Tiny Rods
After Jumoke Verrisimo 

Rain wraps eager souls in a damp embrace,
quells the perturbing mind and shuts weary eyelids close.

Rain calls to the pictures behind shut lids
& wipes them off like cleaning swipes.

Rain whispers loudly salvation songs;
“a mouth must muse melodies of fortune.”

Rain summons me to a realm where my limbs can imitate his-
insistent ardour, like a drummer’s fingers tickling over *gbedu.

Rain calls upon the east and asks the west to sit still,
forces me to repose though any boisterous force.

Whether here and there it pulls, whether piercing into a scream,
rain nudges on my heart a salvation song.

Yea, if I tilt my face to the raptures of splattering rain, 
each drop will come to me hastily as tiny wise bulbs. 

* A percussion instrument traditionally used in ceremonial Yoruba music in Nigeria.





#Memory is how What is Left Unsaid is Said

we stepped forward but 
twice you reclined & we faded
like a passing wave/ 
like two ends of a scarlet, now-
clothesline apart. 

#I remember the way you smiled in my face; 
how creamy bulbs of pictures held the day in them, 
in you, I saw a me I didn't know &
this was the first evening I knew you were a beautiful…

did you say we shouldn't be strangers? But
 we can never be 'knowers' either/ maybe 
our memories are too seeped 
in red/ each film vivid still/ 
even as one, two, three, we count in many…

#I remember the warmth of you beside me, 
the scents and sweat after each race with a ruby rubber roll, 
I wished I could press my head on your taut back, 
this was the first evening I knew you were a pleasant…

I have you hinged on my memory's (ies) hints/ 
you have written your name with ruby ink/ 
on the face of time/ like 
a tombstone/ 
here lies the adoration that never was/ 
should the moon forget to smile/ another show of broken bravado I despise…

#I remember the letter that had your heart, 
each word kneaded by the same reason for 
a girl to jump at night,
 & a blazing fire that lit throes of passion,
 this was the first evening I knew you were a love…

even this night/ there is no peace that comes with it
you are a dark ink splattered on the sky/ my sky/ 
you are the sound of grief/ the tune of pain from a fluter’s flute/ 
you are a vicious remedy; a painful cure to all joy/ 
this flowing sea can see…

#I remember the times you owned me as a writer owns his thoughts,
you wrote the world to a stop, asked it to bow at your pen,
 tradition is but a worship of the dead, 
this was the first evening I knew you were a happy…

you said we shouldn't be strangers/ when time 
sojourns against us/ but haven't you said our love 
hangs on the sky; a star unreachable &
that your heart is a coin?
I can never be the head nor the tail/ & I will never…

again, the night you broke the mirror-
it was at midnight, the sun was sorely in slumber
the birds- corpses of the night 
& the stars cheered in silence 
you became my silent song & I became a distant merry rhyme. 
this was the first time I knew you were a painful…

a lover isn't buried too soon in the hades of memories/ 
this heart cannot call you a stranger/ but 
when my lips seek to muster the memories of passions had/ 
you cease from being a friend/ because 
my heart may turn into a racing car/ & my belly- a blooming garden/ 
even if I tried.

 these creamy bulbs must now close
 the warmth must be put off
 the words must be rubbed out
 the songs must embrace stilled lips
 this is the story of you 
and I- who are 
neither lovers
 nor strangers
 nor friends
 nor foes…

Damilola Oyedeji (Ariella) is an educationist, a creative writer, and an advocate for self-discovery and inclusion. As a poet, she has learned to navigate life through hope’s compass. This is evident in the thematic focus of her works. She is currently a fellow of the SprinNG Writing Fellowship.

Do you think the comic scenes in Doctor Faustus are a deliberate diversion or do they have any substantial significance? Discuss.

Over-solitariness and over eating of Faustus’s tragic ending in horrible doom points towards the gross humour by the brethren of scholars leaving the former to his lifeless melancholia.
Marlowe’s pungent satirical irony is staged by turning the papal court and ridiculing Pope as a mere name. He devalues sovereignty and political activity diminishing the Vicar of Christ from the Emperor to the Duke and eventually descending to private life. It is undoubtedly
comical farce when Pope should be boxed in the ear and exclaim in sinisterish threats of damnation in the papal court palace, “Dam’d be this soul forever for this deed.

Wagner’s conjuring to invoke steward Robin who would not surrender his soul for the paltry prize of a shoulder of mutton unless it was well roasted and flavored by good sauce parallels Faustus’ conjuration of Mephistophilis in servitude of a servant. Wagner chants magical spells to transform Robin into a dog, a cat, or a mouse or rat or anything splendours of clownish comic relief.

Faustus’ casting role of a minor court entertainer or conjurer in the Emperor of Germany allegorises satire of anti papal activities to further extent of Elizabethan Renaissance Miracle and Morality conventions. In the setting of Charles V aspiration to see that famous conqueror Alexander the Great and his Paramour and the Duke of Vaholt’s Duchess’ longing for out of season grapes manifests pageantry. Faustus’ ambivalence with trifling brood of enemies
whether the clowns of Vanholt or Carter the horse courser and the hostess; disbelieving knights of the emperor. Faustus’ life is enmeshed in the trivialities and sunken beneath the
level of the clown and the horse courser.

Lastly Faustus ‘ restoration of dignity and brilliance from being a sadly tarnished magician is the happening of the last act.

“Marlowe brings in all the elements of morality play machinery; but without any of the consolation of morality vision.” Do you agree with the statement? Give reasons for your argument.
Or
Discuss Doctor Faustus as a text which embodies the contradictions of his age.
Elizabethan and Jacobean Marlowe becomes a morning star of the 1890s a harder and more gem-like Oscar Wilde because of his establishment as a religious free thinker and rebel toward
social conventions.
“Leave these frivolous demands that strike terror to my fainting soul” Mephistopheles the agent of the Devil’s disenfranchisement of evil magic and witchcraft necromancy invokes Faustus with indiscriminate self-expression. “Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude” To posses or to strive for Helen was the loftiest bliss of chivalry and heroism.

Faustus’s sweet embracing of Helen might work wonder to alleviate his tormenting suffering that do dissuade him from his vow to Lucifer by that Peerless Dame of Greece and classical paragon of beauty. “Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, Burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss…Thou art fairer than the evening…hapless semele…shalt be my paramour.” Faustus is a strawman or a scapegoat for Marlowe’s demoniac longings and in this sense his character has traits of Machiavellian spirits or in other words subversion through transgression.

Give a comparative analysis of between Faustus’ first soliloquy and his last soliloquy and trace his journey from competence to confidence to damnation. Trace the development of
Faustus from a position of heroic grandeur to damnation.

Faustus as a Witenbergs’ flowering pride changes from Doctor of Divinity to a necromancer pestered by the swarm of infernal bees. He achieves pleasure upon the subjugation of all other beings for his personal gratification. Obsessive preoccupation of power for monarchising enforce his singing of the pact in allegiance with the Lucifer. Humour of monarchising through power over the forces of nature-winds, storms, air amd water, power over national
and international destinies (The Emperor shall not live but by my leave), power over store houses (I’ll have them fly to India for gold/Ransack the ocean for orient pearl); dispositions of
the continental land-masses and movements of the celestial bodies.

Vainglorious ostentations intrigues Faustus to pursue the devilish exercise by aspiring to be the shadow of Agrippa, whose shadows made all Europe honour him. If we consider this of Marlowe’s rhetorical poetic, we are reminded of the quickened impulse, evaluation of a diseased mind or enactment of a kindling or soaring imagination, of a man awestruck before a new universe of meaning
and potentiality: “O, what a world of profit and delight// Of honour, of power, of omnipotence, Is promised to the studious artisan? All things that move between the quiet poles/ Shall be at my command:”

Faustus renounces medicine and surgery to cure thousand maladies and be eternalized. Even laws to him are expounded to be paltry and petty. Faustus stoops in the divinity of knowledge for the sake of witchcraft: “These metaphysics of magicians/ And necromantic books are heavenly;/Lines, circles, letters and characters: Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires”/ Faustus is thus changed as a damnable Promethean hero of the Enlightenment. “A sound magician is a mighty God” : The deity of Doctor Faustus is not the God of Love, the Good Shepherd, but either the avenging Jehovah of the Old Testament, or his Christian offshoot, the Calvinist tyrant of mass reprobation.

“Ay, you accursed spirit, go to ugly hell” Faustus waves farewell to Mephistophilis abhorred by the repellent face of the latter in the demonic world. The fiend’s abrupt departure and his
subsequent return with Lucifer and Beelzebub at precisely the moment when Faustus calls upon Christ is, as James Smith points out an apt representation of the emotional upheaval
which the very asking of the question provokes in Faustus’s consciousness. The vain trifles of man’s souls and merely old wife’s fables of afterlife springs in the doubt of the reality of
Heaven and Hell.

Faustus as a sound magician and humanist aspirant of power fantasies travel the papal court, kingdom and dukedom to “search all corners of the new-found world” in pursuit of “pleasant
fruits and princely delicacies.” Helen, the resuscitated body of classical antique learning extinguishes clean those thoughts that dissuades Faustus from his vow to Lucifer. This hedonism and epicurean self-indulgence allegorises the Faustus cardinal sins of lechery in satire.

This damnable nature of Faustus’ ambition can be justified in the language of the critic Helen Gardner, “The great reversal from the first scene of Doctor Faustus to the last scene can be defined in many different ways. From presumption to despair, from doubt into the existence of hell to belief in the reality of nothing else. From aspiration and deity, and omnipotence to longing for extinction. At the beginning Faustus rises above his humanity but at the closing he sinks below it to be transformed into the beast or little water drops. At the beginning Faustus attempts usurpation upon God but at the closing he is an usurper upon the devil.”

Faustus estranged and suppressed humanity have risen to demand the due fruits of harvest. His hardness of heart and stiffness of mind –Despair in God and trust in Beelzebub/ the escapist frivolities of pageant of sins becomes dwindled by the cosmic forces. It is the consummation of the Puritan imagination as J. B. Steane points out “lurking sense of damnations precedes the invocation of hell”. The apotheosis of Helen is supposed firmly to be placed as a narcotic which extinguish clear his thoughts that do dissuade Faustus from his vow, nevertheless overflows the moral banks Marlowe is constructing:

“O thou art fairer than the evening’s air/
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars,/
Brighter art thou than the flaming Jupiter/
When he appear’d for the hapless Semele;/
More lovely than the monarch of the sky/
In wanton Arethusa’s azur’d arms,/
And none but thou shalt be my paramour.”/

These flames of passion so fiercely flare up is transfigures even so moral epithet as wanton. The conflict is sharp in this scene, for these lines are immediately succeeded by the Old Man:
/“Accursed Faustus, miserable man,/ That from thy soul exclud’st the grace of heaven/ And flies the throne of his tribunal seat/

Water is Life

Small ponds dot my landscape

Bringing egrets, herons to my yard

 

A small stream just a bit back

Homes otters and occasionally, gators

 

Thunderstorms, however

shake my confidence in this world.

 

Wind and swirl of hurricanes

fill these ponds, streams

 

to overflowing, splashing

up into my house overpowering

 

this world with, with mud,

foul smells, no birds.

 

Not always life giving, when water

Flows in too great a quantity, we drown.
 

Talking to the Unseen Moon

Strawberry moon,

tonight hidden by haze

rich red berries

in clouds of whipped cream

remind me you are there.


Fango (mud)  (Poem inspired by Italian floods)

When a child I thought of mud

as material for mud pies or

as the residue splashed onto

and stayed on my boots

when I jumped from puddle

to puddle in a light spring drizzle.

Now I know mud’s darker nature

that it reveals from time to time.

 

Most recently, after a night

of dancing tangos

with lightning, rain, and wind,

sixty rivers, drank themselves into

drunken excess, sprawled

over their banks

drowning fields, submerging houses,

breaking off great chunks of roads

while rushing over them, full

of this fango.

 

When sun finally coaxed the

waters to recede into a more

orderly, ordinary path of flow,

they vomited up what they

had ingested on their spree,

spewed out this foul fango.

Wherever these waters

had danced in their debauched state,

murderous venomous mud,

remained.

 

I understand the nature of this mud,

this fango. Hurricane Florence

spread the same over my home.

I’ve seen it in so many places:

California, Indonesia, Brazil,

Kentucky, and now, Italy.

The news recently showed

hopeful Italian teens working

to shovel out, and to wash

away the fango but I know

its stink will persist

in nose and memory even after

the fango seems to disappear.

 

No one who has seen or felt or smelled

foul fango will ever again

think of mudpies and mud puddles

with unfettered innocence.

Joan Leotta plays with words on page and stage. She performs and writes tales featuring food, family, and strong women. Internationally published, she’s a 2021, 2022 Pushcart nominee, 2022 runner-up, Robert Frost Competition. Recent publications include MacQueen’s Quinterly and Last Leaves, Verse Virtual, and Gargoyle. Her new chapbook, Feathers on Stone is available from Main Street Rag.  

Thank You For The Opportunity

But I’ve re-imagined my purpose in life
and I’m going in another direction,
neither northeast or southwest
but someplace with fewer shadows.
I was rather stunned by the antiseptic
atmosphere, the robotic recitation 
of your strategic plan.
I had a sudden vision of being trapped
in the heart of the mundane.
You scared me or I scared myself,
either way, I won’t be accepting your offer.
That tie, with the parrots, was the tip-off.
I’m liberated, if not by my unsettled
situation, by the empty hours before me, 
with birdsong. One must strive
for authenticity although that itself,
like a rogue wave,
can be a sly subversion. 


Make Me A Rothko

I do love the paint-
    ing, blues and blacks,
    the inconstancy

Separate swathes be-
    fore merging, like the brink
    of a rainstorm 

My heart in layers, too,
    revealed by contem-
    plation, slow, measured

The painting changes
    with the light, cool morn-
    ing, sullen evening

I’m attached to the colors,
    they slip into dreams, sub-
    sume my regrets

Sky of wind, like rough skin
   raked across, I, too, be-
   long to nothing else
 

The Pallid Observation of the Duo

Old people in lawn chairs
Blue-eyed infants eating peaches in the shade
The end of summer, the past become
Loose morals and abandoned rosaries
All the bits in their own cubicles
   their own atmospheres, time
   as a dizzy mistake
   before the celebration, minus the noise

Gasping in the side yard
The slurp as a distillation of sound
Winter broken in two, the future
Sins, mortal and venial plus repentance
To each a place in the sun, no
   walls, circulated air released, echoes
   of several weeks in chaos,
   anticipation, that holy moment

under amber skies
 

saddled by the sadness

 

a long cool breeze

as the sun dies in

the evening

 

under amber skies

 

the poet laughs at

the mere thought

of anguish

 

discomfort

 

a longing that is

fond among these

parts

 

the whores are too

expensive and the

poet is too broken

to enjoy it anymore

 

a quiet death

on the western

front

 

the right hand

reaching for

a gun instead

of a towel
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
burned for kindling
 

random moments of genius

scribbled down in a notebook

 

you figure they will be studied

or burned for kindling

 

each will bring the desired

effect

 

never lived the life of luxury

or pleasure or being wanted

 

i was always the break glass

in case of emergency at least

he knows how to use his tongue

in all the holes necessary

 

not exactly a glorious life

 

but plenty of stories that

become little poems of

experience

 

that goes a long way

in the right situation
---------------------------------------------------------------------
in some mystical place
 

atomic dog

on the radio

 

your soft

brown skin

running

through

my mind

 

thinking of

the way you

taste

 

and all the

years that

have

escaped

us

 

i still have

the occasional

dream we bump

into each other

in some mystical

place and we make

up for lost time

 

or maybe i'll be

smart enough to

just say i'm sorry

and not expect

anything good

to come after

that
----------------------------------------------------------
covered in snow
 

a lonely tree at the bottom

of a mountain covered

in snow

 

this is where the guilty

go to die

 

something bob ross would

teach you how to paint

 

a lonesome cabin

 

ghosts galore

 

bob never did tell you

those details

 

tread lightly my friend
-------------------------------------------------------
visible for miles away
 

the skies aren't quite purple

but this haze is certainly

visible for miles away

 

like some sci-fi movie meant

to scare the living shit out

of you

 

old people scared to venture

out, especially with all the

other diseases still fresh

in their minds

 

prayers for rain or whatever

else aren't quite working

 

imagine that

 

i suppose this is revenge

from canada for all these

years of not winning

the stanley cup

J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is old enough to know where all the bodies are buried. He’s been widely published over the years, most recently at The Rye Whiskey Review, Disturb the Universe Magazine, The Beatnik Cowboy, Cajun Mutt Press and Misfit Magazine. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

Cycling for the First Time

When I first cycled due to my bipolar disorder, my brain concocted an elaborate story about what was happening to me. At the time, I was practicing multiple nights a week on a play, Sense and Sensibility by Kate Hamill, a lively interpretation where each character except the two leads played multiple parts. 

My brain convinced me that this play was an experiment to get me pregnant. While I worked on something I loved (the play), I would be filling my brain and body with the joy of working in theater, thus reducing my stress levels. I believed that the contract I signed when I accepted my role in the play was actually a contract for this experiment. In my mind, the directors of the play were working with my doctors and workplace so that I could go on leave as soon as I was ready to deliver. So when I was placed on leave from work, I thought that part of the experiment was being fulfilled. I frequently rubbed my belly, imagining new life growing within as I dreamed of twins. 

It wasn’t until after I stabilized and saw the incoherent text messages and emails did I understand why I was dismissed from the play and put on leave from work. With my new diagnosis of bipolar, my dreams of a joyful pregnancy were also dashed. I couldn’t imagine living with the disorder and experiencing something as challenging as pregnancy and postpartum. 

Ungrateful Girl

– Why are we poor? I don’t dress like other people. All I eat is moshkichiri, complained Odina.
– O ungrateful girl, you have food to eat, clothes to wear, a house to live in, be thankful.
More than that will be conceit, arrogance, lack of visibility.

Sorry

-Dad, forgive me.
– Why, my daughter.
– I hurt your heart a lot.
– No, my daughter. You didn’t hurt me with your words.
– Not with my words, but with my sins…

Solace

– Why are you crying?
– I’m just…
– Has someone moved away from you?
– No, I have come close, he cried after reading the Qur’an verses.

Unfilled wish

Oh, I miss you.
– After all, you are not far away, my daughter.
– I turned 21, now I can’t sleep with you after hearing all this…
– Mother with tears in her eyes, come, daughter, let’s sleep together..
– Hey, let’s go back to my childhood, tell me… he slowly stretched out his hands.
Asr prayer sounded.
Azan was called instead of Allah.

  Mother kept saying alla…Allayo alla..alla my child who didn’t sleep with your mother..!

Kuziyeva Shakhrizoda. G’ayrat kizi  is a girl of enthusiasm.
She was born on January 1, 2000 in Bogot district of Khorezm region. One of her biggest achievements is being a Navoi scholarship winner.
Her stories are published in Turkey’s “Uzbek voice in the world”, “Talented Voices of Uzbekistan” published by Amazon in the USA, in the anthologies of the Respublic of Uzbekistan “Teacher”, “For Teachers”, “Hilal” collection, “Urganch University”.
“Voice of Youth”, “Ezgu Soz”, “Marifat”, “Virtue” and “Kenya Times”, “Red Times”, “Page 3 news” published in Thailand, USA, India, Canada, Great Britain. It is continuously published in “RKDxTimes” newspapers.