrust blossoms. No aloe vera, those plants

Could feed hungry mouflon and arkars, whose pelage’s yet esteemed by future

Fair City kids, youth whose vulnerabilities get deemed, hourly, safe or no from terrorists’

Poniards (Ya can employ ordinary language to merit Shemyim’s commissionaires).

Temporarily, residents, tourists, voyeurs, we rediscover the cost, in individual lives,

To witnessing the intense dark blues and blacks, of our celestially special sector.

Until silver shofars cry, awaiting when the satori of believers will bring susurrus,

We’ll linger in anticipation of taking delivery, of receiving the lone, holy amplification.

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying
or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or
artist is strictly prohibited.