Category: Poetry

Categories
Poetry

You & I by Munir Momin

Translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch

 YOU AND I

The flames of our existence
cannot scorch us.
At times a patch of cloud 
sails overhead
(we are all dead forests)
in a dead forest
when ecstasy strikes 
the heart of a forlorn tree.

Where can it go?
How far can a tree move, after all?
 
We haven't seen our face yet.
We haven't found our homes yet.
All roads and trails burnt to ashes before our eyes.
All homes and abodes
reflected in the false glow of a mirror,
disappeared
into haze and dust…
 
The wind asked me,
where have the clouds vanished
for kites have invaded the sky?
We can't hear the whispers of doves
nestled within us.
All hail to us!
For we didn't die of our own thirst.
 
Tomorrow,
when we are gone
to the bottom of many vessels,
our agony will settle.
After all it's not the agony
that shaped our solitude.
We, who couldn't die of our own thirst, wonder
how come this grief makes us perish?
 
Once we are gone,
the wind might not whisper with our wounds,
the rain might not cleanse the naked body of our solitude.
The fire of our own existence
will not scorch us!

Munir Momin is a contemporary Balochi poet widely cherished for his sublime art of poetry. Meticulously crafted images, linguistic finesse and profound aesthetic sense have earned him a distinguished place in Balochi literature. His poetry speaks through images, more than words. Momin’s poetry flows far beyond the reach of any ideology or socio-political movement. Nevertheless, he is not ignorant of the stark realities of life. The immenseness of his imagination and his mastery over the language rescues his poetry from becoming the part of any mundane narrative. So far Munir has published seven collections of his poetry and an anthology of short stories. His poetry has been translated into Urdu, English and Persian.  He also edits a literary journal called Gidár.

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

How Will They Know

Sybil Pretious offers art and poetry commemorating the Remembrance Day that mark the end of the first world war.

 Sybil Pretious writes mainly memoir pieces, paints and composes an occasional poem to reflect her varied life in many countries. Lessons in life are woven into her writing encouraging risk-taking and an appreciation of different cultures.

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Categories
Poetry

Anamnesis

By Candice Louisa Daquin

Painting By Vincent Van Gogh. Courtesy: Creative Commons
ANAMNESIS

It is already arranged. 
There in the uncluttered portion of my heart
where simple things lay flat like 
pressed linen cloth awaiting the weight of the fork.
This year, bruised branches split like dry husks
coughing out their hibernating marrow 
against Winter's frosted, relentless betrothal. 
You look older, the tugged downturn
of your eyes, gravities Siamese clamour 
as time winnows her efforts with 
feathering stroke and what is not said
lies dormant like unlit coal in our hearth.
It is written: If you go, I go with you.
We are a chain forged in occidental fate
where night lifts her greying skirts to invite morning.
I watch you turn fitful in your engulfing sleep
all the years flickering like an old 16mm film playing
to sleeping audiences with muted sound.
The click of tape, machine, motion, glossy in dark -- 
we know what we see by the familiar ache provoked.
Your titan hands lifting me over your head 
catching pollen in my assent, drooling joy
like spider’s web will lacquer lustre in dew
moments, so distant, they feel unreal, fiction
forged in time, pockets full of aches, wrapped and stored
like crab apples, promising no worm.
We cannot live with regret so we put it down
and step away carefully, polishing suspended breath
till beckoned back, years hence, your shoulders
dry with prayer, our voices a lament, even
in cold air, where articulation is lost.
I long to protect you, preserve, return, 
stave the crease of time from your brow,
repair the hours fallen in ascendance
where memory has devoured, quilts of bright cold,
patched them against coming shriek of wind
blowing relentlessly about recollections, fragile tinder 
when we were young and redolent with seeded urge
to climb beyond expectations, arms filled with longing
for what is lost now, has no name
no place. It scatters like time, is brushed away by us
when the room was patterned in 1970's hour
paisley print and cold sheets, wan plants leached of sun.
Your young heart then, unemptied as 
my mother's beauty still bore warm flames
possessed of solvent wax and nourished hope. 
I stood in the doorway with my toy badger, 
watching this paper world unfold in mislaid chapters.
Not once did I think of what would not 
still be waiting, as days become decades
we stand on pointe, diminishing photos behind glass
put in drawers, wrecked of momentum
you, almost a stranger in unschooled history 
with your thinned lips and stooped back
a flicker yet, one ember, one familiar evocation…
I am that girl again, claiming your strength
lifted over your head, to spin, and whirl and laugh 
before they blow the candle wick of flame
before we must, before we cannot 
let go.

Candice Louisa Daquin is a Psychotherapist and Editor, having worked in Europe, Canada and the USA. Daquins own work is also published widely, she has written five books of poetry, the last published by Finishing Line Press called Pinch the Lock. Her website is www thefeatheredsleep.com

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Categories
Poetry

Sprinkling of Words & Trouts

By Matthew James Friday

Trouts. Courtesy: Creative Commons
THE TROUT

I see you sliding 
over the muddy gold
bed of the shallow river
as it slips into Lake Lugano.

You follow a flittering 
shoal of hope, gliding 
the thin layers between
the different forms of air.

I’m surprised by your size 
as you snuggle into the sheets
of river and light. Lord 
of the muddier moments,

king-sized in a peasant course,
you draw me down the line
of the green-grey water
until merging with the unseen.


A FEW SPRINKLED WORDS

"How far is between the stars, how much farther 
is what’s right here..."
 -- Rilke 

Late August evening,
light pollution a pastel scum
fronging the pre-Alps around Lugano.

I watch stars spell themselves.
The Big Dipper points its paw to Polaris.
Under Cassiopeia, the tail end

of the Perseid meteor show,
the dusty trail of the Swift-Tuttle comet
on its 34-year love loop of the sun.

I see only the last sparks,
as small as grains of sand, spluttering 
kisses of the final flares.

I’m not putting words in a god’s
gaping mouth; no sprung
mechanisms in mysterious workings.

I only have, as Einstein said, a
vague idea about that highest truth,
the radiant beauty of the unsearchable

and a sudden awareness 
at how fantastically minuscule
my part is. 
A few sprinkled words.


HURRY ON


Drifting at the promenade of Desenzano Del Garda,
admiring freshly fallen snow on the mountains
that crown the pointed head of the Alpine lake.
A building north wind promises in waves.
Here is October tightening its chilling dress. 

We look down at the orange rock under our feet. 
Spun in the dark matter web of irregular lines 
a curling ammonite galaxy with ghostly white 
shell, a reminder of time flattened in plain sight.
The shell spins and I hear the clocks ticking 

trillions of divisions, turning rocks into sand,
caterpillars into butterflies, the hydrogen 
atoms into atomic bombs, my young parents 
into elderly people remembering their own
parents this age, and me a once immortal boy 

now a middle-aged facsimile, puzzled at how 
quickly the sand runs. Now back on the promenade, 
marvelling at the fossil, pointing it out to friends
who want to hurry on - aperitivo calling, snow 
falling, wine to be drunk, the absolute-zero of it all.

Matthew James Friday is a British born writer and teacher. He has been published in numerous international journals, including, recently: Dawntreader (UK), The Dillydoun Review (USA), Verbal Art (India), and Lunch Ticket  (USA). The micro-chapbooks All the Ways to Love, The Residents, Waters of Oregon and The Words Unsaid were published by the Origami Poems Project (USA). 

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Categories
Poetry

Vagaries & More

Poetry by David Francis

VAGARIES

I have seen houses
that went dark early
and you heard your footfall on the tile
but I did not know I would come to live in one.

Have you seen houses
where the shadows of evening
started after noon
but did you know you would come to live in one?



EMPATHY FOR HUMANITY

I walk down the lonely street.
A breeze is blowing—
which is welcome in this heat.
I know where I’m going.

A man and a woman
are standing on the sidewalk,
staring at someone
at the end of the block.

In the trees that intersect
at the entrance
a worker and I connect
from a distance;

off the repair truck he climbs down
and his red face nods,
he knows I’m down,
he knows the odds.

I head toward the boulevard.
A whiff of garbage bin
hits me in the nose hard
and it’s good…it’s all good again.


IGNORANT MAN

Listening to the music
he wouldn’t know how to put the violins together
how to harmonise their parts

He knows the place
the ensemble came from
but how did they arise from there?

Into it, its refinement
mystifies: he half-gets it
but decides he doesn’t like it

He looks so sad
as only a human can
as only a settled nomad…


OBSERVATIONS (FROM A NOCTURNAL PATIO)

The ivy twists upon
itself on the wrought-iron fence—
summer night.

Where’s the light come from
shining on the tabletop
amidst these shadows?

The tattoo parlor
is open—the church next door
is closed, I presume.

A very slight breeze
wavers the sunflower
drooping from its own weight.

The toppling buses
are gone—one with a single
passenger shies home.

The shadow of one
on the brick floor—alone at
a table for four.

A shaky table
but it doesn’t bother me
in this mood somehow.

Lighted from within
those windows must have a curious
life only glimpsed.

Living the moment
is a cliché except when
it’s not a cliché.

Takes one to know one—
I judge harshly and smugly
overheard rubbish.

Shallowness survives
the shadowy depths of the
most romantic night.

The kinds of laughter—
like crocodile tears—hyenas
also devour.

A shadow-flecked face
rattles on from its mouth like
a worm-eaten hole.

Given half a chance
some people will talk like a
stuck horn or siren.

The lone bicyclist
runs the red light to stay ahead
of the traffic.

Exquisite voices
are rare but a desired voice
has tones on reserve.

Coveting gardens
can make one under-appreciate
the dogwood.

Hoarse from over-talk—
some persons talk as if they’re
always in a bar.

Houses that are close
to an all-night establishment
always seem sad.

David Francis has produced seven music albums, Always/Far: a chapbook of lyrics and drawings, and Poems from Argentina (Kelsay Books).  He has written and directed the films, Village Folksinger
(2013) and Memory Journey (2018).  He lives in New York City. 

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Categories
Poetry

Stuck

By Moonmoon Chowdhury

STUCK

For eons, I’ve been shrinking in this chamber, 
Buried under the putrid odor of mothballs.
Memories with forty tentacles and a thousand paws
Gnaw at my flaccid heart as the dirge crescendos.
The sedatives don’t palliate my elephantine pain no more.

The yesteryears trickle in  through the translucent drapery,
And hover over the crinkled bed that houses the threadbare me.
The potpourri of corroded dreams, lost friends, winding paths, 
Whirr and scatter even as my splintered spirit craves 
A break from the begrimed monochrome.

I’ve tried opening the window to trap the rays of the Sun, 
But there’s been a total eclipse, for days on end.
They prescribe self-help books, and cultivating hobbies,
And chide me for my perfect inability to invoke beauty.  
Alas! they don’t see the multiplying moulds and the dead end,
And how I circle back to square one, again and again.

Moonmoon Chowdhury is an aspiring poetess and writer. Her poems and stories have been published in twelve anthologies, available on Amazon. She is currently based in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Categories
Poetry

Parlour Room Gossip

By Ryan Quinn Flanagan

Painting by George Stubbs (1724-1806)
Stagecoach Horse Cart Western Vintage
Courtesy: Creative Commons
THE SKY AND THE NO SKY SPILLING STARS LIKE PARLOUR ROOM GOSSIP

Had this dream where they lined those powdered doughnut horses up
for general inspection.  Whipped a few of the more wilful into snorting 
sidestep position.  Then I stepped away and found myself on some old 
train tarmac looking for my luggage.  The conductor with a whistle 
all the dogs could hear seemed eager to leave.  The sky threatening to rain 
while distant muggers threatened everything else, I was sure of it.  My luggage
lost as I was.  The neighing man beside me pretending to be some horse
in evening dress.  That way I stared would have made anyone else
most uncomfortable.  Fingering that punched ticket hole in my pocket.
The sky and the no sky spilling stars like parlour room gossip.  Some coal 
in the stocking woman running for a one puff train eternally in the black
and looking to make its well-teased bustier run for the hills.

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 The Oklahoma Review. 

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Categories
Poetry

A Falling Frost at Bank House Garden

By Mike Smith

Courtesy: Creative Commons
Winter has arrived. I’ve found starved robins
on the path, as pale as old barolo.
 
Hard frost has told the trees, time to let go.
Leaves fall like dead birds from the sycamores.
 
Dew-drips drop from spider threads.
We’re draped with mist,
like garden chairs out of their season.
 
From each bud’s tip as it begins to freeze,
leaf edge and pine needle, pearled globules squeeze.
 
I motionless, while winter breathes me in
and settling air around my shoulders slips.

Mike Smith lives on the edge of England where he writes occasional plays, poetry, and essays, usually on the short story form in which he writes as Brindley Hallam Dennis. His writing has been published and performed. He blogs at www.Bhdandme.wordpress.com . This poem was part of the Crichton Writers’ (Dumfries) anthology (2007).

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Categories
Poetry

A Superpower in the Pandemic

Poem written in Korean and translated to English by Ihlwha Choi

Courtesy: Creative Commons
A SUPERPOWER IN THE PANDEMIC

Looking at the colourful petals,
I walked along the road of sweet briers.

One man passing by on bike
stopped suddenly beside me and called my name.
Surprisingly, he was one of my friends from boyhood.

He  could recognise me 
despite my mask and cap!
He had an amazing ability of penetration.

I walked along the seaside near Sore fish market.
A few children were throwing cookies to seagulls.
There were full loads of fishing boats returning.

One young man passed by, came back to me
saying ,"Excuse me are you not a teacher?"
Removing masks, we confirmed each other.
He was one of my students from a decade ago.

Marvellous power of discernment!
In this severe pandemic era, people developed
Superpowers to use in real life.

Ihlwha Choi is a South Korean poet. He has published multiple poetry collections, such as Until the Time, When Our Love will Flourish, The Colour of Time, His Song and The Last Rehearsal.

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Categories
Poetry

Vanilla Gorilla & More Mammals

Poetry from Rhys Hughes

Gibbon
Gorilla
Orangutan
Courtesy: Creative Commons

VANILLA GORILLA

I’m a gorilla

who likes the taste of vanilla

ice cream. You are a

tender orang-utan

who prefers the tang

of tangerine. I am rather glad

you aren’t a gibbon

infatuated with fig and

strawberry who feels

an inexplicable need

to devour the dairy dessert

in haste and render

the tub quite

hairy.

HUSKY DOG

I knew
a husky dog
      long ago.

     In the day
           he pulled
     sledges over snow.

                 But in the evenings
            he was a singer
                       in a jazz club.


WHAT WE CALL

I sometimes wonder
what we call a sea
in which a brave dog
swims desperately
through tempestuous
and perilous waves?

      Rough! Rough!


SHEEP MAY SAFELY GRAZE THEIR KNEES

Sheep may safely graze their knees
when skating in the dark.
Although the park is closed at night
and trees in the breeze are sepulchral
the half-pipe is still accessible
to those who have the keys
and this bold woolly flock do, it’s true.

The rams and lambs are showing off,
pulling wheelies and flipping spins,
while the ewes prefer to slalom
around tall bollards wet with dew.

But no matter what tricks they play
they are safe until the break of day,
for this is a town that loves their kind,
a place where animals can lark around
and sheep may safely graze their knees.

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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