Category: Poetry

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Poetry

By Any Other Name

By Staurt McFarlane

Now the school of semantics is fully enrolled,  
we begin to believe the lies we’re being sold. 
‘Proportional response’. ‘Collateral damage’. 
‘It’s a situation we feel we can manage’. 
Politicians, as ever, so sensible,  
queue up to defend the indefensible. 
The Israelis freely act without constraint. 
The Americans continue to urge restraint.   
Schools, housing, hospitals; all are destroyed,
yet, still, euphemistic terms are employed.  
Artillery posts now even have trouble 
finding a building to reduce to rubble.  
And, as Gaza withers, festers and rots,  
the diplomats tie themselves in knots. 
‘Not a ceasefire, a humanitarian pause’.   
Treating the symptoms, not the underlying cause. 
But Israel miscalculated, and crossed a red line, 
in denying the idea of a Palestine. 
For an idea does not so easily die; 
all the dead children of Gaza so testify. 
How can the fighting now ever cease?     
There’s not the faintest prospect of peace. 
By conducting such a senseless war, 
they've only ensured centuries more. 
You can justify anything, if you try hard enough 
but, deep down, do we realise, it’s all so much guff. 
So, don’t pretend, as you kill, wound and maim, 
It's not murder; by any other name.

 Stuart McFarlane is now semi-retired. He taught English for many years to asylum seekers in London. He has had poems published in a few online journals.                                                                                                                    

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Poetry

Testimony of a War-Seized House

By Shamik Banerjee

Before the bombings, I was not aware
That homes, like humans, could get orphaned too.
Built by a wealthy merchant's wealthy heir,
I've held this ground since 1992.

I've witnessed nicety, hope during pain,
Devoutness, goodwill, and pragmatic views
In those five souls I roofed, who once sustained
Me with dense quicksets, sconces, and bright hues.

They say love's sown with hopes of its return,
But I had failed to be a loyal friend
That ill-starred night, when swiftly, turn by turn,
Those cruel projectiles brought my family's end.

The lattices (my forearms) crumpled first,
And then the heavy gambrel roof (my head)
Fell on my sleeping members as the burst
Of asphalt shingles claimed them on their beds.

But greater is my guilt from treachery;
For now, I'm slave to foes, who triumph, shout
On my own land, spit at our dignity.
Oh, how I strongly wish to drive them out!

Shamik Banerjee is a poet from India. He resides in Assam with his parents and works for a local firm. His poems have appeared in Fevers of the Mind, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and Westward Quarterly, among others, and some of his poems are forthcoming in Willow Review and Ekstasis, to name a few.

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Categories
Poetry

Cyclist Give Way

Poetry and Photography by Rhys Hughes

Cyclist, give way
to horses.
     The forces
of darkness will prevail
if you don’t.

A sound of hooves
removes
     any doubts
you may entertain about
whether your brakes
still work–
     Surely they must fail.

The narrow saddle
you ride upon
is smaller than the seats
     the horses know.
It would make
a very poor paddle
if you were ever forced
     to use a canoe.

The glowing sunrise lies
beyond the hills
but what keeps it rising?
Hydrogen atoms
     pay the monthly bills.

Cyclist, give way
every time:
     You are not as fast
as a neighing beast.
In a race you might be
a semi-finalist
     but never a winner.

And what do you eat
for dinner? Do you feast
     on apples and hay
and drink nothing stronger
     than fresh water?

I very much doubt it.
     It seems to me
you prefer to eat cakes
and sip pints of
     strong Irish stout.

You are like a centaur
     mounted there.
The horses will stare
at you and your shoes
and never forget
     this unbalanced fact.

Cyclist! Don’t presume
to know the sources
that continually fill
your rubber wheels
     with airs and graces.
Simply give way
to the faces of horses.

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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Poetry

Poetry by Baisali Chatterjee Dutt

Baisali Chatterjee Dutt
BROKEN EGGS

I have learned 
how to bake my pain
into a cake.
I now feed them
To other people.
When you come for tea,
you might leave
with a bitter aftertaste.

The antacids are in the candy bowl.

PLEA BARGAIN

Break, ugly mirror.
Crack into shiny pieces
and split my funny face.
Let the jagged edges of me,
be swept away into dust.

The laughter in my head
is enough;
I don’t need your judgemental eyes
to remind me
of all that is left undone.

Break, ugly mirror.
Or turn me to stone
instead.

Baisali Chatterjee Dutt is a domesticated nomad who writes, edits, dabbles in theatre and teaches. Her poetry has been published in various anthologies and magazines, print as well as online. Her novella in verse, Three is a Lonely Number, is available on Amazon Kindle. 

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Categories
Poetry

‘Only Endings and Beginnings are Real…’

By Shahalam Tariq

JANUARY: DECEMBER 

December and January
are not real months – they do not seem to be;
They are like translucent blurs
in the puddle of the whole year’s colours.
But,
Perhaps it’s the other way around
and only December and January
are real.
Maybe our lives are translucent
colourless blurs.
And all the colours are just
our assumptions, expectations,
our dreams and hopes,
which we fill into our days ourselves
– so that life may seem a bit bearable.
And maybe,
only endings and beginnings are real.
Perhaps, that’s why
beginnings always seem so difficult,
and endings are so heartbreaking.

Shahalam Tariq is a writer and student 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.

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Poetry

Spectacles of Life

By Kumar Ghimire


Perceptions paint the world,
Each with their own
Lens of preconceptions.
Only an infant remains unpainted,
Blind to the art of presupposition.

The white clouds in the blue sky, 
Perceived as dark,
When viewed through darkened lenses
In the garden, bloom to unravel secrets;
A revelation for the inquisitive,
Putting on the glasses of inquiry.

If you mask with restricted sight,
And the boundless sky shrinks to confinement,
Life mirrors the chosen spectacles,
Determining the hues of the lens
Through which you peer into the eye called life.

Kumar Ghimire is a poet from Nepal. He writes poems in Nepali and English language. His poems have been published in International Times, Ink Pantry, Synchronized Chaos, Grey Thoughts etc.

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Poetry

Kuala Lumpur by Rex Tan

i.
Locked jaws on the kerb
A kick at the low cranium
Incisors, breakfast 

ii.
Bright sky, lonely soul
The filial son wishes for 
Longer road to home 

iii.
Bracing wind, sun, rain 
Kapchai* weaves through the city
For sesuap nasi*

iv.
Car tyres screech, yelling 
A child runs to rescue his 
Flying scarlet crane

v. 
Wafting smell of food 
Red fu* posters, peach blossoms
Your absence, rings loud 



*Kapchai: (local slang) Underbone motorbikes
*Sesuap nasi: (Malay) A spoonful of rice
*Fu: (Mandarin 福）Prosperity

Rex Tan is a journalist by trade and a poet at heart. As a Malaysian, he is fluent in English, Mandarin, and Malay, yet he calls none his first language.

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Poetry

Go, Green Hornet, Go

By Peter Magliocco

Go as the ghost without shadow
Into realms of Iron Man and Achilles
To steal their superpowers tonight.
What good is just being human anymore?
Pluck the force of ages
From the secretive cabbala
Of Wall Street mystics in hiding;
Fill your bounty with their crypto-coins
And rule the stock market of dreams.
The Gen-Z losers will cringe at your doorstep,
Bring you cold elixirs for forgetting foibles
Of their obsolete flesh in a time capsule.
With gusto swirl your cape into faces
Of once doubting infidels
Who’ll never know what it’s like coming-out
To scrape clouds of silver linings,
The taste of greening ambrosia on your lips
In the sunlight’s caress arcing
Past rainbow arches –

While Gotham mortals dress up for Halloween
Waiting for their monstrous selves
To replace dead superheroes

Peter Magliocco writes from Las Vegas, Nevada, where he’s been active as writer, poet, editor, and artist. He has recent poetry in A Too Powerful Word, Trouvaille Review, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Flashes of Brilliance, dyst, Dreich, and elsewhere. His latest poetry books are The Underground Movie Poems (Horror Sleaze Trash), Night Pictures from the Climate Change (Cyberwit.net), and Particle Acceleration on Judgement Day (Impspired press).    

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Categories
Poetry

Meeting  Poets Outside their Poems

By Alpana

Meeting poets outside their poems is like catching hold of a dandelion
always fleeting and flying.
fanning our desires to be light and liberated.

I met a poet in the wee hours of spring yesterday,
wrapped in thoughts,
inhaling more matter,
processing many ideas,
looked much like her poems,
blooming and how!

I met a poet in the early hours of baisakh*,
smelling like toil,
sprinkled with joy
of harvesting goodness,
just like his poems,
emanating courage and thick-skinned demeanour.

I met a poet walking briskly early morning,
panting and perspiring
due to swift movement
but also, gasping to let the poetry ooze out.
Her poetry is quick
Because the pace of her steps mirrors the pace of the gazillion words
plodding in her mind.

I met a poet chewing a gummy one day,
lost in her own reverie
absolutely chill,
rummaging her bag for more such gummyfying trysts,
sitting in a bean sofa with pen and paper
scribbling and doodling away her worries
just like that!

I met a poet engrossed in thrift shopping the other day
clad in comfort, spotting the comfort
not to discomfort his hard-earned moolah
but the words in his poems are priceless.
Because they reveal what being a parent is like.
The experience is valuable and so is his poetry,
causing ripples here and there,
echoing babbles now and then.

So, now you know where to spot poets.
When not absorbed in writing,
spot the happy souls or the dejected ones
in spring,
in the by-lanes of your colony,
or a high-end bar busy chewing a gummy.
Poets are fascinating.
Poets are otherworldly.
But how do you match the poets with their poetry?
How to remove the veil?
The make-believe.
The façade.
The art.
Please, tell me.
Because poets outside their poems
might be catching butterflies 
or responding to a cooing baby.
But exactly how do you match the poets with their poetry?


*April-May

Alpana teaches in a government college of Gurugram, Haryana. If not responding to her babbling toddler and her curious gestures, she finds herself occupied with reading haikus and listening to Jagjit Singh ghazals.

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Categories
Poetry

Rumbling Echoes

By Samina Tahreem

I found a clock in the creek. It’s broken with all its hands missing. It was ghastly. I loved it the moment I saw it.

I found other things in the creek too. There was a prink pride cap, a broken nail paint bottle, a backpack, some utensils and a ruddy old tire. I heard an echoing rumble while skipping back home. I have been hearing echoing rumbles all the time these days, I wonder why. My Aunt said that the water rumbles before it fills the creek. Is the water coming?

I wonder why it rumbles.

Is it hungry?

My Uncle says that the Water is hungry all the time. He told me She ate the whole earth once when people lived on boats. That sounds desperate and sickly, doesn’t it?

I don’t get along with Water too well. I don’t like boats either; they make me seasick. I don’t think I’ll survive if the water gets very hungry again.

What does she do with so much hunger? It must be so scary being driven by one emotion, one desire...

My mother says that if we do not feed the hungry, they steal and that’s sad because hunger is not greed, it is our right.

Maybe the Water believes we are stealing from her and that’s why she gets so ragefull.

“Why are we taking away what’s rightfully hers, Mother?”

Does the Water feel the silence, too? I wonder if silence makes her angry, the way it makes me angry.

My Dad says I wonder too much. He was feeding me cake as he said that; it left me confused.

I have never told anyone this; I am telling you now, please keep it a secret, can you?

I have heard the broken clock whisper to the tune of the Banjo, the water in the creek ripples when it begins to whisper.

Is it whispering the tune of the Water? Is She coming?

But the Water dances when the Banjo plays and the air and the earth stops trembling. Maybe it calms the Water’s nerves. Maybe it puts her to sleep or maybe the clock is convincing the Water to give us more time.

The Water listens to the clock. Maybe they are friends.

They Water rumbles; The clock sings; It’s a nice harmony.

Samina Tahreem is a young poet from Kolkata. 

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