At dusk
I undress my curtains
The sun smiles at my bed
As I kisses the rays of hope
The morning calls out my name
Awakening with golf dimples
Positive thoughts – river in my heart
Flowing like a peaceful flood
That is a mirror that reflects/shines future
I spread myself
spray my wings and fly
As a smile hugs me
Every single day I rise after the short death
A World with One Shortcoming
Winter… Everything was covered in white snow. The leaves of the trees had long since fallen in autumn. Now, their branches were adorned with snow. Birds that loved warmth had flown to other lands. Ra’no sister, as always, was busy with housework. Her husband was not at home. It had been 20 years since they started living together. However, they had no children. Every night, Ra’no sister would raise her hands in prayer, pleading Allah for a child. Her husband, unable to bear their childlessness, drank alcohol every day, drowning his sorrow in it. Finally, today was a joyous day. Ra’no sister’s prayers had been answered. Allah blessed them with a baby girl. Ra’no sister’s happiness was boundless. She was so delighted that she named her daughter Sevinch (Joy). She cherished her daughter dearly. Unfortunately, Asror bro was not pleased. He was disappointed because a daughter had been born instead of a son. But Ra’no sister paid no attention to his reaction.
Several years passed. The girl turned six. Now, she had become more aware of the world around her. Her mother pampered her a lot. Whenever the little girl played, her mother would drop everything and play with her like a child. If Sevinch laughed, her mother laughed with her; if she cried, Ra’no sister would cry even harder. Maybe because she became a mother later in life, she was extremely protective of her daughter and did not trust anyone with her. If her daughter felt even the slightest pain, the world would feel suffocating for Ra’no sister.
One day, they went to the market. The little girl stopped in front of the toys and started begging her mother: “Mommy, I really like this toy. Please buy it for me, please, please!”
Unfortunately, Ra’no sister did not have enough money left to buy the doll. That night, the girl went to sleep feeling disappointed. But her mother did not sleep. She took a scarf, which she usually wore on special occasions, and made a doll for her daughter. She crafted it so beautifully that anyone who saw it would be delighted. Finally, Sevinch reached school age. Her mother told her father about it. But Asror bro responded: “She will not go to school. Instead, she should help you with household chores. Will studying bring me the world?”
However, Ra’no sister did not want her daughter to remain illiterate like herself. She wanted her only source of happiness in this world to be just as good as everyone else. So, despite her husband’s wishes, she sent her daughter to school. Just as she had hoped, Sevinch became the top student in her class. But as she grew older, she started to hurt her mother’s heart more and more. She became irritated by her mother’s kindness and often snapped at her. One day, when her teacher invited Ra’no sister to a parent-teacher meeting, her beloved daughter coldly said: “I am ashamed of you and the clothes you wear. Don’t come to the meeting!” Then she slammed the door and left. That day, Ra’no sister cried a lot. True, she had money, but she saved every bit of it for her daughter and never spent a single penny on herself. Yet, when Sevinch returned home, Ra’no sister hid her sadness and welcomed her with a warm smile, just like always.
Asror bro, however, still hadn’t quit drinking. That night, he came home drunk again and started beating Ra’no sister. Their neighbors barely managed to save her. Sevinch had grown tired of such fights. She wanted to leave that place far behind. So, after graduating from school, she applied to a university in a distant city.
The happiest news was that she was accepted with a full scholarship. Now, she would live in the city. Her parents came to see her off. For the first time in his life, her father embraced her and handed her a phone he had bought for her. Her mother, on the other hand, couldn’t stop crying. She didn’t want to part with a piece of her heart. But her daughter, her life, had to go.
Sevinch arrived in the city. As she was unpacking her belongings, she noticed a large sum of money. Her mother had given her all the money she had saved, sacrificing her own needs for her daughter.
Sevinch quickly adapted to city life. In fact, she even fell in love with a young man. He loved her deeply as well. One day, he proposed to her, and she said “yes.” Now, it was time for their families to meet.
Finally, the day arrived, but the young man’s mother opposed the marriage because Sevinch came from a poor family. Their family was wealthy and well-off. Hearing this, Sevinch stood up and left in tears. But her unfortunate mother couldn’t bear to see her daughter’s pain. She went to the young man’s mother, begged her, and even fell to her knees, pleading for their happiness. At last, the woman agreed to the marriage—but on one condition. Neither the girl’s father nor mother should ever bother them, and they must not even attend the wedding. Left with no choice, the mother accepted the condition—for the sake of her daughter’s happiness. Not long after, the young couple’s wedding took place. Keeping her promise, Ra’no sister never disturbed them. But is there any greater pain for a mother than being separated from her child?
Unfortunately, her suffering did not end there—it only deepened. Her husband passed away. True, he had not been a good man, but he was still her companion in life. Breaking her promise, Ra’no opa called her daughter and told her that her father had died. Sevinch rushed to the funeral, but she felt neither love nor sorrow for him. The reason was simple: Asror bro had never been a father to her. He had never given her love. Less than a year later, Ra’no sister’s joy—her only child, Sevinch—was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was admitted to the hospital. She had only one month left to live. Ra’no sister set off for the city to see her daughter, crying endlessly, nearly losing her mind. On the way, she thought about life… and why this world is always missing something.
Call for submissions (in any language)
La Federación Global de Liderazgo y Alta Inteligencia Federación Global Liderazgo Y Alta Inteligencia te invita a participar en la Antología poética para el día de las madres : Madre, mujer y templo.
Cada uno participará en su lengua madre. Adjuntar carta de autorización de uso. Este es un proyecto académico. Se solicita poesía a dos cuartillas en formato libre. Semblanza de 50 palabras y fotografía. Adjuntar video leyendo su poema para subir a televisión digital , YouTube y plataforma de Facebook en Cabina 11 Cadena Global Escríbeme en privado para más detalles.
Deadline 20 de abril del 2025.
Cuota de participación 20 dólares americanos . Paypal : mexicanosenred@gmail.com
Se entregara certificado de participación . Y su vídeo se integrara al material audiovisual de la presentación del libro.
La obra estará disponible en la plataforma de Amazon.
DrA Jeanette Eureka Tiburcio
Ceo
Global federation of leadership and high intelligence
Mexico
Send your poems
Will be broadcast in
Satellite TV channel
Certificate will be issued
Send with your poems
Letter of consent that you accept your poems to get published in Amazon
Fees 20$
DrA Jeanette Eureka Tiburcio
Ceo
Global federation of leadership and high intelligence
Editor Mundial
Stockholm project 2033
Spectator Sport
Been watching from a distance
For a while now. Life does that
To us, makes us spectators
Assigns us back-row seats and
Just leaves us there. There I go
Again restating the obvious, just
Holding it up to look at again, as
If I hadn’t been paying attention.
I like to say “us.” I like to say “we.”
But I don’t really know if I’m here
Alone or with others, the us and we.
The show has been going on for
Quite some time. The players all
Know their parts. The curtains open
And close. The theme music for all
This keeps playing. The audience
If there is one beyond me is getting
Restless. How many more times?
How long does this go on? When
Will the house lights come on, and
I get to finally walk away?
Stopping
A stop sign, another piece of our day
A pause on our way getting there or
Getting back from wherever we were.
I like to stop as if I am on a timer, just
A second or two when I’m the only one
In line. I like to come to a complete stop
Like someone fresh from drivers’ ed, stop
Then go, a prescribed measure. I stop to
See if someone is crossing in the cross
Walk just then or a car’s going through or
Turning. If they are I feel that the purpose
For the sign has been served. There are
Reasons for things. Things are put in our
Way because sometimes we need to be
Reminded that other folks are coming or
Going too. We need to be reminded to stop
And admit to our place in things. We are
Just another car filling space, rolling or
Racing on, turning, timing getting where
We are going in a group of others doing
Exactly the same damn thing.
Of Course
The inevitable is sitting mid-desk
Lined up properly, as you would
Expect. An envelope with a letter
To the effect that the inevitable has
Come this way. At least it’s not
An email or one of those meetings
That was obviously put together at
The last minute, with all your co-
Workers elbow to elbow knowing
That the Inevitable has finally come
To you/to them. You wonder at this
Difference, a letter left conspicuously
Mid-desk top, waiting to tell you what
You know it will. They even spelled
Your name wrong, the way they do so
Often. The misspelling was a joke for
So long, but now it just adds insult to
Injury. You think about waiting to open
The inevitable later, after you’re home
Or sitting in Patty’s, three sheets to
The wind. But no, you’ll open it now.
This is private and immediate. You’ll have
To face alone like this, alone like this.
CURSE AND CURE
I am the witch who carries a coven within
and the convict who wears all his prisons inside;
the exorcist who fondles the beads and signs
and the amnesty dangling the keys aside.
MY TAILOR,
crisp in his pins and thimbles,
circles and takes my measure.
He garments me by his threads
and then applies his scissors.
EPONYMOUS
Think of the inventions
named for their inventors,
modest benefactors
made by Thomas Crapper
or infamous machines
that victimed Guillotine.
ANTIKARMIC
Ah! those lovenotes I sent–
Valentines back I get,
all addressed OCCUPANT
INANIMATE ENAMORATA
Pleeztameetyu / whaddyudu?
If I could do anything, I’d love to be your free flowing hair,
the fingertips of my follicles tickling your constant shoulders:
you, praising my full body to the skies–
I’d shear you clear off like a lamb’s wool in springtide!
or the palm softened wood of your habitual guitar
cradled into your passionate lap,
neck caressed to perfect pitch —
Even music, I’d gladly banish
if it meant pitching you!
the very odor eaters in your shoes,
if only I could embrace your soul —
But for a day only.
Then bedside
(eagerly coldly)
I’d abandon you
that’s as far as you’d ever get!
then, I guess I’d have to settle on
acting your bathroom mirror,
investigating your secret life
entire–
And I’d shatter your face into diamonds,
just like your illusions,
you peepfuckingpervert tom!
(leaving me in that case merely to wish upon
your vacant genital cavity
your manlacking pussy
handhungry tits,
that the
gap
in your ass beas
empty
as my harmless romantic fantasies–)
MIXED EMOTIONS
The Great Yes, The Great No
William Kentridge
Zellerbach Hall
Berkeley, California
For some people the day comes
when they have to declare the great Yes
or the great No. – Cavafy
Cal Performances presented the Bay Area premiere of William Kentridge’s new collaboration, The Great Yes, The Great No, on a recent chilly, rain-sprinkled March evening, to a standing ovation in a warm, dry, and packed Zellerbach Hall in the “People’s Republic of” Berkeley.
Truly, it was manna to the baffled left these days of a monstrous politics. And a stimulus and wonder even to skeptics of both progressives and reactionaries; echoes of Cavafy, Dante, and Carlyle were clearly not unintended. Even of Coleridge and “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”; even of the Narrenschiff – the “ship of fools” of the Middle Ages and Katherine Anne Porter’s bleak, modern fable.
The work, co-commissioned by the ever-questing Cal Performances for its Illuminations series (the theme this year is “Fractured History” – a timely phrase, as we threaten to crumble into a humblingly fractured present), is the latest in the South African artist’s theatrical undertakings, culminating most recently in Berkeley with the amalgam of fantasy and prophecy Sybil two years ago.
In Kentridge’s new work, we are introduced to a cargo ship repurposed for refugees, ploughing the seas of midcentury on a voyage to escape a Nazified Europe for temporary asylum in the New World. In March 1941, the Capitaine Paul-Lemerle left Marseilles for the Caribbean French colony of Martinique, bearing several hundred refugees, including luminaries such as “the pope of Surrealism” André Breton, Cuban artist Wifredo Lam, novelists Victor Serge and Anna Seghers, and the anthropologist and founder of structuralism, Claude Levi-Strauss: a ship of geniuses, culture avatars, and anti-imperialists fleeing a continent of psychopaths for the utopia of the irrational, of “revolution,” of “freedom.”
A curious but relevant fact about Martinique: it was the one island Napoleon allowed slavery (according to the libretto) when he abolished it throughout the Empire – and why? Because of Europeans’ insatiable desire for the sugar Martinique was known for and could not produce “economically” without its slaves.
Kentridge haunts his ship with figures from multiple eras binding the imperial center to the tiny Antillean island: the Martinican poet, and father of anti-colonialist theories of negritude, Aimé Césaire, and his wife Suzanne; the fellow Martinican sisters Nardal, whose Parisian salon incubated negritude with the Césaires and African writers such as Léopold Sédar Senghor and Léon-Gontran Damas; and other relevant phantoms: Napoleon’s beloved Martiquinaise Joséphine Bonaparte and the Martiniquais, and future revolutionary theorist, Frantz Fanon.
We were treated with Kentridge’s characteristically virtuosic blend of spoken word, dance, dream scene and song, surreal cartoon and reversed film sequence, liberated signifiers, extravagant costumes and portrait masks for each of the avatars, dancing tools and animated utensils (including one of his signature mottos, a twitchy, goofily animated typewriter), in this modern version of classic singspiel.
It took off on a wildly surrealist ride across time and geography, with a collage libretto combining quotations from the figures named and such notable subversives as Bertolt Brecht. Narrative is not Kentridge’s strong suit, and his attempts in that direction usually run aground on pancake-flat characters and prosaic plots (he has yet to quite realize that a story without logic (his explicit pet peeve, in this work, being reason and all its affiliates) is like a decalcified hippo: somewhere between a glob and a blot. He is at his best when indulging his imagination and letting poetry suggest where prose merely deafens.
At the head of the ship stood its captain, an African version of the classic Greek Charon, boatman of the underworld ferrying souls to their final ends. The captain (a brilliantly insouciant Hamilton Dhlamini) dropped many of the evening’s most provocative lines. Another performance especially shone; Nancy Nkusi as Suzanne Césaire, whose recital of the verses of her spouse Aimé, from his poem Cahier d’un retour au pays natal, provided much memorable imagery. Not least was her haunting appearance in a black-and-white film scene, crawling across a banquet table surrounded by tuxedoed gentlemen with the heads of coffeepots and the cannibalistic appetites of all empires.
A constellation of quotations were projected or spoken or sung, or all three, across the magic lantern–like astrolabe that backed the stage: “The Dead Report for Duty,” “The Boats Flee, But to Where?” “The World Is Leaking.” “These Are My Old Tears.” “The Women Are Picking Up the Pieces.”
And a Chorus of Seven Women sing, dance and comment on the mystico-political voyage throughout, translated into the native languages of the singers: Sepedi, Setswana, siSwati, isiZulu, in the music of Nhlanhla Mahlangu.
A small, tight musical ensemble accompanied the proceedings throughout, led by the percussionist and composer Tlale Makhene.
For all the cornucopia of imagery, word wonder and music, my feelings about the evening were obstinately mixed. What I loved were the endlessly inventive visuals Kentridge can always be counted to magic out of the bricolage of his imagination, the 360-degree projections of the ship, the gimcrack costuming, the slants of film and dashes of music, the rich, sly humorous poetry, both visual and verbal, that illuminates, in flash after flash, as much as it entertains.
But there was also an element of agitprop, of heavy-handed prose hectoring and editorializing as it blundered into the show – the poetry, singing, told us endlessly more than the political prosing, shouting, which performed the bizarre act of shipwrecking itself. And when there are positive references to such monstres sacrés as Trotsky and Stalin, I, for one, am out. An artwork makes a poor editorial: when it trades poetry for slogans, it thrills only a few converts.
There is, unhappily, an even more serious point to make. Something about the enterprise rubbed me the wrong way from the start. Late winter 2025 on planet Earth hardly seems the best time and place to be celebrating “the irrational.” Whatever we are facing, politically, historically, it cannot be called by any stretch of the imagination a “tyranny of reason” or the authoritarianism of the bourgeoisie. In the current moment, I, and I suspect many others, feel trapped inside a global surreal nightmare from which we may not be able to escape. A surrealist fantasy celebrating unreason seems perhaps not the most appropriate message for a world on the verge of shipwrecking on the reef of insanity.
Those of us cursed with a reflexive skepticism may not care much to embark (without security guarantees) on so dubious a journey. For every “Great Yes,” there is sometimes a small but potent “no.”
_____
Christopher Bernard is an award-winning novelist, poet, and essayist and author of numerous books, including A Spy in the Ruins (celebrating its twentieth anniversary in 2025) and The Socialist’s Garden of Verses. He is founder and lead editor of the webzine Caveat Lector and recipient of an Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award.
Our Jadid Grandpares!
Called for enlightenment,
Shone like the sun.
He thought of the people,
Our Jadid Grandpares!
How to get to Olay,
All are the popular hand.
The words are close to the nearest,
Our Jadid Grandpares!
Fitratu, Avloni
Cholponu, Kadyrids
Aqilu wise bii
Our Jadid Grandpares!
They are an ointment,
It is as if the heart is treated.
Stored in our hearts,
Our Jadid Grandpares!
Fergana region
Margilan
Erkin Vahidov Shite of Creativity
8th D class
Farzona Hoshimova