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In praise of …..Mind – Less
The catch between the tick and tock Where time lapses Boundary free The page reverses Background foregrounds Words recede Spaciousness breathes Peace expands and illuminates Opens the flow Beingness radiates Clamours are subdued Healing rivulets Soothe and restores Unifies selves within (The Philosophical Pigeon fell to grace into poetry as a way of healing from mental health issues. Fascinated by life and all that jazz poetry is a liberating tool of expression. Content and style are eclectic and mirrors the multidimensional beauty of humanity.)
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One-Way Ticket
As hearts go, Mine is an easy one captured. And indeed, it will always be captured, By the uncertain hope of a one-way ticket. I heard it this morning, He manoeuvres heavy suitcases. His exertion manifests, In warm, sweaty breaths. “One-way ticket to Dublin”, he gasps, His breath fogs up the glass, misty eyes. Perhaps his bags were too heavy, That could be why. Or perhaps he is going to leave and never come home And to start a new life! This bus stops at the airport, And from there there’s the world, Unimaginably wide. There’s nowhere he couldn’t go, An infinity of bus stops are there, right out there! I’ve gotten a one-way ticket before, I came back of course, But when I decided to leave, I didn’t know when my return trip would be. I just went and then was, How exciting was that? And then I was stuck in an airless beige house, for a year and a half, (How exciting was that?) So I went on a voyage, And unearthed a new me, Spent long days, restless nights, Seeking, eking every bit of me out. Gave unloved parts love and untended parts care, Ugly parts too got compassion, Then I pruned them away and replaced them with roses. Slowly, slowly, but every day. I was bone-tired sad once, hated every small bit of the world, And especially me. And now I’m writing a poem as I sit on the bus, And I revel in peace, How exciting is that? I took a one-way trip, I am whole now, complete, I have reached Dublin Airport and here is the world, And there’s nowhere I cannot go. How exciting is that? (Emily is a young scientist from Donegal, Ireland. Completing her final year of university during a national lockdown took a significant toll on her already ailing mental health. This prompted her to seek medical attention for her depression. Over the past months, joy and abundance have returned to her life). The way we go
Were his eyes growing dim or was he already shedding, his once so solid mind crumbling like a leaf in autumn? I felt him reach and fumble, not quite finding me, though I myself hadn’t moved. Each time he tried to connect I got less of him until all that was left was a heap of rust. (Diana Devlin is a Scottish-Italian poet and fiction writer who formerly worked as a translator, lexicographer and teacher. Her work has been widely published and anthologised, for example in The Lake, The Blue Nib, The Poets' Republic, The Poet Magazine and Ink Sweat & Tears). THIS POEM REPLACES ALL PREVIOUS POEMS
So we're born and the rotting process can't wait to begin. Could be leukemia at three, car crash at eleven, overdose at twenty-one, AIDS at thirty, suicide at forty, heart attack at fifty... the doctors tell you none of this. Even if we stay clear of the big stuff, there's little acts of random decay happening all the time to our bodies. What can heart and mind do? Complaining gets them nowhere. Look around. Yes the deciduous forest mimics the process but it gets rebirth for all its troubles. Once human spring is behind us, there's no more spring. I'm a gangrened branch of a family tree. Arthritis is my joints' step-children. Dementia carries on my mind's forgotten name. Sure there's love but have you checked its EKG lately. I'm at another funeral. "Dead before his time," they mutter. But isn't death the only time? "In life there is death," intones the priest. Yes, and that's all there is. Okay, so I'm a pessimist. But I was born an optimist. More proof as if it was needed. (John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Lana Turner and International Poetry Review.) Choosing What to Say
I must have fritted away a dozen chores today, inattentive to their insistent need. I watched a stunned fly waver and die. Every word that needed to be said remains unsaid. There is luxury in entering the Stillness, quiet like the building of a bird’s nest. That silence tells me what I need to know. I’ve learned the value of completing tasks. When I was sixteen, a friend had a cardiac arrest, dying mid-sentence. At seventeen, I witnessed thousands die in Vietnam. At each death, a vacuum is created, and emptiness filled it. Nighttime swirls above my house, bringing every word that should have been said. I need to construct words like foundation stones, to use words that strengthen and console. (Martin Willitts Jr, edits the Comstock Review.. His 25 chapbooks include the Turtle Island Quarterly Editor’s Choice Award, “The Wire Fence Holding Back the World” (Flowstone Press, 2017), plus 21 full-length collections including Blue Light Award “The Temporary World”. His current book includes “Harvest Time” (Deerbrook Editions, 2021). Deep in my couch
Deep in my couch of magnetic dust, I am a bearded old man. I pull out my last bundle of memories beneath my pillow for review. What is left, old man, cry solo in the dark. Here is a small treasure chest of crude diamonds, a glimpse of white gold, charcoal, fingers dipped in black tar. I am a temple of worship with trinket dreams, a tea kettle whistling ex-lovers boiling inside. At dawn, shove them under, let me work. We are all passengers traveling on that train of the past-- senses, sins, errors, or omissions deep in that couch. (Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era and is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. Today he is a poet, freelance writer, amateur photographer, and small business owner in Itasca, DuPage County, Illinois. Mr. Johnson is published in more than 2033 new publications. His poems have appeared in 42 countries; he edits and publishes ten poetry sites. He is the administrator of six Facebook poetry groups; he has several new poetry chapbooks coming out soon. He has over 536 published poems to date. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet 42 countries, nominated for 2 Pushcart Prize awards and 5 Best of the Net nominations. 243 poetry videos are now on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/user/poetrymanusa/videos.) Dataism
1/ The end of a beginning Given each organism as a biochemical algorithm Your life is a programed process proving Your consciousness is actually far less Valuable than a fucking Frankenstein’s AI 2/ Avihs || Vishnu Mornings || they disperse || beyond || the corn Fields, || separately. ||Sunday She || throws Her partner’s computer || (midnight) Into the garage.|| George ||who In many || a city || upgraded || his software Upgraded || hers. They will || stop over || an island Separately.|| Your son Hated || all || mushrooms George mentions – do you recall || yourself? To a single mind,|| their spirits || evaporate 3/ The beginning of an end Through human-computer interface My mind has become part of a robot While the robot part of me As data exchanges with my consciousness Or flow between each other on their own Where can I find my true self? (Yuan Changming hails with Allen Yuan from poetrypacific.blogspot.ca. Credits include Pushcart nominations besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) & BestNewPoemsOnline, among others. Recently, Yuan published his eleventh chapbook Limerence, and served on the jury for Canada's 44th National Magazine Awards (poetry category). Hymn of Silence
Partly drawn curtains reveal sun and traffic outside your room, as the doctor explains the spreading melanoma, mouthing numbers fewer than our months together. The echoes of his steps recede down the hall; I watch from the doorway your face soft, serene. You sleep, my hand hovers over your shoulder in a quest to re-discover the land your body forms, to recapture the time we re-defined refuge within this rich expanse. There is an opening in what seems like mist around us. Ode to a Nurse's Touch So, this is what it's come to? A sliding into a passive state, marveling at the hands of a stranger centering the x-ray apparatus over my chest. I marvel at the silken touch of her fingers; her generous smile strains at the tension between duty and issues at home. At dusk, winter's blue-crazed fringe of streetlights shimmer; she walks to her green Nova, neglected lately by her boyfriend. I imagine her venting an icy sigh as she recalls me quoting Neruda: "The moon lives in the lining of your skin," while she helped me back into the wheelchair. Gypsies and Your Emergency The gypsies, on the outskirts of your beliefs, hold flaming threads unwinding. You probe unordinary dawnings; the ceremony of bright priestly steel washes your veins. Those who have come late to your festival of sweet dying search the traveled street; the lights of a ghostly girl’s eyes lead them through a snowstorm of the future, as your memory-blinded love sings with one too articulate angel late of a shining town, who whispers soon, yes, soon perhaps with the gleaming liquid key you’ll set loose in this long street-stair darkness tides of joy and sing dancing children through expanded time. But your cargo is unloaded the wagon wheels are turning and this unblessed home now is a haven for the emergency you once worshipped, and the sadness torn loose from echoes of the moon. (RC James lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Previously, he lived in South America for twenty years and has a bilingual volume of his poetry and photographs at the Biblioteque Nacional de Colombia. He has works at Sonic Boom, Thimble, Flashes of Brilliance, and Open Door Poetry Magazine.) From Now And Here This time next year some of us will have surrendered to the weakness of the flesh. This time next year you’ll feel twelve months heavier. Your pockets, and head, lighter. One of us will be missing a finger. One will dare risk looking into the smelted core of the divine. Another will have forsaken emotion. Three hundred and sixty odd days and nights from now and here. The X minutes and Y seconds. An algebra of living mass. A fatty math of bloodied tissues. Which means this time next year we’ll all be farther along the crooked path. New scars will have formed. Choices will have proved themselves to be neither right nor wrong. We’ll have made some big decisions, the repercussions only then apparent. Some will have had their molecules shattered, their ashes scattered in a green river. Some of us will carry a child they’d never guessed would have existed. Next year at this time – the same stars in the same sky, but everything will seem different. I’ve heard how time changes everything. I’m learning that change matters. Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with poems published in hundreds of magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are ‘The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press); ‘An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy; (Cawing Crow Press) and ‘Like As If” (Pski’s Porch), Hearsay (The Poet’s Haven). Styx & Stones
The heartbeat is an ashtray of blazes, Kindling smoke and collecting dust on lips – Blooming in the cold, forgotten places: Smelling of city stench and old outstrips. A failed rewrite of caskets and cases, The heart is a sea-morgue of wayward ships. Wrapped in cotton whites and ghostly laces: Blackened out, a sun during the eclipse. An immortal organ, rhythm of ages, Human devotion seeps out red and drips: The stain of dark mahogany angels, Washed away down the long black river Styx. (Angelina Chartrand is a student at Lindenwood University, pursuing a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English Studies with an emphasis in Creative Writing. Having developed a passion for writing ever since she was very young, Angelina has found a love and admiration of short stories to convey her creative ideas.) |
The Beautiful Space-
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