The Floating Humanity

The floating humanity on the ocean

Starving for long time

Listless and die only drinking water

Somebody can flee from the jaws of death

Avoiding the guard on the border line

Some are hiding themselves in residence

Virus, virus and virus all around

The roads, the localities and the provinces of the countries

Industries and factories, offices and shops, bars and restaurants

All are closed in lockdown

Humanity fleeing away from ideology may dive in unsteadiness

Nature takes a new shape with its spring flowers and branches

On the other side

They float or rot

Can eat or starve to die out

Sound low or loud

Not a hand you see on head to calm down

The eyes close down in sigh

The souls flying higher and higher live in peace forever

And never come back to make you sorry anymore

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

18/04/2020

If I Live One Day More

If I live one day more

I would like to utter one word more Love

Blazing the heart forever

How I spend the days?

If I live some days more

I urge on care and support

You are my holy hunt

If I can go one step more

I want to reach you dear

My long nourished rose

Sweet fragrance and petals

A joy and fervor

In the midst of life and death

If I live one day more

Like to sing the songs soothing the painful heart

Shaking my hand with you

Embracing all around if I live one day more.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

18/04/2020

Corona Ghost

The ghost is all around me

Meet me in sleep

Walk in fear of this

Every day and night

Appears to be a monstrous figure

Sits by me and devours in a second

Jump on the bed, the unrest heart cries in deep

Going outside I watch the birds’ calling

With the fluffy feathers

Come on to me

Taking food and water

Go back to the nest

On the branches of the tree, beak into the beak

My heart leaps up with joy

Again when I go to bed

Watch the news of deaths

The ghost Corona disturbs the mind

More than it’s supposed to be.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

18/04/2020

Hand in Hand

I consign myself here at this place

Not besetting guilty horror

The lights in the pages

Morning songs of the birds

The sunrise breeze I walk over

With the sweet scent of roses

And collecting the nyctanthes

Under the tulips – my graceful state

Facing the challenges to kindle the heart 

I find myself in your hand

No colony war overhangs there

We must fight the war

Not leaning the head sideways

Following the promise head and heart.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

19/04/2020

My State

You are my state I live in

The marshy land, the thick forest

My sweet heart, all you have made promise

I visit every day I wish

You are my part of thought, my loving world

I love and proceed

Peace of mind, heart-felt moon light

Journey over the lands

States after the states

A world over the world

I fly over and over

O my sweet heart, my joys.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

20/04/2020

A Strenuous Reaching

Can we count the deaths before the eyes?

A matter of thinking over how many they are

This scaring sight from my birth never been seen

The world now totally hung on

The string under the roof tight in the basket

An effort to survive

The sky confused with thundering and clouds dazzling the eyes

Snatching out the soul

A light on the dark, a realization on

The humanity bargaining with the responsibility

How can this be designed?

A strenuous recycling in reaching.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

21/04/2020

Turn Aside

It stopped raining

The clouds are roaring

Darker and darker it seems to be all along

People stuck with corona

Mask has been the most wanted robe

To meet you in and outside home

Made us each feel like a ghost

The hazy outward, crossing the uneven grisly path

Life is not fit for coming forth

Who cares? —-

All turn away from the maze, the crooked world.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

22/04/2020

The Heart Zoomed in

Why does stress make nest on us?

Unsafe breathing taking all over the world

Zoomed the heart in

Flows in fluctuation

The world fever

Live and die

Die and live

Walk and lie

Lie and walk

O fumigating earth —

Would you be able to make us all cheer-up?

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

23/04/2020

A Cluster of Golden Clouds

The afternoon clouds glowed with the soft sliding sun

In the north sky

The golden light reflecting on the cluster of the cloud

Kissed my face

Enlightened and resolved my heart

For the time being but lasting forever

A soft heavenly breeze all inside outside

Foreshadows tomorrow morning

The sunflower light in its recycling wind

The scented jasmines – the world’s plight.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

23/04/2020

a broken world left to explode
 
wishes dance lightly
on the edge of a broken
world left to explode
 
dreams of beauty or
neon nights of wonder and
magic fills the air
 
sorrow, my only
friend that still even cares to
listen to echoes
 
of love and tragic
loss of any reminder
of whatever hope
 
kept us alive in
this darkened hell full of those
that wish us endless
 
harm and grave closure
to the dream of leaving the
shade of lonely love
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
every heartbreak over the years
 
these are the nights
where your demons
start to play favorites
 
where they start to conspire
with the section of the brain
that holds all that shit you
can't escape from your youth
 
every glass is every
heartbreak over
the years
 
losing your virginity
to some whore that
has a name you can't
remember
 
having a drink thrown
on you in a restaurant
after a dirty joke
 
a plate of food dumped
on you by "accident"
 
the scars from the first woman
that you didn't pull out in time
for and her tears that still ring
in your ears
 
you can see all the marks
you want to dig up and
down your arms
 
all the places where a needle
could fill the damn void already
 
the shotgun has been resting
in the corner for years now
 
the demons always know

when it's time
----------------------------------------------------------------------
other intentions
 
i offered to buy
this woman dinner
 
she obviously thought
i had other intentions
 
i said no
 
the steak is on sale
and i'm sure i'll have
a few drinks
 
but since your mind
went directly to sex
 
who knows what the
night may hold for us
 
that was a $75 dinner

i'll never forget
---------------------------------------------------------------------
on a stormy saturday night
 
she was an old soul
from such a tender age
 
we would laugh as she
smoked old cigarettes
on a stormy saturday night
 
she had legs that i always
wanted to wrap around
my head three times
 
i have always had the
problem of falling in
love with lesbians
 
she was no different
 
a little cruel at times
when she would blow me
kisses and flash a little
more thigh as i was
trying to play pool
 
i got drunk enough one night
that i told her everything
 
from the dirty dreams
to the lovely poems
 
to how her perfume stays
with me for weeks on end
 
i never saw her again
after that night
 
i'm sure she went on
to make some woman
very happy
 

over and over again
----------------------------------------------------------
the simple dreams
 
it's these cold winter
nights in my bed alone,
dreaming of a quiet death
 
wondering how you are doing
on the other side of the world
 
never feeling sorry for myself
 
but also wondering how much
losing does one soul have
to overcome
 
a few rays of sunshine
 
a phone call that isn't
looking for money
 
a howling wind creeping
around every corner
 
right next door to death
 
the stubborn never go easy
 
i'll fall asleep in your arms
tonight, humming a jill scott
song
 
what i wouldn't give to make
just the simple dreams come

true

J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) was raised by wolves yet managed to graduate high school with honors. He’s been widely published over the last quarter century, most recently at Horror Sleaze Trash, Terror House Magazine, The Rye Whiskey Review, The Beatnik Cowboy and Dumpster Fire Press. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)

Small Hands: 5 poems

Bachelor of the Month

After dropping out at sixteen
after dropping out at eighteen
after working with his hands
on the hot tar flat-roofs
of the war-era buildings
of downbeat Brooklyn
the view of Manhattan
too far, too far away

he cleans up nice
he charms the headmaster
of an uptown school
he’s hired
to teach the children
of the über elite.

A boy without background
man without a college degree
an eye for the youth
he talks his way inside homes
the rich, celebrity, power
brokers of the City he loves
woos their daughters
wins their confidence.

A few years of Wall Street,
Rolex and Armani, silk
ties and a fashion model
on each arm, man about
town, wealth, women
he’s living loud until
he’s quietly fired
for insider trading
for stealing and fraud.

He moves on with plans
for his own company
to help the rich
get richer
—and himself
to women, they come
and come and go,
they always go, ever
the flavor of the month
every single month single
for the rest of his life.
Unlimited

They shared a brain, an eye
for the beauty of the pure
fresh spring and budding
unopened blossoms
almost ripe and so sweet.

They shared a house
largest residence in the City
the power of attorney
the yacht, private planes
and the action that comes
with unlimited access.

On a handshake
he took the mansion
made it his playground
his man cave, his den
of iniquity, of cameras
hidden in high walls
in the glossy bedrooms
in the mirrored bathrooms
in secret spaces all around
watching, filming 
his partner, his friends
all the famous guests
in an unlimited springtime
fresh flowers just opening
their delicate petals
under his appreciative eye.

Body Alarm

Roaches and rats underfoot
he longs for a toilet seat
a crystal flute of champagne
small hands on his flesh
kneading out stress.

A cinderblock world
of dark gray concrete
metal table, Metal bunk
hard-bolted
to the mold-damp wall
a future in debt
to the system he tells
he’s done nothing wrong—
and he believes it.

Eight hours a day
under fluorescent lights
in a tight white tile
jailhouse conference room
with the best attorneys
that much money can buy
and he’s going for it
bail appeal on Monday—
and he believes it.

But instead of winning
yet another round for the rich
he hangs loose
from the empty top bunk
by a strip of orange jumpsuit
no cameras working
no guards checking
no no no
for a full eight hours
nobody hears him die.

The autopsy asks questions
regarding the body:
red ligature marks
where they shouldn’t be
three broken bones
that shouldn’t be
no bunkmate, no night watch
and that shouldn’t be
the crime scene disturbed
the body is deemed
inconclusive…

then oh so quickly
the media reports
the medical examiners’ reports
he’s a suicide—
and we believe it?

Joining Forces

In a surge of passion
a sweetheart huddle
a spasm of unity and energy
they create something new
a time-bomb, an ear blast
that is giving birth
to the wonder women within.

The girls are older, wiser
they are free, they are mobile
so easily mobilized
into formation, reformation
into a show of force
into a mob seeking justice
from those they blame
for all they expected
that did not happen
and never will.

Girls hand over photos
their journals, their scars
a long list of grievances
and they’re off to the fight
finally, the good fight
the call to action
they’ve been waiting for
years in a pink room
before a blue screen
locked in a life
with no future
but this.

A show of small hands:
they were too young
and he was wrong, sick
protected, overlooked,
a creep and a con man,
guilty, guilty, guilty.

Parsing Bill

In the entry to the largest
single family residence
on the Upper East Side
where the upper crust
comes to dine, preen, gloat
small hands hung up
an oil painting
a mock portrait
of the former leader
of the free world
in a little blue dress
sharp red heels
a telling smirk
seated seductively
in the oval-shaped office
of the most important home
in America.

The art makes the man
the man makes an art
of the seduction of power
and the portrait serves
as a warning
to all who enter
this upside-down world
about who holds the reins
and who the noose
in small hands.

Originally from Boston, Mickey J. Corrigan writes tropical noir with a dark humor. Her poetry has been widely published in literary journals and chapbooks. In 2020, Grandma Moses Press released Florida Man. Her novel The Physics of Grief puts the fun back in funerals while taking a serious look at the process of mourning (QuoScript, UK, 2021). 

 
 
 

 the bulletin board’s nice eye
  
 the carp was a grant of the fist
 that face is the iron
  
                         bluh!
  
 the lean scope was a charm
 that needle was an eye to laugh
  
 to learn of the laughing hook
 that could be the name of thy building
  
 that wood is the pooh
 my rose is a penny laser
 
  
 the bright hammond of the clouds
  
 possibly
             a rose of the walking head
  
 a merit of the gallon
                         the cruising head
  
 is the sun a school?
 the brain is the charcoal of the iron
  
 the losing head is the northern huck of the filament
  
             the northern hum of the air
 
  
 ah knew bat
  
 to be the featured wool in the stove of the floral earth
 the whipping hum is the light of the beryl
  
 the dusk in the circle of the sherry
  
 shark marbles!
  
 pit pip that lock of the laser maid
 the cherished ankle
  
 the rose of the mica
 the ticking of the feathered serpent
  
 the choral oink of the wandering hum
 the light of the fresno bacon
  
 that alpha is the boat of the marble
 to can a clark of the eel
 
 bio/graf
  
 J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) experiments with words in his subterranean laboratory. His first full-length collection of poetry, entitled In Ghostly Onehead, is slated for a 2021 release by mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press. Visit http://www.MadVerse.com for more information and links to his published work. Nelson live

Finding Traces of Stalin

A potentially friendly cab driver suddenly turned silent when I showed him the address: 7 Kaspi St. He drove to the neighborhood, gestured brusquely down the street, and left. My companion and I had trouble determining if we were even on the right street, as street names are sometimes printed on the sides of buildings in Cyrillic or on hard-to-find street signs. We asked directions of several people, including a neighborhood delivery truck driver, but everyone shrugged and appeared not to know the place.

---

Fifty kilometres from Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia, is Gori, a picturesque city at the
confluence of rivers, surrounded by mountains. Gori’s claim to fame is that Joseph Stalin was born and went to school here. Many people don’t realize that Josef Vissarionovich Djugashvili (იოსებ ბესარიონის ძე ჯუღაშვილი in Georgian), otherwise known as Josef Stalin, was born in Georgia and began revolutionary activities here after abandoning theological studies. Ironically, Stalin enjoyed neither the process of remembering his childhood nor coming back to visit Gori in later years. Busloads of summer tourists visit, though. Although Georgians, understandably, have an uneasy tolerance of Stalin’s fame, the desire to preserve his memory is strong here.

At the centre of town: Stalin Square, Stalin Avenue, the Stalin Museum and a huge poster of his head dominating the upstairs window of a storefront.

Past the peddler selling Stalin novelties on the museum grounds are two interesting things.

One is Stalin’s personal, armored railroad carriage, unrestored, complete with Venetian glass mirrors, carved wooden furniture, a bathtub and toilet, and an office with a phone, table and sofa.

The other is his family’s original house, with intricate woodwork, where Stalin was born into a shoemaker’s family and lived until age four. The family lived above the ground-floor cobbler’s shop. It is now protected by a columned structure with golden yellow stained glass in the roof accented by a hammer-and-sickle design in the corners.

The truly fascinating artifacts are not in Gori, however, but back in Tbilisi. Stalin’s samizdat (underground) printing press is literally underground, 15 metres beneath an old house in the Avlabari district of Tbilisi, a somewhat decrepit neighborhood of bleak apartment blocks and car repair garages.

No. 7 Kaspi St. is now an unofficial museum of early Communism. A few of us attending the 2017 Summer Literary Seminars in Tbilisi agreed to meet at this house one morning. We all got lost on the dusty streets before finally finding each other and the house, whose iron door has a hammer and sickle on it, and were treated to a full tour by none other than the 78 yearold chairman of the Georgian Communist Party, Zhiuli Sikhmashvili.

Energetic and lively, he was happy to show us around the donation-funded museum and talk to us in broken English. Luckily, three people from Poland who spoke both Russian and English showed up soon after we did and were able to translate Sikhmashvili’s Russian so that we got a much more informative tour than we would have otherwise.

The office, crowded with memorabilia and books, had a desk with a pale yellow rotary phone balanced on a stack of papers.

Portraits of revolutionaries working at the printing press, newspapers such as Pravda with Lenin on the front cover, flags, photos and documents occupied several rooms.

In the yard is a replica of the house Stalin was born in, its rooms reconstructed with original furnishings, including a small platen press for handbills and small posters.

But the main purpose and focus of this site is the existence of the large, underground printing press. Between 1903 and 1906 thousands of flyers, pamphlets and newspapers were printed at this location, in Russian, Georgian, Azeri and Armenian.

A large printing press made in Germany in 1893 had been imported from Baku, then
disassembled and its parts lowered fifteen metres down a well shaft hidden by a small shed in the yard. At the bottom, a side tunnel of about four metres was dug to connect to another shaft with a ladder up to the underground cellar where the printing press would be. There, the press was reassembled. Not a job for those with claustrophobia!

The house had to look “normal”, so two women lived on the first floor and kept a few chickens in the yard. In case of potential danger, a hidden electric alarm bell would alert those underground. The young Bolsheviks worked in shifts, sending completed material in a bucket up the shaft to the house. Flyers would be hidden in street sellers’ carts, taken to the railway station, and from there would travel to the Caucasus region and beyond.

Down a rusty spiral staircase (constructed for the museum) is a dank cellar lit only by a few lightbulbs, making photography tricky. The press itself is quite rusted, because the cellar flooded a few years ago. The bucket, rope and ladder are still there in their shafts.

Visitors have left coins on the flat surfaces of the press. Leaving coins there seems more like a show of respect for historical objects than the equivalent of tossing a coin into a fountain. In 1906 the police raided the house, but in 1937 Stalin and Beria—the brutal Georgian chief of the USSR Secret Police—reopened the house as a museum. An official, government-funded museum until 2012, it apparently also contains the offices of the current Georgian Communist Party. The day we visited, other people were just sitting outside, reading or writing.

We were careful to remain neutral in our comments so as not to offend our host, while
managing to convey appreciation for the history displayed there. We left a donation in thanks for receiving a history lesson and a tour of Communism seen through Georgian eyes.

Four Poems
By Chinese Poet Yuan Hongri
Translated by Yuanbing Zhang
 
Give You A Bottle of Nectar From The Kingdom of Heaven
 
Ⅰ
Give you a bottle of nectar from the kingdom of heaven
Let your flowers of soul blossom
Let your bones be white and transparent
Let you bathe in music of the kingdom of heaven
There will be no more earthly night
Let you forget that fragrance of soul
That's in your home of soul
That giant's yourself that are sweet and free.

Ⅱ
The strings of heavenly gems
Embedded on your golden crown
You are the giant's king from the of the Kingdom of Gold
Your land is vaster than billions of seas.
3.6.2019
 
赠你一瓶天国的琼浆
一
赠你一瓶天国的琼浆
让你的灵魂之花绽放
让你的骨骼洁白透明
让你沐浴那天国的乐曲
再也没有尘世的黑夜
让你遗忘那灵魂的芬芳
那在你的灵魂的家园
那甜蜜自在的巨人的自己
二
这一串串天国的宝石
镶嵌在你的金冠之上
你是那黄金之国巨人的王
你的国土巨大胜过亿万座海洋
2019.3.6
 
Our Souls are Free and Magical
 
Our souls are free and magical
Which can reach many heavens without wings
Every Kingdom of Heaven has sweet memories
Oh, where there's no the word of death
To protect your childhood sun
The teenager's starry sky is light from the Kingdom of Heaven
And in the deep of your bones
old gods are smilling at you
Their words are music from the Kingdom of Heaven
3.6.2019
 
我们的灵魂自由而神奇
 
我们的灵魂自由而神奇
不需要翅翼而能抵达诸多的天国
每一座天国都有甜蜜的记忆
哦 在那儿没有死亡这个词语
保护好你的童年的太阳
那少年的星空是天国的光芒
而在你的骨骼深处 古老的
诸神向你微笑
他们的话语是天国的乐曲
2019.3.6

The Stars of The Dawn
 
When the sky gallops like the rivers
you stand in the street of the city on the world
look up at the sky and you could almost hear the singing of the stars
summoning you in the depths of space.
And the Heavens of the gods
are towering lofty cities like the mountains
on gold coast of time;
And on the mammoth ship of platinum
the rings of light twine around giant's necks of men and women
 their eyes are like the stars of the dawn.
2016.4.28
 
黎明的辰星
 
当天空疾驰如江河
你站在人间之城的街道
向天仰望 仿佛听到群星的歌声
在太空的深处向你召唤
而诸神的天国
在时光的黄金海岸
矗立山岳般的巍峨之城
而白金的巨轮之上
巨人的男女 项佩光环
眼眸如黎明的辰星
2016.4.28
 
Only the Eternity is Equal to It
 
I am a singer from the heavens
my song is silent, only the soul can hear it.
Those ancient gods are the mountains behind me,
they gave me the flowers of millennium from paradise,
let my song mellow and sweet as the smile of the heavens;
let the face of time blush and lift the veil of death;
let the ancient earth reveal the true face of gold.
Oh, you'll see another you,
as old as the sun, as young as the dawn
his kingdom is huge and only the eternity is equal to it.
4.04.2015
 
唯有永恒与之齐名
 
我是一位来自天堂的歌者
我的歌曲无声 唯有灵魂听见
那些古老的诸神 是我身后的山岳
他们赠我千年的仙果
让我的歌声芳醇 甘美如天国的笑容
让时光的脸儿羞红 掀去死亡的面纱
让古老的大地 露出黄金的真容
哦 你将看到另一个自己
古老如太阳 年轻如黎明
他的王国之巨大唯有永恒与之齐名
2015.4.4
-
Bio 
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, Acumen, 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 Honrgi's  assistant and translator. He is a Chinese poet and translator, works in a Middle School, Yanzhou District , Jining City, Shandong Province, China. He can be contacted through his email- 3112362909@qq.com.