Imagine your face in someone else’s thoughts
rising to entertain the secret aspect of an eye
and looked to with blind significance
like a small sun without the light.

Already you have been held in mornings
by familial tides, when a parent made the move
to preserve your innocence in a pupil-picture
knowing it is what you may both reduce.

Yet in time you will be clutched in evenings
by the stranger whose sight for you runs deep
and will follow your face, project it within their mind
a moon – giving promise but no relief.

Emily Oldfield

Mark Sheeky’s Oil Painting: The Passion Of Anna (available for purchase)

The sunset years are beckoning me
they whisper my name each night.
Youth softly slips from my fingertips
as my body loses its fight.

Like the snail I move much slower now.
My eyesight fails and all is blurred.
I catch only half of what’s been said
never quite sure I’ve correctly heard.

My seized knees hurt when I climb the stairs.
I puff and groan as I try to stand.
Changes have crept up on me
That never featured in any plans.

But as I slide down the craggy slope
Alone, my outlook is far from grim.
I have great faith in adventures to come
when my earthly light dips and grows dim.

Nicola Hulme: Write Out Loud

Mark Sheeky’s Oil Painting: The Infinite Tiredness Of Ageing (available for purchase)

Masha beseeches Mother Sol,
Save my son.
The sun inside the sphere
destroys the son inside of her.

Her hands, her perfect hands,
reach out to the mock sun,
entreat calescent earth:
I incubate the future;
emend this mandatory rebirth.

Alas, alas, humankind’s time
has come and gone
and with it, the sun.

Linda Cosgriff

Mark Sheeky’s Oil Painting: Self-Portrait As Philosopher (available for purchase)

The hoof-beaten brain
a recipe of tears and sweat
and this utterly speed of rhythm
kneads her thighs to the saddle
stirs her into the summer blues
away and away with.

She knows his sandshape grip
his brutal bit that pulls a grin,
that gags a want to crawl
towards the ever there darkscape,

A match striking the moors
she sparks her blood to sand
that moulds its gritty mirage
through vein and artery
leaving scorched earth
and a blister of sun..

Helen Kay

Mark Sheeky’s Oil Painting: Abandoning Someone Who Was A Friend To Me When I Had None (available for purchase)

Not for nothing do the scorned
fall on their own sword
or, in this case, take the sharp and tapering
end of a horn to heart.

Love’s triangle, pin-prick sharp, now clouds
and beside its token gesture, martyrdom beckons.
All was equal, equilateral but not so now.
He no longer fights his corner.

He bares the body, bares the head,
becomes the colour of quicksilver
in the quicksand of a cell
but must be seen to suffer

so has the wall’s one scar open;
has it neat and shapely;
has it as a portal to his pain,
its point arrowing to his showy surrender.

John Lindley

Mark Sheeky’s Oil Painting: The Death Of Man (available for purchase)

I stuff a clock in forever’s mouth
which it chews up,
spits out—time, a Giant Hogweed,
poisonous to touch, can even

blind you. My Aunt Stokesia
says she wants forever.
It means Heaven
where she’ll be—
that will be heavenly.
When forever calls, a salesman
who gets his foot in the door
and won’t stop talking—ever—

she freezes, wants to stop
time, the one thing it can’t do.
Death pops in,
a jack-in-the-box clown.
She runs to the basement and locks

the door. I’m already there.
I never liked clowns. I keep death
from claiming me one pill at a time.
I’m a shore,
the water dried up.

The Shore of Forever by Mark Sheeky: Oil Painting for sale

Inky Interview Special: Poet Ken Pobo From Pennsylvania

Inky Exclusive: Interview with multi talented artist Mark Sheeky

My face, gone.
I stumbled around since
I had no eyes, hoped it would return
like the dog I lost in fifth grade.
I made coffee and even drove to work.
No one said anything. Perhaps
my face had been erased for years,
maybe since I was born,
only I kept picturing it there.
Is this common? Without a face,
I couldn’t see others. Had I ever?

The sky, I presume, still appeared,
a stale gray the same as my good suit.
I used to say my,
what a pretty world this is,
cornflowers blue as my grandmother’s
church hat, asters poking red swords
in a bloated breeze. I may dream
a whole new self tonight–

it’s happened before. Selves
form and melt, ice on a puddle.

The Passion of Anna: Artwork for sale by Mark Sheeky

Inky Interview Special: Poet Ken Pobo From Pennsylvania

Inky Exclusive: Interview with multi talented artist Mark Sheeky

Walls, a stapled mouth.
Broken oven. Dirty dishes.
Even still, I want home,
a good man to join me there,
a garden out back. Is home
breaking bubbles, faded footprints?
I may be here for decades. Years

look out on the flower bed
where we scattered
Mom’s ashes.
Forever lasts a few seconds.
Guatemalans run from their homes,
El Salvadorans too. On our street,
the same number of cars

each work day. This could be
ten years ago. Home,
where ghosts and the living mingle.
A room leads to
another room. An inexplicable
sudden breeze chills
though the one window is closed.

Home Home Home: Artwork for sale by Mark Sheeky