paper tigers straddle
these doorways of perception
while we grow sleep in
those rusted mortal chains
bound by future desires
they block the tirade of jobcentre queues
gentle
on the breeze
where chapters bind us (lost words)
roar to the core animal entrapment
they hear you calling from far away
& freeze in the moment
2/
dissemination murals
crack of dawn shadings
turning off capitalism’s filth
jaws/darkness/hunches towards
failing light
along a promenade at midnight
fools’ gold folds into sea
entry into schools/teachers decapitated
from knowledge
fishmongers gone ashore cruelly joke
recording debits from credit card union
debasement’s brass etchings
3/
judges in plaster-cast moons
resulting hybrid benefactors
tracing etchings’
steps of wounded soldiers/
their pleas fall on/deaf ears
rattling drums/rattle snakes
(all)
encircled by bankers’ crumbs
bestowing on the headland
breaking wave gestures
tide’s fortitude
4/
fading light surrounds womb
plastic cups social discourse
returning by memory’s see-saw swing
democracy’s wild call – a note from the press
motions
to sea-sick sailors (come)
audio then visual deprivations
outside those freezing chessboard nations
men in uniforms
split their sides
castigating new verbs
5/
desperately seeking fortunes
idle chatter frays on mudflaps
the gin-soaked body of wasted away
(passing their sealed lips)
stacked crazy artisans
rest a while this balance
in rear-view mirrors
at the factory’s birth
akin to 1960’s wallflowers
dishing the dirt on helpless presidents
context of the beat
conflict of defeat
bearing witness to eggshell crossroads
6/
dramatic intrigue as
shoelaces recapture
stepping gundogs which
sniff the air
(walking)
charitable cops
disregarding replica prime ministers
fooled into lapsing to
another doggy language
howling in this aftermath
where days emblazon
new colours for old spring collections
daffodils worn in the emptiness
as unemployment discolours
7/
junk heart stakes out
gentle malnutrition
seedlings posing perpendicular prosedy
across choppy sea disasters
as gesticulating bureaucrats
wander deserts & gypsy
hymns decline
racial origin
forceful adjectives
hasten to kaleidoscopic horizons
traces on the shoreline
passing scoundrels declare
gaping wounds of love
then whisked off by
amateur chauffeurs
each with splendid haircuts
from 1958 movies
& delicate bone structures
carve intimate knowledge
across these cracks of desire
Clive Gresswell is a 65-year-old innovative writer and poet with many publications to his name. His sixth poetry book, a 16,000-word stream-of-consciousness prose poem Shadow Reel, will be available through Amazon in July.
MOTHER
This time I got a pen, for you mom,
I was looking for words like your kindness.
Dare to go today
Just wanted to say I'm fond of you
Actually you are my endless verse,
I have hidden in the bottom of my heart.
Mother, mother, I've said it a thousand times,
You are my sun, the light in my eyes.
Sometimes I couldn't speak my mind,
I couldn't stand and hug you!
Sorry, I couldn't kiss your hand.
I wish these days would come back, mother
I wish I could honor you, mother.
The education you gave me has blossomed today.
I took a place in the heart of teachers.
Your bitter words opened my eyes,
You, my friend, are full of advice!
You planted a seedling with hope,
You will be the best gardener.
With praise, applause, recognition,
You will be a perfect mother!
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE YOUNG PEOPLE
The Uzbek people are young people,
Lover of youth.
Respectfully,
An uplifter.
Young people are ours,
Owners of our tomorrow.
Our pride is our honor,
Trusts of our country.
Be wise, smart,
Intelligence is unique to you.
Smart kids like you
Suitable for great ancestors.
Today is a beautiful holiday,
Let it be forever.
Be happy, be happy, be happy
Congratulations from the bottom of my heart.
Dear President,
Attention is ours.
Today is a celebration,
All boys and girls!
Nozima Ulug’ova was born on October 13, 2001 in “Yosh gayrat” neighborhood, Shorchi district, Surkhandarya province. He graduated from the 37th general education school in the Shorchi district and at the same time, the Nukus branch of the State Institute of Arts and Culture of Uzbekistan “Art Studies” 3rd-level student of the department “Dramaturgy of Stage and Screen Art”. In 2022, his creative author collections “Mother for you” and “Salvation” were published and gained their readers. At the same time, his creative story is among the young artists of Uzbekistan. “Culture”, “Creative Flight”, “Women and Time”, “Surkhan Youth”, “Morning Star” are examples of creativity in our republic. It is covered in newspapers, “Gulkhan” magazine and “Nurli Jol” newspaper of Kazakhstan. The young penman did not limit himself to creativity, but participated in conferences and scientific meetings in prestigious journals with a factor recognized by OAC with about 20 scientific articles, pamphlets and theses.”Samarkand Youth Forum 2021″ “Uzbekistan Development Forum 2021” Participant of several forums and conferences, festivals and seminars. Nozima Ulug’ova in Personal development & Step into the international sphere Course, because he was able to show his activity and interests in the fields of literature and art in this course .Creativity Forum for Culture, Arts and Peace International member, Active member, working Group of International writers “Jontous por las Letras” Iqra Foundation has received membership offers from several international organizations in its field.
Eight Day Weeks
Between
sunny Sundays
and
blue Mondays,
laid a day
so dark
and full
of hate
that it shall
not be named.
Gray
There's no black,
there's no white.
There's no wrong,
there's no right.
There's no good,
there's no evil.
There's no dark,
there's no light;
because just before
the looming storm,
exists distant, infinite
shades of gray.
ThoughtsandPrayers
When a national tragedy
becomes just another day
and the news is always
"BREAKING",
grab a letter sized
white envelope
and fill it with all of the
thoughts and prayers
from your big heart
and your little head,
then lick and seal it
shut before they escape
into the open air,
stick on a stamp,
and wait until the
next day's tragedy
for the address
to mail it to
your child's school.
Hello Sorrow
Hello Sorrow
my first friend,
will you allow
me to drown
in burning rivers
of fire water,
or float like
a hollow log
as you hover over
the ghostly souls
of all who you
have met before,
until you arrive
to make the
skies cry,
or will you keep
me afloat like
a log flowing
downstream,
and we meet again,
my last friend.
Even When You're Dead
Even when you're dead
the neurons keep firing
ping-zing-bing-ding
against the inside of the skull,
but tricking others into thinking
that figeting, flickering and flinching
doesn't mean that you're still living.
Pricing Out
cream detachment
heard a blast within
the many
and
another antic
gone
disaster commandeering
reveals
a digital scribble racket
*
dark songs
measured loose bits
as sacred
deeper, prescient
of swollen definition
more ale along the water bars
flavor bursts
replenish filched steel
Invigorating the spat
unlike no
*
the bars crack shut
their sea against marriage
roaming acclamations
across the surging gape
against
the chronically nostalgic
as place
colors
drift
no profit comes stainless
Cognitive Flight in the Day Cart
ontological waters
ear from a mattress sea
bubbling rise singing
postulate shaft zero
in monochord plan
bookmark prophecy cautious
of the weary regret
her delay cold vibrations
bleed
the scratched
feats precious militia culpas
parroting
the sound of wringer memories
rotor
torment supple slavering wings
turn the commissioned jitney
his lost waters punctuating rubric
plastered cigars
numbing forklift patterns
dark and strong
every supposition doorway
requires a widening alcove
the slump no victory
*
a speechless pent
scripted percussive exchanging
tidal ratcheting reflects
mitosis beans with membranes
along the garbanzo torn
with age laundering
the mashed clasp margins
stemming
rank turn juices
the cavernous claims clunk and scratch
the discerning frenzy installation
desecrated scattered truths
the roving self escaped pleasures
Christmas Spirited
vocalist workbench climb
bearded the somnolent hydrant
its fin stain
a wireless vacancy
morbid curls
motoring the gray inscription
portable volume gone menu
a past among therm
fetal homecoming revenue
manipulated
breath pageants
(the ravenous breathe frequency mustard)
*
a stateroom glower
from past celebrant
boiled the dreamer
the
delivering shaver
curriculum
palette temples
to spite swallowers
only one getaway fired
repentance scoreboard a facet achievement
the hinterlands
a predicated nostrum
glimpsing
a roast metallurgist
cackle before disparity
a spectral typescript
dreamers ration
Current Events Downstream
cornered eyeballs
lost their mimetic vibrations
torn without swords
traffic vibrations transformed
atonal hamlets
while masked
the raisin hippies outlined
galloping rejection
its repression invisibly dentist
a pawned handbag
spilled their watercourse keep
iteration punctuating
a dead period darkening ooze
nitrous eyeballs
burnt a lava memorial forward
old crease brickading
darkened the stalkers
dipping the bloodbath
a weary mist welled
scattered stapled trickles
retrofit removed the newsman
A Lost Season Coming Back
a sinking dock set flagons
steaming a leftward transit
lashed a nascent horsewhip
a fresco malfunction churning
fountains toward ruder color
turns the next night cautious
conjecture burns rumination
greatest hit payola memories
the jerk admonished to wait
silent over a nominal milestone
stowed a disconsolate elastic
in the ebb vat last welled out
fruition spinning from stucco
in dribbles traces their tingle
rudiments to fanlight colanders
spread through riot repression
an empty grip let bandwidth
ripple equinox emerges angry
tips the ether bottles round
billiard asset cruises a sleek
atrium habitat infernal meter
glints a habit lost to vacuum
simulacra subsidy scatters
skin play’s tingling symbols
BIOVernon Frazer’s latest poetry collection is Memo from Alamut.
Gummy Bears
Val and I were in Amsterdam. Queen Elizabeth had just died, and no one was wearing Covid masks anymore. It was cold for September; I wished I had brought warmer clothing. I wore my hoodie and a thin leather jacket, which wasn’t enough.
Walking in the Red Light District, Val put his arm around me. “Do you want to get high?” he whispered. Val has a nice voice – deep and seductive – but he asked as if he were certain I would refuse. We were on vacation, just the two of us, without our sons. When I said, “Okay,” he raised his perfectly arched eyebrows and smiled.
He bought a brownie edible and some gummies from a “coffee house.” With the goods in the chest pocket of his flannel, we rode our rented bikes back to the hotel and locked them in the front courtyard. If we were going to do this, we shouldn’t be on two wheels. On the way to dinner, we each ate a gummy, so innocent seeming, a candy in the shape of a bear.
Walking in Amsterdam was treacherous. Bicycle lanes appeared seemingly out of nowhere, crisscrossed streets, and reappeared where we least expected them. It made us apprehensive and jittery, swinging our heads around and stopping short, catching our breath. We decided to walk in a quieter neighborhood, along the canals and residential streets, as we searched for a restaurant.
A few minutes later, Val said, “Do you feel anything?”
“Nothing.”
“Me neither.”
We each ate another bear while the canals twinkled in the night and the houseboats bobbed in the water.
Debi, my older sister, used to get high. In the 1970s, when I was 6 and she was 16, we shared a room, a small space where I witnessed her teenage life. When she was stoned, I hated her. She laughed too much and was distant. I didn’t like the pungent odor of the smoke, different from cigarette smoke. I needed her to be her usual caring self, someone who was responsible for me after school. Instead, she and her friends spread out on our twin waterbeds, which were not more than two feet apart. When I came home and smelled the pot, I folded my arms in front of my chest and asked her if she was high. This made her laugh even more. “I’m going to tell Mom,” I would threaten and march off to the living room to watch TV. She made being a teen seem like a disease I wanted to avoid. When I was in high school, I experimented a little, but I never inhaled enough to feel any effects. It had no appeal to me. When a joint was being passed around, more often than not, I just handed it along.
Val and I peeked into restaurant windows, looked at the menus posted on the street, and didn’t find anything. Some were too crowded; some didn’t have enough ambiance. Some needed reservations. We walked some more.
“How about now?” he asked.
“Nothing. You?”
“Not a thing.”
He broke off a piece of the brownie and gave it to me.
“Yum,” I said. It tasted sweet and cloying. “I love chocolate.”
He took a bite, too, and put the rest back in his breast pocket.
Val and I finally found a restaurant that was neither nice, cool looking, nor appetizing. We were running out of options, and closing time was near. We took seats and wiped down our table with a napkin.
While we were eating, Val said something, I don’t remember what. For some reason it made me laugh. “What’s so funny?” he asked. “Nothing,” I said, and then we laughed so much that no sounds came out of our mouths, except for occasional gasps for air and a kind of whine from trying to suppress the laugh. We were attracting attention. After we finished our food, Val paid the bill, and then I grabbed his arm across the table and said, “I don’t think I can walk.” Either he didn’t hear me or he ignored me because he got up and left the restaurant. I hauled myself up, willing my legs to function, knocked into the edge of the table, which didn’t even hurt, and followed him to the street.
I hooked my arm into his and followed his lead. I knew I was walking but was not sure how. As if emerging from a blackout, I was standing someplace new. Then there were shouts and screams. I hugged Val and realized that I couldn’t really see. A bicycle swerved around us and then another. We were standing in the middle of a busy bike lane. I tried to open my pink umbrella. I was confused. Was it raining? Why did I have an umbrella in my hand? Val brought my arm down.
Time must have passed because again we were standing someplace new. I felt afraid. I didn’t remember how we got there. My mind was flashing on and off, like a slide projector with a missing slide.
Val was talking to someone on his phone. It was our son in New Rochelle. Aaron and Oliver were locked out of the house. The key had jammed inside the lock of the front door and broken off. Val was talking with them on the phone, trying to figure out what to do. I said I could open the garage remotely from my phone, and I did.
Five minutes later, the boys called again. I asked why they were calling. “Are they okay?”
“Yes,” he said. “They got in the house.”
“They were locked out?”
“Les, we just talked about this.” He looked at me, incredulous.
“Are they okay?” I felt panic mounting, almost a sense of hysteria. “What happened to them?”
Val told me how I had already let them in with the remote garage code on my phone.
“I can’t remember,” I said.
But then, like recalling an elusive dream, I did kind of see myself unlocking my phone and punching in a code. “Did I do that?”
I was in a fog that was dense, and I couldn’t see my way out.
Val said something to me. His sentences seemed so long. I couldn’t follow. I could only absorb a few words at a time. “Can you say the first part of the sentence again?”
Suddenly I was standing near the reception desk of our boutique hotel. My mouth was so dry. I felt like coughing. I saw Val grab a beer from the cooler. I asked him for water. Or I thought I did.
“Am I talking?” I said.
“Huh?”
“Am I asking you for water out loud, or am I just thinking it? Am I talking now?”
The slide projector brought me to blank slide. When I came to, a bottle of water was in my hand, and we were in the tiny glass elevator going up up up.
“Don’t lose me,” I said. And I clutched his arm with both hands.
Then we were miraculously in our 129-square-foot room that didn’t have a closet. Our clothes were strewn on a chair and a deep windowsill. I contemplated undressing. As I stood staring at our bed that took up most of the room, Val opened the beer and it sprayed all over my leather jacket that I loved so much. I looked at my suede boots and said, “Oh shit.” I kicked them off along with my socks, took off my gold hoop earrings, and fell into bed.
“Please let me wake up okay,” I said as I drifted into unconsciousness.
The last thing I heard was Val saying, “Who knows how we will wake up.” His jokes weren’t funny anymore. He wasn’t funny; he was mean.
The next day I opened my eyes. The room smelled like beer. The floor was wet, and my boot was resting in a beery puddle. My foot was cold from not being under the covers.
“Say something,” I commanded.
“That was interesting,” he said.
I showered, washed my hair, wiped down my jacket with a cloth, tried to clean my boots, brushed my teeth, and put my gold hoops back on.
We went to get breakfast. Val still had the rest of the brownie in his shirt pocket. “Wanna bite with coffee?” he asked. I shoved him.
We sat on a bench overlooking the canal. The buttery croissant melted in my mouth, and the warm coffee restored me. I zipped my leather jacket up to my neck and gave him a kiss. “Thanks for getting us back home in one piece.”
We got on our bikes and did not return to the Red Light District. We went to the Van Gogh Museum instead.
Snow drip
washes winter memories
archived on the sidewalk
Don’t analyze
crickets
cast a spell
No room for panic
across the lake
don’t let him drown
Regeneration
It takes time to know a place.
In a day we lose 330 billion cells.
The new ones born
in this new place
smell these new smells
and recognize
they belong.
SWEET ANXIETY OF MOTHERS
A piece of children's heart always lives in the hearts of our mothers. So long as he is still a child. We children always make mothers think and worry. Although there is really no need to worry, you always care for us with motherly love. Your imagination is always busy wondering if my child is calm, has a full stomach, and is not covered. Mothers, your hearts are white, your love is a river, your wishes are abundant, and your prayers are endless.
We children will reach your value only by becoming mothers, and even then we will remain children for you, your worries and sorrow for us will not end, on the contrary, your time and life will increase for you, now our children - your sweet grandchildren.
My mother, be happy that you consider these sweet worries to be the meaning of life! May you be healthy for our happiness, even though your dreams are busy with sweet worries, never let your eyes cry for my child!!!
Gulsevar Khojamova
Student of Andijan State Pedagogical Institute
