In The Autumn Afternoon

One day in the celebration of autumn
I would be your mate
Mind stirs on
In this faint afternoon
The sky smiles on the red sun with the colors of the leaves
Over head and the surroundings welcome all the way
The flock of birds and the colorful butterflies
Someone from the back seem to say something astonishing 
Mind dissolves by the flowing water
Peeping here and again flying there
Play in soft, green dense bushes
All happiness of love takes place
Makes a new tune in the heart
All your glory talks out smiling
Ah! the beauty of the golden scene. 

Chapainawabganj,  Bangladesh
31, October, 2023

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 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 from America for seven years. 

EPHEMERAL

Man only has but two nights: the night he was born, and the night he died.
When he was born,
Joy and mirth pervaded the room,
And cacophony of laughter erupted like fireworks in the night.
Like a tiny vine, he clung to his mother, drawing sustenance from her precious sap,
Like a fledgling bird clinging to its mother’s wings.
With his squeals and gurgles, he shared his babble
Like a child blooming in its mother’s love.
Half a dozen of age; everyday objects of the home became a kingdom of marvels, a realm of
infinite delights, as his imagination turned pots into castles and spoons into swords.
In the hot kitchen, his mind scented the air with the sweet fragrance of his hunger but he cared
not for the heat or the sweat; only for the succulent flavors to come.
Every morning, a new day beckons, a playground of delight, in the eyes of a child
Running across the beach, gathering up the grains of sand– like precious pearls–
As the moon casts its light upon the sea.
The day he died,
Deluge of sorrow choked the room, & the air was dense with wails.
So many, like clouds of houseflies.
The mighty man,
heavy with weight of accomplishments,
Threatened to hump the bier that transported him into his abode of delight.
When he was lowered into the Earth
(beneath the world of men),
A new home hewn in the belly of the earth,
His bones rotted like detritus.
What is death? A beautiful ending or loss?
There is but one conclusion:
That he was born to die, to live as he pleases and return to the dust that made him.

Chukwuemeka Victoria Chiamaka is a psychology graduate from the University of Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, Anambra State, Nigeria. She is passionate about writing and this has made her lay her tent in the world of modern literature.
Email: chukwuemekavictoria23@gmail.com

RELATIVITY

A tablet was found

with the famous Pythagorean theorem.

The tablet is 1,000 years older

than Pythagoras.

An acrylic painting was also found,

made by Grzegorz Wróblewski.

The painting is one day older than

Grzegorz Wróblewski.

I painted it yesterday
in Copenhagen,

watching the twinkling stars

and alien spaceships.

Strange…
They didn’t explode Icelandic volcanoes.
And they didn’t come the promised
horsemen of the apocalypse.

YEARS OF CHANGE

You have to breathe deeply.

The ring finger didn’t explain
anything to me.

(Everything was born and died
happily…)

One day I was a spiritual being,
and the other
a scientistic mammal.

I visited parallel worlds.

Mostly in the Copenhagen Zoo.

Dreamy Clouds of late afternoon

 After the chanting smell of your breath touches 

My day is almost doomed

The heart of sunspots if the night refuses

Dies like ashes, though

Nothing happens suddenly in this world of duality

The verse of birth remains hidden from the roots.

The world whirls in the urge to survive,

Although the sun is still elusive in the evening 

A gloomy poetic cloud is sitting behind me 

Dropping sweatsome through your catkin-neck 

Golden love from sun shakes hand 

Afternoon shines gloomy 

The gap is not so long but 

I know it is too late to reach 

So lie down on your chiffon-hair 

scattered on your graceful shoulder 

All that love gets wet 

In my dream in hidden kisses

I deep into the dim sun, rain and clouds 

The sharpest touch makes the body 

of the shadow playing on the glass

This did not happen suddenly. 

Desires were sitting awake for millions of nights. 

French Fry Etiquette 


She left me sitting alone in McDonalds

Didn't take a bite of her Big Mac 

Or touch a single one of her French Fries    

She grabbed her Coke then walked away 

And never even looked back

I thought about eating the fries 

Although I had lost my appetite 

It wasn't because I was hurt by the drama 

She spreads ketchup on top of all of them

Instead of dipping each fry

I'm sure you know

the type 

When it comes to eating French fries 

Her method doesn't follow proper etiquette

Even though it bothered me I never said a word 

Because she gets pissed off so quickly 

And becomes 

belligerent 

I didn't understand what just happened 

It left me totally confused 

Why did she Super Size her order

If she wasn't going to eat the food

We had a date to go for dinner 

I couldn't figure out why she got upset 

I told her she looked gorgeous 

But maybe a little overdressed 

She looked surprised when we arrived 

And said McDonalds you've got to be kidding 

How insensitive of me to take her to McDonalds for dinner 

Knowing her favorite hamburger joint is Burger King 

JSB

Judge Santiago Burdon 

Stray Dogs and Deuces Wild, Not Real Poetry, Quicksand Highway, Fingers in the Fan, Tequilas Bad Advice, Lords of the Afterglow, Overdose of Destiny 

Kingdom Collapse

On July 5 of 2033 Antarctic bases McMurdo, Davis, Casey and others reported earthquakes of 6 magnitude on the Richter scale.  South Africa and Tierra Del Fuego in South America had minor tsunamis shortly after the earthquakes.  Helicopters flew to the suspected center of the disturbance near the South Pole.  What they saw was deeply disturbing.  An area of hundreds of thousands of square kilometers had subsided anywhere from a few to a hundred meters deep.  What appeared to be naked humans were slowly digging out of the steaming slush.  As the observers goggled at the scene, something like a red guided missile flew out of the depression so fast it was just a blur.  There was no safe landing place, so the helicopters which were short of fuel flew back to their bases.  When the film they had taken was released, the world observed a second odd event.

Only seconds after the “missile” had left Antarctica, a red giant with goat horns wearing a loin cloth and nothing else took over the United Nations.  It had no problem taking over the podium during an active meeting of member nations.  He spoke in English but was translated for the member countries as is usual at the UN.

“Hi there.  You might know me as Satan, but I prefer Lucifer.  Hey, have you heard that Rolling Stones number ‘Sympathy For The Devil’?  Love it.  Lucifer is from the Hebrew and means light bearing.  I know I’ve got a bad reputation, but I serve a valuable purpose, like a garbage collector.  That may be a bad analogy, but OK.  For sure, you wouldn’t want to mingle with my guests in the afterlife”

The giant covered its chest with his hands as five gunshots were heard, then collapsed.  Everyone turned to see a security officer with a smoking gun.  The stunned crowd watched Lucifer as it lay motionless.  A minute and half later the body made strange noises which turned into laughter.  Lucifer got up and looked at his assailant.  “You got spunk kid.  I like your style.  Would you like to do a podcast together?”

After a silent and motionless sixty-four seconds, the gunman said “Ah.  Sure.”

Lucifer seemed pleased and continued “I got a little off track.  You may want to know what happened in Antarctica.  The roof of Hell collapsed and put out our heating system.  I suspect that the inmates are not happy with hell freezing over, but at least it’s a change.  As you may know, it’s a good thing for all the guys whose girlfriends said they wouldn’t have sex with them until hell froze over.”

Lucifer laughed loud and long.  The audience was stunned into silence by the unexpected frivolity of Satan.

“I could go on and on, but maybe you want to ask questions.”

“You from Bulgaria, what’s on your mind?”

“Do you mean hell is a real place where bad people go when they die?”

“That’s right.  Oops.”

Lucifer’s loin cloth fell off.

The audience gasped, laughed, cheered, and made many rude and crude remarks.

Lucifer pulled up his loin cloth and said “Oh, grow up.  If you think that was weird, be glad you didn’t see the flip side.  Anyway, haven’t you ever seen two dicks together before?  How about the president and vice president?”

While the audience was cheering and booing, the Bulgarian delegate grabbed his chance before anyone could pose another question and asked “Follow up.  Why locate Hell in Antarctica?”

“OK, that was a dumb idea.  Fire and ice don’t mix very well.  It was the idea of my colleague.  It thinks it’s some superstar, but it’s not the boss of me.  I shouldn’t have accepted Kolak’s idea of where to locate hell.  As we had to expand due to our population explosion, we kept weakening the structure.  Boom!  Roof falls down, puts out our heating, everything freezes.”

An unidentified person yelled “Kolak?”

“Yeah, that’s its name.  For some reason it’s known on earth by a multitude of different names.”

“You, shorty from Albania.”

“What are the demographics of Hell?”

“Just like earth’s criminals, mostly male.  All of your major religions have contributed a lot of souls.  Masters of war of course, and any soldier or civilian that enjoyed killing and destruction.  Pretty high percentage of politicians.  No surprise.  Common criminals, not so much.”

Lucifer pulled out something from somewhere on its back that looked like a cell phone and looked at it.  “I see we have 2,678,534,968 souls currently and that the number goes up about twelve hundred a minute.  Because of space limitations, we cycle inmates between actively tortured and time outs as small cubes.”

A woman from Canada yelled out “This might not be a question for you, but do you know if there is intelligent life on other planets?”

“Other planets, yes.”

“You from Sweden.”

“How do you handle all of the inmates?”

“You must be a bureaucrat back home.  I have thousands of trustees to make life unpleasant for the inmates.  They are chosen from the worst people – mass murderers.  They hate everyone and are hated in return.  They whip, burn, slice and dice their fellow prisoners who are in constant revolt inflicting damage on the trustees.  Win – win.”

“What’s your question Canada guy?”

“Do you ever do that Faust thing about collecting souls?”

“I have dabbled, but only for amusement.  Thing is, it’s easy to cheat a cheater, so that part is fun.  There’s this business guy recently who was an easy mark.  I delivered for him, but he will regret it.  Some well-known actors.  The involuntarily celibate.”

“The guy with the bad moustache from Sri Lanka.”

“Lucifer, what are you plans for Hell now?”

“I’m not in a hurry to decide.  If the earth people want some zombies to wander their streets, I could lend a few billion, but that seems unlikely.  More likely I’ve got my eye on some real estate on Pluto where we could relocate.  The guys in Antarctica can have snowball fights while they freeze until I decide.”

“I see you have more questions, but I’ve got a hot date with a demon from Mars, so I’m getting out of here.  Don’t pet or feed those guys in Hell while I’m gone.”