Luminous.

Our word for the day?
It's Luminous.
And all I can think about
is "Lumous Maxima"
Where is my wand?
Where is my Ron?
If I had one wish,
and one wish only?
Honestly, it would be
"For Harry Potter to be real"
and for me to be a part of it all.

I wanna be magic.

-Shannon Martinez




Luminous

Hi. I was very unhappy with my “Luminous” piece; it seemed very clunky and had no sense of cohesion. So, I decided to use some old song lyrics I wrote to convey the same message, but in a more poignant manner. That message being my distaste, not for religion, but for religion in the wrong hands. It is the worst weapon in the world; a divider and seldom a unifier. I believe in standing up for what you believe in and not what you are told to believe in. Well, I better stop before I sound preachy, these are just my thoughts out loud in electronic ink. Without further ado, a song that never saw the light of day… Luminous.


They’re setting fire to our door
In the name of the father, son, and ghost
They’ve preconceived our suffering
This is what comes from questioning

The mob is started up the stairs to the bedroom where we sleep
The mob is started up the stairs to the bedroom where we dream
They scream
“Keep them meek, keep them foolish and docile, ignorance will keep them at bay.
Bound their hands, tie their eyes with blindfolds, we wish there was another way”

Awakened from our restless sleep, our searching lead to heresy
Still we’ll trade their lies for honesty til’ they find a better way
Falling face first reaching terminal speed, from the heaven that we once believed
As martyrs burn in effigy for the angels we betrayed
Truth will become our legacy
It’s the relic that we’ll seed
Until integrity succeeds

They’ve laced the pyre with gasoline
They spit and cast their stones in violent mockery
Refrain our lips from quivering
And as strike the match our defiant voice echoes to eternity

Awakened from our restless sleep, our searching lead to heresy
Still we’ll trade our lives for legacies til’ they find a better way
Falling face first reaching terminal speed, from the heaven that we once believed
As martyrs burn in effigy for the angels we betrayed
Truth will become our legacy
It’s the beacon that we’ll seed
A luminous light that supersedes

-Ryan Baker


Luminous.

A subpar performance substituted for substance
She withheld the ending, just to watch it happen
A cardboard canvas dancing to the dawn of apocalypse
Vertebrae snappin’ under high-heel tappin’
Bones break on the 2 and 4, don’t forget to use your hips
It sounds like our song—wait you forgot the words?
Did you ever really know them or did you just play along?
You never have to try when you pretend like you belong
And with a smile so luminous and a strength so hideous,
You are my tiny holocaust, my baby atom bomb.

-Tylor Sherman