Once upon a time, in a village near the forest,
lived a man with very dark hair and a serious countenance.

He was living alone in a wooden house. He was
making everything with his bare hands.
Every day he walked, before sunrise, deep into the forest.

He picked the highest tree and worked from day to night.
All his furniture, even his plates, spoons and forks, was made of wood.

The man did not have a lot of friends, or neighbors,
and the closest house was miles and miles away. He
never married and he spent all of his life working the
wood. His work made him famous in the nearby
village and they came to him and ask him to repair
everything that was broken. And the man gave all his
time and attention to the wood and it was as if he and wood
understood each other. The wood was given new life and
became a beautiful table, a beautiful chair, or a very
nice door.

People were starting to come to him from far away,

from the big city, asking for more furniture and other decorations.

One day he was preparing a wooden chair, and he
was out in the open air, when suddenly a rare
perfume came to him. He looked around but
nobody was with him. So, the man continued to work
the chair and try to give it a nice shape and wanted to
put also some beautiful colours..

Again the perfume made him turn his head and
then he noticed on the earth a very beautiful
strange flower with several colours…

“I do not remember seeing this flower before” he
said.
“No, you don’t. Because I was a seed and some
days ago a sparrow brought me here from a
foreign country. But as the sparrow got tired
from the long journey, he hid me in the earth,
and he thought that he would come and eat me
later…. But he forgot. I am a seed and if u bury
me I will grow up and become a… “
“A beautiful flower that smells so nice” said
the carpenter.

“Yes, but I smell like that only if I am happy..
Some minutes ago an ant passed and we spoke.

He gave me news about my
family, so I am more happy.”

The perfume was exceptional. It was like the
perfume of the orange flowers with a bit of ylang
ylang. The man had never thought he could speak
with a flower.

“I must finish my chair, I have a lot to do. I must

finish before night comes, ” said the carpenter and

started again to work on the chair.

“Why are you so hurrying to finish your chair?
I see nobody else here with you. Do you have
family, a wife or children?”

Asked the flower.

“No, I am alone and I am very busy. So do not
ask me silly questions, I must work because I
have a chair to deliver….”
“How is possible to work in such a beautiful day,
Look up, the sky is so blue, look at the forest and
the trees, such a beautiful picture.” said the
flower, and continued ” I need some fresh water
and if you have some more grass, you can bring
it close to me, so I will have company. “

“Love yourself… “, said the flower and turned his petals
to the sun.

“I feel much better, but I really need some
water..” repeated the flower again.

“Ohh OK. I will go to bring you some water.”
The man left and went to the house. He took a big
vase and he put some water in it. Then he went out and
he threw the water onto the flower.

“Ohhhh you almost destroy my little petals. I tell
you, you really never love anything or anyone.
You just threw the water, with all your force.
You must be gentle with my petals.”

The flower explained to the carpenter for hours the gentle way

he must water him. And that he must from time to time
change and cultivate the soil. And he asked the carpenter if
he would find some other seeds, and plant them close to
him, so he will not feel alone.

Then the carpenter had a better idea, to take a big
pot. He put some soil inside and he suggested to
his friend the flower to grow in there so he will not
be alone anymore.

The carpenter and the flower became friends; he was
strong enough to carry the pot with him

even when he went to the big city for buying
new tools.

After months passed the carpenter was so
attached to his flower that he started to read books
about gardening and every day tried to make his
friend happier.
He bought a new pot and he placed it near the
window so his flower could have a sun bath all day.
When he went to the forest for cutting wood for his
work, he carried the flower along in a small wooden wagon

so they were always together.

They spoke a lot about everyday life and sometimes
about the future. But the flower always said that we
must show our love now, not in the future”.

Today is so important for the
flowers, from the first sunshine that catches us, we
must take as much light we can, and drink water,
and have someone to care for us, as we are so
fragile.

The flower grew up and became even more beautiful.

And his perfume also became so popular that

when neighbors visited the carpenter, they
asked for the name of this flower, so they can also find
the seeds and plant it in their garden.

The carpenter told his neighbors, “My flower is
very rare and I do not know if you will find the same
seeds. I named my flower “Love”. But as this flower
has a deep impact on my life, I give him this name.
Because he helped me understand that today is more
important than the future.

And love is a free energy and the more we give away,
the more comes back to us. “
The carpenter and the flower stayed friends for a long
time. And the carpenter always left some hours free
after his work for gardening, as he got so many
secrets from his friend, that he could grow any
strange seed and see it grow into a mighty tree or lovely flower.

His garden was very famous and people came from
all over the country to see it.
And when someone asked him about the secret of this
beautiful garden, the carpenter responded, with a
smile:
“Love, is the secret.”
The End

Siddall, Sherry.  Sweet Land (Finishing Line Press, 2021)

     Sweet Land is a Love poem:  the unknown, the personal touch.  Ark charts a walk on the beach, meditation:  the ocean’s tongues lap, and the shells wash up and on as “buttercups,” the whole inner and outer changed for the good. 

     “Before the Frost” is an example for Love and Hope.  Memory of a nursing home, as I interpret: “I never thought it would come to this . . . :”  Poem ends:

“winter is coming

it will be glorious soon, all

the light absorbed, done.”

     And North Carolina’s state bird lives in the poem “Cardinal.”  “I hear fierce birds again, as a brown horse watches me over the fence.”

     Sherry Siddall’s Sweet Land rocks and waves with Love of words and surround.  Bareness crackles and winter’s gone, “no future here, no joy, but still those buds,” always the breaking in the sweet sweat of living day to day among “supple” twigs that become the red bird that settles all.  And then “Elegy,” cardinal dead beneath my window.

     Who has not seen this?  Siddall lets us spread the “redness where there is no color.”

     “Hunting Season” speaks for me, for I feed the small game I hunted for the table when I was a boy, a “hunter.”  Her poem’s about hunting ducks; I substitute doves in my memory in her words, “limp feathered bodies” on a rail. 

     These two lines in Sweet Land sum Hope:  “None of earth’s beauty holds us so fast / as this sky, this immensity flying past.”  

---

Shelby Stephenson was North Carolina’s poet laureate, 2015-2018. His recent book is Shelby’s Lady:  The Hog Poems.

Night Descends on the Nation’s Capital   

                  January 6, 2021  

Smoke rises from the Nation’s Capital. 

Flashbangs explode used by the rioters. 

Along with bear spray attacking the police.

Killing an officer and harming many others.

A mob of white rioters invaded the capital in daylight.  

In full military gear with zip ties and Trump flags,  

Using the American flag to beat a police officer.   

It was a dark night in our nation’s history  

Like the nights in 68, when D.C. burned to the ground.  

You remember the night that Dr. King was assassinated. 

The nights when the black community took to the streets.  

The nights that the national guards patrolled the streets,

The police Shot tear gas into the crowds of black Americans. 

The jeeps and military vehicles raced down the streets.  

Guns mounted on the jeeps in the nation’s capital

Remember as troops stood on the steps of the capital. 

A night when a little black boy hid in the bathroom.   

Afraid that he would die in the fire of the night.   

It all happened with the looting and vandalizing. 

Our democracy and the foundations of the nation attacked.  

They looked to assassinate the Vice-President,  

And the speaker of the house and others.   

It was a night of total pandemonium as Trump watched.  

A coup perpetrated by Neo-Nazis with Trump’s blessings.  

Unchecked, as they shouted death threats repeatedly.   

The night when a hangman’s noose,  

Was erected on the Capitol grounds.  

White supremacy has gone unbridled,  

For decades terrorizing those of color in America. 

It was that night that America was blackened,  

And the President watched with delight.   

Black Americans have been lynched for decades.  

This night the night our congress was being hunted,  

By the mob in combat gear without their hoods. 

Wanting to lynch as many as they could find.  

  While parading the confederate flag in the halls of the Capital.   

Note: Lawrence O’Donnell spoke of military jeeps with guns mounted in D.C. 68 riots on one of his shows. I remember the jeeps in the riots; however, I have not been able to source it currently the jeeps with mounted guns in D.C. There are photographs of jeeps with mounted guns in riots in Illinois

Source Alan Taylor, The Atlantic April 3, 2018.

1-25-2021  

My American Flag   

It hangs on to the edge of my desk.  

Ripped and torn for years of flying on that old car. 

After the September 11th attack on America.  

This was a moment in which America meant so much to me. 

Confused

A picture of her spoke a thousand words
but when I held her hands and walk away
I feel that the whole world is peaceful and
incredible until we are reached the boneyard
She kissed me and told me “don't be confused”.
I remember the twilight of infinite satisfaction
She would exhale and let me exhale to end my
fatigue, difficulty, and still help me to dream of
strolling back to Baghdad without any barriers,
or even hold a weapon from the era of the war.
She is the motivation, she is the justification
If you ever meet with her, let her know that my
heart is weeping with her scent, and my eyes
are bleeding from the times we touched the broken
star to collect your elegance to the moonlight.
The sun is the same sun without her silky hair
The winter is the exact winter without her soft lips
Today is a delusion day because people are
everywhere and everyone is wondering if her
death is the terror that provoked me to live miserable.

Snow Day

Three pills into my day, three inches of snow,

My driveway beckons, as it has so often before.

At my age this is what passes for duty, this is

One of the tasks I have left, the others left me

Or I left them, so here I am tending to my to-do

List, a list I keep privately in my head to keep

Me on track, so I don’t look out later and ask

Why the snow seems so deep, untouched, just

There, still waiting. This may be the winter of our

Discontent, pandemic deep into ourselves, dead

Piling up, cases more than ankle deep and drifting

Away from us. My day, the snow, my driveway,

My sense of self become trivial, now not even 

A footnote or a smudged comment written in

The margins of today, but here I am again filling

The page, since it too is one of the tasks I have left.

Sunday

It’s Sunday, I can tell, I get up the same time as always

but on Sundays, like this, the neighbors’ cars are in their

driveways, where I left them last night, some must still be

sleeping, the scene out front is quiet enough to imagine

it as a portrait of quiet, a portrait I’m painting in my head

with words and colors, peaceful, almost motionless, calm.

On the seventh day god rested, right, and so the demi-gods

amongst us take their turn at it. Now there is no flooring to

sell, no patients to attend to, no restless class of children to

teach, no more universes to create, so they rest, sleep in,

while I stand here looking out trying to catch what I can of

the tranquility of Sunday, the day of rest that time lends us,

leaves us here to make the best of it, like this.

Blind

What? A walk, of course

It fits the day, snowless cold

And the dog is along

He’s blind now

So we follow his nose

Or his memory

He knows the way

Better than we do

We’ve put the holidays

Where they belong

Behind us

Memories now, almost sightless

We know our way away

From now – into what?

A walk, covid slow, still a walk

Into a future we guess at

You say summer, maybe spring

Our walk goes on and on

Years end like this

Not with a bang but a whimper

The blind walking into

Whatever futures hold

For them.

---

J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Literary Yard, Black Coffee Review, New Feathers Anthology, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, and Highland Park Poetry.

Title: The Blueprint
Adapted from a book by Chimezie Ihekuna (Mr. Ben)
Screenwriter: Robert Sacchi

Genre: Fantasy

For reviews, production consideration and other publicity, please contact us through the email addresses below.

mrbenisreal@gmail.com

rsacchi@rsacchi.20m.com

Synopsis/Details: 

The war among the extra-terrestrials at the Peak of Eternal Abode over the ownership and rulership of its domain saw the defeat of Illumination and his cohorts. He wanted to be on the same level as his Maker, The Source.

Illumination was able to gain support from some of the multi-dimensional members, including some of The Elements: Wind, Water, and Fire, and persuade them to rebel against their Maker.

However, what Illumination thought was the only way to strip The Source of his kingly authority turned out to be futility. His Maker, through the instrumentality of the rest of his created subjects as led by his guard, together with his Profound League of Justice Keepers, orchestrated an eventual Mark of Defeat. This led to a wide Gap of Banishment and a consequential Seal of Demotion into the Neutrality for Illumination, his followers, and the elements that followed them, far below the threshold of his habitation.