Category: Poetry

Categories
Poetry

We Sang Together …

Poetry By Michael R Burch

From Public Domain 

WITH MY DAUGHTER, BY A WATERFALL 

By a fountain that slowly shed
its rainbows of water, I led
my wond’ring-eyed daughter.

And the rhythm of the waves
that casually lazed
made her sleepy as I rocked her.

By that fountain I finally felt
fulfilment of which I had dreamt
feeling sublime breezes pelt

petals upon me.
And I held her close in the crook of my arm
as she slept, breathing harmony. 

By a river that brazenly rolled,
my daughter and I strolled
toward the setting sun,

and the cadence of the cold,
chattering waters that flowed
reminded us both of an ancient song,

so we sang it together as we walked along
—unsure of the words, but sure of our love—
as the waterfall sighed and the sun died above.


HAVE I BEEN TOO LONG AT THE FAIR?  

Have I been too long at the fair?
The summer has faded,
the leaves have turned brown,
the ferris wheel teeters,
not up, yet not down . . .
Have I been too long at the fair?


GONE

Tonight, it is dark
and the stars do not shine.

A man who is gone
was a good friend of mine.

We were friends.

And the sky was the strangest shade of orange on gold
when I awoke to find him gone ...

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.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Poetry

Hotel Acapulco

Poetry and translation from Italian by Ivan Pozzoni

Ivan Pozzoni
HOTEL ACAPULCO

My emaciated hands continued to write, 
turning each voice of death into paper…
That he  has left no will, 
forgetting to look after 
what everyone defines as normal business 
of every human being: office, home, family, 
the ideal, at last, of a regular life.

Abandoned, back in 2026, 
labelled as unbalanced, 
I'm locked in the centre of Milan
in Hotel Acapulco, a decrepit hotel, 
calling upon the dreams of the marginalised, 
exhausting a lifetime's savings 
in magazines and meagre meals.

When will the carabinieri  burst 
into the decrepit room of the Hotel Acapulco 
and find yet another dead man without a will?
Who will tell the ordinary story 
of an old man who lived breaking wind?

Ivan Pozzoni was born in Monza in 1976. Between 2007 and 2018, he published 13 poetry books. He has written 150 volumes, 1000 essays and founded an avant-garde movement (NéoN-avant-gardisme). 

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Poetry

To Days that are Now Spent

By Shahalam Tariq

TO DAYS THAT ARE NOW SPENT 

No longer does this heart sing the way it did,
In those days of years past, when it's abode
Was in your arms; when in your eyes it lived
Or under the calm shadow of your locks.

It would sleep when the days got all too harsh.
Now it but murmurs rarely a few songs
From days of old, as the book of the past
Lies open on the table half read and torn.

Shahalam Tariq is based in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. His writings on history, theory and literature have appeared in The Friday Times and Bazm e Dana. His poems have appeared in The Writers Sanctuary, an anthology of poetry.

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International

Categories
Poetry

Trailing a Birdwatcher

By G. Javaid Rasool

Photo Courtesy: Jairam Pathak, provided by G Javaid Rasool. 
The impulsive flashes of a birdwatcher
Fills the birder’s ears with fluttering twitters.
Her chattering words
Begin to utter her vision.
The body is illuminated with the avian soul --

Longing to fly,
To be one among them, and
Discovering the façade of being
In yet another life for a moment.

Loud cheerful cackles flash
In amusing oddity.

The desperation for a shot from a proficient vantage
Is jolted when the subject moves hither and thither.

The birder’s wary eyes glow again and again, in other moments,
As though virtually seeing
From the bird’s perspective,
And gulps all the loud cravings
In a draught; shunning aside prudery
For creatures of sky leave in a tearing hurry.

Roaming around trivial flats on the hillside,
A piece of wet monsoon land dotted with scanty shrubberies,
The birder begins his ferreting, suspicious
Following bit by bit the hunch, the hope
To shoot avian frolic.

Experiencing the euphoria of spirit,
Yet wary of achieving some corporeal trance,
The birdwatcher turns back
And we begin going hand in hand
Into the midnight of a garden of virtuality.

The virtuality vanishes, assigning us
To discover the original clay in each of us.

G. Javaid Rasool, a self-proclaimed Lucknow boy, is a social worker. ‘The Wire’ has been publishing his poetic compositions. Besides, Varsity of Columbia, WCAR, etc. have carried his articles.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Poetry

Fear is a Paper Tiger

By Ananya Sarkar

FEAR IS A PAPER TIGER

It flaps and growls,
Gathering all its might.
But it's hollow like an empty can,
And the wind doesn't help either.

It looks fierce
But sways lightly
From side to side,
Unsure of its footing.

So, how long before you
Lift your head,
Look it in the eye
And then reach out to crumple  --
The daunting paper tiger
Made of the sheaves of lies?

Ananya Sarkar is a creative writer from Kolkata currently living in Bangalore. Her work has been published in various ezines. She loves to go on long walks, cloud gaze and ponder upon miracles. She can be found on Instagram @just_1ananya and reached at ananya7891@gmail.com

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Amazon International

Categories
Poetry

To be a Mother…

By Vidya Hariharan

She carried twin rivers 
Within her,
One for herself,
One for her daughter.
Fluid states she embraced,
The change from one to another 
Barely visible
To those who loved her.
Sipping water, gushing milk
And blood, precious nectar
from her womb,
surviving, barely surviving.

Vidya Hariharan is an avid reader and traveller. Her work can be found in Setu, Poetry Super Highway, Muse India’s Your Space, Glomag, Café Dissensus, and Under the Basho.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Poetry

Rain by Paul Mirabile

From Public Domain
RAIN


The rain fell forty days and forty nights,
Flooding forests, meadows and dells;
How hard it fell, dimming the daylight
While I, at my window, experienced peculiar delights.

For forty days and forty nights, a water-logged world sang
Hymns to the low, black clouds of cascading downpours,
Tear-filled verses rang poignant pleadings.

Yet, without respite, the rains fell and all seemed hopelessly lost,
As the deluge drowned out the chantings, poured forth its wrath.
The voices rose higher and higher vexing the Source. 

At last one cloudless morning the tambourining droplets ceased,
Amok rivers, streams and brooks began to recede;
All agog people rushed to celebrate the Event with a grand feast
I, indolently, shut my shutters, rather indifferent to say the least.

Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Poetry

Tyrant by Pulkita Anand

Pulkita Anand

TYRANT

There’s a new culture.
Did you notice it? I, nope.
Do you follow it? Of course.
There’s a game similar to it.
There’s a trend similar to it.
At times, even the rain is similar to it.
It’s silence. It’s silence
That’s covering all. That’s filling all.
That knows all. That’s everywhere
Voices knocking on doors to be heard
But overwhelmed by the silence
Hush! The footsteps are parting the silence.
The barbarians came, and they silenced
And they left silence. 
At night, silence patrols the street.
It dances and sings in the heart,
Silence that sticks to the earth, 
Silence that sticks on a stone, 
Silence that rents ears,
The silence of archives,
Pebbles falling like a fountain 
Leaving silence.
The moon is weeping over the lake.
And one can hear the silence in the houses.
The silence. The silence.

Pulkita Anand has translated a short story collection, Tribal Tales from Jhabua, authored of two children’s e-books, her eco-poetry collection is we were not born to be erased.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Poetry

Apertures by Jenny Middleton

From Public Domain 
a brick wall 
broken by ivy
sky shimmies 

                    spilled grass seed
                    grows on garage shelves
                    escapees

drum and bass
echo in the breeze
cold glass throbs

                  a fern roots 
                  near a rose’s mulch
                  sharing keys

sheltering 
from wintery rain 
pulse rates sync

Jenny Middleton is a working mum and writes whenever she can amid the fun and chaos of family life. Her poetry is published in several printed anthologies, magazines and online poetry sites.  Jenny lives in London with her husband, two children and two very lovely, crazy cats.  You can read more of her poems at her website  https://www.jmiddletonpoems.com.

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International

Categories
Poetry

Poetry by Matthew James Friday

Painting by Michelangelo (1475-1564), Sistine Chapel 
THE POET, GOD 

In the beginning, 
God wrote infinitely before a spaceless window
open to the void.

Perhaps disliking the work, God threw
all the poems out of the window
and they coalesced and swirled and erupted
into the universe, forming
atoms and the Chapbook of Elements,
then the Epic of the DNA,
The Collected Poems of Life
with award winning variety, words in all forms,
and finally us, with our elevated word-souls,
reconstructing all that fractured work
in our little imitations of infinity
and offering it back to God
as prayer or questions or proof.

God does not respond, does not read
the overwhelming volume of submissions.
God has angelic interns to do that.

God sits procrastinating over a new volume,
trying always to write the perfect poem
aware, like all poets,
that no such poem exists
and the closest you can come to it 
is being it.



SUNFLOWER


Stamen stand to attention, parading
rippling hearts and radiating petals

a yellow hole that follows Fibonacci’s 
hinting a hidden march into infinity.

Every year, so much effort as if this 
flower plots to become the sun, 

outlive all stars, defy death itself, 
as Van Gogh knew. The coup fails 

every time only to return. As long
as it returns, we have hope and art.


THE STAR OF THE FOREST  


Scientists are still finding
a few names on the secret roll-call
of those close to erasure.
Tiny panicking plants
in remote corners of the tropics.

(Though not too remote for profit to find.)

Enter the Star of the Forest,
Didymoplexis stella-silvae.
One of sixteen new orchids found
from a once dense corner of Madagascar.

No leaves or chlorophyll,
a plant that has lost what makes a plant.
Star-like flowers that arise out of the dank humus
for one day of attraction

in the total darkness.

The pollinator a mystery, though ants
are suspected.
The lucky one.

3 of the 16 orchids are already extinct 
due to logging and geranium oil 
for aromatherapy in sweet smelling 
middle class Western homes.

Matthew James Friday is a British born writer and teacher. He has had many poems published in US and international journals. His first chapbook, The Residents, was published by Finishing Line Press in summer 2024. http://matthewfriday.weebly.com.

.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International