The Red Ribbon Braid

My hidden love lies in your red ribbon braid
The scented dewy morning wind flows from the fringe of your sari
The sun plays in my sky every moment
The rejuvenated, illuminated star I feel like twinkling in the dark
The light in hand I'm standing on your land -the alluring flute from far-reaching path
A piece of my dream lies in your red ribbon bun shinning in the bright morning sun.
 
Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
14/01//2021

A Floating Piece of Cloud

I'm a piece of cloud floating in the sun of rain
Wakeful on your eyes in time or out of time
In this play of rain and sun
No sooner had I closed my eyes the cloud went out of sight 
Paying no heed I pray for staying some more time 
Where does it take place and how it works?
Before my sleep I recollect the scene repeatedly
All I lost in the world of sleep 
Possibly the cloud flies like that of egrets or doves 
Setting me up to the play of light and love. 

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
15/01//2021

The Envoy of Peace

You are a drop of my eye's envoy of peace
Flying and flying around you sit on the green field
On the bank of the river, the lake, or the pond 
All on a sudden to the branch of the tree 
Eyes fixed at to the unknown far-reaching way
That aiming snatches me away from myself 
Vibrates the imagination to the distant vatical path
O the migratory flock of birds
You are exposed to the winter light - a heavenly glory
Soothing my eyes all the way I come back with a light 
In my hand at the evening or night.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
15/01//2021
   
Classification  

Why is this acute classification in humanity?
Why is this different social status?
Why can't we flow like the waves of the ocean?
The sun rays can't reach the depth of the forest
Yet the heart or conscience shines in humanity
Darkness may be removed for every single hand
The blind eye can find the light
The hungry can have a lump of food
The sick can get treatment 
Why people die before eyes in season or out of season?
And the others run through on the dead bodies 
Though we all stand in the same line in all prayer houses 
Then why is this condition outside?

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
16/01//2021

Turning Back

Whenever I take step out of the door
Come back again and my eyes fix to the deep well of yours
Hold your hands, cry so loud
You pull me up and I weighed down on your rosy wings
You keep me so tight in your breast
We can't go away so far leaving each other
In this sweetness of bond
A spring of love feathering from this sight to the limitless unknown
The joy shimmering in the eyes I come back again and again
Dive into the deep well of your eyes. 

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
16/01//2021

The Making of My Story

Paddling the canoe, I have always wanted to be a doctor. But I am faced with the difficulty of navigating the canoe to its bank where I could board a taxi to school. It has always been the first thing that comes to mind when I wake from sleep. 

My parents  are poor. My mother is a fish monger while my dad is a taxi driver whose lifestyle of incessant drinking and smoking would not permit him to discharge his fatherly responsibilities. By the way, I am the only child of my parents.

Going to school late has always been my hobby. Despite that, I have always had the mindset of being the person I have always wanted to be...A qualified medical doctor. 

My mother has always been supportive. She works tooth and nail to see that all school fee and related expenses are met. Though she falls sick due to stress and burdens my father pose on her, she takes it as her duty to ensure I am hale and hearty.

On a Saturday afternoon, my mother calls my attention by engaging me in what I call The Motivation. 

She begins: ' Be that person you have always wanted to be. You can't be limited by the circumstance I am facing. I am your mother, Jude. I will ensure within my powers and to my last breath that you get to study to the university. I won't fail you, as long as I live, God willing. Jude, you will reach the height of your dream and surpass it'

'Amen' I reply.' Jesus will make a way for us all'

I believe in you. Never give up! Amen to your declaration!'

'Yes mother. I won't give up. My passion has always been to be a medical doctor. And that I shall become'

'Yes, that's the spirit!' She encourages. I can feel that positive vibe rubbing off on me from her.

'Don't mind your father. He can do what he likes. It was my choice I married him. But that's not important, compared to what we are presently facing.'

'But why is father behaving this way?' I ask in interruption. She sees the ugly face of anger in me.

'Don't get me upset' She warns, looking at me sternly. 'I am all out for you, and nothing less. I put my life on the line to ensure you become a better you. What you just asked is none of your business, but mine!'

Noticing her countenance, I had to show remorse. 'I'm sorry'

'No problem. Can I continue uninterrupted?'

'Of course, mother'


'Good!'  She continues: 'But I believe we will live this place and I will leave this business. You know it has not been any easier for me, even your father.'

With tears rolling down my eyes, I hugged her. 'Mother, you're always my sunshine and will never have that light dimmed, even for a split second! You've been my support and pillar. I promise you, I will get us out of this bad situation'

'Of course, my lovely son' She agrees. Unmoved by my tears, she encourage me to 'Be yourself no matter what they say'

She has to go back to her place of trading, a riverine location, not up to a nautical mile to our place.


'Jude, I have to attend to my fishes' She laughs, parting me on the back. 'See you later'

'OK'  I smile. What they great time to be inspired.

Since then, as I paddle the canoe to as part of my side hustle, making some money to support the home and in some way, my education, I am always optimistic that my faith will make me paddle away the challenges I am facing as I climb through the rigors of life tests to become what my dream has always been... A qualified medical doctor.

That has been the making of my story...

The Long and Mischievous Life of Love, Hatred and Fear 
					By Steven Hill 
			(dedicated to the memory of George Floyd)

		“Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made."
					― Immanuel Kant

Now the streets are quiet again, peaceably quiet,
but it is the pause of the reloading,
the stillness of a graveyard;

	it is the morning after
for those without a future, 
viewing the hulk of strip malls charred to steel frame, 
shuffling through the shattered glass 
	of the fragile consensus, 
and the melted smell of tear gas, weeping over broken dreams.
It is the same twisted today that looks like the yesterday of a
	hundred or thousand years ago,
for those without a language whose hopes were turned to ash, and 
	swept by the aproned shopkeep into the ceaseless star-stream. 
The damage is done when the prospect of progress vanishes
	with the dust re-settling, 
when we cease plumbing the depths of the human soul to 
	find that broad territory in common. 
And as the clash of flesh exhausts its insanities,
	as the Us vs Them smashes together like dialectic atoms,
the frantic synthesis arrives in time for the new tumult,
the pieces pick themselves up and recompose,
sneak past the debris to find a way forward again, 
	arresting the black hole collapse to the backward,
leading the escape of runaways in search of
		a refuge from this most un-civil war.

But the silenced ones know, oh yes don’t they, 
that the interregnum always ends
and the relentless assault on meaning begins again,
leading once more to another round of tweeted reprisals;
across the broken landscape, the tectonic plates crack and separate
	kin from kin,
	ethnic from ethnic, 
accord from conversation, 
we watch helplessly as words tap the algorithm and 
sentences juice the emotion, 
	foreboding the passage of night swallowing the day.
History the bloody obituary written by 
	the last of the last survivors,
language a vehicle for unconditional surrender,
signed at the Court House adjacent to the ghastly battlefield,
	bearded General to bearded General, victorious to vanquished,
chainreacting all over the weaponized volksgeist, 
there are no winners here, only those who lose less.			
				
But what if we re-launched the invention of the feeling?
What if we sought where the tenderness may lie?
What if we weren’t beset by something so sad that it paralyzed?
Or if we listened harder to those who 
	had to bite their own tongues until they bled,
	to those who ended with the short end of the loaf of bread, 
	those buried beneath the missing tombstones of the mass graves.
What if the pure decision of the Good Samaritan 
replaced the pursuit of the Master Race deal,
or if our human desires were not entwined,
		like a crown of thorns,
		inside the political economy of our times?  
Here, at the apogee of our history,
the latest Great Leap Forward turns out to be   
	a backward fall into more backwardness.
The return to MAGA plantation greatness is exposed
	as another fake story of 
	white bwanas sipping lemonade on the porch,
attended by obedient Dark Continent subservience, 
such a human thing to do, to love fantasies that never were,
	as they disappear in the rearview mirror.

But the past survivals never stay buried, do they?
They ooze from the muck of the weeping mass graves, 
	the Rosewood’s and Tulsa’s and Thibodaux’s and 1919 arise 
from the cruel crypt of Hate’s harsh oblivion, 
white-world memory tries to delete from the hard drive
	the silenced evidence of ethno-cide, and 
the un-banality of evil and the sin of looking away,
	every soul guilty of all the good you did not do,
leaving us still groping toward a recognition of our real lives,
	our real history, 
the stipulated record of who really built this country,
	planted its fields, erected its towns and schools and cities,
	and laid the rail tracks to the future,
as the Four Horsemen  howled their overwhelming questions: 

Are we here?
Is this real? 
Are we sure?
Am I real?
Does here connect to anywhere?
	
If E = mc2, then how am I still here?   
How do I find a reason to put one foot in front of the other?
When will I uncover the words, consonants and vowels needed
	to arrive at the source of Something true, 
instead of circling the lonely perimeter with longing, 
	for what I cannot have, 
	for what I cannot taste and cannot kiss,
	and cannot see except in fleeting glimpses of Beauty,
that elusive Something that vanishes into Nothing. 
Yes, I see it in your eyes, my love, 
all the disappeared lives that mattered,
reflected a thousand by thousand times, 
the ones who looked after the system, previous and present,
blown like dead pollen across the centuries;
I see it in my eyes, reflected in your eyes, my love,  
the present is everything and nothing,
utterly reusable in the Grand Mortar and Pestle,
	nothing lives forever, nothing ever will,
not even you and I, my love,
	pawing through the leftovers to hoard what we can, 
to return and return as the dust of the double helix,
amidst the un-raveling of the un-civilization and— 			

	You don’t believe me, you say?
	You don’t believe this is slithering thru our DNA? 
Then why, in the realization that we are everywhere and nowhere,
why have all roads led from the many pasts to here? 
	Why, for each History’s moment, does the crossroad 
	fork yet again, to anywhere but here? 				
How do we find it within ourselves to arise from the breakfast cereal 
	into the urgency of each tangled day?
And why then do we fall down, we millions and billions,
	hearts beating fast like the Ninth in D minor, 
contesting the birthright of where we were born, 
as the Fear and Confusion plant their jeering flags
	amidst a fireworks of scorn? 

No, the streets are calm now, passably calm,
it’s dead quiet out there, beneath the noise;
despite the rumblings of marchings from those who demand a future,
despite the huddled masses barred at the border by the rusted Iron Lady, 
despite the divided “e pluribus unum” of this violent mammal trajectory,
	we thought if we plugged our ears it would leave,
	we thought if we clutched our bellies without malice, 
	we thought if we arranged the words and paragraphs just so  
that we could pacify our death-fear locked inside.

But what if the most feared thing is that which we refuse to confess:
	that Love is the strangest notion of Civilization, 
	proven to regularly run amok, 
	kneeling at the altar of heartless entropy,
		until one day we run out of luck; 				
Yet Love is also the molecular force that can bind,
and what’s bound gives the World its arrow-direction,
	in broken search for that more perfect Union, 
	you and I, a chance for resurrection,
for in the end, in the very very end, 
we are here,
	within the limits of our language,
	within the space between our opposable thumbs,
		stumbling toward governance within the parliament of hysterics,
	straining toward common ground, 
resisting the Hate that tries to overrun all representation,
	standing in defiance of the Trumped up charge and
 	the profanity of evil exposed. 

And then, as the streets re-explode in their un-poetry of un-justice,
as we gasp over our brutal re-acquaintance 
	with the imperfection of it all,
	we discover that something still lives above 
that purple bruise behind the stars,
and below the crooked tree limbs, swinging heavy with that strangest of fruit, 
our prayers re-locate the ACTG helix,  
	replicating with mercy and haloed in pearls,
until finally, we remember, just before we extinguish: 

“Our kiss is for the whole world.” 

[1] The Great Leap Forward of Chinese leader Mao Zedong was a disastrous economic policy from 1958 to 1962 to reconstruct China’s agrarian and industrial economies thru forced collectivization that led to mass starvation for  tens of millions of Chinese.

[1] A 19th century colonial and racist term for the continent of Africa. Sigmund Freud also compared adult women’s sexual life to a “dark continent.”

[1] Racial  massacres: in Rosewood, Florida, New Year’s Day, 1923, a white mob of 300 men murdered dozens of black men, women and children, and completely torched the town into oblivion, wiping it forever off the map; in Tulsa in June 1921, whites burned to the ground the prosperous black neighborhood of Greenwood, murdering hundreds and burying them in forgotten mass graves; and in Thibodaux, Louisiana , November 1887, white plantation owners, politicians and their paramilitaries murdered hundreds of black sugar cane workers and their families for going on strike, the most violent labor dispute in US history; in 1919, white massacres and lynchings of blacks took place in more than three dozen US cities, including Chicago, Washington DC, Baltimore and Omaha, after black military veterans returning from World War I asserted their labor rights, resulting in the murder of hundreds of black Americans.

[1] The four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Death, Famine, War, and Conquest, that arrive in the biblical Book of Revelations as harbingers of the Last Judgment and the end of the world. [1] Albert Einstein’s equation of special relativity. Energy (E) produced equals the mass (m) of a body destroyed times the speed of light (c) squared. That means mass and energy are the same physical entity, and can be changed into each other.

[1] Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, popularly known as the  9^th Symphony, or “Ode to Joy.”

[1] The Statue of Liberty is the figure of Libertas, robed Roman goddess of liberty, inscribed with the words “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” [1] “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union…”, first words of the U.S. Constitution.

[1] Singer Billie Holiday, Strange Fruit. “Southern trees bear a strange fruit, Blood on the leaves and blood at the root, Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze, Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.” [1] ACGT is an acronym for the four fundamental units of the genetic code found in a DNA double-helix molecule: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T). They comprise the molecular foundation for all organic life.

But, Sadly It Never Will


The middle of the
night, and here I am
half drunk. Feeling
the urge to write,
but not knowing
quite what to do.

I'm not sure what
I want to say.

I feel like I'm halfway
on the way to somewhere.
I'm not totally depressed,
but I'm not O.K. either.

I'm not happy, though,
no way !
Far from it !

Earlier today, I met a woman,
an old friend of mine,
who's partner died a couple
of years ago.

I hadn't seen her for nearly a
year, or so.
So she didn't know that my wife
and father had died within
two months of each other.
When I told her, she got upset,
which made me feel guilty.

But, what can I do ?
If someone asks, " How is
your partner? ", I can't lie,
and say " Fine."

Can I ?

I wouldn't want to, anyway.
It's a very strange thing, but
I've noticed it before ;
When someone who you
love, really love dies,
for a month or two you
feel like grabbing by the
lapels everyone you pass
in the street, screaming
" Don't you fucking get it ?
My grandfather/ girlfriend/
wife/Dad has died ? "

You want it to mean as much to
the rest of the world, as it does
to you.

But, sadly, it never will. 

INTERNATIONAL UZBEKISTAN AND INDIA LITERATURE FESTIVAL

Organizer: Noel Lorenz (India)
Abdulloh Abdumominov 
(Uzbekistan)

- Rajabov Muxriddin  (Uzbekistan)
- Marjona Yoqubova (Uzbekistan)
- Hakimov Feruz  (Uzbekistan)
- Altinay Tilegenova (Uzbekistan)
- Muhitdinova Dildora  (Uzbekistan)
- Jo'raqulova Mashhura  (Uzbekistan)
- Behzod Gapparov (Uzbekistan)
- Umirzakov Zarpulla  (Uzbekistan)
- Tashtemirova Nodira  (Uzbekistan)
- Mansurova Aziza  (Uzbekistan)
- Bo'ltakov Tursunqul  (Uzbekistan)
- Noel Lorenz  (India)
- Pankhuri Sinha (India)
- Perwaiz Shaharyar (India)
- Deepti Shakya (India)
- Deepika Sinh (India)

Thank you so much to the participants! 

The festival was attended by participants from both countries. The festival was organized by Noel Lorenz to further develop the culture of the two countries. At the festival the friendship between the two countries was further strengthened.

“Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.”
– Stephen Hawking

“When you reach for the stars, you are reaching for the farthest thing out there. When you reach deep into yourself, it is the same thing, but in the opposite direction. If you reach in both directions, you will have spanned the universe. ” – Vera Nazarian

This month we explore what it means to be a member of the universe. We are one part of a larger whole, a resident of a vast world beyond ourselves, but we belong here just as much as anyone else.

Writers and artists this month convey the large human and natural worlds in which we find ourselves, and how we integrate that reality into our lives.

Fabio Sassi’s technicolor images meld together artifacts of modern life: product names, advertising, and technology.

Terry Tierney, in an interview on his recently published historical novel Lucky Ride, describes how his characters’ lives intersect with both the specific history of the 1960s and broader human experiences. He draws on road trips as both reality and metaphor, looking at how travel and a change of scene helps when we attempt to make sense of our lives.

Michael Robinson writes of the spiritual redemption he finds through Easter and his Christian faith.

Umar Yogiza evokes the shadows of death and grief (as well as the title of our publication) in his poetry, which explores the dislocation of personal and public loss. J.J. Campbell evokes disillusionment on a smaller, yet still personally relevant scale, with faith, with romance, and with his own body. Peter Cherches explores mortality and the limits of our creative imaginations with whimsy.

Susie Gharib contributes poems of imagination. Her speakers indulge the worried speculations of a creative mind and highlight their determination to carve out the independence to maintain that state.

Cortney Bledsoe writes of shaky mental health and grief and the various stratagems by which we keep ourselves alive. Mark Young evokes our confinement within the mystery of our existence, where different forms of knowledge are our means of escape.

“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.” – Joseph Campbell

Mahbub’s poetic speakers highlight how they are connected to the broader natural universe. We all experience birth and death, we all are physical creatures.

Chimezie Ihekuna’s essay urges humanity to work together with nature to improve overall health as a means of addressing pandemics.

“Kindness keeps the universe fastened into place.” – Maureen Joyce Connolly

Poet, musician, and DJ Ike Boat describes his project to feed homeless children in Ghana.

Abdulloh Abdumominov writes of the seasons, creative writing, family – all aspects of life that can be preserved and celebrated when we have international peace.

J.K. Durick’s speakers speculate into the lives of others: an elderly woman who dies while on a walk, tornado survivors on the news, Chekhov characters, aware of the limits of their imaginations.

Santiago Burdon’s visual poem depicts a woman worn down and bled dry by the harshness of city life. Mike Zone’s anti-hero Roadrunner character takes on real evil: coyotes perpetrating human trafficking in the desert.

Steven Hill’s consciousness expands at night until he grows to encompass many voices beyond his own: Ukrainians, Chinese forced labor survivors, Rohingyas, Black people experiencing racism in the United States.

We hope that this issue will broaden readers’ points of view to encompass the worlds around them. Thank you very much for reading and for opening up to the wider world within our international publication.

Junkyard lyrics

i
The memories jerked up, 
so the butterflies flies intact
out of the raging fire

into your innocent catch

pours over your fears,

it's a moment of doubt
encased desires mount further

drying in the sunlight 
of your quiet innocence

wanting more of their less,
another history phased

& each history recognizes
more of only what it destroyed,

the old pleasure
repeated measures

Of unexplained things.

Hypnotized lyrics
of synchronized chaos.

The chaos’s embraces

Like hitting a thousand times
by a rocketing ice.

ii
The first Alago word I lost
was 'elayaba'.
The word for there's more, I think.
Silent more. The more in a smile. 
The more in the tears I gave to my Allah
The day he took my mother.

Little more for my prayers than mouth, 
more doubt fleeing my eyes again
more remembrance of memories.

iii

In the moonless anthology
of African contemporary poetry

flowers with the body of stone
talks
have blood
& it pours like champagne gases

It's a synchronized chaos.

The government have ears in poetry.

Eight four soldiers battling terrorist
that stripped off their uniforms
throw away guns
& any military resemblance
& flee 

Celebrates surviving a masked war
after being dismissed.

In a war, right, they say,
lives near wounds, scars & grave.

In this type of synchronized chaos

Pulling what was lost
out of the death is impossible.




Deration

God's anguish derails down further
through the faults in his perfect system.

The Angel would come in flesh like a man
& the vultures would ask to be eaten.

Our tired tomorrows are taking a risk,
Ghosts too are taking a risk of coming back.

The mechanical beasts of the West strikes.
Things are quickening towards the grave.

The sun goes down quiet with hundreds
The memories rises as non-glitter sun

Yesterday, with a room for all chained us, 
Its mystery slices us under its charms.

Heaven glitters in the alphabet of Devil's name
& God became the cracked holes into the hell.