Symbol of 20 years of loyalty
Mother... People compare mother in different ways. In fact, mothers are the most precious gift given to us among the blessings of the world. Mother! Who is he, why is she incomparable...
When a person defines something, he first of all looks at himself. In fact, if a child who has just stepped on the threshold of knowledge is asked what he understands by the word mother, he will say without hesitation what qualities and traits he saw in his mother. It is enough to ask us not who your mother is, but what you feel when you hear the word mother. Our mother is embodied before our eyes, and we begin to describe the word mother with her qualities. A mother is a father, loyalty, life, doctor, counselor, friend, confidant, simple-minded, well-wisher, honest, responsible. The above definitions were exactly my answer to the question: "Who is mother?" Yes, my mother is the kind of woman whose loyalty I know is epic in tongues, the one who praises my mother after seeing the paths of life. A mother is probably the only one who can still preserve the loyalty of 2 years of love, who can devote her life to the loyalty of her love and her child.
18 years ago... That terrible event, the night when the 2-year taste of love that was awaited for 24 years was lost. Death came to a family that was full of happiness and took away all their joy in the blink of an eye. He took a woman's husband, love, confidant, dreams and laughter with him. There was only one reason, which connected him with this world and gave him hope that he would have a smile on his face later. A little girl in a crib who doesn't know what's going on, can't even feel it. It was the only relic left by his confidant. Now the woman could see her soulmate only in her offspring. He gave her his life, joy, love, dreams, everything he had. He raised her, she did not even feel that her father was absent.
It was so much so that even her classmates found out that the girl had no father in the 5th grade, also because of an assignment in the native language class. The woman washed her hair white and combed it, so that she wouldn't lose heart, she pretended that it was coming out of her mouth, so that others wouldn't know her weakness, she confided in him. She taught her daughter so that her life paths would not be like mine, and reawakened her dreams that had turned into mirages. A miracle of God showed itself not to be a miracle, but a miracle. Only a woman, a devoted MOTHER, can do such courage from the blessings created by God. Our mother.
It is said that a human child can endure pain until about 90 bones are broken. Only in the mother's body for 9 months, two hearts beat, and when he was born, he was born with the pain of breaking more than 300 bones. As 9 months are one whole, a woman turns her life into two bodies, holding her life in the hands of death. It's great to give your life, agree to suffer and even give your life as a pledge. That is why Heaven is under the feet of Mothers. Now the counter-respondent?! How? How are we treating them?
To those who gave their lives, put their lives in the middle, spent a piece of our meat night and night, day and night, and threw stones at our beautiful garden, throwing stones at our heels. How are we responding to this man who killed himself?! Instead of comforting him when he is upset, we are the cause of the tears coming out of his eyes. Instead of protecting the pure heart from reproaches and stones, we ourselves are throwing stones. We could not give in to the fact that our tsar missed something insignificant, and we did not even try.
Did we do at least one good deed for people like him to be proud of us while they are proud and bragging about their children. Now ask yourself a question. When was the last time you said to your mother, "Mom, I love you. Thank you, you said. Do you remember when you prayed for your parents during prayer? Let's open our eyes, friends, they are God's blessing, trust, priceless to us. When you enter your home and your parents' shoes are standing on the threshold, there is no happier person in this world than you. Let's appreciate them! After all, "The last regret is your enemy."
Oh, my mother is chasing after me,
A piece of heart is worth a thousand bribes, mother.
In a bright world seeing every misfortune,
My poor mother who did not see Toshkan.
Did I miss you once as a child?
Have I become your child now?
Humanity is created to want to say the dearest and most attractive words about life, the cradle of life - mother. However, the joy of speech and life, life, and happiness begin with the mother. In the above lines, the poet has described his mother beautifully. In fact, it doesn't matter to him whether we are 7 years old or 70. He always worries and thinks about us. "Is my child okay, has he eaten, is it getting colder, please put on some warm clothes, my child is my child," he says, days are restless, and nights are filled with questions.
As if this is not enough, it is necessary to put up with the whims of the spouse. Just one piece of heart breaks itself into a thousand pieces. Child, spouse, family, gossip and slander, suffering, diseases are all his responsibility. Only our innocent heart can see all the sufferings and troubles of this world in half of its life and dreams of seeing the capital once. It's no secret that Uzbek women spend the most beautiful years of their lives in labor and suffering, worrying about their family, while Western women are busy traveling the world.
Our mother is excited to see Tashkent. It is enough to come to the capital once and see its beauty. He brags about his happiness to everyone. If you, as a child, do something good for once, the child's heart will beat with joy. "My child took it for me," he says and shows it to everyone. He rubs his eyes and prays for you every moment. Your small gift will bring joy to the world.
In fact, there is nothing easier than making our mother happy. A small unexpected gift from you will fill you with happiness and joy. Sometimes you don't even need a gift. All you need is a kind word and good health. If you call me my mother, I will give my life for my child. Yes friends, this necklace is such a miracle. He is a child at heart, his courage is as strong as a man's strength, and his patience is stronger than the mountains, he is just a miracle, and this miracle is our paradise on earth.
In conclusion, it should be said that preserving God's miracle and making his eyes wet with tears of joy is a duty for us as well. Let's not forget that even if we are in his service for the rest of our life, we cannot repay him for the one night he spent awake for us. In front of the good things he has done for us, what we do is like a drop in the ocean. Let's protect our paradise, because God has entrusted mothers.
Mukhammadova Mushtariybegim Otabekovna. Born on 01.05.2005 in the city of Navoi, Navoi region. Currently, she is a 2nd-year student of the computer engineering faculty of Tashkent University of Information Technologies. At the same time, she is a young member of the People's Democratic Party. Until now, she has gained knowledge in many areas. In particular, she studied art, culture, education, politics, psychology, personal development, foreign languages perfectly. Currently, she can communicate in Turkish and English.
YOUNG PEOPLE AND THE INTERNET
The internet was first created to store research information for scientists to access them at any time or from any place. The internet has made an immense contribution to globalization.
Nowadays it is much easier than ever to access the internet. Wherever you are you can listen to your favorite music, reading the books and things like that. There is no doubt that many young people spend their hours online during their day. It has some cons but also numerous drawbacks.
One advantage of the internet is that young people can do a lot of useful websites for students. This often helps teenagers to widen their grades. Another positive aspect of the internet is that people can practice the foreign languages by chatting with their friends from other countries. This is a good way of keeping in touch with their friends and family around the world. Even when someone lives hundreds of kilometers from you, you can call each other. In my opinion the internet is an amazing tool. The benefits outweighs the downsides. However we should be careful not to use the internet excessively!
NARZULLOYEVA MUNISA BAKHROMOVNA was born on August 13th,2006 in Surxandarya region Sariasia district of the Republic of Uzbekistan. She graduated school. She accomplished to a lot of achievements. For instance: her articles published on the Germany's "Raven Cage", Kenya's "Mt.Kenya Times" international magazines. Also she is also the member of "All India council of Technical skill development" and the member of "Global Education Ambassador".
Cows Coming Home with Portrait of the Artist in a Sideview Mirror
“You say you want a revolution”
Adrian Brody on the set of The Pianist
“Both thrilling and disturbing when you see your own son
can conjure ghosts”
Blown-up Soviet barracks in East berlin used to represent
Poland in WWII
Striped pajamas on hangars framed against windowlight, Dachau
Office telephone on a desk in Stasi headquarters, former East Berlin
Political prisoners in TV drama, Budapest
Extra on the set of a musical film about Collectivism, Your Rigged Life
“It’s for you” photo of a disconnected line hanging from a telephone pole
In a dream, the sleeping car compartment Jung emerged from
Single flower stuck into the snow on snow covered grave with headstone
elaborate carving of a young girl holding bouquet of flowers.
Watching the dismantling of a paper mâché statue of Stalin 1989
Toppled, wrecked statues, from heroes row, as junk
Déjà vu all over again
Pretend execution of two teenage boys up against the Berlin Wall
Mother’s warning to daughter after collapse of Communism 1990,
“Beware, things will get worse.”
Was she right?
Empty picture frame on a bureaucrat’s wall formerly reserved for a
portrait of Marshall Tito, Belgrade
Marina, a porn actress getting a manicure watched by a fascinated
young girl
Lighting candles for the dead 40th anniversary of Hungarian Revolution
Scrambled Rice (Stan), Annotated
Small Self-portrait (Prototype for Anne’s vampire?)
Cave Wall Late 20th Century (The Internet of things)
The Lighter Side of War
Demon and Cherubs at Play
“A painter paints to unload himself of feeling and visions”
Said Picasso
Two Hell’s Angels Taking Christ Down from the Cross While
Drinking Wine in California with a Mule
Ascending Oranges
Narcissus in Heat
Head du Jour (Christ in a crock pot)
Busts (like death masks) (Not tits, busts)
Visitation of the Wisemen (The Nightmare)
Hitler Denies to Six Million Jews the Watermelon of Life
Adam and Eve Riding from Eden on Beasts
Public Dance (Like early David Lynch experimental films)
Guerilla Penetrated by Projectile Clown (see the Lighter Side of War)
Woman with a Wooden Indian
Satyrs Dancing
Dogs fighting at Paris Carnival
Day 1 ( of the Autocracy with out of focus TV screen shot
of Big Brother)
Rooster Mistakenly Sent in as a Linebacker
“You’re Innocent When You Dream” (after Tom Waits)
Nine Attempts to Paint Hitler as a Baby (“after trying unsuccessfully
eight times; you get only rats, then the baby”)
Rembrandt Departing by Limo
De Kooning refusing an honorary academic degree said, “I can’t
see myself as an academic. I think of myself as a song and
dance man”
Don’t Believe Everything You Read (printed in Bold on a canvas
titled “Recline Nude.” There is no nude figure)
Mary Woronov
Self-describes as “a rat in the sewer of popular culture”
(she’s) the sweet and sour chicken on our cosmic mine
(An) Exploding Plastic Inevitable
Mary Bland
Eating Raoul
Dancing Mary
Singing Mary
Mary Wonderly
Mary Woronov
Rock ‘n Roll High School
Death Race 2000
Fur Coat in Florida
Life Studies Without Models
First the paintings, then the stories
Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills
Secrets of the Chambermaid
Where Sleeping Dogs Lie
Blue and Brittle
Boy Dares Car to Run Over His Girlfriend
Hollywood Hangover
Uneasy Rider
One Night Stands
Red Death
Anxiety, Grief, Depression, Pain
At first, the picnic looked like an after-lunch massacre
Giant black cinders floated from the sky onto California snow
(A) Wake for the Fallen Angels
Hawkes’ Hell’s Angels, The Cannibal
“The night was so black that the red lights from the hatches
of his tanks would have reflected against the clouds
and brought death.”
“It was years since the people had stopped talking.”
“The child ran all the faster when the light went out in the
butcher shop.”
“…jewels of tin cans littered the indefinable yards without
lawns or bushes.”
“She wondered how the strange wild cannibals on tropical
islands or on the dark continent, running with white
bones in their hair, in the shimmering sand, could
bear, in only their feathers, this terrible sun.”
“Behind them one of the chickens began to scream and a
speck appeared in the sky.”
“The policeman’s call faded into nonsense.”
“He was in the presence of the white lady of the other world.”
“The dark angel stood in the doorway cutting off the candlelight
from the other world.”
“How peculiar, the wooden man and fleshless God, they kept
company.”
“In Winter Death steals through the doorway sending for both
young and old and plays for them in his court of law.”
“At last, the rats and the monkeys died.”
“Their bodies were strewn over the main grounds, and since
they froze, they looked life like, tangled together in
the snow.”
“It was difficult keeping the patients from the heaps of small black
corpses.”
On Assignment for Joseph Pulitzer, Nellie Bly’s,
Ten Days in a Madhouse
“I felt a quixotic desire to help them by sympathy and presence.”
“Could I pass a week in the insane ward at Blackwell’s Island?
(later renamed Welfare Island) I could, I would, I did.”
“How will you get me out?”
“The more sanely I talked and acted the crazier I was thought
to be.”
“The woman had a hideous nightmare. She had been dreaming
of me.”
“It is only after one is in trouble that one realizes how little
sympathy and kindness there are in the world.”
“People on charity should not expect anything and should nit
complain.”
“The eating was one of the most horrible things.”
“Choking and beating patients”
“It’s a crime to lock people up and freeze them.”
“She would talk into steam heaters or get up on a chair and talk
out the window.”
“You don’t need to expect any kindness here, for you won’t get it.”
“Promenading with lunatics.”
“How will you get me out?”
“My face was the brightest he had ever seen in a lunatic.”
fill the sky, then merge with the sky over the lake
and the vast line of clouds, changing temperature.
She drives her last car drive,
into this emptiness that does not hurt
but offers no comfort.
After the drive
the love in her blazes refreshed
as she sits in her lazy boy chair,
forgetting her sickness and old age,
blazes the whole scope of her magnificence,
strongest in her compassion.
This last journey we will have together.
We will overcome together until the end
and even then
there will be no ending, just a change,
space, I cannot fathom,
space added between us, space experienced
sometimes as a shedding of plumage,
sometimes, as a wasps’ nest touched,
accidental unbearable sting.
Before I remember
blank days, atheist days
that left me sombre-hard,
but these days
are brim with harrowing storms,
prayers and keepsakes infused
with intractable meaning, memories
ripe and revered as a newborn’s flesh.
Before, my soul was below, breaking
through the body regularly, in pieces,
but these days it sits on the surface,
intact, a glass sphere without protection,
thrown and rolling, like
a lightning fuse, cracked.
These days there are no pointed steps,
but each day is like the first sun rays seen,
heightening my energy to be as kind and capable
as possible as the bringing pulse lives in a jar,
is taken out of the jar, and dying takes its fill,
and death runs in circles around the dream
and everything within the dream
that is real and everlasting is quenched
when the days are these days
sober and groaning, rising
break-and-fall, cresting hard
with this shining golden sharp
hurt, breath-taking.
Tricky blood dripping
into upper wall cracks,
through the grout tracks
and into winter’s foreboding
months ahead.
How does it take so little to examine
the underside and know it is rotten,
flesh covered but disintegrating
underneath?
How many hands have to wash
at the same sink until the basin gets cracked
and the taps only release a trickle?
Tomorrow is today is
a slow-moving line bruised
with intensity and trauma,
clothed in brackets that shift then fall
then plateau before they fall again.
What seems unending
will end and when it ends
an ocean of emptiness will
consume. The dragon’s nest
will be disturbed and
heat will flow its lava-reach and hot depth
into the ordinary, the extraordinary
and everything in between.
This star is imploding into a vacuous
vacuum-suck and spiral break, spinal break
that breaks any chance for mobility.
When it ends it will be my end,
orphaned, no hidden curses, icons will be broken,
and saints will be laid bare, naked, exposed before God.
So end, my mother, but do not end,
be like a songbird blasting her song
before the sun even rises, glorifying,
and watch the heavenly bodies
surrounding, lifting your soul gently,
transforming you naturally
to breaststroke through
sun-bearing ridges
rising, dipping
divine dimensions.
The backside of the shadow
is awake, and losing ground again
burning in the sinkhole, into
a conclusion of harsh hard
cause-and effect.
Eyelids lower, sleep is never rest
but a patchwork horror-show
of violence and loss and things
once perfect, stolen
behind locked doors.
Underground, the circus continues
and I will never find my way out
of this mirrored maze.
I know that if I lie flat in the stark silence,
mortal eroding flesh is inevitable.
Extravagant love always has a price.
The price owed has been paid and I must leave
the turning circle, step past the fissure-groove
and sink into a faith abiding.
I will walk with you reckless
over this abandoned lake,
skipping across veiled skin ice,
thinning, seeing through, skipping,
and somehow never a crack will form
and never your toe nor my heel
falling through.
The smell of worms.
A feast that rages inside
the system-nerves, taking
the body to extreme outerspace,
thresholds of reason
and waiting in the death-year
the year of exhaustion – one day brushed
with energizing hope, and the next,
crumbled, withdrawn.
What is deception in this playing field?
What is an honest ascent that will also
echo into the roots and stay there?
The distance to carry this weighted reality
is unknown, the duty within it, and the love,
is immediate and unquestioning.
So I stay, pressed against the mountain,
pressed against this aching uncertainty.
Pressed and moving and mourning
each conversation, trusting
that the sharp pointed misery
will not pitch, that peace will expand
until peace overcomes.
Arrow stream
in between existences
splashing between shores,
forced to confront her ancient
criticism that has wrapped
my mind-frame and grown
a shadow as cumbersome
as a heavy chain.
This land she demands me to walk on
crowns me with gruelling labour,
hijacking my dignity and sense of equality.
It is a constant place of servitude merging
with guilt and a dismissal of my strength
and true worth.
This red line drawn is crossed over,
onto hot sands without sandals.
Mine is to give but not to neuter
my prayers – rage and pity colliding.
I will give but I will not have
my music reined and whipped
and tossed like a dusty bag
with the rest of the clipped toenails.
I will tell her what I cannot tell her,
by not owning her hierarchical demands
as I give, as I am placed within
this imprisoned place
as her sickness and drug-induced mania
takes control –
her petty compulsions incurable,
but my love for her
so much more.
Kaleidoscope flaming,
her eleven colours remaining
mixed and pure and still swirling,
undimmed
by suffering’s panicked toll
Too much dust and debris
filling the vents, my lungs.
Twisted plots of imagined problems
flung across the river without
factual explanation.
So I endure and I count my numbers
to hold in my anger, hold back my tears
and keep doing the soft servitude and
diligent care I am accustomed to,
instead of doing what I want to do –
withdraw, fold up and out
for at least a good week.
Too much drug-induced insanity whispers,
whispering accusations that hold no water,
but cut and kill just the same
all my good will, my enduring effort
and my exhausted heart that believed at least
it has kept itself true.
The crow almost hits the moving car,
almost goes under the wheel. Instead
it somersaults and avoids being clipped
by inches, flying in front of the car window,
raised away by maneuvering a mounting wind.
Too much blood without redemption.
Too much condemnation for a false claim,
a winter blank and brutal,
not of my own making.
Remember, remember –
the crow caws and reverberates
into the white cells, red cells
or your bloodstream –
Remember
God gives nothing easy,
nothing worthy of keeping
that doesn’t first eviscerate
before reseeding
your radiant core.
How can I rock
between the eaten bread
and the rotten leftovers,
filling plates with putrid smells
and locked-in rage that rages in
an insomniac relentless punch
and tilt – twisting the bowels,
concerned only with petty victories?
How can I keep my self open
while needing full-on protection
from her drug-induced distancing eyes?
How can I live through another day
of exhausting intensity, with unveiled
shameless fears filling space and
the brutal-swerve
of a lingering inevitable?
How can I hold on until the end
hold out until permission is granted
to at last collapse flat out,
unfold, fold?
Last days, these days
roll like a slow-moving stone
across a stony terrain –
many bumps, inclines, declines
and turns.
Last days, restless then at peace
then restless again
as limitations close in so only
the essentials remain.
Last days are these days
soaked with this blazing wound, continuing.
These days there are no more plans
but to live through the days letting in
the undefiled grace that rises like vapour at dusk
through the balcony-door crack,
through her smile which she still manages occasionally,
keeping pace with the clawing hunger for relief
and the undercurrent smells of sickness.
These days are the last days
I can love you,
and how I love you, my mother –
your bright sailboat stalled
in the maw of this menacing wave
surging.
It is clear
that finally we are
adopted into the universe’s time frame,
that time is not counted by cards
or the constellations.
Clear that light is not light-weight
but heavy
when it transforms.
Cracked leather belts tighten like nooses,
dreams crack then shatter and scatter
their fragments down the drain.
God is in the laundry room.
God is in her laboured respiration
and in her smile she now only shows
to strangers.
It is clear dying is not death.
It is its own journey –
a body breaking, a soul struggling
and losing
no matter the effort
to keep itself here, whole.
I wish I was a snail
robbed of its shell, squished
underfoot, drying up in the
sun
so all that was left
of me was a thin crust of skin
that found its way into pavement pores,
and I could be disintegrated, be no more.
I wish I had no responsibilities
but to my solitude, my own thoughts
waking and sleeping.
I wish I never tried to love
because now I know
I have failed at love, to love,
to be strong when open, protecting
not only from the outside but inside too,
taking on others’ spiritual burdens,
not out of kindness
but out of cowardice and the delusion
that the world is anything but
a lulling zone of harsh beggary
and bully imagination.
I am a broken toy kicked to curb.
I am nothing. I have nothing and
I wish I was a snail, dried up,
sensory-dead, flat
and inconsequential.
I don’t know how to sing.
My legs have become old
and there are no more believers
around me.
Clasped in a never-opening lair
with active lava and no windows,
I cannot find the cave through the narrow incline,
trapped, submerged.
I cannot sing or breathe or be here
as I am broken down
bloodied and maimed.
I cannot continue to move,
pretend the feeling light is inside me
when it isn’t, when most days
I wish it was over and the throne of my failure
would burn with myself along with it.
Chaos, eroding sickness,
and the brutal cold reign supreme
Everything I have done
is shattered in a pit
with no way to reassemble or resume.
I don’t want to be here
I don’t want the natural law
but only God’s mercy.
I cannot sing.
My memories are false, used-up
and dissipating.
Exhausted like a willow tree
is exhausted after a storm
but the storm keeps thrashing
and scooping all strong things once rooted
to the ground, releasing them across
the lawn like a brick thrown to the head,
like a dream inhabited in its ghoulish
madness, running but getting nowhere.
The suffering, the need
and the love that keeps
it together but not always.
Nerves dosed in gasoline –
fire just feet away but still at bay.
Breathing for one day, taking no messages, hearing
no extreme complaints. The doors are closed.
The balcony window is open. I step out,
there is a sky and a hawk merging with the clouds.
How much more can I hold?
And then it will be over, and I will hold no more,
not her frail hand, not her scent, not her eyes
with my eyes in deep and struggling prayer,
not her body leaning into my arms,
her full weight surrendered.
A day of reprieve,
wearing a costume and getting
in a car.
A day when the light
is unhooked from its source
and no one will say why
We will just carry on as through
this distress is natural
as though it is a wave to endure
instead of a captive fall.
A day of reverie,
the last time of gathering
and playing the role
The first Christmas at her home
The first time she will sleep through
most of it.
A day that we thought would not come
with her still with us.
So we are grateful
and we take this day
putting our mourning aside
this day – a winter-solstice flower
bearing its last bloom
before the advancing frost.
After the end,
when the end comes
and speaking is useless,
her home will be a torch
blown out – her turquoise eyes,
curtained. Sorrow will open
like a jar of dragonflies, fireflies
released as one.
And even then, when resigned
to the careful truth, the separation
will ache like a phantom limb,
like a stillborn child held, kissed,
never receiving.
As the end approaches,
I will have to force the basics
of breathe, sleep, eat
for her sake and those around me
who love her equally as I do.
I will forget about hope
and then later I will remember
her eyes, alit with playful joy,
her summers spent on proud
adventures and the way she loved me,
never giving up, generous
as an empathetic and beautiful queen,
loving me
without understanding me
but trusting me
all the same.
Repeating, the days
knowing a different day will only be worse,
veiling the eyelids, opening an emptiness
that will never be eased.
Repeating but nor forever, but
longer than anticipated. In spite
of the great love you feel, you feel
used-up, under appreciated.
But this is her now, diseased and drugged,
does not diminish her glowing
life-long compassion, her extravagant tolerance
and kindness, connection to everyone, her softness
that still peels away the crust in an instant
when her heart is touched, when faith
is required.
Duty has made work in the garden
impossible, waking up,
a barren chore.
The mountains have dropped,
flattened out into a steady plane.
Energy I gave up as mine, came back,
surprising me with my own resilience,
stamina to hold the days together one after another
until they became months, a way of life and service.
This gift like a curse like a gift
necessary to pluck
my soul from a rut it had no awareness it was even in
until out, until forced to hold a different tune
and play it until it becomes naturally possible,
a place of unbelievable challenge met,
a place to live without
decisions, conclusions,
live as an open-end-nerve swimming
stroke by stroke upstream –
most times lit on fire,
a few times resting on the bank,
looking around
tamed, soothed.
I cry out throughout the night.
I cry for the thousands due to die
who still remain unclaimed.
A slow step through misery, with moments
intermittent of a pure turquoise glow.
A gradual waking into loss and the definite
abyss of absolute letting-go.
Mid-sleep panic that wakes
me with its red tentacle squeeze
crushing my mind,
and the steady breath I need to endure
another tomorrow.
I cry out but I keep it contained –
my flesh without hope
my spirit committed to this sacred duty
as the rest of me is battered, broken-branched
bearing, feebly carrying
one collapsed body, now another.
A kiss
A curl
a look out
a look beyond
a rosy anticipation.
All things compare to each other
in the dark gloom of dissatisfaction,
meaningless activity
reaching its zenith then back to the nadir and
spinning again.
Painting helps and even singing a familiar song
but these things do not break the loop
or contain more than a flawed and temporary ease.
Hands down, Hands open and the mind saying
now- be brave!
Love is deeper than darkness
more unexpected and varied than the checkpoints
of delusion, chaos and dementia.
Love then, widespread.
Take on that love
and place what weighs you down
into the wet cement blocks
of this unhappy nightmarish decline.
Do this and inherit
the dreamy peace
and its mortal claim.
Do this and be devoted
to good service, knowing
all else is bloodshed,
must be shed to earn your keep
and beeline your way to
a maturing discipline,
an invincible pronouncement –
angelic terror
where only
this slender slice of light exits
to squish through,
beckoning, supreme.
I do not know
the treatment
the reasons
for such a grand tribulation
I have only achieved this interval
of a tiny budding joy,
a respite from the imploding friction.
I do not know if it is more than
a respite, if it is a crossing over,
a victory over infection and chronic chaotic influences
but today she walks a little stronger, limping still
but improving her gait.
Today the Earth is this simple location,
open to the angels and to recovery.
I did not expect this calamity, collapse of
every dream, but my eyes are lifting.
I don’t need a massive harvest, just food
enough to sustain and faith enough
for a mild liberation.
Melody screeched to a halt,
bubble big, too big, extinguished.
I relinquished my faith for answers.
Gruesomely unattractive
in full sight
in sharp black and white
immutable, I wanted
control like some want pleasure,
like one without restrictions
or moral aptitude.
Demons aggressively demanded my trust
underserved, making up stories
to turn failures into victories.
Hell is the steel-illusion-force of truth inverted
where there is no bowing down to the greater
authority, who is God, in charge,
unpredictable, not a pawn to use to
increase power, not a valium pill
to ease my anxiety while
traversing the treacherous unknown.
In that journey there is only one activity,
only faith resuscitating,
the outcome irrelevant –
a blue streak across a grey sky,
feasting on surrender.
Sandbox throughout the vastness
take away the end of time
and I will slide like a globe,
like a planet, bursting stars
as I go, grounding suns and
drowning blackholes in my wake.
I will peel back tomorrow,
compost it into a Sunday secret
gasping for a solitude it will never find
or play-in again.
Take the hunger from Infinity and
I will be open as an abyss, spending money
like everyday is my birthday, my death day.
I will give birth away from
the tempting waters of deception
that conceal choice in hesitation
that drive the mystic to forsaken symbolism,
that pull the spine from its vertebrae, rotating
in one split-second choice,
while looking at it, desiring it, looking like
something worth the price of a soul.
Boredom demands at least a breeze,
at least a far-off flutter to speak the hope
that angels are real.
Take us out of this passageway,
underground mazes, mole homes
that imply safety. The sun is a sea lion.
We will ride beside him and he will coach
us to swerve and flip,
avoid the jellyfish and the stingray.
Meaning will pour like rain on the top
of our surfaced heads –
a storm, this sickness, just another high wave,
just another necessity to dive deeper,
lungs and cells heavy, heavier
to avoid the overhead storm.
Inside, full of hot nerves
sinking without the sight of tentacles
or a slice of coral
to latch onto.
Your faculties, twisted,
breaking logic into shards.
Freedom came like a larger stone to carry,
duty like a sunburn, burning, causing
the first and second layer of skin to blister.
Useless music passes, cannot be kept
or remembered. The space is traveled
knocking against corners, bruising bones
and the remains of visions.
Stings on the pads of your feet
in the white of your eyes.
Inside, we are a tall-tower rubble,
a stack of concrete broken blocks
and bodies
and grief that last generations.
Inside, there is a ship enticing
we cannot board,
a mutual weariness,
a ghostly outage blackout,
blinding us from seeing
sharp corners, soft cushions,
the way to retrieve
a glass
in the kitchen, on the counter
of already poured, useful water.
Blended
into this scenery, this sick bed
and the watered-downed horizon.
It is weak with over-empathizing
tearing crusts off until all protection
is gone from my soft mushy core.
I cannot acclimatize to this grief,
her life-force-fading drawn into my own
bruised blood of doom, dooming my
own cells and strength into this unfair despair,
unsoothable scorch and decay.
A washing down after every visit, care-day
so I do not mimic the symptoms
of death and dying and the aching
anguish of helplessness.
This path will not lead
to a garden but to a cliff,
a farewell without ever coming back.
Each step toward the edge is torture
when taken, is forced not taken because
there is no standing still against it,
no turning around, the inevitable is absolute.
This path is darkness, and this darkness
is complete love – heavy, high above,
a terrifying incarnation.
Turn to me, I turn
skinned,
striking a blow
to the inner circle.
My soul is a peanut,
two parts, shelled, asymmetrical.
Unity is divine, to kill
is never excusable or brave or
or holy.
The bloodwind is the wind
that turns to defeat every journey
in disaster.
Take a mouthful – swirl the grey slime
of decline and the sharp spikes
of uncertainty, to swallow and know this
is what is meant to be
and what you have is this moment
to love and this moment again
to love
and the rest is not worth one thought,
is too much to take in,
so take in and yield to its power.
Chips of clear and broken glass.
Will I make this destiny-duty
intact or burn out on a hospital bed,
drained to the point of no return?
The stones are joy. I keep my smile
pressed on, my impatience under breath
and my dignity on a wire – pulled and tugged
by her unnecessary necessities.
When I am tired
the guilt pores in like
castor oil, down the wrong pipe
into the windpipe as I struggle
to regain our once synchronized flow,
but it will not return or rewind, as her love
only shows in momentary flickers now
before she dives again into these catacombs
collapsing.
She is owned by the morphine
pumping into her bloodstream
at regular intervals, pumping its purpose
to nullify her pain, while twisting mental foreign
tracks through her brain that torture her
with their relentless sticky grid
and serpents’ faces rising, telling her
she is owned, robbed of her
treasured independence, confined to home,
watching her once happy socializing light darken,
and you love her, you know her. You know
for a while
the monster will chomp at the moon,
will take the glow from her view,
soil every brilliant horizon,
will capture her honoured seat,
even conquer her spiritual home,
for a while
death’s rotting belly
will do what it must do,
bloat and swell
foul, naturally cruel.
Dream-self
destiny-self
never align
As soon as the shackles have cracked,
a new cage has formed,
taking away the morning light,
a chance to see the phenomena
of untainted being.
I have fallen into usefulness
like a bottomless sewer pit, falling, nothing
broke, just the drain of gravity in my bones
as I fall, lacking
the gift of appreciation and the possibility
of a safe landing.
Selling parts secretly owned
but never named. Scraping off
the daily dread to find a hope.
Hoping her suffering soul
will be reconciled in a flash,
unscathed when the new one begins,
budding, blooming into the opening,
the center of the ring,
enveloped in tenderness eternal.
Then the peace she gained by her natural
good heart will expand and blot out her
anxieties, her struggles for control.
She will be unharmed, in a state
where joy overwhelms with a constant
ecstasy sustainable and God is beside her
within her and all around her, swirling, caressing,
like God has always been, only now with a certainty
that even the most faithful servants
(inside time
inside gravity)
have never known.
Purely dying
like the universe
bottoming out,
letting it all go into
a sinkhole oblivion.
Purely fear of losing
the definite, the breathing lungs
in the body on the bed
and the heart-seized and blind from
its atomic power.
Purely God
holding the stick and strings,
concealed and blanketing,
preparing her soul for this
divine beginning.
The hall light is dim.
The curtains rustle forward.
Her eyes, once wet with anxiety’s tears,
now see the angels surround, the truth
of boundless love, for her, for all.
Last days
Dark days
dangerous death
at my doorstep,
swinging its hips to-and-fro.
Burning body, cracked, gnawed
away by insect bites, rodent bites
and the big blackhole open-mouth, forsaken.
Take what you must, but take it now,
swiftly, cover the core and the extremities
with your weight and then lift that weight
into the light of the sun, glorious
as a sparkle-water-wave-ripple
and a solitary hawk merging with the horizon.
Let her go like that hawk, pure in spirit
as she is, kind and soft as a child as she is.
Let her go into a dream that turns from
a dream into heaven’s threshold,
where she crosses over filled with your glory,
and my father looking on
with steady, welcoming eyes.
Outer nerves,
the madness of rise and decline,
undulating like an erratic wave,
the body joined to the illusion,
to past conclusions
and repetitive patterns remolded but unchanged.
Anxiety and intuition smudged
into one dim light.
I bow to the blowing wind, to the ignorance of now.
I hold her hand more now than I did as a child.
Tears rest for a while but lack any regulation.
Slow as a sloth but unpredictable as a storm.
Each day expends
what once was a normal week of energy.
Downward is the secret.
Bend in the direction of whatever gives.
The night is full of apocalyptic dreams,
solar flares and precautions, preparations
to minimize the coming death-blast charring burn.
The night season comes
and Earth is mine to hold,
witness its mark
and its gathering decay
while you sleep in an unconscious
darkening – skin around your mouth
turning blue, and inside that open circle,
inner lips peeling rice-paper fine
and your tongue like a dried log, that I keep sponging,
trying to saturate and regain its malleable form.
Your eyebrows twitch in what the nurses
promise me is not pain, promised me
you are comfortable
even though
for three days and three nights you
have lingered in a grizzly dehydrated shadow-stasis.
These days are like years, ripping away my trust,
my faith, my understanding of mercy,
solidifying the power
of bone-chiselling dread.
I love you, more in your helplessness,
in your patience for the final command, lingering,
red sores forming under your eyes,
fingers cold, purple pale and never grasping.
I stay with you in that place, even when
I sleep, I never sleep without you with me.
I love you and I hurt for you
and I want your release from this
brutal collapse of your form.
Why or even how you are lingering so long,
even the doctor can’t say.
I think you are buffering us from the pain of your loss
I think sometimes maybe mercy burns
hotter than punishment.
And these times
life surpasses understanding,
when the bottom current over quicksand thins,
breaking the chrysalis, clearing the way
for an unwanted redemption.
I am lifted
Blood on a field Blood in a cloud
and then so many
streams flowing, unassuming.
I take your hand, lean
over you and kiss your forehead,
weeping, praying, saying
again and again I love you, thank you.
Your breaths are short, coming from below
not from your chest, but from your deepest gut,
stillness, ease, a letting go.
I drop like a bird on your shoulder.
I know you are leaving. You know
it is a beautiful alchemy, accumulation
of a life so gloriously lived. I tell you
to take Jesus’ hand and he will take you
to the golden tender light of eternal heaven.
You take his hand, and God
has become the atmosphere,
encapsulating, removing time.
Your last breath is more
a soft sigh than a breath,
not a cross-wind of struggle,
not a brush-stroke of “But wait..”
You are gone.
Seagulls fill the view from the window,
circling, joyful in their angelic form.
You are free.
My heart has merged with yours,
forest blue, deep and rich and forever.
My mother, my powerful ally,
friend for all ages – goodbye,
the six-month journey to this point
was treacherous, the last weeks, tortuous,
but these final moments were divine,
was God’s grace in full view, mercy
that healed all pain gone before,
resurrection visible like spread-out water lilies
or Elysian Fields, sublime.
My mother, the sky is again yours,
embracing the seen and unseen spectrums.
Your sky is prophecy, feeding
the bedrock and the water’s reflection,
all parts proved sacred, identical
to the immutable moving whole.
Allison Grayhurst has been nominated for “Best of the Net” five times. She has over 1,400 poems published in over 530 international journals, including translations of her work. She has 25 published books of poetry and six chapbooks. She is an ethical vegan and lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay.
Sculptor Arm
Michelangelo Buonarotti
was the third SCULPTOR
To tackle
the Carrera Marble,
That huge block of Carrera Marble,
He who saw spirit in stone,
Who knew that every stone
Has a statue inside it,
And from his pounding,
Chipping, shaping
Relentlessly gave life to
DAVID—
Six tons, and 17 feet tall
DAVID
A symbol of strength
Poise,
Confidence
DAVID
Facing the challenges
Of life.
The first artists gave up—
Too hard, too many
Imperfections--
But Michelangelo Buonorotti,
Only a baby when they abandoned it,
Twenty-five Years later
Took up the chisel, took up the task
With an arm indomitable
That pounded the stone
To completion.
To perfection—
Sculptor Arm!
Spring Twilight Porch clear Sky Moon Above
Spring twilight porch clear sky moon above.
Son, said Father.
The boy looked up.
Know how we all walk upright on two feet? Not on all fours?
The boy lightly nodded.
Most don’t know this; we didn’t always walk that way. Back at the beginning the first of us walked on all fours. But; somehow some command from on high came, to rise from all fours, and walk on just two. Seems simple, eh, right? Yes, but—even back then, humans never could get anything done without a big noisy debate. One morning they found that new two limbed rule had been posted on a wall in the middle of the night.
They stood sleepy-eyed, quietly regarding this, until the loudest mouth among them shouted, Okay, here! Let’s do it—here’s how—and they tried standing on their right arm and right leg, and, promptly fell over, failed. But, even before that failure, others were shouting over them, saying, No, no, no, that’s no good! Its like this—and tried their left arms and left legs, and, also fell over. Some few stubbornly tried those failed ways again and again and fell again and again, as yet others closed in, shouting, No, no, no, no—it’s this way! Right arm, and left leg, see? See—uh, wait, I—and as they fell over, yet more rushed in, crying no no shut up everyone, here; left arm, and right leg, see? See?
And the turmoil grew faster, and louder, and hotter, until a voice shot clear, higher and louder than the rest, crying, This! Two hands! Look here! On two hands, yes! Look how tall! Yes so tall! And I am not falling! This is the way! So, they all tried to leap onto their hands. Some could not do it—but most were able to, and—these were in the majority, so—they agreed! Yes! They agreed—this is the way!
Until, as they learned to do it longer, heads began reddening, eyes began bulging, and pressure began building, and they--they had to let go. Yes, had to—to fall over. But, this being the best solution so far, and one they’d all agreed on, they kept trying—and trying—and getting nowhere. But some learned to do it longer, but—they found the prolonged rushing of blood to their brains was not healthy. Some sickened. Some died. How many? Oh, who’s counting—before at last one let go, fell down, and by chance, rolled over and shot up to standing, solidly on their feet!
Look! They cried—look! Here’s the way! Here’s the way! And they all followed.
And that problem was solved—and that was that! Now, isn’t that something, son? I think that’s really something. Don’t you?
Looking down, he saw his son, calmly relaxed, asleep.
It had worked.
They went inside.
Smoky Lullaby
The birds are getting stoned and it’s all my fault.
I can’t help wanting to unwind with some creature nearby, who maybe just once feels the same
way I do
And the feeling buoys my troubled heart upward
makes me want to consume all of every thing.
After a day of soaking up the people, the places, the thoughts and feelings,
after a day of being the devoured, I want to be the one who devours
Desire desire desire
I am you, you are me
So long as I am coaxed into my dreams and not stranded with my nightmares
So long as the birds who agree to stay in the yard, and the bunny who always inches toward me
to bum a smoke of my green, smoke-filled lullaby
The Female Skin Trap
The woman’s desire to be small is so much more than being sexually attractive.
We want to take up as little space as possible,
We want to shrink into ourselves
We want to be swallowed by the clothes we wear
I say,
Fantasizing of the skeleton utopia,
Oh to drown in the oversized cottons and silks
Not strangled by the linens that somehow feel like myself, my thick skin smothering anything
that dares to contain it
I am tired of bursting at the seams
Of feeling every inch of myself and more
Squeezed, tightly packed, suffocating in my own skin
My layers double, then triple, then rip me to shreds
We want to be microscopic, thin and tall as a blade of grass
Free from the shackles and perceived in surface area just a few inches less-
Until nothing can contain us but ourselves
Earthly Appetite
The earth is a stomach- no, a womb-
Digesting and spitting up and mixing and separating and protecting and defending its creatures
When it's done absorbing and disbanding me, it hesitates to regurgitate anything I’ve said or not
said
The earth is a womb.
Every morning I am born again, and the world spins like a coin
Neither mother nor father to its creatures
And the sky rumbles and growls when it is hungry for more
Swallow me whole, I beg of the sky, who may decide to tell the whole Earth
Who are you but the sum of your parts?
Sometimes, Earth, you make me wonder whether you are tasting us, savoring and delighting, or
merely eating us for the nutrients required to survive..
Land of enchantment, or Badlands?
We’re drawn to places that promise to change us
The elements are different, the water and air a different taste
The homes sculpted of clay, its conception still visible to the passersby
Below the watchful Half crescent eye, neither waxing nor waning
The flavors of an ancient and eclectic landscape blending seamlessly-
Green chili, red chili, lavender, prickly pear
Back to the land we go
Places we’ve never inhabited feel like our roots, and how?
HUNGER
What do you do when you’re starving, and nothing tastes good enough?
What do you do when you’re ravished, and everything is unappetizing?
What do you do when your mouth waters for something that doesn’t exist?
Taste whatever it is that you crave so badly, spit it out, swoosh it around,
Draw some conclusion-
Leave no crumbs, sop it up with a hearty bread and make sure to lick your fingers
Then throw it up
