toast on the kitchen floor

the feeling that sulks in my bone marrow and weighs me down
melts into the air pockets of day old sourdough.

i didn't know that wanting to die was meltable.
i hoped it wasn't
now all i am left with is drips of oil and soot i never tracked in on my heel.
patches of raw feeling still keep their opaque huddling figures
but now it just looks like i have plain toast with molding clumps.
the crust is too hard for my crying jaws. i leave it on the cutting board.

a staler slice resides in the toaster that i have grown up with
so i get crumbs under my nails pulling it out.
fresher emotions that give the illusion of being gentle and friendly
are spread across the surface with the cchhh of 
butter knife on bread
i don’t close the feelings container because it's a pain in the ass 
and i always cut my fingertips just enough to feel the texture difference 
but not enough to hurt
i leave a smear of suicidality in the deli container.

of course its not enough for a whole slice of toast 
but thats too bad for whoever next finds themselves foolish enough to crave toast.

toast is dumb.

it takes the gentleness out of the fresh-baked bread and prods at over-chewed gums.
i only find myself seasoning a second toast because it's there 
and i need something to do.
i pull out a fresh plate and everything for my pretty little crunchy mean bread.
so many favors i've done.
i smeared my feelings out and stared them down 
like a single poppyseed on a fucking sesame bagel.
i also have mixed feelings about sesame seeds.
i’ll eat something that i didn't even know had sesame seeds but for some reason
i always wrestle with the tiny little flavor between my teeth for hours before i taste it.
sesame seeds are also dumb.

my stupid little toast is face down on the floor now and i'm not going to pick it up.

Poetry 

~ Tears ~



How do I say this

As peace roll out of my life

While I wear a garment of pain

To sleep in the bed of sorrow

Having my room spray with depression 

Blocking the sound of melodies in my ear

Left in the hands of the bed sheet

To give me cold after being soak with Nile from the eye



The road to happiness is block with every man foot

No one to consider the cripple rather whip the crush stick out of their hands

The only one that appear on the scene is the one that wet my face

And inspire these broken lines carrying my thoughts far off

In the land where nature controls creature

So I’m lost of sound stanzas 

This poem does not wish to have a name because name is of no gain when pain is a name. 


This poem rewrites the scriptures into a nightmare
where man and wife unglued one
to one and one.
first one seeking comfort in the arms of another, 
second one finding hers
 in the arms of her daughters
so one and one made their homes, 
far from home.
we watched them become brushes
painting their marital underwear simultaneously
on our pale faces
we were just four little cubs
putting on the skins of pain as clothes
their disjointed union had sewn us. 
it was lengthy and weighty
and threatened to uninstall joy in us
and whether or not we wore 
the old ones
their needle words would
 weave more for us. 
so our broken hearts watched 
as one split in two 
believe me, this wasn't a divorce 
there was no paperwork 
but even God knew 
 the better-or-worse deal was off. 
so our broken hearts watched 
mom and dad become 
mom, dad
 and  was washed away by the brutal storm of grieve
and betrayal and infidelity and denial.
so our broken hearts watched
dad yearn the arms of another
I'd rather be a dead lad than mistake this imposter
as mother
that one that willed happiness from us
rolled dad away from us
 or presumably, she did not. 
for our broken hearts watched one split in two 
way before three was born


a voice tells me,
that this union was not meant to be.  

I have to know the wage of text

For a poet, silence is an acceptable, even flattering response, 
claimed Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette.

Another claimed 
that the calm that is the history of silence 
is the poet's revenge.

Look, I walk around with a quill 
between my teeth

Some people have their sensory hearing absorbed into in the most unexpected organs, and some will qualify in silence, accordingly I have to know the wage 
of 
text —

Surely, the initial reaction in humans 
in their early lives is the voice, after
which everything else is a charade.

I am new

They don’t know 
Where I came from
I must connect the- leg
With the waist 
And the pelvis to the spine

That’s the way when items
Are separated from bodies 
And an artificial 
Lens is implanted 
In the - eye.

Who said it’s possible to move 
Organs
Away from their 
Place?

Who said?

Tali Cohen Shabtai, born in Jerusalem, Israel, is a highly-esteemed international poet with works translated into many languages.

She has authored three bilingual volumes of poetry, “Purple Diluted in a Black’s Thick”(2007), “Protest” (2012) and “Nine Years From You”(2018). A fourth volume is forthcoming in 2022. 

Tali began writing poetry at the age of six. She lived for many years in Oslo, Norway, and the U.S.A. and her poems express both the spiritual and physical freedom paradox of exile. Her cosmopolitan vision is obvious in her writings.

Tali is known in her country as a prominent poet with a unique narrative. As one commentator wrote: “She doesn’t give herself easily, but is subject to her own rules.”

Love is a waste of time 
It's like a Dynamic 
Love is a waste of time 
It's like a Landmine 
Love is a waste of time 
It's like a Summertime 
Love is a waste of time 
It's like a book lines 
Love is a waste of time 
It's like a Quarantine.

Look! Her mournful eyes say it all what words can't
She is too tired of battered but you don't understand
She was an endearing dream, turned to be a nightmare
And this is because of your so-called reprimand
                   WATCH OUT!
She isn't anymore a magical fairy of a fairyland
Now she is a grisly dinosaur from Jurassicland
She is a roller coaster of emotions but no longer your wonderland
          She is invincible, She is archaic
She is the Chosen one and owns her own never-never land
            Listen adorable "SHE IS YOU"
Who eventually understands how to take her own right stand...

By Doctor of Optometry RAAFIA SHAHEEN
From PAKISTAN..

Mario Loprete, Catanzaro 1968

Graduate at Accademia of Belle Arti, Catanzaro (ITALY).

Painting for me is my first love. An important, pure love. Creating a painting, starting from the spasmodic research of a concept with which I want to transmit my message this is the foundation of painting for me. The sculpture is my lover, my artistic betrayal to the painting that voluptuous and sensual lover that inspires different emotions which strike prohibited chords.

This new series of concrete sculptures has been giving me more personal and professional satisfaction recently. How was it born? It was the result of an important investigation of my own work. I was looking for that special something I felt was missing. Looking back at my work over the past ten years, I understood that there was a certain semantic and semiotic logic “spoken” by my images, but the right support to valorize their message was not there.

The reinforced cement, the concrete, was created two thousand years ago by the Romans. It tells a millennia-old story, one full of amphitheaters, bridges and roads that have conquered the ancient and modern world. Now, concrete is a synonym of modernity.

Everywhere you go, you find a concrete wall: there’s the modern man in there. From Sydney to Vancouver, Oslo to Pretoria, this reinforced cement is present, and it is this presence which supports writers and enables them to express themselves.

The artistic question was an obvious one for me: if man brought art on the streets in order to make it accessible to everyone, why not bring the urban to galleries and museums?

With respect to my painting process, when a painting has completely dried off, I brush it with a particular substance that not only manages to unite every color and shade, but also gives my artwork the shininess and lucidity of a poster (like the ones we’ve all had hanging on our walls).

For my concrete sculptures, I use my personal clothing. Through my artistic process in which I use plaster, resin and cement, I transform these articles of clothing into artworks to hang. The intended effect is that my DNA and my memory remain inside the concrete, so that the person who looks at these sculptures is transformed into a type of postmodern archeologist, studying my work as urban artefacts.

I like to think that those who look at my sculptures created in 2020 will be able to perceive the anguish, the vulnerability, the fear that each of us has felt in front of a planetary problem that was Covid-19 ... under a layer of cement there are my clothes with which I lived this nefarious period.

Clothes that survived Covid-19, very similar to what survived after the 2,000-year-old catastrophic eruption of Pompeii, capable of recounting man's inability to face the tragedy of broken lives and destroyed economies.