Poetry from Jerry Langdon

Light skinned man with dark short hair and a white collared shirt seated at an angle.
Jerry Langdon
Banshee Call 

From those decrepit ruin walls
Hollow cries creep over the moor.
Something wicked, eerily calls
Whining deathly tears of dire lore.
Night breeze, like morbid ice
Hauntingly drifts among the trees.
From yon desolate edifice
Come cries that make blood freeze.
But a grave now; those castle walls,
Naught as her haunting grounds.
And when you hear the Banshee calls; 
Know is how your death sounds.
For few live to tell their tales
Of their acquaintance with cries at night.
For when the Banshee wails
Nigh never do they greet dawn's light.
Then when one hears the Banshee's call
A wretched soul is destined to fall.

Inner Torment

Lost in misery my soul burns.
It sleeps but sorrow always returns.
If of a memory's cost 
Or in Limbo where hope is lost. 
This hell will not yield.
There is no mercy upon this battlefield.
Only footprints left by death. 
Only tears that strangle one's breath.
Dark requiem in fading light 
Sorrow awakens with the night. 
Abominations from my inner torment
Rising in a horrid ascent.

From South-Western Michigan, Jerry Langdon has lived in Germany since the early 90's. He is an artist and poet. His works bathe in a darker side of emotion and fantasy. He has released five books of Poetry titled "Temperate Darkness an Behind the Twilight Veil", “Death and other cold things” “Rollercoaster Heart” and “Frosted Dreams” Jerry is also the editor and publisher of the literary magazine Raven Cage Zine poetry and prose. His poetic inspirations are derived from poets such as Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Frost and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. As well as from various rock bands. His apparently twisted mind, twists and intertwines fantasy with reality.

Poetry from Kristy Raines

White middle aged woman with reading glasses and very blond straight hair resting her head on her hand.
Kristy Raines
We Need Not Speak

As you hold me close in your warm embrace
I feel like we will melt into one as our hearts beat together.
We need not speak.. 
Our unsteady breaths speak for us 
They are as pleasing as any love poem ever passionately uttered
My love for you will show in my eyes and in my touch 
I slowly drench your heart's barren ground 
Whenever you reach for me, I will be right there.. 

I will always come to you, and there will never be
any doubt that you are alive inside... ❤ 




Love is our Song

Love as we know it, is like a prayer,
and music is what fills our souls with life
It flows from my breath like a gentle breeze,
and I see you come alive with each new song
When our souls met, you gave up your heart
You sacrificed your life for both of us as a whole
You name became mine and mine became yours
Burning in our love was our destination foretold
and the many memories are as many as the stars
We have spent many nights just remembering them all
And our love will be forever eternal.. 

I see it in your eyes.  ❤ 



A Flame Between Us

Like a match, you started a flame between us
I've always understood my place in your life
And remembered when and how it all started
Look no further than right in front of you
because that is where you will find my smile
It's never changed, and has always been for you
My light glows around you like a flame of life
If  you hear my voice, follow the sound
I will light the way to where you will find me
and the dark will no longer surround you
For this flame will light our path together. 




Kristy Raines was born in Oakland California in The United States of America and is a poet, writer, author and humanitarian/advocate.
She has five books getting ready to publish soon, one with a prominent Poet from India  which will launch hopefully soon called, "I Cross my Heart from East to West", two fantasy books of her own called, "Rings, Thins and Butterfly Wings" and "Princess and The Lion", and an anthology of poems in English, "The Passion Within Her" and her Autobiography called "My Very Anomalous Life"
Kristy has received many literary awards for her unique style of writing.

Poetry from Graciela Noemi Villaverde

Young light skinned middle aged woman with long reddish hair, reading glasses, and a pink shirt.
Graciela Noemi Villaverde

DREAM
 With a bunch of lost images
 They don't say anything anymore...
 DREAM
 With verses from other times
 May they appear suddenly
 Lights that illuminated
 my times of youth
 DREAM
 In vain; trying to recover
 sparkles that the water crystallized
 in scattered reflections..
 DREAM
 With a diluted history
 in the air
 with similar gesture
  to the absence
 DREAM
 With a swan with blue feathers
 An unchained elephant
 A jungle full of fruits
 Before the extermination comes.
 DREAM
  With a place for voices
  old
 who fled behind the walls
 DREAM
 With lovers
 they invent poems with life
 DREAM
 Detached from the cluster of clumsiness
 ESCAPE
 Of the shadows and everything
 what doesn't taste like tenderness
 DREAM
 With eager eyes
 Astonished
 The only ones with whom you will read these verses

 

Poetry from Elmaya Jabbarova

White woman with long black hair and a black blouse with flowers on it.
Elmaya Jabbarova

I lived without you 

The love spell struck suddenly,
Made a nest in my heart,
As a miracle my love novel,
I dreamed with your absence.

Right and left, wedding knot,
On the happy day of lovers,
I stayed true to our love,
I got engaged with your absence.

My eyes longed for you,
I could not be happy with you,
Signed my soul pen,
I got married with your absence.

I knew the love poem,
I loved life so much,
I did not blame my fate,
I lived with your absence. 


Poetry from Maja Milojkovic

Younger middle aged white woman with long blonde hair, glasses, and a green top and floral scarf and necklace.
Maja Milojkovic
ETHICAL HEIGHTS

The lofty heights of ethical paths,
Where virtue shines, where light shines clear,
In the hearts of the brave, in the souls of the pure,
A beacon of ethics, a guide to truth.

Courage like a rock, steadfast,
In the sea of ​​challenges, in the storms of life,
We walk firmly, with insatiable faith,
To the heights of honor, where the light shines.

Reverence is like a flower, sweet-smelling,
It spreads around us, like a roaring wave,
Appreciation of every being, every work,
In the shelter of ethics, where the heart burns.

Selflessness leads us, hand in hand,
Through labyrinths of compassion, through challenges difficult,
We share love, give strength,
On ethical heights, where humanity meets.

Oh, may our steps always be firm,
On the path of ethical heights, where virtue flourishes,
May God in our hearts be a guide, a beacon of the world,
We soar high, where we subtly walk the bridges of meeting a soul like ours to embrace a soul-elevating thought. How to help humanity sleeping on the wings of the witch Maya?
In the name of ethics, an attack in defense of the truth!

Poetry from Don Bormon

Young South Asian teen with short brown hair, brown eyes, and a white collared shirt with a school emblem on the breast.
Don Bormon

The park

In the park where dreams take flight,
Beneath the trees so green and bright,
Children's laughter fills the air,
As they play without a care.

Birds above in graceful flight,
Their songs a melody of delight,
Flowers blooming, colors array,
Creating a beautiful display.

Families gathered, picnics spread,
Love and joy, no words unsaid,
Couples walking hand in hand,
Creating memories so grand.

Oh, park so serene and fair,
A place of peace beyond compare,
In your embrace, we find respite,
A sanctuary, a pure delight.

-Don Bormon

Story from Iduoze Abdulhafiz

Still burning black, the dizzy morning stretches vastly across the infinite and wakes me up with a rush of its torpidity. It is infectious and I am unwilling to quit my slumbering position. Why should I quit this lull, this rest, this magnanimity of nothingness and descend into the littleness of life that swims without an iota of comfort? What little courage I have, I must use it, extra hours must be a possibility. For if I wake, it’s for the sake of this morning which is dizzy with it’s sleeping run of sweltering glow. I will not go gently into this day, I war with the giddiness of weak bones and an excessively crushed spirit.

    The scion of a sleepy eyed warrior is to be feared for laziness is more effective than hard work in the right hands. What I would do with my match stick, and my blunt and hard cock and other miscellanies would tear the world away from itself and at the same time, would mean nothing. None of it would matter, indeed, none does matter as much as a somnambulant passion, an unconscious dog burrowing his snout in stinking sand, digging and pissing, that’s why I wish to sleep. I badly wish to sleep and I would return to the rays of my slumber if only the bus of life was directed towards that destination. What is the use of waking when man, in his infinite finiteness, only truly spreads his pinions when he dreams? What is waking but a torment, a mosquito sucking the aspirations from every vein treading the mirrorless earth. It is my intention through these verses (for consider this bad poetry unversified), to sleep while I wake, to bite back the skin of the mosquito and drone and disturb it’s ears. To curse this circus is to mock the thin thread and what higher goal should man aspire towards in this gamut of deception we call wake. Eating the muck that makes up the bug which sucks our blood.

    Everything, everything that moves and breathes secretly secretes a wish for death as they progress through time. It’s like they grow weary and purposely slip, hoping they crack their thinking skulls on the porcelain; like they were tired of thinking and would gladly give away the faculty for it. Like it, a burden rather cast away, had done it’s time. It had always done its time; thinking. My eyes are tired of seeing and I wish I could close them, forever and dream of nothingness or of a Hera’s plump breasts. Whichever soothes the mood I am at that moment– nothingness for ennui; the poetic breasts, well, is for everything else. And like a cockroach, seeking death at every turn, hungry for a corpse of food, hungry to be a corpse of food, I hasten towards the pails of soothe to bathe me in its gushing enshroud. Fogs, clouding against the backdrop to sanctify my choices; to be or not to be, rather to be or to perish and gloat in the perishing– rise like buildings half decimated, half eager to be seen. And in the hubbub of the court of life, I ignore the fog, the sanctity, the choices brought to the steps of my bolted door and I choose slumber; the peace of it, the comfort of assurance. And does this make me an impotent pretender, who even in his parts– the pretense, is made impotent, or raw, like the secretion of all that moves and breathes, that aspires to flee from hunger? Does it make me be? Am I– in the indelible food truck of laughter, laughing at myself, throwing a mock at everything, even this bedsheet, rumpled from giving me repose, while wishing I was an acolyte of something; my trusts saving me from the deliriums of free will?

    At the edge of the shore the waves merge with the thirsty sand and it’s saltwater provokes parching through delicate care. The waves hopes it’s tides of love, which it repeatedly bathes the shores with, would one day sate it’s love, pacify her, relentlessly bring her to the four walls of a gentle climax. But each act of kindness, each touch of thoughtfulness only worsens the state of the shores. But to protest at this point, (if even it could do that, as all protest is a mask of dissatisfaction which leads to more tedium,) is a futile activity. It could even be termed rash; so the shores die in silence. No wonder the pallidity of the beach so stuns us we inevitably fall for it. All men long for woe in their massification, and thrive within the tokens of dry bones self destruct gets from pity, but the men who last… No man lasts, but all unconsciously believe they will.

    All girls are lesbians, but I must wake now from my waking dream. Aurora begins to sieve her provocative rays through the meshes in the window, laying siege to my thoughts. It gilds my room with a flood of light this sunlight. I have not consulted the time. I hate the time for it reminds me of my minuteness and makes me wish so badly I am god– above time and more mean spirited, like a fish that devours the reeds, man and other fishes. This wish targets his aloneness most of all: imagine controlling the world, watching naked bodies, envious: far above the threshold yet close enough to judge. I don’t mind god too much because I don’t know much of him and I don’t believe that any man could know God better than I know God, if he did exist. Pale face that shames the sun, a dick with the seed of stars and buckets of galaxies, time in his pocket, a haughty nature which still is revered? Why give excuses for God while the same characters are disdained in man, and even give God veneration? What makes him of better stock when I exist and he does not? For to exist is to be in this world, and to be in this world props more honor than any transcendence ever will. Death is a nullification as well as all things in the unknown alter; all forms beyond the void.

    To survive the melancholia, the wake, the aches in a blunted finger, to walk a distance under the blazing sun and still love it. God! Why should one not love life and hold it’s beauties however tedious, to greatest esteem. The cutting sunlight, like a knock on the head, begins to discipline me to efficacy, begins to steer me towards stirring from the bed. Still my leaden feet resists, my eyes are shut, still shooting towards sleep and I wish to dream forever.

Iduoze Abdulhafiz is a poet, playwright, short story writer and philosopher. His works delves into themes of introspection and existential questions. In them he explores profound emotions such as grief, longing, ecstasy, the divine and other worldly issues. 

He hopes that through his writing, he brings some form of sate or a glim of light, to the reader reading his work.

Many of his works contemplate issues of existence using metaphorical imagery and philosophical reflections. He has been published in the ekonke magazine.