Category: Poetry

Categories
Poetry

Whale Song Across a Darkened Harbour 

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan  

The old man and the sea, painting by Anne Weirich (Public Domain)
Of all things comprised, my unwitting alibis – 
cove familiar shoulders in hunch, a mortuary stillness, 
whale song across a darkened harbour, 
the ghost of old pipe smoke through a ripened air 
and rattily seated upon this chair, this porch, 
a man of great age and weather; 
a bottle of scotch and a single malt glass 
on a nearby table – the roaming vicissitudes; 
no pining gallant plight, no hands of shared warmth,    
just a language so bare and true 
as no man will be incited, 
no love startled back from the breathless  
unmoved depths.

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

Moonlight

Balochi poem by Bashir Baidar, translated by Fazal Baloch

O kind and gentle moonlight!
In your embrace, hold me tight.
Like a mother, rock me with love
And chant to me the songs of delight.
 
Like the luminous rainbow
On lofty hills and mountains,
Shower pearls of light
On vast fields and arid plains.
 
Look at the downcast hamlets,
The mute and deserted pathways,
Where like a graveyard life stands
Perpetually silent and dismayed.
 
Fathom the pain of the blue sea,
Listen to the shrieks of the tides.
Night cried again the last night,
Look at the dewdrops far and wide.
 
I wonder at these canyons,
Barren caverns, and pastures --
These made wretched by time.
Will your bright scarf ever flutter?
 
If we do not reap the harvest of heads,
Of corpses, floods will not surge.
After all, how will a rainbow form
On earth, if the sky doesn’t rain blood?
 
How long will the night linger on
To kill all the stars one by one,
Smother the twilight over and over again!
Yet, I am sure, there will be a new dawn.

Bashir Baidar belongs to the generation of the Balochi poets that emerged on the horizons of Balochi literature in the 1960s. Drawing inspiration from Progressive Writers Movement, Baidar’s poetry is widely cherished for his political undertone. So far, he has published four anthologies of his poetry. This Poem originally featured in poet’s third collection of poetry “Mahikaan” (Moonlight), published by Gaam Publication Gwadar in 2011.

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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

Tosses of Imagination

Poetry by John Grey

Madonna And Child by Raphael (1483-1520)
CONTRAST

Three in the morning,
and I’m wide awake,
in a room silent
everywhere but in my head.

My thoughts won’t lie down.
My imagination tosses and turns.

Beside me,
my wife is so deep in sleep,
the contrast between us
never more stark.

So it’s not just 
her rom-com movies
versus my horror flicks.

Our nights
could never be more different.

So her “meet cute” 
wakes up refreshed.
My “demon encounter”
still has hell to pay.


VACATION TIME

I wish you wouldn’t stroll
around this particular lake
while I am seated on the porch
of this cabin in New Hampshire
sipping my morning coffee.

Living in the city,
I don’t wake up 
to such a glistening blue
stretch of water
surrounded by lush greenery
with the possibility 
of a loon sighting
somewhere in the quiet ripple.
And I see attractive women
every day.

But my eyes are drawn
to the wind in your long blonde hair,
your shapely figure,
a face a modern-day Raphael
would set aside his Madonna and Child
to paint.

I’m here to get away from it all.
And, thankfully, it’s all here. 

THE METHOD ACTOR

He took acting class at school
and the teacher said, “You are a tree:”
So he stood still
with head high, legs together
and arms spread wide.
When the class was dismissed,
he still didn’t move.
The teacher said, “It’s okay, 
you’re no longer a tree.
You’re a boy again.”
But trees don’t understand
human language.

It’s years later
The new kids in acting class
have to work around him.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, Santa Fe Literary Review, and Lost Pilots. His latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon. He has upcoming poetry in the Seventh Quarry, La Presa and California Quarterly.

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Categories
Poetry

Demanding Longevity

Poetry by Quazi Johirul Islam, translated from Bengali by Fakrul Alam

The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo(1475-1564), Sistine Chapel. Courtesy: Creative Commons
One day I too burst into protest like marginal people do
Clamouring for longevity. 

Despite evolving for millions of years
How could us civilised, highly intelligent creatures
 have such short life spans?
This should never have happened!
When a man succeeds to stand tall on his own merit
Comes the call: “Exit from this world….”
How ridiculous! No way one should accept such a summon!
A man with a life span of only 60, 70 or 80?
Maximum 90, or—with an exception or two—a century—
Does this make any sense?

Humans should live as long as they want to.
Like a ruler of any impoverished nation, 
God has seemingly dictated even our retirement age! 
Look at the developed countries of the world, O God,
No retirement age there! One retires when one wants to
And no one is forced into retirement.
Humans should live or die as long as they want to.
I want the freedom to choose death
I called out to all at the top of my voice—
“Let us all die only when we want to!”
To my protests the Compassionate Almighty paid heed
And came down to our protest meet.
Putting a hand on my shoulder, he said,
“How long would you like to live?”
I could have asked Him then to give me
Four or five hundreds, or even a thousand years of life,
But I didn’t, not being the kind of opportunistic leader
Who’ll slow down a movement by accepting bribes!
I had confronted the Almighty face to face
And told him: “Till the time you can ensure the right
To die, only when a human being wants to die,
Our movement for this cause will go on and on!      
A smile on his face, God said: “Haven’t you realised yet
It’s up to every human being to decide his or her fate!
I’ve shark bone hangers holding up millions of fleshy dresses
All kinds of fleshy dresses sway in the breeze,
But what makes you think such dresses equate life?”

“Life, for sure, is strewn across the ways of the world
Marked by the footsteps of your kind
Every day you fidget and frown
And draw images one way or the other
Serve those who are in distress or need help
Embrace trees and burst into tears
Such going-on typify your lives.

“Clothes wear and tear
There comes a day when they have to be thrown away
Do you want eternal life for your attire? 

“You’ll live by the footsteps you etch on earth
Didn’t your predecessors themselves decide on how long they would live?
Didn’t Moses, Christ, Mohammed, Buddha, Socrates, Rabindranath and Einstein
Decide in their own ways how long they would be living?

“Decide on your own how long you want to live
Stop worrying about how long your clothes will last!”

Quazi Johirul Islam has been writing for over 3 decades. He has published more than 90 books, 39 of them are collections of poetry. His travelogues are very popular. He has been with United Nations, has traveled all over the world, worked in conflict zones, his bag is full of colourful experiences. In 2023, Quazi was awarded Peace Run Torch Bearer Award by Sri Chinmoy Centre, New York. He has also received many awards and honours in Bangladesh, India and abroad.

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

And There in This City

By R.S.

Courtesy: Creative Commons
The swallows flew south,
Gathering on telephone wires.
The streets grumbled and huffed,
Weighed down by grey tyres.

The city ripped at the seams,
Worn-out, frowned.
In the sea of apathy,
Voices dwindled and drowned.

Joy shrivelled and wept,
waylaid in a corner—
Itself, the pallbearer 
And the mourner.

The lamp posts blinked and sighed,
In the midst of commotion
And the piers dangled their feet,
In the sleepy blue ocean.

Radhika Soni (R.S.) writes poetry to find harmony in life. She is greatly influenced and inspired by the poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Frost, Pablo Neruda, W.H. Auden and William Butler Yeats to name a few. She loves nature walks and rises early to draw inspiration from the morning star.

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Categories
Poetry

The Seventh Stanza

By Rhys Hughes

1.1. The man on the mountain
1.2. Hopes to kiss the clouds
1.3. High above the milling crowds
1.4. With his leathery bold lips
1.5. But the cumulus formations
1.6. Rebuff his flirtations: he is too old.

2.1. The mermaid on vacation
2.2. Plunges in the fountain
2.3. To cool her coelacanth brow,
2.4. See how she attracts attention
2.5. At the merest mention
2.6. Of her favourite steed: a sea cow.

3.1. The Abominable Snowman
3.2. Will be wearing his kaftan
3.3. After he jumps off the summit
3.4. Of the Kathmandu Emporiums
3.5. Because at the end of the day
3.6. It’s better than playing accordions.

4.1. The dolphin indulges in pranks a lot
4.2. In the hope of amusing his friends,
4.3. Voting it best when he strikes his chest
4.4. And splashes the spectators
4.5. Who are juggling potatoes
4.6. On the slippery deck of a passing yacht.

5.1. Citizens who are very fashionable
5.2. Are highly tractable but valuable
5.3. And form fake sartorial societies
5.4. With memberships of great variety
5.5. Including dressmakers
5.6. And models suffering from anxiety.

6.1. The bouncing ball is a big male
6.2. Of his India-rubber species
6.3. And he often shouts out loud
6.4. About how he’s too proud
6.5. To quit by failing to rebound
6.6. At the base of his plummet.

To read the seventh and final stanza, please read one line from each of the above six stanzas in the following order: 1.1, 2.2, 3.3, 4.4, 5.5, 6.6.

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

A Grandmother’s Lament

By Prithvijeet Sinha

Paintings by Amrita Shergill ((1913-1941)
A solitary Om circled her ablutions,
holding the pain of those post war years in her ribs,
when she was young and on her way to the bed chamber,
praying for lesser contractions of torment,
consummating a war-torn union with her eyes to the ceiling.

Broken bangles, shattered pots,
leaking vessels of the Shergill women,
severed heads of cows and crows
and approaching stilts of vultures upon the river's bank --
She escaped all that with her wedding procession,
for the countryside's doomsday was two weeks later.

Telegraphs of the carnage reach her,
from those zigzagging pole wires and squinting birds in the balcony,
her memory drawing palms towards the heads of brides and grooms,
now asking for eternal peace and her elderly wisdom.
Another marital procession seeking her ancient presence,
in the arterial vista of generations.

**

She was young once,
when her tongue limned the outline of his shoulders
and his fingers caressed the very essence of her body.
The idea of existence,
of sandalwood aromas reeling with sweat and smells of new beginnings,
all garnered few towns away from her own, 
where intimacy took beastly garbs to snap hymens
and midnight guards broke their sacred words,
to ransack humanity.

"Blessed be the union of these two souls,
prosper and progress as pilgrims on this eternal road,
in faith and in fidelity,
draw strength and make amends the first time around in brewing conflict's way, "
Her words comforting a small town that always lay outside the epicenter of her heyday.

**

Her town burned,
looted and pillaged,
sacked to become refuge of wandering ghosts
and a blot on nostalgia's subtle arc.

She remembers swings swaying past the rainbow,
the fairs bedecked with children's hoots
and parental vigils of joy
and the day before a prognosis of bloodshed doused the fire of youth.

She remembers.
The lament of her 'long ago' gone
with the last smoke of the past,
her failing memory
and the joy of the town congregating for a couple's future.

She remembers.

Prithvijeet Sinha has prolific published credits that encompass poetry, musings on the city, cinema, anthologies, journals of national and international repertoire, as well as a blog, An Awadh Boy’s Panorama, from which these poems have been republished. His life-force resides in writing, in the art of self-expression.

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Categories
Poetry

Poems by David Mellor

David Mellor
                    THERE

                  I’m not there
               And neither are you

         But we have all danced at festivals 
             Walked down the streets 
             Cooked food in our homes 

                  I’m not there 
             And neither are they now… 

 
LOVED

Death is 
R
O
P
P
I
N
G

From the skies 

     L  lies  lifeless
     O on
 E  V ery 
Str E et




Death is 
R
O
P
P
I
N
G
From the sky

Bodies mount up 
1.500 here…
1.500 there…


L
	O
		V
			E
			   Lies in ruins… 
			   No one utters her name 


JUST SOME BODY 
(a child refugee)

I heard the shots, I did 
And my siblings being dragged screaming
Out the door 

My father ran, carrying me like a football
Up into the hills and miles away
Terror in his eyes, “Which way now?”
	
Into the truck, freezing at night 
Dumped on the shore
There was no need to ask 
“Are they coming too?”
As I knew…
They were no more


The boat with a hundred frightened faces came ashore, 
We were taken to the airport and told… 
“Get back home!”
My father desperately pleaded, but to no avail 

We landed in Kabul 
He was tortured and murdered 
      And I followed suit

David Mellor has been published and performed widely from the BBC, The Tate, galleries and pubs and everything in between. Now, resident in Turkey he has continued his literary career with his work appearing in journals including a weekly column in Canakkale Gündem about his observations of Turkish life. His poems and writings are autobiographical, others topical and several his take on life. 

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Categories
Poetry

The Window and the Flower Vase

Poetry and translation from Korean by Ihlwha Choi

In front of the window, there's a flower vase,

Bright and colourful with various blooms.

As I remove the vase,

The colours and scents leave in droves.


The space in front of the window is now open wide,

Without any colour or fragrance.


The window, all alone in its place,

Finally becomes a true window.

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

Voice of the Webb

By Ron Pickett

A Cosmic Tarantula, caught by NASA’s Webb Telescope. 
You can’t hear screams in space -- but they are there, in abundance.
I look at the horizon:
The distant hills are covered with trees and shrubs, and grasses.
The fronds on nearby palm trees sway gently in the warm breeze.
I see a small pond with lilies and reeds and even pond scum,
And I feel good, alive and strong and even essential, significant.

I listen to the sound of a Black Hole.
It is a hiss with modulation, but it is somehow ominous -- deadly,
Atavistic, I’ve heard it before.
I look at the pictures from the Webb telescope.
They are gorgeous, incredible, brilliant, unimaginable.
They take me back to the beginning of time.
The stars and galaxies and nebulae are lacy and soft,
Like a necklace or a lovely ball gown designed to enhance natural beauty.

I re-enter my world. Twenty miles deep air protects me, guards me, gives me freedom.
I feel the heat from the sun -- 93 million miles away; it is vital and terrifying.
I look at the photos from the telescope again, and it is beautiful-deadly.
I can’t escape the chilling reality that I can only be here as long as the pond is filled with water,
The sky is filled with air, and the vicious world outside my earth is kept at bay.
I can’t get close to the stars, the vast dust clouds that are birthing stars.
And I can’t get them out of my mind – I want to play among the stars.
I feel a chill of impending doom, but I don’t know where it comes from.

It is the voice of space, of the Webb. 
The hiss of a Black Hole,
The echo of the Big Bang, 
The beat of the spinning pulsar
It is clean and crisp,
Dark and muddied.
This is the voice of our parents.
This is the sound of our death.

Ron Pickett is a retired naval aviator with over 250 combat missions and 500 carrier landings. His 90-plus articles have appeared in numerous publications. He enjoys writing fiction and has published five books: Perfect Crimes – I Got Away with It, Discovering Roots, Getting Published, EMPATHS, and Sixty Odd Short Stories.

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