We are holding out for a hero. With our forehead carved of multi versa wisdoms,
Sent rowing on a boat designed for a destined night
Stuck in a time lapse of revolutionary haibun
With a soothing arctic cooling of illiteracy volcanic tears dripping on a night breast
Calming flames of corruption
Ascending on a house of cleaning the world dark stains
Said as he who calm anger with knowing,
He who freezes the magma flow of belittled burnt on nightmares
He who spreads wisdom like wild fire. Wouldn’t sought barricades on a night songs face
Hamza Kamar is a 16 years old Nigerian poet, painter, and Content Creator. currently studying at Legend International School. He is also member of Hill-top Creative Art Foundation (HCAF).
When Books Breathe: How Stories Transcend Borders, Time, and Silence
When Books Breathe
In a world constantly racing forward, books remain the quiet keepers of human memory. Unlike fleeting trends or temporary platforms, they stay rooted, whispering stories from past centuries into the ears of modern souls. A book doesn’t demand attention; it earns it slowly — through pages that unfold truth, pain, joy, and hope.
When a person opens a book, they don’t just read. They listen — to distant lands, silenced voices, and forgotten times. Through the weight of a well-crafted sentence or the simplicity of a child’s rhyme, literature transcends borders. A young woman in Uzbekistan can feel the struggles of a mother in Sudan, or the joy of a boy in Peru, all through ink and imagination.
Books breathe when we let them live in our minds — when we carry their messages beyond the bookshelf. In this sense, books are alive not because they are printed, but because they are read, shared, and remembered. They wait patiently, knowing their time will come when a reader is ready to receive.
In a noisy age, the stillness of reading becomes a quiet revolution. Through books, we learn not only about the world, but how to become more human within it. They do not speak louder than others — they speak deeper.
Mushtariybegim Ozodbekova is a student and aspiring writer from Uzbekistan. She enjoys exploring literature as a bridge between cultures and generations. Her writing reflects a deep belief in the power of language to inspire empathy and awareness.
This article was inspired by my own experience of discovering books during a time of personal reflection. In today’s fast-paced world, I wanted to write something that reminds us of the silent strength books carry — and how they connect readers across continents, cultures, and time.
Come; let us head butt the universe to see what she has got intense tone of pitiless indifference or irreducible errors How has it all occurred? What does it mean to be a human? Why this chimpanzee brain with sophisticated cognitive abilities?
Minds that can anticipate and conceptualize Animals in the wild or saviors in mythologies Where are our proximities in behaviors and perceptions?
The meaning of life is in the Darwinian reference Survival, reproduction, and a bit of reciprocal affection I have mixed it up
With Freudian fixations, denials, displacements, and regressions
The meaning of life is where it is not supposed to be
Repression of basic instincts for civilization progress
The aggressions and revolutions that burn down the order of things are its Discontents
Our symbols of art, literature and culture are pornographic,
Simulated by sexual urge
Why do we have morality for her hymen and not for his tongue?
Life is a pendulum that swings between creativity and death
There is no happiness in human civilizations
We have learned to suppress our instincts for artificial security and progress
Come on the heroes of cartoons, screens, and movies there is something magical about interpretation that makes this boring plot so interesting
Follow the trend; go on
Find your meaning in hero worship we all believe more than we think between unloading and fading out Surviving on those useless things that make life worth living
Oh! Karl Marx, can you make us believe again that
Everything is social, historical, and material
Matter before mind
The meaning of life I am thinking of
Has already been conditioned by the economic realities
To keep my spirit alive, I sat beside a stream
I heard the gentle murmur Of a sage moon as he was, Rajneesh
Even without thunder, there was Ma, Ma, Ma Math, Music, Meditations
My guru of excess
We have become too obsessed with sex
And lost the way into superconsicuoness
In my lonely hours, as I was restless in my bed I listened to a madman with the voice of Zarathustra Reason and Madness, Cosmos and Chaos Probability and Randomness Combine to create dazzle on the surface of meaninglessness Nietzsche spoke: you are what you overcome
If life is absurd as you think
You can still create your own meaning
The Prophet of the New Testament sermon told us Don’t judge, for thou shall be judged I said to him, I can’t even cast the first stone I have all the contradictions within
And, for Two Krishnamurti, I admire J. spoke of truth as pathless land I observe as I am Live with choiceless awareness UG, like a sledgehammer, reminded Mind is myth, and thinking is against living. Sages of the Upanishads have said All is all but all, even if you take out all And, as the dawn was about to break Buddha in silence nodded his nothingness
Even if you exist, you don’t Hare Krishna, I still believe in love for all the delusions I have racked up on my wall With Karl Popper, I celebrate open society and how the human mind works
Shifting between clock and cloud models
Why only the one? Have I been saved by too many? Let us not look beyond, beneath, or behind something The meaning of life is like bones and blood Fire and ice Struggle between day and night in the twilight sky Smoke emanating from dead bodies in a funeral pyre A child dying of bone cancer in a hospital bed Human fetus aborted to hide an exchange of pleasure A mother left alone in an old home by her only son And when you can’t even trust the face of an innocent child The meaning of life is discouraging, dangerous, and dark
Hanging between silence, signature, and speech
The meaning of life is somewhere between
What you know and don’t know
The meaning of life has not been inscribed in stone
We only have traces of lines drawn on the sand
Distorted by the waves of history the meaning of life is still recurring and returning Even after all the explanations, analysis, and interpretations
I only speak for my truth; it doesn’t have to be yours
I’m up early, early enough to watch the night slip away.
As always, I’m at the bottom of a mountain.
As always, I am non-committal as to my first step.
I just sit here as new sun nudges away bits of shadow.
I amuse myself with straight lines because I can’t see where
the bent ones go. Coffee begins its occupation of my veins.
My eyes roll around my face, then settle in their sockets.
The cat, with a chrysanthemum in its lapel, rubs my ankles.
The mountain is descending itself. At hill height,
it looks up and, with mighty breath, blows its own head off.
Then it flattens out. I can walk across it.
Light enters the room, is selling uncut flowers.
Above, one sky stands in for all the skies that could be.
It’s the ceiling, like a canvas, where, in a far corner,
a solitary spider signs his name.
NEW MORNING
On a new morning,
the reds, burnt oranges,
of dawn,
fade into fresh light
that becomes
the final arbiter
of stale darkness
and black sky gives way
to pale blue
and downy clouds,
as trees
flap in the brief
flute notes of the breeze
and sunrays
burn away
tiny drops of
water on the grass tips,
wake the flowers,
draw out the petals
from their nighttime fold.
THE WORLD OUTSIDE WHERE IT BELONGS
I am awake, fingers slow burning as they grip hot coffee, heart, a Geiger counter finding love in your still sleeping body, and, on the other side, brain pecking through the grievances already assembled in my thoughts, in the newspaper glaring from my laptop.
The world is a sorry place but the people in it find such comfort in nothing more than a shape in the sheets, a soft breath contesting the solid headwinds of my own. Strangers die but loved ones live. Soldiers kill but no harm comes to those in bedrooms.
Soon, you too will rouse from sleep and dreams, reconvene with what keeps you up at night: the wars, the inequalities, the murders, the rapes, the homeless in their winter blues.
It’s a dangerous world. We are safe. Life turns ugly. We are beautiful. Others are what we read about. We’re what we believe.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, River And South and The Alembic. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Paterson Literary Review, White Wall Review and Flights.
Lonely at the Top
I climbed to the top of the world.
The Statue of Liberty has secret stairs.
They go right up to the torch
and narrow as you go.
Only one person can touch the torch
and see the paint-brush truth of its distant splendor.
At the top,
there is nowhere else to go.
A child might climb on the torch itself.
The adult sees only danger;
where the steps end so do I.
Carefully, I turn around,
Survey all beneath me:
the island and harbor,
the tiny people and Fisher-Price buildings,
Like the toys I had when I was small:
I am their God.
But what can a God do but stare
and be stared at with moribund reverence?
I am above it all.
When I was a child,
I could touch my toys,
move them around.
I can do so no longer,
nor can I swim in the harbor
or walk the land,
so I look up.
The twinkling lights,
New worlds to dominate,
transform, the last chance
for a god to matter.
I must come down
backwards, the way I came,
careful not to trample or be trampled
by those I have passed along the way.
What Standing Up to Tyranny Looks Like
Crowded beach.
Party for all.
Group of hooligans crash
with big guns and armbands.
They laugh loud and announce
they will shoot their guns over the sea,
disrupt the quiet, peaceful brunch
with their monotone supremacy.
Our general jogs over,
with no uniform or rank,
just a sleeveless jacket
and quiet, personal energy
to tell them they are welcome,
but their threats are not.
He cannot arrest them, they know,
or force them to leave.
Alone, he tries to keep the peace
with young men who desire to end it.
He jogs off, getting in the last word,
for all that words matter.
The hooligans proceed to fire
their munitions, pollute
the air and sea
and laugh and laugh.
If a Certain Politician Has His Way
The loss of income
and transportation
is not as bad
as the loss of purpose.
That’s why I’m excited
when the library accepts
my offer to volunteer.
They tell me to come in on Monday
to fill out the paperwork.
Then on Tuesday a van
will escort me to the job site
to see how things work out.
I can’t wait to dive in,
to stack books or paint walls,
whatever they ask of me.
I go in a few days early
to check the place out
and park my bike in the hall
as there are no bike stands outside,
an antiquated convenience
no longer needed in a nation
of super rich and unseen poor.
I stroll into the lobby
and ask a librarian
if I can leave my bike where it is.
She goes with me and sees
the bike is quite large—an obstruction,
she labels it, even though the hallway
is wide. She assists me,
as librarians do, in finding
a more suitable location
in a building undesigned
for the likes of me.
Solidarity
Lunch in these perilous times
is risky. Still we meet,
hash our plans in silent rebellion
over broth and cheap tea,
the three of us with nothing in common
but our vision.
The overlords catch on.
They choose to punish me, the traitor
to their class. They grab my body
with their invisible force and raise me
toward their searing white light.
A pair of hands grab my leg.
Tentacles envelop the other.
My co-conspirators reveal themselves,
refusing to let me go,
refusing to obey,
suspending me in the air.
The overlords, not known for giving up,
relinquish their light. I fall to the café floor.
An unseen voice tells us we will pay.
We know. We already have paid
with a thousand percent interest.
Greg Gildersleeve lives in the Kansas City area where he teaches college courses in composition, technical writing, and creative writing. He authored two Young Adult novels, The Power Club (2017) and The Secret Club (2020), and a novella, False Alarm (2015). His work has appeared in newsletters The Teaching Professor and Faculty Focus. He won the Publication Award of Johnson County Community College, Overland Park KS.
