All I can do is write I cannot fix shelves or work in factories. I am not that person anymore, so that is why I write and continue to write and hope people get something from what I write. JIMMY BURNS' PANTS I found a pair of pants on top of my big locker looked like they had been up there awhile, a big tyre mark through the centre. I knew they were Jimmy's even before I asked him this was his old room and people here did things like that and they were proud of them too. I liked Jimmy he said he came from the gorballs some said the worst estate in europe. When he used to laugh he looked like he was about to piss himself. Over the years I thought I would meet more Jimmy's but I am still looking Sad to say. NO POEMS No poems shall I write today None of hope or new chances. No poems shall I write today of love. No poems shall I write today that speak of the freshness of the air The newness of the day. No poems shall I write today of laughter. No poems shall I write today of beauty. No poems shall I write today. No poems shall I write today. No poems. none. Not today. CRAZY CRAZY There are a pair of pants on top of the small roof next to my toilet. I know because I threw them there. Sometimes people walk by Talking about them Like there were some tourist attraction. Some people have flags of their country flying from their roofs. I have a flag of underpants from the country of crazy crazy And it is the only country for me. THE WORST POET IN THE WORLD Have you heard about the worst poet in the world He tells people to F off on stage. Goes to the mic drunk. Makes fun of people. turns up late or not at all. if you haven't seen him I have to confess. He Is Me. SHAME SHAME SHAME As ride of the valkyres came on I had an urge to leap from my chair put my feet on the shoulders of the boy in front and fly up into the air. Push up around the dome of the royal albert hall circling everybody as I soared above like a big bald eagle and just for a second I was sure I could do it but I didn't quite believe enough what a shame.
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Heather is a hill born Kentucky girl living down south in Mississippi. She is a minister's wife and mother of two sons, working toward the publication of her first novel. She is represented by Peter Knapp of New Leaf Literary. Her credits include: The Mom Egg, Vine Leaves Literary, Tipton Poetry Journal, Drunk Monkeys, Mothers Always Write, and the Young Adult Review Network. Sea Flat bathtub sea nipples and knees sunken volcanoes Polynesian islands the sound of drumbeat steady as the natives lullaby me to sleep, palms suspended, thoughts suspended, life upended, worry drowned, as I sink down into my pores and know myself in you. Dear Son It is early. I am not awake. Dear Son, this is why we close the windows. The is why we lock the doors. A person can feel like a prison. I’ve been out a lot this week. I’d like to curl up, curl in, close out the world. Dear Son, this is why we draw the blinds. The joy radiating from you is a million times brighter than the light from the windows. Everything is heavy. My soul is breaking. A person can feel like an answer. I’m best at tragedy and grief. Dear Son, this is why we love our mothers. They wake up and remake the world. Curl The dark-haired girl that curled inside herself; She was unwilling to be born this way. The boy with the evil smile pushed. He tried to force her spine to bend and crack. She was unwilling to be born this way. Her fingers were white against brown pages. He tried to force her spine to bend and crack. She stared at blurring words, did not look up. Her fingers were white against brown pages. Lines of story wove for her a soft cocoon. She stared at blurring words, did not look up. And she grew her soul into a frightening curve. Lines of story wove for her a soft cocoon. The boy with the evil smile pushed. And she grew her soul into a frightening curve; The dark-haired girl that curled inside herself. Rizwan Saleem is a Banker based in Dubai UAE. The thoughts and expressions detailed in his works are of his various escapades suffered through life, and of the profound surprise of having survived long enough to pen them into words. His poems have appeared in anthologies Twenty Seven Signs by Lady Chaos Press and Self Portrait Poetry Collection by Silver Birch Press. THE DEPARTED Covered, closed and sealed Fist after fist of moist sand Laid to rest The walk back now for the living A drive to return to an empty abode Wouldn't it be so much better to also bury the memories behind Carry on now i must, and still be near the places where we used to dwell Incomplete, left to repeat a single wish If only you had taken me with you My eyes stray on the barren shelves Where you kept your clothes Residues of your perfume still linger in the air The very scents that stirred my lusts for so long Now make it so hard to breath i must wake still, every morning and pretend to be alive Though, i know i went in that grave much before you What remains now is a quest To seek answers for infinite questions that are left for me All of them beginning with "why" The finality of it all, this surcease Becomes too much to bear My heart beats on my chest like a hammer on a condemned wall And when i can take no more, i fall to my knees and cry Sob tears that rise from an abyss Very deep inside For the love lost to me The warm embraces now cold as artic snow The kisses owed but never collected The words that i felt but left unsaid Maybe you're in a better place now Better than this living, breathing hell That caves in around me Maybe you're happy now Or maybe, simply, this is what i deserved all along So now that you're with others i see Everyone else but me I'm taken back in that cemetery To a cold dark corner, tranquil in perpetual shadow Far away and sequestered On a little piece of hallowed ground Where broken hearts are buried ANATOMY OF A CURSE Let it be so Let it come to your turn These dark hallucinations of my mind The hope that your lips burn When you kiss some other Your deepest hazel eyes to lose color When you see it’s not me Cry out loud in anguish When you think of the love we made Rashes ravage that flawless skin With every touch that isn’t mine Ash gray to your fleece of jet black hair I wish it to be now The same pallor of what you left behind Since they no longer cascade over me Let those nimble fingers never feel sensations Those fingers that once entwined with mine Slip from your palm every coin you ever hold Know you how it is to be bereft of all you ever owned Skip a thousand beats of that dead cold heart you carry Every time my name is told Ghouls and vampires call on you In the dead of every night When this world retires to its slumber See how it feels to live Your life six hundred feet under How the full moon now shines but not for its purpose before Those kisses we shared in its glow are ours no more Walk to where you want, run so you can hide I pray my memories hound you Let them never leave your side No church or temple to give you relief Dance your ways with Satan Go round and round and round Such a lovely couple you’d make Always room for some common ground Rejoice in rebirth, I am fully woken The spell you had cast is finally broken Now live the way that I did Have your remaining years be wasted And let you languish through days and see Then and only then Will you discover, lover The true meaning of the word misery. SAHARA Only when on my knees I saw how far I had fallen The azure skies above me Bereft of clouds of shelter Had perhaps shown me enough mercy The cracked and dry soil below Have gained a few drops of rain Shed by my withered eyes Arid, desolate this land Vast and open Yet closed to supplications Only my lonely cries Come echoing back to me Mumbling verses of faith Through lips parched My resolve fritters away in the furnace hot winds Whilst I wallow in reminiscences of my halcyon days Night falls with no promise of surcease And I'm haunted by specters of worries to come Toss and turn like violent seas, I can get no release My ship sails endless over breaking waves Falling at the seams Ready to be broken on the rocks of the sorrows I conjure With every dawn rises new pain Of repeating what yesterday left behind And hope floats like a mirage To let me walk towards another oasis For some elixir to wet my lungs Each step on broken feet I falter and I fail Vultures follow me with malevolent glee Waiting for that final fall I stumble and I crawl For temporary refuge My beastly companions track my trail with blood lusted eyes Point their poisonous beaks at me Hands fall open Unravel scrolls of dreams yet to be fulfilled They laugh at my condition Behold the fate of man; they say Holding on to things that do not hold to him Faleeha Hassan She is a poet, teacher, editor, writer born in Najaf, Iraq, in 1967, who now lives in the United States. And she is the first woman who wrote poetry for children in Iraq. She is leading poetic feminist movement in the holy city of Najaf She got a master's degree in Arabic literature, and published sixteen collections of poetry in Arabic: Being a Girl, and a visit to the Museum of the shadows, five titles for my sea-friendly, although the later poems to the mother, Gardenia perfume, and a collection of poems for children, The Guardian dreams. It includes its Arabic prose Hazinia or lack of joy cells and freckles water (short story). ........Etc Translated poems to (English, Turkmen, Bosevih, Indian, French, Italian, German, Kurdish, Spain and Albania) and has received awards from the linguists and translators Arab Society (AWB) and the Festival of creativity Najafi for 2012, as well as Naziq God Award angels, Al Mu'tamar Prize for Poetry, and the award short story of the martyr mihrab and institution. It is on the boards of Baniqya member, quarterly in Najaf. Rivers Echo (Echo Mesopotamia); Iraqis in Najaf and writers association. Iraqi Union and is a member of the literary women, and Sinonu (ie Swift) Association in Denmark, the Society of Poets beyond borders, and poets of the global community. Her poems and her stories published in different American magazines Such as : (Philadelphia poets 22), (Harbinger Asylum ), (Brooklyn Rail april2016), (Screaminmamas),(The Galway Review)and (Words without Borders) d.fh88@yahoo.com The Wagon So Like a man inured to failure, We climbed aboard the wagon, And The driver, only the driver, Began to listen as the cadence of our deprivation —Thud. . .. Clunk. . . and so on- -Infiltrated the wagon’s pores, Starting with that first dirt road. Our lives’ parasols disappointed us When we shared sorrows Without fancy titles, while Reaping lethargy and frustration. It wasn’t only the driver, or The horse, or Our heads That looked meager; The wagon’s outlook did too. Translated by William M. Hutchins Joan McNerney’s poetry has been included in numerous literary magazines such as Seven Circle Press, Dinner with the Muse, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze, Blueline, and Halcyon Days. Three Bright Hills Press Anthologies, several Poppy Road Review Journals, and numerous Kind of A Hurricane Press Publications has accepted her work. Her latest title is Having Lunch with the Sky and she has four e-books. She has been nominated three times for Best of the Net. All Fall Down Leaves toppling from trees fiery leaves red yellow green flames. Only this remains...smoky ends of days. Days like leaves crumbling, shriveled, tumbling down, falling to the ground. Scattered into an acrid mound. An acrid mound of sour roots. Our garden grew from the wrong side of the moon. Brackish vines are harvested there. Flowers of despair grew a single fruit. It tasted bittersweet. My laughter became harsh. My eyes grew oblique. I want to curse and cry against this world. Fine dreams stolen...ragged and torn like leaves blown in storm. Storm winds strangle treetops, shaking, foliage pulled from boughs. Broken by thunder pummeled through long nights Long nights heavy rains spilling black ink stains. There is no solution, another day done, another piece of the puzzle gone Ashes ashes all fall down what is lost cannot be found. Eleventh Hour Wrapped in darkness we can no longer deceive ourselves. Our smiling masks float away. We snake here, there from one side to another. How many times do we rip off blankets only to claw more on? Listening to zzzzzz of traffic, mumble of freight trains, fog horns. Listening to wheezing, feeling muscles throb. How can we find comfort? Say same word over and over again again falling falling to sleep. I will stop measuring what was lost. I will become brave. Let slumber come covering me. Let my mouth droop, fingers tingle. Wishing something cool…soft…sweet. Now I will curl like a fetus gathering into myself hoping to awake new born. Neil Slevin is a 26 year-old writer from the West of Ireland. An English teacher, in 2015 he returned to university to complete an M.A. in Writing at N.U.I. Galway and to pursue a writing-based career. Flight You emerged from the ripples, flapped your wings then spread them, tapped out your beat on pannier drums, repeating yourself until you knew your time had come; in the way a moment passes, slow and deliberate at first, some circling of the wagons, before momentum builds and its wheels begin to spin. Then you took flight, checked your reflection in the river mirror and drove yourself beyond the bridge. We watched you go until you were gone, knew you wouldn’t return. It was time to move on. He played piano Alone, he played piano to the stillness of the room, his notes rising and falling, bursting like balloons. Every song was a way out, a respite ray of hope in gloom he played for all who could not hear, while he stole time, forgot all moments past, his tears. Then silence reigned, everything returned to him, all the memories of her pain. Where These landmarks tell our story. Where I met the real you, knew; where I walked you home from when I didn’t know anything about you, except that I wanted to know everything. Where we waited, I miss you bouncing bird-like against my brain’s cage. Where you held me and my tears. Where I took you to tell you, we shared our truth; where we went, the first place you’d ever asked me to. Where we sat in the sun and nothing had changed. Where now tells me everything had. Waiting for Her I wanted her to be you. Sometimes I think I still do. Splitting the Atom We thought Siamese twins was the official term, but never thought of what it meant to be joined at the hip or head or heart with someone else nor how one might achieve extrication from such a bond; we were too busy following each other to leave any part of ourselves above the parapet of adolescence. We grew up, learned that they were conjoined by some anomaly of fate, genetics had conspired to mould their beings into one. Science taught us how to split the atom, of the force and power that act could generate when the Enola Gay scoured Hiroshima, and later when white coats in Switzerland sent particles on voyages of indeterminate length about a modicum of the Universe, hoping to create another explosion. But there were no experiments conducted to uncover the secrets of that so natural yet complex force with enough energy and power to create another universe, one where you and I might live. Those, we carried out ourselves from the instant we exploded until our sun burnt out. Then the separation began: we didn’t like our odds but shared the dream that we might find a way to extract our minds from one another; that our hearts would regenerate, one day reproduce those particles and rifle them into life’s atmosphere so we could discover another twin to share our being. Ken Allan Dronsfield is a published poet and author originally from New Hampshire, now residing in Oklahoma. He loves thunderstorms, walking in the woods at night, and spending time with his cats Merlin and Willa. He is the co-editor of the new poetry anthology titled, Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze available at Amazon.com. His published work can be found in reviews, journals, magazines and anthologies throughout the web and in print venues including: The Burningword Journal, Indiana Voice Journal, The Literary Hatchet Magazine, Scarlet Leaf Review, Belle Reve Journal, Peeking Cat Magazine, Dead Snakes,Bewildering Stories, Aquill Relle, Members Anthology, Book 6, Literature Today, Volume 5, Poetic Melodies Anthology, Creative Talents Unleashed; and many others. His poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net for 2016. Aster's and Ladybugs Pristine morning of awakening sunshine; soft, gentle winds blow as butterflies dance. Marshmallow cloudy shadows drifting as chirping birds sing sweetest sonnets. Two lovely Ladybugs glide by in the breezes now rest upon the Aster's at my dew whetted feet. Sunday morning smiles; comforted in the radiance covet all within his gaze the joyous hawk circles. I Pray For..... a sunrise to ignite wispy, darkened corners as planet Earth awakens, a warm blanket spreads while the King of Light rises, the unseen now revealed. I wish..... surging swift waters will fill inland marshes and salty tidal creeks as blue crabs roam; shorebirds scatter all about the sand while seeking small meals. I wish..... to be chased from the edge of the ocean's rushing surf by greedy pursuing waves keeping Neptune's coveted treasures of the deep safely stashed from view. I Pray..... to awaken as chirping birds fly by my open sunlit window, whilst my teapot sings a sonnet announcing this new day of exhilarated joy as praise be an alluring soft whisper in my ear. Ocean of Sadness Seek the visions of light and starry gladness moved by the oceans of perpetual sadness live for a truth within the night of frivolity cast away shadows of an ornamental novelty dancing through life as strife is always abated thunderous blast from an icy past is inflated. wiping all tears in the fears of the breathless death speaks of the weak to spirits so restless if you can't voice the truth to the youth of today get the hell of the stage and rage another way. Golden Locks Upon a Morning Breeze incessant jovial mumbling aghast golden locks upon a morning breeze convertible top down in harsh sunlight Siamese cat rides proud upon the dash casting hazy shadows from stem to stern quieted ride upon the marshmallow tires pizza bites sizzle on the red hot headers as my brain awakens in a drunken stupor crossing the plains, without fear or disdain seeking or freaking like a two headed clam memories absolved of all pleasure or piety golden locks flow upon a morning breeze. Blissfully Waiting for Lithium's Last Kiss Heartlessly waiting and regretfully abating questioning the motif of an abstract work wishing to feel the tweak or feted treats as the needle in the arm burns so slightly. Stand in a street now feeling less bleak the Count reaches ten, the Muppets dance the pain is long gone, Miss Piggy looks hot! June thaw they say, what time is it anyway? The officer stands looking me in the eyes he checks my name on his computer list asks why I'm roof bound trying to fly, say I just blissfully waiting for Lithium's last kiss. Sanjeev Sethi has published three books of poetry. This Summer and That Summer (Bloomsbury, 2015) is his latest. His poems have found a home in Yellow Chair Review, Red Wolf Journal, Expound, Venus in Scorpio Poetry, Off the Coast, Literary Orphans, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Café Dissensus Everyday, Section 8 Magazine, The Jawline Review, Right Hand Pointing, Revolution John, Futures Trading, The Aerogram, Chronogram, Duane’s Poe Tree, The London Magazine, The Fortnightly Review, Ink Sweat and Tears, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, New English Review, The Galway Review, In Between Hangovers, Otoliths, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India. BONDAGE Prosetry of backlit glance, stot of your smile chiseled my corners: the math of seduction coerced me to falsehoods. Alliaceous floats smelled like spice. Beads of my chaplet were soaked in the drain of deception. Prebuttal is in-built in conversations. In our tie-up the mind was mortaged. LAMENT Symphonies of another summer lure me to a lonesome walk on the sideways of sorrow. The sun helps by hiding in cirrus. Moments such as these urge: salvation is in acceptance. Your retinae blurred with bitterness finds me exhausted and unanxious. I can’t muster energies required for exhumation. I gifted you my dictionaries, don’t inquire of words that do not dwell there. Adam Levon Brown is a published author, poet, amateur photographer, and cat lover. He is owner of Madness Muse Press; a micro-press that publishes dark poetry, and a book reviewer for Five 2 One Magazine. He has over 100 poems published in 9 different countries. He has been published in venues such as Burningword Literary Journal, Corvus Review, and Yellow Chair Review. Adam can be contacted via his website at www.AdamLevonBrown.org where he offers free poetry resources. Also see his press at www.Madnessmusepress.com Adam has one chapbook out titled, “These Streets Don’t Cry For Us” which can be found on Amazon. He attends Lane Community College and will soon attend the University of Oregon as an English Major/Creative Writing Minor. Emotional Explosives Sleeping with A hand grenade for a heart always makes me jumpy. As if somehow in the middle of the night I will explode into tears. Soliloquy sorted by synapses sifting silently through the sieve of sanity. I hang my fears on the nightstand and press my head into the pillow; Hoping not to wake the raging beast that lies within. Memory Tainted Tense and struggling to keep the monstrosity in check. Pushing past adversity and unseen barriers makes a heart strong. Halting memories keep me bound to a fate of my worst fears. When the juggernaut sleeps, I will find true peace. The Marked Ones Serendipitous soliloquy splintered through Laborious salivation Sanctimonious sacrilege survives through Inseminating greed and sacrificing succor Salacious sensations stagger sun-chipped Soldiers with stock-eyed stares Lunar cycles sell simplicity in the form Of silent silk made for the secret salutations Sins are secreted into the veins of the absorbent As night slips by into the abyss of solace RON WALKER is a writer from Louisiana. He is 48 and lives on Lake Bistineau in southern Webster Parish. Hobbies are poetry and small engine repair. Limitation... What do you do When your own Shadow Is ashamed of you? When the eyes that Were once clear And bright, Have become Tarnished, And jaded? What do you Tell your friends, When you cannot Look them in the Eye, And smile sincerely- While basking In the glow of Acceptance? And how can you Help Your family through A rough And troubling time, When the wreckage Of your past- Has left you Paralyzed With despair? Where have the Rainbows Ended up This time? You've chased them Only to be Struck down- By the storm clouds That gather behind The soul, That only wanted To be Free? There is no Destination-- Only Limitation... And an End To all Things... |
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