DAILY PHOTO: Church of Maca, Peru

Speakeasy Stained-glass [Free Verse]

The light of a streetlamp
Streams through the stained glass,
And colors spread stably
Over surfaces below.

Then car after car
Pass by that bar,
And the colors are
Climbing and crawling,
Shifting and sprawling,
As headlamp light, briefly,
Dances through the window --
Kaleidoscope swirling the
Shockingly bright colors
In short-lived arcs.

The window was designed
To evoke a cathedral,
And deny all debauchery...

Oh, how it's failed.

Starry Nights [Verse / Free Verse Mutt]

I’m stunned by all the starry nights
Beyond the sprawling city’s lights:
Swirls made of so many colors —
The dark, the light, middling others.

What eternal infinite
Exists out there between
All those stars?

All the dust and nothingness
Of that cold, unbounded expanse
Dances in the hot shell
Of my skull.

PROMPT: Sports Team

If you started a sports team, what would the colors and mascot be?

Black & White; the skunk (but one with character, though more bellicose and less French than Pepé Le Pew. Like Yosemite Sam possessing a skunk.)

Green Fairy [Free Verse]

Bohemians
   gathered around 
   the absinthe bottles,
  the light hitting 
   the bottles shone
   a radioactive shade
   of green.

That green light
   threw blotches
  against walls &
 floors & people &
  anything else there
  was to illuminate.

The more they drank,
 the less green the mottling --
  not because the empty glass 
   was clear, &
 didn't refract, or spray green,
   but because the splotches
  turned every color --
   every color there is --
  and the colors danced
   around the increasingly 
  amorphous surfaces.

 Until, at last,
  everyone was asleep,
 and visions of Green Fairies
  danced in their dreams. 

DAILY PHOTO: Neon Nights, Kolkata

Night Colors [Free Verse]

It's dark.

But the neon burns,
   and bright signs
   color the night,

and that color
   shines against wet surfaces.

The color seems to float,
   and when I walk past
   it shifts, morphs, and flows,

becoming alive.

And it -- those bright primary colors --
   might just be creeping towards me
   like a killer kindergarten clown.

I turn to see the colors swirling,
   swirling but not advancing.

I stare into the color paisleys 
   as they dance yin-yang do-si-do's
   around the puddle.
  
I'm entranced & soothed,
   and no longer fear
   the colors will attack,
   turning me vibrant. 

Breaking Bleak [Haiku]

autumn colors,
 like a pointillist painting
  that'll break bleak.

DAILY PHOTO: Foot Faults & Fall Foliage

Taken at Georgia Tech in November of 2021

DAILY PHOTO: Kochi Beach Sunset

Taken at Kochi Beach in July of 2017