Open your eyes
I hold the utmost respect in my heart,
For those who are never separated from their families.
Some fathers, however, wear sharp arrows,
slowly eroding the rights of their daughters to freedom.
They say they love them, but they are bound tightly,
Their limited minds, girls, forbidding the light.
Oh how they violate the wishes of their daughters, .
saw the depth of his illness.
It is considered a sin to write as a girl,
Not knowing they are caught in the dark.
How many different souls do you cover?
You cannot understand the magnitude of this.
Harming girls is a horrible crime.
Education, dreams, and time to be rejected.
But in this big world, there can be disappointment,
However, women deserve a safe place and housing.
No sleep or torture, let it be done,
Because they are beautiful and safe.
So open your eyes and see,
The power and strength of your daughters.
Let go of the closed bonds of life, .
and give them the freedom to really shine.
Truly compassionate and determined, Anila Bukhari has dedicated her life to supporting children’s rights and affecting a better world. Born with a compassionate heart, Anila has crossed continents and touched the lives of countless individuals through her incredible work.
Anila lived under the importance and transformative power of education from an early age. With an unwavering commitment to empowering children, she embarked on a mission to provide quality education to those who needed it the most. Anila’s efforts span many countries, making an indelible impact on the lives of children and their communities.
One of Anila’s most important accomplishments has been her work to raise awareness of the refugee situation. Understanding the plight of displaced individuals, he took it upon himself to educate more than 1,000 refugees through online forums. Through her dedication and innovative approach, she created a YouTube channel specifically tailored to meet the needs of visually impaired individuals, ensuring that they too had access to the world of knowledge and literature .
Anila’s passion for social justice extends to her tireless efforts in fighting child marriage and advocating for women’s rights. Through her powerful poems and impactful campaigns, she has highlighted the challenges young girls face and the urgent need to end child marriage. Her work has not only raised awareness but also inspired action, and has brought about a major change in legal and social attitudes.
WAITING TO MEET YOU AGAIN
If ever we are in this life or the next,
I will be there waiting to meet you.
Take me to the sky and beyond my imagination
Touch me deeply and tenderly in the depths of my soul
For my heart pines for you over and over
no matter which life we are living in.
Your name is always on my lips when I speak,
as well as the memory of you kiss
At night as I sleep, you enter my dreams gently.
At times they are so real that I cry out your name.
I have no control over the outcome of our life together,
Because, my Love, One who knows best has already
drawn that line and I can not erase it.
Alone...
Loneliness and sadness grew in my heart without you
I tried to find in someone else what I found in you
What I failed to realize is that you can not be replaced
When two hearts are one, none can separate them,
no matter how much I try to move forward..
If he would try to touch my hand, it would chill me
I couldn't look in his eyes...
Because I couldn't find my reflection
You hold the key that locks these golden chains around my heart
I need your kiss, your touch, and the love only we share
But I have no answers...
Because though we are apart in distance
our hearts couldn't be closer
So I will stay alone with your memory
'cause I can't live a life with someone else that was only meant for us
I pray that one day you find your way back to me
You will find me where you left me.... Alone
WHEN I SMILE!
Do you ever wonder why I smile?
I smile when I see a beautiful sunset
When I hear birds sing on a silent day
When a baby laughs, I shine
For many years I lost my smile
Then I saw yours, and slowly
I found my smile again.
Now our world has changed
Our destiny is clear ahead of us
You can rely on me; My world is in you!
Could you not see?
And yes, I am smiling now
So when you see me smile
I hope you realize I smile because of you .... ❤
Meanwhile, in a galaxy not that far away
Last night The Empire
Strikes Back, & a shot of
Yoda resting his 900-year-
old chin on the hand grip
of his walking stick. &
today I am sitting with
my weary chin on the
handle of my walking
stick, waiting for the plane
to take us to Sydney, five
years after I last flew. In
between, faulty knees +
hearing + breathing. & no
holograms around to en-
able me to use The Force.
& on the flight south
I find in the seat-back
pocket in front of me
a finger-sized bar of
milk chocolate, & The
Road, a book by Cormac
McCarthy. Though temp-
ted, I leave the chocolate
where it is, but take the
book to take home with
me. There it will be
placed at the back of a
queue which already
includes the last half-
dozen Lucas Davenport
novels by John Sandford
which I am re-reading
& a number of other
crime novels picked up
at remainder prices in
the (almost) local Big
W department store.
Do not remove all the chairs
The pipe is overhead. Free from all disc-
ursive attachment, it can float anew in
its natural silence. Make no mistake,
nothing is easier to recognize than a pipe.
This is the first rule to be observed. The
second? Never sit down to the piano unin-
vited, unless you are alone in the parlor. An
old custom not without basis, because the
entire function is so scholarly as to allow
the object it represents to appear without
hesitation or equivocation. & the third? The
small articles of a wardrobe require constant
care. Should be of such material as will bear
the crush of a crowded store without injury.
A dignified, modest reserve is the surest way
to repel impertinence. No truer remark was
ever made. In vain the text unfurls below
the drawing with all the attentive fidelity
of a label in a scholarly book. A figure in
the shape of writing. The image of a text.
Sources:
This Is Not a Pipe, by Michel Foucault
The Ladies’ Book of Etiquette (1860), by Florence Hartley
the masturbator
hear him
in the library stacks
oohing and aahing
beating that rhythm
to chinese beauty magazines
see him
head down
on hard wood tables
snoring and scratching his balls
sleeping like a child of heaven
a wad of paper towel
still clutched in his hand.
this work email
today
i’m not going to answer
this work email
i may never answer it
i want the person who sent it
to sit in their office
and wonder why i didn’t respond
yes
i’m going to let
this email sit in my inbox
and rot
like raw meat in the hot summer sun
because
it’s the only form
of independence
that i truly have left.
bait box blues
i watch
the exterminator
put poison and steel wool
into the holes in the wall of my office
watch him set a huge yellow trap
with a dollop of chocolate
and line up bait boxes
like rows of black, plastic apartment buildings
the rat has run by me
twice in a month
the second time
i sprained my foot
trying to get away from him
the exterminator looks at peace
while he sets the traps
he gets up off the ground
and says, we’ll get him
fooling me into a certainty
that i haven’t felt in a long while
even though tomorrow i know
the steel wool
will be pulled out from all the walls
the chocolate from the trap
licked up and gone
those bait boxes pushed around
like an earthquake hit
and a small pile of rat shit
will be waiting for me
on my desk
reminding me of my true place
in this pecking order.
halcyon
each human transgression
is its own freshly sharp blade of grass
i try not to hold it against anyone
but sometimes you just want someone to blame
for all of this sadness and futility
a god to shake a fist at
and i could say i make
the best of things in my spare time
but i don’t
i’m a hungry man with a fork
in a world full of nothing but soup
angry almost always
and growing older ungracefully
another car wreck of a human life
musing those halcyon days
that never were
as the stoplight changes
from green to red
and any semblance of home
seems an eternity away.
everything
and
when she said
it feels like
you hate everything now
there was
nothing left to do
but wash the dirty dishes
sitting in the
dirty sink.
John Grochalski is the author of five poetry collections, three novels, and the forthcoming novella Wolves of Berlin Play Amateur Night at the Flute and Fiddle Pub. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Circle Family
Can someone find me a map?
Where there is no bloody barbed wire fence
There will only be lines of love
Villages of humanity will undoubtedly reach the sky
The paths along the way will be dreamy
The song of communism will be heard in the flock of birds
The tone of union will anchor the language of the earth
The footprints will not be pierced by the arrows of hatred
A flower's aroma will grow in the congealed wound
Let our children draw that map
Poetry will touch the edge of that map
All the accumulated troubles will be removed
There will be no tears in the world of circles
Hungry eyes will not burn.
Trading
I will trade my rusty flesh and cold blood
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my emotions and lifeless harmony
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my citizenship and foreign passport
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my morals and unspoken ethics
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my broken heart and warm hands
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my ageless smile and falling tears
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my heathy organs and memories
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
I will trade my unclear accent and colourless dreams
for a pack of cigarettes and a liquor.
But I’ll never trade my past and homeland
for a casket of the war I barely survived by hanging…
Tiny Eschers After Rain
If one of these unrolled pillbugs looked up,
glassy, beaded dew would refract the light
from the sky and bend their world of vertical green lines
into spheres of shining blue.
Even if the pillbugs were too nearsighted
to see the geese above them
arrowheading their way north,
the potato bugs could hear them.
Honking-honked birds with their straight necks
crissing one season, crossing the next:
for centuries they’ve been stitching the north and south together
so that pillbugs can have a whole world
beyond their tiny patch.
