Quarantine

I don’t have the knowledge to create a vaccine

I don’t have the capacity to donate financially

I don’t have the strength to volunteer in the frontline

All I have

Is the patience to stay at home as much as possible

Is the perseverance to make do with whatever I have

Is the desire to learn something new each day to pass time

Is the contentment that I can be just safe in isolation

Freedom comes with responsibility

If I can’t do anything to help, I can at least try not to be a part of the problem.

Moon

If only the Moon is greater

A celestial with much power

All the planets swimming in milk

Warmed by Sun inside black silk

May your reflected light shine

Against the drunkness of wine

Uncover the hidden secret line

Each great ball that mutely whine

Open up each soul to perceive

Let no word nor act to deceive

Purge out anger and fear to leave

Shield against any evils to receive

Ambitious greed to seal away

No confusion led out to sway

Only compassion here to stay

If Moon has power in her ray

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.

Accident of Los Angeles

In Los Angeles skies, bright and wide,

A sudden crash, no place to hide.

Sirens wail, hearts filled with fear,

Lives are shattered, loss so near.

Dreams once golden, now turned gray,

In the chaos of that fateful day.

Tears fall heavy, pain runs deep,

Memories the city will always keep.

Yet in the dark, hope still glows,

Through broken streets, a new dawn grows.

Strength will rise, though hearts still ache,

A city’s soul, too strong to break.

Don Bormon is a student of grade ten in Harimohan Government High School, Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh.

You are my favorite place

Where gravity leans in my favor.

Dedicated to the memory of my husband Guillermo

You are the root that anchors my twisted tree,

the counterpoint to my chaotic symphony.

A blooming desert, where crystal flowers sprout in the shifting sand.

A solar eclipse that reveals the stars hidden in the day, silent heat in the frozen space.

The echo of a cosmic whisper, a melody woven with threads of silence.

You are the firm ground beneath my wandering feet, the compass that always points to my north.

The starry sky that reflects the depth of my soul, with no moon to hide its brightness.

A dark silk embrace that envelops the cold, a refuge of shadows that protects me from the light.

You are the stillness after the Big Bang,

the dawn that paints the universe with new colors.

A silent refuge where time curves around me,

my home, my peace, my everything.

Here, gravity leans in my favor, the weight of the world fades away, and in your presence, I float in the weightlessness of happiness.

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.

Fire in Los Angeles

Fire spreads all over the area

Swelling and raging at a moment

Burned the houses, trees and all the things around

Fire is not only the fire at all

A ghostly appearance haunts the earth

No time to realize it devours the whole

Fire is raging in body

Fire outside

Leaving thousands of people homeless

And death of twenty nine

The world empowered by heat with carbon dioxide

We are mankind played by

As people play with it

So wavy current flowing on body

In this form of change

People fall in hopelessness

Burning the body of nature

They are running so fast

Fire is chasing from behind like the snakes sparking

O! Fire in Los Angeles!

I always think over.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

 10  February, 2025.

Md. Mahbubul Alam is from Bangladesh. His writer name is Mahbub John in Bangladesh. He is a Senior Teacher (English) of Harimohan Government High School, Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh. Chapainawabganj is a district town of Bangladesh. He is an MA in English Literature from Rajshahi College under National University. He has published three books of poems in Bangla. He writes mainly poems but other branches of literature such as prose, article, essay etc. also have been published in national and local newspapers, magazines, little magazines. He has achieved three times the Best Teacher Certificate and Crest in National Education Week in the District Wise Competition in Chapainawabganj District. He has gained many literary awards from home and abroad. His English writings have been published in Synchronized Chaos for seven years.

there are sounds everywhere
that you will never hear again

***
We’ll die of love
We’ll die of AIDS
Life bets at their highest
Prices for graves are rising
I kiss your imaginary portrait
Rain washes away memory with transparent watercolor
I love you like at the very beginning
I’m dying without you before and after you
Birds meet the winged dawn
Meanwhile the cast-iron night in my heart is growing to burst

***

the bird said it would be quiet and the air was filled with no one’s breath

and in the evening on the corner near the lake birds flocked and were silent

I watched the birds and was also silent, unable to move

meanwhile, somewhere far away, very close, people plucked up the courage 

to yell when a stranger with the face of death roars artillery at them through the window

***
God looks like you and also like a section of forest burned under the snow
The rusty bones of the snowflakes show me the grinding path
I step quietly so as not to wake up the little Jesuses – not yet resurrected flowers
Nobody knows what will happen at the end of the road
Probably at the end of the journey we will all return home
After all the earth is cruelly looped by an ellipsoid
But now in front of me is a fork of cast-iron milk of the night
Where should I go: forward or into the future?
Each step seems like a step into the grave abyss
The cemetery stuck like a sticker to a shoe can’t be peeled off
A snowstorm begins and the voice of the wind begins Celans aria
The ivory of the sky dissolves in the eyes
I lose strength and reluctantly fall asleep on chest of the wind
I dream about you and it seems to me that now you are even more like God
My body is covered with a blanket of snow and I’m burning for the last time

***
white tea of the day
sugar time cubes

the powder of my views dissolves in your thick boiling water of silence

red triangles of the walls of the long night
You don’t /everything is obvious to everyone/

Genuine Love

Don’t’ pick up love from here there and everywhere

Love isn’t love that changes cover

That demands gifts  or anything.

It can’t be blown with the blowing wind,

Can’t be flown with the flowing water,

It is not spent with money

Can’t be  destroyed by the passing of time.

Be constant like the sun.

Justify yourself from the dawn to the dusk. 

Are you justified? 

Are you constant?

Are you pure?

Ask yourself again and again.

If you are positive love is positive.

Remember and always remember

Love is constant.

It is immeasurable emotion

That can’t be obtained through material possessions

It is a connection without condition

If you are intangible

Here is genuine love

Are you in love?

Are you in yourself?

Night Passage

Driving all night

nobody out on the road

listening to my truck radio

old songs singing along

remembering the old days

all my friends passed away

party times and praying for others

when it was okay

to speak your mind

heart loving

wife and kids

smoking my cigar

blowing the smoke out

exhilarated

in the freedom of America.