Anoucheka Gangabissoon is a Primary School Educator in Mauritius. She writes poetry and short stories as hobby. She considers writing to be the meaning of her life as she has always been influenced by all the great writers and wishes to be, like them, immortalized in her words. Her works can be read on poetrysoup.com and she had also appeared in various literary magazines like SETU, Different Truths, Dissident Voice, WISH press, Your One Phone Call, Communicator's League and In Between Hangovers press. She has also been published in Duane’s Poetree and also in an anthology for the Immagine and Poesia group. Her poems are often placed in free online contests. Acceptance Everyone tries to accept life Everyone tries to move on To smile even when faced with storms To pretend That all is fine When nothing is! Pray, to rebel against life and its ways Would seem to imply That towards Mother Earth We have drawn out our swords Ready to slash at her Ready to maim her Ready to look at her in the eyes And say We have no feelings for you We care not if you be or if you cease to be! Why, when we claim to be the children of Earth When we claim to be beings made of humanity We should accept life And everything that it gives to us We should accept everything And smile When everything is being twisted in a storm Smile, yes and even laugh When we face raging seas Ready to engulf us in Ready to sink our ships Ready to cause us to be inexistent someday! Transformation I believed in life’s folly once I thought it was worth more than an ounce I thought it was the very essence of existing Life and its folly had me somersaulting To the beats of its joyous music So much that I never noticed When my feet got tangled in between the roots of truth And I fell I fell from the mundane plane And landed on the spiritual one! Why, I got cured then My folly changed into a most majestic butterfly One shimmering with sparkling dust One made of purity and Able to hypnotize the whole mundane world Able to even imbibe faith in the lot of humankind! Pray, a butterfly I am Flying amidst the freshness of life Seen from a higher position A butterfly, yes, after having been A crawling caterpillar A butterfly, waiting, yet, for another Metamorphosis One which will turn it into a spark of light A spark with endless powers And endless capacities! I believed in life’s folly once In it I basked Taking joy in living in ignorance But the switch of spiritual upliftment has been turned on Now, I shall only look in front of me To climb higher and higher Still so steeper stairs! The swindles of life I saw a man laugh uncontrollably When he managed to abuse of another Yes, he had no money to pay his bus fares But succeeded in swindling a stranger A stranger seeming so decent So fatherly like So engrossed in honest living So child caring So mindful of everything that encompass him And his life! The look on the man’s face Scared me It was as if I was seeing the devil for real What is the meaning of life here Living and toiling we are Only to meet with the end An end which many have philosophized about An end which yet none can describe for certain I wondered then if we are not evil beings Trying to believe that we can be good That if we work towards it We can aspire the reach the divine abodes! Pray, I decided then, to try my best not to let anyone use And abuse of me Life is itself a swindle It has us fooled By making us believe that it is made of goodness When it is none but a trap! Somehow, like the decent men All the decency in us Get trapped in the web of life!
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Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school teacher (remember the hormonally-challenged?) living in Southern California. He believes in the succinct, that the small becomes large; and, like the Transcendentalists and William Blake, that the instant contains eternity. Given his “druthers,” if he’s not writing, Rick would rather still be tailing plywood in a mill in Oregon. He can be reached atrdhartwell@gmail.com. Prairie Passage Grasses undulate in a freshening breeze, prairie roiling much like a huge animal shivering its fur as it wakes and stretches; tactile ululations announcing another dawn. Two wild geese spotted heading east into a winter sunrise – “red sky at morning, sailors take warning” – wondering if birds squint against such brightness. Honking is at first call-and-response then one voice skips a beat, retrieves timing so they clack and flap in unison until they drown below the horizon. Wandering across this open prairie without a deadline or a destination, I encounter what was once a machined, futile attempt to prevent free passage: A long fence-line of barbed wire, two strands in most places, three or four in others, slackened, no longer stretched taut, fixed on splintered wooden posts, Some of which, being decayed with rot at bottom along a seam of high-water mark or where snowmelt each spring, leaves only amputated stumps dangling askew. Now I focus on this distraction from my view of subtly-hummocked high- plains steppe rich in wild, late-winter- wheat in a face caressed with ravines. It was a barrier once meant to restrain the have-nots from the land of the haves, or to sever from sheep and to cleave to cattle, or just to quarter and contain land. What was once open-range, performs now as gaming platform for hawks to plunder small darting prey with zeal across this divide fallen in disrepair since cowboys no longer Ride the fence-line repairing breaks in company with their lonesome memories; and tufts of hair or fur or cloth caught on barbs have mostly rotted away and an occasional plastic bag Signals surrender to the spurs, as it flutters or droops from the wire as weather demands. The slow squeal of a windmill down an arroyo spins tales of vacancy and loss as it draws up Water from a receding aquifer, slurping slowly into an oblong tin tub roofed in moss and skaters. Avian, animal and reptile tracks crisscross the muddy overflow; though, unlike the intent of the barbed wire, This miniature oasis serves as treaty-land of sorts, bequeathed by an age submerged long past beneath a winding-sheet of natural grasses covering the slow bleed-out of a land once verdant and fertile. Above the windmill and the water trough, at the end of a footpath grown indistinct, on a trailer without tires, sits a shipwrecked sailboat with a hole in its hull that pleads a tale of the vessel’s demise, but settles to serve instead as landlocked houseboat for casual habitués of this vast sea of grass in no need of man as mariner or marauder. Hospice, Home Harbor Continents drift together, bruises colliding colorfully – blue, black, green, yellow – enlarging from the sites of self-injections; her body at war with itself, ravaging the victorious along with the vanquished, and here is so little a neutral country can do, neutered by frustration, fear, expectant loss – ignored for all that. She, so weak, so faint, nauseous, and I, massaging islands of flesh trying to liberate the pain of her civil war, am too late to redeem pawned promises, seeking forgiveness for unspoken sins, which won’t salve the other’s wounds. Persistently, land masses flow together, expanding across the world of her body, eclipsing the smooth paleness that was my map to pleasure her when younger; as I remember her streaming body awash with seas of sweat after sex under a fallow moon at seventeen, seen through eyes of remembrance, though now seventy, awaiting results – tests and consultations – facing the global apocalypse fast approaching. And I, too, am defeated at war’s end. Phantasms Cutting the throat of night, the sky bleeds across the horizon; or, viewed differently, the life’s blood of day seeps into earth. Three plums depend from a gnarled branch, a pawnbroker’s marquee inviting the curious: come and browse or bite, surrender to appetite, redeem recollections of sumptuous fruit, and knock down the seeds next to the birdbath, cycling the seasons for each new generation. Peeking through the window like an avian voyeur, an observer of birds at bath; giddy watching sparkles from feathered splashes; no other reference – phantasms: Flashback of the bow-spray, rail down on a catboat at 10; sweat pooling between her breasts at each breath at 17 beneath a summer moon; an accretion of memories. Things of nature, as well as men, possess their own philosophies. Litmus Test Suddenly, aloft, accusations begin with raucous chirping: Tiny yellow bird, seen distantly, canary or perhaps parakeet – hectored by several ravens and a single adolescent hawk – plunges into a rose bush forest to escape hostile intentions. Being different seems as subject to attack among avian as among human; perhaps birds, too, have differences of religious beliefs or are merely organized as against song. Unknown whether the butter-feathered bird escaped or not, but the predators, sated with indignation, drifted away, and such drama before breakfast prepares me for morning news. Perhaps God’s Nuts There have been too many ways by which God or god or gods have been characterized. Perhaps it is not too bizarre to personify the universal creator as a paranoid schizophrenic. Did (s)he start all this with a big bang, accelerating towards an unimaginably immobile and frozen entropy; or, is such a big bang decelerating towards nil only to then crumple into a super-heated singularity? So then what? – Unfolding again in a parallel manner with the same or similar outcome? – or, perhaps collapsing again to a nullity, a nothing, from out of which it, this universe, originally burst into being or, another chance, - collapsing on through such a singularity, punching out to another dimension? It seems likely that such a schizophrenic architect has multiple psychoses, any of which, or in combination, may sketch the dawn and death of stars or entire galactic assembles, of black holes or obscure dark matter. All of this presupposes that such an unstable author partakes in the busyness of this one universe, let alone the prospect of meddling in a multiverse simultaneously. Conceivably, we are all nuts; merely the rant, the paranoid imaginings of God or god or gods at tragic play. Keith Burkholder has been published in Creative Juices, Sol Magazine, Trellis Magazine, Foliate Oak Literary Journal, New Delta Review, Poetry Quarterly, and Scarlet Leaf Review. He has a bachelor's degree in statistics with a minor in mathematics from SUNY at Buffalo (UB). God and Sports If you think about, God has nothing to do with sports, Look at sporting events that are brutal to one another, Like boxing, football and hockey, Where is God to make these players feel comfortable? The constant pounding and destruction of humans and yet God is sung about before their events start, We live in a combative world, People like to destroy one another, Yet, God is always brought up, Yet he doesn't do anything and in all likelihood doesn't exist, Just think about what I have said, There really is no God, and never was, Science is what incorporates our lives, It always will be, From medication one takes to a bridge developed somewhere in this world, Thank science for our well being, not God, Take care and just be good, As I have said many times, goodness prevails because it is a human quality exhibited on planet Earth, For this is our world and let positivity prevail in its highest order. Finances and Religion If you think about it religion doesn't care about finances, Only finances of their own, Religion takes in so much money, but always needs more, God never seems to be around to deal with this, Think about it, There are fish dinners, bingos and patrons giving money, And religion keeps running out of money, Gee, I wonder if God cares, or if he really exists, The longer you live, the greater the chance there is no God, God is supposed to be rich, but never contributes to finances, Whether it is the church, or people in need, Again, believe what you want about religion, Atheist or not, Realize, we live on planet Earth, and God really doesn't care about us, Think about what I have said, Learn as you go, We as humans live on planet Earth, This is our world, God is not here and that is just the way it is, Be good to yourself and others, This is all you can do and let life lead you in a positive direction and that will enhance you life in many ways, Carpe diem. Hearing Voices in the Shower She was taking a shower, The warm water felt great to her, She heard voices from afar, She could not understand this, The voices continued to exist throughout her apartment, She turns off the water, The decides to see if they exist visually, It must be someone here, She wraps herself in a towel, Then she walks about in her apartment, She sees nothing, She wonders if it was her imagination, Stress has affected her greatly at work, It must be her mind playing tricks with her, She goes back to the bathroom, Then resumes her shower, No more voices to be heard, The night passes and it is smooth sailing for her, It must be on account of stress, She is grateful she is safe and sound, Will she ever experience this again? No one can tell, This was her episode and no one else’s, For now the future continues, It should be fine for this woman, Mental occurrences can happen to anyone, She will rest easier and know that time will continue to pass for her as the journey of life leads her to a better tomorrow as we and she knows it. Ken Allan Dronsfield is a poet originally from New Hampshire, now living in Oklahoma. He was nominated for The Best of the Net and 2 Pushcart Awards in Poetry for 2016. His poetry has been published world-wide in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa. Ken loves walking in the woods at night, and spending time with his cat Willa. Ken's new book, "The Cellaring", a collection of 80 haunted, paranormal, weird and wonderful poems, is available through Amazon.com. He is the Co-Editor and Cover Artist for two poetry anthologies, "Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze" and "Dandelion in a Vase of Roses" available from Amazon.com. The Leaf Walking along the long path in the forest of hardwood and pine, a lone leaf glided down, like a paper plane moving left and right in the coolish breezes it finally landed upon the path turned several cartwheels and came to rest in a pile of fodder of like brethren and then from the hills, the winds, sounding like a cheering crowd at a ball game and to my left on the stone wall five squirrels stood with acorns, holding them up. I squinted and saw little numbers written on each. It appeared that my leaf had scored well on his flight and landing. Suddenly snow flakes began to fall, their cold stinging my face as I looked skyward yes, much like confetti, snow was falling, the winds howled and just then, I was jolted awake from my short nap, sitting in my favorite chair on the back porch. I took a sip of my tepid tea, and watched in awe, as a single oak leaf floated down from a high tree across the yard, drifted and landed in the garden. I sprinted out the door and fetched my prize and just then, holding it high to the sky, large snowflakes began to fall and I laughed like a schoolboy, walked into the house and placed my leaf upon the fireplace mantle. Although it's been years since that first leaf touched my heart, each October, I look forward to the "Games" and running to catch and display my winning leaf. A Comely Dare In the waning hours just before the dawn, where the Sirens sing their shrill serenades. We grasp the rigging spying jagged crags; old tales whispered of the Rock of Mermaids. Where women of beauty slap their longish tails, comb seaweed like hair, and sing sonnets to entice. An echoing lullaby and a flirtatious comely dare. Call those lonely sailors and mariners to pay a price. Dead there upon the rocks they will certainly be found, shrieking revenant pleas as Mermaids giggle and wave. Sailing on into calmer seas, balmy winds carry us away. Just 'Round the Corner A dog barks at the unseen the stench of diesel from buses the blues waft from open windows giggling children play on sidewalks two policemen walking their beat yellow cabs bring military men deliver heartbreaks to families flags displayed upon the street tears fall, just 'round the corner. Of Mountains and Meadows A solitary voice whispers in the dark of a meadow. Small swift orbs of light appear floating everywhere. The moon begins to crest atop mountains in the east wildflowers stand proud as bright fireflies dart all about. Snapdragon or buttercups brush my hollow cheeks. swallow your feted elation, as meadows bathe in light behold a rising faery of the morning upon pinkish clouds awash in dancing shadows through, grass, pine, and oak. Reflecting the Mediterranean, her mountains and meadows. John Toivonen's poetry has been published in Norfolk Review, Midwest Review, and Paterson Literary Review. He published his most recent collection of poetry, Song After a Long Campaign, with Great Roots Press in 2015. He is a criminal defense attorney in Lansing, Michigan. Drinking Beneath a Fountain I might find some way to converse with you while we sit at an iron-grated table with the pouring hush of water flowing seamlessly from the fountain. You have put away the money-counting clock long enough to mediate upon the moving glass of constant water, the perfect rhythm of planets, and the night’s auburn notice of the Resurrection. You speak of blood and ask the formal question, did the dolphins bleed during their morphing from men under the capricious hand wielded by the itinerant mountain god? Did wives abandon themselves to something better than ruin, something ordained by the much older, and chaotic cleansing spirit not much praised by authors today? We drink openly without fear of retribution. We take the same care with the methodical pouring of the brown, slightly sweet nectar that mothers do with their calm nursing. We drink Japanese whiskey just to seek a different touch on the tongue, and then when the completed glass is carted away we explore an unknown Irish whiskey. Everything tastes good; everything has its origin. The words date back to the days of English and French fighting. Not much is archaic in these moments when the drinkers are the heads of the fountain. Scene From a Formal Wedding We carried the drunken people out of the wedding, aloft like heavy-boned candles dripping their perspiration on the hardwood floor. The negatives of the people seized by camera seem like black and white ethereal angels. They comfort us by taking us back to the source. The old Angelus of Italian folk song prances pepper notes quick and hot on the ear. We are free from modern, contrived tedium. Long before we were here they practiced the pattern, the spice of rye rides on the tongues who administer the rites of family. Blessings are spit into a small animal's foot, there is the ritual cursing of lizards, and big-hipped bridesmaids slave away the dance. This is the coronation. Everything that is modern feels the infliction of an atavistic wound. Dionysus Returns Though I have not run my hands across the midnight stitches sown by his mother who conjugated flesh back from history to making the man walk again, and my fingertips have not travelled in the red gulley of his scars, I believe that mocking pirates morphed to dolphins, eternal ecstasies of wine made spring procession in the hills, and he has returned because these stories are vivid in my mind. Midwestern Terrain The brown, leaf-covered limbs awake to day as the freckled wood marks skinny dents in the beige tundra spit with swamp. In a scattered island of trees, they depart, the tourque-spun knees of deer running from the lascivious eyes of hunters scattering shot along the line. Each decade of miles the scanning eyes see a grand rectangle of dancing, cloth stripes towering over the tundra marking a place where man makes his home. Paul Ilechko was born in England but has lived much of his life in the USA. He currently lives in Lambertville, NJ with his girlfriend and a cat. Paul has had poetry published recently by Dash Literary Journal, Gravel Magazine, Gloom Cupboard, MockingHeart Review and Slag Review, among others. The Age of Mud and Darkness Black earth is better than red. A rich, loamy soil, seeded and worked, fertile. Black mud; truly black when wet, soaking up the pouring rain. A light, ashy gray when dry, but never sienna, never that toasted red earth, signaling the hardness of red clay. The best earth is found in the valley. Walk through those bottomlands in your muddy hiking boots. Reflect on the glory of agriculture, rather than the overwrought cliché of the mountain top. Once a battlefield – like all flatlands, everywhere – but now turned into perfect farmland. Yet now we sink into the mud. Knee deep in this squalid blackness, sinking as we failed to comprehend the changes that had been, at the last, inevitable. The absolute deterioration of the social contract, the end of civil society as we have known it – we plunge into darkness. The Neighbor She abides, unacknowledged, in the corner of her garden, next to where the mulch pile used to be. To her left, that’s where the chrysanthemums once grew, their flamboyant blossoms shivering in the Autumn breeze. Her husband, long dead, was a horticulturist. Famed in this small town for the beauty of his landscapes, every season was tinted with his unique sense of color, ordered and aligned around a singular creative vision. Behind her stands the decrepit ruin of his crumbling greenhouse. Cracked glass and peeling paint mirror her mental state. She no longer recognizes any of the passersby, not even old friends from those years that have slipped through her fingers. Alzheimer’s has eaten her brain. She stands silently swaying. The curious smile playing on her lips is disconnected, an inchoate response to external stimuli, as she exists In a world of her own, one that we may never enter. Chagallian All houses are yellow, but some are more yellow than others. The man in blue swoops down over the wet slate rooftops to the girl in the red dress and kisses her boldly on her tear-stained cheek. It’s a world of color, of stained glass and flying horses. The sad goat sits quietly, reading the farmer’s autobiography. In the middle distance the plangent melody of a violin is heard. The nude girl marries her childhood lover, eyes averted from the terrifying crucifixion that looms above. Life and death, love and fear, all are present here. The colors of emotion mingle and glow. The music is not visible, but we know, instinctively, that it’s there. Synesthesia demands that the violins play only yellow notes. The bass answers, its throaty rustic song colored deepest blue. As darkness falls the birds return, guiding the guileless lovers back to the contrapuntal amber glory of their bridal suite, to their laddered windows and their spotless laundered sheets. The River The river flows rapidly here, slipping over the rocks like an eel sliding from the mouth of a dead horse. It's a very British river, never showing any anger. Downstream it deepens, becomes sluggish. But here, in this sad provincial market town, a passerby might walk across, skipping from stone to stone to keep his footwear dry. In the city, the canals steal water from the fat and lazy stream. Overshadowed by the hustle of the streets, they reclaim preeminence with their subtle redactions of reality. The riverboats shine red and purple, reflections rippling hazily in the gloomy waters. Hemmed in by tower blocks, those miserable stockades of the poor and defenseless. Further still, and the foggy shores spread their legs wide as the sea penetrates with its probing, salty tongue. The giants of nautilus prowl the horizon, black shapes of unloved portentous bulk. And this is where the river finds peace. A hundred miles of tortured wandering, never free from its confining banks, dissolving in sand and mud as the estuary prevails. The Library In the old library, the books quietly disintegrate. Some of them have not been touched by human hands for fifty years or more. A fine, papery dust fills the air, visible only when sunlight glances in through the grimy skylight. The quality of light down here is almost aquatic; it would be no great surprise if an eel were to squirm around the nearest stack, moving with a silent but eerie grace as it slides out of view into the musty distance. The odor in the room is dampness mixed with gasoline. The heating system is erratic; sometimes too cold to stay here long, sometimes so warm that it attracts a crowd of sleepy undesirables, reeking of cigarettes and gin. Despite everything, there is a peacefulness that is difficult to obtain anywhere else. No one speaks aloud, allowing my thoughts to develop at their own speed, pulling me along on the lengthy, devious path to self-discovery. If I were impossibly wealthy, I would create libraries in every town. I would place them in old, crumbling edifices, the kind of building where silence echoes louder than speech, where the unspeaking introvert can dance inside their own mind. |
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