Gina Marinello-Sweeney

Knowledge can be powerful. But it can only be beautiful if there is more to it. If it is guided by something greater than the simple desire to enhance the potency of the mind.

Battle scars were not a commodity that I was accustomed to selling, least of all to myself.

Rebecca, we live in a world where darkness seems, in the minds of many, something banished to the world of fairy tales and superhero movies. How surprising it then becomes__ven for those of us who believe otherwise__hat it may appear in our own lives, in our own battles. To face an opponent that is more than the average __erk,_ who has made a deadly choice, is, let us admit it, nothing that we expect to experience.

Maturity is so often considered to be synonymous with __dult._ But I truly feel that maturity may be defined by the ability to be both an adult and a child.

Can a rose survive in winter?

Many a year I told her tales. And then the time came for me to watch. And watch I have.

Raindrops lingered in a melody of remembrance cast from the heavens above as I myself cast aside the dryness of the present day.

Caution: Danger ahead. Do not refer to Adriana as little in regards to either her age or stature. If you happen to disregard this most basic of laws, approach with caution. Much, much caution.

The starry night sky echoed across my thoughts, the expanse of my own void filtered in its quiet solitude.

The only way that your work will truly find an audience is if it is genuine.

Inspiration doesn't always come in chronological order.

I would travel far and wide...seeing, listening, creating. I would weave tales for an enthralled audience. A song would be heard throughout the kingdom, and I would be a part of that. You would normally think that a bard would pick up his tales from stories heard in his travels or, perhaps, from personal observation of these events. Perhaps some bards would create the stories themselves or, at least, adapt the original versions heard... But what if the bard were really more than a bard? What if he were once a gallant knight or an old sea captain...perhaps even a forgotten prince? What if the stories he told, what if the characters brought to life in his stories, were really of his comrades and himself? Stories from long ago that he finally wished to be heard? What if those who listened to his tales, all the while assuming that they were far disconnected from their communicator, were really listening to the narrative of a wanderer intimately connected to it all? And where would such an individual go when his final days as an __fficial_ bard were spent? Perhaps he would decide to retire in a lighthouse. For, surely, no place would be more fitting for the hero emeritus. He would gaze upon the glorious sea in recollection...guiding others with the beacon of light atop his home as he had once been shepherded. The adventurer became the storyteller...and then the Sentinel of the Sea.

A poem must be authentic. It could be flowery, it could have the most brilliant metaphor, it could be bursting with onomatopoeia and alliteration, assonance and consonance, hyperbole and paradox, from every end, it could have daring syntax and clever cacophony, it could have a neat and ordered rhyme scheme...but, if it loses its authenticity, its ability to convey the very heart and soul of the poet, then all the euphony and cacophony in the world cannot make up for the loss of its identity as a poem. And that is the true cacophony.

Like dandelions they flew across the expanse Of desert calm without advance They filtered through the stilled __ecome_ Returning to the land they knew. They knew no more than where they flew. And so they gathered, one and all, And scattered it throughout their path. Only golden-shafted majesty could still their might. And so they flew onward, without a path.

You were...are...what I heard. Every note.