1. SILENT STRUGGLES
My childhood unfolded.
A tale of misery within an adventure never told. 
Verbal arrows aimed, and with each pronouncements a savage onslaught. 

The word "depression" was a sinful joke in my household and remains an abomination never to be spoken about.
I was called "weird" and "strange" because I never spoke at public gatherings.
people said I was possessed by powers unknown or I was just acting up.How cruel. 

Mental torments weighs down my fragile back.
Within the walls of home, a battleground of strife and animosity.
Broken plates, cups and souls became the order of the day.
parents' love turned bitter, a tempests dreadful roar.
The wounded witness I was, violated in every way possible and amidst this tumult, academic pressure grew. What a fate. 

My pen bleeds but in the darkness I found my guiding star.
Through the ink-stained pages of my journal, I discovered a sanctuary where my thoughts could flow freely, unburdening my troubled mind.
Each word became a lifeline, a means to navigate the stormy seas of my life.

2. INTERWOVEN ECHOES
I seek my reflection in voice and personas.
A face hidden within the depths of connection.
I listen closely, in each word and tone. 
In your words, I search for my own rhyme.
A mirror of my soul in the sands of time.
I look deeper and I see, it's not just in you but also in me.
Are we all mirrors reflecting the light?
In the tapestry of voices day and night.
In your essence and in mine, intertwined we became. 
A kaleidoscope of selves forever undone.
In the voices of others we discover our art.

Biography
My name is Hannah Aipoh. I am 17 years of age, I am a Nigerian poet with a flair for writing.

Doctor of Medicine, or Interpreter of Results?

There is now a recalcitrant trend among our people. It is not new, but
it sure is growing. Before now, everyone knew to seek the (medical)
doctor out whenever they ailed. It was the doctor who then decided
what investigations to order, and what treatment to give, after
thorough history taking and relevant physical examination. What we
find now is rather different, the well-documented physician-apathy
(illness behaviour) nonetheless. Now, our people wake up with symptoms and head straight to the medical laboratory or diagnostic centre.

Between them and the technicians, somebody decides what tests to be done, what scans to be carried out — because medic no suppose chop — and then the inevitable happens…

Again and again, I have had to explain to patients that yours truly is
a Doctor of Medicine and not an interpreter of results. I am licensed
to treat patients who are patient enough to subject themselves to my
care, not those who already know what to do and merely need my medical licence and indemnity insurance to safeguard their rashness. I find myself in this situation when the laboratory technician (or scientist) sends them to me with a laboratory result I did not request, or the sonographer (or sonologist) urges them away with the report of a scan I did not order, and that is invariably not useful to the patient at that material time! This is even if the patent medicine seller had not emptied the patient’s pockets before Mr. No-Free-Consultations is remembered.

There have been instances where patients underwent absolutely
unnecessary investigations for want of physician guidance — outright
fishing expeditions, in fact. This middle-aged bricklayer fell off the
scaffolding and noticed a chest pain not amenable to the numerous
massages of the traditional bonesetter. He was advised (don’t ask by
whom) to go for an abdominal scan! And then the inevitable happened: they needed a “me” to interpret the useless report and prescribe medication. Needless to say, I sent him for a chest x-ray which expectedly revealed two broken ribs and lung contusion. And after specialist treatment, he was back on his feet in a week! The medical curriculum is there for a reason and that is the reason medical students stay the longest in the university! Everybody is important o, but if you did not spend seven to ten years studying Medicine and Surgery, chances are that you cannot know all of what “I” am expected to know. If e no be panadol…

Our people go to the pharmacy to ask what eyedrop to use. They do not know, or do not care, that there are more than half a dozen causes of ‘red eye’. Someone took her friend’s glaucoma eyedrop container to the pharmacy to buy, without any tests or diagnosis. The ophthalmologist must be avoided at all cost, and when they go blind it must be their village people, demons or arrows at work! The first aid for ear ache is olive oil. But no, our people must put ear drop (do not mind that there are various types), and even hydrogen peroxide with its exothermicity is not spared. The otologist is their enemy, and they only go to him for hearing aids — or polypectomy. Someone was taking his friend’s heart failure medication, never minding that the cause of his own chronic cough was tuberculosis! How many shall one recount? And when they complain to me and I say why not go to the hospital, they are quick to remind me that they are not sick; “they that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick”. — Mark
2: 17.

Our people now only remember the hospital when they see the grave
approaching, but when they die after spending precious time going from one druggist to another, the medic must be held responsible for not performing magic. As I am writing this, a patient has come to complain of easy defatiguability after treating malaria and ‘typhoid’
exhaustively and undergoing self-prescribed blood work that confirmed nothing else. Guess what? He has simple old hypertension! He could have had a stroke or a heart attack if commonsense had not finally dragged him to the hospital…

Those are the things we see. And oh, let me not remember the
Google-said people. If Google is good enough to diagnose (not
diagonise, please) you, let Google treat you abeg. Do not endanger my medical licence with your recklessness; do not turn and say it was Dr. Ayk who managed you; we both know you had damaged your kidneys from consuming “mix” (a concoction of varied analgesics and steroids with or without vitamins and calcium tablets) from chemists for years. Hmm, all the roadside gbogbonise and homemade decoction nko — with and without alcohol? Perhaps in future we will discuss how some alagbo fortify their ‘natural products’ with conventional drugs!

It will take a lot of reorientation to even begin to scratch the
surface. For starters, let the relevant government agencies enforce
extant laws on what patent medicine sellers cannot dispense, let
pharmacies seize prescriptions, let medics stop over-the-phone
consultation AND PRESCRIPTION BY TEXTS, and let unlicensed health workers be dissuaded perceptibly. The Nigeria Medical Association should hasten doctor prescription stamps so our pharmacist siblings can root out fake prescriptions and save our people from themselves.

Let all genuine healthcare providers remember that customers may
always be right, but patients seldom are…

Ayokunle ADELEYE writes from Odogbolu LGA, holds an MBChB from Olabisi Onabanjo University, and is licenced by the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria. He may be reached at adelayok@gmail.com.

Funeral of my Journal

I have became fading paper
Where my words once were.
Might have said all I had to say
So in reverse they are going away.
Fading into the void, forlorn
Waiting to be reborn.
Time was never on my side
Eating me away inside.
I ignore the hourglass
I know it will all pass.
I am not ready for this funeral.
Not ready to bury my journal.


World of Desire

From hollow shadows rise
Scream to dark skies
The night streets so empty
Bleed like poetry 
Hear that distant plea
Veins calling to me
Wanton of eternity
Lusting for captivity
My eden, lost city of light
Enter the night
Where shadows fall
Hear my call
Where the fog does rise
Where my black heart lies
Crimson masquerade
Feel sanguine dreams fade
Black drapes hide so well
Secrets my world shall not tell.
Where candles burn endlessly
Like hearts longing carelessly.
Bleed like a vampire 
Enter the world of desire.


From South-Western, Michigan, Jerry Langdon lives in Germany since the early 90's. He is an Artist and Poet. His works bathe in a darker side of emotion and fantasy. He has released five books of Poetry titled "Temperate Darkness an Behind the Twilight Veil", “Death and other cold things” “Rollercoaster Heart” and “Frosted Dreams” Jerry is also the editor and publisher of the literary magazine Raven Cage Zine poetry and prose. His poetic inspirations are derived from poets such as Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Frost and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. As well as from various Rock Bands. His apparently twisted mind, twists and intertwines fantasy with reality.

Eternal Dance of Creation

Beneath the sky so vast and blue,

Nature weaves its wondrous hue.

Mountains rise and rivers flow,

In every corner, life’s aglow.

Whispering leaves and songs of birds,

The gentle buzz, nature’s words.

Sunsets paint with fiery grace,

Nature’s beauty, a sacred space.

Open fields and forests deep,

Secrets in their shadows are kept.

Oh, nature’s touch, so pure, so free,

A symphony of life’s decree.

Muntasir Mamun Kiron is a student of grade 9 in Harimohan Government High School, Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh.

Homeland

I love my country like a flower,
I am great because of you.
First a welcome threshold,
Indescribable world,
Circumvent your soil,
I will take care of your herbs.

Let me say it in my mother tongue,
My soil is rich in character.
You are the moon shining in my sky,
You are a good host.
Look like heaven,
Your name is kind, dear.

The nations of the world are envious,
Take a lesson from patriots.
Peace prevails in people,
"Dormon" is the source of inspiration.
My people are the leader of my people,
He said that he was out of his mind.





I, Begoyi ( Allabergenova Aytjan ) Egamberdievna, was born on May 10, 1954 in Karl Marks (now Ellikkala district, G. Odilov OFY) farm, Tortkol district. My father, Egamberdi Allabergenov, was a freight forwarder at the "Qirqqizsovkhozvodstroy" trust, and my mother, Orunova Reymajan, was a housewife.

In 1960, I went to study at the Alisher Navoi school in Tortkol district (now Ellikkala), and in 1970 I graduated from the 10th grade of this school. In 1971, I entered medical school in Tortkol district.
In 1973, I graduated from the university and started working in the district central hospital. I worked as a nurse in a polyclinic. From 1979, I worked as an obstetrician in a city hospital until I retired.
Today, I am the mother of 5 children and the grandmother of 13 grandchildren and 2 great-grandchildren.
I retired in 2009.

I have been interested in reading and creating since I was young. Articles and poems in republican and district periodicals began to appear when I was a student at school.
My first book "The virtue of my life" was published in Tashkent in 2013 by "Akademnashr" publishing house.
In 2015, my poetry book "Fountain of Mercy" was published in Tashkent by "Akademnashr" publishing house.
In 2017, Turon Ikboli Publishing House published my book "The Motherland, I Live With You".

In February 2020, my book "Trials of the Mysterious World" was published.
At the end of March 2020, my book "The Remaining Soul" was published.
I participate in regional and republican newspapers and magazines with my works. I am an active participant in all regional and republican events.
I participate in Oynaijahon and radio with my performances.
I wrote 4 poetry books in verse, 1 book "The Remaining Day", stories and fairy tales in the prose direction.
I am a member of the Union of Writers of Uzbekistan and Karakolpakistan.

Critically examine the symbolic significance of the leaves and the wind in Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind.

Or
/ “If I were a dead leaf thou mightiest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee
A wave to pant beneath thy power”/

The leaves and the ‘winged seeds’ will play their part in the great cyclical rebirth of Spring, and the image of the seeds leads us also into the Christian resurrection of Easter. They lie ‘cold and low’ until awakened by the gentle wind of Spring, which suggests resurrection and Judgement Day as “she blows her clarion o’er the dreaming earth.” Examine the Ode to the West Wind in the perspective of symbolic imagery.

Or
Ellsworth Bernard identifies the spirit of the West Wind with the spirit of God, eternal love, Shelley’s hymn, in fact, the West Wind is I’m a sense the symbol of the Deity. The poet’s apparent triumph in the power of the West Wind in stanza 5 may seem like a departure from
Christian submission, but with his final, hopeful query he sinks into the passivity of the willed naturalistic cycle; / “O wind, If winter comes, can Spring be far behind? “/ Examine the passage in the context of the poem, Shelleyan Ode to the West Wind.

The poet himself is conflated within the hope of instrumentality or passivity and the trope of agency envisionings of / “Make me thy lyre even as the forest”/ and / “Be thou me, impetuous one!”/ And thus far this Romantic Metaphor as emphasized by MH Abrams in The
Correspondent Breeze “for the way the mind and the imagination respond to the wind”. In this poem the forest imagery is itself an Aeolian harp, the wind fingerings as it blows across.

But by deriving ‘from both’ the forest and himself ‘deep autumnal tone’ or elegiac consciousness of the mortality, the West Wind partake the poet’s own spirit of survival and sustenance. There is in Shelley’s Ode a movement through figures of sound into figures of light, towards a visionary and apocalyptic moment when sound and light become the same figure.

The poet’s function is no longer compensatory but revelatory or incantatory. The trumpet of a prophecy itself, is the same ‘clarion’ that will awakened the dreaming Earth. The West Wind, which once moved everywhere, has become a symbol for the poet’s own active and inspiring voice by some imaginative revision of the poet’s transmutability from passive instrument to active agent like the wind, itself.

Shelley’s profoundest reflections of nature and mankind associates the abstractest sublimity of wind blown and leaves strewn or driving wind and flying leaves decades observance of the western European landscapes of Italy. The first stanza of the poem describes the leaves flying before the wind blows, which is represented both as destroyer of the leaves and the preserved of the seeds from which new life will rise.

The poet’s fervent plea to lift as a leaf, a wave and a cloud to the invocation of the lyre and the power of the West Wind in order to achieve regeneration or resurrection which climaxes at the pinnacle of dead thoughts driven, scatters from an unextinguished hearth and being through lips that the celestial glory of the cosmic West Wind; there will arise in the cycle of the season a regenerating influence upon mankind.

The West Wind, as the destroyer of the old order and the preserved of the newer order, for Shelley, symbolized Change or Mutability, which destroys yet recreated all things; while the leaves signified for him all things, material and spiritual ruled by Change. The poem epitomizes Shelley’s conception of the eternal cycle of life and death and resurrection in the universe. The winds were to flutter at the gate of his imagination and the leaves were to rustle in the landscape of his mind.

Ode to the West Wind lyrics / “Drive my dead thoughts over the universe/ Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!”/] and furthermore [ / “Be through my lips to unawakened earth/ The trumpet of a prophecy!”]. Percy Florence Shelley, the living symbol of Shelley’s own regeneration and so associated with the rebirth and regeneration symbolized by the Wind and the Leaves in the Ode to the West Wind.

To Leigh Hunt the poet authored on 12 November 1819 “Yesterday morning Mary brought little boy [Percy Florence Shelley] to me….You may imagine that this is a great relief and a great comfort to me amongst all my misfortunes, past, present, and to come. The birth of his child, a rebirth of himself in a sense, was perhaps the motif in the nexus of thought and emotion that inspired the composition of the Ode.
…
Nature poet Shelley’s visionary and mystic manifestations of ‘tameless’ and ‘swift’ and ‘proud’ and ‘uncontrolled’ and ‘fiery’ temperament are the personified embodiments in the allusiveness of strong, swift and masterful wind. The tumultuous tempest marks the end of Summer and the beginning of the autumnal monsoon season, and the assumption of being exalted and roused to be enthroned by the West Wind, that is literally the very breath of Autumn’s being.

The West Wind is followed by the Wind of Spring in the apotheosis of the azure sister of vernal blue haven. She is the feminine complement to the ‘impetuous brother’ by bring life to the ‘winged seeds’ which he had charioted to their dark wintry bed and so preserved. Leaves like ghosts [they are thin and frail] fleeing from enchanter; the winged seeds blown to the ground and buried like corpses in a grave, but in fact they repose in cradles to be reborn with the coming of the Spring.

Enlivening and invigorating imageries rather than burying and entombing imageries are symbolic manifestations within this paradoxical irony. / “O wild West Wind, thou breath of
Autumn’s being/ Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead/ Are drive like ghosts from an enchanter feeling”/ / “The winged seeds where they lie cold and low/ Each like a corpse within its grave, until/ Thine azure sister of Spring shall blow”/

The West Wind is thus glorified above other winds, because which drives the dead leaves into corruption, is akin to the other West Wind ,which quickens the dreaming earth to life. Shelley’s invocation to the West Wind [“For whose paths the Atlantic’s level powers/ Cleaves themselves into chasms”] and furthermore, the poetic invocation of the lyrics recalls Shelley’s Essay on Christianity: “There is a Power by which we are surrounded, like the atmosphere in which some motionless lyre is suspended, which visits with its breath our silent chords, at will”.

Passive will-less attributes of nature dead leaves, seeds clouds, lulled Mediterranean has been transformed into he active and fearful cooperation of the Atlantic ocean with the terrifying power of the wind [‘share/The impulse of thy strength’]. The poet is ‘chained’ and ‘bowed’ by precisely those attributes of Wind embodied in ‘tameless’ and ‘swift’ and ‘proud’.

Shelley attained the emotional highpoint in the lines : / “Be thou, Spirit fierce! My Spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!”/ —-the transition from supplication to command in the subsequent
imperatives [“Drive my dead thoughts”, “Scatter, as from an unextinguished flame” and “Be through my lips”] occurs during this utterance: “Be thou me, impetuous one! In the aftermath of the afterthought in supplication: / “Oh, lift me as a leaf, a wave, a cloud”/ and invocation to the lyre: / “Make me thy lyre even as the forest is”/. Shelley explicates the wind to be the spirit of agency through his plaintive and prayerful diction. Together these commands culminate in the ferment of the fervent plea that Shelley be filled with the spiritual being of the wind, that he become the wind.

George Santayana points out that Shelley is raised into sublimity by his participation in the West Wind’s immortal vital and this sublimity of the emphatic moment can be emphasized in the explanatory context of the critical interpretation: ‘…”Be thou me, impetuous one!”… The emotion comes not from the situation we observe, but from the powers we conceive: we fail to sympathize with the struggling sailors because we sympathize too much with the wind and waves. And this mystical cruelty can extend even to ourselves; we can so feel the fascination of the cosmic powers that engulfs us as to take a fierce joy in the thought of our own destruction. We can identify ourselves with the abstractest essence of reality, and, raised to that height, despite the human accidents of our own nature. Lord, we say, though thou slay, yet will I trust in thee.

The sense of suffering disappears in the sense of life and the imagination overwhelms the understanding.”

This breath of Autumn’s being is enthralling to Shelley because of the inscribed semantic cluster of wind, breath and spirit as ascribed to the desolate spirit of the European discontent; amidst post Napoleonic epoch to which society was deplorable chained and bowed especially the entire canvas of Italian landscapes blackened to the golgotha of winter. [ /The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, /Each like a corpse within its grave, until/ Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow:/] In the phase wintry bed is not a burial grave of dissolution but that of the haven for restorative sleep and anticipatory vision. Petition for transcendence and confession of the overthrow is amalgamated to be the fervent plea, ardent appeal, prayerful invocation, meditative reflection or rhetorical speech act of the adult life of a tragic struggler prophet poet revolutionary coalesced from the nostalgic boyhood introspective recollection: [ /Oh! lift me as a leaf, a wave, a cloud! I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!”/].

To Shelley’s poetic argumentative analysis, “There is no want of knowledge respecting what is wisest and best in morals, government and political economy…but we want the creative Faculty to imagine that which we know; we want the impulse to act that which we imagine; we want the poetry of life.” This passage is allusive in the parallelism in Ode to the West Wind: / “And by the incantation of this verse Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and Sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth
The trumpet of a prophecy!”/

Further Reading

Henry S. Pancoast’s Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind, Modern Language Notes, February 1920,
Volume 35, No. 1, pages : 97-100.

Patrick Swinden’s Shelley: ‘Ode to the West Wind’ Critical Survey, Summer 1973, Volume 3, No.
1 / 2, pages:52-58.

William H. Pixton’s Shelley’s Commands to the West Wind, South Atlantic Bulletin, November
1972, Volume 37, No. 4, pages: 70-73, South Atlantic Modern Language Association

I.J. Rapstein’s The Symbolism of the Wind and the Leaves in Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind”
PMLA, December 1936, Volume 51, No. 4, pages: 1069-1079, Modern Language Association,
Brown University

Richard Harter Fogle’s The Imaginal Design of Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind, Source ELH,
September 1948, Volume 15, No. 3, pages: 219-226

Edward Duffy’s Where Shelley Wrote and What He Wrote For: The Example of the “Ode To The West Wind” Studies in Romanticism, Fall 1984, Volume 23, No. 3, pages: 351-377.

Coleman O. Parson’s Shelley’s Prayer to the West Wind Keats Shelley Journal, Winter 1962,
Volume 11, pages 31-37, City College, New York.

Jennifer Wagner’s A Figure of Resistance: The Visionary Reader in Shelley’s Sonnets and the “West Wind” Ode, Southwest Review, Winter 1992, Volume 77, No. 1, pages: 109-127,
Southern Methodist University

SWEET CRIES & WHISKEY


Ten hours exactly after work, 
your eyes smile through my inner tears. 
With my silence, I write a poem inside of 
me: "You're worth it and you matter."

We are surrounded by glowing stars, 
creating a new chapter on forever love. 
We talk about every memory, sweet cries & whiskey, 
as if it is an obligation to pleasure the cosmos.

Nobody is ahead of us or behind our grief. 
The moon engraves our feelings into the hearts of stars. 
I will live by burying my tears and making you smile. 
Your thoughts are like a mother's prayers for her child.

With my love for you, I'm not afraid of death. 
The lust of being body to flesh, 
it numbs me for your bare breast. 
Don't let people know how much I adore you.

Thirty-four years old and still can't express 
my joyful dreams when I see a wooden chair, 
rusty hanging cords & a knife with blood stains. 
Waiting for me to finish my cigarette and my poem.

25/09/2023

BHP

A Moment To Breathe 

With every breath I take, 
I want you by my side.
Or is this your love I am breathing?
Even though I don't deserve a moment to breathe.

Why do some friends judge us as
Two burning cigarettes in an ashtray,
or cheap liquor and generic cigarettes?
Last night, my favorite liquor sang my sorrows loudly.

Oh woman, I love you like a sad alcoholic.
I'm depressed like nicotine to my drinking alcohol.
This is my first time digging a grave for the bodies 
of my childhood, since this war has taken their lives.

Inside of me, there are aches, regrets, and open wounds.
Between you and me, there is a love flavored with honey.
Take me to your destination, I will be your retired sailor.
Where we can breathe in the fragrance of fruit trees and exhale the tobacco.