My Body, Your Choice

My body holds but flesh and bones for you:

My body has fat in all the right spots for you to hold and holler at.

My legs could be crumbling and I would still be an object to you.

My body was told that it had a choice,

 Yet every time I feel eyes on me,

 fear runs down my skin.

My body lost all hope when it bled out uncontrollably;

Letting Mother Nature turn her back on her children.

My body isn’t mine because I was born with a uterus, fragile and careless, instead of being Blessed with having a dick, hard and stern.

(pause and like heavy breathing (note for myself)

Red hands cover every inch of my body:

Taking control of my movements,

Taking my breath from my veins and lungs,

Taking away each of my rights as if ripping a strand of hair one by one.

With a deep red seeping out of my skin,

I hold myself close with no support but a tube down my throat,

Keeping my throat from closing and my body from breaking.

My body should be in shambles, 

With each shiver it should be gone,

But I was left intact, 

Left alive so I could be used again and again,

No limbs broken,

 But I feel the aching aftermath of every attempt,

Letting phantom hands graze over me swiftly.

My body is a choice to indulge or destroy,

But you choose both at the end.

The Three-Toed Sloth

Even when 
refurbished 
to incorporate 
beautiful en-

suites or worn 
with denim 
for a smart 
casual style

property derived 
from things from 
nature is a step
back in time.

The Bull Moose Convention

at Chicago is the successful result of the praxis of a fused group, unlike the states of antiquity & the great tangle of Marxist thought. It is a complex & powerful reiteration construct, its symbols fashioned from a bicycle seat & a set of corroded handle-bars with minimalist turn signals, its own words of power based upon the repetition of a handful of major triads, its rituals aligned with the cycles of withdrawal & return in morphine-dependent mice.

Seeking meaningful employment

The meatless meal was
really professional & 
serious, a combination 
of heuristic procedures,
anything but boring. The

dislike was the algorithm  

it produced, a nested 

while-loop which included 
three inner loops, crispy on 
the outside, soggy within.

Tax credit for home buyers

We’re always getting lack-
luster troubadours. What I
want is an offensive magician
who can, by exploiting
luminescence spectroscopy,
turn late afternoon tea &
scone parties into a world
tour by Gogol Bordello.

A Mammoth Task

Obsessed as they are

about big hats &

big heads, most

consumers have a

difficult time over-

coming their reluctance

to stop the world from

moving into warmer

climatic conditions. They

want to know how

much it would cost, &

would they get a Dog

Bone Charm or other

keepsake if they

ordered now. By the

halfway answering

point their interest has

shifted anyway to what

funk-punk-thrash-ska

shows are coming up

& would the discovery

of ancient elephant

skeletons randomize

women as well as men.

They conveniently forget

that each one of us, in our

place & time, is in balance

with everything else &

we don’t need to do any-

thing alone any more. That’s

why they consider it

inappropriate to speak ill

of the dead, & why today

feels like a milkshake day.

The Killings of Gaza

The blood flowing on the ground

The world takes its shape in a new mould

By the sound the birds flew away quickly to the safe

The sky became so gloomy

The shiny morning turned into smoky brown

The lightning in the darkness of night shattered down

The children, the women, the young and the old

The devastated area

Oh! Pathetic deaths for whom are you call us?

No reply without a long sigh

Wildfire is running in place of humanity

Sorrows, sufferings, torture and deaths happening in everyday life

It’s as if like the hereditary wealth

From the other side of the spot we see, hear and get scared

As the condition for the deer in the rush in front of a hungry tiger

Nothing to do without feeling hatred for the killers

On the other side sympathized with the people in Gaza

The storm is blowing, the world moving in the cyclone

‘To be or not to be – that is the question’  

We, all stand in the puzzling and haggling queue

But justice never goes injustice

Time will take us to face the judge

And the victims must enter into their mirthful goal

Though out of sight,

Every day in the sprouting green fields

Where fresh oxygen makes our veins flow clean

And in the twinkling sky

They are laughing and singing the songs of joy!

How sweet they dream in sleep!

How would they lead their lives tomorrow?

Can we imagine?

 Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

 27  January, 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.

Enakhan Siddikova’s poem

“O walk in the world of the heart,

Teach your heart to follow your heart.

Do whatever it takes.

Teach me to be happy with you.”

Don’t make life difficult, don’t make him cry

Do not sink into the abyss forever.

An evening tormented by the torment of conscience,

To call someone a friend is to help him.

Don’t ask me what’s wrong, my friend.

Its melody is trust, its garden is loyalty.

Instantly knocks down a thousand-year-old wall,

A little hatred if felt in the hearts.

O walk in the world of the heart,

Teach your heart to follow your heart…

Nilufar Anvarova, 8th grade student of the creative school named after Erkin Vahidov.

THE DISCOUNT MAP

   writing rhymes

   of seasons and reasons

is a way of charting weather.

Try to know – somehow –

when it’s going to rain.

Map experience

and figure the cost.

Nothing is free

and sometimes half-off.

San Francisco and the Ongoing Homeless Situation

A few years ago there was an election, and as usual I received a Voter’s Information Handbook from the San Francisco Dept. of Elections.  Among the propositions there was the expected request for additional funding to solve the homeless crisis in our fair city.

 
One of the rebuttals to why this legislation was so important pointed out that there are over sixty agencies in San Francisco whose sole purpose is to ‘help the homeless.’  Well, I said to myself this equates to sixty sets of office infrastructure (computers, scotch tape, staplers etc.,) sixty sets of mortgages and/or rent, sixty sets of staff and sixty sets of Strategic Plans.  No wonder so little of the voted-for money is actually helping ‘the homeless.’

Once upon a time, some of the homeless lived rent-free in Golden Gate Park.  An intrepid group of them excavated a hill and made it livable.  Then the sweeps came and now there are only a few, forlornly holding their blankets and sleeping bags through the rain, the fog and the cold. In my Chi-Chi neighborhood they sometimes stumble through, looking like they’ve been in a war.

It’s possible for the sane ones to go to the San Francisco Public Library Main Branch and ask at the Information Desk for a Hossa Monday through Friday from 1-3 pm.  Hossas are formerly homeless individuals who have resource lists and information for shelter, showers, meals and clothing among other things.  The out-to-lunch people usually don’t care to hear about this as an option, rightfully fearing they will be put in-patient into a psychiatric ward.
It’s also tricky when the homeless have a dog or dogs because after someone was bitten at a library, dogs are not customarily allowed to visit the library branches, card or no card.

I found that the predominant feature almost all homeless people share is hunger, so I carry light, portable snacks.  Hunger bites.
Back to Golden Gate Park. In my younger years I worked for a Podiatrist, who crowed to me that, “I love joggers.” This was due to the fact that his foot patients who ran routinely on cement usually needed foot surgery at some point from all the wear and tear on their joints.  His solution that he shared with me (because I wouldn’t be caught dead jogging) was that if joggers exercised on grassy land, it would cushion the shock of running rather than destroying their bones.

Two more pieces of wisdom he was shared with me: 1) Try to buy two identical pairs of shoes – by alternating back and forth the shoes will last four times as long as if you were wearing one pair of shoes.  2) Leather gives.  When wearing patent leather, what gives is your feet.  He was an interesting character who also used to treat elderly Chinese women who had bound feet.

No one can make our homeless problem go totally away, but it’s good to use common sense and compassion to deal with the situation.
—

Since 1982 [in California] we have built 22 prisons and three universities. It costs $52,000 a year to house a prisoner, more than the tuition at Stanford.

-Heard on a broadcast of The Commonwealth Club

TREES

If you have only one

center of calm

(circle of intent &

compass of silver,)

stay among the trees

for they’re not bothered by

a storm.

KARST ON A SISTER HEAD

Karst on the head of a sister

Like a denudated surface of a home

Silence sings her name in a flying universe

She’s still a crawling baby with a portraits  

of a cracked verse on her palms

She’s  a sister in a carved star breathing 

fire 

When the stars reborn  she will be a 

diamond  castle of a new dawn.

               WISHES WERE DEAD SONGS

    I wish darkness was never a  dead song 

                           Of night….

    I wish it has never painted my mothers 

                tongue like a city of grief….

    I wish it was never a colour  and symphony 

                           of the dead…..

    I wish darkness turns white like paradise

                           on earth…..

    I wish it never swallows a brother in

                         his new world…..

Rahmat A. Muhammad is a poet from northern Nigeria.

GAZA

Gaza, land of ancient olive trees,

its branches, arms that implore the sky,

its leaves, yellowish green tears,

under a scorching sun, a slow fire.

Its houses, boats stranded on the sand,

hit by waves of war and apathy,

its walls, stories engraved in stone,

of resistance and pain, an open wound.

Its children, flowers that grow among rubble,

with eyes that reflect an uncertain tomorrow,

full of the uncertainty of reconstruction.

its laughter, echoes that seek a tomorrow,

in a withered garden, with no spring nearby.

Its streets, rivers of tears and hope,

that flow among ruins, looking for a way out,

its people, stars that shine in the night,

despite the darkness, a light on.

Gaza, a poem written in blood and pain,

a song to life, which resists the clamor,

a cry of hope, which rises to the sky,

a call for peace, a new future.

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.