Cows Coming Home with Portrait of the Artist in a Sideview Mirror

“You say you want a revolution”
Adrian Brody on the set of The Pianist
“Both thrilling and disturbing when you see your own son
	can conjure ghosts”
Blown-up Soviet barracks in East berlin used to represent 
	Poland in WWII
Striped pajamas on hangars framed against windowlight, Dachau
Office telephone on a desk in Stasi headquarters, former East Berlin
Political prisoners in TV drama, Budapest
Extra on the set of a musical film about Collectivism, Your Rigged Life
“It’s for you” photo of a disconnected line hanging from a telephone pole
In a dream, the sleeping car compartment Jung emerged from
Single flower stuck into the snow on snow covered grave with headstone 
	elaborate carving of a young girl holding bouquet of flowers.
Watching the dismantling of a paper mâché statue of Stalin 1989
Toppled, wrecked statues, from heroes row, as junk
Déjà vu all over again
Pretend execution of two teenage boys up against the Berlin Wall
Mother’s warning to daughter after collapse of Communism 1990,
	“Beware, things will get worse.”
Was she right?
Empty picture frame on a bureaucrat’s wall formerly reserved for a
	portrait of Marshall Tito, Belgrade
Marina, a porn actress getting a manicure watched by a fascinated 
	young girl
Lighting candles for the dead 40th anniversary of Hungarian Revolution
 

Scrambled Rice (Stan), Annotated

Small Self-portrait (Prototype for Anne’s vampire?)
Cave Wall Late 20th Century (The Internet of things)
The Lighter Side of War
Demon and Cherubs at Play
“A painter paints to unload himself of feeling and visions”
Said Picasso
Two Hell’s Angels Taking Christ Down from the Cross While
	Drinking Wine in California with a Mule
Ascending Oranges
Narcissus in Heat
Head du Jour (Christ in a crock pot)
Busts (like death masks) (Not tits, busts)
Visitation of the Wisemen (The Nightmare)
Hitler Denies to Six Million Jews the Watermelon of Life
Adam and Eve Riding from Eden on Beasts
Public Dance (Like early David Lynch experimental films)
Guerilla Penetrated by Projectile Clown (see the Lighter Side of War)
Woman with a Wooden Indian
Satyrs Dancing
Dogs fighting at Paris Carnival
Day 1 ( of the Autocracy with out of focus TV screen shot 
	of Big Brother)
Rooster Mistakenly Sent in as a Linebacker
“You’re Innocent When You Dream” (after Tom Waits)
Nine Attempts to Paint Hitler as a Baby (“after trying unsuccessfully 
	eight times; you get only rats, then the baby”)
Rembrandt Departing by Limo
De Kooning refusing an honorary academic degree said, “I can’t 
	see myself as an academic. I think of myself as a song and 
	dance man”
Don’t Believe Everything You Read (printed in Bold on a canvas
	titled “Recline Nude.” There is no nude figure)

 

Mary Woronov

Self-describes as “a rat in the sewer of popular culture”
(she’s) the sweet and sour chicken on our cosmic mine
(An) Exploding Plastic Inevitable
Mary Bland 
Eating Raoul
Dancing Mary
Singing Mary
Mary Wonderly
Mary Woronov
Rock ‘n Roll High School
Death Race 2000
Fur Coat in Florida
Life Studies Without Models
First the paintings, then the stories
Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills
Secrets of the Chambermaid
Where Sleeping Dogs Lie
Blue and Brittle
Boy Dares Car to Run Over His Girlfriend
Hollywood Hangover
Uneasy Rider
One Night Stands
Red Death
Anxiety, Grief, Depression, Pain
At first, the picnic looked like an after-lunch massacre
Giant black cinders floated from the sky onto California snow
(A) Wake for the Fallen Angels

 
Hawkes’ Hell’s Angels, The Cannibal

“The night was so black that the red lights from the hatches
	of his tanks would have reflected against the clouds
	and brought death.”
“It was years since the people had stopped talking.”
“The child ran all the faster when the light went out in the
	butcher shop.”
“…jewels of tin cans littered the indefinable yards without
	lawns or bushes.”
“She wondered how the strange wild cannibals on tropical
	islands or on the dark continent, running with white 
	bones in their hair, in the shimmering sand, could
	bear, in only their feathers, this terrible sun.”
“Behind them one of the chickens began to scream and a
	speck appeared in the sky.”
“The policeman’s call faded into nonsense.”
“He was in the presence of the white lady of the other world.”
“The dark angel stood in the doorway cutting off the candlelight
	from the other world.”
“How peculiar, the wooden man and fleshless God, they kept
	company.”
“In Winter Death steals through the doorway sending for both
	young and old and plays for them in his court of law.”
“At last, the rats and the monkeys died.”
“Their bodies were strewn over the main grounds, and since 
	they froze, they looked life like, tangled together in 
	the snow.”
“It was difficult keeping the patients from the heaps of small black
	corpses.”


 
On Assignment for Joseph Pulitzer, Nellie Bly’s, 
	Ten Days in a Madhouse

“I felt a quixotic desire to help them by sympathy and presence.”
“Could I pass a week in the insane ward at Blackwell’s Island?
	(later renamed Welfare Island) I could, I would, I did.”
“How will you get me out?”
“The more sanely I talked and acted the crazier I was thought
	to be.”
“The woman had a hideous nightmare. She had been dreaming
	of me.” 
“It is only after one is in trouble that one realizes how little 
	sympathy and kindness there are in the world.”
“People on charity should not expect anything and should nit 
	complain.”
“The eating was one of the most horrible things.”
“Choking and beating patients”
“It’s a crime to lock people up and freeze them.”
“She would talk into steam heaters or get up on a chair and talk
	out the window.”
“You don’t need to expect any kindness here, for you won’t get it.”
“Promenading with lunatics.”
“How will you get me out?”
“My face was the brightest he had ever seen in a lunatic.”

Shroud 

You toiled in that suffering death 
to which no one has consented, 
it because death is an open wound, 
with death in passing death. 

And the eternal moment of life is an opal 
the apple, the serpent and sin are the original 
consented by Adam and Eve to be reborn 
like blood that is not made of water and flows. 
You embodied an idea in your watch, 
the prayers of the man who prayed, 
relic of culture and holy sacred religions 
they created holograms from a cloud. 
Believers worship icons, statues 
and clouds with human incarnations, 
when fear dominates pure thought 
as an artificial myth that has eroded consciousness.

BIOGRAPHY

Lidia Popa was born in Romania in the locality of Piatra Șoimului, in the county of Neamț, on 16th April, 1964. She finished her studies in Piatra Neamț, Romania with a high school diploma and other administrative courses, where she worked until she decided to emigrate to Italy. 

She has been living for 23 years and worked in Rome as part of the wave of intellectual emigrants since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
She wrote her first poem at the age of seven. She is a poet, essayist, storyteller, recognized in Italy and in other countries for her literary activities. She collaborates with cultural associations, literary cenacles, literary magazines and paper and online publications of Romanian, Italian and international literature. She writes in Romanian, Italian and also in other languages as an exercise in knowledge. 

BOOKS

She has published her poems in six books:
in Italy:
1. " Point different ( to be ) " - ed. Italian and
2." In the den of my thoughts ( Dacia ) " - ed. bilingual Romanian/ Italian Aletti Editore 2016,
3.“ Sky amphora " - ed. bilingual Romanian/ Italian Edizioni Divinafollia 2017,
in Romania:
4. " The soul of words" ed. bilingual Romanian/ Albanian Amanda Edit Verlag 2021,
5." Syntagms with longing for clover " ed. Romanian, Editura Minela 2021.
6." The Voice interior " Lidia Popa and Baki Ymeri ed. bilingual Romanian/Italian, Amanda Edit Verlag 2022.

Her poems featured in more than 50 literary anthologies and literary magazines on line from 2014 to 2023 in Italy, Romania, Spain, Canada, Serbia, Bangladesh, United Kingdom, Liban,USA,etc.
Her poems are translated into Italian, French, English, Spanish, Arabic, German, Bangladesh, Portuguese, Serbian, Urdu, Dari, Tamil, etc.
Her writings are published regularly with some magazines in Romania, Italy and abroad.
She is a promoter of Romanian, Italian and international literature, and is part of the juries of the competitions.
She translates from classical or contemporary authors who strike for the refinement and quality of their verses in the languages: Italian, Romanian, English, Spanish, French, German, stating that "it is just a writing exercise to learn and evolve as a person with love for humanity, for art, poetry and literature ".

SHE IS
*Member of the Italian Federation of Writers (FUIS)
*Honorary member of the International Literary Society Casa Poetica Magia y Plumas Republic of Colombia,
*Member of Hispanomundial Union of Writers (Union Hispanomundial de Escritores) (UHE) and Thousands Minds For Mexico (MMMEX)
*President UHE and MMMEX Romania, August 21, 2021
*She had come power of attorney Vice-president UHE Romania, Mars18, 2021- August 21, 2021
*President UHE and MMMEX Romania, August 21, 2021
*Counselor from Italy for Suryodaya Literary Foundation Odisha India,
*Director from Italy for Alìanza Cultural Universal (ACU) Argentina
*Member Motivational Strips Oman,a member of numerous other literary groups at the level internationally,
*Director of Poetry and Literature World Vision Board of Directors (PLWV) Bangladesh
*Membership of ANGEENA INTERNATIONAL NON PROFIT ORGANISATION of Canada
International Peace Ambassador of The Daily Global Nation International Independent Newspaper from Dhaka Bangladesh - 2023
*Founder literary group Lido dell'anima with LIDO DELL'ANIMA AWARDS
*Founder LIDO DELL'ANIMA Italian magazine
*Founder SILVAE VERBORUM INTERNATIONAL multilingual magazine
*Founder literary currently #homelesspoetry
etc.

THE COVETED YELLOW TEA SET

Oh the old teacup handle broke today
Quite accidentally I am sad to say
Because it was the family treasure
Only used in small measure

Oh what a  pleasure it had been
As a child to have gazed at the yellow set
From the glass mirror of the cabinet
Nose squashed against the glass with longing eyes

Eyes wide with dreamy sighs 
Of using the coveted yellow tea set some day
Which didn't come in my parents’ time
Finally gifted to my daughter many years down the line 

Hence, dear friends, before the dust catches it all
Use the beautiful sari which still hangs in the cupboard many years’
Or the red T-shirt which lies untouched
Or soon you’ll  feel shy to wear a colour so bold

Do you hoard waiting for a suitable day?
A dress, a shirt, an event or travel?
Do not tary, dear friend, time is short, 
You may never use that old treasured thing you bought

Or visit that favourite place
Or say those loved words
Time swishes past 
Like sand in an hour glass doesn’t last!


Sushama Kasbekar

SOME ISSUES OF CHECKING ADVANCED VERSIONS IN THE INVESTIGATION OF CRIMES CAUSING INTENTIONAL BODILY INJURY

Rahmatullayeva, daughter of Jasmina Abduvahid, 2nd stage student of World Economy and Diplomacy University

ANNOTATION

The article develops proposals based on the use of tactical and methodological tools recommended by the investigation method, as well as on the basis of preliminary information about the reason for
the use of weapons, traces, the identity of the victim and the infliction of bodily injuries and the correct organization of the investigation.

Keyword. Body injuries, the victim, the instrument of the crime, jealousy, alcohol

INTRODUCTION
With the decision of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan on May 14, 2018 “On measures to radically improve the system of criminal and criminal procedural legislation” PQ 3723[1], the Criminal
and Criminal Procedure of the Republic of Uzbekistan as the main directions and tasks of improving the legislation: unification of norms of criminal legislation; effective and reliable protection of citizens’ rights and freedoms, society and state interests; improvement of the mechanisms of reliable guarantee of the rights and freedoms of the person in the criminal proceedings; it was decided to introduce new forms and procedures of the criminal process.

When carrying out the investigation of the cases of intentional bodily injury to the investigation, the case related to the honor, dignity and other inviolable rights of the person and the crimes with a low social risk. There are more and more cases in which it is necessary to obtain his consent. In the investigation of these crimes, it is appropriate to conduct the case based on the grounds of dispositiveness.

DISCUSSION AND RESULTS

Intentional bodily injury crimes are serious and the investigative method is considered to be one of the most complicated incidents. The application of the criminalistic investigation method in the
investigation of the intentional bodily injury crime is focused on determining the cause of bodily injury to the victim: determining whether the intentional bodily injury occurred as a result of an
attack.

Therefore, in any case, intentional bodily injury should be investigated based on the rules of the criminal investigation method in a suspicious situation. Criminals use various methods and
weapons to commit intentional bodily injury crimes. In most cases, they cause injuries with shooting and cold weapons, various household items (knife, ax, ax), and some hard object (such as iron,
stone).

Methods of intentional bodily injury, motives of criminal action, place, time, consequences of the incident, traces, weapons, all these make up the criminalistic description. Some of its elements are related to each other, stemming from and complementing each other. In particular, elements such as the subject of the crime, the victim, the weapon used, and the crime scene are closely related, and
the traces (consequences) left by each element are reflected in other elements, and the observation and investigation of one depends on it.

When determining the criminalistic description of the crime,
determining the sequence of the above-mentioned cases, the origin of the situations at the scene of the incident, the consequences of one of them leaving certain traces on the other, is the basis for the
success of the initial stage of the investigation. Based on the experience of investigative practice it can be said that the most common crimes of intentional bodily harm are committed in residential buildings, public places, on the streets, where the consequences of the crime, weapons, traces are
not hidden, and the person who committed the crime sometimes does not run away, does not hide.

Such crimes often occur as a result of malice, revenge, jealousy, hooliganism, conflicts between two criminal groups. In these cases, the detection and investigation process of crimes of intentional
bodily injury is not very difficult. Using the tactical and methodical tools recommended by the investigative method and developing versions-images based on the initial information about the weapons, traces, the identity of the victim and the cause of the injury at the scene of the incident, and properly organizing the investigation, i.e. the case it will be possible to reveal and prove it within the appropriate time frame.

In some cases, the crime of intentional bodily injury is committed in a
hidden situation, without witnesses, using the darkness of the night, the absence of a person. Tries to take it with him. Investigation of such crimes is complex from the point of view of proof and causes some difficulties. In the investigation of this type of intentional bodily injury, the investigator must use specialized skills, be able to use the preliminary investigation information correctly, and perform prompt and quality investigative actions that cannot be delayed [2 ].

In the investigation of crimes of intentional bodily harm, it will be possible to obtain preliminary information about the method of its implementation, motives, the weapons used, and the person who committed it. In cases where the identity of the victim is known, it will be possible to create relevant versions-pictures about the criminal, the relationship between them, and the methods of committing the crime. It is possible to find and arrest a person suspected of a crime by obtaining information about the places of intentional bodily injury to the victim of a criminal incident and conducting preliminary investigative actions.

Intentional bodily harm committed in urban settings is often aimed at eliminating traces of crime. If the places where the crime of intentional bodily harm was committed are in different regions, it is
necessary to determine the connection and compatibility of these places. Another description of the crime of intentional bodily harm is the method of its commission. The method of committing intentional bodily harm includes the weapon used, the means, the act, the preparation of the crime in advance and the attempt to remove the traces of the crime.

Intentional bodily injury caused by domestic disputes, jealousy, bullying, under the influence of alcohol and drugs is almost always done without prior preparation.) or another means of injury and
achieves its goal. If intentional bodily harm is done with malicious intent or against the victim’s position, duty, the criminal prepares in advance; determines the place and time. After committing the crime, the criminal tries not to leave footprints and handprints. These cases determine the need to obtain information about the identity of the criminal and among whom to search for him [3].

Efforts to cover up the traces of these crimes sometimes involve masking the injury to make it look like another incident. Depriving the victim of intentional bodily injury, inflicting severe injuries, pushing him from a height, creating the appearance of a mask, etc.

Describing the identity of the victim of intentional bodily injury also helps to make the right clues and find the suspect at the initial
stage of the investigation. When the victims of intentional bodily harm are women, in most cases they are victims of violence, malice or jealousy. The relationship between the criminal and the victim
is related to each other and indicates the reason for the criminal outcome and the content of the intention.

A suspect who has caused bodily harm with intent can be characterized as follows, based on investigative practice. Males between the ages of 18 and 50 who use alcohol or drugs are often
abusive, immoral, disrespectful to the community and women, and have previous convictions. Some of the actions of the criminal who caused the injury – inflicting a lot of injuries on the victim with
extreme lack of mercy, inflicting physical injuries on his close relatives and family members indicate his mental disorder, such cases can be included in typical situations [4 ].

Atypical cases also occur in investigative practice. The criminal is well-versed in the handling of weapons, has mastered the use of shooting or cold weapons in military service or on the basis of
special training, and determines in advance the preparation for the crime and the loss of traces of it after committing it. Such situations creates some complexity at the initial stage of the investigation.

However, according to the law of criminal activity, no crime can leave its consequences and traces, therefore, any crime, including the crime related to intentional bodily harm, has been successfully
investigated, will be exposed.

In conclusion, it should be noted that pre-trial investigation of cases of intentional bodily injury, circumstances that must be determined in the initiation and investigation of crimes, features of the development of investigative methods, the conduct of the case to the court is a complex technology.

Should be recognized as Because he performs a complex, complex and responsible task as part of proceedings before the court. This is a separate special proceeding on intentional bodily injury, the
procedural and organizational-methodical activities related to its specific features are interconnected.

REFERENCES

1. Decision PQ 3723 of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan “On measures to radically improve the system of criminal and criminal-procedural legislation” adopted on May 14, 2018
   //http://lex.uz/docs/ 3735818 (national database of information on legislation of the Republic of
   Uzbekistan).
2. Avakyan M.V. Metodika rassledovaniya i podderjaniya gosudarstvennogo obvineniya po delam ob umyshlennom prichinenii tyajkogo vreda zdorovyu: Diss. … doc. Walk science – Kalingrad, 2017. – C. 51.
3. Bezruchko E. V. Prestupleniya, posyagyushchie na bezopasnost zdorovya cheloveka: teoretikopravovoe issledovanie: Diss. … doc. Walk science – Rostov-on-Don, 2018. – S.45.
4. Bespechnyi O. V. Teoreticheskie i prakticheskie problemy rassledovaniya prespleniy, svyazannyx s
   prichineniem tyajkogo vreda zdorovyu: dis. … candy. Walk nauk / O. V. Bespechnyy. – Barnaul,
5. – P.121.

LOVE 

We love things which look beautiful 
Or things which are useful.
And when things lose beauty 
Or turn useless, 
The love evaporates.

But men and women 
When fall in love,
These benchmarks of 
Beauty and utility
Turn irrelevant.

Love like hope springs eternal 
In human heart 
And stays 
Even when cheeks lose glow 
And winds lose their blow.

Offspring is loved by the living species 
But when parents grow old, 
Or if some accident 
Breaks a child beyond repair, 
How long can love be stretched?

Animals are loved only so long 
As they give milk.
Or they have enough strength 
In their knees to pull the carts, 
Before being sold out to the slaughter house 

Love of this land has its limitations 
Even men and women who love
Sometimes find it a burden 
And rush to the courts. 
Who carries a relation reduced to a carcass?

Earth is a different type of mother 
And God a doting father 
Who call to their embrace 
Voyagers whose boats were broken 
Before they could cry "Eureka".


Dr. Jermail S. Aaand
India 

My Mother’s Sky

(Eileen (Lee Porter) Grayhurst 1930-2024)

The Death Journey

Space around the memories,

walking the cul-de-sac,

house to house, in a dream

where the small school stood and the field

is just the same where you linked arms

with your teacher and talked,

bright with your awakening into literature.

The trees are stronger, thicker-trunked,

living non-violent as they expand

and take up more ground.

Space from room to room and five hawks

fill the sky, then merge with the sky over the lake

and the vast line of clouds, changing temperature.

She drives her last car drive,

into this emptiness that does not hurt

but offers no comfort.

After the drive

the love in her blazes refreshed

as she sits in her lazy boy chair,

forgetting her sickness and old age,

blazes the whole scope of her magnificence,

strongest in her compassion.

This last journey we will have together.

We will overcome together until the end

and even then

there will be no ending, just a change,

space, I cannot fathom,

space added between us, space experienced

sometimes as a shedding of plumage,

sometimes, as a wasps’ nest touched,

accidental unbearable sting.

Before I remember

blank days, atheist days

that left me sombre-hard,

but these days

are brim with harrowing storms,

prayers and keepsakes infused

with intractable meaning, memories

ripe and revered as a newborn’s flesh.

Before, my soul was below, breaking

through the body regularly, in pieces,

but these days it sits on the surface,

intact, a glass sphere without protection,

thrown and rolling, like

a lightning fuse, cracked.

These days there are no pointed steps,

but each day is like the first sun rays seen,

heightening my energy to be as kind and capable

as possible as the bringing pulse lives in a jar,

is taken out of the jar, and dying takes its fill,

and death runs in circles around the dream

and everything within the dream

that is real and everlasting is quenched

when the days are these days

sober and groaning, rising

break-and-fall, cresting hard

with this shining golden sharp

hurt, breath-taking.

Tricky blood dripping

into upper wall cracks,

through the grout tracks

and into winter’s foreboding

months ahead.

How does it take so little to examine

the underside and know it is rotten,

flesh covered but disintegrating

underneath?

How many hands have to wash

at the same sink until the basin gets cracked

and the taps only release a trickle?

Tomorrow is today is

a slow-moving line bruised

with intensity and trauma,

clothed in brackets that shift then fall

then plateau before they fall again.

What seems unending

will end and when it ends

an ocean of emptiness will

consume. The dragon’s nest

will be disturbed and

heat will flow its lava-reach and hot depth

into the ordinary, the extraordinary

and everything in between.

This star is imploding into a vacuous

vacuum-suck and spiral break, spinal break

that breaks any chance for mobility.

When it ends it will be my end,

orphaned, no hidden curses, icons will be broken,

and saints will be laid bare, naked, exposed before God.

So end, my mother, but do not end,

be like a songbird blasting her song

before the sun even rises, glorifying,

and watch the heavenly bodies

surrounding, lifting your soul gently,

transforming you naturally

to breaststroke through

sun-bearing ridges

rising, dipping

divine dimensions.

The backside of the shadow

is awake, and losing ground again

burning in the sinkhole, into

a conclusion of harsh hard

cause-and effect.

Eyelids lower, sleep is never rest

but a patchwork horror-show

of violence and loss and things

once perfect, stolen

behind locked doors.

Underground, the circus continues

and I will never find my way out

of this mirrored maze.

I know that if I lie flat in the stark silence,

mortal eroding flesh is inevitable.

Extravagant love always has a price.

The price owed has been paid and I must leave

the turning circle, step past the fissure-groove

and sink into a faith abiding.

I will walk with you reckless

over this abandoned lake,

skipping across veiled skin ice,

thinning, seeing through, skipping,

and somehow never a crack will form

and never your toe nor my heel

falling through.

The smell of worms.

A feast that rages inside

the system-nerves, taking

the body to extreme outerspace,

thresholds of reason

and waiting in the death-year

the year of exhaustion – one day brushed

with energizing hope, and the next,

crumbled, withdrawn.

What is deception in this playing field?

What is an honest ascent that will also

echo into the roots and stay there?

The distance to carry this weighted reality

is unknown, the duty within it, and the love,

is immediate and unquestioning.

So I stay, pressed against the mountain,

pressed against this aching uncertainty.

Pressed and moving and mourning

each conversation, trusting

that the sharp pointed misery

will not pitch, that peace will expand

until peace overcomes.

Arrow stream

in between existences

splashing between shores,

forced to confront her ancient

criticism that has wrapped

my mind-frame and grown

a shadow as cumbersome

as a heavy chain.

This land she demands me to walk on

crowns me with gruelling labour,

hijacking my dignity and sense of equality.

It is a constant place of servitude merging

with guilt and a dismissal of my strength

and true worth.

This red line drawn is crossed over,

onto hot sands without sandals.

Mine is to give but not to neuter

my prayers – rage and pity colliding.

I will give but I will not have

my music reined and whipped

and tossed like a dusty bag

with the rest of the clipped toenails.

I will tell her what I cannot tell her,

by not owning her hierarchical demands

as I give, as I am placed within

this imprisoned place

as her sickness and drug-induced mania

takes control –

her petty compulsions incurable,

but my love for her

so much more.

            Kaleidoscope flaming,

her eleven colours remaining

mixed and pure and still swirling,

undimmed

by suffering’s panicked toll

Too much dust and debris

filling the vents, my lungs.

Twisted plots of imagined problems

flung across the river without

factual explanation.

So I endure and I count my numbers

to hold in my anger, hold back my tears

and keep doing the soft servitude and

diligent care I am accustomed to,

instead of doing what I want to do –

withdraw, fold up and out

for at least a good week.

Too much drug-induced insanity whispers,

whispering accusations that hold no water,

but cut and kill just the same

all my good will, my enduring effort

and my exhausted heart that believed at least

it has kept itself true.

The crow almost hits the moving car,

almost goes under the wheel. Instead

it somersaults and avoids being clipped

by inches, flying in front of the car window,

raised away by maneuvering a mounting wind.

Too much blood without redemption.

Too much condemnation for a false claim,

a winter blank and brutal,

not of my own making.

Remember, remember –

the crow caws and reverberates

into the white cells, red cells

or your bloodstream –

Remember

God gives nothing easy,

nothing worthy of keeping

that doesn’t first eviscerate

before reseeding

your radiant core.

How can I rock

between the eaten bread

and the rotten leftovers,

filling plates with putrid smells

and locked-in rage that rages in

an insomniac relentless punch

and tilt – twisting the bowels,

concerned only with petty victories?

How can I keep my self open

while needing full-on protection

from her drug-induced distancing eyes?

How can I live through another day

of exhausting intensity, with unveiled

shameless fears filling space and

the brutal-swerve

of a lingering inevitable?

How can I hold on until the end

hold out until permission is granted

to at last collapse flat out,

unfold, fold?

Last days, these days

roll like a slow-moving stone

across a stony terrain –

many bumps, inclines, declines

and turns.

Last days, restless then at peace

then restless again

as limitations close in so only

the essentials remain.

Last days are these days

soaked with this blazing wound, continuing.

These days there are no more plans

but to live through the days letting in

the undefiled grace that rises like vapour at dusk

through the balcony-door crack,

through her smile which she still manages occasionally,

keeping pace with the clawing hunger for relief

and the undercurrent smells of sickness.

These days are the last days

I can love you,

and how I love you, my mother –

your bright sailboat stalled

in the maw of this menacing wave

surging.

It is clear

that finally we are

adopted into the universe’s time frame,

that time is not counted by cards

or the constellations.

Clear that light is not light-weight

but heavy

when it transforms.

Cracked leather belts tighten like nooses,

dreams crack then shatter and scatter

their fragments down the drain.

God is in the laundry room.

God is in her laboured respiration

and in her smile she now only shows

to strangers.

It is clear dying is not death.

It is its own journey –

a body breaking, a soul struggling

and losing

no matter the effort

to keep itself here, whole.

I wish I was a snail

robbed of its shell, squished

underfoot, drying up in the

sun

so all that was left

of me was a thin crust of skin

that found its way into pavement pores,

and I could be disintegrated, be no more.

I wish I had no responsibilities

but to my solitude, my own thoughts

waking and sleeping.

I wish I never tried to love

because now I know

I have failed at love, to love,

to be strong when open, protecting

not only from the outside but inside too,

taking on others’ spiritual burdens,

not out of kindness

but out of cowardice and the delusion

that the world is anything but

a lulling zone of harsh beggary

and bully imagination.

I am a broken toy kicked to curb.

I am nothing. I have nothing and

I wish I was a snail, dried up,

sensory-dead, flat

and inconsequential.

I don’t know how to sing.

My legs have become old

and there are no more believers

around me.

Clasped in a never-opening lair

with active lava and no windows,

I cannot find the cave through the narrow incline,

trapped, submerged.

I cannot sing or breathe or be here

as I am broken down

bloodied and maimed.

I cannot continue to move,

pretend the feeling light is inside me

when it isn’t, when most days

I wish it was over and the throne of my failure

would burn with myself along with it.

Chaos, eroding sickness,

and the brutal cold reign supreme

Everything I have done

is shattered in a pit

with no way to reassemble or resume.

I don’t want to be here

I don’t want the natural law

but only God’s mercy.

I cannot sing.

My memories are false, used-up

and dissipating.

Exhausted like a willow tree

is exhausted after a storm

but the storm keeps thrashing

and scooping all strong things once rooted

to the ground, releasing them across

the lawn like a brick thrown to the head,

like a dream inhabited in its ghoulish

madness, running but getting nowhere.

The suffering, the need

and the love that keeps

it together but not always.

Nerves dosed in gasoline –

fire just feet away but still at bay.

Breathing for one day, taking no messages, hearing

no extreme complaints. The doors are closed.

The balcony window is open. I step out,

there is a sky and a hawk merging with the clouds.

How much more can I hold?

And then it will be over, and I will hold no more,

not her frail hand, not her scent, not her eyes

with my eyes in deep and struggling prayer,

not her body leaning into my arms,

her full weight surrendered.

A day of reprieve,

wearing a costume and getting

in a car.

A day when the light

is unhooked from its source

and no one will say why

We will just carry on as through

this distress is natural

as though it is a wave to endure

instead of a captive fall.

A day of reverie,

the last time of gathering

and playing the role

The first Christmas at her home

The first time she will sleep through

most of it.

A day that we thought would not come

with her still with us.

So we are grateful

and we take this day

putting our mourning aside

this day – a winter-solstice flower

bearing its last bloom

before the advancing frost.

After the end,

when the end comes

and speaking is useless,

her home will be a torch

blown out – her turquoise eyes,

curtained. Sorrow will open

like a jar of dragonflies, fireflies

released as one.

And even then, when resigned

to the careful truth, the separation

will ache like a phantom limb,

like a stillborn child held, kissed,

never receiving.

As the end approaches,

I will have to force the basics

of breathe, sleep, eat

for her sake and those around me

who love her equally as I do.

I will forget about hope

and then later I will remember

her eyes, alit with playful joy,

her summers spent on proud

adventures and the way she loved me,

never giving up, generous

as an empathetic and beautiful queen,

loving me

without understanding me

but trusting me

all the same.

Repeating, the days

knowing a different day will only be worse,

veiling the eyelids, opening an emptiness

that will never be eased.

Repeating but nor forever, but

longer than anticipated. In spite

of the great love you feel, you feel

used-up, under appreciated.

But this is her now, diseased and drugged,

does not diminish her glowing

life-long compassion, her extravagant tolerance

and kindness, connection to everyone, her softness

that still peels away the crust in an instant

when her heart is touched, when faith

is required.

Duty has made work in the garden

impossible, waking up,

a barren chore.

The mountains have dropped,

flattened out into a steady plane.

Energy I gave up as mine, came back,

surprising me with my own resilience,

stamina to hold the days together one after another

until they became months, a way of life and service.

This gift like a curse like a gift

necessary to pluck

my soul from a rut it had no awareness it was even in

until out, until forced to hold a different tune

and play it until it becomes naturally possible,

a place of unbelievable challenge met,

a place to live without

decisions, conclusions,

live as an open-end-nerve swimming

stroke by stroke upstream –

most times lit on fire,

a few times resting on the bank,

looking around

tamed, soothed.

I cry out throughout the night.

I cry for the thousands due to die

who still remain unclaimed.

A slow step through misery, with moments

intermittent of a pure turquoise glow.

A gradual waking into loss and the definite

abyss of absolute letting-go.

Mid-sleep panic that wakes

me with its red tentacle squeeze

crushing my mind,

and the steady breath I need to endure

another tomorrow.

I cry out but I keep it contained –

my flesh without hope

my spirit committed to this sacred duty

as the rest of me is battered, broken-branched

bearing, feebly carrying

one collapsed body, now another.

A kiss

A curl

a look out

a look beyond

a rosy anticipation.

All things compare to each other

in the dark gloom of dissatisfaction,

meaningless activity

reaching its zenith then back to the nadir and

spinning again.

Painting helps and even singing a familiar song

but these things do not break the loop

or contain more than a flawed and temporary ease.

Hands down, Hands open and the mind saying

now- be brave!

Love is deeper than darkness

more unexpected and varied than the checkpoints

of delusion, chaos and dementia.

Love then, widespread.

Take on that love

and place what weighs you down

into the wet cement blocks

of this unhappy nightmarish decline.

Do this and inherit

the dreamy peace

and its mortal claim.

Do this and be devoted

to good service, knowing

all else is bloodshed,

must be shed to earn your keep

and beeline your way to

a maturing discipline,

an invincible pronouncement –

angelic terror

where only

this slender slice of light exits

to squish through,

beckoning, supreme.

I do not know

the treatment

the reasons

for such a grand tribulation

I have only achieved this interval

of a tiny budding joy,

a respite from the imploding friction.

I do not know if it is more than

a respite, if it is a crossing over,

a victory over infection and chronic chaotic influences

but today she walks a little stronger, limping still

but improving her gait.

Today the Earth is this simple location,

open to the angels and to recovery.

I did not expect this calamity, collapse of

every dream, but my eyes are lifting.

I don’t need a massive harvest, just food

enough to sustain and faith enough

for a mild liberation.

Melody screeched to a halt,

bubble big, too big, extinguished.

I relinquished my faith for answers.

Gruesomely unattractive

in full sight

in sharp black and white

immutable, I wanted

control like some want pleasure,

like one without restrictions

or moral aptitude.

Demons aggressively demanded my trust

underserved, making up stories

to turn failures into victories.

Hell is the steel-illusion-force of truth inverted

where there is no bowing down to the greater

authority, who is God, in charge,

unpredictable, not a pawn to use to

increase power, not a valium pill

to ease my anxiety while

traversing the treacherous unknown.

In that journey there is only one activity,

only faith resuscitating,

the outcome irrelevant –

a blue streak across a grey sky,

feasting on surrender.

Sandbox throughout the vastness

take away the end of time

and I will slide like a globe,

like a planet, bursting stars

as I go, grounding suns and

drowning blackholes in my wake.

I will peel back tomorrow,

compost it into a Sunday secret

gasping for a solitude it will never find

or play-in again.

Take the hunger from Infinity and

I will be open as an abyss, spending money

like everyday is my birthday, my death day.

I will give birth away from

the tempting waters of deception

that conceal choice in hesitation

that drive the mystic to forsaken symbolism,

that pull the spine from its vertebrae, rotating

in one split-second choice,

while looking at it, desiring it, looking like

something worth the price of a soul.

Boredom demands at least a breeze,

at least a far-off flutter to speak the hope

that angels are real.

Take us out of this passageway,

underground mazes, mole homes

that imply safety. The sun is a sea lion.

We will ride beside him and he will coach

us to swerve and flip,

avoid the jellyfish and the stingray.

Meaning will pour like rain on the top

of our surfaced heads –

a storm, this sickness, just another high wave,

just another necessity to dive deeper,

lungs and cells heavy, heavier

to avoid the overhead storm.

Inside, full of hot nerves

sinking without the sight of tentacles

or a slice of coral

to latch onto.

Your faculties, twisted,

breaking logic into shards.

Freedom came like a larger stone to carry,

duty like a sunburn, burning, causing

the first and second layer of skin to blister.

Useless music passes, cannot be kept

or remembered. The space is traveled

knocking against corners, bruising bones

and the remains of visions.

Stings on the pads of your feet

in the white of your eyes.

Inside, we are a tall-tower rubble,

a stack of concrete broken blocks

and bodies

and grief that last generations.

Inside, there is a ship enticing

we cannot board,

a mutual weariness,

a ghostly outage blackout,

blinding us from seeing

sharp corners, soft cushions,

the way to retrieve

a glass

in the kitchen, on the counter

of already poured, useful water.

Blended

into this scenery, this sick bed

and the watered-downed horizon.

It is weak with over-empathizing

tearing crusts off until all protection

is gone from my soft mushy core.

I cannot acclimatize to this grief,

her life-force-fading drawn into my own

bruised blood of doom, dooming my

own cells and strength into this unfair despair,

unsoothable scorch and decay.

A washing down after every visit, care-day

so I do not mimic the symptoms

of death and dying and the aching

anguish of helplessness.

This path will not lead

to a garden but to a cliff,

a farewell without ever coming back.

Each step toward the edge is torture

when taken, is forced not taken because

there is no standing still against it,

no turning around, the inevitable is absolute.

This path is darkness, and this darkness

is complete love – heavy, high above,

a terrifying incarnation.

Turn to me, I turn

skinned,

striking a blow

to the inner circle.

My soul is a peanut,

two parts, shelled, asymmetrical.

Unity is divine, to kill

is never excusable or brave or

or holy.

The bloodwind is the wind

that turns to defeat every journey

in disaster.

Take a mouthful – swirl the grey slime

of decline and the sharp spikes

of uncertainty, to swallow and know this

is what is meant to be

and what you have is this moment

to love and this moment again

to love

and the rest is not worth one thought,

is too much to take in,

so take in and yield to its power.

Chips of clear and broken glass.

Will I make this destiny-duty

intact or burn out on a hospital bed,

drained to the point of no return?

The stones are joy. I keep my smile

pressed on, my impatience under breath

and my dignity on a wire – pulled and tugged

by her unnecessary necessities.

When I am tired

the guilt pores in like

castor oil, down the wrong pipe

into the windpipe as I struggle

to regain our once synchronized flow,

but it will not return or rewind, as her love

only shows in momentary flickers now

before she dives again into these catacombs

collapsing.

She is owned by the morphine

pumping into her bloodstream

at regular intervals, pumping its purpose

to nullify her pain, while twisting mental foreign

tracks through her brain that torture her

with their relentless sticky grid

and serpents’ faces rising, telling her

she is owned, robbed of her

treasured independence, confined to home,

watching her once happy socializing light darken,

and you love her, you know her. You know

for a while

the monster will chomp at the moon,

will take the glow from her view,

soil every brilliant horizon,

will capture her honoured seat,

even conquer her spiritual home,

for a while

death’s rotting belly

will do what it must do,

bloat and swell

foul, naturally cruel.

Dream-self

destiny-self

never align

As soon as the shackles have cracked,

a new cage has formed,

taking away the morning light,

a chance to see the phenomena

of untainted being.

I have fallen into usefulness

like a bottomless sewer pit, falling, nothing

broke, just the drain of gravity in my bones

as I fall, lacking

the gift of appreciation and the possibility

of a safe landing.

Selling parts secretly owned

but never named. Scraping off

the daily dread to find a hope.

Hoping her suffering soul

will be reconciled in a flash,

unscathed when the new one begins,

budding, blooming into the opening,

the center of the ring,

enveloped in tenderness eternal.

Then the peace she gained by her natural

good heart will expand and blot out her

anxieties, her struggles for control.

She will be unharmed, in a state

where joy overwhelms with a constant

ecstasy sustainable and God is beside her

within her and all around her, swirling, caressing,

like God has always been, only now with a certainty

that even the most faithful servants

(inside time

inside gravity)

have never known.

Purely dying

like the universe

bottoming out,

letting it all go into

a sinkhole oblivion.

Purely fear of losing

the definite, the breathing lungs

in the body on the bed

and the heart-seized and blind from

its atomic power.

Purely God

holding the stick and strings,

concealed and blanketing,

preparing her soul for this

divine beginning.

The hall light is dim.

The curtains rustle forward.

Her eyes, once wet with anxiety’s tears,

now see the angels surround, the truth

of boundless love, for her, for all.

Last days

Dark days

dangerous death

at my doorstep,

swinging its hips to-and-fro.

Burning body, cracked, gnawed

away by insect bites, rodent bites

and the big blackhole open-mouth, forsaken.

Take what you must, but take it now,

swiftly, cover the core and the extremities

with your weight and then lift that weight

into the light of the sun, glorious

as a sparkle-water-wave-ripple

and a solitary hawk merging with the horizon.

Let her go like that hawk, pure in spirit

as she is, kind and soft as a child as she is.

Let her go into a dream that turns from

a dream into heaven’s threshold,

where she crosses over filled with your glory,

and my father looking on

with steady, welcoming eyes.

Outer nerves,

the madness of rise and decline,

undulating like an erratic wave,

the body joined to the illusion,

to past conclusions

and repetitive patterns remolded but unchanged.

Anxiety and intuition smudged

into one dim light.

I bow to the blowing wind, to the ignorance of now.

I hold her hand more now than I did as a child.

Tears rest for a while but lack any regulation.

Slow as a sloth but unpredictable as a storm.

Each day expends

what once was a normal week of energy.

Downward is the secret.

Bend in the direction of whatever gives.

The night is full of apocalyptic dreams,

solar flares and precautions, preparations

to minimize the coming death-blast charring burn.

The night season comes

and Earth is mine to hold,

witness its mark

and its gathering decay

while you sleep in an unconscious

darkening – skin around your mouth

turning blue, and inside that open circle,

inner lips peeling rice-paper fine

and your tongue like a dried log, that I keep sponging,

trying to saturate and regain its malleable form.

Your eyebrows twitch in what the nurses

promise me is not pain, promised me

you are comfortable

even though

for three days and three nights you

have lingered in a grizzly dehydrated shadow-stasis.

These days are like years, ripping away my trust,

my faith, my understanding of mercy,

solidifying the power

of bone-chiselling dread.

I love you, more in your helplessness,

in your patience for the final command, lingering,

red sores forming under your eyes,

fingers cold, purple pale and never grasping.

I stay with you in that place, even when

I sleep, I never sleep without you with me.

I love you and I hurt for you

and I want your release from this

brutal collapse of your form.

Why or even how you are lingering so long,

even the doctor can’t say.

I think you are buffering us from the pain of your loss

I think sometimes maybe mercy burns

hotter than punishment.

And these times

life surpasses understanding,

when the bottom current over quicksand thins,

breaking the chrysalis, clearing the way

for an unwanted redemption.

I am lifted

Blood on a field   Blood in a cloud

and then so many

streams flowing, unassuming.

I take your hand, lean

over you and kiss your forehead,

weeping, praying, saying

again and again I love you, thank you.

Your breaths are short, coming from below

not from your chest, but from your deepest gut,

stillness, ease, a letting go.

I drop like a bird on your shoulder.

I know you are leaving. You know

it is a beautiful alchemy, accumulation

of a life so gloriously lived. I tell you

to take Jesus’ hand and he will take you

to the golden tender light of eternal heaven.

You take his hand, and God

has become the atmosphere,

encapsulating, removing time.

Your last breath is more

a soft sigh than a breath,

not a cross-wind of struggle,

not a brush-stroke of “But wait..”

You are gone.

Seagulls fill the view from the window,

circling, joyful in their angelic form.

You are free.

My heart has merged with yours,

forest blue, deep and rich and forever.

My mother, my powerful ally,

friend for all ages – goodbye,

the six-month journey to this point

was treacherous, the last weeks, tortuous,

but these final moments were divine,

was God’s grace in full view, mercy

that healed all pain gone before,

resurrection visible like spread-out water lilies

or Elysian Fields, sublime.

            My mother, the sky is again yours,

embracing the seen and unseen spectrums.

Your sky is prophecy, feeding

the bedrock and the water’s reflection,

all parts proved sacred, identical

to the immutable moving whole.

Allison Grayhurst has been nominated for “Best of the Net” five times. She has over 1,400 poems published in over 530 international journals, including translations of her work. She has 25 published books of poetry and six chapbooks. She is an ethical vegan and lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay.