Category: Poetry

Categories
Poetry

Poignant Poems by George Freek

Art by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). From Public Domain 

A PARTING 

You’ve now departed.
Tonight it’s a sickle moon.
Do we share it, although
you’re far away?
Unable to rest
on this mournful night,
I walk into my garden.
I try, but I can’t hold
in my hands
the moon’s pale light,
and my pajama bottoms
become wet with dew.
So I return to my room
to think of our reunion.
But I wonder, is it
the same question with you?


EMPTY THOUGHTS

After I eat my dinner,
I walk into November.
Leaves squirm as they die.
They have no choice.
Nature is their grim god.
Their lives are now over.
The stars look small,
but why they’re here at all,
remains a mystery.
As the moon rises
in funereal guise,
an icy wind blows.
Where does it come from?
where does it go? 
I don’t really care to know,
and I hurry home
before I freeze,
no wiser than those dead leaves.

                                                                     
TINY DEATHS 

I walk past a small.
twisting stream. Tonight
it’s quiet, almost serene,
but time rolls like thunder 
through the dark night.
It echoes off the trees,
sick with a mortal disease.
Insects crawl about 
in my uncut grass.
Their life is brief.
If they die beneath my feet,
who would feel grief? 
The stars might mourn
for billions of years.
What would they feel?
They wouldn’t shed a tear.

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

The Bird and the Tree by Snehaprava Das

A koel: From Public Domain
WHAT KEEPS THE CHAITRA* KOEL BACK?


The Chaitra koel's routine visit to the 
Lone mango tree in the compound 
Of a lonelier house,
Where life rests in a shadow of silence,
Is delayed this time.
Has it forgotten the tree
That stands shrunken, pale 
And waits patiently to gather 
The silk whisper of spring colours 
In its brittle arms and 
Coax music  out of it?

*

What is keeping the bird back, 
The tree wonders.
And the answer comes in 
A startling cacophony 
That loops and rolls in angry surges 
Across the neighbouring  vacant lot
Where  the mid-spring sun slants ,
Warm and oily, on the 
Massive drilling rigs, 
Excavators, concrete  mixers,
Behemoths from some alien world
Filling the empty hours
With too much life, 
Hurling ugly sermons of urbanity
At its placid apathy.

The clangs, the clatters and the grinding;
Stones gritting, metals rattling,
Smell of smouldering tobacco and toxicity
Hang over the mounds of red earth
Like a crumpled canopy 
Of noisy ash.

Will the koel return to the Chaitra tree
With its gentle silky lilts 
Drowning the tumults,
The tree wonders, but waits
Shaking dust and doubt
Off its welcoming fragrant boughs 
Throbbing, trembling in the 
heavy vibrating breeze
And gathering itself back 
Steadfast in its hope  and trust.

  

*Chaitra: March
From Public Domain

Snehaprava Das is an academic, translator and writer. She has multiple translations, three collections of stories and five anthologies of poetry to her credit. She has been published in Indian Literature, Oxford University Press, Speaking Tiger, Penguin and Black Eagle Books.

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Categories
Poetry

Dying Embers by Pramod Rastogi

From Public Domain 

DYING EMBERS

I have struggled all my life
To keep my dreams alive.
They have held sway over me,
Those that consoled me
And those I learned to disdain.

But in the darkness of time,
None, not even my thoughts,
Stood aligned with me. The fire
Once ignited in my dreams
Left me blind, barely

Clinging to the timber of my bed.
These dreams, like faded stars,
Have drifted awfully far, too far
To cast me still beneath their spell.
Yet I doubt. All is not ash.

Embers lie in slumber.
In storm or in calm, I must tread
Deftly as a whisper, lest a dying ember
Shriek its way from the clutter
And ignite my life into flames.

Pramod Rastogi is an Emeritus Professor at the EPFL, Switzerland. He is a poet, academician, researcher, author of nine scientific books, and a former Editor-in-chief (1999-2019) of the international scientific journal, Optics and Lasers in Engineering. He was an honorary Professor at the IIT Delhi between 2000 and 2004. He was a guest Professor at the IIT Gandhinagar between 2019 and 2023. He is presently an honorary adjunct Professor at the IIT Jammu.

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Categories
Poetry

Rows of Unlit Candles, Looking for a Flame

By Laila Brahmbhatt

From Public Domain 
I think of him often.

I have become
the ghost of my longing.

My breath never reached him.

He was the icicles
hanging from winter’s white breath.
I was a cactus
in a forgotten desert.

He carved his image in frost
while I searched for his face in a mirage.

Now I listen to songs
that remind me
how easily I fall in love.

As he walked through snow dunes,
I stood
a single grain of sand.

Laila Brahmbhatt, a Kashmiri/Jharkhand-rooted writer and Senior Immigration Consultant in New York, has published haiku and haibun in several international journals, including Cold Moon Journal and Failed Haiku.

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Categories
Poetry

Poem for the Glassy Eyes of a Doll

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

The cartographer of rooms maps his way through a labyrinth
of plaster and repurposed floors, smiling frame jobs and flea market 
throws, all manner of seating and cushion; quite the thing to behold, 
a formation of fire pokers which at first glace appear gathered for
warring parties, and upstairs above the clumsy creak, a writing desk
of wobbly scribbles.  The faded ink of this poem for the glassy eyes
of a doll, made in the image by makers on the make, object of 
childly affections.  Knotted hair combed out and braided, secrets
exchanged, you can see the beginnings of the gossip parlour.
Dressed in nature's spun mimicry, an inanimate gaze which fires
cruelest imagination.  If anything has begun, it must be that.
First canning to empty pantry.
From Public Domain

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

The Great Snow Shovel Fight of 2024

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

From Public Domain 
THE GREAT SNOW SHOVEL FIGHT OF 2024

We were in the middle of the winter deep freeze
when it happened.  A single comment about where (and where not) 
to pile snow.  And having been locked inside for months
and gone squirrely, neighbours became combatants with a 
single swing of the shovel.  It bounced dully off the kneecap,
but reaction was swift.  Another shovel coming back the other way,
grazing off the side of the arm.  The first shovel was then raised and extended
as if a spear in some ancient Greek phalanx.  I was up in the window
across the street, watching the entire thing.  It has since been christened
The Great Snow Shovel Fight of 2024.  I guess a few of the other neighbours
saw it as well.  I wonder if they cheered as I did when the one shovel
clobbered the other over the head and chased him up the street.
Maybe I was a little bit squirrely as well.  Rushing downstairs to plug 
the iced-over truck into the house with an orange extension cord, 
so that it had a chance of starting in the morning.

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

Innocence by Manahil Tahir

INNOCENCE 

Torn clothes, rough hair, a burn scar—
I wonder where she is.

Maybe adopted by a safe land,
still afraid of the dark, the smoke,
and a voice too high.

Lying with hollow eyes,
staring at the starry sky—
I wonder where she is.

Maybe in a refugee haven,
still starving to feed one younger than her.

Alongside a graveyard of dreams and desires…
I wonder where she is.

In a wrecked shelter once called home—
not warm enough to battle the cold inside.

You may wonder why I am so optimistic.

Because—

I was her doll, and she was mine.
There is no mortality in Doll Land
From Public Domain

Manahil Tahir  is an MBBS student from Pakistan whose writing explores memory, conflict, and quiet resilience at the intersection of humanity and psychology.

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Categories
Poetry

The Canopy Palm by John Swain

THE CANOPY PALM 

Rain brocades the canopy palm,
glass lions silver
the cornerpost of a marble dome.
We read a tablet of leaves
on the ceiling,
you step over a crescent of roses,
the candle stars swim 
in the black trees.
Fountain waters branch lavender
between helical pillars,
we awaken cords and strings,
we turn our amber mirrors upward,
the sky fallows mosaic pastures
at the height of the ciphering earth.

A Roman floor mosaic from Ostia Antica from the Immaculate Conception Room, Vatican Museum. Photo Courtesy: John Swain. 

John Swain lives in Le Perreux-sur-Marne, France.  His most recent chapbook, The Daymark, was published by the Origami Poems Project. Additional information may be found at http://www.john-swain.com. 

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Categories
Poetry

I Can Imagine… Poems by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal

TO SAY GOODBYE

Time has erased the road
where I walked as a child.
The last time I walked through
here there were trees and grass.

Time has eroded everything.
There is no shade, no flowers
blooming, and no fruit on
the vines. It is all rubble.

How sad it makes feel to see 
this road go away like if it
never existed. I have only
returned to say goodbye.


THE END OF SILENCE 

I am almost at the end of silence.
I am way past the end of love.
Everything is almost over.

Where could I go now?
And does it really matter?
I feel the wind in my eyes.
In a matter of time, I will be blind.

Summer is long gone.
The glass is neither half empty nor half full.
The leaves that fall at my feet 
will be followed by their mother trees.

I will spread out like a tortilla 
The sea will carry my remains away
toward sunset like my will says.
The sky will fill with clouds 
and birds will sing my goodbye song.

My time will soon run out.
I could still hold out for a moment.
I am as impassive as solitude.
My eyes are fixed upon the sun.

Lay my soul to rest.
Let me pass like all things.


THE FOG BELOW MY FEET 

The ceiling has dropped.
There is fog below my feet.
The ceiling has dropped.
I can barely see the street.

I can imagine this
a meeting of ghosts 
gathering all around us.
It must be their mouths 
blowing smoke out of
a ghost cigarette.

I grounded my car.
I left the keys on the nail.
I grounded my car.
If I drive, I am sure to fail.

I can imagine I
am walking on clouds
rising from the ground.
It is nature, the
fog-maker, reminding 
us to look out and slow down.
Art by John Constable ( 1776-1837). From Public Domain

Born in Mexico, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal lives in California and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles. His poetry has appeared in Abramelin, Barbaric Yawp, Blue Collar Review, Borderless Journal, Fixator Press, Kendra Steiner Editions, Mad Swirl, The Literary Undeground, and Unlikely Stories.

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Categories
Poetry

Poetry by Mohul Bhowmick

Mohul Bhowmick
LATE AUGUST

Late, late August; the ample rains muddy
The floor of the forest in dear desolation.
The berries lie pristine dampened
By the final drips of last night's drizzle.
The forsythia blooms unhindered outside
The window as my mind turns to America.
Each year, as fall approaches, I think of you.
Yet all I do now is turn, turn, turn to the rain.
The leaves moisten in indefinite wait for the
Sun that leaves no room for conjecture.
The shadows tell diverse tales at different
Hours of the day; my watch dissents sometimes.
The infidelities of the clouds run amok in terse
Acceptance of their inabilities to shimmer.
Prodded by the indecisive nature that life
Bestows upon my very being, I remain rooted
To the oranges that fill my basket with yearning.
The grass would leave no imprint of our touch,
Nor the daisies without whom monsoon had
Little meaning. The jasmines would be seen
Flitting about with a sense of purpose
As we chased them without pity or faith.
With a deep lust for expectation, I remind myself
Of the days when we would crowd these streets
Littered with the shrubbery of touch-me-nots.
Every year, I would hope against hope.


(First published in The Past Is Another Country, poems by Mohul Bhowmick)

Mohul Bhowmick is a national-level cricketer, sports journalist, poet, essayist and travel writer from Hyderabad, India. He has published five collections of poems and one travelogue so far. His latest book, The Past Is Another Country, came out in 2025. More of his work can be discovered on his website: www.mohulbhowmick.com.

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