We ride the shimmer, stardust spun/
Between the birth of dying suns/
A groove of galaxies unwinds/
The pulse of silence, vast, sublime/
Nebulae breathe, in violet streams/
We waltz on waves of astral dreams/
Comet tails curl, a cosmic tune/
Our shadows cast by fractured moons/
Through veils of gas and drifting light,
We pass from day into the night/
Where gravity’s embrace is loose
We dance, unanchored, star-induced/
Electric hearts, in sync, align
With every ancient, pulsing sign/
We cross the nebula, become
A groove eternal, endless drum/
And when the universe exhales
Its secrets, stardust, cosmic tales/
We’ll still be moving, you and I,
Across the nebula-lit sky/
I was so small, looking up at you as I gripped your
hand tight.
My eyes like deep sea bioluminescence, yours like a
nebula.
Dead and anew.
You were starlight, the sun. Close enough to warm me,
but impossible to hold. To soothe.
The world was not meant for us
And yet, here we are.
Mismatched, misshapen, misbehaved.
We peer through the cracks and cut our fingers on the
edges.
And you, you said you would die young
Snuffed out so fast, in a moment of darkness.
I guess you got what you wanted, then.
I guess you wanted to leave this all behind.
Instead, you left me
Stuck with your spirit bursting in my chest.
I am engulfed in this absence, filled with seawater.
Head pounding to the beat of your heartache.
And the tree that watches over you
Stretches to see the sun.
And the dirt blankets you the way your mother
never could.
And I hope you found your place in the vast.
But, god, didn’t you ever look up?
Who could ever bear to leave this world?
Nebula to Eye
Where stars weave though velvet sky
Is born a limpid nebula to eye.
no sound
in a cascade of nerves
submerged
amid a myriad of silences
a serpentine fold
slices through the viscera
and a breath
of phosphor
burns
in the chest’s hollow
a crawling rhythm
of an aborted name
shapeless
a lunar longing
locks into the bones
among the remnants
of a collapsed nebula
I do not heal
I do not return
I am
flesh that refuses form
You had me
for a year, I believed it all was true.
Every moment, every action,
how could it not be?
Like a serpentine snake,
you slithered inside my mind, my body,
squeezing out all my trust,
all I believed in you.
You made me lower my guards.
I believed.
I wished I didn’t.
You showered me with love,
a cascade, a toxic waterfall,
drowning me in a myriad of lies,
your words with a cruel lilt,
twisting truth like a blade.
Like a lunar glow, you fooled me,
your eyes deceiving.
I fell, head over heels.
Now I’m stuck, haunted like a nebula
that never fades.
Star Studded Night
Myriad stars like tiny jewels greet me
as I set up my telescope
a new moon was the current
Lunar cycle, no light to interfere
Ophiuchus the Serpentine constellation
Slithers across the sky trailing
Phosphorous dust in its wake
I train my scope on the pinwheel shaped
Andromeda constellation its spiral arms
reaching far out to space
the Helix Nebula comes into view
its brilliant colors from a shrinking star
a Cascade of meteors from the Perseid shower
cap off my night with a glorious display
streaking across the dark sky.
("Starless Nebula", 2020, original encaustic)
Nebula of Mind
Each step we take, each breath, each thought
A crossroad
A point of possible turning
Holding a potential
Balancing all the weight of the past
With the light of a future
Each moment another chance
To see the light
And release the weight
Everything that comes
The embodiment of all that has been
Till at the crossroad of death
We experience the habits of a life
The way each night we dream
Of a clear light
Through the veils of our day
Who are we, where are we going
If not this clear light
Conditioned by all we do
Each moment, each step, breath, thought
A crossroad to face
What it is we are doing
Where it leads
And if the veils thicken or thin
Right or left, up or down, in or out
Is not the question
Or the answer
As we wake
From beginningless sleep
As stars form
In the nebula of Mind
(12/17/23)
Hubble photographed her
in her finest sapphire
and carnelian display;
a wizened sage who’s
gathered knowledge of universes
Orion takes his back seat to her luminosity.
Gowned in her elegant splendor,
Carina’s a nebulous delight,
upon Sagittarius’s Arm
a pageantry of excellence,
as she arrives at the universal ball.
Marbles rolling among gasses.
through the black passes;
dynamic wormhole universal flight;
etheric ghosts ride to the light.
Soul in a dream state,
spectre awaiting checkmate.
Fall into the lion’s mouth,
slide on down south.
Animals to guide you through,
abyss of many colored hues;
revealed secrets hiding deep,
within recesses, up they creep.
Deep within the glass revealed,
answers await a calling peal.
Lighting candles pierce the black;
revealing secrets in greenbacks.
When bells are tolled, all’s said and done,
beneath an orange and mocking sun;
truths no longer hidden lie;
within all-seeing, glassy eye.
1-26-2022
A STRAND (1060) Poetry Contest
Brian Strand
Expectant eyes searched dark sullen skies
Stellar starlight was dim this nebula night
The mourning moon in silent swoon
donned sorrow's shroud beneath a cosmic cloud
Her vibrant veil, faintly frail
Brilliant beams became stygian streams
Then dawn danced as aurora* advanced
Marbles rolling among gasses.
through the black passes;
dynamic wormhole universal flight;
etheric ghosts ride to the light.
Soul in a dream state,
spectre awaiting checkmate.
Fall into the lion’s mouth,
slide on down south.
Animals to guide you through,
abyss of many colored hues;
revealed secrets hiding deep,
within recesses, up they creep.
Deep within the glass revealed,
answers await a calling peal.
Lighting candles pierce the black;
revealing secrets in greenbacks.
When bells are tolled, all’s said and done,
beneath an orange and mocking sun;
truths no longer hidden lie;
within all-seeing, glassy eye.
It's the spherical objects in these galaxies,
That revolves and rotates
Brightened by the light from the red star not so far,
Fissions of helium.
Ever orbiting path never missing the track,
Kepler noted for us.
Apart from all, geometry in the cosmos,
Rapt its solidity.
Ever amazing facts that make us in this blue,
Marbled, as seen from space.
Deep, abyssal it enclosed in the Oort cloud rings,
Particles years apart.
We keep our time according to its deft motions,
Settings move in their ways
Rockets to visit neighbors in the Nebula,
A telescopic, view.
get beguiled by meteors those showers sometimes,
Falling fire from above.
Spectacles sparkling from afar, hitting at times,
Yet we feel safe as part
Wonder how the crates in our moon shaded airless,
Dimples it bore for us.
All seemed its static stationed somewhere with its moon,
What a place, we call home.
The word sprouted
from the brute
matter
breaks out...
Through
the paled
disguise
of the throat,
instigates one
creative reaction
in the nebulae
of mind,
and by reflex
emits a signal.
And by metaphor
allusion,
arrives to the ropes
of the larynx
in shape of
sonorous signal we call,
word
On a planetoid in our galaxy
lives a being of illumination;
spinning stardust from her palms,
in colored chromatic ecstasy.
Like ribbons flowing from her hands
that whip and whirl in lunar-play;
she crafts rainbows in motion,
electric neon swirling bands.
Brilliant cascade of locomotion
bobbing lights in outer space;
look up to the heavens in wonder
at her bright harmonic ocean.
5-23-2021
ALL YOURS (May 25) Poetry Contest
Brian Strand
The Horse Nebula
rises from flames, forged
from Milky Way core.
Saturn flanks his right,
Jupiter his left --
Gods girded for war.
Lightning bolts whistle
above the red glare
for all to beware.
Dark stallion ascends,
riderless, regal,
through the rarified air.
Photo taken by the author at the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, July 29, 2019, showing Saturn, Jupiter, the Milky Way core, and Southern Delta Aquarid meteors.
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