I'm just concerned about your emotional warfare, and putting the Charlie in Baudelaire 

Not racist, heaps border fears

Bought their ears

That's why your night's in arrears

As for the secret weapon, it's in our pocket

Not timeless, just rock it bored of years

I turn on the tele just for a fix of fears

Here they have the barkeep glitch our beers

Don't snitch on peers

No, put snitches on piers

Treading on thin nice try, left swipe

I don't want to live in a sci fi

Haven't moved in a year, these things moving up me, they say it's not divine

The main attraction, but still got sidekicked

So fishy they had to more real than reel us in

You can call me a wit, man, cos I lilac

You can call me a Whitlam, cos it's time

To get kicked out by the CIA

I mean CI Gay, but don't tell my wifi

I do skylines thru the eyes, chemtrails, clouds

Walk in, all the fems loud

Get the train rail off all its routes

Now when we need it, they just cough up the doubt

We don't smoke green, jist chop up the louts

Can't help, we already shot up the Galts

Why do you think we look so young for?

I've got power you can point at, but you can't dock yours

I've only got six mull in my sock drawer

I only look so I can drop jaws

I won't robocop to you any more

I won't drop you any flaws

Except the price one

A word to the high rise can't be undone

No batman bout the raves, but you can say I'm Robin

Like you don't underline what these dreams be costing

I'm getting plaid by Ryan Gosling

So it's myself on the red

Carpet I'm accosting







So few memories


I chuck myself out the pub was getting too rowdy


Pack up my things say howdy 


Order up a beer relight the bounty


 kindle my ounces and single my prouder


Movements out on TV


Units back from Jon doe ray me


Jumped from hand into my mode de vie


And from there, into my ode to me


And my shadows are irritable again


Can't understand I'm not my friend


sallows my cheeks, second elderhood


But the youth I'm shooting says there's hell to prove


 Only rules I like the ones the dead flout


So I guess that's why you had me at get the fuck out




Queen of Odds


So close to me like the cure

So closed to me like the future 

Closer it gets the looser the thread 

we cut the loser instead - that me

Choose you over life; you make me happy

When skies are out of service

And the winds are getting blabby

Just as we do, and did last night

Are you sure we didn't do this in a past life?

We ask nice and the ocean lets us surfers

Float instead of sink somehow 

shear the shore winks to make us go wow

try to make clouds treetops won't kowtow 

Everything about you is pow wow bow wow 

Just flowers me thinking, like, our souls're grouse foul

you be my perso climate change

Get me glitching all the whys away

With greenhouse gas lines

We need replace, but 

Resources're 

lacking, time too

 Sick coal still too powerful

Must est there; bower's full

Hours neither heat nor cool now

lost compass

meaningless, sour

flip flops clip clop on the way home from the drowse 

I'm deconstructed away from you

Remodernist me, babe

Frack modest

Tee it up - you truly, madly, deeply think these rhymes are proper gay 

But so are you - I got you, bae

And without warning, the coffee plate spins out of control absent of intervention

And we console ourselves with what? Yawning indecision?

Bring bring listenings no bring bring listen

Oh, it's Sly? Tell em I said die

Like the weather changes. Concrete's quicksand 

Whooshes the kitchen back to us

Some kind of catalyst to see what matters to me 

 Say can't cap a way free

But actually, if you and me….

Bloodbath valley, guts to rally, no dilly dally, gashed up alley, one cashed up sally, who taking the tally?

But sometimes, just sometimes, you can be a wee illuminasty

Shut up and farm me 



Am I a terrorist

for planting heroin in the president's office?

For insulting old codgers with my eloquent doctrines?

For inviting riots to decry it all the president's options? 

I'm intelligent often, I'm the resident boffin, I'm selling your coffins, inventive

a god send me down to change the face of rap (crap),

now whenever we play they claptrap back

to the clawing, bored and faded

the drawing board was always awesome jaded

I'm bold and brain-dead

Sold out and tasteless

Must have the language virus

Eating up an anguished iris 

I'm very good at dissection

Highly likely I will die sectioned

On the outside in 

We let the bouncers

Spin them away from daggitude 

You don't have to do with it a dagger, dude

Looks like crazy

Pfft, you should see the streets that staged me

The Drawings

 

The drawings are singing

The wonderful melodious songs are sung with instruments

Enchanting as the painting of Mona Lisa!

The laugh you live in me

For ever and ever.

 

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

13 May, 2023

 


Withered Thoughts

 

The cyclone is ready to destroy

People are taking shelter as the birds fly to other

Fear hovers around the coastal area

Fear disturbs the mind

The sun is so hot, the scorching sun

Hinders to pace outside

We are in this turmoil world

Drooping in the furnace and chokes the breath.

 

 

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

13 May, 2023

UFO Museum: Roswell, NM


Breaking in was nothing,

For one of my talents,

Ditto for lifting the device I needed

From its glass case without tripping the alarm;

Installing and testing it was a matter of moments.

I was ready to go;

I'd miss Darlene, she'd been good to me:

A loving wife, willing participant

In what must have seemed, at times,

Bizarre activities, but she'd get over it,

And I couldn't give her the children

She so desperately needed,


I needed to get back to my other family,

My other wife

Raising a horde of sprouts on her own,

And I was so tired of the lies:

An only child of fictitious parents

Killed in a “car” crash,

Born and raised in “the Midwest,”

A retired airline pilot.

My only real fear,

That my wife had remarried,

And her husband had, of course, eaten our young,

So I'm on my way back to Aldebaran,

And I really hope that if I have to kill and eat

Her and her lover,

He's not one of my brothers.

Mother

I get it when it's full of flowers scent
I can't find a single scent
I can't distinguish my mother
From a thousand tosser

Mercy is a river, my pure-hearted mother
I have only one value
To be alive for my child
Eat our sorrow day and night

He gave me a white wash
Until adulthood
I will see my child's happiness 
Give us a lifetime.

GIFT FROM GOD

 

Love is a gift from God

thank Maya by writing about Me.

You have no love for God, but call upon it, imagine that it is there, and pray for the Divine Vision.

That sublime love is hidden in holy books and in people whose mouths kiss the word of God and do not deviate from the path of devotion. Don't trust Maya men when you read love poems,

that's not love, that's lust.

Yesterday someone wrote about the only love,

 today you are the only love

tomorrow some other woman will be the only love.

It is a lie hidden in beautiful words.

Don't believe Maya's illusion

Don't look for love where it doesn't exist.

Pray to Maya with all your heart for protection.

Call Me.

I am Your gift, reveal me and

 keep me secret.

 

I FEEL YOU

 

Every raindrop is your inhale

and exhale

in the heavenly symphony

I listen to the beat of your heart.

Through the touch of the rain I feel you.

 

 

Maja Milojković was born in 1975 in Zaječar, Serbia.

She is a person to whom from an early age, Leonardo da Vinci's statement, "Painting is poetry that can be seen, and poetry is painting that can be heard," is circulating through the blood.

That's why she started to use feathers and a brush and began to reveal the world and herself to them.

As a poet, she is represented in numerous domestic and foreign literary newspapers, anthologies, and electronic media, and some of her poems can be found on YouTube.

Many of her poems have been translated into English, Hungarian, Bengali, and Bulgarian due to the need of foreign readers.

She is the recipient of many international awards.

"Trees of Desire" is her second collection of poems in preparation, which is preceded by the book of poems "Moon Circle."

She is a member of the International Society of Writers and Artists "Mountain Views" in Montenegro, and she is also a member of the Poetry club "Area Felix" in Serbia.

Seeing Desperate Lives

The photos make me feel a hundred years old:

Schoolroom made rubble, skeletal steel frames

of desks somehow standing, withstanding the blast;

exhausted fireman sitting in the living room

of a burning house, admitting defeat; woman

with concerned face dappled by sun through leaves

of her yard's beautiful trees leaving her village house,

one forearm holding a fluffy white kitten, its face

buried in her shoulder.



They are desperate, and I tire of mainlining

their anxiety, so I look up from the phone

into my rearview, at the sun-scorched asphalt --

the road beyond my yard's tree cover

is molten with summer sun.  I wheeled in

and looked up Ukraine, like I do at least once a day,

and it makes me feel a hundred years old.  So,

I do the only thing I can think of to forget:

step out of my pick-up, take shoes off toe to heel,

pull off socks, walk my pine straw and oak leaf drive

onto the sizzle heat of road, and its sudden tactile feel

in the flesh of my feet consumes me.



And I am here, now, away from war, and soon

I am young again, walking barefoot

the hot paved parking lot to the state park spring

that began a river in Florida, that mine

and two other families caravanned to in summers,

the hours of swimming, the picnics in a blanket of grass

by sedges, herbs, and wildflowers at river's edge.

Until -- the burn's ministry becomes too much,

and I walk back onto the cool of pine straw, open

the truck door for the phone, look again

at the places I will never go to anymore.



After Russia invaded, I talked with my Iraq vet friend

David who told me of two acquaintances

who went into Ukraine to rescue the in-laws

of one of them, native Ukrainians, and I said

I could no longer handle war psychologically:

my mind hearing the ominous thump

of helicopter rotors, distant artillery, pounding

"danger close" seconds later, high flying planes,

birds of prey dropping dots of bombs that ride

gravity's slipstream to earth, plowing earthquakes

that reverberate, spit heat and flame

against everything natural.



He tells me of the healing power of yoga,

how he's started yoga teacher training.

Next time we talk, I'll have to tell of walking

a hot street.  I look again at one of the photos.

I'm well removed now, twice, through the lens

of the camera, through the lens of the phone,

but I remember the pain of watching starving dogs

being shot by laughing Iraqi soldiers, and I wonder

where the woman will take her cat.




Year 2, Ukraine



It was last year that the shelling first disturbed

the deep time of an old village, hub for farmers

and beekeepers



Now tanks roll into the square again, one crushing

the stone walls of a central fountain, old coins

fall with the water from its heavy treads



In the corner of the square, from the alley by

the Armenian church, a shadow strides, moves

into the square



Pacing here and there erratically, palm to temple,

this walking wound gathering breath to force insults

in growing gasps



This man whose family was killed in last year's shelling

The Polish radio says his government is winning,

at 10:00 and 5:00 daily



He thinks the war has already gone on forever  Bitterly,

he thinks the war has already killed him  A soldier shouts

"Khokhol!" in the language of bears



Waving him closer from the height of his round, iron hatch,

the soldier points a pistol  This dead man loads his mouth

with more insults and rushes forward



Into the loop of everlasting war  In the sky's drizzle on his face

are tears that were once salty seas




Prayer for a Savior




Come for your gentle people

who shudder in this darkness



bring your sovereign brightness

unbreakable shield of goodness



let misfortune, famine, disease,

war, become faraway sounds



make them gray at the temples,

let them fade away



give us a spell of warm sun, soft

winds, clear rain over green valleys



we know death is stronger than

suffering -- may you open its horizon



of strength in this living season and

forgive our fragile clay, wounded



hearts, that for heaven's peace

can't wait.

A US Army combat veteran, Steven Croft lives happily on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia on a property lush with vegetation and home to various species of birds and animals. His poems have appeared in Liquid Imagination, The Five-Two, Misfit Magazine, Eunoia Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Synchronized Chaos, and other places, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.