GOOD MORNING ZAGREB
Zagreb is the most beautiful city
you stay young with him in your heart
in it is my dream
I live in it every day
That is my only Zagreb
my white beloved city
I live in it
I live his beauty
I sing in it because I'm happy
the only thing i know
my Zagreb is the most beautiful city
I have your work in my heart...
==
Borna Kekić was born in Zagreb, graduated from high school of economics. He started playing music as a boy in the Zagreb Children's Choir. He started playing rap music in the 7th grade of elementary school and it remains with him to this day, and he has gone through various forms of playing this type of music. He writes his own texts, creates his own music, and in the high school of economics, in the field of marketing and entrepreneurship, he was encouraged to take up additional activities, so that, in addition to being in the studio, he is currently also recording videos. He got to know poets through music and that encouraged him to express his feelings in this way as well.
YOUNG AMERICANS
They’re cherubs compared to me
and their eyes are ten times as bright.
They can hold an audience
while I’m merely walk by alone.
And see where the sunlight falls.
Not on me. On them.
They’ve a lot of life ahead of them
and a big space to live it in.
They’re seeds and I’ve been reaped.
They’re nimble and look at me –
as sluggish as a terrestrial gastropod mollusk.
Their hair can be tousled but never hostile.
And for all their pulled faces,
they can’t quite disguise themselves.
They wear their colors large – red, white, blue.
I go about in shrunken hues.
They worship laughter.
They’re known to sob.
And the losses, no doubt, have started.
But they have years before
deaths and heartbreaks
take on an accumulative effect.
They’ll be me someday.
They know it but they don’t feel it.
For they don’t waste their feelings.
They know better than to use me
as an example.
ANNOYANCES
A dangerous curve
black and gleaming with oncoming cars,
a leaf daubed in late season snow,
that common quick embrace and parting
seen on many a sidewalk –
an earth unfit for babies,
an afterword disguised as breath,
aging, that damnable hourglass,
and ambition, yours, mine
and everybody else’s –
the lack of a comics section
in the New York Times,
and, among my grieving,
the death of certain trees –
people who won’t leave me alone,
burnt-out bulbs, anguish,
the disorderly dissolution of a life,
someone looking at me
as if they already know what I’m about to tell them –
anything that’s tissue-thin,
or comes in a white box,
or is a device whose purpose
is not immediately clear –
scraping fingernails,
wills that leave me nothing,
all of the useless things
that are so cheap and plentiful,
a handful of dirt versus an abstract painting –
the agony of denial,
the diffidence of guilt,
diaphanous desire.
drinking to the health of the dead,
dripping taps
and everything else that reminds me of time
the necessity of ingratitude,
the constant exodus of old friends,
the vacuity of famous people,
anticipation that’s derailed by bad weather –
the inability to discern
the constellations
inventions that I get no credit for,
worst of all, the comforts of anxiety –
signing off – not annoyance –
I really am signing off.
NEWBORN SON
On a moonless March night, a man was pumping
a handcar through dairy country, inspecting the
line between Eumundi and Cooroy. He’d been
a cane cutter and a sawmill worker, served in
the Air Force with the 2nd Airfield Construction Squadron.
And now he was a railway ganger, carrying
out his duties in a world of invisible fences and fields,
a man who liked a beer, fishing, and a flutter on the races,
had many friends, a young wife, three daughters
and a newborn son. And a newborn son. A newborn son.
Unknown to the man, a station hand waved a banking engine
through, down that track toward the man who didn’t see
it coming until it was too late. The man was killed.
He was 35. And that was it. Poof. Nothing. A couple
of faded snapshots. One professionally done photograph
of the man, his wife, the three daughters. It was taken
before the son was born. He’s in uniform. The women
wear simple dresses. The family is not wealthy.
They live in a rented house provided by the railway.
The picture is undated but roughly three years before
the son is born. The newborn son. The newborn son.
Six months old when the man is buried in the local cemetery.
There’s little left of the man’s story. The ones who would
know are all gone. The wife is dead. The daughters have
passed away. The son, no longer newborn, is left with
that photo, a clipping and nothing else. The son writes.
Ghost stories sometimes but the biggest ghost of them all
is never mentioned. There’s no connection. The man
can’t even haunt. And the son never felt his absence
because he never knew his presence. He was born
into all he knew as normal. At a point where his recollection
begins, he is telling people, “I have no father.”
Curiosity creeps up on him but not sadness.
By the time he’s old enough to understand,
the wife doesn’t mention the man. She’s moved to
the city. She’s worked a series of low paying jobs to provide
for four children. The son is happy enough.
He’s no longer newborn. No longer a newborn son.
NEWBORN SON
Family is just what you get, he figures. If there’s no man,
then there’s no man. If no one teaches you to hammer
a nail or fish or drive a car, then there’s always poetry.
And there’s these four women in his life, all older,
the daughters more like mothers to him than sisters.
People say he looks like his mother. No one mentions any likeness
to the man. Years pass, years when his name is never brought up
the once. The daughters marry, move out. The son travels.
He too marries. New generations put the man in his place,
a place so deep in the murk of family history, he can never be found.
And if there’s a man at all, it’s now that son. In fact, it has
been for such a long time. Ever since he was newborn. Newborn.
He’s all that’s left of the household he was born into.
He has no children, no newborn of his own.
He sits in his study, his home thousands of miles from
where he was born. He tells himself now it’s time to write
a poem, the poem, about his father. But there’s no way into
the man. The facts are old and they’re dry. So he writes of himself
instead. The newborn son. The newborn son. The newborn son.
But born to who?
TO ALL THOSE IN OUR ESTIMATION
Hear this,
when it’s dark out, we start blessing people,
crossing over the river on a dimly-lit bridge,
or looking out a window at where street-lamps cannot reach,
hungry or just having eaten,
saying thank you to a Stop sign,
or running water in the sink.
After the unexpected deaths,
the dour hospital visits,
the cancerous news on the telephone,
we owe something to the living,
pass it on silently,
as the road narrows
or the plates sparkle as they dry.
Watching TV,
we leave spaces in our concentration.
Crawling into bed,
we don’t sleep without remembering.
Even in our dreams,
when the subconscious scrambles
people and lives,
we beg them stay there,
do what they do,
we need them.
Hear this,
there’s nothing to hear,
not with the sheet up to our throats,
and the blanket spreading over us,
just a quiet we go on with,
just a quiet that holds them here.
FROM MY VANTAGE POINT
In the dark, you have no hands.
No shield.
Not even eyes.
You’re a funeral procession
in all but breath.
At the same time,
I am the hammers in my head.
The day’s exchanges.
The rampaging bison in my memory.
And, as always,
the staccato drumming of my heart.
This is what we must make sense of.
This is what we’re dealing with
when we lay ourselves down to sleep.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Sheepshead Review. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and California Quarterly.
The Descent
Li-Young Lee says every poem
is a descendant of God
unless it’s not good enough.
Then it’s just this
flat fart on the face of flatness.
God’s got better things to do, like bowling.
He never loses at bowling,
a perfect strike,
and heart attack, long covid
culling the bad pins that are bad
from the holy ones crowned
in lane grease. The rest shuffle out
into the alley behind the alley
which is hell or close enough.
They play bad smooth jazz
and clap on the beat like a stick figure
as the angel of angels turns away in embarrassment.
Poems like couch lint
hacked up by couch cats
excess, unnecessary and pungent
litter the face of the abyss
drained of sacredness. They are not even true
but they exist,
defiant in their inconsequence
like Nerf twinkies or Nerf rat turds
or rat turds made of twinkies
or twinkies made of rat turds.
They transcend transcendence
like Job made of twinkies
crying out to heaven
on his ash heap of corn syrup.
Eventually he descends.
(1) AGENT VISNU 999 (Story and Screenplay) (2) THE BANK THIEF (3) THE TRUE HERO (4) RICH MIND (5) TUNE, SING AND DANCE POEMS (6) SOUND OF SONG (7) SUCCESS KNOW-HOW (8) LADY POLICE (9) THE CRAZY BEGGARS (10) ENTANGLEMENTS (24 STORIES) (11) POETRY LYRICS (WORLD POPULAR) (12) SPECIAL QUOTATIONS (80 Photos) (13) ANIMAL STORIES KIDS (14) THE DEAD AND GHOSTS (15) CLASS 1-8 COMPUTER LEARNING, (16) ONE STANZA POEM (17) MARK’S POEMS (18) WINGS OF LOVE (19) MY DARLING (20) 1000 PROVERS (21) NATURE & FORESTS (22) SOCIAL IMPOTENCE (23) NGO WORLD (24) SUCCESS KNOW-HOW (25) VISHAL AND THE EVIL KING (26) MANTRI’S MICRO POEMS (PART 1, 2 AND 3) (27)ONE STANZA POEMS (COLOR)
*
Imprecise Language
in different
words
I
might
convey
words
with
intended
meaning;
words
indifferent
*
Gardener's Lament
my garden spot
weeds
among
annuals
perennials
weeds
overcrowding
ornamentals
vegetables
weeds
spot my garden
This poem first appeared in Your Daily Poem, 7/22/2020.
Poet’s Notes: The Skinny poem is a new minimalist form that consists of eleven lines. The first and eleventh lines can be any length (although shorter lines are favored). The eleventh and last line must be repeated using the same words from the first and opening line (however, they can be rearranged). The second, sixth, and tenth lines must be identical. All the lines in this form, except for the first and last lines, must be comprised of ONLY one word. The Skinny was created by Truth Thomas in the Tony Medina Poetry Workshop at Howard University in 2005.
Lauren McBride finds inspiration in faith, family, nature, science, and membership in the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA). Nominated for the Best of the Net, Pushcart, Rhysling, and Dwarf Stars Awards, her poetry has appeared internationally in speculative and mainstream publications for young adults and adults, including Asimov’s and Fantasy & Science Fiction. Her chapbook, Aliens, Magic, and Monsters, is forthcoming from Hiraeth Publishing. She enjoys swimming, gardening, baking, reading, writing, and knitting scarves for U.S. troops.
BOOK OF POETRY
Imagine the day of justice
The time is quiet and infinite
Nobody can be seen anywhere
The desert-fish flies in the sea of sand
A vast emptiness touching the doomsday
Nature trembles fearing the fog.
Look closely, a poet stands alone
In the north-eastern horizon
You may think he holds his fate in hand
But I swear that God knows
It is his dearest book of poetry.
FREEDOM
I read and write in my own language
I learn from the school of trees and plants
Even the ants and birds understand my meaning.
Just as King Solomon understood the essence of grasshopper
As Buddha knew the rewarding of man based on his karma
All animals seek freedom and the religion of venting their opinion.
I am walking after putting my two lips on words
I am swimming on the words all through my life.
--
Rezauddin Stalin is a very famous poet in Bengal.
He was born in 1962 in Nalbhanga village of Greater Jessore district and won many local and foreign awards including from the Bangla Academy. His poems have been translated into 42 languages. Along with poetry he has established himself as a successful media personality sharing his thoughts on various social issues.
It started, I guess, the day before. I heard, from my spot making porridge (I subsisted almost entirely off of porridge) in the kitchen, an apocalypse coming down the back alley of our house. Only when it came through the back gate did I register what I heard: he was bashing fences, tipping over bins and grunting a lot. Watching him tip over the bins and bash the fence and grunt enlightened me.
“All right,” he proclaimed, but I was sure it was anything but.
And let it be known that, really, he was the serial kitchen offender. He’d bin what is left unwashed rather than deal.
“I’m sick of coming home from work – to this.”
I looked at my two dirty dishes, a bowl and a mug.
“I’m about to use the mug again.”
Tom’s four unwashed dishes stared at me.
“And most of them aren’t mine.”
“I don’t care. They’re there, aren’t they?”
“Yes”
“Exactly.”
It was resolved I would, post porridge, wash mine and some of Tom’s dishes, and any further infringements would be met summarily with a bashing.
I had D stay over that night, not just for safety. He took what I’ll call the squatters room. In the morning, we went drinking in campo. I got hungry, promised to come back and went home to snack on some mi goreng.
He must have heard my stumbling. R was in the doorway when I opened the back gate. I went to walk past him, but arrived only at him walloping me in the face, accompanied by some queer epithet.
I felt the blood flowing out as I looked him in the smile, screamed how I was gonna kill him. I knocked over a tin of paint (I was always finding paint), the contents weirdly coagulated and looking like toxic waste. On my way out, looking like I might radioactively mutate, I knocked over the bins, for both safety and synchronicity.
Then the tape skipped again. I was blurry at the bus stop, then the cop shop. They told me I’ve been stabbed and took me to hospital.
After a bit of waiting around, I went for a smoko. When I came back, they told me four hours had passed. I asked, “Really?”
“Yep.”
I remember, before I sat down, telling some strangers police did this to me.
I needed seven stitches. I got none. I was too scared of the needle.
Police said they would arrest him soon. I was too scared to shower at home. Police said they would arrest him soon.
I pissed in bottles of wine and barricaded my door. He woke me at four in the morning getting up for work.
For days, I lived like this.
I must have called the cops. They were there, but the evidence was cleaned, and R said he didn’t do it, which made it that was that, apparently. They told me, and I have A as my witness, that they thus wouldn’t investigate. I stormed out. “This is why people say fuck the police.”
I became good friends with Tom, but. After all, it wasn’t his fault.
