"Neon Wave" a poem by Victoria Grace

I am looping.

My life is

looping,

a vivid pattern,

the same pace

each time.

The sky is dark,

the stars are bright,

but my lights always glow;

a permanent

evening time.

Nothing is coming or going,

I feel perfectly calm

all the same.

Yesterday is tomorrow

and tomorrow I'll call something else,

I'll change and rename.

Today is another moment

that I sit through

apart from the future,

alive and well in the past.

My memory is forever. 

My neon is forever.

Everything in this space stays in my head,

these bright colors will surely last.

It's another visit to an inner space

hidden from prying people's view,

during a time frozen and still.

I don't wanna think

of what's to come,

but it's clear that it's something

that could punish or kill.

No, I'm staying 'round these edges,

on the corner of nostalgia,

avenue of cherished residence,

not thinking of unknown destinations.

It's quite comfortable here--

hoping the break in time

will buy some time,

maybe answer questions

of this prior sorrow and frustration.

Here's looking for a way to stay in,

not climb out

of that warmth,

apex of my childhood,

dreams that were dreamt many moons and suns ago.

Just continuing fantasy

with not a hint of remorse

trauma,

or painful echoes.

Perhaps I'll stay here forever

in the bright, beautiful, bittersweet belonging;

stretch out my hand

to reach its glare,

hoping for eternity,

sending out a message

to my prior youth.

Then the old me will know where to go,

where to stay,

and finally know the meaning of her life,

that bright, beautiful, bittersweet truth.

"On 24th Street" a dark poem by Victoria Grace

It was warm,

gentle,

it definitely was not raining.

I see the picture

in my head

and feel the morning breeze

on my skin

too well,

and that woman fills my memory,

that woman keeps coming back

like a discordant note.

Her face came out in a spring dawn,

but it wasn't her time,

didn't seem to be.

Her time was 

dark and cold,

a reminder

of a place

where pain was normal

and speech was lost.

Her eyes stared through

my own,

her mouth opened as if to say something to me 

and her arm stretched forward.

I thought,

no I KNEW,

her flesh was rotting.

I held my breath.

it was bursting,

ready to explode into the sky

shatter into crystals.

She floated down the pavement--

halfway between an apparition

and a dream.

But I knew my heart was open

and waiting for the answer to the question

standing in front of me.

Where did you come from,

the future or the past? I shouted.

She seemed to jump a distance,

her face so close to mine.

Her eyes carried a blaze,

a craze

I had to know was from her present.

Wrapped in the gap of time,

her skin blistering

and festering by every second,

she touched my face 

with her fingertips

and sent a shock

of electricity

running through me.

And I was not 

on that narrow path anymore.

Bright,

berserk images

ripped through my brain,

my eyes pulsing

with the vividness

of them.

The woman was neither

old or young

up close.

She was an enigma of distance

and space

and her skin

her pores,

opened like flowers.

Her blood flowed

with my tears

and I knew she was dying 

to show me the truth

of my life.

The sum of my existence

was a nuclear blast

of catastrophic intensity and heat.

I saw the world stretched out in front of me,

many people with the same

rotten skin

and despairing souls

and I was amongst them.

Was she me?

Was I her?

My eyes opened to the story

unfolding

and I understood

why she was there

on this street

at this minute,

instead of the darkness,

the despair,

she crawled out of.

I saw her smile.

I saw her tears roll down her

fading face

and I wanted to embrace her

but I couldn't wrap my arms around smoke.

"Now you see?"

I heard her whisper as she evaporated into the sky.

"Now I know."

I assured her.

And I turned away from that street,

from that corner,

and began a new direction

that may or may not 

have taken me into a new future.

"Time For An End" An Apocalyptic poem by Victoria Grace

Our daylight 

came after the 

hottest 

week 

in winter 

we'd ever seen, 

sun like flame, 

scorching the land.

Smoke of torment 

wound 

through eternity

from fires 

of the obliviously damned.  

The land is gone,

so is our civilization

and minds.

One by one,

we chose our destiny below-ground,

where we long for death

and witness incineration

of our bloodline.

Sometimes we remember stories

of cool times, oceans and mist.

The others who cannot bear it,

fill with fury, scream and throw up their fists.

Our skin hurts to the touch,

our new home is filled

with our pain from morning to what was once night.

The lucky amongst us crawl out of darkness

into the sun's bright blazing light.

But of sanity,

I told you,

the rest have long since thrown aside.

It's become distant memory what we were,

before His punishment,

before the world died.

I listen to the howls of them in this hole,

how different it is now.

Our end time was bound to happen,

it was just the when

and the how.

My last few days in my corner

has had me thinking quite a bit.

I am only one of few left,

I guess it's time for our spirits to quit.

I whisper my last thoughts from a bleeding tongue,

into the diseased air,

finally closing the hope

that all is just a very long nightmare.

If everything has been taken from me,

erased and denied,

one thing is true--

I tried.