How
How my heart breaks at every storm my love ones face
How I want to shield them from the rages of lightning's race
How I wish I can cover them from winds of impulsive phase
How I desire to gather them all in a warm cozy place
How my heart breaks at every drought my love ones have to endure
How I want to shield them from the scorching thirst their throats measure
How I wish I have a vessel full of cool refreshing water to treasure
How I desire I can save them from the chains of poverty's pressure
How my heart breaks for every thorn my love ones step on their journey
How I want to shield them from the injustice of vengeful destiny
How I wish I can fight for them against fate's unreasonable tyranny
How I desire I have the power so comfort and peace be their company
How my heart breaks that for my love ones there is nothing I can do
How I want to shield them forever and to them my love I can show
How I wish I could love them less, my worry and fear away I throw
How I desire yet that is not to be so... for my heart cannot let go
Bottom of Form
Ignorance's Bliss
Have I not seen the beauty of dawn
I'd be contented of midnight lawn
Yet the pains of desire is sown
Hopeless pains of once numbed pawn
Have I not seen the field of star
I'd be blinded by neon lights afar
Yet not even diamonds come on par
The hope of peace in midst of war
Would it have been better to be ignorant
Following the instincts of an ant
From the sea of norm be deviant
Would satisfaction be a blessed grant?
Why must my eyes be opened wide
To the vastness of truth can't hide
Confusion of uncertainty to confide
White, black, red or blue, gown of bride
Knowledge is power and poison of peace
When certainty knows not of wisdom's ease
How much rain can be contained by fleece
Doubts and fears even sage's soul tease.
Lilian Dipasupil Kunimasa was born January 14, 1965, in Manila Philippines. She has worked as a retired Language Instructor, interpreter, caregiver, secretary, product promotion employee, and private therapeutic masseur. Her works have been published as poems and short story anthologies in several language translations for e-magazines, monthly magazines, and books; poems for cause anthologies in a Zimbabwean newspaper; a feature article in a Philippine newspaper; and had her works posted on different poetry web and blog sites. She has been writing poems since childhood but started on Facebook only in 2014. For her, Poetry is life and life is poetry.
Lilian Kunimasa considers herself a student/teacher with the duty to learn, inspire, guide, and motivate others to contribute to changing what is seen as normal into a better world than when she steps into it. She has always considered life as an endless journey, searching for new goals, and challenges and how she can in small ways make a difference in every path she takes. She sees humanity as one family where each one must support the other and considers poets as a voice for Truth in pursuit of Equality and proper Stewardship of nature despite the hindrances of distorted information and traditions.
Photo of a reddish-brown haired and smiling woman with a necklace and black and white tank top next to a man with brown hair and a collared blue shirt.
TODAY, WITHOUT YOU
Talk to me, as if you don't know anything.
Recognize me, as a woman in a poem
I will go find your music,
Please turn the sound down, it's too loud.
Turn your gaze to mine
A halo of hope would have been enough.
How much winter threatens to freeze your skin,
It would be enough to finish the time
The moment your eyes closed.
Today without you, I only feel cold
Frequent uncertainty
Shadow gaps
Fear that paralyzes
You are no longer...
A thousand voices shout at me and I dissolve in them
You burst like a whip into my wounded side.
I arrived crying...
I look for you in the house,
I hug a sigh.
I look at the horizon that doesn't know
Where I lost the memory,
Your absence embraces me,
The tide of tears does not pause.
And so I fall asleep, while your
Dear husband
Rest in peace
June 20, 2024
GRACIELA NOEMI VILLAVERDE is a writer and poet from Concepción del Uruguay (Entre Rios) Argentina, based in Buenos Aires She graduated in letters and is the author of seven books of poetry, awarded several times worldwide. She works as the World Manager of Educational and Social Projects of the Hispanic World Union of Writers and is the UHE World Honorary President of the same institution Activa de la Sade, Argentine Society of Writers. She is the Commissioner of Honor in the executive cabinet IN THE EDUCATIONAL AND SOCIAL RELATIONS DIVISION, of the UNACCC SOUTH AMERICA ARGENTINA CHAPTER.
If I were the lady of time
If I were the lady of time
I would bring peace to the souls of those who suffer
due to illnesses, but first I would make her fulfill all the dreams that have been handed down
for a better time. I would make them go and discover the many wonders
of the world, breathe the joy of being a part of this earth.
I would make them leave
happy and without suffering
atrocities that empty the heart of sensitivity every day.
Hearing violin music while dragging the cart
to go to the entrance of the temple.
If I were the lady of time…
But I'm the one who
ostentatiously trudges through life
through the streets of the local market and nothing happens
without meaning in this life of dust and a continuous
cleaning of toilets from where I take my voice to shout
the opprobrium on the things that drain me every day like blood suckers.
Indifference that kills unaware of malice
in the wealthy opulence that ties and unties ties.
If I were the lady of time
I would make a list of priorities
and I would invite to the dance first the one who is indifferent to the others.
BIOGRAPHY
Lidia Popa was born in Romania in the locality of Piatra Șoimului, in the county of Neamț, on 16th April, 1964. She finished her studies in Piatra Neamț, Romania with a high school diploma and other administrative courses, where she worked until she decided to emigrate to Italy.
She has been living for 23 years and worked in Rome as part of the wave of intellectual emigrants since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
She wrote your first poem at her age of seven. She is a poet, essayist, storyteller, recognized in Italy and in other countries for her literary activities. She collaborates with cultural associations, literary cenacles, literary magazines and paper and online publications of Romanian, Italian and international literature. She writes in Romanian, Italian and also in other languages as an exercise in knowledge.
BOOKS
She has published her poems in six books:
in Italy:
1. " Point different ( to be ) " - ed. Italian and
2." In the den of my thoughts ( Dacia ) " - ed. bilingual Romanian/ Italian AlettiEditore 2016,
3.“ Sky amphora " - ed. bilingual Romanian/ Italian EdizioniDivinafollia 2017,
in Romania:
4. " The soul of words" ed. bilingual Romanian/ Albanian Amanda Edit Verlag 2021,
5." Syntagms with longing for clover " ed. Romanian, EdituraMinela 2021.
6." The Voice interior " LidiaPopa and BakiYmeri ed. bilingual Romanian/Italian, Amanda Edit Verlag 2022.
Her poems featured in more than 50 literary anthologies and literary magazines on line from 2014 to 2023 in Italy, Romania, Spain, Canada, Serbia, Bangladesh, United Kingdom, Liban, USA, etc.
Her poems are translated into Italian, French, English, Spanish, Arabic, German, Bangladesh, Portuguese, Serbian, Urdu, Dari, Tamil, etc.
Her writings are published regularly with some magazines in Romania, Italy and abroad.
She is a promoter of Romanian, Italian and international literature, and is part of the juries of the competitions.
She translates from classical or contemporary authors who strike for the refinement and quality of their verses in the languages: Italian, Romanian, English, Spanish, French, German, stating that "it is just a writing exercise to learn and evolve as a person with love for humanity, for art, poetry and literature ".
SHE IS
*Member of the Italian Federation of Writers (FUIS)
*Honorary member of the International Literary Society Casa PoeticaMagia y Plumas Republic of Colombia,
*Member of Hispanomundial Union of Writers (Union Hispanomundial de Escritores) (UHE) and Thousands Minds For Mexico (MMMEX)
*President UHE and MMMEX Romania, August 21, 2021
*She had come power of attorney Vice-president UHE Romania, Mars18, 2021- August 21, 2021
*President UHE and MMMEX Romania, August 21, 2021
*Counselor from Italy for Suryodaya Literary Foundation Odisha India,
*Director from Italy for Alìanza Cultural Universal (ACU) Argentina
*Member Motivational Strips Oman,a member of numerous other literary groups at the level internationally,
*Director of Poetry and Literature World Vision Board of Directors (PLWV) Bangladesh
*Membership of ANGEENA INTERNATIONAL NON PROFIT ORGANISATION of Canada
International Peace Ambassador of The Daily Global Nation International Independent Newspaper from Dhaka Bangladesh - 2023
*Founder literary group Lido dell'anima with LIDO DELL'ANIMA AWARDS
*Founder LIDO DELL'ANIMA Italian magazine
*Founder SILVAE VERBORUM INTERNATIONAL multilingual magazine
*Founder literary currently #homelesspoetry
etc.
We and Our Game
A game I play
Is your cheerful clappings.
Happiness I treasure
Is your smile.
My childhood art
Is your first craft.
We are one
Holding hands
Before we cross the roads.
Rose carpet decorates
The steps that climb
The difficulty hill, full of spirit.
We exchanged letters
And our handwritings matched.
Your city,
Is my tunnel to suburb vacation.
We cross ways like arrows
And take a target shot of life.
The game we play
Isn't a whistling wind
But the rope mesh of ladder
Of this nascent paradise
That we are still building
Despite all the odds.
Sushant Thapa (born on 26th February, 1993) is an award-winning poet from Biratnagar, Nepal who holds Master’s degree in English literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India. He has published five books of English poetry, namely: The Poetic Burden and Other Poems (Published in New Delhi, 2020), Abstraction and Other Poems (UK, 2021), Minutes of Merit (Kolkata, 2021), Love’s Cradle (New York, USA and Senegal, Africa, 2023)
and Spontaneity: A New Name of Rhyme (New Delhi, 2023). His sixth book is ready, and about to go to the press. Sushant works as a lecturer of English in Biratnagar, Nepal. He is also the assistant editor of Himalaya Diary, an online portal published from Kathmandu.
There is the sky and the clouds, a long and straight passageway below, beside a hill. It’s dark and shaded but not so much that one can’t see. Wind visits and makes the branches to sway back and forth. Previous storms have strewn leaves and branches around on the earth. Back and back, far and far, the largest mushroom waits untouched and unknown on a broken tree surrounded by reeds tall and then still. Just outside the trees is the open place, and on the feral summer growths are butterflies, spiders, and dragonflies. There are ants and grasshoppers. Blooms yellow, blue, and the open air is cleansing, refreshing. A pastoral scene. What is beyond the end of that place, where there is no passageway and the trees, the shrubs and chaparral become too thick? What would William Golding or Joseph Conrad think of that place? In the winter the snow is like infinite tiny crystals or other-worldly grains of sands. Agate, chaga, a large snake looks at me. Kundalini symbol and sign. I pause and it goes away at which point I look to the sky. I want to understand the clouds. I vaguely remember dreams of the night where I was in the desert and walked to a city at night with metropolitan lights and infrastructure and populace. But I wanted to go back to the desert. I couldn’t remember the rest. Something runs in the tall grasses. Fast. Determined. Magical. I see clover, bee, ladybug. Whitman wrote, -You road I enter and look around, I believe you are not all that is here, I believe much unseen is also here.- Whitman only travelled far and far once, to Canada, to visit his friend a doctor interested in consciousness. I breathe as deeply as possible. I’d say there is a bird but there is no bird then. But the clouds are enough. They are something, colloquially speaking…they are really something then beautifully bloated, numerous, each a little different and content in their difference. The clouds are confident then.
Haibun Highway
[This is an excerpt of a travel journal I wrote in 2017 while walking 160 kilometres (100 miles) from Vancouver, BC, up the Sunshine Coast in the Northwest Pacific, to visit my friends Haedy and Ed in Powell River, BC. I mostly stayed with friends along the way. Using the haibun form (known most famously through Basho’s Narrow Road To The Interior) each day has a description of the writing, followed by a haiku, as well as a haibun with impressions during the rest times.]
September 6
I walk for 14,000 metres along the highway, along the highway, along the highway, past a sign that reads Smugglers Cove, until I reach Secret Cove. There’s a change in plan and I stay at Elizabeth’s, who lives right on the beach.
lizzy’s couch:
i dream to the water drum
all night long
the ocean’s waters gurgle gently against big rocks, lying there like sleeping hippopotamuses from the river nile. so much more water than land! the islands, the rocks, the coast are all here at the sufferance of water. it all exists surrounded by what we call air, suffused today as in the last days by the smoke created by the wildfires.
water, earth, air, fire. water. the water people can be felt – seen? – everywhere. watermen and waterwomen, and watercreatures i can never understand, not equipped to grasp. i see a watercreature hailing a seagull and know that somewhere near, humpback whales are on the move. the sleeping hippopotamuses allow me to sense not only the nile but also the great okanagan lake, creeks in kamloops, the mighty fraser in its canyon. the waternet is everywhere.
i am of land and water. we’re all of land and water.
transfixed
is sit in this
fairytale puddle
September 7
13,000 metres today, from Secret Cove to Madeira Park. I am taken by signs on the roadside: an announcement of “Visitors Info – 400m” leading to a row of ten or so billboards arranged in a quarter circle; a barn advertising it’s a mink farm, right beside an old “Drink Coca Cola” sign; donut circles screeched into the road with smoking tires. Mario greets me and takes me to his home on the hill.
highway full of curves
wouldn’t wanna walk this way
drunk and in the rain
tonight i sleep in a library. all the books are bound in hardcover, some standing neatly side by side in series – agatha christie, for example, or jane austen. photographs of lovers, mothers, long-dead dogs look down on me. videos beside a tv, respectfully stacked. a dog pillow lies on the ground. of sounds i notice hardly any, none from the outside on this quiet wooded hill, only a few from inside the house. before i fall asleep i read a little in a book called sointula island utopia, full of names like linnoila, kurikka and honkala.
the scent of books
how can i not
have a magical night?
September 8
This is my last full day on the Southern part of the Sunshine Coast. I walk 16,100 metres along a highway with less and less traffic, towards Ruby Lake. A woman stops beside me on the opposite side of the road.
“I’ve seen you on the highway before. Where are you going?”
“I’m walking from Vancouver to Powell River.”
“Where are you heading today?”
“To the Iris Griffith Center.”
It turns out she works there but the center is closed today. Very generously, she decides to let me in anyway – “I’ll just put the key under the mat.” Her friendliness bowls me over.
trees, rocks, blackberries …
joy bubbles from my heart
as i walk
And another night at Elizabeth’s. We have a hoot!
at the iris griffith centre. i have benefitted from so much generosity. sitting here in this beautiful space, i feel it everywhere. the generosity of air and soil, so much unfathomable abundance. the generosity of these strong tree trunks that hold up the roof. the generosity of billions of cells that grew the ten-point antler of the deer skull on the wall. the generosity of the cookies and tea on the table beside me. the generosity of the woman who gave me the key to the centre, just like that, without knowing me. i am grateful. and wish i could be feel the gratitude even deeper, right in my blood, to honour the generosity that has been thrown my way, a tidal wave, a sandstorm of generosity.
can’t repay
all the wealth tossed at me –
not meant to
September 9
It rains. I walk to the ferry and it rains. I dry out, just a little, on the ferry, and it rains. I walk from the ferry, and it rains. For 10,200 long metres I get very wet, then suddenly Haedy and Ed show up. I am confused; I was not planning to see them until I arrived at their doorstep, a good 30,000 metres from here. I am wet. It rains. I get into their car. It rains. Disappointment over not walking today’s allotted stretch, gratitude, and confusion tumble about in my head. Haedy and Ed drive me to the B&B I had arranged for the night and the day after, a day of rest. The place is stunning and luxurious.
wet rat
tumbling through the landscape
the cackle of a crow
turn on the water in the shiny sink. add shampoo, the next best thing if there is no laundry detergent. dunk the socks – the socks must go first, they are the dirtiest. their former white is grey and black in most places although clean spots shine through like the clouds behind a sudden gap between trees.
turn the water off. we finally, finally had rain today but there will be no reason for a long time to waste water. add underwear, bra, t-shirt. squeeze it all a bit and let it soak. check the rain-drenched jacket – is it drying? look at the alice munro book. i like the really short stories and the really long ones. “wild swans,” – yes, i’ll read that one.
return to the sink. the socks need soap – what do we have here today? lavender. the time for lavender bloom is over; we’re heading into autumn. as am i. this 62-year-old remembers washing laundry by hand as a given, not something done with tender nostalgia about archaic times.
the owner of this luxurious place has cushion covers embroidered with the same colours and deer motif as my grandmother’s. embroidered by hand.
and suddenly
summer’s over
… one squishy step at a time …
September 10
Stillwater Creek B&B
A Day of Rest
i wake up at the earliest dawn, sensing it’s not completely dark anymore. first i hear nothing but quiet. the tide has gone out. then crickets. when a few moments later the seagulls start their screech, i know night is over. out of the dark gray-blue, a growl. it seems to come from the porch or … no, not the porch. farther down, by the water. then another growl and a whole chorus. this is not what bears sound like. bears are forest animals, quiet, they don’t talk like drunks in a pub. and then i understand – sea lions! they growl and bellow and gurgle, throaty voices unmistakably carried by their large blubber bodies.
then – a swooshing and rushing from the same area where i believe the sea lions to be – no, farther away.
a night of sensing but not knowing the sounds. not fully awake, i think of hurricanes, and i’m a little afraid. the rushing gets louder and nearer, not fast like a plane but moving inexorably, directly, without obstruction, to this beautiful house.
sea lions –
amid the surround sound of rain
a canticle of growls
I am Helena LeClerc Reformed Solemniac
Hah so there you are. Hah so there you are whichwise won’t now nor never believe in this comfybed—this comfybed you believe on in one of two ways depending on depending of, as; 1, that it is no rest at all ‘cause no sleep’s allowed, or 2. It is rest time please leave me alone I am sleeping don’t tug me up out over to you whomever you are, which doesn’t matter, on cause which that you need your sleep and can’t function without it so don’t ruin the morning to come by making it another stumbling sand pit of low exhaustion inability to know hear understand speak or or or whatever, so.
No mind my nameplate that back at Grundig’s read Helena LeClerc Reformed Solemniac and that now again reads what eh? Oh, pitiful one claiming it is too far out for one such asleep as you are not so okay so okay here it is flat in your face my name’s Helena LeClerc Reformed Solemniac see this Helena yas first name then LeClerc yas nextname then Reformed yup yup yup that’s me too all over and the last be; Solemniac; off punch you’ gut wit’ Helena—then wit’ LeClerc Reformed—then last wit’ Solemniac—hey! Helena LeClerc Reformed Solemniac—ho! There! You woke now? Wakened out up and in now eh?
So! Sonboy!
Listen to me I am Helena LeClerc Reformed Solemniac Helena LeClerc Reformed Solemniac, and again and forever Helena LeClerc Reformed Solemniac so!
Be awake!
Now and immediately!
Ah oh stand back blanket flung four by four splintering sheet rent gold flecks shattered torn shreds flying shot from the ground and unseen in the dark, signboard first in two and, unseen in the dark, then in five, is eh then in fifty eh one hundred eh all rubble eh grown down into grassweeds time and pressure pressure and time too hot much too hot much hot too much too hot no up get go up get go danger hey—
Sonboy up awake and unseen in the dark shouting.
The light! Give me light!
What is the where is this?
Give me light!
Snap-on; all a’beaming—
Sonboy, good morning.
Ah—who are you—I—
I am, for the last time, Helena LeClerc Reformed Solemniac.
Oh—
But, as previously stated, you may call me Dwight.
Sonboy’s fists came up twisting the sleep from his eyes. The black pebble swirl from within soothed and soothed and he kept at it until the pressure turned unpleasant lowering his fists, and, blinking, he beheld things at last clearly.
Sonboy! Sonboy.
At last and for once clearly.
Mom, he stated.
The word licked in his mouth as she said, Come on Sonboy. I’ll whip you up some breakfast. Come on.
Jim Meirose's short work is widely published, and his novels include "Sunday Dinner with Father Dwyer"(Optional Books), "Le Overgivers au Club de la Résurrection" (Mannequin Haus), "No and Maybe - Maybe and No"(Pski's Porch), "Audio Bookies" (LJMcD Communications), "Et Tu" (C22 press), and "Game 5" (Soros Books). info: www.jimmeirose.com, X id @jwmeirose
