Lily and Reed

My mossy pad touching your mighty waist
melancholizes my petals. You play
the flute as if it were a lissom sword.
I love your Creole voice, twigs of raucous
French marinated and casseroled with
African leaves. A rich spinster reading
the soul of the perfect, poor man makes her
richer. I will give my horizontal
to your vertical. Give me not curved moons
that belongs to primitive people; give
me a rusty sickle that I may reap
you for myself. I cannot wait for you
to call yourself mine. Time, our breath, is but
a flower jealously jailed by its bud.
You are egoless; I want to live and
end on your reedbed, not in this soggy
palace. I want to call you, your voice mine.


Fatherly Forms

When I feel down, like a small bulb dying
among a crowd of condescending moons,
my guilty eyes see only one martyr.

He is a devoted, withering trunk
holding countless boughs, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruits.
Unmoved by his perpetual pain, like
greedy worms we feasted on his glory.
We picked up huge stones to stone him, sometimes.

Each dewy morning, the massive mountain
is losing his soil to the angry waves.
He walks around leaning against the walls
of the house he built but can no more own.
Like a scarecrow he kept us safe and fed

our fields, but since the avalanche of white
hair, he is toothless and frightens no birds.

And, when I spend the afternoon over
the bridge watching the fragile fish carry
their blissful bodies down the river, I
feel his youth in the rhythmic ripples and
know he would lie about his evening grief.


Self-Isolation & Shakespeare

A nameless day, I see myself leaning
on a Malboro backstage, my green tongue
in love with borrowed smoke. I talk of
dreams; I am the musical Mercutio.
Stickmen on fire queue up for my concerts.

A blank night, I find myself in seiza
at a shrine, gargling with sweet, warm water.
An Asian Orsino, I chew music;
I am the scarecrow stuffed with red hay,
whose harmonium goes wild and mild.

A dateless noon I see myself digging
into an oyster; I am Bassanio,
the gambler. I rejoice in the absence
of the sun, trying to lure a mermaid into
the spirited marrow of my drained skeleton.

I have no regret as my beard falls on
the cracked window sill. On the old table,
fresh newspaper. Covid count. Coldest rain.
To be Romeo, or not to be Romeo?
Back to my boulder, I am the snowman
cheating invisible death, in his blindness.

Amit Parmessur, 38, a private tutor, is a two-time Pushcart Prize and two-time Best of the Web nominee. His poems have appeared in over 165 magazines, namely WINK, The Rye Whiskey Review, Night Garden Journal, Hobo Camp Review, Ann Arbor Review and Ethos Literary Journal.  He lives in Quatre-Bornes, Mauritius, where he spent his adolescence hating poetry.

Donuts

Do they still eat donuts? It’s easy to picture it:

a squad car pulls up to the precinct or station

a cop goes in, heads immediately for the lounge

that small area that smells of the burned coffee

they all complain about but drink, and there on

the counter is the box of donuts. Might be from

Dunkin or, better, that small bakery someone’s

aunt owns or at least knows the owner. No lean

and hungry look about them, some go for jelly

others for glazed or chocolate. Don’t you recall

the pudgy policemen we’d see downtown, always

friendly, knew everyone, and always quick on

the draw when it came to donuts and burned

coffee. You have to wonder, now that you have

a moment, do they still eat donuts, like they did

back when a policeman was a familiar face and

sometimes even smiled.


Gunless

Never owned a gun, my mother said

“no son of mine…” and so I never did.

Never really bothered me either. My

Friends went off hunting and I stayed

Home in my gunless house waiting for

Their stories to unload. Missed that

Part most, the stories that guns give

A person, the hunt, the perfect shot

The pats on the back standing over

The kill, elements we knew from TV

And the movies, so many war stories

Westerns and gangsters, everyone

With a gun, toting or carrying. Knew

All the words, tough masculine stuff,

“make my day” and variations of that.

I grew up in a gunless home, never got

To clean one, load one, aim it, and then

Pull the trigger – and never shot anyone

By accident or on purpose, never stood

Over some slow-moving animal, dead

Now because I had a gun and shot it.


What's Left

On quiet evenings like this

I wait till after dinner


To drag the rubbish and

Recycling down to the end

Of the driveway.

It’s dark enough to go

Almost unnoticed

By neighbors who always

Win the race to be first

With their leavings placed

Out for others to pick through

To pick up, to take away.

We produce so much waste,

The things left over after

We live our daily lives.

We crowd, we fill, we mess

Yes, we stuff, we cram, we jam

We crowd the world with leftovers

With trash, with recycling that

Will never be recycled

With what is left over of our time

Here

We will fill it soon and then we’ll…

J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Black Coffee Review, Kitchen Sink, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, Journal of Expressive Writing, Lightwood and Highland Park Poetry.

GROWING UP

Linda Hibbard

              It is the autumn of my 7th grade at school.  The first year at Frick Junior High.

            The school is large and dirty and very impersonal.  Perhaps it is the first year of my life that feelings seem to have any importance.  I think I am lost, lost in a large world of uncaring people. It is as if I turned around and found myself in something I couldn’t understand and most of all didn’t want to understand.

            I wonder what am I doing here and why?  Why am I sentenced to this setting.  Last year I didn’t seem to feel much of anything.  I was a child that was taken care of and I want to go back, but I know I can’t.  Now I’m something that is not a child, but what am I?

We’re told to go to period 1, that is P.E., so I go.  The teacher always looks so strange. Her legs are thick and bulky and she wears short socks and heavy white shoes.  Her face is like stone, no emotion, she acts like something of a man and woman combined.  I am scared.  We dress in a cold room, it is always cold in that room.  We dress in queer looking blue shorts with elastic in the legs and snaps on the side.  The shirt is blue all blue with snaps in the front.  Everybody looks alike, we are now going to play tetherball, and we do.  Then the loud whistle brows, it blows in my ear and I can hear the ringing for the next ten minutes.  The game is finally over, nobody seems to know who won or lost and nobody cares.

Next we shower in dirty stalls and hear laughing, giggling and yelling.  My hair is a mess and the day has just began.  I wonder will I get through Period 2.     

O Habibitiy 

I am shaking as a leafless branch 
Your presence is a tremendous price of rebellion,
Would tonight's rain over my unnoticed heartache? 
With a drop of your kindness water, my thirst demise it.

A restrained lover is in a dream of a magnificent casket
I tried to resist winter's sun until I inferred your warm voice
The world's end is real, however, we still seek for the ark
Baghdad reveals the hanging corpses to illustrate my grief.

O habibitiy, true satisfaction can only happen once a year, 
Our tongues are silent from the words of compassion 
Love me with an earthy heart, and inky honey on the lips.
Montreal is the city that opens my eyes to fall in love with you.

Without any golden treasure, you love me with my sweats.
Without any colourful dreams, you love me with my bursts.
Without any valuable trophies, you adore me with my soul.
With some poems I wrote for you, I see that you are my habibility.


O habibitiy means my beloved in Arabic.

01/17/2022

Language of a Cursed Struggle

After I was evacuated from destiny’s festivity “womb”
I concede that I have to focus on improving myself 
from the world's major challenges of living sufficiently.
 
I spread kindness among others 
I serve as a good citizen of this earth
I fall in love with severe depression cluelessly.

Little stones are in my direction to walk barefoot to cure
My awareness’s become the language of a cursed struggle
I keep my decent smile in an intimate locker, swallow its keys.

Difficult times are pursuing the lightning I seek for  
I serve in-between seasons on a daily battle basis
Sitting on the chair, learning to apologize for the dark sky.

Allow me to enter into your heart, and listen intently 
Truthfully, I am here to relate my pain and connect with you
Take me to the calm shore, I will heal you with a wavey love.


Buried Treasure 

Our devotion should not be 
buried as forgotten treasure
Night abandons my torn’s past 
like an empty pack of cigarettes.

The moonlight sets our dreamy sails, 
as the seagulls and sea sing along 
to our shoreline love.
With eyes confiding to our mouths.

We expand our love on 
the spring treetops,
Rays of the summer sun
 breath of your creek.

Fly me away from the bars
Let my fantasy glow with the stars 
I truly love and miss you for so long
Yet, your perfume whispers a sad song.

01/15/2022

Steps To Be Orphan… 

 The sky is blue, 
but her heart is in the severe blues.
She lives in a world of brutal humiliation
and continuous barbarity. 

Your daybreak is colourful and cloudy 
Her daylight is black and darker than your grief 
Your dreams are the corners of the world 
As for her, her dreams were crushed from her 
-sleeping upon a bed of rock.

Your parents teach you how those birds fly 
While the guy who raped her destroyed her revolution 
As she realized that life unfairness taught her 
steps to be orphan, with chains invisible on her coffin.

The four seasons of the year were her friends, 
The summer sunrise whispers to her ears some of prayers 
The autumn pour warm above her salty face of her crying out 
The snow hides her wounds from society nonstop judgments  
The spring offers her the scent she deserves to be the queen of the world.

She doesn't have a cellphone 
or unreal images on social media.
Her eyes filmed what the world censor from us, 
She was the seen and read stories of homelessness.

Unfortunately, her sufferings grow into a dark cloud
It grows faster than the days of your days of joblessness 
With more flames of her tears burning the cages of birds
Those birds flow to heaven, while she is crossing barefoot 
to the bonfire and cigarettes of another unscared rapist...

Four Poems

Written by Chinese Poet Yuan Hongri

Translated by Yuanbing Zhang


 

God is Ourselves after Waking up

 

You can’t catch every worldly thing like you can’t retain the days.

You can’t see the truth of all things on earth like you can’t see your own soul.

Happiness and tribulation may not exist as if there is no night

and daylight in the Kingdom of Heaven,

And the universe is merely the phantom of the light of our soul,

and God is ourselves after waking up.

 

上帝是梦醒之后的自己

 

你抓不住世间的一切犹如留不住时光

你看不见万物的真相犹如看不见自己的灵魂

幸福和苦难也许并不存在犹如在天国没有黑夜与白昼

而宇宙只是自己的灵魂之光的幻影而上帝是梦醒之后的自己

 

City of Dreamland

 

You walk in the city of dreamland but forget that you are the unique creator.

For your soul is the unique God that lives in the Kingdom of Heaven;

And you believe the riot of colours in a dream–

the pulsating of life and the blight of death;

And the muse of love makes you look like butterfly that hovered lightly in the garden

and forgot that your name is Zhuangzi.

 

梦境之城

 

你走在梦境之城却忘了自己是唯一的创造者

而灵魂是唯一的上帝而且居住于不可回忆之天国

而你相信了梦中的赤橙兰绿那生之绚烂与死之枯萎

而爱情之蜜酒让你如同花园里翩跹飞舞的蝴蝶而忘了自己名曰庄子

 

Universe is the Heavenly Garden of The Stars

 

Emptiness-nothingness will save you and wipe away all of the worldly scars,

Until you are fresh as the beginning and as fragrant – beauty as another spring.

The world will never fade because the universe is the heavenly garden of the stars.

The other you is that giant who is arriving in a huge spaceship

from another city of the sun.

 

宇宙是天国的星辰花园

 

空无会拯救你且抹去世上的一切伤痕

直到你鲜艳如初芳美若又一个春日甘醇之大明烝烝

世界永不会凋谢因为宇宙是天国的星辰花园

明天的你那乘坐星际巨舰的巨人正在另一个太阳之城驶来

 

King of the Universe

 

Seek thyself and seek your soul which is a lifetime mission.

The soul is both in your body and the Kingdom of Heaven,

Because the eyes always deceive you, thus you are lost in the illusion of the world.

You will be the king of the universe when you find yourself or else you have nothing.

 

宇宙之王

 

寻找自己寻找自己的灵魂这是终生的使命

灵魂在你的体内也在遥远的天国

因为眼晴总在把你欺骗而让你迷失于世界的幻象

当你找到了自己甚至一无所有也将成为宇宙之王

 

Yuan Hongri (born 1962) is a renowned Chinese mystic, poet, and philosopher. His work has been published in the UK, USA, India, New Zealand, Canada, and Nigeria; his poems have appeared in Poet's Espresso Review, Orbis, Tipton Poetry Journal, Harbinger Asylum, The Stray Branch, Pinyon Review, Taj Mahal Review, Madswirl, Shot Glass Journal, Amethyst Review, The Poetry Village, and other e-zines, anthologies, and journals. His best known works are Platinum City and Golden Giant. His works explore themes of prehistoric and future civilization.

 

Yuanbing Zhang (b. 1974), is Mr. Yuan Hongri’s assistant and translator. He himself is a Chinese poet and translator, and works in a Middle School, Yanzhou District, Jining City, Shandong Province China. He can be contacted through his email-3112362909@qq.com.

 

Email:3112362909@qq.com Hongri Yuan Phone:+86 15263747339

Address:No.18 middle school Yanzhou District ,Jining City, Shandong Province, China

 

 

Grow Up (Say It To The Mirror Remix)

Look at you wearing ocd like it's a badge of honor

Is that your latest excuse to get through life

What people are supposed to feel sorry for you and give you a break.

You know better than that by now you should realize that you 

Will never amount to anything unless you make a lot of changes really fast

Out here bragging about being a criminal with your silly ass

You'll never get any bigger in the world you want because you're really trash 

And not as good as you think you are 

Writing all this crazy love poetry about a woman you've never met 

Yeah you two had a special bond despite the distance 

But instead of losing your mind over a woman 

You need to sit it out have some alone time 

Try to fix yourself because in your current shape 

You wouldn't do anything but bring a woman down 

Of course you would love them with a passion they've probably never seen before 

But what about all those other sides of you that you could show them 

With every single heart you can't settle for anything less than a tragedy 

Such a drama king you look on the bright side and turn your nose up

What are you 41...well I'm here to tell you that you still need to grow up 

Not good with the shears and snips you lay out of work 

And sacrifice the money to run from the problem 

So you gonna let em fire you for laying out or you gonna get every dollar possible 

And make em fire you for fucking up some plants

Again you've got a lot of growing up to do

I know you don't like hearing that but I'm gonna keep saying it till you can't stand it

Till you stop and say to yourself...you know what he's right

I have a lot of growing up to do

You can't hide in your fictional worlds anymore 

You just made it to the pan you never even flashed 

I know this hurts but someone had to tell you 

One more thing and I really didn't want to go this far

But while you're out here chasing women 

Why don't you sit it out and try to fix your relationship with your children 

Yeah I know that one hurt and again someone has an awful lot of growing up to do 

Hate to be so tough on you...you just look like a fool the way you carry yourself 

I wanna see you do better in life so you can hold your head up proudly 

Best take all these words to heart

What breaks it in a different way might save you...