Arlene Corwin writes

When Joy Leaves

When joy leaves, what steps in?

Nature doesn’t love a vacuum -

Almost never leaves a vacuum.

When joy leaves

Rampant listlessness of mind takes over*

And a person by the name of Nover

Is observer.

Paucity so strange and foreign

Doesn’t doesn’t really want that thing - that joyless thing

To put the mind, spine, neck to swing

(As in the concept ‘noose’’).

When shorn or torn from mind-set,

Sleeplessness replacing it,

The active peace hard to get back

Unless one has provided self

With some kind of a silent frame

With any kind of name, (but lame) for comfort -

Times when happiness has left its home inside your heart,

It’s but to wait it out,

To find again the peaceful state

With gentle and unsentimental will

To stillness.

 

*rempant listlessness; an oxymoron

Amita Sarjit Ahluwalia writes

PEARL ON WARM SKIN 

Come to the Master

Or wander, waste, wither 

Flick of the wrist

Twist of the tongue

Quicksilver

A brushstroke here

A dab there

It’s done

You labour

Like Ovid‘s mountain

And birth a mouse

You strain

From hardbound brain

Six lines a year

The rest

Is tosh

If someone binds it in gold

Dust doesn’t become a Rose

Though my rose turns to dust tomorrow

Today it’s a wildflower bouquet

With jonquil fragrance

And wild rose

Neither coldness nor burning envy

Sharing is different

Skin warm

Pearl on warm skin

Warm

Ephemeral, all

Soon breaks

Time’s string 

Pearls scattered

Lives wasted

 

 

Great Expectations -- Thomas Nast

Amita Sarjit Ahluwalia writes

HURT

Did the hurt hurt you

As you hurt others?

Is that the reason

For the coldness

On the edge?

But you always were

Angel, Devil

Ice, Fire

Divine , Evil

As are we all 

Love

Life’s a brief candle

We all die

In the end 

But perhaps

Your knived

Died sooner

That is something

That is much

That’s your story 

Judged

Judge not

For thou shalt be

Living hell

Blue sea and daffodil hills

Amita Sarjit Ahluwalia writes

COLD CORE

From where

Does that hard cold core come

Which defines you?

Yes I can be cruel

Even deliberately, knowingly,

In calculated words

But that is when I am blazingly angry

When my space is violated

When people act unknowing of their own privilege

Blindly bigoted

Blasè with entitlement

Make commandlike requests

Barge poke probe stare

Are insensitive

Are cruel

I lash out

I do not nurse grudges

I block people

I throw them out

I do not sneer

I fight a clean fight

You can see me fighting

See my weapons

See my cause

On my escutcheon

My heart

On my sleeve

I am not duplicitous

I am not tactful

I don’t mull poison

I don’t brew hatred

I don’t breed gall

Wert thou my enemy, O my dear friend,

What wouldst thou worse?

 

My anger is temporary

Your coldness is permanent 

The waste hurts 

For in the end

We all die

Amita Sarjit Ahluwalia writes

PANGOLIN

Good that I have armour

Which is flexible

Perhaps scaly

As a pangolin’s skin

Perhaps shiny

And repulsive

Good that I grew it

Good that I fight

Good that you can’t hurt me

And even if you do

You cannot kill me

Good, good

Anteaters

Eat ants obviously

Little pesky biters

And stingers

Dart Whoosh

Done

 

Amita Sarjit Ahluwalia writes

VOICE

Is that my voice?

I am not as honest courageous or skillful

I cut corners

I challenge you though

And you avoid me

Dodging freezing

Waiting

For ice cold poison

And a hopeless void

Why?

We all long

For the light

We all long

For darkness

Shibaprasad Deb writes

Seesaw

Corona n. Crown like,

Luminous halo, aureole,

Builder’s cornice, a cape,

even a much guzzled ale,

never a threat, nor a viral 

save a Roman villain in Asterix.

Come December, of nineteen, 

Corona’s not positive any more,

outbreaks and oriental lockdowns 

shake us like never before

soon sweeps global swathes

brings the mighty to their knees.

Crises and pandemics

miseries every few decades

depression and downturn 

we overcame virulence, plagues,

Unleashing our artillery

of biotech and the fisc.

Not any longer, 

this time it’s an either or

caught between life and livelihood

twixt two ends of a seesaw 

balanced not by weight alone

tugged by multiple variables.
-- Didier Conrad

J.J. Campbell writes

acid rainbows

 

was told by a woman last night

that if i married her i would be

fourteen million dollars richer

 

and here i thought my dreams of

acid rainbows and neon souls

were outlandish

J.J. Campbell writes

dare

 

dare to fall

in love

 

dare to have

your heart

broken yet

again

 

dare to tell

her you love

her

 

dare to empty

your soul at

her doorstep

 

dare to look

in the eyes

of the spanish

princess and

get swept

away

 

dare her to

keep saying

no and miss

out on the

adventure

of a lifetime

 

Spanish Eyes -- Edwin Rosado

 

J.J. Campbell writes

never meant to be loved

 

they don't

understand

the pain

 

the lonely

drifting of

a lost soul

 

never meant

to be loved

 

to feel

whole

 

to feel

anything

other than

despair

 

the broken

understand

 

they see the

desperation

dripping from

the eyes

 

like a yellow

cancer

 

a red fear

or anger

 

nothing ever

the same again

J.J. Campbell writes

some sleazy toilet outside of toledo

 

i can't remember

the last time i

kissed a woman

 

and it's not that

i don’t want to

 

but when years

become decades

 

what's the fucking

point

 

eventually, we all

die

 

become a statistic

 

a case settled

in court

 

ashes flushed down

some sleazy toilet

outside of toledo

 

like any of us

deserve any

better

J.J. Campbell writes

tomorrow was simply a rumor

 

met a woman that reminded me

of the pam grier fever dreams

i had as a child

 

we danced the night away over

glasses of bourbon and a lonely

man playing the saxophone

 

she kissed me like tomorrow

was simply a rumor

 

my hands embraced every curve

like this was the last meal of

some old fuck stuck on death row

 

we had one of those fucks in the

parking lot that only teenagers

ever get to dream about

 

this was over a decade ago now

 

she's married to some lucky soul

out west

 

and i'm wondering when luck

will ever strike again

 

 

 

Ananya S Guha writes

Pre-Ordaining

I have read between spaces,

that exist in primordial times

handed over by time and history

I continue to read 

and those hard rocks, the monoliths

speak of an age, ancestors

and war head hunters;

I have seen the spaces in time

the onslaught of eternity

and the time of questioning 

the way that ancient myths work

on the present is in a manner

pre ordaining times and moorings

Arlene Corwin writes

I Love You More & More

What can be the meaning of

A “more & more” in love?

Broader, deeper, 

More expensive - cheaper?

A fun concept upon which to dwell.

Does love swell?  Ah, well,

There’s a thought!

A man who reads my poetry

Said that to me.

He hardly know this girl, hmm..lady,

Writer, woman, human.

Yet a poem evokes what it evokes.

Connoting anger, madness, lust & pathos…

Every idea on the globe

And further into universes,

All the connotations endless.

So, “i love you more and more”

Will be well stored cerebrally.

Not physically, nor sentiment-emotionally.

No, “more & more” will have more value than

Repeating schmaltzy rhymes again:

Like,

“Roses red, violets blue, 

Sugar sweet, so are you”

This “more & more”

Is gloriously philosophical 

And much more valuable

Than all the corn of yesteryear,

Being nearer to the real.

And so I thank you more and more

For thinking, saying ‘more & more'

Good wishes, and sincerely, 

Arlene Nover CORwin.

John Doyle writes

The Only Known Tape of Nick Drake Speaking

You're lying on your back in the forest,

it's dawn,

moist as deer giving birth, a blood-soaked

fire-crisp sky.

You breathe slower than clouds

that drive on the wrong side of the road. 

Europe is a crystal ball

that trickles ice like promises, escaping from the palms of your hands.

There is tree-bark that dangles from your hair,

petals detach in your sudden shapes,

rising to be anointed, replacing you,

where you used to be. It's not home.

There is the smell of coffee,

ginger, Arabia,

small woodland creatures,

witches, schoolgirls in pigtails click like knitting needles

in foul tongues they learned

from blues men.

This is wrong - the star-bent trajectory -

the horoscopes - 

the twisted sneer of brake-light on empty puddles.

Stand up, walk towards the nearest gate

like a fox hunting in the snow.

Thumb a lift towards the village,

keep your silence close to you,

the lady and the gent beside you 

are smiling

as they drive you away,

maybe they know your mother, your father,

maybe they saw your sister on TV saving Earth from aliens.

Silence hangs from your caftan -

It's how you'll bargain for your bread,

for your milk and honey,

should those wolves and dogs

start howling,

and there's no moonlight

for the next few decades. You seen the splinters of your guitar

lying in the ditch as you approached the village.

No-one knows if you stopped and bandaged it,

stopped it from bleeding

Nick Drake -- Keith Morris

John Doyle writes

Worth 

Millions

moving through solid air, solid air  

John Martyn

A 
swinging light-bulb from a cracked ceiling scenario,

crooked-stringed acoustic guitar, 

caffeine, 

old man’s tobacco,

tapes rolling;

milkmen prowl streets shrouded in the end of days.

There were no overdubs, except that piano,

that commercial aeons later,

that moon changing tones, somewhat red, 

somewhat white,

a difficult choice, it seemed.

The kid didn't see a penny back in ‘72,

spare change for bus conductors with little to share,

a smile on a country road, 

out of petrol, 

waiting for parents to come, 

collect,

polite smiles, 

turbulent skies,

out of leaves, 

begs cigarettes

from the postman. 

He looks at the river, the sun is rising



Pink Moon -- Michael Trevithick

John Doyle writes

Fire in the Fields

When I heard you singing Place To Be,

I imagined fields on fire; August was slowly rising,

priestesses and their daughters 

wore white robes

as smoke and heaven came. 

There were combine harvesters,

dried-out tracks from wheels, 

a dormouse scattered,

leaving smoke to disappear.  

It all returned to normal soon.

There you were singing Place To Be.

There was nothing ever in those fields