Only for You

I have broken myself into pieces
Have lost my energy to take a single step  
Only for you -------
Only for you - I'm waiting here under the shade of the large banyan tree till then
Hundred years old that banyan tree, I look through again and again
Still now the green leaves of the old tree soothes the eyes and the body
Still now the birds can find their shelter to sit for rest and spend the nights
I know you do possess the same green shade in your breast
I'm still here breaking myself into pieces to reach the shade of your breast.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
11/01//2021


Breaking the Boundary

Breaking the boundary of time we are on this vast ocean
Bubbling on the surface diving and rising in one
The unseen magnetic power
The earth with its all rounds in harmony
Flowing on the tune of love
From millions of the stars to the vast land and the ocean
A wonderful play of light and shade
The feathering birds from one corner of the earth to the other 
A shield of faith, the evergreen tree
Passing through the soft blowing wind, never missing
To the last breath of the earth overcoming time and space 
The sun reflecting on the surface the shadow of us
A promise we had under the moon from beginning to end. 

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
11/01//2021


Birth on One Side, Death on the Other

The ostrich imported from Africa in Gazipur Safari Park
Lays eggs regularly 
The nestlings in the incubator make the curator happy, overwhelmed with joy
Who does not like to see the new birth?
On the contrary how it appears to be -----
When Benu Begum, Salim's elder brother's wife is beaten to death
By Abeda Khatun, Salim's wife
On a trifle matter at the time of quarrelling to each other
Only for that Benu threw a tissue paper on the family grave yard
Anger flamed in Abeda
Prompted to strike Benu to death  
How far does it matter that joy over the nestlings of the ostrich in the incubator
When everyday in every sector murdering takes place on a simple matter?  

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
12/01//2021

 
The Tart Fruit

The fruit never tasted before tastes sour 
Taking that peculiar kind of fruit
The peoples' blood is poisoned 
Though the one man power blooms all over
Taste felt in the tongue from that outcome
People succumb to death one after another 
Yet the nation nourishes the tree with too much love and care 
The name of the tree is Autocracy in guise of Democracy 
How sour the fruit indeed!

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
12/01//2021


Vaccination

Today crores of people of the world are looking forward to
When the a dose of vaccine be pushed on
But the forgetful world never thought before of that dire situation
Violating the promise that we kept once
Now the trembling world turns back again with its spring flowers
To stand before each other, sharing the heart's overwhelming joy
Walk through the way in the fresh air singing and loving together
Let's take the vaccine and join the respective field for cultivation
Never forgetting the promise we made for each other

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
13/01//2021

Winter

Silver Winter has come again,
Kids flying sled.
We make Christmas,
We play snowballs.

They hit my window,
The sound of a bitter winter.
Invites you to the new year,
The playful word of the snow.
Tales told by my mother

Great from each other
My mother tells fairy tales
Leads to good
Tales of generations
Pillars in the future

We tell my mom
Thank you very much
We get it from fairy tales
Examples of goodness
We will ask again
Stories, proverbs



Peace
                                       
May there always be peace,
Let there be no war.
May our country be beautiful,
Rejoice, our people.
Wherever you go, always,
Do good to you.
They say that even the ancestors,
The near future is you.

Always in our country,
It's a wedding, it's a spectacle.
Tulips on the hill,
Come on guys.

We celebrate,
Now you guys.
In our independent hands
When we live happily


Alisher Navoi

How many years, how many centuries,
No matter how much time passes.
Navoi our ancestor,
The world remembers.

Great epics,
The rabbis are ghazals.
It's all a world,
Beautiful than each other.

My heart is full of dreams,
If my poem finds value.
If I could write like my grandfather,
At least one line.


Spring

When spring comes, the environment wakes up,
The wind blows softly.
The whole nature wakes up,
You are welcome to my people

Scattering the scent of tulips,
You fly smoothly in the mountains.
In the beautiful sky in the wide field,
Our sheet is still flying.

Flying spring again,
Stay in this miraculous land.
Make our tongues involuntary,
Take my love

ABDULLOH ABDUMOMINOV

Abdulloh Abdumominov was born on November 29, 2008 in Tashkent. At the age of five he began to study international literature and read books. From a young age, he was fond of literature. He started writing stories when he was ten and his stories have been translated into many languages and published in many countries. He participated in international competitions and won prizes. 

To Abdumominov, the purpose of writing a story is to instill in children a sense of time and culture. His works have been published in newspapers, magazines, and websites in Uzbekistan. They have also been published in Russia, Pakistan, India, Kazakhstan, Dagestan, Indonesia, Israel, Africa, Belgium, Romania, the United States, Argentina, and China. Also published in Russian, English, Kazakh, Indonesian, Irvitic, Romanian, Spanish, and Chinese. He is the coordinator for Uzbekistan for the Kenya Times and Namaste India Magazine. Abdulloh Abdumominov is 13 years old. 

Missing

When she first went missing, they tried

not to be too concerned. She often went

off on her own, but a woman her age and

in her condition, so they started searching.

On the evening news they mentioned her,

her age, her confused condition, and that

family, some friends, and the police were

searching for her. The next day the search

was joined by volunteers and eventually by

dogs and drones. The news showed a picture

of her walking along a road, a stray camera

caught the picture, a fleeting image that her

friends said looked like her, so determined,

so deliberate, walking faster than she should

heading in the wrong direction. When they

finally found her, she was in a wooded area

near her home. Dead a day in an area they

searched several times. Perhaps she never

went any further, or perhaps she was on her

way back home, went for a walk, went for

a visit and died on her way back to where

they all thought she should be.

 

 

                  Tornado

This isn’t The Wizard of Oz

this time

not Hollywood special effects

Dorothy and Toto

and all that.

This is the real thing tearing

through real lives

homes, buildings, trees uprooted

cars lifted and thrown

trucks on their sides

people dead, people missing.

We get to watch this on TV

safe and snug

hundreds of miles away

from it all, trying to imagine

ourselves in it

our homes pulled apart

our lives torn apart.

But we know that this

is what happens to others

vaguely familiar people whose lives

get summarized like this

a few minutes of the evening news

and promises of aid.

The ones they interview

seem to know the roles they play

now – survivors who just want to start

again, give it another try

as if they expected the whole thing.

 

                         Chekovian

I feel like a character from a Chekov short story

an elderly Russian peasant out to buy a present

for his love. A bracelet he decides, after seeing

them on so many women’s wrists and wanting

his love to feel the way women seemed to feel

with flash of light when they moved their arms

move their wrists, the beauty that bracelets bring.

And there he is/I am in the jewelry shop, at last

after hours of planning and guessing. There I am/

we are leaning on a jewelry display, trying not

to look so out of place, just as if we know what

we are doing. The jewelry saleslady sees us there

the Russian peasant dressed as me, says something

to the person next to her. They both chuckle a bit

and then she starts over. The non-Chekovian part

of me, who is always on alert, pulls out his credit

card and smiles knowing that he will be treated well.

on the horizon
 
these old bones
are tired
 
death is on
the horizon
 
the sun getting
closer every
damn day
-------------------------------------------------------------------
crystal fucking clear
 
the sheep still
believe because
they don't know
they are allowed
a different way
of thinking
 
and no matter
how bad their
lives get they
still have to
believe
 
but just wait
until the church
fucks them over
 
then that sad
reality becomes
crystal fucking
clear
 
god never existed
 
jesus was the
unlucky fuck
that failed to
read the fine
print of his
contract
 
and the bible
obviously was
a success
 
but to be honest,
a pretty boring
read
----------------------------------------------------------------------
coffee-stained nightmares
 
laughter in the
fading sunlight
 
coffee-stained
nightmares of a
broken soul left
to rot in a concrete
wasteland
 
bless your heart
means something
else around here
 
stealing kisses
in a laundromat
parking lot
 
the lunatics
are running
the fucking
show
anymore
 
and here come
all the excuses
and lies and the
endless beliefs
that such a thing
should never be
 
enjoy the deafening
silence
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
the last fading glance
 
here come the nightmares
 
the sweaty nights of what
could have been
 
the endless thoughts of the
last kiss
 
the last intimate touch
 
the last fading glance of
two souls driven apart
 
and two souls adrift hardly
ever bump into each other
again
 
this isn't a fucking lifetime
movie
 
the slashes up the arm are
real life
 
not a cry for help
but a moment in time
 
a bookmark, meant to have
something funny on it
 
now covered in blood
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
from experience
 
at the age
where you
must pick
where you
are sitting
wisely
 
too low
and you
are stuck
there for
a while
 
too high
and your
back will
tell you to
fuck off
 
just right
and you
won’t
have the
realization
that
 
the easy
shit is now
a struggle

J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is trapped in suburbia, plotting his escape. He’s been widely published over the years, most recently at Horror Sleaze Trash, Terror House Magazine, The Beatnik Cowboy, Black Coffee Review and Cajun Mutt Press. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights.

A Conversation with Terry Tierney, 
author of LUCKY RIDE

Lucky Ride is a historical novel, set in the ’60s. Why did you decide to set the novel when you did?

Initially, I did not intend it as an historical novel. The novel is based on my own experience of the ’60s, and as I wrote the novel the story evolved into a broader portrait of the ’60s and a reflection of our contemporary time. Although many of the characters and situations in the novel can be seen as cultural artifacts, I believe resonant themes like escape, renewal, friendship, and romance provide valuable insights. The cultural divisions of the’60s, in particular, bear similarity to what we experience now. Slogans like “America Love It or Leave It” echo in both eras. 

During Flash’s hitchhiking trip across the country, he confronts many discordant types of people, including law enforcement, who question his values, and he must defend himself. The hostile conversations Flash encounters, even around the dinner table, are similar to ones I have recently seen. In some ways the ’60s seem less divisive, but that might be my view in retrospect. Despite the distrust of other voices and the general malaise of the Vietnam War, along with their own personal failures, Flash and his fellow characters embody a sense of hope and possible reconciliation. I wish we could get back to that tenuous feeling. 

How autobiographical is this story?

My experiences provide the grist of the novel. I hitchhiked across the country, served on Adak, smoked a lot of weed, confronted poverty, and experienced relationships both idyllic and doomed. However, the ultimate story of Lucky Ride is invented as are all of the characters. Some scenes are similar to events that happened in real life, but more scenes are entirely imagined. It’s possible though unintentional that a character might share a quirk or trait with a real person. This includes Flash the narrator, who is not me, though I wish I had some of his qualities. My intent was to tell an entertaining story--an historical novel--not a history or a memoir.  


Why did you decide to make use of flashbacks to help tell Flash’s story?

I understand that some editors and writing teachers discourage flashbacks, but they provide key dramatic devices and perspectives within Lucky Ride. Since much of hitchhiking, and travel in general, involves long durations of dullness between moments of excitement, the flashbacks fill in dramatic space. I see them as similar to Shakespearean comedy scenes within his tragedies. 

Flashbacks also fit because Flash is trying to reconcile his past with his present and future, and he recalls his friends on Adak, for example, when he is on the road to visit them. Similarly, Flash remembers earlier scenes with Ronnie when he is considering the next steps in their unraveling relationship. The flashbacks tend to be stories themselves and often humorous. The Adak flashbacks in particular might be stories you would tell your friends over a beer.

The entire story is told over one long cross-country road trip from New York to California and back again. How did you decide to structure the novel the way you did?

On one level Lucky Ride describes Flash’s wild hitchhiking trip, but it’s also the story of his dying marriage and his struggle to reconstruct his life after his military service, which is echoed by several other characters. I structured the novel around the road trip because it contains both the desire for escape and the yearning for home and closure we endure when our relationships are falling apart. Similarly, characters separated from their families or stranded in places like Adak confront the depths of homesickness. When they emerge from an experience of physical and emotional displacement, they try to reconnect the pieces of their former lives, but none of it quite fits. I liken this to the feeling of coming home after a long trip when everything has changed but your memory of the way it was before you left.

What feeds your writing process?

I like to write first thing in the morning, after a short walk and a cup of coffee. My walks and  my dreams often give me an idea or phrase to get me going. Music is a great background for writing, but I find I cannot listen to vocals. My preferred genre are jazz and classical music, though I tend most often to queue up jazz. Miles Davis is one of my favorite artists, and his album “Bitches Brew” has carried me through many writing sessions. The unstructured feel of the tunes sets my mind free.

Can you describe your journey as a writer, how you got to the point of publishing your first novel?

The key word for my writing journey is persistence. I always wanted to write, and while in high school my first career choice was journalism, which I stoked by writing for my school and college newspapers. After I dropped out of college and got sucked into the draft, I returned to college under the GI Bill and finished with a double major in English and Political Science. Unfortunately, I found no viable journalism jobs. To pay the bills I fell back on the technical experience I had gained before I entered the service. Along the way I also acquired a passion for literature, which blossomed into writing my own poetry and stories. 

I earned an MA in English by attending night classes, and I eventually left my job to accept a PhD fellowship. After graduate school I taught college English as a visiting lecturer, but I could not land a position with any stability. So I went back to technical work. In parallel I continued to write whenever I could, and I picked up a few poetry and fiction publications. Now that I’ve retired from chasing software bugs, I have concentrated on writing. I am grateful to my publisher Unsolicited Press for allowing me to live my dream.

Who are the authors who most inspired you while writing Lucky Ride?

The road story is integral to our narrative tradition, of course, from Homer and Chaucer through Jack Kerouac and later writers. When I realized the book was best structured as a road story, my first inspiration was Jack Kerouac, but most novels are journeys of one kind or another, e.g. birth to adulthood, infatuation to marriage, courage to disillusionment. I love Kerouac’s characters, their visions, and their literary aspirations. His prose is mesmerizing. But Kerouac’s characters seldom if ever hitchhike, so in that regard I feel kinship with John Steinbeck’s characters who have nothing but the road. I also draw on Tom Wolfe with Ken Kesey’s famous bus, and Hunter S. Thompson. My narrative style probably owes more to Hemingway and Raymond Chandler, but I love all good writing.

What would you like your readers to take away from the book?

I hope readers will share moments of realization and epiphany with the characters as they confront quirky people and unusual places while struggling with their own cycles of young love, divorce, and reconciliation. I hope the irreverent content and fast pace of the novel will draw readers into the experience. I want readers to enjoy the ride.