What Will Remain
What will remain of me today or the next coming year, will it be worth a bird’s feather The only grief in my bloodroot is the sad song of nightingales like a wedding with a mother in a picture frame In this life I could live foolishly and lost in problems with a place in darkness to weep till I die The tattooist of previous wars asked me about my homeland I told him that I was sold to the land of happiness With a friend who broke my trust, a woman who died before loving me, And parents who denied my existence What will remain of me, not an expensive pen, but an unreadable diary of the depths of my soul Tears of The Sad Stars The other day; I wore my Victorian suit and I poured myself a cup of English tea. As I take my first sip, I saw a giant Viking ship, sinking quickly. In seconds everything was calm as if nothing happened but a flying dragon was eating the cold moon. Meanwhile the cookie monster was eating the cookies of the kids who died in the Viking ship my cup was not filled with tea instead it was filled with tears of the sad stars (Ahmad Al-Khatat. He was born in Baghdad on May 8th. From Iraq, he came to Canada at the age of 10, the same age when he wrote my very first poem back in the year 2000. He also has been published in several press publications and anthologies all over the world. And he currently studies Political Sciences, at the Concordia University in Montreal. He recently have published his two chapbooks “The Bleeding Heart Poet” and “Love On The War’s Frontline”. With Alien Buddha Press. It is available for sale on Amazon. Most of his new and old poems are also available on his official page Bleeding Heart Poet Copyright on Facebook.)
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PTSD # 7
Those are cluster bombs in the street I can’t forget the sound and the screams and racing down the stairs and out onto the lawn I find my childhood friend Morgan sitting there in shock reaching for his legs that aren’t there anymore and his dying body grabs me by the throat begs me not to leave him, but I can hear all the other screams through the fog and leave him to die there alone, the ultimate betrayal, but I have to find all the others. 2nd Stint During my second stint in the madhouse I was in a semi-private room at the hospital on the sixth floor of Health Sciences North with the cardiac ward just above us and every evening the incoming helicopters would shake the windows as they landed on the roof above and a code blue would go over the hospital loudspeaker so that I knew someone was dying right there on the slab each night less than thirty feet above me while the nurses snowed my roommate with Trazodone and waited for me to get better or kill myself charting bowel movements and fixations as they do when the sane are still looking to separate themselves from the pack. ( Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Word Riot, Anti-Heroin Chic, In Between Hangovers, Red Fez, Horror Sleaze Trash, and Your One Phone Call.) Boundary Survey
The psychologists have been told to survey my psyche. They’re trying to see if my mind is a mountain range full of jagged precipices or a desert, bare boned and dry. They begin topographically, looking at the contours of my landscape, the existing features, the surface of my earth. They need to scale its territory to see if it’s flat like the soles of my shoe or round like a helium balloon straining to escape behind the clouds. They’ve been ordered to map out the places unknown. They want to know if the visible network of roads leads to the eye of the storm, is there still a buildable base there? There is a place they will never be able to access. At night, the sweat hangs around my forehead, a crown of pearls, my eyes are wide shut and filled with sand and I become your princess again. I meet you there at the surf’s edge. We chase crabs on the beach and you teach me about the stars. The only bottles in sight are the ones filled with messages we launch into the ocean. In the morning, I taste the salt on my cheeks and they’ll think it’s from tears. They’ll never be able to reach the outer banks of that place. I don’t want it to go into their draft. Certain terrains are required to be left alone. Wanderweg A call to the trail, away from the trajectory of a therapist’s chair. An awakening. Slivers of sunlight peek into an unfinished dream. A call to the living, “Step outside!” A crash to the bottom now requires a slow crawl back to the top, a task set at hand, to get moving, start walking. A call to the wild. To wander within it with hopes of wandering away from an invisible illness that’s screaming to escape. Standing alone above the horizon, patchwork hills roll into mismatched greens opening my heart to change. An invitation from the wind, a call to post-illness instead of post-traumatic, a welcome to post-despair from a friendly sky. It embraces me like a plush pullover its sunbeams fall upon my cheeks like golden fingers and dry away my tears. A march towards a path reaching out to me through generations, worn down by those seeking penance. Contrition. Walking into the woods, up through the hills around the mountains, above the lakes, through the sleepy villages in hopes of shedding this second skin of singular sadness. Not a choice, but a scar. As I pass the lake’s edge I imagine I’m the water supporting the sailboats, the burden placed upon my back and the buoyancy of those troubles forced up again and again, like the force keeping the boats afloat, normalcy slipping between my fingertips. Yet, here I am amid the trees, marching upon the path to recovery, learning to let go, to just be in that moment in time, embracing forgiveness between the rustle of the leaves and the march of my feet. ( TAK Erzinger is an American/Swiss poet and artist. She is also an English teacher who earned a BA in English from Boston University and her English teaching certification from the University of Cambridge. Her poems have been published in various anthologies. Her first poetry collection entitled Water Songs was published by The Origami Poetry Project (USA). Her poems and other writings have been featured by Harness Magazine, Mojave He[art] Review, Hello Switzerland and Wombyin to name a few. At the end of 2016 she suffered a nervous break-down and was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), ever since then nature, writing and art have been accompanying her through the recovery process. Last summer, as part of this process she began walking through Switzerland on the St. Jacob’s Way. She lives in a valley between the Swiss Alps with her husband and two cats.) Missing in Action
Another moment passes as if it did not exist. Vanished from time eternal, the past is but a dream. Did I walk those fields of green, or touch that ancient ruin, one wonders, questioning sanity. Looking back at images, was I really there? Remains of glorious vacations, now filed in boxes on a shelf. Glimpses of a distant yesterday, fragment then coalesce. Trees no longer climbed, except in one’s own mind. Memories of past events, now just wandering illusions. Fleeting emotions grasp at obscure bits of recognition, while trying to capture shadows, evaporating in front of me. The past so quickly fades as reality takes over, for all we really ever have is this present moment. Lost Pleasantries It very well may be … If you allow me … The politeness of words continue. A riddle, a game. They are all the same. We have not come so far. Is the answer the question, or the question a ruse? We all abide our time. There is no reason or rhyme. In the beginning, the end is near, yet that is what we all fear The page, dog-eared and marked, turned so gingerly. The journey on which we embark, Is not for all to see. And, words once so polite, now crumpled on the floor, while correctness and etiquette go flying out the door. Rapture Delicate fragrance of life, plucked before it is ripe. I cannot live beyond this realm, where moonlight dances, and swallows speak in hushed whispers. Stars sing to lost loves and sheltered fears. Caressed by wind and washed by rain. I once loved in the real world, before falling from the sky into your arms. No longer with the living, I find myself in a place of dreams and expectations, where reality does not exist. ( Ann Christine Tabaka has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry, has been internationally published, and won poetry awards from numerous publications.) Home as a story
I close my eyes and we are standing enveloped by forest in the late afternoon. The trees are singing of a melancholy more crisp and a warmth more wistful than anything resembling truth, but this is a salve for something unfixable so I meet your eyes and let sleeping dogs lie. (You whisper sweet nothings to lull them to sleep.) And the leaves do not know they should be hanging at half-mast but the long grass raises its hackles, warns us never to tell them, so they dance on. The sun gleams gold and the branches sweep skyward - a flying buttress for the cathedral you've built in the palm of your hand. Perhaps this haven is where you found refuge from that wild edge that would creep into your clear, steady voice even then until you learnt to quell it with the gentle dexterity of an ancient craftsman wise in the ways of forgetting. And at some point I realize what I've always known that there is nothing whimsical about this magic. This is intentional, now, to stir the most painful complexities with the lightest of possible touches, this is beauty last, and first it is survival. Still murmuring lies to the sun-dappled soil, you close your eyes. And I wonder what you see. (Cristina Leone is a cognitive science nerd who also sometimes likes to write) |
The Beautiful Space-
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