A love body

This is my body

A man’s body

For a woman, next to you all over —–

I would like to build a castle for you, my darling

I would like to live in you for ever and ever

But nothing can I make that proves I be for you

I have no speech to express

I have no hand to touch

I have no mouth to kiss

I have no way to move towards you

But I see every item of every wonder

that hangs me with the string of love

I move, my body says ‘I love you, my darling and all —‘.

Jam-pack

Ours  is a life, a jam prone journey

Every moment we are lagging in a certain place

One after another, this or that, here and there

A shabby marshy bog looks not so soothing

Always going on a play of shooting

I am a fearful man, now more feared

All seem to be stopped and fixed in one place and time

I bite my tongue but there no blood comes out from that

At once I pay heed to my beats whether I alive or not

A Moorish land clogs to move forward

The engines are to stand still before our gray eyes

No result comes out for this stagnant muddy journey.

I find myself

Feathers are sprouting from her

Only head and mouth left to grow

Whole body is covered with wings

On the crystal water light

Reflects as soft as moonlit night

She takes her step in dancing mode

Her glittering eyes,  the sound of rings

Hides me to the surprise, a blessing home

I try to find myself my destination

Towards the end of my whole journey

I discover myself in a fairy land of white feathers.

A  Dog’s Cry

It was a heart breaking cry I heard last night

I was in deep sleep but suddendly a sound of cry

that woke me up

I was startled to hear the missing cry

I tried to make out the rolling sound

but  I couldn’t find any more

It seemed to be a woman who lost her dear

and was breaking the heart watering the eyes

rolling down to the ground

over night after night

It was a time of sound sleep

but what I heard I could not catch any more

the whole night and my heart also

waves with the dog’s voice

This was a sound stuck me to

the  hundreds and thousands of cries.

Leaving Me Alone

What is creed or what is greed

Would not like to read

Its my creel I bought

So many fresh fishes are collected

Would you like to get one?

You say, ‘yes, I need only one’

Then at once a big slap on the face

‘go away from here and never try to back’

Its my world to exist, only my —-

‘Go to the shore and enact your crank-shaft

Start your day with new speed’

Leaving me alone ‘go away all the evil spirits’

All the items of good and drink

consumed by day and night.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

20/09/2016

Mother my first God

Babbled a dual syllable:

Mama; my first cosmic sound

While she was in my binocular vision

Mother is not a simple dual syllable

She is a cosmos to all mankind

Ocean of love she my breath; leads

Me that lullaby into sound sleep

Sees beauty on all, she my eyes

Fragrance of life she my smell

Taste buds she a tongue of my food

Prayers to God she my soft lips

Smiles at all wonders of life

Feather touch when she my hands

Walks hardships through; she my legs

Cries for me for a cry of mine

A perfect gesture she all my emotions

Time, space or even death can’t

Separate a mother on earth

God can be experienced by miracles

Mother can be sensed without miracle

Then, who is true God?

©-Vijay P Nair -2017

Dedicated to all mothers on earth

All aboard, readers! This month we’re charting our course over literary seas.

As we see in J.K. Durick’s poetry, life’s circumstances come and go like waves. There are some natural and seasonal patterns, but some of our existence is unpredictable. We do have choices at times, some ability to plot and steer our course, but we are also tossed by wind and water, floating out wherever they take us.

Joan Beebe recounts her visit to coastal Maine, close to the ocean, with views from lighthouses and sunsets over the Atlantic. Sanjay Bheenuck, a London-based author, describes a grittier, less elegant journey through inner Malaysia.

In the poem I mentioned earlier from J.K. Durick, a speaker sails on the open sea, checking the horizon to find the scene there both familiar and unfamiliar at once. His other pieces touch on the discombobulation of travel and the calm of off-season destinations.

Richard Slota’s novel Stray Son, reviewed by writer Mike Zone, presents a journey through space and time as the protagonist picks up the ghosts of his past on a trip that’s more about understanding than pat reconciliation. He becomes able to place his life’s traumas in a broader context.

Mike Zone’s own poetry is infused with images of Romantic writers, Beatnik literary figures, and road travel, and Changming Yuan’s work crosses borders, whether between night and day or China and the English-speaking West, to reflect intercultural interaction.

As we meander our way through life, we sometimes have the chance to set our sails toward a particular direction.

In her powerful story ‘Him and Her,’ Vandini Sharma illuminates the life of a woman determined to get an education. Returning poet Mahbub, a Pakistani national and high school English teacher, reflects the tension between the excitement of learning and the harshness of social pressures, including violence. The grouping of these pieces seems to convey a dichotomy, or perhaps a choice, between thoughtful education and mindless chaos.

Some of the destinations we may choose look good at first, but turn out to be only mirages as we approach. So it can be good to recalibrate our course.

Returning Bangladeshi poet Vijay Nair mourns the grotesqueness of poets writing for fame rather than pursuing justice or carrying out an artistic vision. In a similar vein, John Grochalski mocks shallow people who seem to only exist for parties and brunches, ignorant of the rich history of the cities around them. Sheryl Bize-Boutte’s poem illustrates choices that seem delicious at first, but later, aren’t.

Love and respect seem to be constant human desires as we travel through life. We need our crewmates!

Elizabeth Hughes, in her monthly Book Periscope column, looks over three titles: Kimberly Lake-Seibert’s The Adventures of Toby the Bear, Evelyn Blohm’s poetry collection Four Seasons, and Lesley Graham’s Star Warrior. Whether it’s the comfort of the warm little puppy Toby, the gentle verses and kind words of Evelyn Blohm, or the protection of the intergalactic Star Warriors in Graham’s novel, many of us need a little support to get through the day.

J.J. Campbell’s poetry, like Richard Slota’s novel, explores the lingering effects of childhood violations, which as the poetic sequence shows, can lead to extreme isolation and loneliness, in life and perhaps even in death.

Sheryl Bize-Boutte also contributes a short story, ‘Madeline and Me,’ which brings home the power of friendship and the devastating interpersonal effects of racism.

One of the choices we can make, as we trace our course on the map, is to love and respect ourselves and others.

The third installment of Christopher Bernard’s dense, heady novel Amor I Kaos presents the conundrum of why to love in a world where we don’t know what is meaningful, and presents the choice to love as a pathway out of isolation and selfishness, a way to make existential meaning. Allison Grayhurst, returning Canadian poet, looks to birds and human relationships to illustrate the fragile grace of existence, as we decide to care for each other despite our finiteness and imperfections. Michael Robinson gives us a sequence of free verse and prose poetry where, despite the many losses in his world, he finds acceptance from his mother, who enables him to extend the same to himself.

Finally, we should remember to look up every so often and calibrate our position by the vast array of stars.

Several submissions touch on the broader journey of existence, who we are as living creatures and our connection to a vaster universe.

Doug Hawley’s short story ‘Kitten on the Keys’ explores the possibility of transcending death by scientifically reanimating dead bodies, of people, or, in this case, a kitten. Fine artist Giorgio Borroni contributes images from our history and dreamscape, including Freud and sea monster Chtulu. Dave Douglas sends in a formal pantoum reminding us to make the most of the time we have before ending up underneath a gravestone, and Ken Dronsfield’s speakers animate a world of afternoon, twilight, crabapples, autumn leaves and bones. They’re alive but thoughtful, conscious of time and the legacies they are leaving.

Janine Canan’s poems celebrate infinite divinity and spiritual transcendence, and the paradox of all of us being merely human, selfish, distracted, weak – but at the same time, so much more than that. Lauren Ainslie looks to the broader world in a more personal way, bringing us a meditation on her visceral emotions, her impressions of an isolated pond tucked away high in the mountains, and a dramatic piece where she heralds her birth and takes her rightful, meaningful place in the grand universe.

In the words of Jack London, “Sail On”!