Category: Poetry

Categories
Poetry

Less Human Love

By Tapas Sarkar

LESS HUMAN LOVE 
 
In the early days of my young heart,
I fell in love like other lovers of history.
I saw beauty in a rose believing, ‘it cannot be un-pink’
Even if it is plucked.
Separating my heart from my psyche and self,
I believed in spoken love, desire, and darkness.
 
What the heart spoke, I agreed.
What love meant, I believed.
There were conditions in love,
Or love in the conditions.
It was like a bird in a cage,
Or a cage without the bird.
In between, I died a thousand times
To be reborn in millions…
 
From somewhere to nowhere or vice versa.
Still, I believed in fair promises against time.
With a definition of broken love
Eyes departed, lips dried...
Heart spoke less words, beauty spoke nothing,
And, I was blamed for believing in "less human love".
 
Today, the more I introspect on human love
Being less human,
The more I hear the echoing voices:
“There is always a pause in a journey,
An easy midway, to begin afresh.
There is always an end to an earthly path,
Which yet reminds us to begin anew.”

Tapas Sarkar is a researcher at Mahatma Gandhi Central University, Bihar. Along with his research, he writes poems, short stories, and novels. His debut poetry book is Dancing in Solitude: A Book of Poetic Sense (2023) and has edited a Bengali poetry anthology, Digante Canvas (Canvas on the Horizon, 2020).

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Categories
Poetry

What I Said in My Meeting with the Sea…

By Mary Tina Shamli Pillay

WHAT I SAID IN MY MEETING WITH THE SEA

Oh well, there you are!
Forever sea --
Waving at me, beckoning 
Me to come join you in your dance 
Infinitely. We are not you. 
You are not us. We are friends. 
We live lives, we have wives, 
Husbands, children, in-laws, families,
You have us. All of us. Plunging 
Into the blurred depths of your soul, 
Hounding, being hounded, honing 
Our thoughts, perfecting our strokes
Clinging onto hope. We cannot
Afford your dance. Our score 
Is written, we strut in step, 
Finding partners, and keeping beat
Knowing it’s not for perpetuity. 

No one beckons. You come,
You go. Master of the shore. Subsiding 
At will, rising -- and how! You are
With our burdens, patient and tried. 
Those sweeping arms console 
And chide. Our hearts swollen 
With pride. We cannot come. 
We don’t want to go. Our steps recede 
We swirl no more. Yet 
You repeat, chargeless and 
Thrashing about the board.

Mary Tina Shamli Pillay’s poems and stories have appeared on BBC Radio, Kitaab, Blink-Ink, MeanPepperVine, and other places. Her first book of poems, I met a Feather, was published in 2023. Tina is a teacher, language editor and political enthusiast. She can be contacted at:  mtspillay@gmail.com

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Categories
Poetry

Human by Manzur Bismil

Translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch 

In the city,
Those who know me,
Look at me through two different perspectives:

"You're peerless,
So pure,
We need souls like yours
To grace our world,
May your shadow endure forever."

"If more souls like yours,
Doomed and dark,
Taint our land,
Our trees will wither,
You're a stain, a blight
On the fabric of our world,
May you end up in shadows unseen."

Yet as I weigh my deeds
And ponder deeply,
A voice echoes deep within me,
Unfurling the truth:
“I am a human,
A fragment of my heart is housed by God
And the devil seeks to take over the rest.”

In this city,
Those who know me
Look at me through two different perspectives.
For if I am truly a human,
How can I be stripped of my share 
From either?

Manzur Bismil is a prominent Balochi poet. He emerged on the literary scene in the early 1990s and soon rose to fame, creating a niche for himself in the pantheon of the Balochi poets. He is widely known for his neo-classic style, especially in his verses. So far he has published eight anthologies of his poetry. This poem is taken from the second edition of “Hoshken Kaaneeg” published in 2017.

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. Fazal Baloch has the translation rights of of this poem from the poet. 

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Categories
Poetry

Anticipation

By Michael Lee Johnson

Moko Jumbies (or stilt walkers in colourful costumes) evolved from an old West African tradition, dating back to 13th-14th century. The tradition became part of American lore two hundred years ago as the plantation owners would import workers from Africa.  
ANTICIPATION 

I watch out my condo window
this winter, packing up and leaving for spring.
I structure myself in a dream as
Moko Jumbie, masquerader
on stilts. I lean out my balcony
window in anticipation.
Dead branches, snow paper-thin,
brown spots, shared spaces.
A slug of Skol vodka,
a glass of cheap sweet
Carlo Rossi rose red wine.
I wait these last few days out.
That first robin,
The beginning of brilliance—
crack, emerald dark, these colours.

Michael Lee Johnson is a poet in the greater Chicagoland area, IL. He is an internationally published poet in 46 countries, a song lyricist, has several published poetry books. He is editor-in-chief of 3 poetry anthologies, all available on Amazon, and has several poetry books.

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Categories
Poetry

‘We bleed for life’

By Anjali Chauhan

BLEEDING

Something has been broken
Some other has been torn
I feel a rush in my veins
There are drops of sweat over my forehead
My eyes are drowsy
Body feels weak
My legs are trembling
I’m bleeding

The blood’s flowing
Between my thighs
I don’t know from where I’ve got cut
But I know
This blood, my blood
Is not the product of wars
Of violence and hatred
It signifies life
Of theirs and mine

I bleed, and they don’t
But they talk of equality
And get silent on differences
Of uniqueness of the women and queer-kind
Some of us bleed every month
Others are made to bleed because they love all colours
Rests of us are mothers
They give birth to babies in a pool of blood

But at the sight of it
They turn faces, they curse us
Are they scared of our blood?
Or are they blind?

And then comes that blood
Which is celebrated worldwide
The blood of outcastes, enemies, powerless
And those who don’t fit in the binaries
The blood with which borders are drawn
The blood for which forests are burnt
And wars are fought and lost countries are bombed
Management of this blood becomes the State affair
Like development
And amid all this
We bleed for life

Anjali Chauhan is a feminist researcher, journalist, and writer based in India. She is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Political Science at the University of Delhi and working with BehanBox, a feminist media website, as a consultant. 

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Categories
Poetry

The Fabulous by George Freek

Painting by Claude Monet (1840-1926)
THE FABULOUS

The soughing of the waters
of the river is like the keening
of a mother for her child.
It will never end
until time itself is no more,
and the light disappears
from some distant shore.
Until then, Marianne
wields her garden rake
with something like fury,
as if that will happen tomorrow.
No crowd gathers to watch,
and no man offers assistance,
or can take a moment
from the course of his day,
to marvel at her persistence,
or to wonder, as at a body
risen from its grave,
or as a rake digs its furrow,
or the earth bears no seed,
at the cause of this unspoken sorrow.

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

Poetry by Scott Thomas Outlar

Scott Thomas Outlar
THREE WISHES

I want to reach the state
where angels dance across my neurons
from tiptoe-crossed ethereal realms
while humming my spirit in the direction
of higher consciousness
with spells that guide me close enough
to smell the throne of God

I want to close my eyes
and instantaneously shift perception
to the precision point of total awareness
where what once was believed to be normal reality
begins to seem as if it was just a childlike illusion
as the true data pulses and throbs
in colours, shapes, signs, and visions
from dimensions that cannot be counted on fingers

I want to expand the inward horizon
with lucid dreams of precognition
that foretell what is still set to manifest
through glimpses that melt away my conditioning
and open the doorways to enlightenment

SIDEREAL NECTAR

Yellow neon fluorescence escaping
behind the cover of pines

full moon bows a graceful retreat
replaced by live wires and humming generators

I will write a poem on tea leaves
about ripened figs and the prince of parables

crown the skyline at five a.m. 
while Venus dances to her own blinking pulse

electricity spells half of the story
a magnet clenched between teeth to attract the pull

cross-tide and chemical trails
hung from the wings of gods and ghosts

breathe deeply of the moment while it lasts
then beg for mercy that another arrives

ALL THE WORLD IS A STAGE 

And the horses will gallop
and the cows will chew the cud
and the sheep will graze
(while being led astray)
and the vultures will perch
and the rats will scurry
and the turtles will shrink their heads
and the swine will bathe in their troughs
and the skunks will spray their scent
and the goats will gnaw on bones
and the wolves will hunt
and the foxes will manoeuvre with stealth
and the serpents will slither
and the salmon will swim
and the bulls will charge
and the frogs will hop
and the ravens will sing their refrains
and the owls will judge by night
and the ants will march after sugar
and the bees will buzz near the flowers
and the butterflies will flutter

and all the farm will play its part in kind
as both the shepherds
and the butchers watch over

Scott Thomas Outlar survived both the fire and the flood. He now spends his hours flowing and fluxing with the ever-changing currents of the Tao River.

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Categories
Poetry

The Fudge Boat

Poetry and Photography by Rhys Hughes

The fudge boat
stays afloat
thanks
to the towering
willpower
of sailors
who love fudge.

The anchor is weighed
every day
and brings up sludge
on its flukes
that looks disgusting
but tastes
robustly nourishing.

This is the fudge
in question.

And the fudge in answer?

Well, that’s as
smooth as an exotic dancer
who undulates
her degenerate limbs
for the benefit
of the salty whims
of the shore leave crew,
captain, navigator and mate,
all of whom
love to chew
the hardest fudge that you
might ever imagine:
it sticks their
jaws together
as if their gums are tethered
to each other
by mooring ropes.

But the fudge boat remains.

Once I took a trip
as a passenger on that vessel.
I nestled in the hold
among the tubs of fudge
and I refused to budge
when we finally
reached our destination.
I loved that fudge too much!

The captain kicked me off
his ship
and I was reduced
to begging in the port city
for cheap toffee
because of fudge withdrawal.

It’s a terrible curse
to love fudge that much
and even worse
to be forced to give it up
but I was a poor man,
not a toff,
and couldn’t afford
to overindulge until I bulged.
Woe is me!

But I am resourceful
and never abandon hope
and now
I'm designing
my own strange boat:
a tiramisu submarine.

If it works, it’ll be a dream,
and if it doesn’t
I will drift with the currents
under the waves
towards those flooded caves
where mermaids
act as envoys for
the rulers of fudge enclaves.

I’ll be brave
and attempt to claim asylum
by denying my
species, class and phylum
and fudging
the figures to the best of my
affable ability.

Fudge paradise, here I come!

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

Jericho Was No One’s Lover

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

JERICHO WAS NO ONE’S LOVER 

Musical resonance, the skeletal grind,
wheel well tumblings on a red vineyard clime –
Sardinian giant wormholes, shivering,
stuck on a what in the world island,
heaving cardamom can’t work corners,
the formation of sand and mixtape spools,
a cursory lust over the wanting membrane:
frothing, feasting, ruthlessly ensnared
And Jericho was no one’s lover,
scorned his heart for an apple-bride’s cleaver,
drove scurvy from the harbours,
devoured the worm from the bottom of the bottle,
held Man high as the oldest scar,
taunting the land with boundless shadows:
inventor of the first way 
to die.

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

Flowering in the Rain & More Poems

Poetry by Ahmad Al-Khatat

FLOWERING IN THE RAIN 

Are you going to bloom in the rain tonight?
I hear your footsteps in the darkness,
I smell your scent on the budding seeds,
and wonder whether you are among the stars.

This life can only be lived due to your existence.
I feel like I am losing myself more than usual.
After losing everything I cared about,
I considered migrating to a different country.

Regrets have shattered some of my aspirations,
and I miss giving my all to love someone like you.
Why does tonight’s rain sound so sad?
I've cried for ages, and you haven't flowered yet.

Thousands of breaths push me towards your sweet lips.
Allow our sorrows to touch the drenched grass in the park,
and follow the moonlight to
find me waiting with a rainbow umbrella…

TWO FINGERS CROSSED

I'm wondering if my depression stems
from my past or what I'll become in the future.
Is it because I speak your language with an accent?
I'm sorry, but my accent represents who I am.

I wish I could erase children's memories
of everyday genocide with a pencil and eraser.
My phone isn't charging. My cousin is wearing
my face mask. I lie dead in my blood-soaked bath.

Does the moonlight still brighten your melancholy heart?
What arouses your emotions?
Can you dream about kissing me the way you usually do?
Who wouldn't love a walk under the twinkling stars?

I miss the way you hold my frigid hands behind my back,
with at least two fingers crossed.
When I inhale your breath, I trust my senses completely.
Your amazing voice is the music that brings me joy.

PACK OF CIGARETTES AND LIQUOR  

I'd swap my rusty flesh and chilly blood 
for a pack of smokes and a drink. 

I am willing to sacrifice my emotions and peace 
for a pack of smokes and alcohol. 

I'm willing to surrender my citizenship and foreign passport 
for smokes and whisky. 

I am willing to compromise my values and ethics 
for a pack of smokes and alcohol. 

I'd swap my wounded heart and warm hands 
for a pack of smokes and a drink. 

I'd swap my youthful smile and tears 
for a pack of smokes and a drink. 

I'm willing to exchange my healthy organs and memories 
for smokes and whisky. 

I'd exchange my imprecise accent and colourless fantasies 
for a pack of smokes and a bottle of vodka. 

I will never give up my past and hometown 
for a coffin which I tried to steal before my sentence 
by hanging with death.

Ahmad Al-Khatat was born in Baghdad, Iraq. His work has appeared in print and online journals globally. He has poems translated into several languages such as Farsi, Chinese, Spanish, Albanian, Romanian. He has published some poetry chapbooks, and a collection of short stories.

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