Category: Poetry

Categories
Poetry

Eighteen Goblins

By Rhys Hughes

Courtesy: Creative Commons
There are eighteen goblins
     who live in a cave.

Harry is surely the bravest one;
he’s best at climbing stalactites
while wearing ladies’ tights
and sadly often stalagmites too
dressed in a badly-pressed vest.

Grabba is a mischief maker;
some say he’s quite a pest,
for he enjoys juggling worms,
toads and the pets of guests
until they feel distressed.

Humpty is the biggest goblin;
he’s twenty-two inches high,
just look at his gargantuan fists!
Standing on his taller friends
he can almost touch the sky,
which, of course, of rock consists.

Gfyxxlgr the Unpronounceable
has only one regret; nobody has
ever addressed him by his name,
at least not yet, because it’s not
reducible or even undisputable
and it sounds more like a threat.

Bunny isn’t a goblin authentic;
most of his decisions are unwise,
he is a green-suited interloper,
a gnome no-hoper in disguise.

Mandy is a goblin queen’s niece;
a brilliant impersonator of geese
after drinking too much brandy,
and swans too, sometimes ducks,
but only when she trusts her luck.

Baglo-Snag is a clever inventor;
his duty as a part-time mentor
to apathetic apprentice goblins
who say, “Whatever” to every
question asked about magnetic
portentous progressive dreams,
not to mention, “So what?” to
his cleanly kinetic machines, is
never challenged by dissenters.

Snapdoodle is a poet and chews
old shadows as he seeks a muse
and sucks the dripping cavern
slime as he designs new rhymes.

Freddie wants to live on his own;
but the cave system is his only home
and he’s too timid to seek elsewhere
a dwelling space, because his face
has been located below a bald dome
ever since the day he lost all his hair.

Gillian Oblivion won’t kick up a fuss;
she’s the only goblin with a surname.
One half fairy, three parts amphibian,
she loves to flitter from pool to pool,
wings as shiny and black as obsidian,
skin more slimy than any green ghoul.

Gruntybones flatly refuses to discuss
why he is flatter than a pancake by far;
his brothers are so much fatter, we find,
than the planet Mars not seen from afar
but magnified by a powerful telescope.
One only hopes he’ll change his mind.

Kravdraa seems like a normal goblin;
but the candle flame sets him sobbing
and his frame is racked with trembles,
for although his body is goblin-shaped,
his shadow’s mark on cave walls draped
an aardvark acutely resembles.

Cuthbert feels like the odd goblin out;
for he always prefers fresh air to stale
and when sparkling water is offered
in a glass, he never declines the drink
with a disgusted face while insisting,
“Stagnant in a decanter for me!” like
his goblinesque friends and enemies.

Ratso is keen on exploring the narrow tunnels
that undulate through the mysterious ground;
not once in a tight space has he become stuck
because his body is far too flexible and soft
for accidents of that sort to be his tough luck.

Tourmaline is a very musical goblin;
he loudly strums the lute late at night
and plays the drums with his knees
while bashing a gong with his head
and then he sleeps through the day.
Sometime soon, instead of waking
with a brand new tune in his mind,
I think he’ll find he’ll wake up dead.

Do you know the goblin named Karl?
He paints animals on the stone walls
and some are short but more are tall
and some are wide but more are thin;
yet he takes great pride in all equally.
Except for a cat that looks like a bee.

Kushy is a pushy goblin, apparently;
if he ever unlocks doors with a key
he never pulls them open but only
ever pushes, his expression so brave,
and groans when he snaps the hinges.
Luckily there are no doors in the cave.

Prude is a pure mathematician
and also the king of the tribe.
He has taught arithmetic to all
so that they have no need to hide
from quantities and sums; there’s
only one who fails to understand.

Abacuso is the one who can’t count;
his face and neck are bottle-green.
Only eighteen goblins are allowed
in the cave but he is goblin nineteen.
Courtesy: Creative Commons

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

Dreams of Disenchantment

Poetry by Michael Burch

OF CIVILISATION AND DISENCHANTMENT 

Suddenly uncomfortable
to stay at my grandfather’s house—
actually his third new wife’s,
in her daughter’s bedroom
—one interminable summer 
with nothing to do,
all the meals served cold,
even beans and peas—

Lacking the words to describe
ah!, those pearl-lustrous estuaries—
strange omens, incoherent nights.

Seeing the flares of the river barges
illuminating Memphis,
city of bluffs and dying splendours.

Drifting toward Alexandria,
Pharaos, Rhakotis, Djoser’s fertile delta,
lands at the beginning of a new time and “civilization.”

Leaving behind sixty miles of unbroken cemetery,
Alexander’s corpse floating seaward,
bobbing, milk white, in a jar of honey.
 
Memphis shall be waste and desolate,
without an inhabitant.
Or so the people dreamed, in chains.

(Published by The Centrifugal Eye and The Centrifugal Eye Fifth Anniversary Anthology)



JUST DESSERTS

“The West Antarctic ice sheet
might not need a huge nudge
to budge.”

And if it does budge,
denialist fudge
may force us to trudge
neck-deep in the sludge!

(The first stanza is a quote by paleo-climatologist Jeremy Shakun in the Science magazine.)
Antarctica. Courtesy: Creative Commons

Michael R. Burch’s poems have been published by hundreds of literary journals, taught in high schools and colleges, translated into fourteen languages, incorporated into three plays and two operas, and set to music by seventeen composers.

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Categories
Poetry

Desolation: A Poem by Munir Momin

Translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch

Courtesy: Creative Commons
Why didn’t you bring along the fire, 
embers of pain or snow clouds?
Perched on the green meadow,
I wonder if it’s a bird or its silhouette,
looking all alone at the city 
of its solitude 
like a handful of breeze 
someone held frozen in his hand.
If you move a few steps westward,
you’ll see life is a flock of birds
in a playful flight above
the surface of water.

Today, the eventide yielded 
my exhausted soul as
an empty vessel of melodies
and a wound inflicted by stillness
wrapped in a melancholy haze.
Today there lingers nothing
between the heaven and earth, 
neither a gaze, nor a scene, 
nor even I --
no call, no gimmick
to thrive in solitude.

Ages after
the wind seemed to have come to life again,
so did the statue of solitude.
It raised its eyes 
and saw the wind carry an epistle as
the cloud melted in its crystalline eyes.

O, pigeon!
If a tyrant monarch
forces upon me 
his quietude, pain and solitude
I, in that very moment will
join the ranks of a fierce legion
and mark for myself a grave
in the battlefield.

Munir Momin is a contemporary Balochi poet widely cherished for his sublime art of poetry. Meticulously crafted images, linguistic finesse and profound aesthetic sense have earned him a distinguished place in Balochi literature. His poetry speaks through images, more than words. Momin’s poetry flows far beyond the reach of any ideology or socio-political movement. Nevertheless, he is not ignorant of the stark realities of life. The immenseness of his imagination and his mastery over the language rescues his poetry from becoming the part of any mundane narrative. So far Munir has published seven collections of his poetry and an anthology of short stories. His poetry has been translated into Urdu, English and Persian.  He also edits a literary journal called Gidár.

Fazal Baloch is a Balochi writer and translator. He has translated many Balochi poems and short stories into English. His translations have been featured in Pakistani Literature published by Pakistan Academy of Letters and in the form of books and anthologies.

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Categories
Poetry

Standing in a Vineyard, Souring All the Grapes

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Courtesy: Creative Commons
They could not stop arguing.
Lobbing the most vile of accusations at one another.

At this wine tasting in Southern Ontario.
In spite of the wonderful weather.

The host trying to ignore them as he poured.

These two vipers having escaped the pit.
Now standing in a vineyard, souring all the grapes.

So that you would taste it in the bottle
when it came time to pick the harvest.

That petty jealousy that kept them at each other’s throats.
Surrounded by all those grapes 
that could not escape that overwhelming anger.

Their rancid lives infusing everything,
you could feel it! 

A sudden heavy cloudiness of sky.
No one driving and everyone sauced.

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

Loneliness

Written by and translated from Korean by Ihlwha Choi

Korean landscape. Courtesy: Creative Commons
LONELINESS

Like a breeze, I tread softly.
Sitting in the spring sun, gazing at the green mountain valley,
Life is truly a lonely thing.
Even with yesterday's memories and tomorrow's hopes,
Even with friends coming and going, amidst the daily bustles,
Living is truly a lonely thing.

All day today, I've been thinking of you.
Is my life lonely because I miss you?
Is this spring day lonely because you're there?
Like a breeze, I walk aimlessly.
Sitting in the grassy field, gazing at the lake's waves,
Even this blossoming season is lonely like this.

Ihlwha Choi is a South Korean poet. He has published multiple poetry collections, such as Until the Time When Our Love will Flourish, The Color of Time, His Song and The Last Rehearsal.

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Categories
Poetry

I Drank with the Moon

By Urmi Chakravorty

I watched the pregnant moon melt – a pearly blob
in the pulp of my onyx sleeplessness.
As I tossed and turned on the bed,
She played peek-a-boo through the lush filigree
of the wishing tree outside my window,
mocking my naivete, scorning at the maelstrom
ripping through my jilted heart.

I invited her to a late-night cognac.
She accepted, scattering her uppity sparkle 
on the blistered walls and cracked floors
of my restless atelier -- with eavesdropping walls
and kitschy souvenirs, carrying the dust of sterile memories.

We clinked the crystals and raised a toast,
I, to my wasted sepia breath and moribund yen,
She, to her borrowed sheen and waning arc.
The clouds waved and the stars smiled but half. 
We laid out our picnic basket on the leaden sky --
One, with the whiff of stale desire, and a taste of dementia,
A one-pot meal of life’s battle scars
Slow cooked on the embers of pain, love and loss.

Then the tired moon yawned and tucked herself to sleep
As I slid under the duvet of half-crocheted, gossamer dreams,
High on life…drunk on hope…a dandelion 
amidst the rubble of my being.

Urmi Chakravorty is an educator whose articles, stories and poems have found space in The Hindu, The Times of India, multiple social and literary platforms and anthologies.

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Categories
Poetry

Carnival Time

Poetry by Masud Khan, translated from the Bengali poem, ‘Aj Ullash Diba’ by Fakrul Alam

Courtesy: Creative Commons
It’s carnival time today.
Serfs and plebeians pour into streets.
Behold the giggling, decked up undertaker’s wife, 
That man over there, completely soused, is her spouse! 
He holds his pay tight in his fists and grins grotesquely, 
See the sweeper there, lips reddened by betel leaf!

There he is— the constable— sporting a shiny wristband. 
And look at that rotund young eunuch—
All merry, like dusky Abyssinians or Afghan revellers in the rain. 

Today it’s time to collect wages and bonuses and forget files. 
Today superiors have trade place with subordinates

And mandarins have transformed themselves into mere clerks.

The roly-poly slave and Kishorimohon Das
Sleep fitfully next to each other near the town reservoir, 
Stirred again and again by the mayor’s snores,

The hapless water bearer gets completely wet. 
The woman over there is a streetwalker,
Visiting town for the first time with her snotty-nosed brother. 
That man there trades in lead, and there is the perfume seller, 
He is the accountant, and he, the treasurer,
And next to him on this day of intermittent rain 
Is the petty thief’s no-good brother.
And there— leaning, bent by the weight of his imagination, 
As if in a trance, is the poet, the king of poets!

This day all have spilled out into the streets and stroll there 
Endlessly — intransitive
Wrapped in newly spun silk.

Masud Khan (b. 1959) is a Bengali poet and writer. He has, authored nine volumes of poetry and three volumes of prose and fiction. His poems and fictions (in translation) have appeared in journals including Asiatic, Contemporary Literary Horizon, Six Seasons Review, Kaurab, 3c World Fiction, Ragazine.cc, Nebo: A literary Journal, Last Bench, Urhalpul, Tower Journal, Muse Poetry, Word Machine, and anthologies including Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (W.W. Norton & Co., NY/London); Contemporary Literary Horizon Anthology,Bucharest; Intercontinental Anthology of Poetry on Universal Peace (Global Fraternity of Poets); and Padma Meghna Jamuna: Modern Poetry from Bangladesh(Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature, New Delhi). Two volumes of his poems have been published as translations, Poems of Masud Khan(English), Antivirus Publications, UK, and Carnival Time and Other Poems (English and Spanish), Bibliotheca Universalis, Romania.  Born and brought up in Bangladesh, Masud Khan lives in Canada and teaches at a college in Toronto.

Fakrul Alam is an academic, translator and writer from Bangladesh. He has translated works of Jibonananda Das and Rabindranath Tagore into English and is the recipient of Bangla Academy Literary Award (2012) for translation and SAARC Literary Award (2012).

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Categories
Poetry

Poems on Hope & Grief

By Sreekanth Kopuri

HOPE

We die 
like great trees 
but the roots of
memories hold 
deep into the earth
that waits for the 
fresh monsoons 
of our dreams 
to sprout some 
hopes around.

GRIEF

a tear runs down 
the earth’s eye

a sandpiper tethers along 
these sandy dunes of 
a prolonged absence

here a half sunk boat
dilapidated by broken dreams
stinks of dead fish  
		
birds winter again
and the silence of desire
worms the blood
before the soul’s last flight
to the bleeding Sun

A DESTINATION

Those bruises -- time’s ashes 
beneath these aging feet 
will bring home a love 
beyond all our meanings;
but not yet, since the 
ash flakes of these dreams
still blur the way.

Sreekanth Kopuri is an Indian poet, Current poetry editor for The AutoEthnographer Journal Florida, Alumni Writer in Residence, and a Professor of English from Machilipatnam, India. 

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Categories
Poetry

Poetry by Wilda Morris

Wilda Morris
A BLOB OF GOO? 
    
. . . instead of being like an empty room
 (a really big room) space is more like 
a huge blob of thick goo.     
 ~ Jorge Cham & Daniel Whiteson

When I was just a child I knew
the universe was awfully full
of emptiness and nothing more
surrounding us—that was the lore
taught in those times, the teacher’s store—
but now they say that’s bull.

Astronomers have changed the facts.
It’s hard for me to understand
how space can be a blob of goo
when astronauts tell us they flew
up to the moon itself, and new
research says space expands.

It’s not like taffy, that I know.
Not sticky gunk or sludge or slime.
It’s not like goop. It doesn’t jell. 
Invisible. It doesn’t smell.
So what it is, I just can’t tell.
I hope I’ll learn sometime.	

What Einstein said was surely true—
he said that space can stretch and bend.
Space goo is something like the air
in which we walk without a care
and hardly notice anywhere—
without it life would end.

Wilda Morris’s third full-length book of poetry, At Goat Island and Other Poems is scheduled for publication by Kelsay Books this spring. She lives in Bolingbrook, Illinois, USA.

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Categories
Poetry

The New Understanding

By Peter Cashorali

The change whose start no one observed
Continues. Just above the roofs
What was sky becomes dark water.
Trees convert to flame and throw
Their orange light up at the waves.
Now the earth rolls out from under
And takes its new place overhead,
Soaked black with authority
That will not entertain appeals. 
Everything depends on it.
Come, it’s time to hold our hands
Out to how it’s going to be
And accept with gratitude
The beggar’s share that’s spared for us.

Peter Cashorali is a psychotherapist, previously working in community mental health and HIV/AIDS, now in private practice in Portland and Los Angeles. He is the author of two books, Gay Fairy Tales (HarperSanFranciso 1995) and Gay Folk and Fairy Tales (Faber and Faber, 1997). He has lived through addiction, multiple bereavements and the transitions from youth to midlife and midlife to old age and believes you can too.

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