Category: Poetry

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Poetry

A Motorbike at Knossos by Rhys Hughes

Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (1870-1953) was a writer and political activist. From Public Domain 
     A MOTORBIKE AT KNOSSOS 
 (in memory of Hilaire Belloc)


The chief defect of Arthur Glee
was unrestrained velocity.
Let’s listen to his final story
even though it’s rather gory.

Arthur rode a bike of chrome and red,
filled onlookers’ hearts with mortal dread,
for he had sworn that he must go
to see the island grotto below
where the Minotaur in darkness dwelled
deep down within a stony hell,
his awful bellow the only sound
in that grisly underground,
and Arthur raced through ruined halls
and never hit a single wall.
But speed is such a fickle thing,
as Arthur learned, while wandering.

The labyrinth, built of stone and myth,
was something he would reckon with.
He sped past pillars, tall and wide,
with nothing but a desire inside
to prove that modern speed and gear
can conquer every ancient fear.
“The Labyrinth!” he roared with pride,
and threw the throttle open wide.

But as he leaned into the curve,
he lost his grip (and then his nerve).
For history is a heavy weight
on those who challenge it too late.
He struck a wall of Minoan brick
and though a rescue team was very quick
they found that Arthur, in his haste,
had gone most thoroughly to waste.

The surgeons, with astounding skill,
repaired his frame against his will.
With plastic, steel, titanium plate,
they mended his unhappy state
until, like Theseus’ famous ship,
he’d lost his true identity’s grip.
Was he the boy who crashed the bike
or something more… robotic-like?

Now tourists stand in frozen lines
beneath the Mediterranean pines,
while Arthur ponders, strange and grim,
with nothing left that was part of him.

The Moral:
If you must visit ancient sites,
do not go chasing bullish frights.
For he who races through the past
will find himself replaced at last.

Rhys Hughes has lived in many countries. He graduated as an engineer but currently works as a tutor of mathematics. Since his first book was published in 1995 he has had fifty other books published and his work has been translated into ten languages.

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Categories
Poetry

Poems by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal

Murals, El Paso. From Public Domian 
CASUAL RAGS
 
In casual rags I made my way
down the streets of El Paso 
saturated with the city’s aromas. 
The trees were perfectly situated 
to drop shade as the burning sun
loitered above. Each day seemed
worse than the next as drought
played its silly games. No water
fell from the sky for weeks. I
checked each day as I walked
in my casual rags drenched in
sweat. At night I dreamt of the
water that would not drop from
the sky. In silence I meditated
and imagined how great it would
feel for rain to start falling on me.
 
 
MOVING OUT
 
The curtains are drawn.
I folded the sheets.
There is no hold here
where I once was held.
 
This is goodbye. I have
to let you go, house.
 
Every memory is etched
in every cell of my being.
Mother, father, raised me.


A THOUSAND YEARS
 
My body is not much to look at.
I am the least interesting man on earth.
I have never been to Paris, France.
I have been to the Paris Las Vegas.
I have never kissed you on a winter
morning or at any season. I have never
dreamt about you kissing me. You
hugged me once. If I lived to eternity,
I will never forget that. If I lived for
another year, I would not forget that.
If I lived a thousand years, I would 
always remember that day.

Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal was born in Mexico, lives in California, and works in Los Angeles.He has been published in Blue Collar Review, Borderless Journal, Chiron Review, Kendra SteinerEditions, Mad Swirl, and Unlikely Stories. His most recent poems have appeared in Four FeathersPress.

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Categories
Poetry

Pink Angels Bursting by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Pink Angels by Willem de Kooning (1904-1997). Photo provided by Ryan Quinn Flanagan 
PINK ANGELS BURSTING 

I wonder what de Kooning was thinking
when he demolished his pink angels,
a failure of the writer most surely 
when he needs to know the mind before the paint,
like watching the smoke rings of a treasured tobacconist 
dissolved in a vat of acid: in mangled appetites,
a splintered swan failing to escape the bottom of the painting,
is that an eye by graceless clubfoot?  
A bedroom eye in fitful spasms.
Those yellow whirling knives that cleave 
and so abruptly bother   
these angels of a most personal heaven.

Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Borderless Journal, GloMag, Red Fez and Lothlorien Poetry Journal.  

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Categories
Poetry

Poetry By Charles Rammelkamp

Charles Rammelkamp
Winter Reverie

Be careful what you wish for.
The winters have been so warm.
Snow is a romantic dream.
Wish fulfillment may be more than you bargained for.

The winters have been so warm.
Insects appear inside in February.
Wish fulfillment may be more than you bargained for.
At least the heating bill is low.

Insects appear inside in February.
That bag of snow melt neglected in the basement.
At least the heating bill is low.
Sometimes you consider wearing shorts.

That bag of snow melt neglected in the basement.
Snow shovels gather dust in the shadows.
Sometimes you consider wearing shorts.
Would a trip to Florida feel wrong?

The shovels gather dust in the shadows. 
Snow is such a romantic dream.
Would a trip to Florida feel wrong?
Be careful what you wish for.


Casablanca Crime

We’d passed up Rick’s Café 
at Place du jardin, 
named for the Bogart film.
Maybe it wasn’t even open.
This was Ramadan, after all.
We wound up at Café La Cadence.
I was starving for lunch.

We’d barely taken our seats
when the police stormed in.
They arrested fifty of us
for having something to eat!
A crime to eat during the day?
A blatant violation of freedom of belief.

The worst part?
The crêpe fromage I’d ordered
was drowned in cheese
like a tasteless sludge of glue.
Adil’d recommended the place
for its coffee and bubble tea.
This was not worth going to prison for!


The Best Thing on TV Since Ruby Shot Oswald


What's the best thing I’ve seen on TV?
I think of that line from Andy Warhol’s Diaries,
apparently something a fan said to Truman Capote.
It’s got to be a sports show, a Wimbledon final,
a Super Bowl touchdown,
a game seven World Series home run.

But I did see that live killing,
Ruby muscling in with a snub-nosed pistol,
the sheriff – was his name Garrison? –
rearing back as if from an offensive odor,
Oswald crumpling in on himself
like a sheet of crushed cellophane.

As if the assassination weren’t dramatic enough –
and I can’t remember when I saw
the 26-second 8-mm Zapruder film,
but it must have been years later –
the “reality TV” killing
blew my ten-year-old mind,
sitting in front of the family black and white Motorola
in Potawatomi Falls, Michigan, November, 1963.

The moon landing? The January 6 Capitol riot? 


Brutal Honesty

When I complimented Ellen, 
the lady in the cubicle
next to mine,
on her lovely smile, 
her even white teeth,
she told me her first husband
knocked her teeth out.
These were implants.

It made me remember 
Freshman year registration –
how many decades ago –
college students snaking around
the gymnasium, table to table,
filling out forms.
In line in front of me,
another freshman, Dan,
who fancied himself suave,
telling Pam, the girl beside him,
she had the most dazzling blue eyes,
in his most Sean Connery voice,
she saying to him,
“They’re tinted contacts.”

Did Ellen think 
I was attempting debonair?


An Off-and-On-Again Praying Person

Sometimes for health.
Sometimes for love.
Sometimes for the home team.
Sometimes for the health and safety of pets.
Sometimes for respect, recognition, esteem.

Sometimes because things seem hopeless.
Sometimes because I know it’s impossible.
Sometimes because of the inevitable.
Sometimes because Fate seems so unchangeable.
Sometimes because why not, can’t hurt. 

Then there’s democracy, hazy concept,
but you know when it’s being subverted.
Pareidolia may just be faces in the clouds,
hidden drama in the motion of trees or water.
Prayers and their partner, thoughts, 
about as effective.

Pareidolia is the psychological phenomenon of seeing patterns, especially faces, induced by random stimuli. From: Public Domain

Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore. His collection, The Tao According to Calvin Coolidge, was recently published by Kelsay Books.

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Categories
Poetry

Three Poems by George Freek

Art by Thomas Cole (1801 – 1848). From Public Domain 
MY CAT IN HIS GARDEN
 
As my young cat
seeks new experiences,
he’s obsessed with a beetle,
whose interesting pincers
are defiantly bared,
but my cat is undismayed.
He’s far too young
to think of being afraid,
until he gets stung.
Once I was like him,
finding intrigue
in anything new.
I never gave a thought
to growing old,
until I got there.
It’s true, death itself
has no sting,
but journeying there
is often an unpleasant thing.
  

CEREMONY IN ABSENTIA

The girls leave the factory,
joking and laughing
making plans for the night.
I wish I could join them,
but I had my day.
I danced and drank with the best,
but when I married my wife,
I forgot all the rest.
As I pour a glass of wine,
I fall into a melancholy mood.
I stare at distant mountains,
So far away, and yet
they appear to be so near.
Today would
be your birthday, wife,
if you were still here.



A MOMENT IN NATURE 

A breeze rustles the leaves
at the edge of the bay,
The stars make night
almost as clear as day.
On the lake, from far away,
a loon cries. Is it a greeting
or a warning? The lake
is now a quiet desert,
but tonight strong winds
will blow, and waves
will beat like furious fists
against an impenetrable shore.
This rage is also nature.
Some say we should
search for the good
in a benevolent nature.
Forgive me, as I observe
a harmless worm,
struggle through the grass,
eyed by a hungry bird,
until the worm arrives,
at its predestined end.
That bird’s stomach is not his friend.

George Freek’s poetry has recently appeared in The Ottawa Arts Review, Acumen, The Lake, The Whimsical Poet, Triggerfish and Torrid Literature.

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Categories
Poetry

Desert Flower by A Jessie Michael

From Public Domain 
DESERT FLOWER

A desert flower
Blooms alone
A desert soul
Amidst thorns and stone

The desert flower
Dried to the bone
Seeks its water
on its own

the deserted lover 
bitter grown
still thrives and blooms
among the windblown

begs not for love
from those unknown
but seeks it all within
cause trust has flown

Hurt has flamed to anger
The ashes turn to hate
The lover drinks deep of the self
The soul needs to satiate

A freedom to be so untouched
The lover is not alone
The desert  flower stands tall
Seeks its water on its own

A. Jessie Michael is a retired Associate Professor of English from Malaysia. She has written short stories for online journals, local magazines and newspapers. She has published an anthology of short stories Snapshots, with two other writers and most recently her own anthology The Madman and Other Stories (2016).

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Categories
Poetry

Three More Poems by John Grey

From Public Domain 
THE KENNEL

Studio flat. Mattress, futon, floor. 
Could we have stayed there forever, content? 
No reply. It measured roughly the size of a kennel. 
She barked -- “Woof.” 
But she giggled when she said it.

Now we sleep in a proper bed, sprung coils, 
fitted sheets, a home with walls that favour silence
over the fights and lovemaking of next-door neighbours.

And the refrigerator fits more than beer and pizza slices.
We’ve enough stove to cook an entire meal. 
But sometimes, she stirs honey into tea, 
and the spoon’s clink is a memory of rain 
on that single-pane window. 

We don’t speak of that old apartment.
But sometimes, lying back and thinking of nothing,
I can hear the echo of her bark -- not grief, not joy –- 
just the sound of a life small enough for two.



THE BOY WHO FELL THROUGH THE ICE

What does it mean to stagger from the old pond, 
mouth smudged, blue eyes cratered, nostrils red?

The hometown has traded soul for shingles. 
A strip mall fronts our watery playground now.
The wire that fences it is a trellis for weeds.

And you who once were too late for saving,
now clutch soil in ever-defiant handfuls. 

Winter holds you still. 
You rise -- a revenant carved from frost 
and a memory of your flailing body
as seen from far above.

This is no repeat of our childhood. 
Then, you didn’t return. 
Now, you crawl past the despair.

I marvel at your instinct -- 
how you chase the moment beyond meaning 
to what breathes on the other side.
I want that too. To know death as merely vessel--
something we sail in when the ice thins.


THE GIANT

He was at the birthday party,
a shadow of immense proportions.
Streams trembled.
Balloons lost their moorings.
The cake sank.
Giggles stuck in many a craw.

He stood apart as the children 
shrieked and scattered.
In the swimming pool’s blue eye 
he was a reflection, 
not a swimmer.

He waited. 
Not for flat cake, 
not for games,
but for the slow growth of girls 
into something more dangerous. 

He would guard her, 
then become the thing 
she’d need guarding from.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Shift, Trampoline and Flights. His latest books — Bittersweet, Subject Matters and Between Two Fires — are available through Amazon. He has work upcoming in Levitate, White Wall Review and Willow Review.

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Categories
Poetry

The Sun by Mahnoor Shaheen

Mahnoor Shaheen
He cradled the Sun on his back,
ripe with lost songs, nestled to attack.
It was an old tune he kept harkening, 
an old anthem he kept murmuring. 

It was a poem burning him inside,
yet it was the one thing keeping him alive.

“Why must you carry this weight, this burden, this light?” they asked.
It’s the only thing binding me, he said.
Was it a song, a boulder, a passion or a tune he had to keep dragging upright?
Was it a pen bleeding out his insides?

Wasn’t he the only one who could hear, sing about the Sun’s symphony?
Wasn’t he the only one who could speak her name
and yet, he could never see the red blisters on his hands, knuckles and ribs?

He would tell you the Sun gives him light 
when all he could feel was burning.

Mahnoor Shaheen is a poet and academic based in Lahore, Pakistan. Her work explores the artist’s relationship with poetry, mythology and memory.

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Poetry

How Brilliant is the Sky Tonight by David Mellor

From Public Domain 
HOW BRILLIANT IS THE SKY TONIGHT 

How brilliant is the light tonight 
how brilliant is it 

Flashes like meteors boom and bang 
A festival of fireworks 
Heading here and there  

How brilliant is the sky tonight 
how brilliant is it 

But some won’t see it 
Others will  
A child points at a flashing light 
And then they are in it


How deadly is the night tonight 
How chilling is it

David Mellor has been published and performed widely from the BBC, The Tate, galleries and pubs and everything in between. Now, resident in Turkey he has continued his literary career with his work appearing in journals including a weekly column in Canakkale Gündem about his observations of Turkish life. His poems and writings are autobiographical, others topical and several his take on life. 

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Categories
Poetry

The Way You Left Me by Fazal Abubakkar Esaf

Fazal Abubakkar Esaf
THE WAY YOU LEFT ME 

the way you left me
still hurts
you said goodbye
like it meant nothing
but it echoed
through every part of me
that once knew
how to smile
i held your name
like a prayer
now it tastes
like ash
on my tongue
i still carry
your silence
like a bruise
that forgot
how to heal
it blooms
beneath my ribs
quietly
without warning
your absence
moves through me
like a ghost
haunting all the places
i once felt safe
i wait
for the day
your memory
stops
knocking
on my chest

Fazal Abubakkar Esaf is a writer, content creator, and educator with experience in community engagement. He’s a quiet soul writing loud feelings in soft words that explore love, loss, and everything we carry but never say aloud.

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