We have new poetry from several excellent writers for our June issue. Donal Mahoney, Corey Mesler, Isaac Black, William Doreski, Ricky Garni and Steve F. Klepetar. They’ve each added a spark to Spinozablue and expand its history.
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Pathways have always intrigued me. Especially deep pathways that go on forever, with tall thick woods all around that deepen as you go further in. They should scare you just a little bit and make you question why you started in this direction, wondering if you’ll ever get out. But at the same time, they should be green and thick and verdant enough to make you not care one way or another. Should you make it back out or not . . . should you ever see the light of day again, your home sweet home, your girl, your trusty steed. Of course, there is always the dragon in the center to find. Or the pot of gold. There is always the contrast between all of that virgin green and the soft, running river and the ugly factory close by. If it’s closed for the day, you can hear the dragon. If not, if it’s bent on being an obnoxious complainer through its soot-filled chimney stacks and the like, the dragon will likely never leave his lair.
I can’t compete with blue and green. I have to just accept that. They are better than I am. Truer. Blessed with myriad connotations, while all I have is one: Doug. Which connotes . . . Doug. Why is it that we, being a part of nature, the same as, separate ourselves so far from it by taking on names, so we lose our ability to connote and denote and provoke a thousand things? I wish I were not a human, but rather a natural repository of similes. Colors. Allegories. Poems and symbols. Richly elegant, maddening, edgy and mercurial. A thousand things cast off here but cherished over there, on the side of the pathway with the Christina Rossetti girls, lying in the pond, taking turns playing Ophelia.