The hardest day

I was young then. The sky was full of stars, the yard was full of dust, the water was flowing from the ponds, it was as if the darkness of the sky was disturbing me. I was in sweet sleep; at one point, a sad, quiet sound was heard from under my ear. When I slowly opened my eyes, my mother was standing in front of me, pale as if she was afraid of something. It was already late. Outside, the dogs were barking and the wind was blowing. 

My mother said in a sad voice: my daughter is not feeling well, my blood pressure is rising for some reason. I ignored my mother's words and continued to sleep. Even then, my poor mother would not wake me up, saying that she is tired, let my daughter sleep. When I wake up in the morning, our yard is dirty. Before, when I woke up, my mother would prepare breakfast and greet me with a sweet smile. 

And I didn't ask anyone where my mother was, and I wasn't even interested. I wonder why I did that. If those times were to come back again, I would not smile even a step from my mother's side. Later I found out that my mother was in the hospital. Once I found out that my mother was in the hospital; I didn't hear from mom saying how are you? One day when we were sitting with my brothers, eadam came; They said, "Go, I will take you to your mother." We were very upset by what my father said. Even though my mother was in the hospital, my father became a mother instead of my mother. 

They didn't say they were missing my mother and we went to the hospital. My mother was sleeping. There were many medicines on my mother's table. I started to get scared seeing these and said mother in a low voice. Then my mother opened her eyes and started stroking my head. "Mom, go, let's go home," I said, crying. At that moment, my mother closed her eyes and took her hands from my head. Then the doctors came and begged us to come out, and I said to my father; I asked if my mother would not return home. 

My dad; They read that your mother will definitely come home and my daughter will cook sweet food for you. In my life, I thought that my mother will not come home anymore, she will not cook us sweet food, and every day I asked God to heal my mother. Even if I stood or walked, my mother would not leave my mind. The world seems dark to my eyes. Even my mother entered and exited my dreams. 

One day when I came home from school, there were too many people in our house. I was scared to see them. It was as if my heart stopped, and when I ran into the house, my mother was in front of me; they said happy birthday my daughter. I couldn't believe my eyes. I was very happy to see my mother. Then I forgot that it was my birthday. After that day, I did not want to take a single step in front of my mother. These events were the hardest day of my life. I was very afraid of losing my mother. Mother means the closest friend, the best confidant. So let's protect our mothers. We should give them more love than before. Our mothers are our heaven.

Boronova Sevinch was born on November 4, 2006 in Dehkanabad district of Kashkadarya region. Currently, she is a student of the 1st stage of the Academic Lyceum of Karshi State University.

After Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken

          For things they did not tell us:
        “Life is our teacher, & our tears,
          sighs and sweats; the levies.”

Mother told me that father was a good man
& I should tread the path he led. & because
she was my mother, saying no was a metaphor
for calling myself unfilial.
I echoed the songs of his footprints, hoping
to reach the shore, but yonder was his
footprints echoing some faded tunes that
reeked of rusty bones. There the stamps
on the sand became broad & heavy; my feet,
swollen. I folded my hopes into a talisman,
hung it on my suprasternal notch–to drag
this broken body to the shore. Yesterday,
mother called me a gentle man (like
father's mother had done) & I smiled.
I smiled, shrouding my cries & pangs under
a fake face. I knew father, too, was a hostage
like me for there were tears and sweats
in the wake of his footprints & yet, he died.
He died like a contused chameleon,
shredded off of his color to look for another
at the shore, but couldn't reach the shore.
But because she's my mother, I couldn't teach her
that we all had sketches of our destinations.
For here, we grew up, we grew up to brook
the path on which life put our feet.
And the courses to our own shores
were the roads not taken.

Arikewusola Abdul Awal writes from Oyo state. His poems have appeared on ila magazine, willi wash, Teen Lit journals, Literary Yard, The Yellow House, Eboquills, Afrihill Press, Spillwords magazine, Thirty Shades of Roses Anthology, Broken chunks of hearts, World Voice Magazine and elsewhere.

When he is not writing, he is found reading or watching movies.

Seeing Desperate Lives

The photos make me feel a hundred years old:

Schoolroom made rubble, skeletal steel frames

of desks somehow standing, withstanding the blast;

exhausted fireman sitting in the living room

of a burning house, admitting defeat; woman

with concerned face dappled by sun through leaves

of her yard's beautiful trees leaving her village house,

one forearm holding a fluffy white kitten, its face

buried in her shoulder.



They are desperate, and I tire of mainlining

their anxiety, so I look up from the phone

into my rearview, at the sun-scorched asphalt --

the road beyond my yard's tree cover

is molten with summer sun.  I wheeled in

and looked up Ukraine, like I do at least once a day,

and it makes me feel a hundred years old.  So,

I do the only thing I can think of to forget:

step out of my pick-up, take shoes off toe to heel,

pull off socks, walk my pine straw and oak leaf drive

onto the sizzle heat of road, and its sudden tactile feel

in the flesh of my feet consumes me.



And I am here, now, away from war, and soon

I am young again, walking barefoot

the hot paved parking lot to the state park spring

that began a river in Florida, that mine

and two other families caravanned to in summers,

the hours of swimming, the picnics in a blanket of grass

by sedges, herbs, and wildflowers at river's edge.

Until -- the burn's ministry becomes too much,

and I walk back onto the cool of pine straw, open

the truck door for the phone, look again

at the places I will never go to anymore.



After Russia invaded, I talked with my Iraq vet friend

David who told me of two acquaintances

who went into Ukraine to rescue the in-laws

of one of them, native Ukrainians, and I said

I could no longer handle war psychologically:

my mind hearing the ominous thump

of helicopter rotors, distant artillery, pounding

"danger close" seconds later, high flying planes,

birds of prey dropping dots of bombs that ride

gravity's slipstream to earth, plowing earthquakes

that reverberate, spit heat and flame

against everything natural.



He tells me of the healing power of yoga,

how he's started yoga teacher training.

Next time we talk, I'll have to tell of walking

a hot street.  I look again at one of the photos.

I'm well removed now, twice, through the lens

of the camera, through the lens of the phone,

but I remember the pain of watching starving dogs

being shot by laughing Iraqi soldiers, and I wonder

where the woman will take her cat.




Year 2, Ukraine



It was last year that the shelling first disturbed

the deep time of an old village, hub for farmers

and beekeepers



Now tanks roll into the square again, one crushing

the stone walls of a central fountain, old coins

fall with the water from its heavy treads



In the corner of the square, from the alley by

the Armenian church, a shadow strides, moves

into the square



Pacing here and there erratically, palm to temple,

this walking wound gathering breath to force insults

in growing gasps



This man whose family was killed in last year's shelling

The Polish radio says his government is winning,

at 10:00 and 5:00 daily



He thinks the war has already gone on forever  Bitterly,

he thinks the war has already killed him  A soldier shouts

"Khokhol!" in the language of bears



Waving him closer from the height of his round, iron hatch,

the soldier points a pistol  This dead man loads his mouth

with more insults and rushes forward



Into the loop of everlasting war  In the sky's drizzle on his face

are tears that were once salty seas




Prayer for a Savior




Come for your gentle people

who shudder in this darkness



bring your sovereign brightness

unbreakable shield of goodness



let misfortune, famine, disease,

war, become faraway sounds



make them gray at the temples,

let them fade away



give us a spell of warm sun, soft

winds, clear rain over green valleys



we know death is stronger than

suffering -- may you open its horizon



of strength in this living season and

forgive our fragile clay, wounded



hearts, that for heaven's peace

can't wait.

A US Army combat veteran, Steven Croft lives happily on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia on a property lush with vegetation and home to various species of birds and animals. His poems have appeared in Liquid Imagination, The Five-Two, Misfit Magazine, Eunoia Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Synchronized Chaos, and other places, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Mother

I get it when it's full of flowers scent
I can't find a single scent
I can't distinguish my mother
From a thousand tosser

Mercy is a river, my pure-hearted mother
I have only one value
To be alive for my child
Eat our sorrow day and night

He gave me a white wash
Until adulthood
I will see my child's happiness 
Give us a lifetime.

I'm just concerned about your emotional warfare, and putting the Charlie in Baudelaire 

Not racist, heaps border fears

Bought their ears

That's why your night's in arrears

As for the secret weapon, it's in our pocket

Not timeless, just rock it bored of years

I turn on the tele just for a fix of fears

Here they have the barkeep glitch our beers

Don't snitch on peers

No, put snitches on piers

Treading on thin nice try, left swipe

I don't want to live in a sci fi

Haven't moved in a year, these things moving up me, they say it's not divine

The main attraction, but still got sidekicked

So fishy they had to more real than reel us in

You can call me a wit, man, cos I lilac

You can call me a Whitlam, cos it's time

To get kicked out by the CIA

I mean CI Gay, but don't tell my wifi

I do skylines thru the eyes, chemtrails, clouds

Walk in, all the fems loud

Get the train rail off all its routes

Now when we need it, they just cough up the doubt

We don't smoke green, jist chop up the louts

Can't help, we already shot up the Galts

Why do you think we look so young for?

I've got power you can point at, but you can't dock yours

I've only got six mull in my sock drawer

I only look so I can drop jaws

I won't robocop to you any more

I won't drop you any flaws

Except the price one

A word to the high rise can't be undone

No batman bout the raves, but you can say I'm Robin

Like you don't underline what these dreams be costing

I'm getting plaid by Ryan Gosling

So it's myself on the red

Carpet I'm accosting







So few memories


I chuck myself out the pub was getting too rowdy


Pack up my things say howdy 


Order up a beer relight the bounty


 kindle my ounces and single my prouder


Movements out on TV


Units back from Jon doe ray me


Jumped from hand into my mode de vie


And from there, into my ode to me


And my shadows are irritable again


Can't understand I'm not my friend


sallows my cheeks, second elderhood


But the youth I'm shooting says there's hell to prove


 Only rules I like the ones the dead flout


So I guess that's why you had me at get the fuck out




Queen of Odds


So close to me like the cure

So closed to me like the future 

Closer it gets the looser the thread 

we cut the loser instead - that me

Choose you over life; you make me happy

When skies are out of service

And the winds are getting blabby

Just as we do, and did last night

Are you sure we didn't do this in a past life?

We ask nice and the ocean lets us surfers

Float instead of sink somehow 

shear the shore winks to make us go wow

try to make clouds treetops won't kowtow 

Everything about you is pow wow bow wow 

Just flowers me thinking, like, our souls're grouse foul

you be my perso climate change

Get me glitching all the whys away

With greenhouse gas lines

We need replace, but 

Resources're 

lacking, time too

 Sick coal still too powerful

Must est there; bower's full

Hours neither heat nor cool now

lost compass

meaningless, sour

flip flops clip clop on the way home from the drowse 

I'm deconstructed away from you

Remodernist me, babe

Frack modest

Tee it up - you truly, madly, deeply think these rhymes are proper gay 

But so are you - I got you, bae

And without warning, the coffee plate spins out of control absent of intervention

And we console ourselves with what? Yawning indecision?

Bring bring listenings no bring bring listen

Oh, it's Sly? Tell em I said die

Like the weather changes. Concrete's quicksand 

Whooshes the kitchen back to us

Some kind of catalyst to see what matters to me 

 Say can't cap a way free

But actually, if you and me….

Bloodbath valley, guts to rally, no dilly dally, gashed up alley, one cashed up sally, who taking the tally?

But sometimes, just sometimes, you can be a wee illuminasty

Shut up and farm me 



Am I a terrorist

for planting heroin in the president's office?

For insulting old codgers with my eloquent doctrines?

For inviting riots to decry it all the president's options? 

I'm intelligent often, I'm the resident boffin, I'm selling your coffins, inventive

a god send me down to change the face of rap (crap),

now whenever we play they claptrap back

to the clawing, bored and faded

the drawing board was always awesome jaded

I'm bold and brain-dead

Sold out and tasteless

Must have the language virus

Eating up an anguished iris 

I'm very good at dissection

Highly likely I will die sectioned

On the outside in 

We let the bouncers

Spin them away from daggitude 

You don't have to do with it a dagger, dude

Looks like crazy

Pfft, you should see the streets that staged me

Recurrent I: Walking to New Mexico in My Sleep

It takes nearly no time at all, this quick jaunt along 
the Oklahoma Panhandle, so long as I don’t stop 
to admire huge temples of fossil fuels: white miles
of pipes bending upon themselves, bathed in a sort
	of perpetual just-past-dusk not-quite-light,

all clean and humming with no one around (at least,
	their acres of well-lit parking are unoccupied.)

I say
		nearly no time at all,

but it is more true to say 
		There is no time to take; 

it is always three in the morning, so that I am 
		eternally up late but never running behind.

I can never get past Clayton when I go this way, 
although I am not sure whether I am supposed to,
	so perhaps it all works out.

The hotel there is far too big for a small town; 
I suspect this is by design. Otherwise, how could
	there be these ingeniously (maddeningly)

laid-out hallways, too narrow to turn around in,
purporting to lead to my room but instead spiraling 
	ever inward for nonexistent miles and hours?

Someone is waiting for me here. If I can only 
remember who, perhaps I will be allowed to arrive.

I would check my watch, but I already know the time.
 

Kansas City Which is Also Overland Park, Kansas: Dream I

It takes a while to place this stretch of street (or rather
streets), with its red-brick antique stores, its hair salons,
its bakery and gallery and anachronous travel agency.

Someone, it seems, has folded the map so as to overlay
45th Street east of State Line and 80th west of Metcalf,
then set it down on a steepish slope, east at the bottom.

Two small white houses, one on each side, sit atop
the street. They are in slight need of paint, but not
so badly as to get letters from either city or both.

This street exists nearly perpetually in early evening;
on rare occasions, you might catch it on a sleepy 
Saturday morning. It is always sometime between
late May and early July, and the air often smells
	of hidden roses and imminent warm rain.

The sidewalks are empty, but there is a sun-faded 
red pickup – a round-fendered Chevy, something 
that rolled off the line in Truman’s only full term –
	parked halfway up the hill on the south side.

Whatever might lie to the west, beyond the hill’s crest,
I have not seen it. I am not sure that anyone has, aside 
from whoever lives in those white houses. Sometimes,
	dark songless birds fly over from that direction.

No matter what time it is, the businesses all closed 
five minutes ago. I will have to come back tomorrow.

 
Third Floor of My Office Building Which is Also the Rec Room in My Old House: Dream I

It all started downstairs, an offhand Nerf ball dunk
on an eight-foot plastic rim; I hung in the air just
long enough to estimate the gap from soles to floor.

Now, with an audience and a high ceiling, I have
decided to give this new ability a full workout.

First rising to tiptoe, as men in my family always
do in times of urgency or strong emotion, I bounce
twice on the balls of my feet, then swing arms back
forward up and rise – less a true leap than pushing
off from the bottom of a pool, letting buoyancy
do the work. I latch on to a rafter by my fingertips,
swaying in the faint breeze of fans electric and human.

A high-pitched sound in my ear; somehow I know –
an instinct born in my late middle age –  that this is
not the ringing born of jamming my head into my 
favorite bar band’s speakers back when that sort of
thing made Coors-Light-and-idiocy-fueled sense.

This is the song of air in my lungs, air lighter than 
itself, and when I release it all and take in new breath, 
I will be floorbound again, and old, and ordinary. 

My landing is slow, soft; I inhale deeply, prepare for
	another takeoff, but all novelty has worn off.

My colleagues disperse, reoccupied by meetings
and deadlines. I should go to lunch soon, I suppose –
but first, let me rise one last time, be more than
what reality allows. (Just one more last time.)

Perhaps I can master a sort of hovering swim, shoot
a game of eight-ball against myself without ever 
touching the floor. Slop counts, or at least until I
get the hang of hanging at the proper height.

What else is one to do on a Friday, the codes of
	dress and gravity both suspended with pay?