SAMANTHA TERRELL - POET / EIC, SHINE Poetry Series - SHINE

July 2~ LAURIE DONALDSON

7/2/2025

Poetry lovers and friends, thanks for stopping by SHINE, where today we welcome Scottish poet Laurie Donaldson with three phenomenal poems: "Torchsong," "The Man I Could Have Been," and "Some Day." Enjoy! And thank you, Laurie, for sharing your words with SHINE international poetry community.

Torchsong
(for Rosebud)

Fleeting bright through dark I want
to follow that glow to see you again,
even half-seen on the edge of awareness.

You show at disconcerting times
my will o’ the wisp
across the rain-thronged moor

of old heartbreak. Traipsing,
I feel led by that magic now, know its pull,
my gone child I sensed I’d meet once more,

to eventually clasp in ethereal embrace.
She calls me with fairy fire
from those endless might have beens

where imagination becomes penance,
taught sorrow in that ancient way.
Despite empires rising, falling into ruin,

new atrocities unfurling towards the light,
this kernel of pain, my sprite,
holds sway deep within, and she beckons

me to finally follow, to lure me
to accept her ghostly radiance,
not at the end of a tunnel

but across a wide welcoming upland
of vivid clouds, spectrum of patchwork
mosses and lichens that absorb

my energy as I pass from one form to another,
slowly delighted to become such brief flare
– not quite there, rarely seen but once known.

The Man I Could Have Been
(with apologies to Roddy Lumsden)

The man I could have been understands the difference between art and artifice,
can assuage doubt with the sweep of a pen,
ink drying on pages of easy dreams,
adds verbs destructively like a spoilt magus.

The man I could have been has not savoured measly death,
but has drawn a line in clear water, a paddle
quietly moving him to windward,
assuming a position of casual delinquency.

The man I could have been eats placebos with little relish,
holds comfort quietly as a stranger needs a map to their life,
pushes disdain from his mind, but slowly,
until stained clouds are beaten away by the sun.

The man I could have been does not slice up eyeballs,
knows those he can trust are not those he must like,
affects preposterous opinions for the sake of controversy,
while secretly feeling their worth, just a man trying not to give it all away.

The man I could have been has seen that, done that,
is full of brio, in tune with the bloated times of easy ego,
can hinge on a kitten heel in a new direction,
one that has the flavour of sorghum and papaya.

The man I could have been has cut out the middleman,
spread a range of reveries out on a mat for display,
clasps momentary whims like a cheap necklace
and finds suitable transport for each passing thought.

The man I could have been finds anxiety a natural ally,
discovers a lodestone of purpose designed for anything new,
throws shrapnel at chance and shrugs at spoon theory,
piles worn experience in a heap and then sets fire to the world.

Some Day

I planted a tree to say a few words to the sky
watched it grow into the bright air
to speak for itself, and me,
our message to the rain
thickets of small birds
a wind that displaced quiet
a flichter of snow as the seasons talked back
owned us both.

Laurie Donaldson is a Scottish poet and artist who has been published in numerous journals, magazines, anthologies and zines. He also runs creative writing workshops, and recently helped launch and co-hosts a monthly creative open mic, and is part of a collective starting a new local magazine for the arts.

July 1~ NEIL COLEMAN

7/1/2025

Today SHINE welcomes Chicago-based poet, Neil Coleman. Neil brings us two poems: "For Ever and More" and "Yourself, No Longer." Thank you, Neil, for sharing your gift of words with SHINE international poetry series!

For Ever and More

A shiver.
Then another.
I'm taken. Awakened.
And it ends.
the lively banter, the easy laughter of dream
now a misty memory of a moment never there

"Are you awake? Oh, good.
I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. Don’t worry.
I will never leave you.
For Ever and More.
Now, go back to sleep.”

Almost pitch.
Midnight sky.
A sliver of moon. The stars illume
And transcend
I’m thrilled, ecstatic in my insignificance.
As I grasp to behold, a shiver takes hold

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?
Beyond wonderment's clench.
A hunger unsated, a thirst never quenched.

Cavemen and apes stared with open-mouthed gape
No painter, no piper, no ploughman escaped
The peril, the promise
This scintillant sight

Every poet and priest and prophet rattled,
Each tortured soul and soldier embattled.
I am the breath-hold of your fright
I am the fear in the night.

For I was right there with them as I am here with you.
You need not fear.
For I’m already here and I will never leave you.
For Ever and More.
Now, go back to sleep.”

“ ‘Lord, deliver me’, you cry.
And you shall be delivered. But not yet.

Now, go back to sleep.”

Yourself, No Longer

A path.
Any path.
Any cock-eyed slip of the slope.
Rocky and thatched and webbed with enstrangling vinery.
That elusive journey taken toward

a moment.
Any moment.
Any fleeting tick of the tock.
Blinding and shrill and creaking with soul-crushing constriction.
That fugitive time spent moving forward.

When you reach the vanish of that path
and stand at the bell-toll of that moment,
unblinking, unbending, unwavering,
on the threshold at the gatehouse of purpose

to travel onward, to look inward, to seek deeper,
is paradise found,
showering upon you the boundless courage
to be a stranger to yourself no longer.

Neil Coleman is a Chicago area poet and writer. He doesn't sleep well because he worries about most everything, from the future of the human experience to the starting pitching of the Chicago White Sox. UGH! Drawing inspiration from everything and anything, Neil crafts poems and stories that explore a wide range of themes, from love and loss to fear and faith.

June 30~ DAVID L. O'NAN

6/30/2025

Welcome back to SHINE, poetry lovers. On this last day of the month, I'm pleased to shine the spotlight, once again, on the talented and prolific David O'Nan. David is an Indiana-based poet and indie editor/publisher at Fevers of the Mind, who brings us three new poems: A Carnival of Knives, Dream #30, and (my personal favorite) The Archivist of Unquiet Rooms. Thank you, David, for sharing your words with the SHINE international poetry community!

A Carnival of Knives

We’ve all just been playing with the carnival knives
laughing through the makeup.
Slashing time into ticker tape illusions
as another carousel spins
as a ballot rigged in reverse.
The ringmaster wears a corrupt senator’s smile,
he has a mustached inked with lobbyist grease,
the clowns begin to bite their tongues
into bleeding treaties dancing in their oversized shoes.

Here there is no trapeze,
just an illusion of flight,
a mid-air contract that dissolves
before your signature dries-
and we are still juggling,
we applaud the dangers and the creepiness,
Our dignity sliced like candy apples,
caramel hands stuck in the applause of wolves.

Behind every curtain,
the mirrors cracked and slimy
the knives twisted as if the stabbing has been done.
The air is heavy in ghoulish whispering
‘You signed the waiver, kid-you bled like the rest.'

Dream #30

I was supposed to be gone-
thirty minutes flatlined under pale blue machines.
yet my mind flickered on
as a film reel coughing up its final scenes.

And there it was-
not fire, not demons
but a hallway of biting,
and doors pulsing with memories
they didn’t seem to fully belong to me.

I walked barefoot across a floor of ticking watches,
each one I could hear a laugh from a different voice.
One sounded like my mother on a night I didn’t come home.
Another hissed like the brake I never pressed.

I saw my face levitating on a veiny string hanging in the sky,
stitched skin with rearview mirrors and glass-filled pores,
crumpled seatbelts with prayers written from my mind
telling me “You’re here because you blinked at the wrong time”

I saw a church made of IV drips
And the nurses all had red wigs and wore rings of rust.
They sang blues songs in defibrillator chords,
A choir of death, mucus filled static
Like an A.M. radio between goodbye and no, and I’m here, I’m not.
I love you, I loved you, and I remember you, I forgot you.

I saw children pulling sleds of ribcages through the slick snow
from a blizzard to a desert to a funeral of ash.
Their eyes looked more like a television playing a repetitive commercial,
or reruns of collisions.

And somewhere,
behind a blue velvet curtain that pulsed like a wound,
was the crash,
suspended in honeyed glass,
every scream slowed to a drone-
like God was trying to rewind and make a decision.
The buttons had shifted and left him in confusion.

I woke with a throat full of wires,
lights battered me into an epileptic trance dancing in my bloodstream.
My lungs filled up like two rusted accordions.
The remaining life around said I was lucky.

They hadn’t seen the hallways I just walked through barefoot, and they never heard the ticking, ticking, explosions and what a final breath could be.

The Archivist of Unquiet Rooms

There’s a filing cabinet in my skull,
drawers crooked, a caution and a screaming,
labels smudged by panic and sweaty thumbs –
every thought receives a new folder and tab
and runs naked through my mind in the hall of NOW.

ADHD is the conductor of this haunting train.
It forgets the passengers,
asks the clocks what time it actually is,
and eats the answer before it can be written down.
I will start sweeping the floors,
then blankly end up listening to all my failures and regrets,
poems I didn’t get to write, the excessiveness of trying to hurry love.

Anxiety-
She pounds in wearing tap shoes and performs from midnight to dawn
on the stage scattered with nerves,
tapping codes and wild languages into my bones,
breathing in my ears the worst-case ending to fairy tales
while I pretend to breathe like a well-adjusted human.

Claustrophobia-
lives in the air vents
hissing in while the ceilings lean in, and sweeps me in the enclosure
from a tornado to a sinkhole.
The elevators seem to never move.
Your clothes can give you panic.
The animals can go from beautiful to terrifying in a quick second.
Hell is a fitted room with no windows, with all the chairs facing me.

OCD-
The curator of small, invisible fires.
Like an experiment, I feel if I don’t, then I will fail.
Count the breaths, and then count them again.
Count the heartbeats, and wonder if they are sin.
Re-arrange the messes, a dumpster, or a sacred temple.

And then-
there’s the Empath,
the drunk compassionate oracle in my chest,
a rebel prophet tasting emotions like a whiskey that they secretly ordered.
Feeling the strangers’ heartbreak
like a physical bleeding pouring through their clothing.
To know the tension and the edginess
just from a twitch in the lip.
Inside you feel you’re hugging too long.
You’re remembering your dead father just driving your car.
Tears appear during an insane song, and suddenly I’m asked what is wrong?
I feel like a scream when I try to numb them,
yet they always cry when I leave them raw
to want to fix the world,
but can’t control the tape even when the signals blink “ready.”

Together we live in this house –
slanted floors, walls always peeling
even when scrubbed for a repainting.
We argue over who gets to drive
a loose wheel that ADHD grips,
Anxiety screaming the directions,
OCD rewriting the GPS,
Claustrophobia refusing to get in,
and the Empath sits in the back feeling everything
while depression is making up its mind if it even wants to go, or wants the party.

David L O’Nan is a writer/poet currently in Southern Indiana, born in Kentucky with a stop in New Orleans in between. He has been writing/editing for over 25 years including his website “Fevers of the Mind” which has also put out collective anthologies of poetry & art. He has several self-published books available and is also a four-time nominee for Best of the Net.

<<Previous

July 2~ LAURIE DONALDSON

Torchsong
(for Rosebud)

The Man I Could Have Been
(with apologies to Roddy Lumsden)

Some Day

July 1~ NEIL COLEMAN

For Ever and More

Yourself, No Longer

June 30~ DAVID L. O'NAN

A Carnival of Knives

Dream #30

The Archivist of Unquiet Rooms

SHINE - International Poetry Series

Previous Features

July 2~ LAURIE DONALDSON

Torchsong(for Rosebud)

The Man I Could Have Been (with apologies to Roddy Lumsden)

Some Day

July 1~ NEIL COLEMAN

For Ever and More

Yourself, No Longer

June 30~ DAVID L. O'NAN

A Carnival of Knives

Dream #30

The Archivist of Unquiet Rooms

SHINE - International Poetry Series

Previous Features

Torchsong
(for Rosebud)

The Man I Could Have Been
(with apologies to Roddy Lumsden)