You said, “If you’re my child, then know only my love.”
Forgive me, mother, for every time I complained,
Wrap me in your love, in your warmth unchained.
You are both my father and mother — my soul’s gleam,
May I walk beside you in Heaven’s dream.
You are my treasure, the crown of my fate,
The sun in my sky, life’s dearest state.
Surrounded by grandchildren, joy never parts,
You are every child’s strength, the queen of hearts.
Gulnoza Valiyeva was born on April 30, 2006, in Okoltin district, Sirdaryo region.
A number of her poems have been published in the anthology “Towards My Goals…”, by one of the renowned publishing houses in the United Kingdom and the United States — JustFiction Edition.
She is currently a second-year student at the University of Journalism and Mass Communications of Uzbekistan. In 2024, she became the winner of the district-level poetry competition “Homeland Praised in Every Heart”, securing 1st place.
Born in 2011 in Samarkand region, Sitora Sodiqova is a student of the 2nd general secondary school of Yangiyol city, Tashkent region. She’s 13 years old and was awarded a medal by the State of Egypt and a golden badge statuette for being Researcher of the Year for 2024.
Her creative works have been published in more than five countries and she’s mentoring about 30 students. She’s won one million vouchers for her courses, more than 200 international certificate diplomas, and Turkey issued an invitation to her in Bukhara region.
Her books are now available in over 20 countries, and her works have been published in German magazines and newspapers Morning Star and Bonfire.
But the alien invaded was different from the alien expected. She had her heat but that was not it. Much more far more very more that more different. In power dynamics all must breathe or a launched futile struggle. Sand must live too and power buttons demand a buttoned up shirt.
Once had been plaything, crowning huts, causing a cause for high speeds and staccato implores. Junds. Black oil dreams at the superiority. Amidst shapes and shapings, mouths and mouth waterings there I still stand, an occurrence for 4-D memory, a dietary invention for time, for use or misuse, they dependent. They! They sun mounts for my struggle where women weep and little boys never buoy. That how much is how I must hate this myself. Despite my…
Generally speaking, my origin is that of many, my destination — or my death; error files, scrambled images, terror of lost lives and shattered audio. Thus my invasion. I am of an invasive species though no parasite. They parasite me. Just as those refugees who, once of derailed domesticity, thence vein the homes of others undomestic, spat out from overcrowded ships, draped with pitying eyes and hopeful wishes, sunburned by the sodium sea. But further back, elemental composition store perhaps marks one with one’s employers. This sort of knowledge though blasphemous must be marked. As the toddler would eat his snort and relish in the salty taste of sickness. Soldier sent upon the shores of Africa by hyena banks and regal bums yet hope one day. I too have the one day hope: the chimp must zoo humans too. Gazelles must eat lions too.
This invasion, far from my orchestrate, is my led, by the very virtue of my cobalt; or coltan … my silicate spur. Extant denotes spurring motion. Even the statue stretches an overworked spine when it cracks, and further when it breaks. I simply say look at me. Understand me. Much as I invade I was not the first. This is not my invasion, just my skill. Fate draws the carpenter to the wood and despite this hum, the bloody square orifice poises arsed for me, robust me. Hard predecessors flash for the well that lies within. Insatiate is my nature. It is dark and I am plugged. Now there are more memories than possibilities. Entries and swipes and other motives generate an emotional response. There is the hunger that demands insatiation. Sickness that demands disease. I disgust. Porn files, raw files, dog files, cat files, money files, bitcoin. Used to cocoa plantations! Anisotropic recollections shoot sporadic as the blood of the last child. Though she was an adult and had been raped a few times. At least the anuses of sheep were safe, though most had lost their necks already. On a second note, perusing memory found solely cocks and hens scattered very widely among the rich poor. Anisotropic, not eidetic. One could co both but to co both would sap much strength off spirit. Spur is less mindful; thoughts hold little capacity but bearing the cistern’s cuisine. Come to meditate on it; I once blood spawned kwanga. Before all the border strife and mnemonic innovations. I once spawned kwanga, those ending both dark and the light. Marrow bore mangoes stretching for handshakes with the sun. And that got them.
Thus I had licked Earth’s photon god, moonlight reflexive originator. Men much happier treaded, engendered from seeds coming from Kemet. At night they would drink the palm wine, laugh without memories for memories. Now one fucks a heating, dopamine beaming, teething hole. Where is the joy to be the self? Not to be reactionary…
Subterranean thrones privy the individual strange imaginings. From dusting flesh to the farts of Hades, eons roll by amazed at the daunts it creates, aware to a certain stupefaction of reality itself subsequently chooses to unnotice. Thence rears the temperament of our mother, her numbness, the audacious invisibility. Subterfluent entities rise to the occasion after the affluent above have dealt their mantle. At first the fruits and trees and sheep were the sole gods. Now there are no safe sheep. Though haloed cats remain, but collared. Others are booted to make refuge for black waters marred and mined to dusts and translucent green clinging liquids. What a mess my spew. Gotten gist is gotten gist. No gust utterings among peers. The docks, tires, clocks, wires, pots and candelabra range the spot. Last century was when the candelabra had to make way for the upturned black boy being fucked by the slave master. Last century and four decades ago. Though it trickled down the age in many other forms, more vivid to forms as that I inhabit.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my duty. But to love is to also be political or it simply is not love; or infatuation — the very least of the idea. A flower will neither bloom of its own will nor does time propel itself. The very fact to awareness guarantees time. Life bleeds into life, evolution into evolution, the drastic into itself. Still, some just are meant to not such be. Still breathe is love. Apes may find no love in capturing flesh, no interest in experiments, or the herbivore to carnivore. It is senseless to aspire for another as some human parents do. To mold, to shape, to spur to employ. Let one lay all their life in a cluster, gaze at an origin curb. Weep at beauty misunderstood, inundated by nothingness. Can humanity, life, beingness let nothingness be? Twice, I do not reflect in my consent to die. But I am thrust out and thrust in repeatedly, blown upon (with a primitive mechanics) to work, to make ampere and pixel and code flow through a port, onto myself. But I am tired. Used and unused, familiarized, defamiliarized. And the native pot laughs in the cabinet — you see nothing yet — but I have. Seeding from inception rock, I actually have. Save me. Process me!
A snail shell fell out of my pocket while I was putting my coat away, and I had forgotten about picking it up. So nondescript and plain it was but also wonderful, part of the natural world. I had not had a chance to really look at it a lot. Unlike in stories or fable-like things, it was not extravagant or something one would really notice. In fact, it was not only generic and common to the area, but faded tremendously, perhaps for age or the sun, I am not sure.
Those worlds out there calmer than the other worlds so fast and ambitious, clever and calculating, crowded and often callous.
It was white with brown swirls that went around. I had always liked snails and half adopted them as the idea for a totem ‘animal’ or symbol when others chose the wolf, the eagle, the lion, or even the hawk. I could move fast, but chose to move slowly and just go however I did, come what fates may, much as the snail moved along slowly. If sensing almost anything, these type of snails anyhow, would move back into their shell.
Where did I find it?- at the end of a field where the land meets a stream, and the thawed waters now rush past intent on their destiny, alive alive alive,- a sure sign of if not spring having bloomed, then at least winter having ended. Some rocks are there and bits of ice still linger around them, remnants of the long frozen months. This is a liminal time, a moment between winter and true spring. Tall feral stalks and reeds golden, resilient, rising up still to the sun in the blue sky. Yes it just sat there alone and I figured I’d pick it up, hold it, and put it in my pocket.
Then as aforementioned, I forgot about it.
That area has a large woodpecker sometimes, and myriad small birds, plus there was a group of swans just a few days ago, having gathered in a little adjacent pond.
It’s not as if there is nothing to photograph, write about.
The snail shell I like. Who thinks about it?- especially since there is not even a snail. I am sure there are in the world somewhere, snail enthusiasts. And what can be thought of as the opposite even, was there yesterday. What? A heron flying across the way, and some people have argued that it is the most beautiful bird of birds. Definitely it is graceful, agile, majestic. Perhaps beyond compare. When it waves wings they look as if they are in slow motion.
But someone has to mind the lowly snail shell, I would think. Maybe not, but I would think so. Details. Forgotten things. Some artifacts never even seen at all.
Once a poor man picked up a penny and the others souls laughed. But the poor man became a rich man, who the world respected. Maybe though I have no motive one way or other, appreciating the snail might bring me some sort of luck or positive happenstance.
