would have been so easy to declare you a good soul
Winded now
from just a flight of steps – just one damn flight
you said I was a monster
yet you endlessly wanted to be with me
hence, we birthed the monster together
slipped into its asylum
a toke here and there
on some good marijuana
we spiraled into the Cadillac of drugs
We died some nights
straddled together in an agony so great
it gives me chills dare I think about it
death is good for you – remember you said that?
it’s good to come back alive and on fire
I came back with one eye and dimwitted
I came back with a limp
I came back with a burned neck
I saw the stars spray
over an archipelago
in a swoon
during one of my deaths
I’m sure it was Jesus
That battered black cat long since dead
you – now homeless and a smell
caked so deep
you cannot be cleansed
I waited for Jesus under that moon
naked and busted up
it took all those months of forever
it took all nine lives of that wretched cat
He came for me
barely recognizable
me – not Jesus
(I’d know Jesus if I was deaf
blind or headless)
when you were high as fuck
pouring lighter fluid on his beautiful white loincloth
I scrambled behind with a bucket of water
Jesus remembered
I Wanted Virgil
Same dream again and again
I trudge to the edge overlooking an immense blackened gorge
teeter and sway
will myself to step off
my body in complete disagreement
pushing myself with my mind
I flail myself over
into the abyss
then Virgil appears
disappointed
worn and beaten
from our grim replay
I awake in time
to swallow a scream
light a cigarette
the orange glow soothes
yet my heart
blows up
On my nineteenth birthday
we stood outside our building
giggling in snow knee-deep
the heroin
just started to flow
created magical art
on canvases we imagined
in our personal heavens
when she hurled her body over the roof
twelve floors
the slow motion movie scene
mesmerized us
Her heart continued to beat
even after her body hit
we heard it – the beat
a loud gong
like a wildebeest being taken down
not ready – the heart never ready
defies all purpose
simply because its primary desire
is to beat
The red-pink snow shaped a grave
around her twisted body
and we – high as fuck
mourning like half-wits
clumsily dipping and falling
to lean together in some wrecked sadness
or perhaps envy
Virgil comes back
pasty white
stone-faced
stares accusingly
annoyed that he
is my chosen
chaperone
I awake again soaked with sweat
still feel his rough ancient breath
my heart dead
but the beating steadfast
so violently alive
Donna Dallas has appeared most recently in Beatnik Cowboy, Quail Bell Magazine and Fevers of the Mind. She is the author of Death Sisters, her legacy novel, published by Alien Buddha Press. She has two chapbooks, Smoke and Mirrors, launched with New York Quarterly, and Megalodon, launched with The Opiate. Donna has served on the editorial team of Red Fez and NYQ.
A living being on the earth Seeking so many amazing rides, Facing unbearable shoots and arts Is that the meaning of life?
What is life? Who cares or shares? Who bears? Who roars?
Life is nothing but the Illusion Imagination is its own creation.
What do you mean about this? What does life depict around this phase?
Life! It comes and says- I know so much the fact. No way to show any case Life is itself a casino stage.
The fact lies on the phase Life is the beautiful pace Need to believe and feel Life is the universal reel.
What is Life? Now say this time It’s omnipotent dear Let it flow and clear.
Life is the charm on earth Lit it with eternal arts The heart and mind know all Life is the beautiful pool.
Author S. Afrose hails from Bangladesh, a lover of poetry world. Poetry is her passion. Her writes have been published on magazines, anthologies etc. There are some published poetry books available on Amazon Worldwide. YouTube: S Afrose * Muse of Writes*
Shamsiya Khudoynazarova Turumovna (February 15, 1973) was born in Uzbekistan. Studied at the Faculty of Journalism of Tashkent State University (1992-1998). She took first place in the competition of young republican poets (1999). Four collections of poems have been published in Uzbekistan: “Leaf of the Heart” (1998), “Roads to You” (1998), “The Sky in My Chest” (2007), “Lovely Melodies” (2013). She wrote poetry in more than ten genres. She translated some Russian and Turkish poets into Uzbek, as well as a book by YunusEmro. She lived as a political immigrant with her family for five years in Turkey.
EVIL, CRIME AND VIOLENCE: HAS GOD FINALLY LOST THE BATTLE?
What keeps us holding on while watching a movie is not the even flow of events, but we always look for how and when things take a twist, a villain is introduced, and the film ends with a brutal fight in which the villain is killed and his empire decimated embodying the great ethical message that good always triumphs over evil. I have never seen a movie in which the protagonist is killed at the end, and evil is shown prospering. However, the movies of contemporary times sometimes come up with blended stories which present victims who turn villains and take on society or their tormentors. I am reminded of ‘Deewar’ in which a victimized child turns out to be a great mafia don. He was getting back on the society which had caused the death of his father, and brought the family to ruin.
When we look back at literature, and, in particular, drama, we wonder how comedy stands nowhere in comparison to the impact, the tragedy leaves on the mind of man. If we talk of lasting impact, it comes only from tragedy. Tragedy is nothing but violence which is given an aesthetic turn so that finally it evokes a wholesome response from the audience. ‘Oedipus’ ‘Macbeth’ ‘Julius Caesar’ ‘Hamlet’ are immortal works which have left a lasting impact on the mind of man, finally making them emerge as better human beings.
If we are shown a film in which people are living a happy life, after some time, we shall start feeling, why we are wasting time. What is there in it. So, that ‘what’ which we are looking for in a film is some villain, something going wrong, so that it leads to some ‘thrills’ and thrills are not possible until things take a twist, and go wrong. If we look back at Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’, nobody will read it if Satan is dropped. Evil and violence are essential to make peace and poise, meaningful and worth craving for. When evil dies, we heave a sigh of unmixed relief. It is another thing this feeling of relief is different if we are watching a tragedy by Sophocles or Shakespeare. The students of literature know a tragedy effects catharsis by purging the feelings of pity and fear, thus restoring the mental balance of the audience.
Violence that we watch before our eyes on the road is different from the violence we watch in a film or even drama. Distance lends charm, even to a vile thing like a violent death. Actual violence evokes anger, and a feeling of revenge, while the reported violence makes us sit and reflect, and the servicing of our mind gets into operation.
Learning what is good may be a difficult lesson. But the instinct for the evil is quite intrinsic to mankind. Our nervous system reports faster to malignant impulses. Still, truth and untruth, and good and evil remain intertwined and in order to understand good, we have to have an instant understanding of what is evil and where good ends and evil begins. In this way, the study of evil is more important than the study of good, because when we study evil, we shall automatically understand, what is not evil, and all that is not evil is good.
Sometimes I wonder how we dislike the easy flow of life. What we call ‘illat’ in Punjabi is ‘mischief’ in English. Mischief is the sapling from which the tree of crime takes shape. Mischief in its infancy dons an aura of pleasantness, which we tend to enjoy. But it starts giving us headache when mischief takes the shape of mistakes, and when mistakes become a habit, they become the cause of cardiac arrest for the society: that is crime. A mistake can be corrected, and atoned for, but for a crime, one has suffer. The only reason why the perpetrator of a crime has to suffer is that he makes others suffer, and unless he himself suffers, the account cannot be squared.
How evil is interspersed in our being, we can judge it easily if we filter the ideas that enter and fleet from our mind for an hour. We shall soon come to realize how evil comes so naturally to man, while for doing good, we have to force ourselves into strict discipline, and even train our mind to think right thoughts. It is shocking and surprising too, that we need no training in doing evil, while we need gurus, scriptures, oracles, and pilgrimages to understand the idea of good.
The real surprise is we have a huge array of religions, and prophets, and their teachings, their sacrifices, and their shrines which dot the earth in millions. India has a great spiritual legacy [which country hasn’t have her own?] like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. The Bhagwad Gita is the greatest spiritual text for right living. So, is the Guru Granth Sahib which represents the Sikh Faith. If we go further into it, we shall see how people like Yogis, Nagas, Boddhis and Lamas are required to undergo rigorous training of body and mind, to keep their minds in trim. They wear a particular dress, and lead rigorous lives, and they are told that they must keep muttering the name of God all the time.
I cannot imagine how great is the lure of evil and violence in our lives! They always keep us on tenterhooks, always trying to destabilize us and cause our fall. The paradox is startling. For evil, you need no training. You can do it very naturally. Rather, if you indulge in evil, you feel so natural and normal. But, if you are told to do good, you need the backing of religious rigour, and when you do it, it is not done, it is performed, like a duty. To be good is a duty. And, you know, a duty is a task assigned to us much against our will. How happily we perform our duties?
I don’t question why Eve fell to Satan’s insinuations. Even Adam could have fallen, had Satan tried his art at him. But, I think Satan knew our modern dictum which has been the subject of declamation contests. If you teach a man, you teach only one person. But if you teach a woman, you teach a whole family. Satan might have been thinking of devastating the entire tribe by poisoning Eve’s ears. The original tribe was endowed with Original Intelligence, in the form of Innocence [which does not, however, mean Ignorance]. Satan attacked it very cautiously. He proposed that they should get knowledge and know more and more about themselves and their existential conditions. It was tempting for them. Evil’s greatest quality is that it tempts. Men fall because of greed. That is why, Lustus, the neo-mythical heir of Satan is shown as blessed by Greda, the goddess of Greed [neo-mythology]. In fact, when man is greedy, he can be tempted which means he has said good bye to reason and sense. It is a perverted form of trance, in which reason is put in abeyance, and man does not know when he has glided into the glittering world of crime and violence. Just as Truth has a physical dimension in Ethics, Evil has a physical manifestation in Violence. How we love it? Our world, our newspapers are full of news items relating to crime, killings, abductions, arson, accidents, heists and scams. They never upset us. That is the neo-normal. Rather what upsets us is the absence of a villain and violence from a piece of life, as much as in a film.
The Author
Dr. Jernail Singh Anand, [the Seneca, Charter of Morava, Franz Kafka and Maxim Gorky award and Signs Peace Award Laureate, with an opus of 180 books, whose name adorns the Poets’ Rock in Serbia]] is a towering literary figure whose work embodies a rare fusion of creativity, intellect, and moral vision.
