Wordsmiths-Guild

What are the things that I find beautiful? A smile that just happens. A heart that keeps beating even when it's breaking. Calloused hands and feet with thick, bulging varicose veins because they belong to people who didn't take the easy way out, people who worked, who strove for what they got. What else do I find beautiful? Eyes, expressive eyes. Eyes that are so intense that you can see the realness of the person within. Eyes that are bright with unshed tears yet keep on forging forward, looking straight ahead, never down at their feet in defeat. Eyes that look at the stars and see more than swirling orbs of gas and dust held together b

In the streets of a hometown I used to wander Trapped between the stilled time of a sunset And the afternoon's hazy rush into a deep evening, There was a shopping district where I used to play. There was a drunken blaze of shops here, Bulked together like the bells Of Japanese rituals and priestess ceremonies. These shops, to a young boy, seemed to grow Like a mountain of treasure. Behind the mouth of a gaping alleyway The streetlight flickering over a secret doorway, The district emerged like a mercantile Atlantis. Atop restaurants stacked like bamboo steamers They vended birds in small cages, fish Like living ribbons trapped

When you dream of monsters, Keep the teeth, the claws, the wide, drooling maws. Keep the dark fur and frightful face. Keep them dreadful and wrawling and avaricious. Don't try to humanize them, to find the little person with two smooth arms and legs, Five fingers on each hand and eyes made of three parts. They're not there. Instead, remember that monsters are there to remind you of what scares you, To draw and repel. Monsters aren't broken things to be mended, Nor ugly things to be realised as beautiful. There is no status quo for them to revert to. That monster underneath your bed, the other hidden in your closet and the one dwelling in y

He had the most expressive eyes.  - You could drown yourself in those eyes, I said. And I wanted to. He was thin.  Lithe. Like a candlestick or a branch.  Frail. But in a way that held permeance.  Like he could take on the world and bend but not break. I admired that about him. He moves like he's afraid to disturb the air. Like molecules were butterflies, and I wanted to crash my soul against his. Still. I wanted to protect him.  So would you.  If you met him.  If you had him. Because no one has ever had such eyes, and his hands touch you like you belong in another world. It was summer, and we melted together like the world simplif

Fiction. Fiction is a mirror, a palliative, a catalyst. Fiction is a shield, a safe-harbour, and salvation. It is wide-open arms and the quiet voice in the dark. Sometimes seeking. Sometimes comforting. Always the gentle teacher that says, 'You are not alone.' It is the road you didn't take, and the fork you may yet encounter. Fiction allows you to escape, allows you to discover. It allows you to forget and it allows you to remember.

We are made up of stories but we are not a myth. No one has imagined us. We are not carved out, painted automatons jerkily making our way across the stage by someone else's push and pull. There is a grace to each of us. Our hearts carry sunburst scars, still exuberantly beating no matter the state and feel of our bones. What is integral is still alive, still functioning. We will die, someday. It is inevitable. Terrible things will happen to us - have happened to us. But our path is necessary; it is demanded. We will create unrelenting, glorious things. We will each be known by new names. Nightly our skin threatens to crawl away but we catch

You dance a fluid staccato down my spine - transform me. I am a bridge, head thrown back, toes curled. A thief in the night, you could steal the very jewels from my eyes. Our bodies are silky tempests, quick feet never touching the floor. My sweet chameleon, I have become the Italian summer sun in your arms, yellow through the window slats. Scatter pearls across the floor, changeling, and I will be a siren for you. My skin ripples blue and green as the ocean. But gentle - gentle. Sing a sweet song for me or I, too, will fly away. We feel the earth in our hands, and gather mistletoe in our fists. I see you are up to your ol

Tuned in the news today And I could hardly even trust my ears I can’t see where we’re drifting to Without an anchor in the flow of years Are we really moving forward? Out to sea or are we shoreward? Where is up? The new thing is to be PC Right down to the eighth degree Alongside rising selfishness And new waves of entitlement Are our causes getting greater Or are we just getting smaller? Is it both? It seems like no one knows no answers Are we health or are we cancer? Who could know. So how am I to live my life? For status, fun, subscribes and likes With children free of sacrifice? Or should success be my pursuit? To plot, b

parted lips a single breath held hostage by Surprise and Awe pink cheeks kissed by Cold button-nose speckled by Light blue-green eyes filled with Magic peering out from under a warm fur cover frosted by powdered-sugar air a pause      compelled by Wonder overwhelmed by Curiosity    "please...           in this moment...                    breath for me."

The sun is subdued velvet, and the sea is dressed in tumbling crow feathers: the birth of a pearl is like a god. slow, unfurling like snow, inhuman in a sea of mud. Lend him hands and a home, build him bone and shape him, something smooth like silk, like wispy wool. The divers are burrowing under liquid glass, untwining soggy weed to search for shells – for pearls, the pearls! – with hands that scrabble for god, who is worth too much. for the burnished bubbles of milk are cherished above and beyond the bubbles of breath rising from the doves in flight with feathers of silk – the divers, like doves, are free &#

and all I want is to reach inside you and gather your flame-bred moments of sorrow, shatter them to pieces with a hammer made of daylight, throw them in volcanic furnaces and breath their smoke as they burn, letting them settle in recesses of my soaring lungs, safely locked away - and and all I want is to reach inside myself and gather my barefoot moments of happiness, bathe them in dewdrops and dry them in the fresh dawn sun, tie them together with a zephyr-vine, offering them to you at sunset when tired and thirsty and the single traveller on a dusty road you look for shadow and a cool drop of life.