Category: Poetry

Categories
Poetry

One Day in the Life of a Daydreamer

By Sujash Purna

One Day in the Life of a Daydreamer

The blue book with Whitman’s face
peers at me with the graphically
enhanced shadow of doubt.

I don’t learn to sing, but to dream
with my eyes open, no captain
for a borderline personality disorder.

My name is not on the list on the back
of the paperback because I am still
processing the pandemic, a fever dream:

A pentagram tattooed across her back,
a poet writes in couplets about men 
becoming monsters in kaiju defects,

but I continue teaching my class, masks
on, fortunately, or I would have Zoomed
in from a hospital bed if there’s any left.

I remember $3 reading fee and a gut-punch
knowing I don’t earn a living for five
months, living stimulus to stimulus.

Today I didn’t wince over my breakfast 
for the hunger to be an invisible name
trying so bad to be visible on the back-

a tattoo or a blue book with others- graphically
enhanced, perhaps shadowed by age,
pressed gently by the fingertips of a lover.

Sujash Purna, born in Bangladesh, is a graduate student at Missouri State University. His poetry appeared in South Carolina Review, Hawai`i Pacific Review, Kansas City Voices, Poetry Salzburg Review, English Journal, Stonecoast Review and others. He has a chapbook collection Epidemic of Nostalgia  from Finishing Line Press.

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Categories
Poetry

The Mona Lisa is a Real Piece of Work by Ryan Quinn Flanagan

The Mona Lisa is a Real Piece of Work

Such a large hoopla for such a small rendering
which smacks of good marketing and questionable taste,
you come to me with religion and I ask about my Baudelaire;
any man who can hate the rest of humanity more than himself 
is an exporter in the truest sense of the word,
a shipper’s manifest mind with a shipping crate heart lost at sea
and that Mona Lisa is a real piece of work,
that curt fender bender smirk of lost knowing  
so that you just want to be in on the hustle with the insurance companies,
trade information and maybe land those digits   
even though you never call which drives women CRAZY –
not the one hanging in the Louvre, with that most masculine
of brows; stare all you like, she’s not betraying one iota 
of her mysteries to you or anyone else

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

Soldiers and Missives

By Prithvijeet Sinha

Ships and Soldiers: Courtesy: Creative Commons
THE MISSIVE

I send a letter to you,

with drops of blood dyed purple,

your favourite flowers pressed with them

and the smell of musk on this dog-eared paper,

to remind you of me.

 

In return,

send back

my whole hometown's exuberance,

a box of saffron

to entwine me to my land

and a promise to pray

and never blame God.

 

With deliverances of freedom,

pray for peacetime

to gallop

like a glorious stallion

on open land

and set me back home.


MACBETH C. 2021

It's so easy to wash one's hands,

rinse off all the blood

in a ceramic bowl

but the splotches will still show.

Look what war has made

of this home.

The blood on our hands

traverses the atlas,

open like a dusty tapestry

in the drawing room.

 

Blood on the table,

blood on the windowsill,

splotches here and there,

stuck like evanescence

on doorknobs,

not one corner spared from ghosts.

 

**

Smell of napalm wafts in the air

and the burning monk's images

make it obvious for him,

tiger eyes peek from beyond

the page

and mortal danger orchestrates stealth,

amidst the overgrown elephant grass

of forests now turned into

a battlefield in his mind.

 

When the world goes to war,

all the loons by the lakes

go dead silent,

as if on some suicidal spree

and the shore,

abuzz with their beck and call,

becomes scorching dry,

turned from fertile land

to sand dunes.

 

There is no sinister time for him

to lose his mind

because there has to be no greater

pressure-point than this war for sanity.

 

The blood on our hands

is dried clean

but the splotches still show.

Greater than a bullet wound

and far more sinister than the

general's fallacies from the front lines.

 

The War At Home starts from his bunker.

The clawing back to his room

ends in loud laughter

and then rage

and then death by combat

with his own ghosts.

The war at home begins there.

Prithvijeet Sinha has been prolifically publishing works of various hues in journals and magazines like   Cafe Dissensus, Confluence, The Medley, Borderless, Wilda Morris’ Poetry Blog, Screen Queens, Rhetorica Quarterly, Lothlorien, Chamber Magazine, Livewire  among others. He believes writing to be the true music of the soul.

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Categories
Poetry

Sorrows Left Alone

Written in Korean & translated by Ihlwha Choi

Sorrows Left Alone

When we apologise even to the flower,
the wind is sweet and the sunshine bright.
When we settle their misunderstandings,
a mound is tranquil and the birds' songs are friendly.

If birds stop singing and flowers fall blankly,
time will rattle like a wagon rolling over gravel.

We must not trust commonplace sorrow
only to heavens.

If humans do not come forward,
the world will be overthrown by the sea of tears
as only sorrows will retain their hold.

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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Poetry

The Mysteries of the Universe by Akbar Barakzai

Balochi Poetry by Akabar Barakzai, translated by Fazal Baloch

Mysteries of the Universe

I wonder if mountains smile
If the wind gets hungry
If clouds too have a mind
I wonder if ants wash themselves
If flowers have any sight
If colours breathe

I wonder if the sun also feels thirsty
If the moon stretches out for a yawn
If fire ever becomes pregnant 
If water dreams any dream

I wonder if stones, pebbles and gravels
Pass through childhood, youth and old age?
I wonder if beads and pearls are passionate for one another
If fish and birds compose songs
I wonder if there exist such walls
Which have no ears at all
If dead can also see us from their grave
If they laugh at us
If days and nights have tongues
If they mourn for others
I wonder if clouds too burst forth in the heavens
If flowers and trees also tie the knot
If river, lake and sea feel grief and pain
If stars and Pleiades have heart, eyes and ears
I wonder if Mars and Venus know of friendship and poetry
I wonder if the earth has ever fallen in love
If it has endured any pain and anguish
I wonder if anyone can unravel the enigmas
Embedded in Akbar's verse
The mysteries of the universe

Akbar Barakzai was born in Shikarpur, Sindh in 1939. He is ranked amongst the proponents of modern Balochi literature. His poetry reflects the objective realities of life. Love for motherland, peace and prosperity and dignity of a man are the recurrent themes of his poetry. His love for human dignity transcends all geographical and cultural frontiers. Barakzai is not a prolific poet. In a literary career which spans over half a century, Barakzai has brought out just two anthologies of poetry, Who can Kill the Sun and The Lamps of Heads, but his poetry has depth and reaches out to human hearts with its profundity. Last year, Barakzai rejected the Pakistan Academy of Letters (PAL) award, quoting  the oppressive policies meted out to his region by the government as the reason.

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 to Barakzai’s works and is in the process of bringing them out as a book.

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Categories
Poetry

Unasked-For

By Tony Brewer

Unasked-for


I love your tiger
I hate your king
I have too many unpopular things
You looked really cute in your floppy hat
You have something in your teeth
Most movies bungle act 3
I will tolerate lima beans
I often lose track of days
Happy people here look like ads
No, thanks anyway

Tony Brewer is a poet, live sound effects artist, and event producer. His most recent book is The History of Projectiles. More at tonybrewer71.blogspot.com.

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Poetry

Longing

By Pramod Rastogi

Courtesy: Creative Commons
Longing

As flowers are to a plant, 
So is longing to my life.
While a flower offers fragrance, 
Melancholic is the poetry I offer.
While a bouquet offers exuberance,  
My poetry has only tears to offer. 

The spring brings a ray of hope
And the buds spring out in plants.
The spring pricks me like thorns, 
So scarred at present is my heart
By the burden of longings
That nest in its core.

Flowers sway in the breeze, 
Singing joyous songs of bliss,  
With each petal joining the choir.
My longings play the violin
And its eloquence stirs in me 
The quivering lips of my love.   

The clouds have covered the sky. 
The sunflowers long for the sun 
With their joy mellowed down a shade.
Dense clouds of loneliness have
Long since wandered over my life
As I long to kiss those lucid eyes. 

I have seen flowers wither,
Longing for rain to fall,
But who knows how much I long 
For the time to rewind to my youth,
To see me surrender to her embrace 
As I pin a flower on her braids?

Pramod Rastogi is an Emeritus Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland. He is a Member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences. He is the 2014 recipient of the SPIE Dennis Gabor Award. He is currently a guest Professor at the IIT Gandhinagar, India.

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Poetry

Home Schooled

By Baisali Chatterjee Dutt

Home Schooled

I eat a new word
everyday
for breakfast. 

You butter the newspaper
and down it with a cup of sugarless tea
leaving behind crumbs on the chair. 
After you leave,
I regurgitate my newly acquired set of letters,
spit them out,
and let them bounce off the walls. 
Some settle on my broom-wielding hand
like henna
so I softly trace their beauty
like a baby’s sleeping face. 
I revel in their temporary freedom
and pound the floor
with my bare fists
and elegies. 

When you’re back,
I swallow them whole,
caging them as before,
allowing you to believe that 
Yes,
Right away
and Thank you
are the sum total of my vocabulary.

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.

Categories
Poetry

Quest to Relive

Poems by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal

Off the I:10

Off the I-10 I am guided
by memory in my quest
to relive the past. The
ghost of my father’s shop
remains. The name has
changed. I hear the sound
of sewing machines, of
scissors cutting fabric, and
the hammer and staple gun
of the carpenter. In his 70’s
in the 80’s, I am certain he
is dead and buried like my
father. The past has come
and gone and all I have is
a memory of ancient days.
It is getting too late to stay
around. It makes me sad
being in these streets.
I drive back to the house
that my father and mother
bought, where I feel the
sadness come and go as
well until I drift off to sleep.


Waiting Around

Waiting around
like always,
the story of
my life: whether
it is for food,
love, or a
better job,
the wait is
always a part
of it. It is the hardest
part if you
listen to Tom
Petty.  Sometimes
It is worth it
and sometimes
it is not. It is
best to walk
away sometimes
and leave
the waiting for
someone else.


The Last Cold

Here it is, the last cold
of all the colds I have
had in the whole of this
life. Soon I will have a
last sneeze once and for all.
I might not blow my nose.
My head will ache worse than
ever and this so-called
condition will be an
afterthought. This poet
has seen much better days.

This is the last goodbye.
I cannot face the sun
lying on this bed. I
will turn all the lights down.

Here it is, the last cold.
It is a physical
thing. Keep the aspirin.

Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal is a Mexican-born author, who resides in California and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles. His poems have appeared in Blue Collar Review, Kendra Steiner Editions, and Unlikely Stories.

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Categories
Poetry

Euphoria in a Tea Garden

By Rupali Gupta Mukherjee

Euphoria


Stealthily, I crept up to the tall tree-top,
And, sat reclined in the cozy loft.
Tuning pages of legacy, ‘The Saga of Indian Tea’,
My mind diverted by the tweet of myriad birds.
I glanced from the heavenly machaan
Acres of undulating tea bushes lay onward.
A goblet of sizzling first-flush from the emerald lawn,
I sat snug on the tree-house, gazing at the divine dawn.

Horizon dipped in lavender splash,
Dam-Dim Estate draped in awe-struck flash.
Chic Swiss country-house veiled in misty streak
Orange coppice, crimson orchid fringes the nearby creek,
Ethnic cuisine, colonial suites, carpeted jade tea-brushwood
Sinuous rivulet Chel brimming in classical rosewood.

As I stood by the brook, to have a lucid look
I heard a placid din. Was it the trumpet of the wild?
Beyond Chel, I stood beguiled.
Their trumpets ricochetted with the adjacent mountain range.
Hiking downhill, I felt blessed, wasn’t nature’s obscurity strange?

Rupali Gupta Mukherjee has a passion for reading, writing and reciting poetry.   She is a nature enthusiast, loves to travel and has a zeal for photography.

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