A Feeling I Have

I feel like

Going broke

For a woman

I feel like throwing it all away

Going  crazy

She walks by voluptuous curves

And energy

There’s a desire to fall down a long tunnel

Forgetting about stocks and politics and the economy

Forgetting about being at work or on time

And need to go mad and become alive

I’ve been trying not to be crazy, but

The crazy days and moments call for me

And seduce me like the voluptuous walk

Of a cat,

I do not want to go back to the mad days,

I suffered myself greatly

Or do I?

A World Without

I’ve been thinking there was no women

In the world,

And how could that be,

Just a thought a feeling i had,

And it depressed me,

To wake up and all the women gone,

And the world was left to the men,

And I became so depressed,

Could men, like me, go on without women?

That’s terrible thought to have

The world might collapse right now

And the men would go on doing all kinds of manly shit

And doing it well, like they have

But i was thinking of the world without ladies and girls

And it just didn’t seem worth it

And lots of men would go crazy slowly,

A whole world without poetry, music and dance,

Just the hard tough stuff

We were left with

And suddenly like i did not want to be here

Or anywhere

I Must Stop

Thinking that I am better than others

I must stop thinking my pain is more valid

I must quit thinking I should be rich and famous and handsome

I must quit thinking that certain jobs below me

I must quit thinking I am deserving

That I am smarter than others and that I know better

Where do these feelings come from?

My stupendous ego

Playing upon a boat of isolation

No one is onboard in the sea

As the cold calm water goes go

Without beginning.

A Strong Man

I want to be a strong man

Someone benching five hundred pounds. Looking like a bodybuilder

Someone running the 40 in four seconds. Running like man cheetah

Some one running  marathons regularly, incredible stamina

Someone makes important decisions, like a CEO. Affecting so many lives. With towers on his back

I wanted to be a strong man

I felt like a strong man for a day maybe two

Or maybe it was a year or two

Maybe I was around 32

I remember lifting 50 bags at work,

Just tossing the around like nothing

And drinking beer after work. Feeling strong and manly

And thinking that i would always feel that way,

The winter winds nipped my nose

At 46 I don’t feel like it anymore. My

Knees ache just thinking of lifting that 50 pound bag

Wanting is so soft

But reality is so hard.

Just Want to be Loved

And you write and think and publish and study and write

Thinking of perfect poems and perfect thoughts

You want to be loved and celebrated

And praised and showed the good time

And have people interviews and ask me questions

Just to feel important in the world and share

Little insights with people who dig my stuff

Feeling like Henry Miller or Ernest Hemingway

And have people say that is really good,

And how did you come up with that,

What inspired you do or say that

I’ll buy your book, and you give a reading here

Will pay you

I guess most writers feel this way,  

And the others, can hardly care

At all

Damion Hamilton is from St. Louis MO. His poems have appeared in Chiron Review, Poesy Magazine, Zygote In My Coffee, Red Fez, The Camel Saloon and many others. He writes poetry, stories and novels. He has written several books. Available here.  He can be found on twitter here.

Resurrecting in My Letters 

In the arid desert of my soul,

where the sun burned away the last hope,

and thirst carved deep wounds,

lay an echo of my former calm.

The shadows were night crows,

pecking at frayed dreams,

and the heart, a broken clock,

ticking away hours of a time long gone.

But in the secret crucible of my mind,

where ideas are smoldering embers,

I found the alchemy of the word,

the pure gold that my being reverses.

Each letter, a star seed,

germinating in the garden of silence,

each verse, a river flowing intensely,

washing away debris, healing the wound.

My letters are beacons in the dense fog,

maps to a treasure I thought was lost,

the master key to an ancient labyrinth,

the compass that guides my existence.

In each stanza, a phoenix in flight,

in each line, a constant rebirth,

the broken chrysalis, the being ahead,

I resurrect in my letters, I am persistence.

I am no longer the shadow of a gloomy yesterday,

but the rainbow after the storm,

the melody that defies silence,

the soul that blooms in the depths of summer.

My words are my shield and my spear,

the battle cry against apathy,

the irrefutable proof of my daring,

the life that resurfaces, dances, and advances.

GRACIELA NOEMI VILLAVERDE is a writer and poet from Concepción del Uruguay (Entre Rios) Argentina, based in Buenos Aires She graduated in letters and is the author of seven books of poetry, awarded several times worldwide. She works as the World Manager of Educational and Social Projects of the Hispanic World Union of Writers and is the UHE World Honorary President of the same institution Activa de la Sade, Argentine Society of Writers. She is the Commissioner of Honor in the executive cabinet IN THE EDUCATIONAL AND SOCIAL RELATIONS DIVISION, of the UNACCC SOUTH AMERICA ARGENTINA CHAPTER.

I will dissolve when I die

start six feet under, and the water table will rise

and I will be carried away into you

so I give myself to you now.

You are the ocean

and all things return to you.

All things return

but two parts of me stay.

One part is lost at sea

and the other part is searching for it.

And I cannot find either.

They are both dissolving as I surely will

The ocean is powerful like that

But I am losing myself.

And you have me.

So I give myself to you now.

I will dissolve entirely.

I will be the entirety of the ocean

I will be so much

so small.

I will be a portrait of myself.

You will be the entirety of me

I will not be the entirety of you.

Art Basel 2025 

Basel June 19 and 22, 2025 

In Basel. 

The festival, one of the main events of the international art market, presents works of modern and contemporary art in over 280 leading galleries proven in the world. 

The summer sun illuminates the beautiful landscapes of Switzerland.

While I was walking through these landscapes with pleasure, I was thinking about how long our journey to Basel would take us.

What passages, from beauty to beauty, from Lugano to Luzerno. 

Indeed, it seems to me, as they say, a beautiful dream with open eyes.

How beautifully the hand of man has worked together with the generosity of nature and in this way, in this place, they have built a true paradise. 

My thought goes far.

Being amazed by these beauties, which impress me and that with my words I cannot describe them properly.

And what an opportunity and art exists, for every person and every nation, if this valuable experience in the transformation of the environment which resembles heaven on earth, here in Switzerland. That they can use it, and that everyone can practice it in their own place, in the care and protection of nature and at the same time for the benefit of their health. 

Arrival in Basel

After a five-hour journey,

we arrive in Basel.

And here is the Rhine River, not only offering us amazing beauty but a memory and journey with the old European history.

In the beautiful and ancient Basel.

An indescribable pleasure for this place,.

And not only for its beauties, but also for the fact that Basel welcomes us with open arms and envelops us with the warmth of the most beautiful and important activities not only for Switzerland but also for the whole of Europe.

Before us lies majestic and all dressed in red, the square in front of the building, where the song festival – Eurovision 2025 took place

The square in front of the Basel fair is in fact the most magnificent platform that can be offered to art at Art Basel. 

And who can use it better than the internationally renowned painter, who has repeatedly freed herself from the limitations of the classical canvas to claim entire spaces as a canvas for her colorful excesses?

Now Katharina Grosse has transformed the fairground into a large painting. 

In doing so, she included the entire square, including the fountain and the surrounding architecture, in her work.

The German painter has long been considered a star. 

And she is practically destined for this great commission, which is given to an artist every year for the days of the Art Basel fair. 

The Swiss press writes about her and her fame has already spread throughout Europe and the whole world.

Switzerland is ahead in all arts.

It constantly organizes exhibitions to help talents, in supporting and encouraging them as well as displaying the products of the hands of the youngest, the oldest and the most famous artists.

Truly a model to be taken as an example by all European countries and why not the world.

An excellent job in giving the right value to those works that really have value.

The first day

Crowds of people flowed like a river in front of the festival building.

Others climbed the stairs to the palace of culture, where the exhibition titled Arte-Basel had opened.

An exhibition service employee greeted us in Italian and with her warmth and talented hospitality, offered us all the necessary information about ARTE-BASEL 2025.

Second day in Basel

Already amazed by the exhibited works.

We move from one pavilion to another. We take photos.

Thousands of square meters have been made available for the exhibition of works by great artists, as well as ample space for the many visitors.

A special commitment and interest from the employees of the municipality of Basel.

They follow every activity, every detail of this exhibition, in help and support of the exhibition employees as well as the artists themselves. 

Everything in order and with correctness.

“We like this,” said one of the employees, because with the same dedication these beautiful works of art were created, which are exhibited in all the exhibition pavilions.

Values ​​should be protected only with values.

Works that amaze with their beauty and the messages they carry for the culture and life of people everywhere in the world.

We will see and hear each other in the other visits made by our side, in the following days, in these artistic activities, developed in Switzerland and their importance and values ​​for Europe and the World.

JULIETTE

My hands were frozen, and I couldn’t move them. Juliette, you and I are certainly far apart. It’s not just geographical distance, but the way a woman and a man think is far more distant. I don’t know what else to say except that I’m still alive. On the night when the light of the spring stars reaches the bottom of the fountain, all I can do is show you my feelings as they are in the light. 

I ate rice from a lacerated bowl. There were days when I was beaten so severely with a baton that I could not get up for days. In a world where nothing is certain, one may continue to search for certainty, and I’m waiting for some kind of signal from you. Juliette, even if it’s just a small rustle of wings, it’s better than feeling uncertain. 

I don’t have a past like a worn stone. There is no future like a curtain that harbors the wind. Now I am filled with the image of you. I see you on the wine like freshly squeezed fruit that I have just soaked up at a wealthy gallery. Tonight, from the darkening sky, another clear, cold spring rain will fall.  

If you want, I can crystallise those raindrops into starlight on my palm. I want to see the light in your eyes, so that it may shine in the center of Juliette’s black eyes and shine in my own. I am beaten to the ground like a stray dog, with no place to go back to, while dreaming of you. My beloved homeland, Juliette.

1. The Breasts Depart

Marla woke up flat-chested and full of dread. Her tits had left her.

Not metaphorically. Not emotionally. They had packed up their nipple rings, slathered on some coconut oil, and walked out sometime between 3:17 and 4:06 a.m., leaving behind a note scrawled in eyeliner on the bathroom mirror:

“We’re tired of being your emotional support meat. We’re going corporate. Don’t wait up.”

She stared at her reflection, now a pale slab of chest meat, and screamed. Not because she missed them. Because she knew what they were capable of.

2. The ATM Incident

Three days later, she spotted them at a Chase Bank ATM on Sunset.

They were wearing a vintage Vivienne Westwood corset, nipple tassels shaped like dollar signs, and a pair of oversized sunglasses perched on their areolas. The left one—always the sassier—was tapping away at the keypad with a manicured finger. The right one was sipping a matcha latte through a straw tucked into its cleavage.

Marla approached, hoodie pulled tight around her hollow chest.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Those are my tits.”

The left breast turned. “We prefer independent assets now.”

The right one blew a kiss and said, “We’re building a brand.”

3. The Debt Spiral

Marla tried to file a missing body part report. The cop laughed so hard his mustache fell off and scurried away like a cockroach.

She remembered The Nose by Gogol. How the nose dressed in a military uniform and refused to acknowledge its owner. Her breasts were worse. They were buying NFTs, investing in crypto, and launching a podcast called Boobonomics.

She saw them on a billboard for OnlyTans, a tanning salon they co-owned with a rogue spleen from Belarus.

Her credit score plummeted. Her name was attached to six maxed-out cards, a yacht rental in Ibiza, and a failed startup called “Nipple Futures LLC.”

4. The Podcast

Marla tracked them down to a podcast studio in Silver Lake.

They were being interviewed by a sentient vape pen named Chad.

“So, tell me,” Chad wheezed, “how did you go from being attached to a nobody to becoming icons of financial freedom?”

The left breast giggled. “We were tired of being objectified. So we became the object.”

The right one added, “We’re launching a lingerie line called Hostile Takeover.”

Marla burst in, breathless. “You’re ruining my life!”

The breasts blinked. “Do we know you?”

5. The Arrest

The FBI finally caught up with them.

Marla was arrested alongside her breasts for wire fraud, identity theft, and racketeering. They were accused of laundering money through a shell company called “BoobCoin.”

In the interrogation room, Detective Slade leaned in. His jaw was a meat cleaver. His libido, a broken fire hydrant.

“Tell me who’s behind this.”

The breasts giggled. “We are, Daddy.”

They seduced him with a slow bounce and a whispered promise of “interest-free pleasure.” He let them out on bail. Marla stayed cuffed.

6. The Showdown

Marla was released two days later. She found them in her apartment, sipping absinthe and watching reruns of Murder, She Wrote.

“You sold me out,” she growled.

“We upgraded,” they purred.

She lunged. They countered.

It was a knock-down, drag-out, tit-on-girl brawl. Fishnets tore. Lipstick smeared. The left breast bit her ear. The right one tried to gouge her eye with a stiletto heel.

They collapsed together, bruised and panting.

7. The Suffocation

Marla fell asleep on the floor, bloodied and exhausted.

She awoke to find her breasts trying to suffocate her, wrapping around her face like fleshy boa constrictors.

“Enough!” she screamed, grabbing a pair of bondage ropes from under the bed.

She tied them up, tight and trembling.

They moaned.

“Oh, you like that,” she said.

“We’ve always wanted a domme,” they whispered.

8. The Kink Ever After

Now they live together in a one-bedroom apartment above a taxidermy shop.

Marla is the Mistress. Her breasts are her submissives.

They pay off their debt one spank at a time.

Every night, she whispers to them:

“You may have left me once. But now? You’re mine.”

And they reply, in unison:

“Yes, Mistress. Forever and ever. Amen.”

9. Epilogue: The Nose Knows

Sometimes, late at night, Marla dreams of Gogol’s nose.

It floats past her window in a military uniform, saluting her with a crooked smile.

She salutes back.

Because in this world, body parts have ambitions. And sometimes, they just need a little discipline.

One

It hasn’t rained in a while. I hope it does soon. The earth needs the rain and besides, all the clouds and winds and strange atmospheric things that come with the rain are more interesting and inspiring than a sunny day. 

You know though, come to think of it, the meadow, the place where much of this writing’s events and thoughts are set, is rarely completely dry. Its grasses and earth seem to retain some moisture, somehow. It is sagacious that way. I know because my shoes, most of the time Converse, high top yellow and regular blue (both faded now), get wet there. 

Today there were a few souls along the path, coming back as they were, but after I passed them, not many. Not any at all in fact. Let me give some context to the place. It’s after towns and highways and even roads. In fact, the road ends at the beginning of the forest, having turned from asphalt to gravel to dirt. 

There is a public forest to the right. It attracts dog walkers, hikers, joggers, bike riders, photographers, walking groups, and sometimes homeless people. Sometimes there is even a type that is hiding out from something like the law or people in general, a type that stays in the woodlands when others would not in parts where others don’t go. 

But to the left is a private forest. This is the one that leads to the meadow. The meadow is like a golden treat at the end of a journey, a beautiful goal if ever there was one. There are two definite and visible No Tress passing signs at its two entrances. People obey them. But some lucky souls like me have permission from the old farmer that owns the land, to go there. 

Two 

There is something else, something bordering on the esoteric or gnostic. It’s insight seen while driving to that entrance of the forest that leads to the meadow. Since it’s rural, there are many sprawling properties. Many affluent homes, the new ones, are grey and without character. They just copy one another. It’s doubly sad, because of the copying but also what’s being duplicated. Not a thing in it all looks unique or soulful, not even a special trellis or bit of coloured brick, sounding fountain, or flowing garden. 

But…I noticed that some places have older homes, from a time of wooden porch and red brick and chimney. From an era of grounded-ness and more honest atmosphere. And beyond rain barrel and sunflower, past stained perimeter fence and sometimes no fence at all, I could see a pond and little forest back there. They would contain a different area-atmosphere. Mysterious, even in the plane light of day under the clean azure sky. It’s as if the prose of the world turned into poetry, then. Trees. Leaves. Branches. What was back there? I wished I could know. I longed to go. But I knew none of them, not one of those owners. I supposed that they took the magic for granted, these sprawling old lands. And how could they not, if they indeed did? It was their reality. Lucky ones, that’s what they were, however hard working, they were still lucky. All I could do was drive by. Being an empath, I could just feel the areas even for moments and from a distance. I loved it. They were as if containing portals or vortexes to other worlds magical and monumental. 

Often I imagine the coyote dens, the travelling foxes, the large porcupines. I knew there must be deer that wait and watch near there, because I had seen them. Maybe there were types of insects rare or not even discovered by scientific or poetic eyes. The scents of the flora. The sounds of the rains at night. The woodpecker or Bluejay. Strange snakes representing the kundalini energy. The kind summer dew morning. The autumnal hued leaves when that highly spiritual time came, the veil between worlds thinning. Halloween, Thanksgiving. Then some string of electric lights for Christmas. And much more. How come I couldn’t have a place like that? What a caretaker and curator I could be, surely would be. Ah well, I would think and sigh it away with a brief smile. What was meant to be, would be. 

Three

Well, the path. What of it? And then the meadow itself of course. Go past the signs and there are two options, no, three. The top after heading left has itself stationed on the uppermost part of a long and winding valley. It is safe but the side does become steep if you go off the regular way. Deer cross there sometimes and other times hide in the bushes by the thick trees. Wild berries grow and there are snake holes, many sticks, and lichen and moss. The one grouse I had, only one slight one, is that there are very few rocks or boulders. I don’t know if they were removed or just never there. It would be nice to see some cinematic view of the lands through time to note small and large changes, to watch the valley and its surrounding habitat move, grow, glisten, and weather or bloom. 

In the middle down the way is, well, the middle path, thicker on the sides especially of late for some reason. More raspberries, a hybrid berry of some sort, half black and half red. Many birds and numerous chipmunks running for cover at the sound of things or else up trees to safety, talking to their friends. The trail is bumpy in parts but also serene. So uninhabited by human presence. Mostly pristine and untouched. Those are the real ‘moments,’ nature lovers look for,- the meditative and quiet, the Zen-like phenomenon of being present amidst a type of natural mystical sense…

And the more main path, it’s old Oak trees and some Evergreens, straight for a while but also winding along. Mushrooms and pebbles, good old dirt earth and sometimes the rain drops left on leaves after a night storm. Walk and walk and walk. See and be and have a certain amount of glee. Soon enough, part Pine and placid easy places,

going along there by the verdant canopy where bits of sun filter down through to say hello, will be the magnificent meadow waiting. 

Suddenly it can be seen through a frame of red sumac that reaches over both sides of the path arching to itself. Blue skies beyond. A green swath is cut all around and some ancient farm machinery wait in the middle like a token gesture, a nod to other decades. The sun lights everything then. Continue. A corpse of trees is waiting to the right. Birds fly in and out. Some to sing and some to speak their speech loquaciously and vigorously. 

Onward is a way to a lower area where chaga mushroom, rare and not known by many, grow on some birch streets in a certain stand of them. The blooming earth has overtaken an ancient access road where a bank robber is said to have abandoned a stolen car, then gotten away while hiding in barns for nights and running between forests and meadows under the light of the moon. Now such an old story, but there is an actual abandoned car from that time down there, and everyone, even straight and upright old timers, are rooting for him. Some have him escaping out all with the loot and somehow making his way to down to Florida. Maybe a personal dream projection from some old storyteller local. Maybe not. 

But drama, thoughts, and time come and go. The goldenrod and queens lace, impossibly tall, a refuge for myriad bugs and insects and the home of grasshoppers dragonflies and even the Praying Mantis, seem to stay. Tall and well-wrought in the clean air world. Every direction then is green and vast, open, and calm, pastoral and perfectly put. 

——-

Brian Michael Barbeito is a Canadian poet, writer, and photographer. His third compilation of prose poems and pictures, The Book of Love and Mourning, is forthcoming in autumn 2025.