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Up with the Larks
When roused from one’s demonic dreams – the world in waiting freezing outside, you hardly remember your own name, let alone, any personal history, other that that you were cheated in love, cheated in life by madness and an inability to follow the rules. Always an outsider, never a rider, given to melancholy, for as young as you can remember, the world frozen with grief. How would it be, not yet remembered, if your time on Earth wasn’t worth a footnote, or even a song for old times? Hard to imagine your poems saved anyone, more so, to think you deserved anything more than a nod from the top. So rise early with the larks, as if your identity depended upon it, your whole life being no more than the sum of your dreams. Two Men Treading Water (for Oli) Now we are two, variously thrashing around, up to our necks in this viscous soup we call the ocean. The life boats have moved out of harm’s way and our buoyancy aides hardly suffice against the freezing waves. We must drink the salty soup until we burst, shuffle off, or worse still, we are the last to be rescued alive. Pity about the trip of a lifetime. Pity how much time has been wasted. Pity how we are loved and not loved. Most Things are Never Meant Paradox After all the years of forgetting and pain he thought he would never forget the image of her face in his mind’s eye. Yet at the end of days and the decades that lay between them, time had transformed both perception and reality, as if to render memory incapable of capturing any informed picture of her countenance. Sure enough, beauty had its place at the heart of it, but only the idea without detail or form, latent in his brain. Not much to show for a lifetime in verse. Nonetheless, how could he forget her hand-written letter of admiration – her nineteen years, the sense that wonder could still be had in the holding of someone else’s hand? Regret, the only word for it now, but regret tempered with the cynic’s eye. Trapped by the inertia of loneliness he speaks her name out loud: Sandrine! Sandrine! Sandrine! Three times out loud for luck, for a connection never to be lived, and finally for love. (Mark A. Murphy is the editor of the online journal, POETiCA REViEW. His poetry collections include Tin Cat Alley (1996), Our Little Bit of Immortality (2011), Night-watch Man & Muse (2013) and his next full length collection, Night Wanderer’s Plea is pending from Waterloo Press in the UK.)
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Anymore
When you grow up and tell me things, grown-up things, in the language and thoughts of grown-ups. When you won’t speak for the fun of it and act your then age. How will I feel? How much shall I miss the little you my child! I actually stop typing, as I’ve heard you playing and babbling joyfully in the other room. I must first play with you, long, long before you don’t want to play with your old father anymore. The flying cage I saw a flying iron cage, yes, the bars were round as I saw the silhouette and there was an iron desk in it and a chair of iron to sit on. All the things were patterned as grills, so I could see through them from my terrace as the cage flew high in the sky. The night was dark around the cage and I had no time to check whether any moon gave its light anywhere. I had no time, as I was busy calling my children from downstairs to come watch that quaint thing with me. No, it was not magic, the orange glow that showed the cage to me below came from the fire from under the balloon that lifted it. No, my children did not join me to witness the spectacle and to make it complete as, the man that sat at the desk just opened the door of the cage and jumped, bungee style. I write It’s not easy to write. First, there’s that light, piercing pain somewhere between my right ear and eye. It goes away for some time but returns stubbornly. Then, there’s that doubt, rather, there are two of them. My wife was not well this morning. Was it just common cold, or there’s something to worry about? I need some documents to start a process, and have applied for the same. Will I get it? Shall my will be done? Yet I make myself sit to write, happy that I’m free for the moment and no one needs me for some time. I write because I can. I write for my dream. I write as I hope. I live, so I write. (Rajnish Mishra is a poet, writer, translator and blogger born and brought up in Varanasi, India and now in exile from his city. His work originates at the point of intersection between his psyche and his city. He edits PPP Ezine.) ON MY RETURN
Through other lives lived And reclaimed I find myself again here Where the mad roam Locked up Doped up In worlds designed by Pharmacutical Giants My dignity is robbed And I am divested of all my passions Like an animal caged I roar and smash But it is too late for anger So again I WEEP I WEEP Brain storm Brain racing Know not to believe Thoughts telling me I can do anything Been here too long now Not to trust my addled mind As it betrays me Time and again ANGER HATRED RAGE AND FURY A demon Loose in my soul Always there Waiting To come back THE DARKNESS Gathering all around Enclosing me inside Like a ruined walled castle garden With no castle left to protect Where am I ? What am I ? Are there others here ? No, I am alone Nobody to come out and play Mammy, mammy Can saoirse come out to play ? Where did the all go ? I see hundreds of faces Flashing past Turning into one My own I'm all that I'm here with A child ? An adult ? Alone In the darkness Dark, dark days and nights Becomming so small I hardly recognise myself A shell A shrivelled wreck A half-person DYSPHORIA RED RED RED RED Bursting through the calm No moments to gather self A full rush wave of MANIA An outpouring of VIOLENCE RAGE ABUSE SHOUTING AND WORSE This one is the biggest curse No signs At the begining And once it starts NOTHING NOTHING Can stop it Until I burn out And then floods of tears But then it is always TOO LATE ............................................................. BY SAOIRSE LOVE as children we expect our mothers and
our fathers to live forever we envision them as immortal and challenge their ways then death comes and picks off one grandparent at a time an uncle suicides a divorce is finalized and the puddles we once jumped in remain stagnant and lonesome the bogeyman we once feared becomes credit card debt student loans rent or a mortgage a hospital bill the electric bill the gas bill all bills it is endless and it has always been but as children our parents shielded us from this shit somedays there is a harmony like old chimes blowing in the wind though no chimes are outside and no wind is present i do not know what this means but it continues on and this harmony brings about a forgotten peace that was once found in those now stagnant puddles. (Tohm Bakelas is a published poet from New Jersey) I remember my grandparent’s enclosed porch,
their Boston Terriers nipping at my heels as I entered the yard. I enjoyed the reminiscences, repeated at each visit. I reveled in the laughter that ensued after each anecdote about my childhood was concluded. The story I remember most today is the one about my lone field trip, at the age of three, to the neighborhood railroad tracks. Little me, found by frantic people and returned home safely. In later years, my grandmother, Alzheimer ridden, was found wandering those same railroad tracks by equally frantic people. I’ve wondered since if we were looking for the same thing. (Linda Imbler’s poetry collections include “Big Questions, Little Sleep,” “Lost and Found,” “The Sea’s Secret Song,” and “Pairings,” a hybrid ebook of short fiction and poetry. She is a Kansas-based Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Nominee. Linda’s poetry and a listing of publications can be found at lindaspoetryblog.blogspot.com.) |
The Beautiful Space-
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