Poets & Muses
POETS & MUSES is a collection of poetry & multimedia artworks, celebrating creative connections across mediums. Beginning with the brilliant ekphrastic poetry of Mohammad Taha (new to the Scribes!), we journey through an eclectic selection of poetry in which the writers & their sources of inspiration intertwine & overlap. With a musical storytelling performance by Kara Kemp, a music video by Mantis Osiris, and various visual art pieces accompanying the poems—instruments & voices, pens & paint collide to create an explosive artistic adventure.
Special thanks to Brandon Thorpe for the above cover photo, featuring Dandelion Scribes contributor Chris Boyatt at our most recent poetry reading, hosted by McCreary County Public Library. Read all the way to the end of the collection for more photos and a recap of this latest event surrounding our new community anthology, Where the Old Stories Still Breathe.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Ekphrasis
by Mohammad Taha
Chapter 2: The Midnight Set
by George Fillingham
Chapter 3: This Stranger’s Life
by Cameron Lyric Cox
Chapter 4: We Are Still Here. And We Are OK.
by Rhonda Kendziorski
Chapter 5: Too Young to Mourn
by Jade Willow
Chapter 6: The Geometry of Innocence & Other Poems
by Dane Osborne
Chapter 7: Simple Prose Does Not Fit
by Blair Correll
Chapter 8: First Cup of Coffee
by Kara Jill Kemp
Chapter 9: Self-Portraits
by the Sonnet Sisters (warbling treefrog & the dithyrambler)
Chapter 10: Both Artist & Muse
by Colibria Moonbow & Frances Denise
Chapter 11: Cats & Noodles & Little Love
by Nina
Chapter 12: We Linger Where the Mountains Glow
by Sheena Fry King
Chapter 13: Let’s Play Cards This Weekend
by Amethyst Drake
Chapter 14: Death On A Normal Day
by Brandon Thorpe
Chapter 15: Beautiful Things Will Blind You
by Joshua Walker (The Last Bard)
Chapter 16: She’s So Scary
by Mantis Osiris
𖤣.𖥧.𖡼.⚘
POETS &
MUSES
Chapter 1: Ekphrasis
by Mohammad Taha
The following ekphrastic poems were written and formatted by Mohammad Taha, each inspired by the corresponding cover artwork.
“My Only Face” was written after Andy Evansen's watercolour A Boat, a Bucket and a Brother. “Congregation” responds to Bruegel's 1568 painting The Blind Leading the Blind, where six blind men follow each other into a ditch while a church looks on in silence.
Click or touch to navigate to the next slides and read the two poems in full.
Chapter 2: The Midnight Set
by George Fillingham
Inspired by the Dandelion Scribes digital collection, Creation is My Refuge
MIDNIGHT
Graffiti atop Pilot Rock like a permanent reminder
That someone wanted to be remembered
To be a thing of this world, to be not an idea.
A man’s name and a date: 1934.
When I stood up there I could see a long way
Even at night, especially at midnight.
Across the far below and far yonder
Lights impress themselves like images in playdough.
The land of milk and honey, the lights mimicking
The stars above, the milky way.
These stars had to appear to gather someplace.
Might as well be here above me on this rock outcrop.
When this enormous outcrop was just a fish lair
Under shallow seas and marshland I wouldn’t have mourned
The cost of so much after hours light or gasoline for travel.
I would have shrugged at news of spilled milk
And simply looked at the Milky Way
From atop old Pilot Rock like somebody
With a marker in 1934. I could have left a name
But why compost your compost.
⚘
MY SON AS COMET
(died 2016)
“Voice, come out of the silence.
Say something.”
–Theodore Roethke
Darkling from the big black empty where all things began
the comet that was my boy arcs from out eternity.
I helped him grow from a hewn ice ball
thrown far into the night, to a beautiful caring man,
his maker’s mark all over him.
I’ve tracked this comet that became my son
with my heart and my mind and in the flesh,
running through the star fields of our yard laughing,
like my alien-familiar in my day and night sky.
Driving to work above me his telltale tail reminder
I was his dad. Driving home down empty roads
Comet-son, so much like me we see through each other’s eyes.
Two streams of light across the dark. But someone thought different.
I watched the fire of collision burn him up. The flames
too soon too far away for naked eyes to find.
⚘
A SON OF MAN
Luke 9:58
The traffic fades to fitful headlight beams
like rodent eyes above thick nostrils sniffing.
They scour me as I wait. The bright eyes leer.
A dusty Moonrise breaks the trees.
The hunter-hawk finds rest high in these trees.
The dew assembles a hutch of snuggled rabbits.
The prowling fox, still hungry, retires to a hollow log.
The garden spiders walk their moth-less webs.
I lag behind to breathe the sky above.
The stars exhale the empty road as one long nerve.
I am a son of man. I feel the shoulder of the road
against me, nudging me along.
Chapter 3: This Stranger’s Life
by Cameron Lyric Cox
NEWBORN
The day I was born
I opened the eyes of an adult body
fully formed.
They entity that possessed it
whispered a lifetime of memories into my mind
before it slipped away
into peaceful oblivion.
I came equipped with knowledge
of how to walk and feed myself
and drive a car and do arithmetic.
I already had a job
and friends
and enemies
All of which had been gifted
from the dying entity, but
I could not hide that
I was someone new.
And so,
I introduced myself
and made this stranger’s life my own
But I can’t escape how strange it feels
to have a lifetime of memories
that are not of me.
⚘
MELTDOWN
It was so many little things
that built and stacked together
until it was too much to bear
and it all came bursting out.
I stomped my feet so hard
the ground cracked beneath them
opening fissures all the way
to the molten core of the Earth.
I screamed so loud
the sound burst out with
such ferocious pressure
all the walls crumbled and
the studs were ripped from the foundation.
I flailed my arms
and gnashed my teeth
and ripped my eyes from their sockets
to relieve the pressure pounding in my skull.
I fell to the fractured ground
wailing
weeping tears of blood
surrounded by destruction and finally
…
…
…
“Hey, are you okay? You spaced out for a bit.”
The world comes back into focus.
No damage.
No carnage.
Everyone moving, unbothered, through their days.
“I’m fine,” I say
and touch my thumb to each fingertip over and over
and over and over
until my heart stops racing
and I feel as calm as the world looks
outside.
Chapter 4: We Are Still Here. And We Are Ok.
by Rhonda Kendziorski
PANIC
I can’t breathe!
I can’t breathe!
Gasping, clutching, no air coming
Chest tight, pulse racing
Vision blurring, mind whirring
Crying uncontrollably
I can’t breathe!
What is wrong with me?
What is happening?
I’m OK I tell myself
I’m OK!
But the panic doesn’t go away
Calm yourself, take a breath
Cold cloth on my neck
Why am I such a wreck?
I can’t breathe!
What do they think when they see
This weakened weeping version of me?
No, no, I have to push through
Be here for my loved ones
And see things through
I must breathe!
Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale
Slowly, the knot finally uncoils
The crushing pressure lifts
Lungs releasing
Finally breathing
⚘
MIRROR IMAGE
Passing by the mirror, I pause for a closer look
The eyes staring back at me are mine
Elements of the face recognizable
But she is still a child
She looks scared and lost,
defiant, and determined, all at once
Locking eyes, we share a knowing
of all she has been through
But only I know what is yet to be
In the gap between her and me
Reaching through to the glass
We press palm against palm
I wipe the tears from her face
Pulling her into my embrace
I try to console her
It’s ok little one, you are precious
and stronger than you should have to be
You will get through it all, you’ll see
I do not release her
I hold her tight
We are one and the same
I carry her with me in heart and spirit
With gentle reminders that she’s still here
That we are still here
And we are ok
⚘
DREAMS OF YOU
I saw you in a dream last night
My beautiful friend
We were in a room full of people
You were standing in the distance
Much too far away
Talking and laughing
Like back in the day
For a moment everything seemed okay
It felt right, because you always knew everyone
Everywhere we went people stopped to speak and hug you
You were so loved
You still are
I miss you everyday
I touch your chimes
And say your name
There’s a void in this world
Things are not the same
Each night I hope for the gift
Of another dream with you in it
So I can see and hear you again
If only for a minute
⚘
NO FIXING IT
There are a few who learn quickly
At the first sign of trouble
Instantly reacting to protect themselves
Through warning growls or gnashing teeth
But usually, it takes a lot of kicks
Before a dog turns against you
So full of love and excitement,
Willingness, and devotion
The first time it happens
It doesn’t know what to think
Confused and hurt
But it still has that joyful spirit
Longing to please and to connect
The next time it happens
It becomes a bit more uncertain
Skittish when you call it
But still the hesitant wag of the tail
With willingness and adoration
The desire to be loved
As it happens again and again
It learns not to trust you.
And YOU have the audacity to wonder why it changed
Its little spirit is broken
Although deep inside,
There’s a glimmer of wishfulness
That this time will be different
It takes a lot of kicks
Before a dog turns against you
But once it finally does
There’s no fixing it
Chapter 5: Too Young to Mourn
by Jade Willow
BEAUTY
I’m too young to mourn beneath the bathroom lights, too young to know that pretty feels like a fight. There’s a girl inside my phone with such a flawless face, skin, and grace, and every night I loose a fight against my face. “But you’re pretty!” Yet, the mirrors cut too deep, and boys like girls more loudly when they look good on a screen. So I learned to twist my angles just so I feel that I belong, whilst insecurity hangs on me like a dress I cannot take off.
⚘
LABELS
I am not labeled by any title, for I am my own person, and my own I will continue to be. I stand by myself, not because I am selfless, yet I am my own, and by myself I shall stand. So be it, I will stand alone, praying and searching that someday I will find my one true home.
Chapter 6: The Geometry of Innocence & Other Poems
by Dane Osborne
THE GEOMETRY OF INNOCENCE
The power of white science
That heals your mind so you will see the world anew
Through the eyes of a child
Is understood and engineered
By infinitesimal equations
By means of the geometry of innocence.
That is when everything you see becomes ethereal
And everything is clean again.....clean again.
The frequency induced by electrical plasma
At microscopic scales
Creates probabilities which open
The door for the miracle of breath
And life, forever.
POEM FOR DANIELLE (REQUIEM)
It's my regret to inform you
That Alas, the kindfaced woman of the white sun who lived on Love Street
And collected big sums of stolen money as charity for all the hurt youth
That belonged to the full moon who ever knew her touch
So she could see their souls....has met her day
Where she danced with death and learned for herself how soft and easy
His embrace can be for those chosen few who merit mercy from a universe which Already knows and sees.
Oh Hurt Youth enslaved by the grip of a mad white moon!
Those who weep now at the news I bring.
She Died! And the eye inside my mind be forever haunted by the absence
Of her celestial warmth that radiated from her black sky eyes
Which always read of confidence in wilted flowers that survive all frost
And the sadness of knowing tyranny born from chance.
Cry not and take comfort her love was a seed
Planted in all she loved and healed
And by this,
She lives on with our every step on this cold leaden planet.
MY MOTHER’S EYES
My mother has kind dark eyes
that shine with God's endless mercy.
Her heart goes out to those
Who nobody has a heart for
And she has my heart for that.
My mother comes off
tough and tired of the blue world
But her heart breathes mercy into this world
That nobody has ever known of before her.
She doesn't know this
But everybody who has ever loved her knows.
My mother has kind dark eyes
That have no cruelty
However harsh her tone may be.
Oh Let her have the peace
She's wished for so many others
During these sad hard days
Of the sun and moon.
Chapter 7: Simple Prose Does Not Fit
by Blair Correll
MUSE
Only when I pull from the stars
Can I write pieces of him
He is the fire and these are halfhearted sparks
He is the galaxy and these are mere dots of light
Here I translate the vibrant short breaths of him
Because simple prose does not fit
It is not the song he is
Or his voice of the world
Or his eyes of everything
He is all color and light and hope and humanity
I put him to paper when he is gone
So I hold him tightly when he is here
I want him to remember my hands
I want to remember him beneath them
As if I could hold him in my mind
Thinking maybe he will stay there longer
Until he comes to me again, a dream made real
Then I can put away my penned half truths
And delight in his bewitching reality once more
⚘
A STRANGE CASE
Now my life seems to form
Taking shape around me
I am hardly aware of it
Though it is no great surprise
I have been in so many cages
Created by my fantastical anxieties
The lights are too bright
The nights are too dark
I am unsatisfied with reality
I am creeping along through it
Oh but don’t discount me yet
Yes I always know how to get out
Let me play the part for a while
Singing and shuffling my feathers
Appeasing my Hyde one more day
Then you will find me flapping
Then flying then soaring then gone
Chapter 8: First Cup of Coffee
by Kara Jill Kemp
A musical storytelling performance.
Performed as part of Kittens on the Keys (2014) at Murfreesboro Little Theatre, accompaniment by Jonny Gower and band, singing by Jennifer Butler.
Click to play the video.
Chapter 9: Self-Portraits
by the Sonnet Sisters
The Sonnet Sisters write themselves in this playful pair of self-portraits, originally published on the Sonnet Sisters’ Substack. Taking inspiration from self-timed photographs—making each sister both poet & muse—they create images that capture a meaningful sense of self, and conjure captions in rhyme & meter that speak to deeper identities.
In the following photos, warbling treefrog explores Hokitika Gorge, New Zealand, and the dithyrambler dances at Angel Falls Overlook in the Big South Fork. Sun & sky, color & place inform the poems accompanying the images—revealing how each sister sees herself within the natural world, inseparable from Earth.
All trees are travelers, Muir says, when they sway
on journeys there and back in strong windstorms.
I grip cool bark and blend with branches gray
to voyage wide but leave deep roots untorn.
On still nights, I await a gentler breeze:
the flutter of a moth’s swift velvet wings.
No howling wind, but cricket chirps I’ll seize,
imbibe the grace and song of fleeting things.
My voice carries to soil and tree top
fond odes to weather, bugs, and novel news.
Winged shadows may subdue but never stop
the lovers’ verse that treats the now as muse.
Beneath the wheeling sky, I’m starlight’s cog—
well-read and loud, an eastern gray tree frog.
–warbling treefrog
I am the dithyrambler, and I climb
to cliffside high, where water winds below
through rocky sandstone gorge carved out by time,
swift river bending, breaking—and the crow
I call—all cloaked in black—he answers back
as buzzards swirl around the clouds and search
for what can enter life, and so I ask
the sun to stain with light this ancient church.
No windows here; I breathe in open air
and move with grace when music meets the wing,
to circle round the mountains like a prayer—
my talismans hang down—I dance—they swing.
I am the dithyrambler, reaching sky—
above the blue, I see the other eye.
–the dithyrambler
Chapter 10: Both Artist & Muse
by Colibria Moonbow
& Frances Denise
PATH OF KNOWING
Being the knower
Your own muse
Walking yourself home
Into remembrance
Through fractaled reflections
In the many forms of trail angels
Not A soul; THE soul
Vicarious living through
Malleable clay form
Flesh vehicles animated by wonder
Seeking pleasure
Finding the balance of pain
In the flow of know
You are both artist and muse
Remembering again
On the long walk home
–Colibria Moonbow
Collage art created by Colibria Moonbow.
Inspired by “She in the Red Cloak” by Frances Denise.
SHE IN THE RED CLOAK
A woman clothed in a deep-red hooded cape
Dusted with fresh snowflakes
The same pure-white whispers swirling around her
On horseback, she rides carefully through the woodland
Her majestic companion, loyal and strong
Dark brown hide, jet black mane
I don't know who she is or where she is going
She belongs as a picture in my mind
Carrying a message that I've been here before
In this solemn place
Blanketed in sorrow and wonder
Memories etched in air,
Taken in only by the sensitive breathers of sound.
As I watch the snow fall in surrender
I see her in her crimson cloak
She feels as deeply as I feel
As we contemplate the profound beauty in the silence of winter
In its harsh bitterness and gentle peacefulness
A comforting backdrop for rest and mourning
Containing so well, in regret and gratitude
All that has gone before
And all that is to come.
–Frances Denise
⚘
UPROOTED
He arrived like a roadrunner
Stirred my heart like a hurricane
He was sent
To push the stone off
My tomb
My hiding place
To breathe life into
My slumber
To show me everything
I needed to see
The cancers that were
Siphoning me
The love that laid dormant
Buried deep in my grief
We held each other
For a moment
That moved like a lifetime
He kissed me like something holy
Hurt me like something sinister
We shifted, we drifted
Pretended, we
Fought hard for what was
Fought hard against our fate
Stubbornly believing our love
Was strong enough
To make it
We stepped into
That tick in the clock, and
Just as swiftly
Far more painfully
He was taken away
Under moonlight
And a thick gray sky
He was
Uprooted
From me
–Frances Denise
⚘
FLIES
When I dropped my resistance
To the flies that arrived
I remembered that nothing appears without purpose
I know now that
They were here to digest
The death of my most
Persistent selves
They were here to help me
Compost the programming
And its network of roots,
Here to absorb my unprocessed grief
They were here to prepare
A soft bed of soil
To fully support the millions of seeds
That are sprouting –
The new choruses that will soon populate this ground.
Forgive me
For yesterday's primitive understanding
You are right, I heard you –
I am no stranger to the underworld
It took me in as its daughter,
Taught me its secrets
But fear is a potion that makes one forget
We either drink it
Or spill it for the fungi to ingest.
There is no better option for me
Than to believe this is best
And sure enough, I expressed
I witnessed, I cleansed.
When the work was done
When the book was closed
The flies were no more.
They vanished
They picked up and left
Our consumed moments
On the forest floor.
–Frances Denise
Chapter 11: Cats & Noodles & Little Love
by Nina
it’s raining
cats and noodles
I don’t know what to do
it’s raining
cats and noodles
and now it’s raining
pigs too
⚘
Chapter 12: We Linger Where the Mountains Glow
by Sheena Fry King
ECHOES WRITTEN IN LIGHT
Inspired by “Cosmic Memory” by Amethyst Drake, from the Dandelion Scribes digital Collection, Poems from the Cosmos
We stand beneath the same sky
not new, not ours
just borrowed starlight
traveling centuries to find our eyes.
Before us, they stood here too,
boots in Appalachian soil,
hands calloused from carving homes
out of stubborn mountains,
heads tilted back
toward a cosmos they could not name
but somehow understood.
They didn’t say light-years,
but they knew distance.
Didn’t say nebula,
but they saw birth in the haze.
Didn’t speak of gravity wells,
yet felt the pull of something greater
holding them in place.
And now we whisper words like
Orion’s Belt,
Andromeda,
red giant,
event horizon,
as if naming the stars makes them ours.
But the sky does not belong to language.
It hums in frequencies older than speech,
a quiet radiation,
cosmic background,
echoing the first breath of everything.
Maybe our ancestors heard it
in the crackle of firewood,
in the hush between cicadas,
in the long dark stretch
between one hard day and the next.
Maybe they knew the stars were not just light
but memory,
burning archives of time,
each photon a messenger
carrying stories across vacuum and void.
We look up now
through phone screens and satellites,
through constellations mapped and remapped,
through telescopes that split light
into spectra,
hydrogen, helium, trace signatures
of something ancient still unfolding.
But still,
we are the same.
Standing in the same dark,
beneath the same expanding universe,
orbiting a middle-aged star
in a quiet spiral arm of the Milky Way,
pretending we are separate
from the story we’re inside.
What if the stars are speaking?
Not in words,
but in collapse and ignition,
in supernovae that scatter the elements
we carry in our bones,
in the slow fusion of hydrogen into helium
that mirrors the way we try
to become something more.
What if every constellation
is a sentence we’ve forgotten how to read?
And the mountains,
old as tectonic memory,
stand like witnesses
between us and the sky,
reminding us that time is not linear
but layered,
like sediment,
like story,
like us.
We are made of the same dust
that settled into these hills,
the same carbon that once burned
in the heart of a dying star.
So when we look up,
we are not observing.
We are remembering.
And somewhere, beyond perception,
past the heliosphere,
past the pull of our own small orbit,
the universe continues to write itself
in collapsing clouds and spinning galaxies,
waiting.
Waiting for us
to listen again.
⚘
MOUNTAIN SPELL
Misty meadow morning,
Hollow hit by light,
The creeping sun spills over hills,
Waking us up bright.
Yet high along the cliffs,
Where stone meets endless sky,
The shadows loom,
Midnight tangled with noon, passing by.
A soft-blowing breeze drifts low,
A whisper through the trees,
For these old hills hold secrets
Carried on centuries.
Struck still by stark silence,
We listen, breath held tight,
As the sun slips back behind the peaks,
Shooing day into night.
Called toward rest,
Though our hearts want play,
We linger where the mountains glow
At the edge of dark and day.
Then dancing in the moonlight,
Fire burning bright,
We skip a ring of laughter round,
Tickled with delight.
For in these mountains’ quiet spell,
Where shadow, flame, and sky unite,
The world feels ancient, alive,
And perfectly, wildly right.
Chapter 13: Let’s Play Cards This Weekend
by Amethyst Drake
There’s a light in your droopy eyes
that flickers every now and then
which reminds me of a star
gone supernova in cursory fits.
You are a force of nature,
a thunderstorm in shambles;
The prime version of myself.
And perhaps that’s why I love you,
in my shallow simple way.
For that and the many threadbare memories
we often howl about
into the early hours of the morning
because being good is so wildly overrated!
I remember drinking Zima
in that old graveyard
our backs resting on two faded tombstones
to make ourselves comfortably at home.
Or the time we raged into the night
like unchained spirits
worshiping at the altar of St. Matthias
and putting Morpheus to bed
until Jaime hid everything remotely intoxicating
including the Benadryl!
We were undeterred, however,
our spirits lifted at once
by our vow to take off our pants at the creek
and shoot something!
You told me once we could never start a cult
because we would fight over who gets to be
God.
I think you’re right about that.
But debating is what we have always done.
Arguing the finer points of democracy like the
Greeks of Ponch Creek.
Me whipped into a self-righteous fury
and you so violently wrong.
To this day I don’t think I’ve changed your mind
about anything,
always agreeing to disagree, however
passionately, knowing, as ever, we are
two sides to the same coin.
I never dreamed we would actually fall out,
until we did.
Having spent years not speaking still breaks
my heart,
even though I know it was my fault.
I was in the prime of my enslavement,
you in the infancy of yours.
I grieved your loss the same way I did
when I discovered God doesn’t exist;
That is to say, harshly, and in fits.
My mistakes cost me dearly.
I never got to speak to your mother after that,
even in the end;
Not because of you,
but because I was too ashamed.
I will regret that until I die.
Nevertheless, it was she who brought us back
together in her final act of kindness.
The blank page before me reminds me
that there is much left yet to write.
Until then I will leave you with this;
You are a bumblebee lost in a poppy field,
but you don’t have to be there alone.
Let’s get through this together
and for God’s sake,
let’s play cards this weekend!
Chapter 14: Death On A Normal Day
by Brandon Thorpe
THE NEW HOSPITAL
A quiet death on a normal day.
For everyone else,
things were the same.
How long before
they return to work,
and before their kids
go back to school.
For a second there
everything had
stopped.
The people in
the hospital paused
to watch
as the sobbing family
passed them by.
And wonder what
had made them cry
with all the context
to take a guess
in a building surrounded
by death.
During the day the halls
are alive, but after hours
they turn out most of the lights.
The place feels like it should be
off limits, but you or someone
you know's been admitted.
You can sneak anywhere you
want
so you go to the cafeteria
and watch your
phone in the dark.
They keep the chapel
gently lit
they’ve got boxes of tissue
and pews where you can sit
off in private and cry,
if someone you love has died.
With its sprawling
empty halls, the liminal
spaces during the day
thousands cross, decorated
with quilts and local art
school children made
to honor the doctors.
Outside they have a giant pond
and a walking track tracing it
you can walk on. Inside the water
there are little green fish
and frogs on the ledges
that always jump in
when you get too near,
and the big statue of Mother Mary
they brought down from the hill
when this place was first built.
⚘
THE HOME OWNERS ASSOCIATION
IS A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION
Diodia virginiana
covers the ground
smothering all
the grasses out.
Purslane
ground clovers
dandelions
broadleaf
wild violet
moss
rise up in violence and
murder these lawns.
Box turtle fragments in a freshly
plowed field
every action we take in life
ends with something killed.
There’s nothing more ugly
than a perfectly manicured
lawn. They lied to us all
to sell lawn mowers
to homeowners.
It’s not only ugly,
but it uses too much water.
Ecological dead zones
that might as well be
made of stone.
The only thing that
survives
are mosquitos and flies,
maybe some mice
but nothing
to support predator life.
No reason at all
for a spider to cast a web
It’ll just get poisoned
from the chemicals you
sprayed. So you’re menaced
by the pests
because your lawn can’t
support anything else.
Put out poison and traps
a mouse eats some, then
gets eaten by a cat
that dies in pain alone,
and its owners wonder why
it never came home.
Leave nature alone
If you own land, and you happen
to have
control over a little chunk
of earth
why would you want to make it
worse? To fit in? Salting the
earth with some invasive grass
species that’s supposed
to grow easily.
Let the weeds grow
let the pollinators eat
watch the bees go from
one flower to the next
eventually the frogs show
up
to eat whoever’s left.
This is their home,
just leave them alone
You can leave yellow jackets
sugar water in a plate
when it’s late fall
and they’ve run out of sugar
from their babies.
They get desperate and fly
into your drinks, they’ll
actually calm down
if you give them something
to eat.
Just remember, there’s no such
thing as a
weed.
Artwork by the author.
Chapter 15: Beautiful Things Will Blind You
by Joshua Walker (The Last Bard)
THINGS MY HEROES TOTALLY SAID
(Note: the writer is a highly respected poet but amateur historian.)
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.
Except on Instagram. There you should pretend
to be considerably happier than you are."
–Oscar Wilde, 1893
Wilde warns us of the dangers of social media.
He understood that a photograph is not a life,
that the heart cannot be measured in likes,
and that no man truly needs
fourteen photographs of his brunch.
Remarkable foresight for a man who died in 1900.
“Find what you love and let it kill you.
Unless it's cigarettes. Those things are twelve bucks a pack now.
Switch to vaping."
–Charles Bukowski, 1987
Many people misunderstand Bukowski.
They think this is about death.
It is actually about inflation.
“This is the way the world ends,
not with a bang but with a whimper,
and probably after somebody posts the whole thing
on TikTok with Subway Surfers underneath."
–T. S. Eliot, 1925
Eliot understood attention.
He knew modern man would someday require
two simultaneous stimuli
just to experience the apocalypse.
The end of civilization would no longer be enough.
We would need captions. And gameplay.
This is generally considered
the central argument of The Hollow Men.
“Because I could not stop for Death,
he kindly stopped for me,
but I told him to circle the block
because my DoorDash was almost here."
–Emily Dickinson, 1863
Dickinson reminds us that death is patient,
but mozzarella sticks have a delivery window.
Scholars often point out
that DoorDash did not exist in 1863.
This interpretation is unnecessarily literal.
Dickinson was a poet. She had imagination.
“She walks in beauty, like the night,
like a princess among the stars.
Anyway, The Empire Strikes Back
is clearly superior to the first one."
–Lord Byron, 1814
Here Byron abandons metaphor
to make an important critical distinction.
Some believe A New Hope has the cleaner narrative.
Byron disagreed.
He recognized the greater emotional complexity
of Vader's revelation, the tragedy of Han Solo,
and the maturation of Luke Skywalker.
Unfortunately, Byron died in 1824,
which prevented him from seeing Return of the Jedi.
But Byron was a Romantic.
George Lucas made space operas.
Historians tell me
none of my heroes said these things.
But historians concern themselves
with dates, manuscripts, evidence,
primary sources, and other obstacles to knowledge.
I am a poet. We concern ourselves with truth.
And as Oscar Wilde famously said
shortly before his death,
“Wikipedia will sort all this out eventually."
⚘
THE GAP IN HIS RÉSUMÉ
I wasn't listening at first.
They were two tables over.
One man with a folder,
the other wearing a tie that looked borrowed.
Job interview. None of my business.
I heard pieces anyway.
Twelve years experience. Forklift certified.
Never missed a shift unless one of his kids was sick.
It sounded like it was going well.
Good references. Knew the equipment. Could start Monday.
Then the interviewer tapped the résumé.
There's a gap here.
The man stopped smiling.
Eight years, the interviewer said.
It doesn't say what you were doing.
The man looked at his hands.
Then came the question
printed on every application
like a door pretending not to be locked.
Have you ever been convicted of a felony?
Yes.
The interviewer looked up.
The man nodded toward the résumé.
That's the eight years.
Something changed.
Not loudly.
The interviewer was still polite.
Sometimes polite is worse.
I see.
The man had heard I see before.
You could tell.
The interviewer talked about company policy.
Background checks. Liability. Certain positions.
The man listened.
At first.
Then he said, Can I ask you something?
The interviewer stopped.
Did I lie to you?
No.
Am I qualified?
Yes, but—
Can I do the job?
From what I can see, yes.
Then what am I supposed to do?
Nobody answered.
The man leaned forward.
I did eight years.
I woke up there every morning.
I went to sleep there every night.
I lost birthdays. Christmases.
My mother died while I was there.
I did what the judge said.
I got out.
And since then I've filled out applications
until I know the questions
better than the people asking them.
I tell the truth, you don't hire me.
I leave it blank, you call me dishonest.
I explain, you tell me about policy.
So tell me. What exactly am I supposed to do?
The interviewer looked down.
The man didn't let him.
No. Look at me.
You asked where I've been. I'm telling you.
I fucked up. I went to prison. I did my time.
I'm not asking you to say I didn't do it.
I'm asking you when do I get to be done?
The room had gone quiet.
He sat back.
For a moment neither man spoke.
Then the interviewer closed the folder.
I don't know if he got the job.
That's not the part I remember.
I remember the man
straightening the résumé with both hands,
smoothing a crease he had made in the paper.
Then quietly saying,
I just want to work.
And God,
there shouldn't have been anything extraordinary
about that.
⚘
BASER NATURES
She never asked them to fight.
She only learned where to stand
when she wanted them to.
One smile across a crowded room
and Troy discovered gasoline.
Good men became old gods,
breaking bottles, friendships, marriages,
each swearing she had made him do it.
She hadn't.
That was her favorite part.
She only touched the match
to whatever they had already soaked in fuel,
then watched civilization remember
how thin its walls were.
By morning, three men were bleeding,
two brothers no longer spoke,
and someone had punched a hole through a door.
She left with neither Paris nor Menelaus.
Outside, sirens painted the street red.
She lit a cigarette beneath their light,
looked back at the burning kingdom,
and smiled.
Helen had always been blamed for Troy.
But this time
she knew exactly what she was doing.
⚘
STARING AT THE SUN
My mother told me not to stare at the sun.
She said some beautiful things
will blind you if you love them too directly.
I thought she was talking about the sky.
Years later, I watched you leave
and kept looking long after you were gone,
as if pain might become an answer
if I refused to blink.
It didn’t.
There are still mornings I see your shape
burned into everything I try to love.
I close my eyes.
You are brighter there.
Chapter 16: She’s So Scary
by Mantis Osiris
A music video made by Mantis Osiris & the dithyrambler.
Click to play the video.
𖤣.𖥧.𖡼.⚘
Before you go,
see what the Scribes have been up to
in-and-around the Big South Fork,
and check out our upcoming events!
McCreary County Public Library in Whitley City, KY welcomed the Dandelion Scribes on August 21, 2026 for an evening of poetry & community, featuring local contributors to the new anthology, Where the Old Stories Still Breathe.
Special thanks to Victoria Smith, Grady Wilson, and Rhonda Kendziorski who coordinated this beautiful, unforgettable event!
Photos courtesy of Cari Lynne Wilson.
Coming up in September, we’ll be visiting Pulaski County Public Library in Somerset, KY (9/8), The Black Cat in Oneida, TN (9/19), and Black Cat Folk Magic in Knoxville, TN (9/27). Head on over to our events page to keep up with all the details for our ongoing book tour!
Online orders & more information about the book available here.
And thank you to Historic Rugby for hosting us on August 15 for our book launch! Shoutout to Annie Patterson, Bonnie Cassida, and Gerald Hanwright for preparing the theatre for us!
Finally, YOU are invited to join us for another upcoming performance in Historic Rugby, featuring Dandelion Scribes contributor Kara Kemp as the special guest for our Muses & Magicians summer variety show series finale. FREE community event!
Thank you for reading, communing, and supporting the Scribes!
Don’t forget to subscribe for updates straight to your email.
𖤣.𖥧.𖡼.⚘
With endless love & gratitude,
the Dandelion Scribes
