Visual Artwork by Meret Slover
Book am I by Meret Slover
I hold within uncounted treasures
Better than gold in unknown measures
More valuable than jewels or ore
I hold a conflict in my core
I have a spine fashioned of wood
I hold history when I should
I hold fantasy, comedy, all genres
I hold periods, dashes, slashes and commas
I sometimes tell truth and sometimes I lie
Stories I hold, for book am I.
The Artist of Stansbury Square by Meret Slover
They passed him by, not knowing his name
He knows each face, knows that none are the same
They gave him money for the skill they saw
He barely survives, but never questions the law
The stones are dirty, the gutter reeks
His clothes fray, his hat leeks
The old eyes are still sharp and bright and keen
From the sights and faces and places he’s seen
Though his hands were quick and his renderings pleased
If he were gone none would notice or care
The unnoticed artist of Stansbury Square.
Writer and Reader by Meret Slover
His hands work.
The work of his hands.
His Mind works
They’ve only met him, no one else
Thoughts vary as if it’s real all inside one
Are they all the same?
Only he knows
Walking and talking and thinking
They aren’t all the same. We are the same.
Nobody sets themselves apart.
Clockwork flower by Meret Slover
There once was a king.
He lived in a crystal palace, with many friends and servants, and even a queen as beautiful as any flower. He was the only man to ever have all he wanted. All loved him, and he did not bear worry on his back.
But none of it was real.
Because at night, the king had bad dreams that were not dreams at all. The crystal was nothing more than glass, taken from a thousand windows of a hundred houses. Ordinary houses, with love and hate and crying babies. Not palaces like the king’s. His friends were puppets, his servants beasts, and his queen was a clockwork flower. She lived when he saw her, but when a door closed between them she would die. Purpose spent. A clock beyond time.
And when the king awoke, he yet again had everything he wanted. But he wasn’t happy. For the dreams were not dreams and the king never slept when he laid down in his golden bed. No, he would listen. And with every night of listening, the crystal looked more like glass, because when she thought her king was asleep beside her, the clockwork queen would not breathe.
And so the king listened.
And so he heard nothing.
And so he knew his queen had never been alive.
Each day, rising, he saw glass and puppets instead of his crystal palace and his friends, and what once were servants were only beasts who looked like men.
He lived with everything he wanted, but he did not feel alive, and his wants were never true.
One day, the king rose.
He looked at the beasts and the puppets and the glass around him.
And on that day, the king threw a stone.