She sleeps in a past that lives in her gaze
blurring in brightness and dulling the haze
longing still to escape the deaths
of life that fades away

please touch, please reach through
worlds, and rescue, grasp, tease
hold firm and wrap yourself
around these vacant needs

slip past and slip beyond
this tainted parched resistance
push in and slip through
the haunted dark persistence

take me, you hear, she cries
please, no, why, oh god why
no words, no songs to tame sighs
in the bulb’s light, the present dies.

 

(c) Copyright Nina Athena Radke

Nina Athena Radke has been ordering words around and crafting tales ever since she first learned to write. Ms. Radke is the author of four collections of poetry & prose, Off the Beaten Path, In Retrospect, Dreamtales, and The Best of Nina Athena. Ms. Radke was most recently featured on Creative Talents Unleashed and In Between Hangovers.

With a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from Buffalo State College, this freelance writer has been editing and publishing for over a decade.

As the founder of DreamMiners Publishing, Ms. Radke has produced several novels and literary collections, including Tangent Literary Arts Magazine, Shattering Silence: An Anthology of Poetry and Art, The Gift That Keeps On Givin’, a novel written by A.J. Scott, and two collections of poetry written by Modest Mentality entitled Mindfully Modest and Tranquility.