When The Chalice Rises

No one knows

if the sacred narrative is

like the church fathers

tell us

Collected events

from distant a past

reported by rumours

that speak of hell and heaven

of Cain and Abel

of the Magdalen

the snake and the apple

Everything suggests

imaginary stories

for foolish and gullible people

told in an archaic language

the modernity refuses

to understand

But when on the altar

the chalice rises

in reverent silence

bow the bystanders  their heads

Nervous

I was always a nervous 

little boy, negotiating 

playground perils,

the bigger, louder 

boys, girls, figuring 

when and how to kiss

Patty under the wild 

cherry tree. (The why 

remained an enigma.)

My apprehension 

loomed from more

malevolent origins: 

a dark violence,

a cruel neglect, 

too many horrific events,

a long list efficiently 

repressed. (But we won’t 

get into that, will we?)

My symptoms manifested: 

my belly, a perpetually 

clenched little fist;

my frequent and 

spontaneous bloody

nose on the school bus; 

my peculiar and relentless 

obsessions and compulsions.

Now gray, nearly sixty, 

that small, anxious child 

huddles, cringes, 

desperate for a quiet, 

unobtrusive corner.

The Dead Man

When she was still young,

When we were yet a family,

My mother found a dead man,

A very dead dead man,

On her way home from work,

Drudgery at the carry-out.

Old Mr. what’s-his-name

Had been raking leaves

In his yard, that tiny red

Bungalow on Martinsburg Road.

I could guess at her usual

Oscillation between shock, curiosity,

And annoyance over the bother.

Did she poke at him a bit, feel

For his pulse before seeking help?

(Years later, a girl I danced with

In the Pleasant Street Junior High

Cafeteria made her first home

With her new husband there.

I imagined the dead man still

Breathing, raking, poking about.)

In the kitchen, after supper,

Mom and Dad whispered

And joked over her adventure.

I thought, as there was no one

But my mother to find him,

Shouldn’t we be a little sad, a little 

Thoughtful over the dead man,

Old Mr. what’s-his-name?

How was it when, her turn,

Someone found my mother dead, 

Alone in her bed long after her 

Mania and violence split us apart?

Did they whisper and joke about

My mother at their kitchen table?

Born today 

From an idea that suddenly flashed 

Among the cherry blossoms, the enchanting spring arrived with the rosy rain of the first kiss to welcome the new life generated today before the poetic triumph in the city cradle of wisdom and creativity.

The open lips to bud color of cherries golden impassioned cherries yearn to join the instant to crown the fleeting moment.

Challenge and play have merged into one to highlight, in the final touch, the eternal skin incarnate on which to write our prayer of love as a hymn sung while hearts dance to the alternating rhythm of sweet melodious notes that reach Paradise.

I will be born with you, raising my goblets to toast 

timid and smiling eyes 

as we say congratulations 

So be for now and always.

Duty to parents

Parents are the people who worked hard for us to grow up, always thought of us, and fed us without eating. We must learn to appreciate our family members. Because if we don’t appreciate them now, we won’t regret their absence tomorrow.

Nowadays, some children live separately from their parents or take their parents to nursing homes. These people are those who have lost their innocence and childhood. Such vices are not suitable for human beings. ! It means someone.

We know that there are families that are similar to these families. Of course not!

Some children become rich and lose their poverty and become arrogant. First of all, they don’t see how hard their parents have worked. Parents run for their children, but instead of being thanked when they grow up, they cannot live comfortably.

I came to the conclusion from this essay that no matter how much you achieve and become arrogant, if you don’t respect your parents, none of it is useful. The more good you do to your parents, the more rewards you will get in the next world.

Dear parents, let’s appreciate them!

SIMPLE MATH

Left knee to queen’s bishop six:

the renowned Polish ploy to save the connubial chess.

And the Copernican does hypothesize

his private junction of X’s, Y’s:

Marriage is an intersection of curves;

ergo, we mate with the which who’s most available

at some point, A, where both wes’re most vulnerable.

Zen Mack Sennet monks tell this Pollack koan deep in the abbot’s office.

It ends with this punchline proverb:

“Within the novice virgin, nine mobths after she’s hit

with the-old-man-on-the-mountain’s holy stick,

           wisdom is born.”

And the white bride glides down the stainless aisle

past pews of naked delicatessen racks

like a boiled swollen sausage

as she synchronizes her calendar and stopwatch.

“So now who says that this Kamasutra’s Polish Position is back/to/back?”

And the new kielbasa mama splits into a smile.

“I guess I took too serious what he only poked at me in fun.”

SOUL’S ADVICE

“Stop hiding,” urged Soul. “Get close.”

In love and hope I strode unclothed

to your home — you rushed doors closed.

Disarmed unmasked raw revealed —

And all hope of love shrinks, reviled.

“Bewail,” Soul whispers. “Reveil.”

DESCENSUS INFEROS

Our day closes with roses and gold

and soon we’ll night

by a river of silver ores

beneath a banner

of christmastree stars

and we’ll exchange us presents,

tinsel medallions and

lovingcups of liquid chromium,

and one well will fill another

while, beyond the where-we-are,

your world still worlds its way.

Our tomorrow too will resurrect

in a flamingo and salmon dawn

and then

eventually

end again

in honey and

blood-oranges.

SYMBIONTS

An oxpecker and its rhino.

Lovers in an inexplicable bird cage,

opposites caught despite themselves

in an intimate unity of self and other

becoming other and remaining self.

Strong talons in-digging tough hides

hunting for those hidden ticks

that neverend neverend

However many these lovers may be

they are as trinitarian as time —

a divine Now invisibly linked

to the Not Yet Now to Now No More

becoming self remaining other.

EGONOMICS

This I between my left I

and my right, Is divided from themselves

by the selves I am not,

by the identity of their opposites.

The well of self is narrow and deep,

the sky of soul is wide

and deeper,

and they are joined by a shallow rain.

This is how the All coheres.

The now is the what between hull and coral.

Nothingness is just another existence,

a choir that accompanies my dances.

Among my many ises,

in order to anticipate my pasts, I can see all the futures that used to be.

The present is another sequence of wases and willbes,

a passage between being well and killed,

one way from sleep to sleep,

a blurred and fading journal

of my vacations and my trials,

of webs and webs of sometimes.

The past has many paths.

Life is a flood of poetry: a line of thin rain

followed by lines of sunlight

and lines of more rain.

I live within the caesura of my skin

but my plural bodies wear

too many faces,

store too many heads.

So, I am this uncertain shadow,

a stranger to myself,

the corpse between my mes,

a confused collection

of doubtful witnesses

and contradictory laws.

(Or, rather,

though my molecules stay in flux

I’m almost always myself

even though I’m not the one I once

was

and not the one I’ll be.)

I endlessly create myself.

I lodge inside the impersonator I call my body,

I forge this counterfeit worldly disguise.

I never go home with the I I left with.

My mind is the smithy of all idols.

The symbols it imposes are blankly neutral

at the first before they become the crowds of gods.

I’ve clothed these naked signs with universal aspirations —

for justice/mercy, foreordained free will,

for blending all-power to my desires.

The wise magi

found a god

in a feedbox;

so I can locate mine any where

and then I can exist slowly

like mountains, seas, and stars.

I am lived by beings (my genes)

who incarcerate my existence.

Though the rituals of seduction are usually mutual,

generation nevertheless begins as corruption.

To proliferate this me

I need poetry and conception:

I need your body of verses

and I need your erogenous one

to unfold and spread like morning lilies

while starlings sing their Sumerian songs.

Then the urgency of the mind

meets the wisdom of the flesh,

the cavalry in my entrails

encounters the fanatic in your womb.

In the organ dialectic

the Old I disappears into a new text.

Thoughts hide inside words and words within thought.

Wordthought erects evolution,

poetry engineers environment.

And yet, the poet precedes the poem

and is yet the product of the page,

as the poem also precedes the poet

in the merger of image emotion and happenstance.

My language speaks itself

but as a mirror that must reverse.

It fixes and flatters, divulges deceives displays detects distorts,

memorializes my veneration of self-lies,

encourages my construction of shadow.

This is why

I confuse reflection with appearance (honesty with vanity).

The All comes in many fashions, styles, and designs.

My cradle is my casket, I that corpse between my mes.

Everyone lives with death, one of many infinities,

though both death and life are empty phantoms.

Death lives even before birth,

and our final death is not life’s only one —

and not even its worst.

But this instant is my only eternity. So,

dispose of my corpse as you will, w

ith coals or shovels.

The I between my left and my right

will unite at last!

But after immortality, what?

Sea

Hey sea, take me in your arms
How much I love you
Even though I can’t fit in a big city
I’ll tell you everything.

Hey sea, calm reigns in you
The waves don’t crash, go to the shore
The dawn when people are striving for the shore
Take me far away.

Hey sea, I’m rushing towards you
High mountains stand between you
Your destination is far away, the roads are long
I will definitely go and find a way.

Hey sea, all the love is in you
There is light, there is magic in your beauty
You only listen and laugh quietly
Because you have love, loyalty, and affection.

Hey sea, you live in my imagination
The waves beat softly in my heart
I know! You have been waiting for me, sea
I will go to you, I am close.

                 Nilufar Tokhtaboyeva

Uzbekistan 

We Are Children!

We make the world go round

but we are taken to the ground

We make ourselves ready to be used

but we are abused!

We make the world a proud place

but we are pushed aside in many ways!

We make up the figure

but we  are not shown the gesture!

We make forgiveness our priority

but we are faced with cruelty!

We make the truth our watch-word

but we are influenced by the Liar’s Rod!

We make the world one

but we are treated as none!

We make freedom play out itself

but we are stuck in the growing years of  self!

We make ourselves happy at school

but we are not just cool!

We make our elders better brethren

but we are children!

(E)

Family

I am the symbol of unity

I am the showcase of magnanimity

I am the reason for marriage

I am not regarding age

I am the room where my members rage

(Yet) I am the reason for the home

I am the husband’s and wife’s foam

I am the reason man and wife stay warm

I am the inspiration behind children

I am the very society’s pen

I am “Love Reign Supreme”

I ensure all members are at their prime

I put the very needed effects in the home on time

“Who are you?” asks Mr. Rhyme.

I simply reply: I am Family.