6PM I’m emotionally exhausted.
You’re equally emotionally reserved. You look through my emptiness. I stare at my toes, Wondering if it is coincidence, Or if it is contagious. I need you, To pull me from myself- build me up. But you’re down here with me- Except you’re not with me. You’re millions of miles away. I’m screaming underwater Begging you for the kiss of life But you’re deep in the cosmos Begging me for permission to die. I wish on my bad days, Yours weren’t always worse.
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Wanting to be Whole |
Andrada Costoiu is a Tobis Fellow at the University of Irvine California and a graduate student at University of Illinois of Chicago, currently finishing her Phd in Political Science. She has published works in the field of politics, on immigration and identity issues. Her work has appeared in the Journal of Identity and Migration Studies and she has also been published by Cambridge Scholars. She is an emerging poet that enjoys writing on the deep sense of life, on philosophical questions and on issues related to cultural values. She has previously published poems by Spill Words Press. She is also the author of the novel Under the Iron Curtain, which is set up in communist Romania. You can find more of her writing at her personal blog: a-passion4life.com, where she frequently writes about her experiences, events and people that are an inspiration to her. |
The nameless child
And drew corridors of fire
That led everywhere and nowhere,
Toward a future that kept hanging.
The tearless silence was floating,
Dressed with silk black cap,
As faith was rewriting the lists
For new havens.
His eyes were closed, but it was bright inside,
He remembered the taste of chocolate
And how he ran up and down the hills
Over the desert.
He will soon hear the others,
Crawling like him, on their canes of hope,
Their skills got sharper every time.
He’ll join them in the quest for
Their food for tomorrow:
Wild mushrooms and rabbits.
Sometimes they will go by the airfield,
Wondering loud where the storks were,
And why was their place taken by uniformed men.
He felt his body burning,
Heard shouting, faint, then rising,
He smelled his father pomade and felt the clutching of his arms.
He was tired of running in a race that had no stopwatch,
Besides he already won,
Of all the things, this war has never been able to embargo his dreams.
I would like to continue
Everything ends, doesn’t it? Or maybe it doesn’t…..
Some physicist says that there is no such thing as the past and future,
And that the order of time is not a one-way street.
I try to believe him, but I cannot devoid myself of the trace of temporality,
And strangely enough, it doesn’t bother me.
My silent thoughts summon and acknowledge past memories,
And piece by piece, each memory is filled with love, fear, desire or passion.
From my smallness I see the footprints of our humanity,
It’s not silent and aimless,
It makes me smile watching how we are all striving and longing to get what we desperately want,
And I can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.
We don’t suffer from a tragic misconception of time,
We take what we understand and we strive to understand more.
We have time. Everything that doesn’t work will work one day,
And I would like to continue.
A new Gertrude Bell for the Atlantis of the Sands
to a world of ever changing, uncharted sands of red and tan.
No tribal conflicts are troubling this place,
The hammer of the modern world has already been cast.
I hear the music of the shifting dunes
Chanting to worlds that have been here long before the present,
With a faint hum, low throated, drum like sealing sound.
Glowing under the moon, the lights of a thousand stars hanging from the sky,
Drench the desert like whiffs of wisdom.
I know,
That I have lived my entire life in the company of them,
Kneeling together to the same universe,
Feeling the life force.
Some girls wear different hats,
Mine is to thread the beads of civilization into the eternal loop,
and prove that that nothing disappears into the unknown.
I have been searching to make the Atlantis of the Sands real,
To find the lost city that was forgotten for thousands of years.
I keep planning my route,
And this is certainly the most spectacular adventure of my life.
My feet are aching, for days I’ve been begging for new feet, new arms,
stoic in my quest that I hope to carry through the next day and on.
Tonight, I feel so thirsty,
Drinking water from my canteen, barefoot,
I see my crew stretching,
The feeble sounds of their hymn sung in unison
Express visions of life that undulate across miles of silent sand.
“We’ll go at first light”, says the main porter,
I nod,
Knowing that the greatest honor bestowed upon us humans is survival.
Tomorrow is another day,
Neither bound nor free, we will keep walking.
We’re a band of loyal warriors fighting to assemble the puzzle that reveals the truth:
The past, the present, and the future are all connected,
We don’t own time, but we do own our history.
I believe in us,
Nothing is dust in the wind
And our songs will not fade mute.
Ancient flames of light flicker inside us,
Giving us purpose,
We will dive and emerge from the sea currents of time,
And trace past and present trails of human survival and civilization.
Gopal Lahiri is a Kolkata- based bilingual poet, critic, editor, writer and translator with 21 books published, 13 in English and 8 in Bengali, including three joint books. His poetry is also published across various anthologies as well as in eminent journals of India and abroad. He has been invited in Sahitya Akademi, India, programmes and various poetry festivals including World Congress of Poets recently held in India. He works have been published in 12 countries and in 10 languages. |
Compassion
You do not know the destination.
What’s important in life, you cannot read out
In front of a void.
Mourners have left centuries ago
We are left with the alphabets of ashes.
Sit quietly before a closed window, imagine
The hidden prism emitting colours.
Testing the strength of life and looking
Back to find an answer.
Deep down, the unwritten verse nourishing the roots
Resonate in blue shroud.
Breathing feels connected with the lungs of Mother Earth,
Reseeds into the nectar of life.,
Kindness steps into your heart gently,
Melts there, transcending lights.
Tonight
Like a soft whisper,
There is no darkness, no rolling winds
Memories are plucked from the branches
Only the human waves cultivate the resilience.
Tonight, there will be no lumps of wound and pain,
No spilling of laughter, no shedding of tear
No stillness of tall trees,
Your name is written beside me in an open book
Our life is ready for penning.
Tonight, there will be no hatred, no war
The river water, the ripple of the sand dunes,
Flames and fire are one and the same,
A long winding road and the low octave
Songs are pressed between the pages of books.
Bringing solace beneath the promises.
Tonight, we know that tiny ants are
filled with the love of God,
love that records life in the gentle flow of the river
and now the silence hangs heavy
The wrinkles of skyline, the shades of inky blue
beneath the dawn of time.
Tonight, we are united by the bond
as the differences are calibrated
by the echoing universe,
the stars are bursting with memories,
only the hush of milky way is rising up,
It’s now pure bliss of the newfound life.
Rejoice
Rejoice in the blessings of life,
Making a honest living and remembering God
All pervading force will be striding in your soul.
,
Taking the world up in your arms
Look upon time as another possibility,
Moon shadows spill silence over the scar
And think of each soul as blossoming flowers, rising stars,
Each moment is the music of the soul erasing
Days bleed into twilight, weigh nothing.
The songbirds are out in the open,
Truth lives on the edges off the meandering river.
Each word is a voice, each letter an identity,
Dream and desire are engraved in the vast landscape.
In the Age of Corona Virus
the sunrays pierce the skin and bone
moth-eaten leaves awash in abuse.
Ghost in the sunlight, a hidden enemy,
whispering in the ear,
soft words, sinister caresses
a smile skids across your face.
I lived a long life- tiniest stream in your eyes,
pale lips turn into skies.
looking for another word!
You know that,
the colour of the death is always blue, endless blue
intense, visceral, scary.
There lies a wondrous solution in the blue,
another world is possible,
you can hear, it’s breathing close.
Shelter of light
Laughter has spilled, the tears shed
The solitary sparrow weighs nothing in two palms.
Marvel at the quiet,
no longer bakeries belching smoke
no more graffiti, no traffic snarls.
Blood under your fingernails, collect words in silence
as if keeping the boats from leaving-
bad weather for sure.
The well-sharpened pencil tip can
penetrate the lighted rooms
when Grandfather is listening to the radio .
Then the needle in his flesh you don’t know
when it will jab again
surgical cottons
this endless moment has become a routine.
You don’t know,
they’ve tricked you again at the door,
attacking you from behind,
you don’t know about the promise.
Nature is enjoying without human
life is only safe in the shelter of galaxy
night has dropped a few stars,
light them one by one in another universe
Theresa Rodriguez is the author of six books, including Jesus and Eros: Sonnets, Poems and Songs (Bardsinger Books, 2015), Longer Thoughts (Shanti Arts, 2020) and a collection of sixty-five sonnets (Shanti Arts, 2020). Her website is www.bardsinger.com. |
The Rise of Fall
The fragrant colors of a verdant time;
Such fresh potentiality, sublime
In all the loveliness that they did bring.
Then summer issued forth a deep wellspring,
Maturely ripening, where vines would climb
And trees begin to bulge. This is the prime
Of life when growth will dance, and sway, and sing.
But autumn is the time of now. I stand
Amid the harvests and the fruit. The change
Between the then and now, it leaves me jaded;
I barely have the bearings to withstand
This person of today. Indeed, how strange,
How much the beauty of the past has faded.
Annelid Sonnet
But I have not. Must I go again
Into this place of torment? Tell me how
To get rid of this leech that suckles when
I try to free it. How I can I walk on
When I am chained? I bury you inside,
Outside, within, withal, whereon, be gone!
Be dead! But in the casket you abide,
Alive but molded, withered; rotten worm
That will not die, though I had thought you dead!
I lunge forth and away but you hold firm
With prongs embedded in my bones and head.
Oh, you have held a place within too long,
Too undeserved, too late to right the wrong.
Grey Sonnet
How shades of grey are complementary
To russet, red, maroon, or crimson's flow,
And other hues of blood that bleed from me?
You admix, so you say, of black and white;
But did you notice how the dawn of grey
Will burst with yellow purples, pinks and light
When face to face confronted with the day?
Then you are every color and are none:
For black absorbs and white reflects; yet free
In alchemy the rigid comes undone,
And then my spectrum you more clearly see.
For grey to dwell alone is grey indeed
When colors yearn to contrast, blend, and bleed.
Sonnet of the Hardened Heart
With inner crevices: prying the shell
Like scabs (rough, oozing, sore), which crust, but tell
Of tumults against the psychic seabed floor;
It is in vain. Swollen and hard around
The meat (like newborn skin, or the vaginal flower),
The protection, obdurate, damns me. Damn the mound
Which buries my soul and suffocates what little power
My will may afford. That meat, that flower, that skin
(A pulsing pinkish mass) is thus entombed;
And yet, for her to exist at all, the wound
Must needs be sealed by this guardian within.
She lives within her shell; perhaps she dies
As well, because it makes and mutes her cries.
I once was sharp as blades
And I could slice raw words within my mind
And then put them to paper, thus consigned
To publish all I think, believe, and feel.
I was as bright as day, and was as real
As sunlight which can make the viewer blind:
So sharp and light did become intertwined,
And beauties from within to all reveal.
But now I am as dull as rotten wool;
My thoughts are nothing if not addlepated;
My acumen seems gone into a pile
Of sweet, soft nothing. Once so strong and full
Of clarity, but now deteriorated,
I wonder how my efforts are worthwhile.
Depression I – V
I am scattering.
My room, ever a prison, is too big;
like a liquid I fill the space,
my sense of self too other to hold together.
An iron lung, a straitjacket, an embrace --
any such compassion might assuage my ineffectual disappearance,
which leads me nowhere, trapped though asunder.
My brain floats then falls,
floats then falls, on the tides of death.
I long for return to the unconsciousness of the ocean.
Dissipating, pain unabating,
this flesh decomposes around a heavy, headached sorrow.
Once more I place this selegeline patch on my absent body.
II
Maybe I want to cry but my body is not inclined to do so.
My fingers mistype; my neurons misfire.
Words provide no relief; words are all I have.
Peripherally from my pillow I see indistinct numbers;
laterally gazing, they disappear from the clock: I am stuck
between time's unintelligible representation and its undiscernible reality.
I have static surrounding me; I have been lost in it for some time.
I have lost 20lbs; maybe I can lose the rest of the risperidone weight.
I have my space heater on, as always; its comfort embarrasses me.
We all want to be loved, I guess.
I want to go to sleep, that little reprieve from the onslaught of living.
Maybe I will take doxylamine. Maybe my sleep will not end in the terror of waking.
Maybe I will be able to cry. Maybe I can throw away this first-person pronoun
and be something else, though my body is not inclined to do so.
Maybe I can be loved. Maybe.
III
Like a nausea
the tendrils of self-persecution reach forth
like fingers from the phantom of Otherness,
that dream-formed beast that whispers I am
irreparably damaged and unable to measure up;
they seek to discomfort me and mark me unclean.
How can I feel like a human being?
How cruel depression is to let dreams live
while destroying the reality in which to achieve them.
I have exhausted the nourishment of language
and am left with its bitter taste in my mouth.
I lay and listen to memories of joy sing me to sleep
like a music box.
IV
Night names me.
Light lames me.
Blight blames me.
V
Life is heavy,
less as cliché
than as conscious moments
in which eternity hides.
Close your eyes;
heed your chest
rising,
beating.
Try, tired one,
to keep trying,
living,
enduring.
The Gray up there
sky is
the kind
of gray
that
it
gets in
the fall –
even here
where
the temperature
barely changes
and
the trees
keep their leaves -
The sky
and
the air
and
the breeze
make me
ache –
like
I'm waiting
for something
that
never really
gets here –
like
I'm yearning
for something
that
I can
barely imagine.
Jabez Andre Baron Richard is an experimental artist and doomsday prophet, working towards a double major in Creative Writing and Literature with a minor in Film Studies from Western Washington University. He lives in Bellingham, Washington, where he produces rap, electronic music and horror films with his family. |
Applying for a Housing Loan
Drawer TUV
“Unsatisfactory” folder
Today did not go completely
According to plan
Close the drawer
Without filing the sheet
Instead select PQRS
It was “salvageable”
Enough I suppose
But shake my head no
And shut the case
Still pinching paper
LMNO chalk this one
Up for a calculated “loss”
But you still “win” some
Reconsider drawer WXYZ
The real enemy is stagnancy
We are finally taking steps
Applications properly submitted
More importantly the past
Has ceased to exist
And tomorrow isn’t real
Until the “dawnlight” ignites
The horizon—drawer ABCD
What I want and what I get
Somehow conflict like polarity
Folder “haves/havenots” in HIJK
I’d mend this rift before all
Others in the cabinet
I’ll open the last drawer
And “eyeball” it desperately
Fated for an anonymous pile
Nothing worth mentioning
Written all over it.
Greetings From a Puddle
From a puddle
You look skywise
So high up above
Like a bubble
So gentlefragile
Can you imagine
If it suddenly popped?
That’s why we huddle
Too close for comfort
A crowded concert
When the the rush pushes forward
In perpetual motion
I am the ocean
A pristine mountain stream
When it’s frozen
I am an iceberg
Submerged in a surge of urges
And crucial
Nonessential moments
Hello
From a puddle
Someday soon
We’ll all be sunken ships
It Was Inevitable!
my mother cat
brought a live
bat into the house
(unbeknownst to me)
she let it go
like a slingshot
to fly wild
circles around
the living room
while myself
and the other
land animals gawked
awestruck and dumbfounded
eventually it flew into
the kitchen but took
a wrong turn
up the stairs
trapping itself in
the girls’ room
while I was at work
I received a text
from Ciera saying
“The bat emoji
is still alive
and out of the house”
I was relieved
the cats didn’t kill it
though that was always
a viable solution
to prevent the spread
of rabies and wall-bats
Ego Death
This shape is not me
I have been dishonest
My thoughts, my words,
My voice are lying
Between an extremely
(head-shakingly) long
Sequence of events
And infinity: Don’t trust them
This life is not mine
I have been dishonest
There is no ownership
In death the only things
Relinquished are heat
And the invisible (close eyes)
Patterns firecrackering up
And down my spine
Sensational!
I have been dishonest
The codes that I represent
Belong to a much
(hand-wringingly) greater
Body of work
I am less than a line
On a page of the final chapter
And this me is just a link
Made of many twisting chains
Thunder and Blazes
To sit and enjoy my favorite teacup
Without being whirled on the carousel
Calliope plays Entry of the Gladiators
And circus clowns hit me with balloon bats
Every time I extend my pinky the cup to my lips
It’s a good thing I have always pictured it
As China chips and porcelain powder
From the first it entered into my possession
And what I love about everything I’ve ever known
There are mushroom clouds ceramic urns for us all
Savor the bitterness its complexity
That never fails to relief and release
Tatiana Raudales has been writing creatively for the better part of over ten years, while writing professionally for the last four. Her educational background includes an ongoing pursuit of a Bachelor’s degree in English, paired with many writing workshop courses. She has previously published a short story in the Scarlet Leaf Review back in the November 2016 issue. She has worked effortlessly to grow and reshape her writing since. |
Akiana
Who I hope will smile down
Upon my new baby
But I know it can’t be
For you only existed
As our dream.
She Yanked Away
The little doll clasped between my fingers
She didn’t mind tearing off skin this way
And shrugged off the sadness that lingers
She stole every sense
Of freedom, identity, self autonomy
And threw my doll into cold, dark vents
Leaving me in search of my dolly
She pushed all of it onto me
Her insecurities, anxieties, and godly fear
But she didn’t plan on giving me
Any sense of boundaries to adhere
She screamed and I coiled
Back into the vents, holding my doll
Safety, and hopes guarded
The Man Who Haunts Me
The chains scraped against the concrete
The cold concrete riddled with broken glass
But his face is content
He is no longer a bird perched on a branch
He sits in the body I once saw
But I cannot see his entire body
For I have only seen him in photos
He opens his mouth to speak but
His voice is too quiet for me to hear
Have I forgotten it after all these years?
I look closer and even his face is blurred
The man who haunts me walks free
At peace with all that occurred
Yet I, the one who stirred the pot
Cannot stop having these heartbreaking dreams.
John Kaniecki writes prose and poetry. His poetry has appeared in over one hundred outlets and his prose in about a dozen. He was until recently a full-time caregiver for his wife Sylvia who suffers from dementia. She is now presently safe in a nursing home. John works as an assistant to a lawyer. He is also a peace activist and a minister in the Church of Christ. As being openly bipolar he is an advocate for the mentally ill community. His story to overcome his mental illness and his declaration of humanity is told in his memoirs "More Than The Madness." John's poem “Tea With Joe Hill” won the Joe Hill Poetry Contest in 2012 along with a $500 prize. https://johnkaniecki.weebly.com/ http://johnkaniecki.blogspot.com/ https://www.facebook.com/JohnsPoems/ |
Love Letters
Reckless rambling wayward words
Smashing foul fetters
Groans of pleasure heard
Intimate touch
Insanely too much
Sounds rolling of the tongue
You can only be young
One time
Was it a crime
To express
Love and tenderness
I hear you never married
And that you carried
An iron cross
I feel for your loss
Would you feel better
If I sent to you
A love letter
I Can't Think Now
Keyboard teetering as I type
Pesky fruit fly zooms on by
Sylvia stirring on the couch
Love poems taped to the wall
Over a lithograph of the Brooklyn Bridge
It is signed and entitled by the artist
A wedding photograph
I don't like the way that I am looking
Hair too short and belly too big
My shoes need replacing
I glance in the mirror where the clock hangs
I am clean shaven but my hair is frazzled
Mirror needs cleaning
We have no Windex
This is working seems to be getting somewhere
I am angry and I am calm
The noise of the clock is a distinct constant
Allen Ginsburg wrote stream of conscious
As did the other Beat Writers
I bet he edited Howl though
I'll give you ten to one odds
We are almost never what we claim to be
Professional athletes are vastly over paid
We should eliminate the position of owner
My egalitarian ideals are shining
Like the electric lamp in the dingy mirror
I wonder if I should edit this?
The desk is a mess and it needs some dusting as well
The clock's noise is reminiscent of a constant water tap dripping
The Beatles wrote a song about that
"I'm fixing a hole where the rain comes in"
I won't quote the subsequent line
I am cracking my knuckles reading what I just wrote
I think I am almost finished with my poem
If I could just find a clever way to end
The Arm Chair Revolutionary
All men are created equal
Sounds like a phenomenal
Sound byte to pass on
Right on!
Fight on!
Equal how
In which way?
Where do we find
Womankind?
The Arm Chair Revolutionary
A step back
From Jack
On the evolutionary
Chain
He feels your pain
Hey don’t knock him/her
I’ll tell you what for
If he/she had a black friend
And he/she is close enough to pretend
He’d/She’d have them over for dinner
And wouldn’t dare
Hide the good silverware
But down in the hood
The work is in desperate need
Where by one look
It is clearly understood
The impoverished masses bleed
They are not to be found anywhere
At least I don’t see them there
I wonder if they really care
Or they merely feign compassion
In idle inaction
So you read your books of theory
And with dialectical eyes
You believe your lies
So you can see clearly
You are an unlit candle in the dark night
And I say
We need day light
There Is A Woe
I used to know
So long ago
Hatred was the vile name
(I recall in shame)
I hated within
I hated without
It was a sin
Without a doubt
I knew something was terribly wrong
To be a man I need be strong
(But perchance what is strength?)
(To lift the massive weight?)
(Or to run the eternal length?)
But love as a kernel was planted deep
Watered by my tears as I fell to sleep
It was my most sincere prayer
To find a true love
A kindred soul to care
But year after year I was denied
And oh how I cried
But folly is never wasted upon a youth
Years come
And if the brain is not numb
So manifests the truth
Lies fade before perceptive eyes
I came to the crossroads but not to make a deal
The devil with wicked grin steeped in sin
Sought my soul to steal
But I turned my way to the cross
And gained all in my loss
Kindergarten
HUSH, respect is mandatory
How else could it exist?
Stern elders with authoritative titles
Mister So And So
Mrs. Blowing In The Wind
Principle Proper
Learn to patiently wait in line
Wildebeest at the oasis
Three taps at the water fountain
Or perhaps the riotous bully
In alligator joy clumping anger
Will fully twist the handle
Baptizing your face in a streaming current
Of humility
Tender shoots
Deeply rooted in invulnerable life
Definitions are being created
Taboos defined
Psychologists to reap bountifully
Seeds of servitude sown
No laughing don’t giggle
As if joy was a sin
What do you mean you want to be happy in life?
Mumbo Jumbo Pledge of Allegiance incantation
Vocabulary undecipherable
Learn to play nice
Profiling has commenced
Be good citizens pay your taxes
Choose your crayon colors carefully
Draw neatly with caution inside the lines
A laboratory infested with mice
Monitored by sadistic half starved alley cats
Detest
Suppress
Success means promotion
To more of the same
Welcome to the best year of your life
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