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.)

​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)