Scribbles
[Written at a Boston-based writing group and included in Fleury's book "You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self"]
La vie
Ah, la douleur de la vie;
So sorrowful this life can be,
We live in a constant that is uncertainty,
Waiting to awaken each morning can be tiresome,
Waking from a nightmare can be winsome,
‘Til we see the dreadful daylight of reality!
Yearning to sleep;
Daring to wake;
What comes next?
Life is but a haste!
Bird Bath
The mockingbird emerged from its bath,
Singing while it sat on a raft,
Looking into the distant path,
And poised with some sass,
Swiftly flew off in a fit of wrath!
Insomnia
I dreamed I had insomnia
And birds of prey roamed
‘Round my sphere
My heart rhythm’s tachycardia
Abided in a bed of fear...
I dreamt I slept with insomnia
echoes of children
Resounded like nostalgia
My senses somewhat forlorn
Yearning for the years bygone
Wishing to wish away my melancholia
I dream of sleep
Awake I weep
I dreamt i prayed
My soul to keep
I fell asleep
Or so it seems
Wishing to weep
For my esteem
Alas to sleep
Perchance to dream...
What Place is This?
Surrounded by a shadowy grey environ,
Sitting cross-legged on some ground,
Looking up in a circular motion,
I wondered why there was no one else around...
Yearning to hear a sound;
Something has blurred my vision,
Suddenly I hear a pound,
Could thunder be a thing I found?!
Alas...The dawning of my wakening,
I am living in a cloud!!!
Jacques Stanley Fleury is a Haitian-American Poet, Author and Educator. He holds an undergraduate degree in Liberal Arts and is currently pursuing graduate studies in the literary arts at Harvard University online. Once on the editing staff of The Watermark, a literary magazine at the University of Massachusetts, his first book Sparks in the Dark: A Lighter Shade of Blue, A Poetic Memoir was featured in and endorsed by the Boston Globe. His second book: It’s Always Sunrise Somewhere and Other Stories is a collection of short fictional stories dealing with the human condition as the characters navigate life’s foibles and was featured on Good Reads. His current book and hitherto magnum opus Chain Letter to America: The One Thing You Can Do to End Racism, A Collection of Essays, Fiction and Poetry Celebrating Multiculturalism explores social justice in America and his latest book, “You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self” along with all other previously mentioned titles are available at public libraries, The Harvard Book Store, Porter Square Books, The Grolier Bookshop, Goodreads, bookshop, Amazon etc… His CD A Lighter Shade of Blue as a lyrics writer in collaboration with the neo-folk musical group Sweet Wednesday is available on Amazon, iTunes & Spotify to benefit Haitian charity St. Boniface.
loom outside the darkness, lingering off the road.
I encounter ghosts in the mirror,
the wind sniffs beneath fallen leaves, through a door-crack,
scenting the faint glow of flesh revealed.
Axes, slingshots, cleavers all line the window sill painted blue,
even my stiff six-year-old elbows bear the grain of wood.
The yard’s pale wooden gate is locked, the door to the cottage too,
I stare at every tremble of the wooden gate
and the passing sound of the whistling poplar trees.
Mother hasn’t returned yet, I don’t know how many years
how many winters have passed, I hear the door handle softly turning,
the quiet voices of family members, and the slow movement of a golden lamp.
But I can’t wake up, can’t bolt that door wrapped in a sack.
A Near-Forgotten Craft
Destruction is space, allowing new horrors to emerge
yellowed pages can no longer be turned
invisible ghosts make you cough incessantly
the painted landscape keeps shrinking
until real places become indistinguishable:
a century-old iron bridge as dark as a bagpipe
now creaks like a knee by the water’s edge.
Punish life by writing everything down
let the sunset hover forever in a still cave.
As long as this book is opened once
everyone will be resurrected, the precise machinery of hell
will start again, with wild winds, hail, and flames
with the asphalt stiffening their joints, the suffering of others continues
unbeknown to anyone.
Reliant on the reader’s sympathy and testimony
time continues like dashed lines in the snow.
Snow falls, falling forever,
yet never falling on the bent heads of pedestrians
always walking in the same place, never avoiding a snowfall.
Few believe in these kinds of games anymore.
Perhaps it’s just a harmless game
which offers us the image of time
like a watchmaker with weak eyesight in his workshop,
where metal parts and various-sized gears reflect the dusk light
through the carved glass revolving door, candlelight, flickers
at the door, an unidentified white horse appears
snorting with contempt, carrying the decay of generations.
Encounter with a Cat on Midnight Streets
You lay sprawled in the centre of the street, eyes half-open.
Poor little thing, what happened to you?
Your gaze seems to ask me, what is life?
I had just returned from a meeting discussing the meaning of life,
drunk on wine because life is so beautiful,
though the discussion was dull, led by zombies.
I never expected to meet you like this,
“Death” lying on the path I, “Life,” must take.
As if questioning me, unknown death, how to understand life.
The midnight street suddenly falls silent, and I hesitate for a moment,
thinking to find a branch to move your flattened body to the roadside,
where passing cars will crush it repeatedly,
until your emaciated pain is swept away by the sun’s custodian,
or it becomes a golden beehive, dripping with blood honey.
But in the end, I did nothing, exchanging a meaningful gaze with you.
I turn away, like a soul leaving its shell.
“Here”
“Here” is a signpost, not really here,
the earth beneath your feet is a vertical, transparent void,
you can only recognize here by its “non-existence”.
You’re familiar with these signs, a street, a road,the house behind houses,
a date, a name, the sound of poplar leaves brushing each other,
and songs from the last century playing on a radio hanging from a branch.
You can no longer make out their lyrics,
as if they’ve been encrypted at the far end of time,
that’s fine—no words to smudge this perfect balm,
no other you, old, young, or in between,
walking out of this maze of “here”,
to watch a sunset elsewhere,
or see another autumn rain falling in another realm,
another of you, nose buried in a colour-blurred map,
collar wore the wrong way round, searching for a “here” you’ve been before.
Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, Ph.D, Since 1986 He has published over eighty original works and translations. He is a professor in the Faculty of Arts and Literature, Nanjing University of Science and Technology. His studies center around Chinese and Western modern poetics, post-modern literature, and eco-criticism. His translations from English include works by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, W.C.Williams, John Ashbery, Henry James, Herman Melville, May Sarton and others.
Ancient Egypt: Zahi Hawass and the True Face of the Golden Masks
Prof. Zahi Hawass is the world’s most famous archaeologist and has been active for decades in bringing to light sensational discoveries about ancient Egypt that illuminate the modern world with knowledge.
The archaeological mechanism works that from one discovery you access another and so on and so it is happening regarding the latest discovery of Prof. Hawass: the “Lost Golden City” in Luxor, the most important discovery of 2021, as Daily News Egypt writes.
Over the millennia, the sand of the Egyptian desert has covered archaeological treasures, but ancient Egypt itself must be explored through an immense maze of secret underground passages. It is as if an immense golden mask, which would represent death, covers and watches over the secrets of life that rejoins death, in a flow that challenges immortality.
The United States wants Zahi Hawass back and he will be returning to the US and Canada in the spring of 2025 with his very interesting lectures that will widely reveal in detail the most sensational latest discoveries of the mysterious ancient Egypt.
Fall
A partly frisky fall, a lonely jump
Across the plane
A watershed benchmark
Full of throttled wishes
The macabre knew what to do with anxiety
Your face a full flanked rose garden
Tattooed in Australia, knows what to do
Coming over a backfired cameo at the end
Why is that blue flower so small?
I floated friskly at the fall garden
Silencing the primary force
For all at once I swamed a whole gypsy plane.
Guilty Pleasure
He’s watching
The latest season
Of “Selling Sunset”
On Netflix,
One of
His many
Guilty pleasures.
Taylor Dibbert is a writer, journalist, and poet in Washington, DC. “Rescue Dog,” his fifth book, was published in May.
The Sun of Time
The sea of love is frozen
Ships are like a painting of a painter
The sky does not breath
Cloud hides under water
Wind sleeps in the lap of Nature
Sea beach is like empty vessel
Tourists' footprint is vanished
The sun of time is absent
Spring does not smile
Only silence walks here and there
Two sailors are not one
Communication is broken down
But two hearts are one
Fountain of Love flows from one to another
Nothing can stop love
None can break down communication between two hearts.
