Welcome New World!
The most innocent emotions belong to humans,
But why did Adam's children change?
They gather and fill their treasures,
Their greed and stubbornness never fade!
The desire to be more prosperous, greater,
Their lofty ideals are empty illusions!
They shed no tears for the limits of competition,
A diffusion towards the end of mankind!
Every side, every corner is filled with sin,
Deadly diseases, epidemics prevail,
Disgrace does not bring honor,
Let drug addiction be eradicated!
Let peace and justice be our future's name,
Let us maintain balance on the scales,
Where do millions and billions go,
Let us account for and scrutinize each expenditure!
Awaken, put an end to this ignorance,
Perhaps the bud will wither before it blooms,
Greedy ones, put an end to this insatiable hunger,
Everything will be inherited by this world!
Place yourselves in the shoes of the poor,
See how it feels to be without support,
Learn the pain of impossibility,
To be denied everything you witness!
The genes of food and fruits are manipulated,
Animals are injected with harmful substances,
Infants are born sick, abnormal,
They suffer the horrors of life!
Nature lovingly caresses us,
As a sole consolation to humanity,
Let us not distance ourselves like ungrateful children,
This opportunity will not be given to us again!
Let us gift the world a radiant smile,
Let us say no to war together!
May the innocent faces of children shine,
Let the earth not be left to wickedness.
Let us say to the world, with laughter,
That no one is afraid anymore,
We will not surrender the world to the headless tyrant,
Let his vile desires remain in his heart!
In this world, there are countless nations, peoples,
Each has its own native language,
In every language, there are countless words,
With deep meaning and profound wisdom.
Words cannot be measured,
Each one is like a unique pearl,
There is no equal in the world,
The elixir of kind words soothes the soul!
Let us write melodies with honeyed words,
Far from hatred, anger, and rage,
Let us erase fearful dreams with benevolence,
And create smiles and joy on faces!
Come, masters of words, army of poets,
Let us create a brand-new world once again!
May the fragrance of peace spread everywhere,
Together, let us compose the anthem of the world.
The world does not belong to you,
Nor does it belong to me,
The world belongs to each and every one of us!
Let us live with conscience,
With love, with respect,
Let the world revolve,
With faith in the future!
Welcome New World!
07.07.2023.
Elmaya Jabbarova - was born in Azerbaijan. She is a poet, writer, reciter, and translator.
Her poems were published in the regional newspapers «Shargin sesi», «Ziya», «Hekari», literary collections «Turan», «Karabakh is Azerbaijan!», «Zafar», «Buta», foreign Anthologies «Silk Road Arabian Nights», «Nano poem for Africa», «Juntos por las Letras 1;2», «Kafiye.net» in Turkey, in the African's CAJ magazine, Bangladesh's Red Times magazine, «Prodigy Published» magazine. She performed her poems live on Bangladesh Uddan TV, at the II Spain Book Fair 1ra Feria Virtual del Libro Panama, Bolivia, Uruguay, France, Portugal, USA.
Forster was a story teller of diminuendos and anticlimaxes, as pointed out by Katherine Mansfield in the lines, “Forster never gets any further than warming the teapot.”
EM Forster highlights the radiant grandeur and majestic wonder of the Greek literature that tends to be both aesthetic and ethical and imitative in the mimetic of both individual and social realities which blends a combination of beauty and depth, wit and wisdom, gaiety and insight, speculation and ecstasy, carnality and spirit.
EM Forster’s crucial crux of characterization and incidents are touchstones in the arrangement of plots as sequences of events in their time sequence bereft of spatiotemporality, periodization or historicity. In fact, Aspects of the Novel, is the critical examination of the eclectic literary critic in the immersive objectivity and sympathy of the narratives’ dramatis persona and the narrative multiplicities featuring those timeless classic masterpieces or avant gardes that encompasses and engenders architectural unity and preordained form.
The self confessed literary critic expostulate nineteenth century romanticism, aestheticism, symbolism, impressionism in the humanistic and liberal attitudes in the late world war I and the aftermath of the early world war II decades. Forster asserts the significances of a central theme or idea in the literature as evidenced in the passage: “When a book is written round a central idea, it gains unity that is denied to its more discursive brethren, and this Norwegian novel stands out among its English contemporaries much as a man that has something to say stands out in a crowd of chatterers. Its characters are sketches, and the plot does not exist, but the central theme gripped by the author, grips the reader and leaves a profound impression behind.”
EM Forster critiques Sir Walter Scott as idiosyncratic and wayward more than order because of moral and commercial tastes contrarieties in the 1980s art for an art’s sake movement. On the contrary, Virginia Woolf, triumphs from the distortion effects of aestheticism owing to her comical sense and creative zest. Poetry is enchanted garden much more like the spiritual armory in the words of Mathew Arnold as eternal engravings in the creator, spectator and readers alike, resonating Shelley’s commentary, “beautiful idealisms of moral excellence.”
Emily Dickinson’s poetic verses and musical lyrics in the prose works contrasts with Austenean realists fiction in the literary imaginative landscapes of the readers’ mindscapes and the momentary transformative external environment of the appreciative individual. Forster was also undoubtedly thinking of Dickinson when he viewed Dickinson as one who loved the Ariel world of the spiritual repose and aesthetic emotion but cannot remain in it because Caliban had to be tamed, Antonio reformed and Prospero restored to his rule. ‘A true novelist observes the realities and describes them dispassionately.”
In ‘Anonymity’ Forster expresses that literature not only lectures the outward and rational but also the subconscious, the reality that lies within the center of the individual personality. In this sense, social and political realities should be lesser important than the aesthetic effectiveness. Forster deplored the fascist Nazi censorship since the epoch resulted in ‘uniformity’, ‘monotony’ and ‘spiritual death’.
Nonetheless, Forster tells us of the literary tradition to be the borderline between history and literature in the Aspects of the Novel. To him, the best critic will have spent much time exploring that territory in order to augment his knowledge of literature. Leo Tolstoy’s novels are an omnibus of complex plot intricacies and characters of psychological complexities that for subtlety were ambiguous because of inconsistencies and violation of the probability to Forster.
Fantasy is the featured as alternative to realism in fiction and upholds resemblances to the symbolic alternatives to desires and identities———-metonymic for orgasmic terms such as choking or thrilling readers even to this degree of maturity in accord with obscenities, oddities and queerness. Fantasy is a doubled natured and gendered beast expression some of the alternative interpretations to realities in the vein of supernaturalism and mysticism that can take the androgynous guise.
The Edwardian epoch heralded the familiarity and popularity of fantasy fiction from folklores and folktales and folk fables or fantasy tales inhabited by satyrs and nymphs of the magical woods. Fantasy and prophecy are together diametrically polaroids of alternative interpretations to realities. In this sense, fantasy and prophecy are illuminators and intensifiers of the material world, sedulously dusted by the hands of common sense, manipulated by the beam light in the more vividness than mediocrity and domesticity by the fantasist and the prophet. For instance, Tristram Shandy and Moby Dick are diametric axis of fantasy and prophecy. Northrope Frye claims that “fictions in the last generation or so has turned increasing from realism to fantasy, partly because fantasy is the normal technique for the modern fiction writers who do not believe in the permanence or continuity of the societies they belong to.”
Archie Bunker opines about Pellegrino Water
**Archie Bunker was a character in the 1970s TV show, "All in the Family." It was a satire about a white working-class man-who was an unapologetic racist
This ain't your Polish meathead Poland Springs
this is what comes from what you call
Virgin Springs.--
hey—nobody gets laid there
they are happy just drinking water
may Jesus strike me dead!
It's like seltzer
but it is not made by the hebes --
them people make it like a sucker punch
christians make sure there is no
bitch slap
of dem bubbles
here-- there are
no troubles...
She is long, lean and green
a tall glass of water
a regular queen
hey!
you know
what I mean?
Co-President of the New England Poetry Club
Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene http://dougholder.blogspot.com
Ibbetson Street Press http://www.ibbetsonpress.com
Poet to Poet/Writer to Writer http://www.poettopoetwritertowriter.blogspot.com
Doug Holder CV http://www.dougholderresume.blogspot.com
Doug Holder's Columns in The Somerville Times
https://www.thesomervilletimes.com/?s=%22Doug+Holder%22&x=0&y=0
Doug Holder's collection at the Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/@dougholder
House
I painted the house white this morning
Into a silky fluttering vision of life
Joyful, with giant hands
I leave pieces of white
Where did all the living birds from my home go?
Maybe into black grass with flashes of futility
Where will the spirits of life fly that have no name?
They make me love to hug you invisible,
But present, in the dark night
Who longs forever to stay scared?
Emina Đelilović-Kevrić (Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina) After studying the b/h/s (bosnian/croatian/serbian) language and literature at the Philoshopical Faculty in Zenica she got her master's degree on the subject „Memory construction in the South Slavic interlinear community: typical models of the war camp experience in literature“. She is the author of the poetry collection „ This time without history“ and the short stories collection „ Erased lives“. Her collection of poems „ My son and I“ is awarded by the Publishing Foundation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2021. In 2022 she won the second place in the international literature competition „ Isnam Taljić“. She is the winner of the second award for the best short story of the regional literature competition „Zija Dizdarević“ 2022, and she won the first place on international literature competition „Nastavi priču“. 2023. she won a third place on international poetry competition „Ossi di Seppia“ Italy.
The diner illuminated to neon lights effect, in pitch black night with tiny strobes of stars twinkling. Isolated with pine trees at a stretch of distance, that led into the woods.
The stranger sat next to the window, remained ominously quiet. His hands together, underneath the table. Fidgeting. His breath unsettled. His eyes disturbed. A hint of dark melancholic flashed intermittently as he glanced towards his hands. His thoughts seemed bloated by weight.
The younger waitress working at the diner, approached him with a warm smile. Her dark eyes, twinkled with gentleness and welcoming.
Before any word left her lips, she sensed an unease of air surrounded the man in a breath.
That gentleness in her eyes dissipated to concern and curiosity.
Her eyes, registered irregular breathing. His disturbed eyes troubled her the most as he slowly set his eyes on her and stared. He knew who she was, and couldn’t come to forget her face.
“I raped you back in high school…” He whispered, as his eyes lowered with remorse.
She inhaled. Making sense of the words that left his mouth. Her eyes shifted with dreadful realisation. Her brows twitched, her mouth opened little. She couldn’t bring to her mind his face, if ever she had met him before. But the fact that she had been raped when she was a teenager, conjured up.
She leaned a little closer, that is when she glanced towards his fidgeting hands, hidden away underneath the table.
She noticed something, the sight of which caused her eyes to dilate. Widened with surprise. She drew away only slightly. And then her body was as if hponotised by temporary paralysis. The shock of it kept her feet glued to the ground.
She held her breath as the stranger pulled out the object fidgeting in his hands and aimed it at her, without setting his eyes on her. Her eyes grew teary with glint.
His finger still deciding as it intermittently rested and removed off the trigger of a revolver.
His hands were trembling.
If any sudden sound expect silence interrupted him now, he’d act by panic and pull the trigger, from reflex.
The old man, who owned the diner, turned and noticed the waitress remain stood. Suspicion flashed in his eyes. She turned her head slightly to her right, her eye rolled as she registered the old man. He noticed her dark eyes shone with glint.
Then his eyes lowered slowly and set at the startling sight of the revolver.
Her eyes returned to the man pointing the revolver at her.
The old man’s hand tried to reach for his shotgun, but watched as the stranger’s finger rested over the trigger, slowly leaned back. The stranger turned towards him and throw a hostile stare, brows arched intimidatingly, as if sensed this intention.
The old man returned his hand away from the shotgun.
Raised his hands in surrender.
Any further attempt would most likely jeopardise the young girl’s life. And yet, his emotions underneath the surface of his skin, bristled with tension. His breath gradually grew unsettled. He couldn’t simply watch helplessly if something terrifying happened in front of his eyes.
The old man tried to reason by psychological means for the stranger to question his actions.
“She’s done no wrong to anyone…” His voice quivered as he spoke slowly for the words to settle in.
“She testified…” The stranger whispered, without setting his eyes at the old man.
The old man’s brows twitched.
Curiosity, trepidation and disbelief flashed in his wide eyes.
Before he could investigate, interrogate what the stranger meant by this, his eyes shifted and setted onto the waitress.
She raised her trembling hand at him.
Indirectly, signaled for him to speak no more. Then returned her hand by her side. Whether she cried or pleaded, a look of fatalism, darkened her glinting eyes.
The sight of her teary eyes left the old man’s heart heavy.
His stomach churned.
Even if he tried to reach for his shotgun or approach the stranger, anything could happen in a split second. The consequences of either which, would be irreplaceably catastrophic.
In the occurrence of a near-death experience, claimed that your life flashed before your eyes, the image of her mother flashed in the waitress’s mind. Her eyes grew to a brim, blinking in denial, struggling to comprehend her current position it still seemed.
Awkward silence filled the spaces between the distance that separated them.
Anxiety lingered in the air.
A tear trickled down her cheek, and with her trembling hand, she wiped it away. Her throat had grown excruciatingly heavy.
The stranger blinked with both eyes. As if awoken from hypnosis, a mental cloud of haze had cleared.
His brows knitted together as his eyes slowly settled at the revolver. Questioning it’s presence.
He registered that the intention to stretch out his gun and take aim at the waitress, wasn’t actually his own.
His eyes flashed a state of confusion as they climbed up like taking steps on a ladder, acknowledging the waitress stood with temporarily paralysis in front of the pointed end of the revolver.
His pupils widened with some sense of sudden realisation.
Absorbing her presence and her current state of emotion.
His confused eyes leveled with hers.
Her twinkling eyes made contact with his, and she sensed something had changed in an instant. Unpredictably. Even the old man sensed this too but any sudden actions especially at his standing distance, seemed futile.
But the revolver continued to point at her.
The stranger returned his troubled eyes back at the gun, he intended to remove it away from her now.
But his hand began to tremble. Refusing to obey his true intention.
Perspiration released through the surface of his skin made his grip around the revolver wet.
His face bristled with tension as he tried harder, but something had invaded his hand that held the revolver. He could feel it as it had grown stiff like a rock.
Numb and cold.
With a magnetic-like pull.
The waitress’s brows arched and her lips parted with curiosity. She studied his bristled face, and registered a startling response that evidently separated his intentions from his actions.
They seemed to not coordinate as one.
He slapped his palm against the glass next to him, fingers spaced out, as he tried to brace himself. Trepidation traveled through his body like a pandemic.
His finger over the trigger remained jammed yet continued to push back towards him.
As he predicted with his eyes that the probability that he would pull the trigger, without his consent, he swiftly swiped the revolver at the glass with such extreme effort.
The revolver went off.
The waitress jumped at the explosive, deafening sound of it.
An instant pang of panic shot through the old man, as he blinked flinchingly.
The only bullet that sat in the chamber.
The stranger quickly dropped the revolver onto the table in front, away from him. He had managed to save her life, miraculously.
But the bullet which had discharged, hasn’t pierced through the glass.
It seemed to touch against the glass but remained suspended in thin air, like some kind of a magic trick.
Mind control mojo.
The waitress and the old man had carefully registered the bullet afloat like a space satellite, as their eyes had shifted away from the stranger, and were set onto this surreal moment.
The stranger stared unflinchingly as the bullet stopped levitating and dropped away.
He diverted away from the bullet, and refocused his attention onto the surface of the glass, checking for even a subtle splinter.
Not even the tiniest of scratch was found.
But his eyes widened with alert as he noticed something present pass the glass, outside a stretch of distance. Stood outside further into the woods, near the pine trees, as a lamppost illuminated with fluorescence like the organs of a butterfly over this figure, only for it to grow dim.
The stranger jumped back with jolt, as his heart jumped with pang of fright.
The waitress’s lips parted with dread.
The old man’s dreadful eyes widened to a bulge.
The invader stood with a human-like shell but an entity with such supernaturally intimidating presence. You couldn’t make out its tenebrous face, lips, eyes and nose, except it’s head seemed similar to a beehive. The startlingly frightening sight of a cluster of bees flew around its head like orbiting satellites, attracted to it like a honeycomb.
But it—the invader—seemed to be watching them. It’s head pointed at there direction.
The humming sounds that the bees made, which at such distance would fall mute, now were heard with such sinisterly unsettling undertones. As if it came from within the diner.
As they watched incredulously with trepidation, two strobes of yellow light beamed onto the invader’s face, as if these were it’s eyes.
These strobes of light began to whirl like a flashing beacon.
Dilating and undilating as a set of pupils. Communicating, telepathically.
KARMA, KISMET, PROVIDENCE
To insure the Kismet effect
casino fixers
load the dice and mark the cards:
They rig the game,
annihilate free will.
To achieve a Karma asset,
cosmic accountants
balance debits and credits
of moral worth,
a result called justice.
Gamblers evoke Providence,
invoking mercy
to cancel consequences
that casinos
and accountants require.
But statisticians exclude
Providence, Kismet,
Karma, and all free will too,
Their random world’s
an impersonal one.
THE TREASON OF THE ROSE
A rose is for pleasure
and not for tears, Sir.
No, Bud is not like a rose
though his hair is fiery red
and though his smell pleased my nose.
But he bore no thorns in rows
--a single, fatal, prick instead.
I know now rose’s treason.
Contrasting plant with leaving,
I chose my rose, believing
it would last the season.
So, no, a rose Bud is not.
A rose will stay in its place
or share a family pot,
but Bud forfeited his lot
and left me to deal with the blaze.
A rose is for pleasure
and not for tears, Sir.
THE WHEELS OF JUSTICE
The honorable judge,
a-robed like a hedgehog,
was squatted at the bench
like an endowed lodger.
And that machine of law
read out loud
the preprogrammed sentence
to the court’s turned-on crowd
and the robot condemned,
heads dependably bowed.
The automated guard
led him out.
Next trial was clockwork
as the line moved foreward
till production halted.
Wind-up judge came unplugged,
hedgehog needed a nudge
when it slept.
THE NEW MONTESQUIEU
The factions sort themselves
into the left, right, and centrist
via birthright, and interest,
and contents of bookshelves.
Politicos maintain
the stability of chaos
through civility and payoffs
to competing claimants.
DO THAT HORIZON DANCE
An intimate selfish sharing
of a present timeless instant
of transcendent fluidity.
Your brain and your breath are the key
to its rhythm and symmetry.
You rest and then again embrace
Horizon Dance!
Inanimate, Self-less, shearing,
the present, an endless instant
of transcendent solidity.
Your brain and breathing are the key.
Imprisoned impassivity
unmoves that everlasting last
Horizon Dance.
