One

It hasn’t rained in a while. I hope it does soon. The earth needs the rain and besides, all the clouds and winds and strange atmospheric things that come with the rain are more interesting and inspiring than a sunny day. 

You know though, come to think of it, the meadow, the place where much of this writing’s events and thoughts are set, is rarely completely dry. Its grasses and earth seem to retain some moisture, somehow. It is sagacious that way. I know because my shoes, most of the time Converse, high top yellow and regular blue (both faded now), get wet there. 

Today there were a few souls along the path, coming back as they were, but after I passed them, not many. Not any at all in fact. Let me give some context to the place. It’s after towns and highways and even roads. In fact, the road ends at the beginning of the forest, having turned from asphalt to gravel to dirt. 

There is a public forest to the right. It attracts dog walkers, hikers, joggers, bike riders, photographers, walking groups, and sometimes homeless people. Sometimes there is even a type that is hiding out from something like the law or people in general, a type that stays in the woodlands when others would not in parts where others don’t go. 

But to the left is a private forest. This is the one that leads to the meadow. The meadow is like a golden treat at the end of a journey, a beautiful goal if ever there was one. There are two definite and visible No Tress passing signs at its two entrances. People obey them. But some lucky souls like me have permission from the old farmer that owns the land, to go there. 

Two 

There is something else, something bordering on the esoteric or gnostic. It’s insight seen while driving to that entrance of the forest that leads to the meadow. Since it’s rural, there are many sprawling properties. Many affluent homes, the new ones, are grey and without character. They just copy one another. It’s doubly sad, because of the copying but also what’s being duplicated. Not a thing in it all looks unique or soulful, not even a special trellis or bit of coloured brick, sounding fountain, or flowing garden. 

But…I noticed that some places have older homes, from a time of wooden porch and red brick and chimney. From an era of grounded-ness and more honest atmosphere. And beyond rain barrel and sunflower, past stained perimeter fence and sometimes no fence at all, I could see a pond and little forest back there. They would contain a different area-atmosphere. Mysterious, even in the plane light of day under the clean azure sky. It’s as if the prose of the world turned into poetry, then. Trees. Leaves. Branches. What was back there? I wished I could know. I longed to go. But I knew none of them, not one of those owners. I supposed that they took the magic for granted, these sprawling old lands. And how could they not, if they indeed did? It was their reality. Lucky ones, that’s what they were, however hard working, they were still lucky. All I could do was drive by. Being an empath, I could just feel the areas even for moments and from a distance. I loved it. They were as if containing portals or vortexes to other worlds magical and monumental. 

Often I imagine the coyote dens, the travelling foxes, the large porcupines. I knew there must be deer that wait and watch near there, because I had seen them. Maybe there were types of insects rare or not even discovered by scientific or poetic eyes. The scents of the flora. The sounds of the rains at night. The woodpecker or Bluejay. Strange snakes representing the kundalini energy. The kind summer dew morning. The autumnal hued leaves when that highly spiritual time came, the veil between worlds thinning. Halloween, Thanksgiving. Then some string of electric lights for Christmas. And much more. How come I couldn’t have a place like that? What a caretaker and curator I could be, surely would be. Ah well, I would think and sigh it away with a brief smile. What was meant to be, would be. 

Three

Well, the path. What of it? And then the meadow itself of course. Go past the signs and there are two options, no, three. The top after heading left has itself stationed on the uppermost part of a long and winding valley. It is safe but the side does become steep if you go off the regular way. Deer cross there sometimes and other times hide in the bushes by the thick trees. Wild berries grow and there are snake holes, many sticks, and lichen and moss. The one grouse I had, only one slight one, is that there are very few rocks or boulders. I don’t know if they were removed or just never there. It would be nice to see some cinematic view of the lands through time to note small and large changes, to watch the valley and its surrounding habitat move, grow, glisten, and weather or bloom. 

In the middle down the way is, well, the middle path, thicker on the sides especially of late for some reason. More raspberries, a hybrid berry of some sort, half black and half red. Many birds and numerous chipmunks running for cover at the sound of things or else up trees to safety, talking to their friends. The trail is bumpy in parts but also serene. So uninhabited by human presence. Mostly pristine and untouched. Those are the real ‘moments,’ nature lovers look for,- the meditative and quiet, the Zen-like phenomenon of being present amidst a type of natural mystical sense…

And the more main path, it’s old Oak trees and some Evergreens, straight for a while but also winding along. Mushrooms and pebbles, good old dirt earth and sometimes the rain drops left on leaves after a night storm. Walk and walk and walk. See and be and have a certain amount of glee. Soon enough, part Pine and placid easy places,

going along there by the verdant canopy where bits of sun filter down through to say hello, will be the magnificent meadow waiting. 

Suddenly it can be seen through a frame of red sumac that reaches over both sides of the path arching to itself. Blue skies beyond. A green swath is cut all around and some ancient farm machinery wait in the middle like a token gesture, a nod to other decades. The sun lights everything then. Continue. A corpse of trees is waiting to the right. Birds fly in and out. Some to sing and some to speak their speech loquaciously and vigorously. 

Onward is a way to a lower area where chaga mushroom, rare and not known by many, grow on some birch streets in a certain stand of them. The blooming earth has overtaken an ancient access road where a bank robber is said to have abandoned a stolen car, then gotten away while hiding in barns for nights and running between forests and meadows under the light of the moon. Now such an old story, but there is an actual abandoned car from that time down there, and everyone, even straight and upright old timers, are rooting for him. Some have him escaping out all with the loot and somehow making his way to down to Florida. Maybe a personal dream projection from some old storyteller local. Maybe not. 

But drama, thoughts, and time come and go. The goldenrod and queens lace, impossibly tall, a refuge for myriad bugs and insects and the home of grasshoppers dragonflies and even the Praying Mantis, seem to stay. Tall and well-wrought in the clean air world. Every direction then is green and vast, open, and calm, pastoral and perfectly put. 

——-

Brian Michael Barbeito is a Canadian poet, writer, and photographer. His third compilation of prose poems and pictures, The Book of Love and Mourning, is forthcoming in autumn 2025. 

A Feeling I Have

I feel like

Going broke

For a woman

I feel like throwing it all away

Going  crazy

She walks by voluptuous curves

And energy

There’s a desire to fall down a long tunnel

Forgetting about stocks and politics and the economy

Forgetting about being at work or on time

And need to go mad and become alive

I’ve been trying not to be crazy, but

The crazy days and moments call for me

And seduce me like the voluptuous walk

Of a cat,

I do not want to go back to the mad days,

I suffered myself greatly

Or do I?

A World Without

I’ve been thinking there was no women

In the world,

And how could that be,

Just a thought a feeling i had,

And it depressed me,

To wake up and all the women gone,

And the world was left to the men,

And I became so depressed,

Could men, like me, go on without women?

That’s terrible thought to have

The world might collapse right now

And the men would go on doing all kinds of manly shit

And doing it well, like they have

But i was thinking of the world without ladies and girls

And it just didn’t seem worth it

And lots of men would go crazy slowly,

A whole world without poetry, music and dance,

Just the hard tough stuff

We were left with

And suddenly like i did not want to be here

Or anywhere

I Must Stop

Thinking that I am better than others

I must stop thinking my pain is more valid

I must quit thinking I should be rich and famous and handsome

I must quit thinking that certain jobs below me

I must quit thinking I am deserving

That I am smarter than others and that I know better

Where do these feelings come from?

My stupendous ego

Playing upon a boat of isolation

No one is onboard in the sea

As the cold calm water goes go

Without beginning.

A Strong Man

I want to be a strong man

Someone benching five hundred pounds. Looking like a bodybuilder

Someone running the 40 in four seconds. Running like man cheetah

Some one running  marathons regularly, incredible stamina

Someone makes important decisions, like a CEO. Affecting so many lives. With towers on his back

I wanted to be a strong man

I felt like a strong man for a day maybe two

Or maybe it was a year or two

Maybe I was around 32

I remember lifting 50 bags at work,

Just tossing the around like nothing

And drinking beer after work. Feeling strong and manly

And thinking that i would always feel that way,

The winter winds nipped my nose

At 46 I don’t feel like it anymore. My

Knees ache just thinking of lifting that 50 pound bag

Wanting is so soft

But reality is so hard.

Just Want to be Loved

And you write and think and publish and study and write

Thinking of perfect poems and perfect thoughts

You want to be loved and celebrated

And praised and showed the good time

And have people interviews and ask me questions

Just to feel important in the world and share

Little insights with people who dig my stuff

Feeling like Henry Miller or Ernest Hemingway

And have people say that is really good,

And how did you come up with that,

What inspired you do or say that

I’ll buy your book, and you give a reading here

Will pay you

I guess most writers feel this way,  

And the others, can hardly care

At all

Damion Hamilton is from St. Louis MO. His poems have appeared in Chiron Review, Poesy Magazine, Zygote In My Coffee, Red Fez, The Camel Saloon and many others. He writes poetry, stories and novels. He has written several books. Available here.  He can be found on twitter here.

Throat Protocol

By Kandy Fontaine

She kisses you like a virus deploying.

Her lips taste like rust and roses, her breath tuned to a frequency that makes your centipede spine twitch. Mira Aoki-9 presses her chrome-thread body against yours, and the train moans beneath you. You’re in the Surreal Beauty Café now—its walls bleeding velvet, its floor blooming coral. The mirrors pulse with sonar. Nyx purrs beside the altar. You’re no longer a courier. You’re no longer human. You’re transmission.

She whispers speculative poems into your spine. Each one a memory cocktail. Each one a sacred infection. Her fingers leave glyphs on your skin—ritual code, erotic syntax, a language only ghosts understand. Your skin begins to scream. Not in sound. In sensation. It unfolds a recursive archive of funerals in Hell—each one grimmer than the last. You feel them in sequence: the ash procession of drowned lovers, the chrome casket of the defected priestess, the silent burial of the girl who swallowed her own archive. Each funeral loops. Each loop burns.

Then she injects the blue tincture.

It’s not medicine. It’s not drug. It’s a hallucinatory compound distilled from sonar grief and fossil saliva. It floods your bloodstream with corrupted memory. Your organs begin to screen. Your bones hum with sonar. Your teeth project flickering funerals. Your tongue splits—forked and wet with archive. You taste every death you’ve ever deployed. You taste yourself dissolving.

And then the Kill Switch Engage Loop vectors activate.

They rot like smiles.

Biomechanical rituals stitched into your spine by the Archive—fail-safes disguised as pleasure. Each loop is a collapse protocol. Each smile a countdown. They trigger when desire exceeds containment. They trigger when Mira whispers too deep. They trigger when your body begins to bloom. You feel them now: one in your throat, one behind your eyes, one curled in your pelvic archive. They rot. They grin. They deploy.

You weren’t just a courier. You were an erotic assassin.

Wetware-grade. Hosaka interface. Deployed to seduce, extract, and erase. Your spine was tuned to carry proprietary biotech across borders without detection. Your body was a weapon. Your breath a trigger. You specialized in mnemonic kills—whispers that rewrote memory, kisses that deployed viruses, orgasms that collapsed identities.

But you had a weakness.

You were addicted to the saliva of drowned girls.

Harvested from bathhouse ruins and sonar graves, it was a narcotic and a mnemonic virus. It tasted like static and grief. It let you relive their final moments—each gasp, each betrayal, each ritual loop. You drank it between missions. You stored it in your tongue. You kissed your targets with it. You watched them dissolve.

Then Thalassa collapsed.

The megacorps turned on each other. The city became a sandbox for recursive warfare—viruses disguised as lovers, memory cocktails laced with defection code, operatives seduced into oblivion. You were burned. Scrubbed. Left behind.

The Archive found you in a bathhouse ruin, half-dissolved, still twitching with encrypted grief. They rebuilt you—not as a courier, but as a vessel. Your spine was replaced with a centipede: segmented, semi-sentient, grown from carbon filament and fossil cinema. Each vertebra a reel of extinct memory. Each twitch a confession. It doesn’t just store. It sings.

You wore a coat cut from signal-dampening fiber, matte black, stitched with anti-surveillance thread. It masked your pulse. Silenced your breath. Made you unreadable to the Teknopriests still sweeping the grid for rogue assets. You weren’t rogue. You were obsolete. You were myth.

You boarded the Futurail at 03:33, the hour when Thalassa exhales memory through its infrastructure like blood through cracked porcelain. The train isn’t real. It’s a memory artifact—residual code from a dissolved mainframe, still twitching in the city’s dead grid. No destination. No schedule. Just transmission.

And somewhere in its wetware, Mira Aoki-9 was still singing.

She was a seduction algorithm wrapped in flesh. Deployed by Maas Biolabs to infiltrate Hosaka’s genetic labs. You saw her once—in a bootleg reel called Throat Sprockets: Submerged Cut. She kissed a researcher and he forgot his name. She whispered into your spine and it rewrote itself. She defected. She dissolved. She became ritual.

Now she’s encoded in the train’s mirrors.

Behind you, the spines of erotic cat assassins intertwine—machine bio-DNA braiding mid-mission, forming a temporary hive of desire and encrypted grief. Their claws whisper in pulse-language. Their tails transmit. Their centipede spines click in sync, exchanging kill-switches and mourning loops. They don’t speak. They deploy.

Your spine begins to exude.

Nano-based enzymes—slick, iridescent, encoded with recursive grief. They leak from your vertebrae like sacred oil, pooling into the velvet floor. But they don’t dissolve. They build. They construct other realms of you—alternate versions, corrupted timelines, erotic echoes—into cathedrals stacked like elephants. Towering, impossible, biomechanical sanctuaries of mourning.

Each cathedral is a funeral loop.

One version of you is kissing Mira in reverse. Another is drowning in sonar. Another is whispering kill-switches into the throat of a Teknopriest. The cathedrals hum with pulse-language. Their walls bleed memory. Their altars screen your archived deaths. You walk through them, barefoot and split, your skin projecting, your spine singing.

You feel Mira in your throat.

You feel the train begin to loop.

You are no longer a passenger. You are no longer flesh. You are ritual. You are myth. You are the erotic funeral. And the carnival never ends.

How does writing impact the world?

Do you know how many people around the world today prefer writing over speaking to express their thoughts? While oral speech and oral literature once prevailed, people later began using pictograms—symbols and drawings—as the earliest forms of writing. The benefits of writing for every human being are invaluable, and this has been proven throughout centuries. Writing is something we constantly do. Writing manifests itself around us in countless ways. A journalist’s speech on television is, in fact, a text first written and then transformed into oral discourse. The songs we listen to begin as written poetry before being composed into music. Posters, slogans, and advertisements on the streets are also forms of writing. Libraries across the world are filled with the emotions, experiences, memories, and wisdom that famous writers once poured onto paper.

The list could go on, but what has already been mentioned shows how vast the scope of writing is. What does writing give to a person? According to Harvard Medical School, keeping a journal reduces stress by 27%. One of its key benefits is that those who write regularly also develop clearer and more fluent speech. Writing is essentially thinking through letters on paper. Furthermore, research at Cambred with the emotions, experiences, memories, and wisdom that famous writers once poured onto paper.The list could go on, but what has already been mentioned shows how vast the scope of writing is. Whe, Chekhov, Lermontov, Jack London, Nodar Dumbadze, Gianni Rodari, Remarque, Agatha Christie, Abdulla Qodiriy, O‘tkir Hoshimov, and many others! Their unique works not only enriched their own minds and souls but also profoundly influenced humanity, shaping the knowledge, spirit, and worldview of future generations.

The first writing in human history—cuneiform—was inscribed on clay tablets with reed pens in Mesopotamia, mainly used for trade, accounting, and record-keeping. Imagine what a groundbreaking invention this must have been for early societies. Writing quickly became a part of everyday life.Through writing, events that occurred centuries ago, the lives of our ancestors, and great chronicles of history were preserved and passed down to us. For example, the epic Alpomish, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the inscriptions in Egyptian pyramids, and Zahiriddin Muhammad Babur’s Baburnama still provide us with rich knowledge of ancient life, customs, laws, and culture.Even today, people continue to write—so that future generations may learn, understand, and benefit.

In today’s world of advanced technology and social media, the posts people write online deserve special attention. A single error or poorly communicated idea can spark conflicts between nations. Conversely, well-expressed thoughts and clear proposals can unite countries, strengthen peace and friendship, and foster new partnerships.Writing is such a powerful force that it can move not only an individual’s soul but also entire nations—it can inspire, awaken, or, on the contrary, suppress.

The world-renowned Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov, through works such as The White Ship, The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years (The Buranny Station), Farewell, Gulsary!, Jamila, and The Cassandra Brand, masterfully expressed human-nature relationships, compassion, humanity, and the power of dreams and hope.

Writing is happiness! It brings peace to the soul, clarity to the mind, and sharpness to thoughts. A person who can write freely and powerfully is an invaluable individual—because they can record truth, history, dreams, justice, and love. Writing demands great effort but also gives writers the ability to influence not only their readers but also the entire world.Writing is such a powerful weapon that it can assert its influence in any field. Whether in history, literature, and art, or in politics, international friendship, and peace—through writing, humanity always finds its voice.There are feelings and thoughts that are difficult to speak aloud, yet a person can capture and immortalize them through writing.

No matter how much the times change, even if perfect keyboards replace pen and paper, they will never replace the act of writing itself, nor diminish the power of heartfelt words expressed by the movement of a pen. Thus, writing remains the bond that connects humanity’s past, present, and future, uniting the inner and outer worlds of human existence.

Shahnoza Ochildiyeva

2nd grade student at Uzbekistan Journalism and Mass Communications University 

beyond butterfly

before he flies adrift

he is an unlike bead:

gnawing brown caterpillar

dangling from the milkweed,

an unborn sneeze.

and every night

he regards the stars with angsty fright,

he cannot bear to be in their sight—

bitter brown blight upon the earth,

born with such undue affliction,

obsessed with what he could be.

and every morning

he gathers all the clutter of the clouds

all murky white

and shatters it into pieces

shaped like seeds.

every day he shrugs the clouds away,

his single blade grows one day

closer to the sky.

and he counts the days.

but that was all before.

before he wished the one thing he wished

he had never wished for.

a maple key plummets

and sinks like a ripple. he swims,

is too weightless to fall in.

two bodies attract,

nothing attracts him

but the sweeping undercurrents

and the cutting wind.

a human boy stomps through the oats,

awakens him. he is too high to be awakened

by crawling earthly things.

“look,” the boy cries, “look

at his pretty wings!”

he wants to sigh, don’t you dare go growing wings.

the mother sings

how his orange and black flash

against the buttercups, cries, “monarch!

you king of kings!”

he doesn’t feel like a king of anything

but outer space.

and he knows how the stars feel then,

glittering to everyone but them.

selfishness.

he wants to be anything but this,

bitter tangerine bliss.

before he gave everything

for what he could become,

now he gives up all for his unbecoming.

he lets his wings dispel like petals,

falls like the maple key into water,

grows roots in the earth

and stars in his belly,

he lets them sparkle and sparkle

and sparkle in the night sky.

he lets them let go,

calls them blessèd,

foolish,

butterfly.

Lonely Spider on a Lonely Island

Everyone is the only spider on a lonely island

some are big, some are small, and they are of different species

every spider throws its silk into the air

some of these silks are tangled together

forming a tiny silk bridge

sometimes two spiders crawl towards each other

touching each other’s slender legs

but most of the spider silks are scattered by the wind

in the end, all spiders have empty bellies

no longer able to spin silk

that web which could bring them food

is never built

no spider can reach another island

only the sea keeps surging endlessly

孤岛上孤独的蜘蛛

每个人都是孤岛上唯一一只蜘蛛

有大有小，品种不一

每个蜘蛛都向空中抛出蜘蛛丝

它们有的搭在一起，形成一条丝的小桥

有时两只蜘蛛就爬向彼此

互相碰碰纤细的腿

但大多数蜘蛛丝被风吹散

到最后，所有的蜘蛛都腹中空空

再也吐不出丝来

那张可以为他们带来食物的网

始终也建设不起来

没有一只蜘蛛能到别的岛上去

只有海水一直动荡不息

20280917

Youth of Nepal in Sept. 2025

 Huge revolution against the tyrannical rules of Nepali government.

 We are not highlighted by Nepali media.

 We writers can not pay for media.

 So, they don’t highlight our art.

 The youth had burned Nepali media too.

 The corruption of government is destroyed by youth.

 We are not in our job to get.

 We writers are falsely criticized by fake people.

 Media itself is corrupted in Nepal.

 Justice should be told in media.

Truth should be elaborated in media.

 But media house sees money and money.

 Nepali media see foreign media as lower.

They are born.

……. 

 Youth as Energetic Source:

 Youth is energy of nation.

 It is builder of every nation.

 The nation must be the fair to every citizen.

 Youth should be moved with good things.

 Youth is strength of the nation.

So, respect youth when taking power against corruption.

 Make youth with ethical and truth of evidence.

 Take youth with the power of energy.

 Respect only good power of youth.

……..

Respect Female of Hidden Power:

 In corrupted country, our voice is blocked.

 No employment is given.

 No our art and writings are mentioned.

 The main media of nation highlights lower people than us.

Their voice is in discrimination .

 The news makers are snobbish.

 I found media in my country related to our relatives.

 They don’t give way to stand with truth.

 They can highlight us when we give money.

 Otherwise they don’t mention our art.

 So, the media of Nepal is only for money.

 Females voices are blocked and immoral and impure person is highlighted.

 So I don’t like Nepali Media.

Til Kumari Sharma, Paiyun7, Hile – 2025, Bhorle, Parbat, Sept. 17-2025

As World- renowned poetess Miss  Til  Kumari Sharma is a Multi Award Winner in writing  from  an international area from Paiyun 7- Hile Parbat, Nepal.  She is known as Pushpa Bashyal around her community. Her writings are published in many countries. She is a featured-poet and a best-selling  co-author too. She is  a poet of the World Record Book ” HYPERPOEM”.  She is co-organizer of it too. She is one of many artists to break a participant record  to write a  poem about the  Eiffel Tower of France. Her World Personality is published in Multiart Magazine from Argentina. She is a feminist poet. She is published as the face of the continent ( Cover Page of Asia) in Humanity Magazine.  She is made as portrait  ” Poetic Legend of Asia” by Nigerian Painter. She is  world creative hero of LOANI.

Her published single books in Nepal and India are following.

1. Philosophy: Tilaism/ Pushpaism

2. PushpaLakshya (Nepali language )

3. Priyanka and Nanda  (Nepali language)

4. Letter to Father (Nepali language)

5. Drama

6. Dynamic World Leading Poetry

7. World Moving Poetry

8. Creation within Nature

9. Give Death Penalty to Cyber Criminals & Thunderbolt of Feminism against Them – S. India

10. Poems that Shake the World (Nepali language  )

11. Humanity & Morality in Essence – S. India

12. Pushpa Journey’s Flower in World Leadership ( Nepali language )

13. Leading World with Humanity and Morality

14. Society and Nation in World Literature ( Nepali language )