NEEDLES

We wedded the ink with the skin.

The priest performed acupuncture

consecrated by heroin,

and the nurses purled the sutures

while the knitters prepared the syringe.

These rites we practiced unpinned time.

We survived your blessings and sins

and withstood your charities and crimes.

We know our bricks wither within

but our ivies, they cling, they climb.

WHAT ABOUT THE AGE OF LOVERS?

The age of heroes is broken.

The palace is now aflame.

The historians’ is growing.

The heroes are not to blame,

for, though their strength is diminished

it isn’t demolished yet.

Tomorrow’s the resurrection

but today is just a rest.

Our bodies and experience

form the borders of our mind.

But there exists That Beyond Sense

that we cannot understand.

We get confused in worlds not right.

If bandit’s in the library

and pundit’s at the prize fight

we can’t tell plains from prairies.

We imagine a symmetry

that we can’t yet define.

We assign all our mysteries

to God, to magic, to time.

We gird our egos in armor

to weaken our defenses,

but freedom embraces karma,

aggression joins resistance.

Desire develops into deed.

Our matches become beacons.

We were waves that became a sea

and rowboats that grew riggings.

Orators are clothed in words

and scholars stand on language.

But heroes must speak through their work

and lovers through their anguish.

A DEVOLUTION OF THE VAN GOGH SOUL

My heart sits tarnished

in its rib prison.

The inclement earth

burns under heavens

ashen and barren.

Who erased the stars?

“MUSHROOMING”

If you were forest

i could purport

this noble purpose

for these frequent

meticulous surveys

that I perform

throughout your moist

and fetid shadows

WITHOUT YOU BETH

                       MY LIFE

Beth:

I miss you often.

These paths unmapped and all my everythings nones.

(near me still your spirit hovers

but — unattached!)

standards weighed by a crooked butcher’s variable pound.

*

Breaths used to lift dolphin-like

from our depths

like frost balloons toward the sun

in/and/out, those beaths of lovers

with joys unmatched.

up/and/down/and/up/

an ocean-rhythmed merry-go-round.

*

Death.

Abyss-dropped coffin.

Everyone wept. Someone mumbled a little Donne.

Then they handed round the shovels.

(An egg unhatched:

without you Beth my life’s another burial ground.)

*

Faith?

My fists clasp-softened, fingernails ripped —

faith, you say?

A black-habit nun who whispers yes but means never.

Faith’s record scratched:

Here’s how the faith radio with no aerial sounds :

…

The Victory Day

16th December is the Victory day of Bangladesh
After a long line of death in nine months ---
Severe torture, rape and struggle in the deep dark place
The Morning Sun rose in the East sky
On this day of 1971
Bangladesh, a name written with the blood of millions of Bangalee people
A name glorious with its own beauty and struggle
We have bought this country with so many lives
When I go through this history
I can't but cry 
Oh, my country! We have found you in the map of the world
Where I live and find myself to be one the world's citizens
Oh, my Bangladesh! I love you from the core of my heart.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh,
11 December, 2023
 

Md. Mahbubul Alam is from Bangladesh. His writer name is Mahbub John in Bangladesh. He is a Senior Teacher (English) of Harimohan Government High School, Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh. Chapainawabganj is a district town of Bangladesh. He is an MA in English Literature from Rajshahi College under National University. He has published three books of poems in Bangla. 

He writes mainly poems but other branches of literature such as prose, article, essay etc. also have been published in national and local newspapers, magazines, little magazines. He has achieved three times Best Teacher Certificate and Crest in National Education Week in the District Wise Competition in Chapainawabganj District. He has gained many literary awards from home and abroad.   His English writings have been being published in an International Online Magazine - Synchronized Chaos from America for seven years. 

We continue to express sorrow over what’s happening in so many different parts of the world and encourage our readers to support people and the planet.

Also, we are hosting our Metamorphosis gathering again! This is a chance for people to share music, art, and writing and to dialogue across different generations (hence the name, the concept of ideas morphing and changing over the years). So far photographer Rebecca Kelly and English/Spanish bilingual poet Bridgett Rex are part of the lineup and more are welcome! This event is also a benefit for the grassroots Afghan women-led group RAWA, which is currently supporting educational and income generation and literacy projects in Afghanistan as well as assisting earthquake survivors. (We don’t charge or process the cash, you are free to donate online on your own and then attend!)

This will be Sunday, December 31st, 2-4 pm in the fellowship hall of Davis Lutheran Church at 317 East 8th Street in Davis, California. It’s a nonreligious event open to all, the church has graciously allowed us to use the meeting room.

You may sign up here for event reminders. RSVP appreciated but not required.

This month, as we prepare to exit 2023 and enter a fresh new year, we contemplate the unfurling canvas of time.

Misha Beggs renders the passage of time into pieces that tenderly trace the soft wooden shape of a guitar and the lines on human faces.

Grzegorz Wroblewski’s mixed media pieces situate their creator in time, reflecting how we are simultaneously physical and spiritual/emotional beings.

John Mellender relates narrative poems of history and humor and survival while Stephen Jarrell Williams finds moments of hope and comfort in a collapsing world.

Bill Tope’s work reflects the effects of institutional dehumanization and slow long-term trauma on a person. John Edward Culp illustrates the renewal we can find in nature and through the intentional movement of our bodies.

Ayganim Beknazarova celebrates the promise of the spring Uzbek New Year celebration and Sayani Mukherjee proffers up a rich, lush take on an edible hibiscus.

Brian Barbeito contributes a poetic take on birds during autumn’s transformation into winter while Aklima Ankhi envisions herself migrating along with sea creatures as she traverses a beach. Alan Catlin evokes environmental change and ruin through his burned-out and storm-ridden landscapes.

Doug Hawley’s humorous tale of Hell freezing over draws on today’s environmental and political headlines.

Duane Vorhees explores sensuality and life’s mysteries through a series of off-kilter poems, and Patrick Sweeney captures people and places within short phrases. John Tustin plays with childhood memories, attraction, and the allure of nature in his collection.

Odina Abdumuminova‘s piece concerns an artist who draws a beautiful clock and yet fails to capture the passage of time. Chukwuemeka Victoria Chiamaka urges us to make the most of our time, as life’s flickering roses will fade away.

In this spirit, Isabel Gomes de Diego’s photography approaches everyday scenes as if they were museum exhibits and Daniel De Culla showcases the chubby Buddha figurines so common in restaurants, highlighting joy and mindfulness in the everyday that will allow us to experience and transcend the mundane.

J.D. Nelson’s work presents uneasy but oddly familiar juxtapositions, as if he’s scanning a room. Mark Young intersperses pop singers and avant-garde artists into his abstract work.

Christopher Bernard presents a gentle, abundant Christmas shopping scene where people have the luxury of only small problems.

Perhaps in a celebratory mood gone awry, Patricia Doyne laments the struggle of opening boxed wine. Tom P. finds moments of ceremony within his personal memories, as well as humor and memorable characters.

Human knowledge and history represents and comprises its own historical timescales.

Irene Koronas takes us on an odyssey of verbiage and color theory while Daniel Y. Harris crafts a mashup of hacker technology aesthetics and Whitman humanist poetry.

Mickey Corrigan explores the life of writer Patricia Highsmith through poetry. Don McLellan relates the perennial writers’ struggle of finding a publisher and an audience for their work. Jerry Langdon laments in a poem reminiscent of a horror fantasy how his poetic words can never match or illustrate the frustrated sentiments of his mind.

Z.I. Mahmud probes class, money, and satisfaction in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, the power of romance as resistance to an untenable social order in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and self-development in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Elan Barnehama’s piece is an excerpt from his upcoming novel Escape Route, concerning the son of a Holocaust survivor who hopes to avoid the anti-Semitic persecution he fears will come to the United States.

Norman J. Olson traces his journey through Riverside and Rome and his experience of much smaller catastrophes, such as illness and security hangups.

Other contributors speak to personal growth and moving through stages of life.

Alison Gadsby’s piece aims to convey the feelings of new motherhood, of being dislocated and judged. Qiyomiddinova Zilola offers another take on the fear and grief of losing children, the inevitable nervousness of parenthood.

Anila Bukhari gives us hopeful and humane pieces about young girls rising above their circumstances. Graciela Noemi Villaverde reflects the permanence of her ingrained pre-verbal happy childhood memories.

Replete with joy among falling leaves and still water, Mahbub Alam’s poetic speakers revel in a simple moment of connection outdoors in Bangladesh.

Karmelina Angelica Kelenc’s love poem is steeped in Croatian patriotism while Borna Kekic connects the joy and freedom of birds in flight on a sunny day after a rainstorm to the pride he takes in Zagreb, his native city. Xayrullo Xalikov offers poetic flowery praise to her Uzbek homeland and Iroda Abdullayeva’s pieces revel in the natural and human beauty of her rural Uzbek heritage.

Kristy Raines celebrates aspects of love: care for the natural world and compassion for the struggling around the globe. Anindya Pal remembers a warm afternoon redolent with the aroma of nature and dreams of love. Annie Johnson’s emotions soften with the arrival of twilight as she speculates on the future of her love amidst the twinkling stars, while Maja Milojkovic finds love and self-realization while immersing herself fully within a river.

Peter Cherches‘ story probes the connection between name and self-image and reflects on how we can change through the years.

J.J. Campbell finds moments of peace, or at least acceptance, in a litany of loneliness and longing. Taylor Dibbert speaks to self-reclamation after a breakup, while Zahro Shamsiyya evokes the questioning and bargaining stage of grieving after lost love.

Suyarova Mahliyo Muradxon’s piece reminds us that dramatic situations have backstories, relationships can be more troubled than they seem.

Jaylan Salah reviews Sierra Urich’s film Joonam, the story of different generations of Iranian-American immigrant women.

Eva Petropoulou Lianou celebrates female strength and urges women to support each other, and reflects on her creative inspiration. Wayne Russell renders the precarity and beauty of the creative process.

Mesfakus Salahin memorializes a soldier who gave his life for national Bangladeshi independence, dying for his country’s birth.

Mykyta Ryzhykh speaks to the smaller and larger deaths and dislocations we experience, personally and globally.

Daniel De Culla mourns the absurdity of harming civilians and children in war while Faleeha Hassan comments that armed conflict can reduce all civilians to children searching in vain for comfort from their parents. Chimezie Ihekuna reflects on the economic promise of Nigeria and the instability that challenges foreign investors. Lilian Dipasupil Kunimasa addresses society’s combined exploitation of women, workers, and nature while Manzar Alam pleads with the world to put an end to war.

Finally, Elmaya Jabbarova urges all of us not to give up on the world, even if it seems about to die around us. We can start to repair where we are, with what we have.

Everything is not as it seems

When it rained, everywhere is wet, the air is clean, I am looking out of the window of my room with different dreams, then I left my questions for a moment and I saw two couples.

   The first couple was standing near the entrance to the student residence, about 50 meters away, and the second couple were talking to each other.

   By chance, the guy from the first couple raised his hand to the girl, she stood crying for a minute and went into the bedroom. Then I noticed the second couple, and now it’s the opposite, the girl raised her hand to the guy, but the girl was very upset, and when she tried to turn back, the guy wouldn’t let her go, the girl was crying a lot.

   From my imagination, I walked without forgetting the situation of the two girls in front of my eyes. I said that there was a big difference between the first girl and the second girl.

   (after about 4 or 5 hours of wear)

   I was going to the library with my friend and I accidentally passed two more girls and I asked my friend about the two girls…. my friend knew both girls and both of them were engaged to the guys I saw next to me. .

   The first couple I saw fell in love with each other and got engaged. Are you wondering why the guy hit the girl? I asked my friend the same thing…?

   My friend said that the girl was jealous when she saw her boyfriend shaking hands with his fellow students. If you are interested in the second couple, listen, this couple is also engaged, but both of them are children who grew up in a rich family, who have passed their words on to their family members, and they will say whatever they say. The girl found out that the guy cheated on his betrothed daughter due to his wealth and wealth and had relationships with other girls, and she got angry and attacked the guy.

   My friends, do you understand that everything will not be as easy and beautiful as it seems? When you hear my first words, you still feel bad for the first girl. You ask yourself why she hits you, what is her right? from yourself …….!

Biography of a Guitar

Smooth wooden sides,

Carefully and carelessly carved away

From his mother. Rounded, sharpened

A carved down, hollow memory of a tree

The pattern of which is roughly polished

Into dust. A new pattern, freshly painted

On with seemingly gross perfectionism

In which the wooden shell will only in

Later years, see the reflection of imperfection

And neglected love hidden away

In the weathered hand of the painter.

Factory coils wrapped tight and thin

Starved plastic strings on pieces and knobs

Hammered, delicately attached to the

Oak tree shell – Now he sees he is from oak,

Not a patchwork of wood –

Wire, string mazes form strict lines to be

Arranged with handles? Knobs?

As a painting gains new layers, the oak tree

Shell is now metal, now string, now taut, mean,

Soft, still wooden. And with a simple strum of the

Wires, the strings. Slight turn of the knob

Ears to listen and a strum again,

A song is made.

Time Walks Each to its Grave

Tell me a story, your mouth whispers

Finished, still your eyes plead let this

Not end yet.

You’ve seen the way autumn stalks

Your beloved monkshood’s life, and

Know that his life is not fading:

It has found a home in his wrinkles.

Let time walk me down your path,

And watch life herself

Dance from your eyes into the scars

Cleaning your hands. She is only resting,

Yet as the lines in your palm meander,

So will her dreams.

Red-Handed

Aimlessly typing

I know, I remember knowing

You’ve never

Cut out your tongue only to learn

A missile shot through it,

Writhing in taciturn soil.

Silence an air raid, serenity.

Slide back under a tar-black sky

Wrinkled at some distant

Stain, bleeding

Into these stars too.

It’s only your fault ethics

Are haggard things, and

You’re haunted by lives

You’ve never breathed.

It could’ve been anyone, couldn’t it?

ONE CHRISTMAS EVE

One Christmas Eve a young man shivered in the night
No extravagant meal, no presents or beautiful lights
No parents or friends to celebrate with on this special day
He felt like an orphan or a child that had been thrown away

As families gather with excitement and glee
He wonders every day what his future will be
Will someone with a heart save him from this lonely life?
Will one day he have any children or a wife? 

He looks out his window at all the smiling faces
People singing joyfully of love and heavenly places
Except the young man who stands staring at this unthinkable scene
Who will be the one to save him from this horrible dream?

Just then there came a soft knock at his creaky old door
There stood an unknow woman he'd never seen before
But she was the one who wrote to him every day and night
And who used to tell him stories of never giving into this fight

She had promised him long ago that one way or another
She would do everything in her power to become his new mother
She didn't have the money to pay to get him to the States
But told him in God's time they would both have to wait

For she knew that only in His timing would this come to pass
And she prayed faithfully every night that this miracle would come fast
They had lost touch at some point; He stood alone once again 
Never did he think he would ever hear from her and then...

When he opened the door from whom someone now knocks
It was the now older woman to whom he used to have long talks
With tears in their eyes and without speaking a word
They hugged each other tightly no sound being heard

Only the cries of emotion from years of waiting for this day
On one special Christmas Eve when God did make a way... ❤



***************


Said The Moon to The Sun 

O Sun
You have learned how to walk on the thin
threads of my Love
But you need not dance alone anymore
Because I have heard a new song and I have
learned the rhythm of your love

O Sun
Come swim in my river, for the current has calmed
and the pain of my love will no longer burn you.
The cool river has put out the hot flames and
washed away the sharp rocks that had hurt you
You no longer have to be afraid

O Sun
The roses in my garden have shed their thorns for you
You no longer will have to bleed for my love
Now you can wrap yourself around their stems
And enjoy the beautiful red petals of their kisses
As my wounds now will one day all heal

O Sun
When the Spring comes and I have shed my old leaves
Climb the tree and enjoy the beautiful new blooms
It is there you will witness the transformation
You can then build your nest in its beauty
And It is there where you will be able to enjoy my love.©





Kristy Raines was born  in Oakland California in The United States.
A Poet, Writer, Author and Humanitarian/Activist.
She has five books getting ready to publish soon, one with a prominent poet from India  which will launch hopefully soon called, "I Cross my Heart from East to West", two fantasy books of her own called, "Rings, Thins and Butterfly Wings" and "Princess and The Lion", and an anthology of poems in English," Walking Without You, one in French, "Little Rose Poetry", and one in Arabic called," Jasmine and Roses". She is taking a course in Arabic to write this book. Kristy has received many literary awards for her unique style of writing.

Stop Please, killing

Still, I hear the echoes of the words
That the dying baby of Syria or Palestine uttered.
He said in the next world he would complain to the Lord
Who has created us all.
He threatened the world that he would say everything
The cruelty and injustice that he suffered.
He would ask his Lord what was his crime
And why was he killed?
When the innocent was taking to the grave
The air was heavy with tears and sighs
The helpless mother how helplessly she cries.

Certainly, certainly our creator had heard
That heart rending complains the baby had made.
The Almighty God had punished the world
By sending Covid – 19 Corona Virus.
The world has then seen the rallies of death.

But the hardhearted killers would never stop
To violate the rules of the Almighty Lord.
Still are they killing countless a day
Destroying the houses, hospitals and tents.
Which religion allows you to kill innocents
And burn hospitals, churches and mosques as well?

Blood of Muslims, blood of Jewish
Blood of Christians , Buddhists and Hindus
All are red and look the same.
Then why such rivalry why such crimes,
Why the slaughtering of people
And deprivation of right?
Stop please, killing stop genocide.
Don’t drop your bombs don’t fire missiles.

(Manzar Alam from Bangladesh)