Love at Sunset

In the place where the water meets the sky;
Is the love that surrounds us as ever time goes by.
In the place where the sea seashore meets the bay;
Is the love that abounds through the heat of every time ray. 
No other hand,
Than his who rules on high,
Could wield the brush and spread such,
Bright array.

Love at sunset
Even in joyfulness,
Even in times we cry;
Our love will never stop,
But will keep on rolling by.
Upon the outstretched canvas of the sky,
Then draw the curtains of departing day.

Love at sunset
The sun may go down,
But at the end of the day,
The flaring shades of love will always have to stay.
I stand in silence,
Reaching with my eyes,
My love, you are beautiful,
I love the way you fall,
Softly losing space.

Love at sunset
Take down all your troubles,
And wrap up your regret,
Tie them to the rays of light,
The sun sheds as it sets.

Love at sunset
My secret lover
I want you only to myself.
How many times,
Have I come here,
And was thrown away,
Because,
I am beseeching from poverty,
With courage,
With my sorrow,
You left me up in your fall.




 New Kru Town

Our hustling brothers, 
Far from religion,
Have spit on Christianity,
And loose their focus with no heart of second thought
An unexpected death has arrested the sight,
 And capture it slaves. 
Why New Kru Town
A place that develop good seeds where the soil is useless,
An opal heart area,
A stubborn, lavish land
You who that have never loved her,
Will not understand
Earth holds many splendor,
But,
Others do not value,
And shake its hand away.

New Kru Town,
A part of our mother's land,
A place where robbers attacked religion in celebration,
A face to face place in the day
That turn to nightmare in the night.
A place where robbers intuit to stay,
See different saints come and go.
How many birds have I seen Perched,
Looking hurriedly here and there,
And they abuse the proud of Christian,
And take advantage of their religion.
New Kru Town
A place where ethically good that you do, 
Do not talk,
Cause you may risk your head to blade.
A place where robbers making daily contribution
By chasing people with cutlasses in dead mood.

By: Jelvin S. Gibson
Pen Name: Inkbloc
A Poet, Teacher, Script writer,
Director, and an Introvert

Poets Die (V2)

By Michael Lee Johnson

 

Why do poets die;

linger in youth

addicted to death.

They create culture

but so crippled.

They seldom harm

except themselves—

why not let them live?

Their only crime is words

they shout them out in anger

cry out loud, vulgar in private

places like Indiana cornfields.

In fall, poets stretch arms out

their spines the centerpiece

on crosses on scarecrows,

they only frighten themselves.

They travel in their minds,

or watch from condo windows,

the mirage, these changing colors,

those leaves; they harm no one.

Poets Out of Service (V6)

By Michael Lee Johnson

 

Like a full-service gas station

or postal service workers

displaced, racing to Staples retail

for employment against the rules of labor,

poets are out of business nowadays, you know.

Who carries a loose change in their pockets?

Who tosses loose coins in their car ashtray anymore?

iPhones, smartphones, life is a video camera

ready to shoot, destroy, and expose.

No one reads poets anymore. 

No one thumbs through the yellow pages anymore.

Who has sex in the back seat of their car anymore,

just naked shots passed around online?

Streetwalkers, bleach blonde whores,

cosmetic plastic altered faces in the neon night;

they don’t bother to pick pennies

or quarters off the streets anymore.

The days of surprise candy bags for a nickel

pennies lying on the countertop for

Tar Babies, Strawberry Licorice Laces

(2 for a penny), Wax Lips, Pixie Sticks,

Good & Plenty are no more.

Everyone is a dead-end player; he dies with time.

Monster technology destroys crump fragments of culture.

Old age is a passive slut; engaging old age

conversations idle to a whisper and sleep alone.

Matchbox, hand-rolled cigarettes,

serrated, slimmed down, and gone.

Time is a broken stopwatch gone by.

Life is a defunct full-service gas station.

Poets are out of business nowadays.

 

Deep in my Couch (V2)

By Michael Lee Johnson

 

Deep in my couch 

of magnetic dust,

I am a bearded old man.

I pull out my last bundle 

of memories beneath

my pillow for review.

What is left, old man,

cry solo in the dark.

Here is a small treasure chest

of crude diamonds, a glimpse 

of white gold, charcoal, 

fingers dipped in black tar.

I am a temple of worship with trinket dreams,

a tea kettle whistling ex-lovers boiling inside.

At dawn, shove them under, let me work.

We are all passengers traveling

on that train of the past—

senses, sins, errors, or omissions

deep in that couch.

Nightlife Jungle Beat,

Bar Next Door (V2)

By Michael Lee Johnson


 

Like all things life changes, its melodies fragment.

It breaks pieces apart, then they drift, then shatter.

The singers of songs love bars,

naked bodies, consistencies, and inconsistencies

that makes it burn all turn outright at night.

They like to drum repeat rhythms and sounds.

Poets like to retreat to dens

of pleasure just like these.

Sing poets sing off-key

free verse notes down by the bridge,

near the river as far as their voices

will carry them away.

It is the nature of difference,

indifference a vocabulary of us confused,

minds between insanity and genius.

The hermit asks for

a public forum in shyness,

while treading to the bar

next door for a shot of tequila

no money, no life.

 

Michael Lee Johnson is internationally published poet in 43 countries, several published poetry books, nominated for four Pushcart Prize awards and five Best of the Net nominations. He is editor-in-chief of three poetry anthologies, all available on Amazon, and has several poetry books and chapbooks. He has over 536 published poems. Michael is the administrator of six Facebook Poetry groups. Member Illinois State Poetry Society: http://www.illinoispoets.org/.

                War

There are the bombs again

Buildings crumbling

Pictures of tanks

On the evening news

So we watch it all

This is how it’s waged

Tanks clogging streets

Crushing any hope that

Might have been left

Left over from before

This is how it’s waged

The latest weaponry

With uniforms everywhere

The grinding sound of battle

Goes on and on

Bullets and bombs at their best

As we watch it all

 

People fill the roads out

The displaced fill trains

And border crossings

Cameras are rolling

So we watch it all

Halfway around the world

From all this

We watch it all

This is how it’s waged

Numbers of the dead and

The wounded tallied

As if we’re keeping score

While we watch it all

Half a world away.


         Moving On


We move from pandemic to endemic

just a slight change of words,

of spelling, a change in prefixes,

a change of attitude.

It’s like turning a page, like

closing one door and opening yet another,

like turning a corner and

finding ourselves on another street,

a street that looks oddly familiar

with the same traffic,

the same pedestrians and

the same litter and lines

the same distance to travel to get where we

would rather be.

We move from plague-like interference

with our lives to

a thing more flu-like.

People still get shots, still get sick, and

still will die,

but we’re hoping, expecting a lot fewer

as the endemic kicks in

and the pandemic checks out.




                Taxes


How much we make

Then where we live

And what we consume

They all play their part

Become taxable

Someone, someplace

Keeps track

Tabulates, measures me

Next to the others

Assumes I’ll pay

And I do

Never think much about

It/them

What do they say about

Taxes, death and taxes

Will be with us

So we will pay

So we will die

They’re the cost of living

What we pay for this vague

          Privilege. 

J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Black Coffee Review, Kitchen Sink, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, Journal of Expressive Writing, Lightwood, and Highland Park Poetry.

Death Peak

Death is the highest peak in life to reach over
Mitigating the gap between right and wrong, good and bad
Keeping the body at the same place, flying on the same feather 
Signing no grade or social status 
Bound to receive the journey whether we like or not
Just at the meeting of the angel of death all powerful sins 
Tyranny, avarice, exploitation, refusal of love and faith comes to an end
O my hungry brothers and sisters, why do you cry and blame your fate?
Let the days go and welcome the every single moment in smiling face
How refreshing the air by the river and the green and flowery land!
The eternal peace and prosperity.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
30/12//2020

Bhasan Char- The New Habitation of Rohingyas

Life is nothing but the grain of sand
Flying over time here and there
The Rohingyas are the people struggling for existence where to live and die
Life turns into the sandy storm when the address gets lost
How they live and where to find the livelihood- staring at the sky
The homeless migrants are like the goods finding no way to place the roots 
With a great expectation they take shelter at Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh 
They are like birds flying here and there from land to sand
Sitting in the bus on the way to Bhasan Char, 
An island around thirty seven miles off the coast of the Bay of Bengal 
The eyes aiming at on how to make fit struggling with the sand
Life appears to be floating on water and at the same time 
The fallen green leaf flying with the grain of sand
Life other than finds the meaning of life 
 
Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
30/12//2020

The Setting Sun

Flitted by the evening shadow on my back
The red glowing sun over to the west
What a wonder on the river!
The youthful rays of the sun dims down
As it grows old from morning to evening welcoming the silver lining
The pages of love feeling open and blaze in the eyes
The bamboo shadow runs to the narrow way of the rural housing 
Surrounded by the sloping blushful light
Just at the moment you, my setting sun sit by me 
I talk with you, as every day I watch and talk to the morning birds
The sun is setting with the curling smoke on the river, Padma
O my love river, in my subconscious mind I jump on 
Have been swimming for thousands of years 
The sun went down, leaving behind us on bank of the river
The world is going to be covered in the blanket of darkness 
My heart turning passion like the ember in the fireplace. 

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
31/12//2020


Happy New Year-2021


We can't curse any moment of the days in 2020 
Though many of our near and dear ones bid us farewell from this earth
Rather we can bow down our head in a great sigh in respect of them
Cursing our wrong deeds on humanity, we can repent ourselves
What we did and what we should do in the next
Bringing out this plus-minus result, we can fix our future plan
Even after so many deaths the kids are dancing in the musical beats near me on the yard
Their hearts leap up to the world of starry sky 
They must overcome the obstacles in the outside thunder and storm 
As the green leaves in the soft breeze on the chirping of birds in the light of the sun
The ever-green leaves; the flowers from the buds blooming in the twinkling of the light
Let this large tree be resonant with these leaves, flowers and birds
Happy New Year-2021.
 
Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
31/12//2020

The Prey 

Corona is lurking on the surface of the world
Yet the wind around us appears to be heavy in other box
The howling of the virgins or the women on rape and death 
Snatches me away from this soft corner  
How many paths have I crossed and how many are left to go?
Who counts this?                                      
The bricks are burnt in the chimney
Humanity in and outside home
On the other side tigers and lions are roaring in search of the prey
The dear and the deer cubs fleeing at a stretch  
To the end eaten by the unknown fate
We are the passers-by running so fast on ongoing process
And return home blowing the horn all the way -so fed-up
Nevertheless we are to stay at home nowadays
But I can't understand 
Why this roaring of the victims around me? 

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
01/01//2021
 

To cry is a pill 


Seated alone counting on your losses, sometimes it's better to cry
Cry aloud from the top of your lungs and feel it no more.

It's better to scream, it's better to shout, it's better to yell and set free your whole 
But it's faulty to wear the garments of pains and sorrows under your long going sleeves, grief! it hurts. 

Cry is the filter that flushes out the pains clustered in your heart, causing headache 
And I see grief as a catcher that condenses a bundle of pains inside the heart, causing suffocation, constipation and heartache 

It doesn't tell how weak you are, cry
It doesn't prove that your eyes are filled with tears, no! 
It doesn't tells the world that you're living in fears, no! 

It's a therapy of no cost, and another way of telling  emotional stories, yes!
It tells the world how strong you are, cos weak vessel never cries, yes!

Cry is a pill, you'll get up and move after a cry
It's better to cry 
And I see grief as an ill, it hurts a lot
You must be endowed with heart attacks,
sleeping with grief. 

Tears were meant for crying, cry aloud cry them out, cry like you dare it
Your heart was built for beats and channeling free flow, grief not, cos cry is a free gift. 



About the Author 

My name is George Siaway Karnea Boakai, With a pen and well known name Compoze. 
I was born on April 29 1995 in Ghanta city Nimba County Liberia.
I am a freelancer, a poet, a story teller, a song writer, a singer, a rapper and an aspiring Anthropologist. 
I starting writing since I was a kid, but I recognized that I am a writer in the year 2018.

Poetry is the mirror that I see myself into on a day to day basis, it is the way I tell my millions of stories to the world. 
Poetry is one of the many ways I tell about my County Liberia and its long years of civil unrest to the world, it is the way by which I want to be heard and read about. 

Confession Lines

In this poem 
I’m just a shy girl
Trying to say stuffs
That has never parted
My lips before

So sorry if my words
Are blushing like how
My face blushes
Every time I see you

I know you don’t see it
But my eyes wander 
Around with eagerness
At the sound of your name

And the sweetest worst
Part of it all is my heart
Skips a beat every time
Your hand lands on mine

Just this one touch from you
My body trembles and yearns
That you do it all over again

That’s why I’m letting my feelings
Flow freely like how the river
Flows in to the ocean

But I hope mine flows 
Down the walls of your heart
After all the heart understands
The language of the heart

Aminata Talawally is an emerging writer from Liberia. She is a secondary student. Her ambition is to become a software engineer and also a great writer. Most of her poems surround love, life, pain, etc..

One-percenter 

Let me decide 
for myself
if success is as empty
as they say 
and I will let you know 
if dating a Swedish model 
in the French Riviera 
is vapid and will 
rapidly lead to 
my soul's decay 
and when my 
pretty bank teller 
sees my current balance 
and her pupils start dilating 
don't tell me this 
won't feel like 
a spiritual awakening 
because I have been 
chasing that star-studded 
gold-leafed, sugar-coated 
gift-wrapped, jackpot
since I was old enough 
to watch 
the Beverly Hillbillies 
on TV 
so don't you even try 
to stop me from 
sipping on some
good ol' Texas tea


Lonesome Dove 

I don't share 
my life with 
one particular 
person in the 
traditional sense 
instead I have built 
an amazingly effective 
invisible fence 
that keeps my dogged 
pride from running away 
from this private property 
and possibly getting run over
and once in a great while 
I let in the unexpected 
visitor who happens
to be in the area
and just thought
they'd stop on by
and we have 
cookies and coffee 
and when they leave 
I wave goodbye 
as their car 
pulls out of the drive 
while holding my
caged heart 
yet it somehow 
escapes like 
a parakeet 
into the skies
and that's when 
I remember that 
time flies 


Spring Cleaning 

I still saved
everything you 
gave me 
and I have 
stored all that 
nothingness 
in an empty room 
in the attic of 
my consciousness 
next to undeveloped 
negatives of what 
could have been 
positive 
if only you 
could have lived up
to the hype 
of being 
what I wanted 
so much 
but can now 
live without 
I guess 
that is what 
dandruff and dust
is all about 



Hook Up 

It's official 
this whole 
thing is superficial 
and based solely 
on mutual distraction 
from emotional depth 
or even worse
spiritual meaning 
because sometimes 
it's fun to downgrade 
expectations and indulge 
in soft-core 
consensual conversation 
consisting of 
nonintellectual innuendo 
and zero love 
so tomorrow 
don't even wait 
for my text
instead when you 
think of me
just whisper the word
"next"




The Big Comeback 

I was
once beautiful 
respected far and wide 
the toast of the town 
considered the next big thing 
expected to stay on top
traveled first class 
pursued by women and the press 
mentioned in the tabloids 
paid handsomely 
young as roses in bloom 
whispered about in certain circles 
the life of parties uptown and down
loved to the moon and back 
dressed in Versace 
with both parents alive and proud 
now I'm 
living in a modest home 
walking like a zombie at a local Mall 
disappearing into a crowd
learning old friends have become somebody
driving while listening to 80s music 
lost in fantasy at the pharmacy 
a has-been who would-be if could-be 
and yet just offered a major new contract 
given a new lease on hope
checking with a lawyer if this is 
too-good-to-be-true 
assured this is a legitimate opportunity 
pinching myself to make sure it isn't just a dream 
not even worried if this time it will or will not last 
just ready to once again kick fame and fortune's ass 

Ivan Jenson is a fine artist, novelist and popular contemporary poet. His artwork was featured in Art in America, Art News, and Interview Magazine and has sold at auction at Christie’s. Ivan was commissioned by Absolut Vodka to make a painting titled Absolut Jenson for the brand’s national ad campaign. His Absolut paintings are in the collection of the Spirit Museum, the museum of spirits in Stockholm, Sweden.  
Jenson’s painting of the “Marlboro Man” was collected by the Philip Morris corporation. Ivan was commissioned to paint the final portrait of the late Malcolm Forbes.  Ivan has written two novels, Dead Artist and Seeing Soriah, both of which illustrate the creative and often dramatic lives of artists. Jenson’s poetry is widely published (with over 600 poems published in the US, UK and Europe) in a variety of literary media. A book of Ivan Jenson’s poetry was recently published by Hen House Press titled Media Child and Other Poems, which can be acquired on Amazon. Two novels by Ivan Jenson entitled, Marketing Mia and Erotic Rights have been published hardcover. His website is: http://www.ivanjenson.com

Ivan Jenson’s thriller “The Murderess” is now available hardcover and as an eBook on Amazon.  Ivan Jenson’s new thriller, “The Widow” will be released in March 2022.