Autumn
By Ashley Barner

I watch my feet go walking on,
I watch the ground go flitting by.
I hear the blades of amber grass,
Their breeze-blown rattle like a sigh.

I see the object of their gloom
Before my toes. All nature grieves
To see these bodies I pick up—
The summer’s death in skeleton leaves.


Sensory Perceptions
By Ashley Barner

These wavelengths strike receptor cells,
Neurons fire within our brains,
It reaches to the farthest lobe,
And then we see the rain.

The complexity and the longitude
Recorded by three (3.00) bones inside:
It reaches to our listening cells
And then we hear the tide.

Action potential rises
Neurotransmitters flow
Dendrites catch them on the way
And then we feel the snow.

Science, you'll never learn it all!
You don't know where to start!
You'll never realized that life is more,
Much more, than the sum of its parts.


Cassandra and the Damned
By Ashley Barner

"How terrible knowledge of the truth can be
When there's no help in truth!"
—Oedipus Rex, Sophocles

Cassandra of the screaming mouth
The matted hair
The rolling eyes
Cassandra of the dirty cheeks
The blackened nails
The foaming lips
Cassandra of the rags and shreds
Cassandra of the dark and dank
Cassandra of the reek and filth
Pure glowing truth of the gods was gleaming from her.

Scream, Cassandra,
Scream, thou caged, wild prophetess,
Scream in the echoing Cells Below
Where no one hears your warnings but the already Damned.

Who can be mad who deals in truth?

And who in the madhouse will understand?


Preoperational Egocentrism—Piaget
By Ashley Barner

Teenager, writing a love poem:
I loved him! I loved him! (I think)
Heartbroken! Heartbroken! Sob!

Little child, toys on a table:
What do you see?
A house, three mountains, a teddy bear.
What does the teddy bear see?
…?

I loved him! Why didn’t he love me?

What do you see?
A house, three mountains, a teddy bear.
What does the teddy bear see?
A house, three mountains, a teddy bear.

I am older now. And I think,
Maybe his view was different.

What do you see?
A house, three mountains, a teddy bear.
What does the teddy bear see?
Three mountains, a house, and me.