A Letter Written on A Tombstone
Stranger, wait here
Wait for a moment
Once I was like you
My forefather was like you
Now I am here
Many people are here
One day you will come here
Everybody will have to come here
Time will finish everything
It is a unconditional fact
Everybody has to embrace with death
And come here one by one
It is out of the world
The world is not here
Money has no power here
Power is powerless
Politics and politicians can't play games
Landlord can't dominant forcefully
Nobody can do anything
Caste system has no chance
All are equal
Because all are dead.
Dead man has no address
The things we need here is good deeds
Only good deeds must help us.
So, please do good deeds as much as possible
Time is knocking at the door
Anytime there will go the bell.
Jasna Gugić was born in Vinkovci, Croatia. She is the Vice-President of the Association of Artists and Writers of the World SAPS; P.L.O.T.S USA the Creative Magazine Ambassador for Croatia, Ambassador in Elite Arab Creative Union of The Royal House – Lebanon, Ambassador of Peace and Peaceful Coexistence – Morocco, Global Ambassador of Literacy and Culture for the Asih Sasami Indonesia Global Writers, and a member of Angeena International, a non-profit organization for peace, humanity, literature, poetry, and culture. She is also co-editor of the anthology, Compassion-Save the World, one poem was written by 130 world poets.
Jasna has published three collections of poems. The first two collections are bilingual: one is Croatian-English and the other is Croatian-Polish. The third collection consists of a single poem translated into sixty languages of the world.
Jasna Gugić is one of the winners of the World Award for Cultural Excellence “César Vallejo” for the year 2020. in the category of culture, awarded by Union Hispanomundial de Escritores (UHE).
She is one of the winners of the World Award for Excellence “Golden Eagle” for the year 2023. in the category of literature, awarded by Union Hispanomundial de Escritores (UHE), in a global alliance with Mil Mentes por Mexico International (MMPMI) and Academia Mundial de Literatura, Historia, Arte y Cultura(AMLHAC) and Global Peace Alliance Award 2023. awarded by Union Hispanomundial de Escritores (UHE) , MIL MENTES por Mexico Internacional, and Academia Mundial de Literatura, Historia, Arte y Cultura(AMLHAC).
Jasna is a multiple winner of many international awards for poetry and literature and her work has been translated into several world languages.
She lives and works in Zagreb, Croatia. Her poems have been published in magazines in the USA, Spain, Greece, Italy, Russia, Croatia, India, Syria, Denmark, Brazil, Mexico, Bangladesh, Serbia, Albania, Nigeria, Belgium, China, Chile, Nepal, Pakistan, Korea, Germany, Turkey, etc.
Her poems have been published in so many world-famous print and electronic magazines, journals, websites, blogs, and anthologies like Spillwords Press – USA, P.L.O.T.S. The Creative Magazine – USA, Mad Swirl – USA ,Inspired – USA Raven Cage – USA, Highland Park Poetry – USA, Setu – USA, Ariel Chart – USA, Dissident Voice – USA, World of Myth Magazine – USA, Cocktail Literary Journal –USA, Synchronized Chaos Magazine – USA, Cajun Mutt Press – USA, Word City Literary Journal – USA, Medusa‟s Kitchen – USA, Sage Cigarettes – USA, Fevers of the Mind – USA, Atunis Galaxy Poetry – Albania /Belgium, Mokasini – Israel, Lothlorien Poetry Journal – UK, Polis Magazino – Greece, Homo Universalis – Greece, Chinese Language Monthly – 中國語文月刊 – China, Active Muse – India, Eboquills – Nigeria, Azahar Revista Poetica – Spain, Sindh Courier – Pakistan, Magazine Humanity – Russia, Entre Parentesis – Chile, Daily Asia Bani – Bangladesh, Bharat Vision – Denmark, Litterateur Rw, Dritare E Re – Albania, Literary Yard – India, Gazeta Destinacioni – Albania, Newspaper Lissalba – Albania, Alb- Spirit – Albania, Albania Press – Albania, Alessandria Today – Italy, The Moment International News – Germany, Kavya Kishor English – Bangladesh, PETRUŠKA NASTAMBA, an e-magazine for language, literature, and culture – Serbia, Güncel Sanat magazine – Turkey, Cultural Reverence, a global digital journal of art and literature -India, A Too Powerful Word – Serbia, Magazine Ghorsowar – India, Al-Arabi Today Magazine, Magazine Rainbow, Humayuns Editorial – Bangladesh, Himalaya Diary – Nepal and Agarid br. 24 and 16, Online newspaper NewsNjeju, Korea, Willwash. wordpress blogzine – Nigeria.
Between mountains & sea, through jungles, along lagoons, over silted rivers. Sometimes that Caribbean just below my sight, just beyond the vine-draped trees.
*
Long ago the sea disappeared. & now we enter these mountains heavy-green. Along banks of streams, in the folds of land, hand-built homes. Their families sell coconut milk & candies at roadside stands.
* *
I am searching for this city. The shantytowns, the industry, the suburbia that always mark the entry of metropolis.
But all I see is this highway through green.
* * *
Finally nearing the center. Traffic jams the highway of this late afternoon. Yes, the stores, the malls, the houses – but still that verdant range.
* * * *
When will we arrive? We continue going on & on. The canopy of high-rise apartments, skyscrapers & billboards grimed by time towers above the canopy of trees.
ON THE ROAD AGAIN
Soon we leave the high rises of Caracas
& enter the forested high rise of
the mountains. Misting clouds
dampen the morning highway. The
bus stereo playa salsas. A passenger
in back sings along off-key.
We wind towards the Maracay lowlands,
over banana-lined streams, past sugar
cane, through small towns. A white dog
chases another across a field along this
road.
By the time we reach the lower lands, the
slate-grey clouds shatter the cobalt-blue
sky & bright sun. Valencia Lake ripples
white-capped, dully, deep-blue-deep-
green in a bowl-valley of the sierra.
From Valencia to Barquisimeto, larger cities
of this country. Will it be endless urban
scenery now? Or shall I continue to be
dazzled by those emerald mountains,
that sapphire sky draped with bauxite
clouds, these rushing topaz rivers?
Through small towns, past cattle ranches, past
chicken farms – & yes, the verdant
mountains …
SANARE TRIO
At the tip of these Andes, the slopes surrounding Sanare neatly parcel into farms & cafetales. Distant mountains, dryer & rougher, fading to ghostly silhouettes in the warming day.
*
By noon the clouds are descending. The mountains fall into deep shadows. The aroma of roasting coffee wafts on the fresh breeze.
* *
This evening bathed with mist, the sun paints these sierra lands indigo-rose.
My biography
Lorraine Caputo is a wandering troubadour whose writings appear in over 500 journals on six continents, and 24 collections – including In the Jaguar Valley (dancing girl press, 2023) and Santa Marta Ayres (Origami Poems Project, 2024). She also authors travel narratives, articles and guidebooks. Her writing has been honored by the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada (2011) and nominated for the Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Caputo has done literary readings from Alaska to the Patagonia. She journeys through Latin America with her faithful knapsack Rocinante, listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth. Follow her adventures at www.facebook.com/lorrainecaputo.wanderer or http://latinamericawanderer.wordpress.com.
Critically examine the postmodern reading of Leda and the Swan by William Butler Yeats.
(Black and white pencil drawing of a naked human entwined with a winged bird and her egg)
Leda’s virgin femininity is at stake by the perilous encroachment of anthropomorphic Zeus. The masculinized possession upon the staggering girl by caressing her frail thighs symbolizes helplessness. This helplessness manifests emblematic relinquishment of virginity to the amorous conquest of Zeus. Love and war are supposedly antithetical paradoxes and fruits in reproduction of offsprings and therefore vindictive of the polarization between supernatural immortality and mortal beings or bonded and free..
Seduction and rape of Leda the Queen of Sparta, by the God of Heavens and King of the Olympics, in disguise of Swan in Greek, mythologizes the fantastical narration of Helen of Troy and the cloned brothers Castor and Pollux. Orgasm and ejaculation implicates shudder in the loins with impregnation of Leda by Swan while engendering the broken wall, burning roof and tower alike architectural landmarks and milestones. Later this climatic Homeric allusion pontificates toward Agamemnon’s bereavement. Historical cycle of Helen’s and Clytemnestra’s seeds are planted and fertilized by Leda. Rhetorical questions become justifiable with the explanatory statements: “The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?/ But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?” Herein, succumbent of Leda’s virginity to the supremacy of the mightier and loftiest God has been decreed as consummation of sexual gratification. Allegorically colonial hegemonic culture of England reigning with superpower supremacy over colonized Ireland has been satirically implicated.
William Butler Yeats examines the consequences of the rape intimating the eventual defeat of Troy and triumph of Greece and the restoration of Western history. These mythic puns and sublime images are a testament to the legacy of Celtic Anglo Irish poetic cult amidst the traumatic outbreak of World War I, inviting readers toward imaginary resistance to oppression. “He holds her helpless breasts upon his breasts” furthermore implicates the political turmoil of historical Irish landscapes as implied metaphorically in Leda’s succumbing to the temptation of Zeus’s busty demeanor. The invasion of Ireland by Britain is allegorically manifested by this dialectic. Yeats revisits mythological fiction through fragmentation of Leda and this case spotlights metaphorical fragmentation of a country, nation, tribe and culture.
The act of Leda and the Swan is a bright marbled sculpture of apopsiopesis that is constantly resurrected from the microcosmic everyday acts, released from the ravages of delusory time. “Did she put on his knowledge with his power /Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?” These lines succinctly projects the rebellious spirit of the nationalistic freedom movement and the aftereffects of post revolution in accord with the domain of England’s imperial regime. Ireland’s defeminization and emasculation afterthoughts foreshadowed by the rhetorical questions indeed.
Further Reading
Textual/Sexual Politics in Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan”, William Johnsen, Yeats and Postmodernism, Leonard Orr, Sycrause University Press.
(Brown clay sculpture of a naked person whose arms and legs are entwined with a winged bird)
-------------------------------------------------------
turn down the lights
these are the nights
i should drink myself
to death
that's the problem with
starting out drinking
at a young age
it takes so damn much
anymore to even get
close to the end
it ain't worth it
play some music
turn down the lights
remember the last one
that ever wanted to
kiss you
if she only had a way
to get out of that shitty
marriage
who knows
soon the scotch will
switch to gin
that is what the inner
child likes to call
torture
iron sharpens iron
the shotgun in the
corner has dust on it
i suppose that says
more than even i
believe it does
----------------------------------------------------------
all hope is lost
there is a darkness around me
some days
a pain that lingers in the background
like an awkward kid at the prom
but as that pain lingers
especially as i have grown
older
every fucking twist and turn
the poems start to be written
in blood
all hope is lost in a fucking
sewer miles away
no one ever loved me and
i am painfully aware of it
on most days, i don't even
bother to fight off the demons
anymore
what's the point
death has been on my mind
for over forty fucking years
now
longer than some of my friends
ever lived
will it be a mirror or a spoon
laughing at the moon or loading
the bullets into a homemade gun
i still hide the knives in the bushes
just for old times' sake
last time anyone actually cared
---------------------------------------------------------
not your blood
trembling hands
covered in blood
not your blood
love rushes in
when reality
fades away
a final breath
amid chaos
and mayhem
you always knew
he wanted death
to be one hell of
a story to tell
-------------------------------------------------------------
eyes that would haunt a ghost
broken neon scattered
across the sky in another
one of my broken dreams
she always has brown hair
brown skin, a great ass
and eyes that would haunt
a ghost
somehow, she is in love
with me, an overweight
poet with a wicked tongue
if you know what i mean
hand in hand in the rain
laughing at nothing at all
her kisses are like a lovers
lament
often, she will try to kill
me in these dreams
on a rare night, we make
love in a parking lot
outside of some shitty
bar
i had a friend ask me
if i ever was in love
i told her your guess
is as good as mine
-------------------------------------------------------
welcome to love with a poet
she tasted like cherry cream soda
curves in all the right places
how much is this going to cost me
well, eventually your life
she showed her hand, hoping
for a ring
i was fresh out of ideas and excuses
to say no
i put a rubber band on her ring finger
she laughed
i said welcome to love with a poet
we might have lasted another month
or so
eventually, the laughs were glasses
being thrown against walls
fists into bricks
you know
the typical white trash utopia break
up shit on a saturday night in the sticks
i still think of her
i still have the scars
J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) is slowly dying in the suburbs, realizing that the story only gets sadder from here. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Mad Swirl, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Beatnik Cowboy, The Rye Whiskey Review and Disturb the Universe Magazine. His most recent chapbook, Altered States of The Unflinching Souls, with Casey Renee Kiser, was published in August. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)
Unknown person behind the curtains that take decisions
It is all about manipulation and violence
It is all about no ethics
People want to earn money fast
It is all about a fake world
And if you do not stay soft ..
If you don’t keep the inner child
your soul will be lost….
EVA Petropoulou Eva Lianou Petropoulou
Eva Lianou Petropoulou (Greece)
She is an awarded author and poet from Greece with more than 25 years in the literary field published more that 10 books. Her poems are translated in more than 25 languages. She is President of creativity and art of Mil Mentes Por Mexico Association. She represents Greece as a media partner and is a member of IAE India. She’s part of the Global Federation of Leadership and High Intelligence A.C. and an official candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. She is a World Ambassador of the International Academy of Ethics in India and an Ambassador of Group Poetry as well as a member of several literary groups.
