​​Ruth Z. Deming has had her work published in lit mags including Literary Yard, Blood and Thunder, Pure Slush, O-Dark-Thirty, and Your One Phone Call. A psychotherapist, she lives in Willow Grove, a suburb of Philadelphia. She's always proud to be published in Scarlet Leaf Review. ​​

​The other five are fine
This one has that famous
condition bipolar disorder
The Famous own it
Virginia Woolf
Kay Redfield Jamison
Walter Cronkite's daughter
Kathy

She moans about her Pietro
His brain detonated before
kindy-garten. What's to be
done, she cries into her
pillow.

Should she pump medication
into his Diet Pepsi?

Ram loves to write- be it fiction or nonfiction. He loves life and explores the material, philosophical and spiritual aspects of life through his poems. He believes that  there is more to life than ‘earning, acquiring and losing’. He believes that the natural state of man is joy and all our efforts to acquire and keep pace with others make us lose our joy. He hopes to capture the beauty of life through his poems.
 
His poems have been published in a number of journals across  the web.

​The IS-NOT cannot
Define the IS.
The WHAT-IF and IF-ONLY
Are reactions
Of an uncomprehending mind
To the ways
Of an ever flowing IS.
The source-knowing,
All-aware IS,
Is forever moving forward,
Back to its goal,
Completing the cosmic dance
Of an infinite,
All containing ZERO.
The WHAT-IF and IF-ONLY
Jump on the bewildered mind,
Showing it the possibilities
Of the IS-NOT
And push it forward,
To question why,
And break the boundaries
Of the limiting self.
And there-
In that universal state-
The consciousness discovers
That there
The IS-NOT is not
And all that is
Is just IS
 

​Of all the words unspoken,
And all the hearts it has broken,
Of all the thoughts unthought,
And all the pain it has brought,
 
Of lover’s journey jarred,
Or friendship’s passage barred,
Of the countless battles fought,
On this cursed thought,
 
Of this cruel, mindless brute,
Or its bitter, poisoned fruit,
I shall only speak in vain,
Truly it is the seed of pain.
 
Long before man had learned to speak,
Many a heart did it break;
Now after a million years,
It still harvests bloodied tears.
 
Unthought, it is the killer seed,
Unspoken, grows the strangling weed,
Ever it stakes its claim for fame,
Envy is its evil name.
 
 

​Did I?
Did I not?
Thoughts play ping pong
With the feeble mind.
Did I switch the geyser off?
Did I lock the door?
Was the lamp burning
Or did I switch it off?
The train has started moving,
Did I keep the jewel box
In the almyrah?
The tour guide
Tells his story well
"Welcome to the countryside
Where hearts and spaces
Are wide open".
The question
On my mind now:
Did I leave the
Fridge door open?
Showing us the mud brick houses
He declares:
"No need for an ac there".
Guess what doubt
Is making me
Hot under the collar now?
Back at home,
Unpacking done
I sit down to have
The much-needed tea
Up pops the question:
What did I give
To the taxi driver:
Three notes of hundred each
Or three of five hundred?
 
 

​Here it comes, you can feel it
Creeping up on you
coming in low under the radar
Who knows what caused it this time
Lack of sleep
Too much stuff rattling inside your head
jerking you out of sleep
And now this
trapped at the dinner table
unable to swallow
food about to stick in your throat
Choking you
Killing you
Making you lurch forward and grab the table
ignoring the stares of others
as you mouth an apology
on the way to the kitchen and a drink
to help you get through this meal
this life

​Back in the 70s
A cult band
Touring constantly
Screwed by their management
Never released an album
Split up in their late 20s
 
40 years later
Pushing 70
It’s the comeback tour

​Keith Burkholder has been published in Creative Juices, Sol Magazine, Trellis Magazine, Foliate Oak Literary Journal, New Delta Review, Poetry Quarterly, Scarlet Leaf Review, and Birmingham Arts Journal.  He has a bachelor's degree in statistics with a minor in mathematics from SUNY at Buffalo (UB).

​He has OCD,
He walks to avoid cracks,
In the sidewalk and street,
Weird as this sounds,
This is how it for him,
The world is a unique place,
He understands this well,
His mind works oddly,
In ways he only understands,
People are what they are,
They can be nice,
Or not nice at all,
This is up to the person at hand,
For he continues forward,
With his thoughts,
For this is his OCD,
Tomorrow is a new day,
This is how it will go as time passes on.

If you think about this,
It is true,
No one is that nice in real life,
Facebook is a fantasy,
People suddenly nice,
And even religious,
They think false gods exist,
These people were bad at one time,
Now they have found God,
When there isn't one,
I can go on and on,
No one is that nice,
I mean no one,
Believe what you want,
This is how social media is,
And will always be,
Take care,
And carry forward.
​

​Facebook is fantasy land,
It really is,
No one life has over a 1,000 friends,
I mean no one,
In life, one is lucky to a great friend or two,
I mean genuine friends,
Real friends are hard to come by,
A person liking you as you are,
Very rare,
Facebook is social media with fakeness,
Believe what you want about friends,
I mean really believe,
This is how I feel,
Take care for now,
Be good to others,
And let life lead you to happiness any which way you go.

​Sunk in stinging dreams,
the vast turtle twirls
a little deeper into the ocean floor.
 
It’s nasty being a hero.
Things bite you.
You’re called to work that shreds
your flesh, chars your hope.
Then you heal. If you heal.
 
Heavy inside his shell,
Gamera dreams himself small again--
but not the turtlet lectured
on a thousand duties,
not those tiny flippers straining toward speed and power.
Now, young again, Gamera is sliding
down slick mud slopes, frolicking upward
in a shower of bubbles, rejoicing
in the lightness of a watery world
that holds him up, that nourishes, that comforts.

​Beached indeed. Its cracked
windows gaze north, toward no
water at all. Its hull a dry, cracked tongue.
 
You never know. Once
fathoms swamped this dust. Trilobites
writhed and sharks snapped
at clams. This sand, wet
once. Pressed to stone. Now heat
weights the crumbling land,
sun peels my boat’s painted hide.
 
Soon or late, preparation
rots, hope is flayed, rain
hardens to ash and blows far away.

Hush! The man may waken
soon, his cheek twitched, now
alert the bloggers. His pale skin,
dewy and cool, cradles
still-strong muscles 
on his athlete’s frame. That wide, calm
brow, the strong slow heart
hold wisdom and strength. We’re sure.
He’s always been a hero, always
looked like heroes looked, always traveled
on the backs of cheering crowds.
So hush! We wait; he’ll wake.

Outside,
children chalk miracles
with sidewalk cracks
in them, dance and raise
dust in patterns
no one’s seen before
and cheer each other. Make
salads of mulberry leaves
and hedge berries, look
at a sky they’ll swim in.

Women scoop 
dirt and scraps and failures
into clay they mold
into fields, statues, 
homes. They sing
while they work--
wild songs that rise
alone, or twine like vines
that purl the village
and help the hops
to climb. 
 
At dusk, the women
go to watch 
the children, clap
and crow and marvel, 
kiss
the fevered foreheads.
And the village 
comes together 
in a feasting, some,
and others go talk
and eat quietly
in cooler shadows.

Why can’t they be quiet?
The man may waken!
They should wait
for him. Beside him.
How dare they live
as if they were—were
people?
 

​ 
“I do not think I’ve ever burned down my literary house.”
 – Dr. Janice M. Bogstad
 

​Who was it who torched
the library at Alexandria, wonder
of a wondering world? No one
wants to claim it. It makes a flaming shame
to stake an enemy to the earth.
 
Horror of horrors, to try to take
a world’s words. And yet words reach papyrus
because it hoards them. No matter
how the ink is spilled, texts spoiled,
despoiled in wiping monkish bums,
we excavate the middens.
In how many deserts
of works banned and burned
have quiet insurgents
tucked the words
they lived through
into cool jars?
Waiting. A time may come
when new hungers
seek those juicy roots
and gnaw.
 
Books have been stashed in coffins
and found to rise again.
 
Even in an eclipse of writing
authorial voices flicker through the paths
of minds and hearts and lungs and fingers.
Though despots would demolish all their fuel,
behold! and hark! and feel!
the words come, and there is light.
 
 

Saloni Kaul, author and poet, was first published at the age of ten and has stayed in print since. As critic and columnist Saloni has enjoyed forty one years of being published. Saloni Kaul's first volume, a fifty poem collection was published in the USA in 2009. Subsequent volumes include Universal One and Essentials All. 

Most recent Saloni Kaul poetic production has been published in The Horrorzine, Misty Mountain Review, Mad Swirl (contains ongoing Saloni Kaul poetry page), The Penwood Review, The Voices Project, Cabildo Quarterly, AJI Magazine, Scarlet Leaf Review, River Poets Journal,Taj Mahal Review, Verbal Art, Poetry Pacific, Ink Sweat And Tears and Military Experience And The Arts (As You Were: The Military Review), OVI Magazine, Blueline, Five 2 One Journal and The City Poetry. Upcoming publication acceptances include those of The Penwood Review, Scarlet Leaf Review and The Voices Project and The Horrorzine. 

​Silver glinting lobster traps line Yarmouth’s shores
Like long deserted dolls’ town houses piled on high
While wintry bay winds whipping o’er to tidal bores
Bring little scent of lobsters thriving where warm currents lie.
But at tideturn the lobstering adventurous few
Quite undeterred by those weather reports, as it’s their week's sprawl,
Liking rhythm of working whole year through,
Wake to routine’s call, load the four hundred trap trawl.
Swept out to sea with these outgoing waters ,
Prepared to rough three hardy days all steady so,
Anchored alone monitoring at close quarters
The ins and outs of ocean’s wealth in traps below.
Pounds hundred thousand trapped, their traps then freed of all,
Streamlined as its sunset, Yarmouth receives the wholesome haul.

​Old town in heyday steep, expanding wealth bloated,
At all three waters’ lapping confluence ,
On which grand commerce’s tall ships once floated ,
That brought twice daily tides, influx of affluence.
Sun-glowing gentle murmurs, undulating rills,
Like freezing melting of libratory waddly time,
Saltscented strong as air of flowered window sills,
Atrahent thrum twinge, then release of reed and slime.
Emerging from mysterious blend in mists, low tide mumbles
Gloriously as gradations in flowers’ tint ,
Glow houses gardens town  scarce hint of grumble
At onward sun’s all silent autumn sprint.        
How leisurely this moment as the waters glide ,
Deceiving careless eye, ignoring grip of time and tide.

​And with that absolute intrinsic essence flowering                            
Each sonnet brims with reveries to read.
All ready high to fly, each line that sings assuring        
Contains a lifetime’s wholesome fill and feed.
With utmost ease of minstrels leisurely
Strolling through some wide open garden gate ,
Lyrics of song committed are to memory
Lapped up as though what is sung were in fact their fate.
Music welloved plays in the mind and haunts ,
Affects us skin and sensibility ;
Yet we’d ever be keen to launch experiments high jaunt
With most immediate groundbreaking novelty.
Bring on the reassuring old from which we learn
But see that today’s novel elements rightly earn.

​Each permanent aspect lovingly shaped,
Each linear detail painstakingly cast ,
Results then speak directly for themselves
Like ties that in perpetual time enduring last.
Yet something in your disposition firm ingrained
Examines the perfect whole as each part anew;
Like glossaries, rosters of facts tortuously soon ascertained
By one dependent on dissection for his clue.
We who’re used to today’s creators and their isms,
Find it so hard to recognise truth when it comes straight to the test,
Those shattered splintered elements ejected through flash prisms,
Pureed mishmashed like baby food most easy to digest.
It is all perfectly written, the music’s scored.
When you say yes , by all it shall be totally adored.

Issues all ring with their own mixed sensations
And radiate like divers branches bold of broom,
Where rooted to the one, for neat expansions
Outward in scope throughout there’s always room.
Yet while staying confined chaste simple and most pure
Within strict formalism’s edges always keen ,
To win over emotions strong they do implore
And yes, admittedly at times they touch the spleen.
We who like to so learn , then thorough teach,
Under tradition’s outright sheltered skies     
And at all times aim for the upper hand, beseech
Attentions of the one that hands us all the prize.
Student or teacher, hold throughout the reins most tight,
At roundtables, class centre your reign’s on the heights.  ​

​When there is direct active verbal sparring
And people at each other senselessly sharp lash ,
Or when head to foot in the thick of it downright jarring
Discordant voices like arrows at war point clash ;
And when with frail unsteady rule of tide’s thumb
Unwarned the scales of fortunes startling dip,
There’s always some bright remedy quite close at hand
For that one restless wavering coin to flip.
For who are we to yell and shower blame,
Firm ostracise those left out in the cold,
Who living on shoestring from some strange shores here came,
And slam the door on faces lined with problems old.
May kindness-courtesy be at your threshold,
A smile heralds a seachange in the life you stark behold.

​Take it hard, or try to reach for grace,
but cart it to your car and on out my driveway.
Don’t darken the doorstep, said Mrs. Dude X,
consumed though she was with feeding
men’s apparel to the burning barrel,
stir-stick probing the flickering fibers.
Take offense or write this off
as your most famous accident. Either way,
please take it down the road, she told him,
updraft ash of family albums, ties reduced
to soot particulate, merging into general nighttime.
Dude X sees his explanatory powers
failing to hold water. He lets wisdom prevail,
bids adieu and backs out of this inflammatory
situation. He goes in search of motels
for itinerant losers and the newly paroled.
Down to the clothes on his back,
and of course the old beater Chevrolet.
It’s still good to be free.

​It’s noon o’clock somewhere, compañeros.
That’s the zeitgeist in the alley, the self-serving logic
that won these rotgut men and (God help the helpless)
a couple hardscrabble women spots
in the Wild Rose rotation, spinning
outbound slug by swig, discarding all
which isn’t the need or fuel for that need. Seated
in a circle by the dumpster, sun-up dew-sheen
yet to evaporate from surfaces. Never too early
for Early Times. It’s grave o’clock somewhere
under a cool sod blanket, inside pristine silence,
where no other drunk can dump their madness
in another’s ear. Build toward basic buzz
behind the liquor store, the buzz’s
construction tenuous at best. Weekday morning
a weak day among too much weakness
 

​Waterfront Astoria,
a scavenger of lovely objects
in his women's used fur coat
and protective biker helmet (visor up)
pushes his receptacle along. Nothing in it
but quality goods rescued from oblivion,
runoff from the Coast Ranges,
the Cascades, from the Bitterroots.
The collector wipes clean the salt air,
babies his treasures, corrosion the main danger
in this mist climate. Every perfect shiny thing
can oxidize from just existing.
Mouth of the Columbia River,
hungry always for shipwrecks,
here the flotsam comes to die,
junk and lovely objects alike
swept from the continent,
overpowered.

 

​There’s an arsenic capsule
supplied to covert agents
of Free Will, a safeguard
should they find wit’s fallibility,
fall into the hands of enemies.
That’s their notion of assistance
back at headquarters. Those desk jockeys
go home and shirk work problems
come five o’clock. They grab Take-Out,
watch their shows while life’s rich pageant plays.
Field representatives risk their necks
over ideology, for the prize of
information, for dubious news.

​If our hustles come to nothing, let’s blow this popsicle stand,
slink off to Caye Caulker, Be-live a little at that third gear
Caribbean speed. I will bartend inside tiny tiki buildings
a couple days a week, at most. We’ll try not to overspend
the hours zoned out on the coral sand. Each of our ventures
holds a chance of financial success. Yes.
But if the next get-rich angles tangent off a hard surface
force us to spin plates for pennies,
instead let’s take the moving sale proceeds down to Belize
where they dream the weeks away at a saner cost of living.
We need far enough from mainland
to buy the island bubble concept.
The only fear worth fear is hurricanes.

They sound our depths for all We wish to know.
Charting secrets Strewn on sea floors,
The vestiges of time behind, Vessels and bones of a schooner dethroned.
Struck dumb with a gust The Ida Francis heeled too much,
Heaving twenty lives into the reach, where currents seldom cease.
Bodies baptized by the briny, The pilgrims christen themselves
And debris drifting under the influence of wind and sea.
Clutching at life And crawling toward shore,
Their skin surrendered heat Their limbs caught cold
Until fishermen delivered them From frigid waters and fog,
As the ship fell To rocky realms
Her mast splintering the surface
Reminding them to watch For what sits below.

​

Dawn in a foreign place is sinister
The unknown abounds
Riding the junks in Hong Kong 
Unsteady
Not speaking the language
and cursing because they put fish sauce on your scrambled eggs 
Again
The wayward tailors who want to measure you up and down and tailor you
for a tall price
but the shoes don’t fit because Americans have big feet
British accents speaking in muted tones
Riding the bus with other Americans quite not giving your reasons for being here away 
Hong Kong 2001

​Don’t let the hurt settle
open the blinds in the old room
paint the walls a brighter color
and bleach the doorknobs
send it packing in droves
evict it and call a cab
no thirty day notice
don’t watch it leave
or you might miss
what is coming.

​ 
"I bet you give every girl this poem"
she says as I drop it at her feet
she picks it up and sets it in her lap
"You can't lie to me"
she opens it up and begins to read
her eyes shift fast across the lines
but as she reads on she slows down 
stopping at every line
every word 
that’s when she realizes I've truly captured her
placing her in a jar she could never fly out of
I preserved her in time
like a flower pressed behind glass.

​On earth I sit and watch her
wild and free above me
my soul mate, my Venus
she is the brightest to me
the storm in her soul rests on Jupiter
she dances with my tongue on Mars
I breathe in her soft laugh
her fingers grasp Saturn’s ring
as I slip it onto her finger
she grips my sides tightly
as she takes me above.