was it real? that thing wavering off in the distance. it had been a long time between towns, longer with each leaving. we were worried, but kept up our banter as if our talking would close the distance.
He stopped the long, arduous crawl through the desert and lifted his head to see what appeared to be a shallow pond with trees surrounding it. “This must be a mirage,” he thought. But as he crawled, closer he realized it was much more than that.
Corey
It was like something at a circus, the way the leaves dipped and wheeled as they fell. They traced patterns, red, yellow, dark gold, orange… falling, falling, falling to a scattered pattern. They reminded me that indian summer was a mirage.
There was a mirage of him the passenger window of my Ford Explorer. Like he was there like he used to be there – in that grey leather seat. Not so much navigating as ignoring the consequences of a wrong turn, and embracing my panic as I repeatedly, exit after exit, swerved across busy lanes of traffic to stay on course.
I’m thinking of a desert. Dripping, no salivation, there is nothing to mesmerize me but the image I think is in front of me. I crawl and crawl. Beg, plead. God, please help me. One drip of water. One drop of salvation. That oasis. That mirage. Come to me. Please.
Jeremy Burris
Sparkling, blue, beautifully clear; the creek calls out to him. The man reaches towards it with his fingers, licks his parched lips with a dry tongue. He would cry in happiness if he had tears, if only he had tears; he would have tears now. He has water now. He cups the water in quivering fingers, and drinks; he drinks, drinks, drinks it all though his thirst is never quelled.
The plane had crash landed in the Gobi Desert. He had walked for many miles in the searing heat, his water bottle almost empty. Did he really see an oasis or was it just a mirage?
I wish I could see mirages every day. Durung a boring school lesson, I want to talk to an imaginary person. On the train drive home, I want to hear voices, talking to me sweetly.
M
A mirage. Something we thought was there but isn’t.
She was a mirage.
He always called her name. At the dining hall, at his office. Hoping to see her and her auburn hair, but as usual, she doesn’t answer.
Because she was a mirage. Someone he thought would always be there, but wasn’t.
“I can’t stay.”
“Please.”
“I’m not really here.”
“I can’t lose you again.”
“I’m not really anywhere.”
He tries to hold her, arms sliding through empty air.
“Say what you need to say to me. You don’t have much longer.” She begins to fade, just the tiniest bit.
“I–.”
“Hurry.”
“I’m sorry. I love you. Goodbye.”
A gust of wind, and nothing but empty space.
Imagine all the people living life in peace. That’s a mirage.
There is no more hunger. That’s a mirage.
Peace reigns throughout the kingdom. That’s a mirage.
No more homeless people. That’s a mirage.
People helping people. That’s a mirage.
Beauty in abundance. That’s a mirage.
He looked at the mirror. Behind his squeezed eyes a picture started to take a form. There was a mouth, fairly small. Two eyes, impossible to tell the color, over-grown hair and two thin shoulders. At the bottom corner of the mirror his childhood hero smiled at him in his muscular super power essence. “I am you in secret” he said out loud. “Even from myself” adding in his thoughts.
happyrabbit
He assumes their place is more like a bachelor pad, but Rolls always likened it to a nest where ‘cooped up pigeons’ such as themselves could hide out away from the rest of the world, because apparently, even strays such as themselves needed a little shade once in a while.
“As if I need to hang here with you old spinsters!”
Rolls laughed at him then and Marcus was aloof as always, and that kind of pissed him off sometimes.
“You don’t need to stay here, but everyone else likes it when you visit. We’ll eat dinner too.”
“Oi…are you luring me in? Do you think a gimmick like that will work?” He pried and pried until Marcus finally bristled and Rolls snickered. Much later when he’s out working in some unfamiliar part of town and he has an empty stomach, he looks over his shoulder and sees the littered, dirty apartment place like one sees an oasis in a desert.
She’s a mirage shimmering in the distance; the temptation you desire as lust seizes your throat. She weakens your voice of logic, growing smaller and smaller for every step you take, stumbling forward. Hopelessly, helplessly (in love).
Don’t blink, or she’ll be gone.
Hope flares, a candle you thought was burnt out at the end of its wick. Yet how deceiving is this type of hope. You squint, trying to keep her in your vision. Her form shifting, ever-shifting, like the sand at your feet. You lick your dry lips with a sandpaper tongue and mutter a few incoherent words. What was that? You have forgotten. All that consumes your thoughts are her. Her and her vices. Her and her siren song and her wicked smile and her painful beauty. She is the alluring beck, and you are the obedient call.
Don’t blink, or she’ll be gone, along with all her promises, forever.
You walk up to her. She still feels distant and unreal, like the trick of a light in which only the darkness of logic can dampen. She stretches out a hand and you go to hold it, to touch her. But the wind snatches her away, howling with laughter, along with your cries of mercy.
I see a blurry image ahead of me but I cannot tell if it is human or not. When I come closer it shimmers brightly and I still cannot tell. A step closer. More shimmering. More glittering. But when I am close to touching it, it shatters like glass into the wind.
mirage is a phenomenon due to Total Internal Reflection, favoured by high temperatures, and generally occurs in deserts, in which the inverted images of objects appear which makes one conclude that there is water in the desert. This term is usually used by poets to refer things that are specious, and are meant to fool seekers.
I long for fulfillment, I a weak and heavy laden. Every step I take is equivalent to the lifting of an elephant. Dark was from within is finally spreading, I can barely see two metres ahead. I thought it was bad before, why did I turn away from such a sure hope, why did I turn and put my hope in what I thought I needed, why did I put all my weight and trust in that stupid worthless mirage. Is there anyone who can save me?
Jose
The trees shimmered in the haze, only partially visible over the horizon, and he could clearly see the polar bear hanging from the palm fronds. That was how he knew it was a mirage; – polar bears don’t climb trees!
tonykeyesjapan
It felt so real,
It seemed so true
It was just a dream
A fading memory of you
In my sleep last night I saw your eyes
You spoke words of comfort to me
You told me no lies
It was as if time had reversed
I was in bliss once more
Then I awoke and cursed
You seemed so vivid before you disappeared
Like a mirage you never really were there
I guess that was always what I truly feared…
The oasis was just there, all palm trees and crystal clear waters that seemed to whisper to her sweat-caked limbs. Just a little farther. She stumbled forward, falling to her knees into what she suspected to the coolness of this blessedly located oasis.
And, instead, met with nothing but scalding sand as the mirage, for that was all her saving grace had been, faded away before her eyes.
Now, the only wetness to be seen was that slipping in salty rivers down her cheeks.
Mirrors. She cursed every deity that might possibly exist. Who in the world decided to rent out their abandoned mirror factory. She slid around a corner
Hannah
she’s walking through the desert nice and slow. can see disaster ahead, wobbling in the heat. it’ll happen.
“Everything is just a mirage in the end. People see what they want to see, don’t they?”
“I guess they do. You might be right. Then again, what would it be like if everyone ad the same reality?”
“Boring.”
“Exactly. Everything might be a mirage, but at least I can look at you and know for a fact I am the only one who can see you like I do. “
Isabel Pinaud
A mirage is a collection of things, What kind of things? Pretty things or happy things. Ugly things or sad things. It is pictures or memories or people. Its presents can be happy or signify that something bad has happened.
karissa
Someone is infront of me.
Same eyes, same freckles.
Same movements at the exact time.
Looks like me.
Its not me.
I see something dark at the corner of my eye.
When I turn to see the mirror again.
The thing is smiling.
He blinked his eyes in disbelief. It couldn’t have been, at least not in real life. When he reopened them, she was gone, the bus stop empty as it had been for the past hour. No, she wasn’t there any more but it didn’t stop him from believing that she was.
Ayesha
He stood before me, looking like the silvery mist that hovered over the water just behind him. What was he? A real man? Or a glimps into the imagination that I had so long ago left behind? Maybe both, but I cared little for these things; I knew that I wanted him. But only in the most innocent of ways.
There were times when we wondered if what we were seeing was actually real—not just some sort of perverse hallucination, or a mirage in the rising desert heat. Some swore it was a revelation from the divine.
But me? I wasn’t so sure.
The opulent room was breath taking. Crystal chandeliers hung from a richly painted ceiling. Look at it you would almost expect one of the demons or angels to swoop down to claim you for themselves.
The marble floors polished to a mirror finish. Tables laden with fat roasted geese, succulent baby pigs, and desserts as far as the eye could see.
Her stomach seized at the sight and smells. It had been a long time since she had eaten and oh, the endless line of crystal tumblers filled with sparking water were heaven sent.
As soon as she seated herself she burst into tears. It had been a mirage. One sent by hell itself to torment her. Sometimes she truly hated life.
Her hand slipped out of mine. She stood, the auditorium silent. The eyes blinking at her was the most movement I saw anywhere. She scooted to the aisle where the eyes followed her progress like a mirage that had suddenly come alive.
Lauren
i can manage the mirage
after all
it’s mine
that’s just fine
the sanity is just camouflage
Dayly mist dries the dalliant dream, “I leave”, I wrote on the receipt, changing languages in between words. The cashier was abrupt, and before he swept a scowl across his brother’s face, I became a mirage. I left.
Those mirages, I remember driving in the car with my mother when I was a preschooler. The days were sunny, and looking far ahead, the highway seemed to lead right into the middle of a slough. A slough! A slough! I’d be so excited for the car to get closer to the sweet blue water, but we never did. Always we were chasing that patch of sky blue on the concrete.
rachelzana
A mirage shimmered across the horizon, quivering under the afternoon sun. Isn’t it funny, she thought, I believe more in that mirage than I do in myself.
was it real? that thing wavering off in the distance. it had been a long time between towns, longer with each leaving. we were worried, but kept up our banter as if our talking would close the distance.
He stopped the long, arduous crawl through the desert and lifted his head to see what appeared to be a shallow pond with trees surrounding it. “This must be a mirage,” he thought. But as he crawled, closer he realized it was much more than that.
It was like something at a circus, the way the leaves dipped and wheeled as they fell. They traced patterns, red, yellow, dark gold, orange… falling, falling, falling to a scattered pattern. They reminded me that indian summer was a mirage.
The utopian world human kind hopes for but doesn’t work for.
invisible, disputable, fantasy, desert, illusions,
imagination
feverish
There was a mirage of him the passenger window of my Ford Explorer. Like he was there like he used to be there – in that grey leather seat. Not so much navigating as ignoring the consequences of a wrong turn, and embracing my panic as I repeatedly, exit after exit, swerved across busy lanes of traffic to stay on course.
I’m thinking of a desert. Dripping, no salivation, there is nothing to mesmerize me but the image I think is in front of me. I crawl and crawl. Beg, plead. God, please help me. One drip of water. One drop of salvation. That oasis. That mirage. Come to me. Please.
Sparkling, blue, beautifully clear; the creek calls out to him. The man reaches towards it with his fingers, licks his parched lips with a dry tongue. He would cry in happiness if he had tears, if only he had tears; he would have tears now. He has water now. He cups the water in quivering fingers, and drinks; he drinks, drinks, drinks it all though his thirst is never quelled.
The plane had crash landed in the Gobi Desert. He had walked for many miles in the searing heat, his water bottle almost empty. Did he really see an oasis or was it just a mirage?
I wish I could see mirages every day. Durung a boring school lesson, I want to talk to an imaginary person. On the train drive home, I want to hear voices, talking to me sweetly.
A mirage. Something we thought was there but isn’t.
She was a mirage.
He always called her name. At the dining hall, at his office. Hoping to see her and her auburn hair, but as usual, she doesn’t answer.
Because she was a mirage. Someone he thought would always be there, but wasn’t.
“I can’t stay.”
“Please.”
“I’m not really here.”
“I can’t lose you again.”
“I’m not really anywhere.”
He tries to hold her, arms sliding through empty air.
“Say what you need to say to me. You don’t have much longer.” She begins to fade, just the tiniest bit.
“I–.”
“Hurry.”
“I’m sorry. I love you. Goodbye.”
A gust of wind, and nothing but empty space.
Social networking sites create images of of happiness. People share, connect, like. But is it more than a mirage?
Imagine all the people living life in peace. That’s a mirage.
There is no more hunger. That’s a mirage.
Peace reigns throughout the kingdom. That’s a mirage.
No more homeless people. That’s a mirage.
People helping people. That’s a mirage.
Beauty in abundance. That’s a mirage.
He looked at the mirror. Behind his squeezed eyes a picture started to take a form. There was a mouth, fairly small. Two eyes, impossible to tell the color, over-grown hair and two thin shoulders. At the bottom corner of the mirror his childhood hero smiled at him in his muscular super power essence. “I am you in secret” he said out loud. “Even from myself” adding in his thoughts.
He assumes their place is more like a bachelor pad, but Rolls always likened it to a nest where ‘cooped up pigeons’ such as themselves could hide out away from the rest of the world, because apparently, even strays such as themselves needed a little shade once in a while.
“As if I need to hang here with you old spinsters!”
Rolls laughed at him then and Marcus was aloof as always, and that kind of pissed him off sometimes.
“You don’t need to stay here, but everyone else likes it when you visit. We’ll eat dinner too.”
“Oi…are you luring me in? Do you think a gimmick like that will work?” He pried and pried until Marcus finally bristled and Rolls snickered. Much later when he’s out working in some unfamiliar part of town and he has an empty stomach, he looks over his shoulder and sees the littered, dirty apartment place like one sees an oasis in a desert.
Don’t blink.
She’s a mirage shimmering in the distance; the temptation you desire as lust seizes your throat. She weakens your voice of logic, growing smaller and smaller for every step you take, stumbling forward. Hopelessly, helplessly (in love).
Don’t blink, or she’ll be gone.
Hope flares, a candle you thought was burnt out at the end of its wick. Yet how deceiving is this type of hope. You squint, trying to keep her in your vision. Her form shifting, ever-shifting, like the sand at your feet. You lick your dry lips with a sandpaper tongue and mutter a few incoherent words. What was that? You have forgotten. All that consumes your thoughts are her. Her and her vices. Her and her siren song and her wicked smile and her painful beauty. She is the alluring beck, and you are the obedient call.
Don’t blink, or she’ll be gone, along with all her promises, forever.
You walk up to her. She still feels distant and unreal, like the trick of a light in which only the darkness of logic can dampen. She stretches out a hand and you go to hold it, to touch her. But the wind snatches her away, howling with laughter, along with your cries of mercy.
You blink.
I see a blurry image ahead of me but I cannot tell if it is human or not. When I come closer it shimmers brightly and I still cannot tell. A step closer. More shimmering. More glittering. But when I am close to touching it, it shatters like glass into the wind.
mirage is a phenomenon due to Total Internal Reflection, favoured by high temperatures, and generally occurs in deserts, in which the inverted images of objects appear which makes one conclude that there is water in the desert. This term is usually used by poets to refer things that are specious, and are meant to fool seekers.
I long for fulfillment, I a weak and heavy laden. Every step I take is equivalent to the lifting of an elephant. Dark was from within is finally spreading, I can barely see two metres ahead. I thought it was bad before, why did I turn away from such a sure hope, why did I turn and put my hope in what I thought I needed, why did I put all my weight and trust in that stupid worthless mirage. Is there anyone who can save me?
The trees shimmered in the haze, only partially visible over the horizon, and he could clearly see the polar bear hanging from the palm fronds. That was how he knew it was a mirage; – polar bears don’t climb trees!
It felt so real,
It seemed so true
It was just a dream
A fading memory of you
In my sleep last night I saw your eyes
You spoke words of comfort to me
You told me no lies
It was as if time had reversed
I was in bliss once more
Then I awoke and cursed
You seemed so vivid before you disappeared
Like a mirage you never really were there
I guess that was always what I truly feared…
The oasis was just there, all palm trees and crystal clear waters that seemed to whisper to her sweat-caked limbs. Just a little farther. She stumbled forward, falling to her knees into what she suspected to the coolness of this blessedly located oasis.
And, instead, met with nothing but scalding sand as the mirage, for that was all her saving grace had been, faded away before her eyes.
Now, the only wetness to be seen was that slipping in salty rivers down her cheeks.
Mirrors. She cursed every deity that might possibly exist. Who in the world decided to rent out their abandoned mirror factory. She slid around a corner
she’s walking through the desert nice and slow. can see disaster ahead, wobbling in the heat. it’ll happen.
“Carlos, what is that?”
“I think that’s a blinking red light on top of a mountain.”
“A mountain? Those don’t exist!”
“Well, we’re standing in front of one right now so I think it’s time to believe it.”
“But… that can’t be! Last time there was something like that, you said it was a mirage!”
“I think it’s another mirage right now. C’mon, Cecil, let’s forget about that for the moment while I cook us dinner.”
“Oh, Carlos. Perfect, beautiful, Carlos. You sure know how to be convincing.”
“Alright, now let’s get back home.”
(Aww, yiss, my first Cecilos dialogue! \m/)
“Everything is just a mirage in the end. People see what they want to see, don’t they?”
“I guess they do. You might be right. Then again, what would it be like if everyone ad the same reality?”
“Boring.”
“Exactly. Everything might be a mirage, but at least I can look at you and know for a fact I am the only one who can see you like I do. “
A mirage is a collection of things, What kind of things? Pretty things or happy things. Ugly things or sad things. It is pictures or memories or people. Its presents can be happy or signify that something bad has happened.
Someone is infront of me.
Same eyes, same freckles.
Same movements at the exact time.
Looks like me.
Its not me.
I see something dark at the corner of my eye.
When I turn to see the mirror again.
The thing is smiling.
He blinked his eyes in disbelief. It couldn’t have been, at least not in real life. When he reopened them, she was gone, the bus stop empty as it had been for the past hour. No, she wasn’t there any more but it didn’t stop him from believing that she was.
He stood before me, looking like the silvery mist that hovered over the water just behind him. What was he? A real man? Or a glimps into the imagination that I had so long ago left behind? Maybe both, but I cared little for these things; I knew that I wanted him. But only in the most innocent of ways.
There were times when we wondered if what we were seeing was actually real—not just some sort of perverse hallucination, or a mirage in the rising desert heat. Some swore it was a revelation from the divine.
But me? I wasn’t so sure.
The opulent room was breath taking. Crystal chandeliers hung from a richly painted ceiling. Look at it you would almost expect one of the demons or angels to swoop down to claim you for themselves.
The marble floors polished to a mirror finish. Tables laden with fat roasted geese, succulent baby pigs, and desserts as far as the eye could see.
Her stomach seized at the sight and smells. It had been a long time since she had eaten and oh, the endless line of crystal tumblers filled with sparking water were heaven sent.
As soon as she seated herself she burst into tears. It had been a mirage. One sent by hell itself to torment her. Sometimes she truly hated life.
Her hand slipped out of mine. She stood, the auditorium silent. The eyes blinking at her was the most movement I saw anywhere. She scooted to the aisle where the eyes followed her progress like a mirage that had suddenly come alive.
i can manage the mirage
after all
it’s mine
that’s just fine
the sanity is just camouflage
Not really there. Sand. Water. Palm trees. Oasis. Beautiful. Rare. Sand. Tired. Delirious. Turban. Desert.
Dayly mist dries the dalliant dream, “I leave”, I wrote on the receipt, changing languages in between words. The cashier was abrupt, and before he swept a scowl across his brother’s face, I became a mirage. I left.
Those mirages, I remember driving in the car with my mother when I was a preschooler. The days were sunny, and looking far ahead, the highway seemed to lead right into the middle of a slough. A slough! A slough! I’d be so excited for the car to get closer to the sweet blue water, but we never did. Always we were chasing that patch of sky blue on the concrete.
A mirage shimmered across the horizon, quivering under the afternoon sun. Isn’t it funny, she thought, I believe more in that mirage than I do in myself.
crazy