Indunil Madhusankha is currently an undergraduate reading for a BSc Special Degree in Mathematics at the Faculty of Science of the University of Colombo. Even though he is academically involved with the subjects of Mathematics and Statistics, he also pursues a successful career in the field of English language and literature as a budding young researcher, reviewer, poet and content writer. Basically, he explores the miscellaneous complications of the human existence through his poetry by focussing on the burning issues in the contemporary society. Moreover, Indunil’s works have been featured in several international anthologies, magazines and journals. Flowers on Sale Rose, jasmine, anthurium, carnation and hibiscus A multiplicity of gorgeous flowers to the taste of the wealthy, of the opulent gentlemen Tulips available only in Five Star Hotels consumed by millionaires who may evour in the most fulgent pollens while bobbing on the petals The remuneration package negotiable and depending on the superficial elegance or on the number of petals They are just toys, to the rapture of their clients Dark blots in these flowers and lacking more of the inner fragrance Branded as stray bitches Disdain and hate left as their badge And there lies under the very folly, in the bed of their heart, the cause, the unknown cause, that was the titillation provoking to be on sale An Anthem for a Warlord Sought refuge in underground bunkers Nor did you see the sunlight while groping in the gloom of the underworld At the fall of sky hugging mansions, you shrank into earth drilling luxurious bunkers and fortified them with many a snare Isn't it due to your fear, the repulsive fear of the death? Clad in armoured suits, what was your expectation? Above all it was the fear that quivered throughout your body Despite your exorbitant wealth and excessive power the fear burned your heart almost like a rolling fire ball You draped a chain attached to a capsule of Cyanide around your Tigers' neck, just like a noose to hasten their journey to the penultimate destination Yet, never did you wear one The truth surfaces, you were afraid of death that you have bestowed on thousands without the least sense Thirsty, you must be, restlessly running after a mirage in the desert The fear followed you like a shadow Perhaps you wished mental relief, relief from fear, that you lacked in abundance Yet, you are late, too late, The dead may already be holing your heart! Classroom Nothing that can be recommended as courtesy or worthy of learning I perceive in their immensely pictured tall talks about their conceit and slang values Driven crazy by inordinate sordid concepts they gossiped about all their adventures from A to Z The heroically virile deeds, they boasted about and recited in a dashing tongue The love game that bound their preference Marks given in accordance with the number of girls one entraps in his web The higher the marks they got The more the victims were Those obtaining lower marks provided them with a source of great amusement Surpassing even fashion models, T-shirts, trousers, caps, wrist watches and bracelets of flamboyant quality embroidered their figure Along with funky haircuts that paved the way for duplicate film stars Yet I have achieved the realization of the fact about them being cardboard heroes The shrill whistles they made, even in the presence of teachers ranked them much closer to loiterers Clenching their teeth they gave their eyes a wild rotation, while peeping at untouched girls Very awkward, was the way they sucked lollipops implying their desires, unsatisfied They consumed their youth medicating to heal their incurable fevers with cigarettes, arrack, and most probably with hired flowers, letting their beaks drink the nectar in them They bragged about their prospect of soldiering Holding the bat like a rifle and making a stammering noise by mouth they acted out, how they expected to shoot anybody standing in front of them, and at the end flung the bat at one of their friends while the latter gave a painful bark In the examination hall, the employment of tactics to copy ran beyond notice Written in an eraser or in a piece of paper folded to the smallest size and concealed inside the stapler, answers passed from hand to hand They tapped at the desk muttering various songs The rhythm like throwing gravel on a corrugated iron sheet Hence, no value surfaces from their practices or ideals that I could enfold with wholehearted enthusiasm But a priceless lesson captures my focus taught by them, A lesson probing the nature of society
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Mantz Yorke lives in Manchester, England. His poems have appeared in Butcher’s Dog, Dactyl, Dawntreader,Lunar Poetry, New Madrid Journal, Popshot, Prole, Revival, The Brain of Forgetting and The Stony ThursdayBook magazines, in e-magazines and anthologies. The Shredding Last time I opened the box, a hint arose of the Ivoire that soused your first letter, exciting and embarrassing me at work: now, only old paper’s mustiness. A glance across a room began it, then exchanges: words; a poem under my door, and in return; letters – each of us in pain, seeking comfort. The morning I escaped with you to Alderley we meandered through the spring-green wood above the bouldery cascade of sand, not touching, unsure how close we should be. All too soon our commitments drew us back from the Edge, frustrated, leaving the hinterland unexplored. Love? I never quite found out, unhappily tied by convention and too numbed to hulk my muscles and break free, save vicariously through pen and ink. ‘Friend for life’, you wrote – but ‘life’ turned out judicial, not literal. I can’t leave these letters. When I’m gone, the children sorting out my stuff might scuffle through these leaves, vividly imagining what could have happened, not what did. So today the shredder whines and overheats. Your sentences become indecipherable strips – judges’ wig-rolls tangling in the bin. Tomorrow’s when the bin-men come. The Dragon Always at the end of our road, waiting, his silhouette – a figure or a figment – whether I’d headed straight home from school or zigzagged through the backstreets. I used to watch to see which route he’d take and take another, hang around shops – anything not to be caught alone. As big for his age as I was small, he’d never needed to hit: threats were enough to make me blub and enable him to strut. Decades on, another from his tribe is crushing my self-belief. All I know, all the skills I’ve learned, can’t stop his weaselly eyes inducing in me a rabbit’s freeze. Summoned, I have to face this beast. Again I remind myself of a dragon on a hill, the dread of villagers below, and a boy climbing up to find merely a purring mite he could shoulder home. Untrustingly, I force foot past foot up the stairs towards his door. Bloody Monday, Derry i.m. Brian Friel, and remembering a performance of The Freedom of the City at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin A bit of a lark, the three arrivals from the street making merry in the mayor’s parlour, drinking whiskey and sherry, as protesters in Guildhall Square flee water cannon, rubber bullets and CS gas. A megaphone demands they lay down their arms and leave. Hands up, trusting, they emerge to an unlit stage, save for spotlights on their faces, till rifles crack and all goes black. In the shocking dark there’s time to dab tears away before the living dead, but not the Sunday dead, beamingly revive and bow to a huge explosion of applause. pend right rain my bough pend in beneath my sadness rests under my shoe for you: these hours mark days and weeks since I've known these small new things does it matter? who stamps about tramping their headlights into the breemy glim ranching and routing their stars through my eyes who clams courts and shrowders my pale house in my evening who knows these meanings kept forward and strange howling? not god, for it's not in the sky but in liquid time bend time howdered time meant full and thrilling menacing hateful loving and bright: bend my time for me break my hour for me I am chanting with my fingers to try to catch the rope in: now shout after I'm over after I've loved. now begin my ending's here inside the meaning of my hour my truth my love: wait here for me by the music don't catch the fall I can't hear it I can't hear it: (I'm falling) the bed the bone the birth roaming my shoulder ruins and slow: and now what have you for me inside the brunt crust of the gravel the shadows thick and wise all ghosts are cousins to me in these hours days and years. I will bend nothing for you I will break open for you I will listen and in listening, I will break you open too with my speech. lead me to the water and I'll mess I'll rest I'll catch my words, years who caught me too what have you now tigers and beaters and antwerps no one to love no one to beat no one to swallow no one to earn or whip or hollow no one to meet and grasp and chuckle no one who's your ruin your worth your mask your heart no one who heard you when we were dancing when I loved you. no one was worth it but you before you stopped and now I insist you look at who you have become in the last light in the first hour in the beastly repast of your million excuses in your ardor ardor for the truth that you never wanted: I kill you sounds and owls and bracelets! I break your fast on my mouth! I build everything that you are! I break knowingness into a fog and thrill you through it! I am chanting your name! I am killing your thoughts! They have always been so useless! Ever since you came away. Now: Break bread with me On your white rest and I’ll show you what it means to be beautiful regret nothing but the truth Elizabeth S. Wolf lives in MA with her daughter and several pets, where she maintains a day job as a Technical Metadata Librarian. Elizabeth has previously published poems in local anthologies (Merrimac Mic: Gleanings from the First Year; 30 Poems in November 2014; Amherst Storybook Project). The Amherst Storybook Project is published in print and on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6d3pUd8jR0 Too Common Prayer for Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown CT 12/14/12 Close your eyes, hold hands. Lead us not into temptation: Close your eyes, hold hands. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death: Close your eyes, hold hands. He came for the children: Close your eyes, hold hands. Have mercy on the souls set loose too soon From bodies so small, laying in their graves: Close your eyes, hold hands. Afflict the comfortable Who know what they must do And yet do not: Close your eyes, hold hands. All of us are changed. Close your eyes, hold hands. Let none of us remain unmoved. Close your eyes, hold hands. For any of us is next in line: All of us are next in line. Close your eyes. Hold hands. May we never walk this way again. ** News photos of the children evacuating Sandy Hook showed rows of children with their eyes closed, some holding onto rope as they were led past the carnage. The children were instructed to ‘close your eyes, and hold hands’. What If What if today there were no shootings. What if today, there were no beatings, even if dinner is late or cold. What if today everyone had enough dinner. What if today, those who call themselves lovers actually respected each other. What if today, children were seen and believed and treasured. What if today we greeted our neighbors. What if today is all the time we have; what if today is enough; what if. Every Addict is Somebody’s Child “I made sure my daughter died with good credit and no police record. Imagine that.” Doug Griffin i. Grandma’s pills are gone again, and my wife’s bracelet from our 15th anniversary, it’s missing, and the fifty dollars stashed in my toolkit isn’t there. What the hell. If anything is broken, daddy will fix it. But deep deep inside there’s a hole in her soul. I get so angry. I yell and threaten and tell her I’m done- I’ve gone as far as I can go- but then look at her and know I will love and protect my child for the rest of my life. So I convince the cop she’s a good kid who got sleepy after curfew; I drag her butt out of bed to the therapist and the meetings and the unemployment office when she loses her job. Again. When she tells me the lights are going out, daddy, first I freeze and then I pay the electric. I tell her she needs to be more responsible but she crumbles, crying, she has disappointed me- again- and she feels so bad, so bad. So I hold her and tell her I love her, but even while I’m hugging her I know she’s going out to use again to smother this fresh pain. Because deep down inside there’s a hole in her soul. ii I was down in my work room making something, making a mess, thinking about how we got here and what is wrong with that kid and how do I fix this, how do I fix her- is this a disease or is that an excuse- when there was a knock on the door. And even though I told her a hundred times this was going to happen- told her some day she would wake up dead- until the man in uniform said they couldn’t revive her, I never came close to imagining this pain, how much it hurts. So bad. My baby is gone. All of my life up until that day- gone. When she died, everything stopped: when she died, something dropped. Deep down inside, there’s a hole in my soul. ** This poem is based on a series in the local paper on the heroin crisis in New England, and in particular on this article: http://www.newburyportnews.com/heroin_epidemic/creating-the-courtney-griffin-sober-house-important-and-bittersweet/article_c11a86b3-17d0-5aa1-acd3-2c675ba631cb.html Because Because I survived I must speak out; Because I survived I must blend to pass. Because I have endured months in your wards and hours crawling the floors of welfare offices, stared through plate glass windows of restaurants hungering in the streets, I have seen the naked bones of society's fortress. Because I have emerged, risen from ashes earned degrees by day, working flat on my back through long groping nights, have learned to walk and talk and dress like you, to carry credit cards and expense receipts, I must blind myself to my past. Because I have been scarred I must be a revolutionary. Because I have tasted your brand of success I have learned to fear passion and loss. Fabiyas M V is a writer from Orumanayur village in Kerala, India. He is the author of Moonlight and Solitude. His fiction and poems have appeared in Westerly, Forward Poetry, Literary The Hatchet, Rathalla Review, Off the Coast, Structo, and in several anthologies. He won many international accolades including the Poetry Soup International Award, USA , the RSPCA Pet Poetry Prize, UK, and Merseyside at War Poetry Award from Liverpool John Moores University, UK. His poems have been broadcast on the All India Radio. Sahib’s Waiting Sahib’s head swings in an arm-chair while waiting for his son. A midnight fox howls. His son hasn’t returned yet. Disquietude deepens. Dry leaves stain adolescence in the cannabis lit nights. His son washes his wounds in rum. His stepmother’s tongue was sharp. Bell rings. As he opens the door, Sahib’s mind’s hinges grate. His son passes by as an emperor from a lawless kingdom. His son can’t lift up his sin streaked eyes. Reek of liquor mutes Sahib. Each night burns until its edge. This is love’s non-profit pain. The Down-trodden Sense His knowledge catches fire. A flame, a burning ache, Spreads from the scalp To the sole of his mind. Later, he finds that flame Dead in his distant daughter’s Wound. If he tells it aloud, People will call him mad. Feelings are sometimes Synchronized in the track Of telepathy. His mind Receives signals again. His call surprises his Spouse beyond the sea The moment she muses About him. Cells of souls Merge together, sharing The distant pangs and joys. Mind has been linked With extension cords. It burns with the power of Deepest love. There’s a Down-trodden sense, waging Within for recognition. Mango It’d a bitter childhood like a girl in penury. It could defend itself against the molestation by pests. It didn’t succumb to the hot rays. Now it’s ripe, and its chubby cheeks so charming. It’s a forbidden fruit, but Chami’s impulse is vehement as the monsoon waves leaping over the breakwater. His teeth wound its soft skin. He sucks its sweet syrup from its soul, and rises up to the heaven. Slowly he falls down into the hell of fatigue and drowsiness. Again, he repents of disobeying his diabetologist’s advice. a coolie woman’s delivery digging digging digging she defeats the dry sand red dust enhances her resistance thanks to the underground cables and her sweat lest our telephones won’t ring he’d filled her womb with transient love and vanished behind the crowd but she won’t let herself drown in loneliness she’s conscious never anxious of swelling love inside this is a unique pain like one from the depth of nature she withdraws into the seclusion of the bathroom hearing her shriek the local class passengers rush to the door her baby falls down through the open toilet pipe as a train gives birth somebody pulls the chain locomotive lullaby ceases newborn baby lies safe on the track between the right and left rows of wheels she didn’t make it unnatural with tonics tablets and tests she didn’t waste thousands during the last ten months. Declan Ryan is a 26 year-old writer from Athlone, Co. Westmeath Ireland. Having gained a BSc in Pharmaceutical Science in Sligo and recently moving to the Dublin to pursue a masters in science, all while maintaining a creative side through poetry, song-writing and photography, it’s clear that he is a naturally curious induvial, with a love for self-expression and creative writing. The Snail Loving you, Was like, Accidentally stepping, On a snail. Home “You’ll always have a home here” She says. “Where my ashes lie, Where the Shannon meets the sky.” Armchair Yoga A face that mimics death, With wrought brow and heavy breath, Elderly Armchair Yoga, Exercises eternity now Biscuit crumbs and inaudible snore, His sly eye glances, At each creaking screech of the door, Indifferent sighs to implore A return to slumber, Once more Eventually our eyes do meet, “I’m tired”, says he as he puts up his feet, Covertly counselling his opinion, I sense as such, And offer mine grinning, Not all are down in this world, And easy to beat! Joseph Goosey lives in Southern Pines, North Carolina. A dropout of the MFA program at George Mason University, he is the author of four chapbooks. I BOUGHT A NETI POT FOR WHICH TO FLUSH OUT YOUR SCENT Grief does what it can to clog the sinus Apologies for appearances It’s my driving what makes objects messy A combination of my driving and your recent turning to salt Last year I spent a shit load of energy on a child to whom I was no parent The ocean had an ending for us both Neither of us could know What's in the microwave for tonight and who plans to be sexy while it cooks I'm turning into a person who disgusts the people I'm around but remain comfortable in that kind of wind Whatever your child cried you sang to him Not every time but some of the times When you sang to your crying child I felt warm on his behalf Am I being held for questioning If so I am in a bitter mood Once released from questioning I will travel to the Raleigh arboretum to burn down the redwood You are symbol for what isn't Or at least what isn't any longer There is an H-Bomb in my memory and no respite in the lungs Your child told jokes about ghosts taking poops When I laughed I meant it When I did a lot of shit I meant it I suppose I still mean it but still feel so melon balled Little villages without food Grow in my carpet But when you're a flea there is always food so I will become a flea Feeding on blood is a funny thing to do Funny as the way in which I'm being treated as though I'm a receipt for your donuts How long can you continue to swim How long before the salt AMTRAK REMIX When I make my paintings I prefer not to have any buttons buttoned if you know what I mean, said some painter I met on a holiday train I nodded to indicate yes meaning always of course no. We were in the café cart, he for a personal frozen DiGirono and I for…I don’t remember. Back at my assigned seat I slept next to a woman who reminded me of Morgan Freeman whenever Morgan Freeman is cast as god in movies where god has to come down and intervene in one man’s life for a relatively trivial reason. In the morning she told me I didn’t sleep well, that I was shivering and she tried to keep me warm but I was twitching too, which made that difficult. I haven’t bee well, I told her. She gave me the same nod I gave to the painter and shut her eyes again either to go back where she came from, die, or ‘cause she had another eight hours (I originally said years) until Fort Lauderdale. PARTY HORNS The congestion shows its appreciation for the lungs while on New Years Eve I ingested a drug cocktail in an effort to reduce the images you’ve photocopied into my loins and off of my cornea A girl followed me home and I let her because am at once afraid and accommodating At some point there were dogs and I agreed to being someone I wasn’t then I realized I often agree to being someone I’m not Running around with a two children and a sled on very little snow You had a glass in hand when I met you I don’t know if that was a warning At the Days Inn or maybe the Best Western I don’t remember because we went to the wrong hotel first and I got angry in front of you, maybe for the first time You asked me to sleep in the other bed and again I acquiesced because again I am afraid, accommodating, doting, drooling, hardly even sentient I should have took that as a warning I took it as understanding instead Instead next time the effigy will take out more of the field SUMMARY People itch incessant. Over the weekend I took some ecstasy, got a seatbelt citation, said good day, said goodnight, said happy days are surely to arrive, bought a flea comb, bought flea medicine, bought people food, bought cat food, sniffed, swallowed, and spat, considered saying a lot of things from which I refrained, considered saying a lot from which I couldn’t refrain, sat by fire, scratched by the fire, vacuumed the carpet, vacuumed the perch, dreamt your presence, experienced your absence, cleaned the litter, scraped the litter, saw the moon, burnt a plank, pretended a finale, remembered arcades, imagined arcadia, avoided a get together, viewed unpleasant facts, remembered facts just as unpleasant, did a line of coke, danced to Ma & Pa after another line of coke, checked for fleas, lost a war, won a battle. BY THE GRILL WITH THE LANDLORD This poem should inhabit the worst world imaginable, go full regalia, and then exit safely. Having been ruined wholesale as a fidget I am unable to pay the court costs and must go before the trial of fire. Please hand me that toad in case certain things become reality. Heart breaking down: all those barriers. We’re taught to elicit confessions. Fleas leap from host to dream. Tonight I ate an allergy to be polite, go full regalia, and in sleep will regret whatever. Deborah Guzzi is a healing facilitator, healing through touch and the written word. She has written three books. The Hurricane available now through Prolific Press, The Healing Heart, and Heaven & Hell in a Nutshell. Her poetry appears in Journals & Literary Reviews in Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Greece, India and dozens of others in the USA.
Growing Pains The room, dark with shadow, swamped with fear. Unseen, the tooth and claw of nightmare tore her sleep. Her thin legs in constant cramp from dream running. She was only a child, but not the only child, beside her, across a gap of oaken floor, in a matching bed, I sleep. Her whimpering brought me near, Tell me good things, she’d plead. Make my dreams sweet. I would snuggle her close. Warm kittens, I’d chant chocolate bunnies to chomp. Butterflies on your fingertip, snow on your nose. The memories linger on. Her wet cheeks and sheets of woe night after night, where did Daddy go? The small girl began to grow, to shield with the only things she knew food, with food for thought and form sated, sleep came easier. She grew through the nightmare of longing—our home; she grew to and past me: little mother, big mother. She sang the songs of love to dolls, to dogs, to stray dust-motes and flew. Too sweet to linger in the lost land, where battles must be found and fought. Too dear to go through life alone; need garnered, family formed, upon the rack of sustenance and the twist of genetic curdling’s; she blooms, still. Barricaded at intervals from the nightmares, cramped with too large a soul in too fragile a form, sister mine, friend of all. Craig Kurtz has vexed aesthetic circles since the 1981 release of The Philosophic Collage. Recent work appears in Dalhousie Review,The Madras Mag Anthology of Contemporary Writing, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Sheepshead Review, and Tower Poetry; many others would just as soon string him up. He resides at Twin Oaks Intentional Community. The Sorrows of Satire Tragedy has its panache but I like my plays to have laughs; thus I prefer my love stories to end fitly, like comedies; but these affairs have clods and sots between heroes to fill their plots; there’s Lazarillo, you’ll recall, enjoyed no love, ‘tho loved by all; and ‘tis true, please don’t forget, the pit did cosset odd Lapet; there was applause for Sir Cully but inverse to his bombastry; then, there’s grand Lord Foppington, adored for the way he was shunned; 1 and ‘tho Touchstone received a maid he was a jester, I’m afraid; these characters get the best bits but the best dames are off-limits. 1. Buffoons from popular comedies of the era; respectively, Beamount and Fletcher’s The Woman-Hater, Thomas Middleton’s The Nice Valour, George Etherege’s The Comical Revenge, and John Vanbrugh’s The Relapse. The Limits of Wit I’d count the ways that I love thee if only I could put infinity into numbers, or into little jars the contents, shining, of the stars. I’d sing the ways that I love thee if there were more notes to set free than merely twelve, attached to the strings of instruments I’d have grow wings. I’d write the ways that I love thee if only phraseology could but express all I’ve inside of love to possibly confide. I’d count the ways that I love thee, but who counts sempiternity? So let this moment be the one time I’m content my wit’s undone. Alexandra Wilcox is a recovering attorney. She received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from UC Riverside and is currently pursuing her doctorate in Global Education from USC. She lives with her husband, five children, and two rescue dogs in Atlanta, Georgia where she is an online Professor in Employment and Labor Law. Her poems have appeared in Quatrain.Fish, Verse-Virtual, and Yellow Chair Review and are scheduled to appear in After the Pause and other journals. To the Man on the Street He slurps from a white bowl in his right hand. The water tastes warm to him. It smells right to him. It looks good to him. I can tell by the way he clutches the plastic bowl. He slumps. A stack of boxes block cold air. It sounds good to him. My Pet Sorrow Come Sorrow. I won’t shoo you away. Rest here on my shoulder. But, please don’t chirp in my ear. Your Blues keep me awake. No, I won’t. Your faux social grace. Your powerful beak, I know. But if I feed you crumbs of sadness-- Will you let me go? Marine Monument A bronze statue in full uniform. Remains of salt and a Ti-leaf lei. Embracing his feet, a plaque with gold letters - Semper Fi. The Marine salutes the early morning fog. |
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