Eight page template - inner leaf (middle pages)
Back cover
Front Cover
Dirty water flows and streams
Under eyelids creased
Under harsh vowel sounds
Jammed in whispers
Under truth
Of the soil
From the tender hearts of
Karaya Morris, photographer
Alayne Caroline Ballantine, poet
Twelve page template - outer cover
Trying to see through the dark-
The depths of our fear
Our eyes were closed
But we were all still awake
Having almost forgotten
How anything feels
Not only time had melted away with the night.
Slick red thoughts of vacancy.
Meshed and woven flesh
Taught over wounds that still bleed.
Concrete and regulations
are the only thing that i trust
A distance we can measure,
built up and in between us.
For all the people-
who see me alone while i sleep
My Cyclical dreams
from their sick little thoughts
Broken fingers dangle
from doorways
Resistance is a choice
But we have no voice
My syllables drown in waves of red iron ore.
What is left to feel
By those forced to chew
On the backbone of our system.
Dreams of sovereignty
With no awakening.
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Page 1
She stepped off the balcony,
from the windows made of sand; I rolled around in poison oak,
wishing she would die; both of us wanting to go home.
To be who we should,
not what had dissolved us; we knitted ourselves together
like a train busted, bent, and broken
kissing a snowy mountain-side.
There passes a wave among us.
A plague of syllables that crash-
against each others drawn-on eyelids; paper thin and glued together.
Twelve page template - inner cover
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Why am I licking my wounds?
Because it helps them heal?
Or because they are all I have left of you.
When all I have, and all I’m left with
Are these lingering cuts
That I never let heal-
Like the cat
I just picked and picked away at both of our skins
Twelve page template - middle leaf (face same side as outer cover)
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Page 3
I can only dream in white noise
The heavy breath of air
Here, in all this dryness
It made me cry
And my knuckles bleed
To remember
The oppressive heat
As the plum tree blooms
The heart lies deep
Thick with movement-
Nothing is the same
Everything has moved beyond
the shattered mirrors of my comprehension
The air feels thick.
Beyond thick.
Like pushing through wet sand.
Heavy against my spinal cord.
I want to pull off my skin.
The false faces on my body.
My throat is numb.
It tastes like strawberries that have been painted white.
The smell is pale,
and itches my hand.
Digging away at the layers
Carnivorous mouth of hope
The dirt under my nails
That everyone paints over
Shed my skin-
These flesh bound clothes.
Blistered youth,
Sleep into the dawn.
Carry away the disappointment.
Quick lime
Scars streak down behind dark glasses
Bottomless eyes hold everything they cannot see
Blinded
From all this gilded information.
Shining in emptiness.
Glittering as we drown.
Skin dividing- honesty supplying
Sickly sweet lime burns away the faces while we look out into the smoke
Mummified gods preach from glass cases
Absence is the only safe space
All truth will be washed away.
All the animals will be caged.
Feed us to the pigs
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If I soak my face in the blood of the winter I knew was coming…
That I couldn’t accept-
Will it keep me warm?
Will it still pierce my skin?
In failed attempts
That I thought were a connection?
Or will it still twist my heart
And make me mean.
The only answer is a place I can never go again.
Sweat in the cold.
Like always.
A trap.
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Relief seems so very far away,
Mortality is so beautiful
And unforgivingly far from sight.
Mist
Falls
Through eyes socketed by passing sounds
The burn scar floods
it can only hear itself.
Broken, static, pebbled
Unknowing and scared
Of having to stay
Of being passed by
From the rushing swell
The grip of death.
I do not smell like trees.
I smell like lies and deceit.
I taste like pulling out teeth
With the bite of disaster.
Broken branches pin down my dirty fingers that don't know where to grasp
There is nowhere
I have created my isolation.
I have burnt the farm
Broken my nose to better my slimy ability
To slip through the cracks.
I want to smell the warm, dry, red sand that matches your hair.
I want to taste like my namesake,
After It was accidentally ripped down.
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Concentrated
Like that frozen orange juice stuff.
Is that what all the pain and sugar
I’ve consumed have done to me?
All the spite in my mouth
Burns acidic holes in my soft gums
Tunnels to where?
Hiding spots for sour feelings
Burrowed and buried
So they can rot
And go rancid
Like the rest of me.
An aching memory
That became a cavity.
Concrete souls weigh us down.
No one can pick up their feet.
false tongues, heads hung-
Deliverance through pointed teeth
Our sores gain sight
So we can see through the pain.
Drowning in the noise
Of voices that speak from behind the soil.
The infection has set in
We will rust
and we must-
Pray
Twelve page template - inner leaf (middle pages)
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