This is a cut-up piece containing two poems and one painting

Underneath this wild light
That chaotic energy residing amongst the trees…
In the white noise and numbness
There’s an edge we ride staring into forever with our skins undone.
Just bones and viscera just you just us.

Life is a tree – I trim its leaves;
A child’s excited anticipation,
Some collective sorrow of the whole of us,
Loud in the nothing all around.
We are Human, we who walk here
On this road to redemption
With just enough wonder
To not outsmart ourselves.

Hoping for answers at the close,
Hoping for the close at all, it seems.
A subtle, blue forever,
Barely able to contain
The uniqueness of seeing.

The urgent whispers.

A persistent calling rises from the Earth.

And from its shadows: A wailing.

We are Gods, those who step carefully
And seek to peer into the night.
And its dark shadows oozing warm grey and green,
Written in the blood from our veins.
There’s magic in these blurred edges –
I catch a glimpse; not déjà vu,
More of a domain seen.
Away from it all like we need to be
And the only way forward is the Great Big Nowhere.

Leaning into the canine wind
A corner at every turn,
We seek this gentle expanse,
We seek these endless wanders,
The only way at all is the always and never of us,
Shrouded in the dark Enduring.

Kayla Allie

Born & raised on the south side of Chicago, Illinois, where she explored her love of poetry through the city’s thriving slam and open mic scene. When not writing angsty words on paper, she can be found collecting plants and plant accessories, and bragging about them to strangers online.

Mike Knippel

Mike Knippel is a retired Naval Officer living on Vancouver Island, where he spends much of his time hiking and backpacking the remote forests, coasts, and alpine, sometimes painting and writing about what he sees and feels.