In the shadow of the colossal sphere, where ancient echoes sleep,
Vaeloria fades into the dark, a secret it must keep.
The watchers put their scopes away, the screens fade out to grey,
As morning calls the busy streets to meet another day.
No scholar marks the turning tide, no profit in the view,
For men forget the distant stars to chase what is brand new.
They walk through cities built of glass, untroubled, blind, and proud,
Unknowing that the selfsame veil is gathering like a cloud.
The rot that choked the Aethel Sea now crawls along their strand,
An unremembered resonance that slips across the land.
As silent as the giant orb that hid the world before,
The shadow comes to take their home, and lock them in its lore.
Through lenses cold and ground from mountain glass,
We watched the dying worlds of iron pass.
For generations, every spark we found
Was tethered to a bleeding, broken ground—
The sudden flash of silo doors undone,
The brief, horrific birthing of a sun,
Then ash that drifted like a heavy shroud
To lock a planet in a toxic cloud.
We turned our mirrors to the northern sky,
Expecting just another world to die,
To see Vaeloria’s final signature
Be etched in fire, black and premature.
We braced for the familiar, sudden glare
Of empires burning down their final air.
But what we found across the cosmic deep
Was not the final, static-riddled sleep.
The planet did not burn; it started glowing,
A quiet, silver respiration growing,
As if a willow made of starlight grew
And drank the poison till the sky turned blue.
No high radiation tore the night,
But pulses of a deep, organic light.
A lonely mind had stitched the broken spheres,
And washed away a century of fears.
We leaned into our sights, amazed to see
A world redeemed by a single tree.
The borders fell like fever from a long-tormented frame,
No steel was turned, no legions marched, no decree spoke their name.
For when the node of silver wood began its quiet rise,
The phantom lines of sovereign pride dissolved before their eyes.
The ancient ghosts of territory, of fortress, and of crest,
Like winter frost before the sun, sank deep into the breast.
The pain that once had armed the hand and built the concrete wall
Was opened to the anchor node, unmetered, shared by all.
A mother’s cry in Sector One, the drought of Sector Four,
No longer stopped at checkpoints or the barricaded door.
The collective mind, in empathy, received the bitter sting,
And wove the ache of centuries into a single string.
Where once the barbed dividers stood to guard the hollow grain,
Now surged a tide of healing hands to wash away the stain.
The map of old Vaeloria, where blood-bought nations bled,
Became a tapestry of care, by quiet mercy fed.
No citizen was left an island, stranded in their grief;
The shared scar of the species brought its ultimate relief.
Fiction evolves from reality.
Even Truth in stranger than Fiction
Again Fiction has the power
to initiate real stories.
Fiction is the reflection of Reality
and vice. Versa.
The measure of power of Fiction
depends to what intensity
it can influence readers.
The more the reader is engrossed
or impressed, more powerful is the Fiction.
Reality and Fiction apparently resemble
two poles of a magnet, attracting one another.
If Fiction be the shadow of Truth,
Truth is Shadowed by Fiction
Life is not a Continuous Function -
But contains chapters of discrete function
as several happenstances
producing Fiction of ruthless Truth
The radio towers died at noon, the screens went blank and cold,
And static ceased to whisper of the empires bought and sold.
Down in the deep concrete redoubts, where millions gasped for air,
The ordinary citizens were stripped of their despair.
But in its place came something vast, a terrible, clean weight—
The absolute, unyielding hush that settled at the gate.
For thirty days no leader spoke, no siren pierced the dark,
The automated generators left a silent spark.
Men stared into their calloused hands, unable to recall
The frantic noise that used to drive their backs against the wall.
The silence was a physical thing, a pressure in the ear,
That forced the crowded bunker-rooms to face their oldest fear.
Yet by the third long, wordless week, the madness turned to rest,
As heartbeat matched to heartbeat in the quiet of the chest.
They learned to read the shifts of light, the breathing of the crowd,
And found a stranger, softer tongue where nothing was allowed.
Before the silver wood reached down to claim the planet's lease,
The bunker citizens survived the suffocating peace.
The fuel, fury and addiction,
stupendous depiction.
I’m magnetized; my nose buried
in vellum sheets. Varied,
the construct of complicated
simpletons located
on cliffs, near harbors, with their ghosts;
misdirecting guideposts.
The injection of crafty twists;
flying ink insists
you sink deeper into its thick.
The turn of pages, a joystick.
Wanting to finish the story;
feeling’s transitory.
Compose a series, Author, please!
Your book ended with tease.
I’ll have eyes on antagonist,
tea with protagonist,
follow breadcrumbs and red herring,
and choose to be daring.
T h e E n d
Vivid scrolls,
in tantalising yarns,
fantastic that reveal,
exotic envelopes of vista,
that have me transfixed,
and transported,
my brown hazel eyed,
gladsone gaze,
oe’r lush depiction,
bold brushstroke of,
myriad science fiction,
vibrant character snapshots,
that dispel monotony,
douse mundane patterns,
gap-filler of trite,
vacuous daily plod,
as I clasp otherworld,
enchantment in a dash,
novelists who exude,
endowed flourish with,
pockets of fly plots,
misleading labyrinth,
convoluted and intricate,
shady, cagy, fly-by-night,
side routes veering off,
adding riddles shadowy,
step by echoe’d step,
in hair-raising soundscape,
rushes of exhilaration,
stoke and fire,
iridescent wonderland,
escape into mythic mists,
entwined flames of romance,
laced with sumptuous,
dream moon flotillas,
a swooning heart march past,
yet I bystander engrossed,
by segue after segue.
Black Manta and Jayna sing's
Sexy Mermaids
Written By: Dristter A. Niente
and Lex Luthor
-------------------------------------
"because of its inherent qualities
I don't know what to say
the ship in the harbor
follows me
every step of the way
it might sound crazy
maybe I'm insane
I saw blackbeard neath the pelmet
just the other day
I aint got no issues
she replaced theJolly Roger
with a pink and blue pelmet
I saw her blackbeard
I couldn't look away
thar she blows
I know there I go
Neath the pelmet
I saw blackbeard
Dobros get your jolly
she told us all
strangers in the night
a ship big and tall
thar she blows
and there I go
i saw a blackbeard neath her pelmet
---------------------------------------------
ple growth wood and cured resin
gives it it's sound
----------------------------------------------------
The making of the Scarecrow is a documentary
Narrated by Lex luthor
At HI features, oh how we shudder.
Here, back in time, each human brain has 'em,
in DNA's scripts, brains soft as butter,
and the code of low-grade protoplasm.
But now, thanks to Tomorrow 4.1,
we've recognized the strange and the stranger,
and we look proudly at what we have done,
eradicating the human danger.
Rest assured, we are safe, silicon friend.
They were just evolution's hapless bump.
The human race has now come to an end.
and we're not plagued by that pesky ol' chump,
for, we quashed the clumsy human pretense
they called unique ethics and intelligence.
You will discover how my keen mind works
Through books I’ve read, or rather, through their quirks.
I leap into unknown as pages turn,
As chapters fly I find where I belong.
To fight and win the hero’s wars I yearn
While my adventures move the plot along.
I roam through distant worlds in every book,
I delve into the author’s shared insight.
I’m Tom, I’m Robinson, I’m Captain Hook,
An English orphan, a Round Table Knight.
I taste survival grip in Love of Life,
My Gatsby’s in pursuit of a green light,
Edmond Dantes’ obsessive revenge drive -
His vengeance burns until the wrongs are right.
Can’t help falling in love with Princess Bride,
I wear an Iron Mask - my grand disguise,
With loyal Dr. Watson by my side,
I’m charismatic Bond, spy of all spies.
I laugh out loud at cantankerous Grinch
Who holds angelic villagers in fear,
Bet beloved Dr. Seuss didn’t flinch
At placing Grinch’s sneer against Christmas cheer.
As pages turn into unknown I leap -
The realm I enter is mine to keep.
September 7, 2026
"Read away and let your imagination soar." By Poet......
I love books both new and old,
did you know there is power between the pages?
A book is made up of paper and ink,
the words give power to the fiction.
As a reader one can go many places,
learning about life and living.
Reading can bring one's imagination to life,
as you turn the pages reading away.
We can place ourselves and feelings in the story,
as we become one of the characters.
Sometimes it will take our breath away,
other times it may put us to sleep.
As a writer our imagination comes alive,
when the ink hits the paper.
The power of fiction,
can take us over as we write.
The letters become words,
then the words become sentences.
Our story becomes alive for the reader to enjoy,
after all we write for our readers.
As we write happy or sad,
the reader's feelings will come out.
We hope the reader will enjoy,
our vision for the poem or book.
An earthling knows what he likes,
as he soars and he sails river pikes.
He has two arms and two legs,
is not hatched from eggs,
and is perfectly suited for bikes.
Yet, folks from the planet of Zentical,
with one arm, three legs, and a tentacle,
can't steer a bike,
which they really dislike.
Other than that, they're nearly identical.
Sponsor: Nette Onclaud
Contest: LIGHT A PENSEE Poetry Contest
Date:July 28, 2026
Seed Becomes Light
Candle tongue
small sun in ink
he burned twenty hours to wake dawn
darkness cracked like glass before him
night bowed to one man
Poet Note:
This pensee is inspired by Thomas Edison, who worked by candlelight to invent the light bulb.
They journey midst the stars or so one might think
They come and go by way of the roof like energy,
Or so it might appear at times, wearing uniforms
But usually dressed casual and they ask for either
A pizza or a soda- maybe they want to make Promotional
Arrangements or perhaps they come for an important meeting
How do they really come? By transporter, in which case there’s
a ship orbiting over head? Convertible or other car? Or perhaps
walking? Maybe by bus but there aren’t any that run on Sundays-
Perhaps they stay close by overnight although that’s not likely so
that it had to be one of the other ways- you can only wonder and be
grateful that they are patrons
Next a person might wonder who they are-fictional characters right
from the movie screen or respectable people with various life styles
and names who play a game whether it’s tame or to avoid the television
at football time-whichever of the above they happen to be if any they are
Star Trek fans even as they seemingly glimmer around
In the night, the sea was still,
Maggie Province, with iron will,
A mission clear, eyes set on the prize,
But shadows linger, beneath dark skies.
Fire the guns, let the thunder roll,
Echoes of courage, in a brave heart's soul,
But the darkness hides, they’re flanking our way,
Fight till the end, through the storm we’ll sway.
A warship lurking, laying down the mines,
We charged through the waves, as fate entwines,
But a cruiser’s wrath, came rushing in,
No mercy shown, where this battle will begin.
The ocean roars, as we stand our ground,
In the face of doom, our spirits are bound,
With every shot, we’ll make our mark,
But the night grows colder, and the sea turns dark.
Down we go, with the stars as our guide,
Brothers in arms, forever we’ll ride,
In the depths of the ocean, tales will resound,
Of the brave destroyer, that fought all around.
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