Photos taken at the Museum of Human Evolution (Museo de la Evolución Humana (MEH)) Burgos.

THE LONG SIDEWALK

The sidewalk is long. 

You can’t see to the end of it. 

At first, you figure it’s just perspective, 

but as you move along it, 

the sidewalk physically narrows. 

Soon you find there is no room 

for you to turn around. 

So you keep walking forward, 

the only way you can go. 

The sidewalk borders  

a dark woods to one side; 

a swift river to the other. 

A misstep could plunge you helplessly into either. 

The narrowing continues until

you have to take your steps single file, 

one foot directly in front of the other. 

Further on, the sidewalk turns sideways, 

merging into the horizon, 

a line you must tread like a tightrope, 

lest you plunge helplessly 

into the future or the past.

Dinner in Colombo

He’s having

An egg kottu

At a random place

On Galle Road

In Colombo,

Trying to

Hold back

This massive smile

As he eats,

He loves

Sri Lanka.

Taylor Dibbert is a writer, journalist, and poet in Washington, DC. “Invictus,” his debut poetry collection, is due out in January 2024.

You never know they’re gone until it’s too late.

The sun blossoms in the distance,

piercing bespeckled eyes,

leaving them in tears,

having never seen dying beauty before.

Sunlight takes eight minutes

and twenty seconds

to race across violet oceans,

to make its presence known.

Cosmic oceans drown the screaming.

We don’t hear the sun

because the voices would be deafening.

We are not ready to hear it cry.

We never know when the screaming halts.

We never know when the calls stop.

We never know when the requiem plays.

We never know they’re gone

until it’s too late.

The Ephemeral World Then, 7:57 on the Clock, Prose Poems for Lost Souls 

one

the wild summer sun and the countenance of the earth 

the two men in Orlando were talking about baseball, and thinking of it, the two men in Nevada were talking about hockey. the first two spoke of spring training and the second two of drafts and players old and new. each time I went away from the group and tried to find what the landscape said. birds or the lakes, the desert sun or the vastness of rocky natural structures. they were not wrong per se, but they never looked up to see the sun, thought I. and the dusk would begin soon enough, and not having seen the brightness and the horizon, the firmament clouds say, and not having listened to the wind, then what would they do and what would they really know beyond statistics and local gossip? 

two

Cars and Stars, and Coyote Road Abridged, Destinies and Nonduality-Advaita-Vedanta

first I was a incarnated and then not long after I was in a little store on the south west side of an intersection that was almost always grey and dirty, unwelcoming and represented the tough and rugged parts of a metropolis and not the good aspects. I wonder if anything is still there where that shop was. I suppose something is there. in the middle was a huge display with toy cars. i didn’t want the cars and never thought of it,- not even one car and not even once. I just liked how it all looked. I was not identified w/the world in the way others were. Later I was gifted many, many toy cars and the person taking care of me stole them. 

decades later I sat with the two blondes on a large swing in the dusk in a northern town. one, the Piscean had long hair and one had short they were saying how the world was and were very smart. yes one was a Pisces and I don’t like Pisces but she was on the level and an exception. her eyes and her cheeks looked like a Pisces woman, as were the problems she struggled with. I told them they were great people the two of them which was true, but that i had to go. a few weeks later the one called me and I knew something was wrong at the first ring because she never called me. she was calling to say the blonde Piscean on the level woman was dead. she had been killed in a car accident by a drunk driver. 

I thought of how much I didn’t like cars much anymore, and I was soon under the summer dusk but the dusk would turn to night which is dark and the summer would turn to autumn which is less colourful indeed and the autumn or fall speaks of winter and it’s bold and cold and grey times that wait like a disease or an unfortunate or even tragic destiny. 

three

beyond the towns 

In the denser parts of the town where there were more houses, more infrastructure, more electric light and other, there had been snow but it melted. Yet, not too far north of there where the town ended, an old brick church unintentionally marking a quick liminal way between the two, a church from another, simpler time,  well there began snow. and that snow, because no heat troubled it, stayed on the ground and branches and the whole world there… evergreens-sumac-stones, little streams, wide and narrow paths, birch trees, shriveling strange old mushrooms plus a myriad of other things of course,…and far,- so far in a distant field framed by beige reeds that danced just a bit for a winter wind whose end had reached them, a hawk sat at the very top of an old tree that was leafless. it surely surveyed the landscape stoically, sagaciously, and it looked for some reason that it had been there forever. how the hawk is loved more than the world. how the hawk means more than the whole world. how the hawk by the snow in the abandoned winter fields under the opacity of the firmament is then the world. 

four

those old leaves and the ridge or the valley floor

wandering along the old path. how old is that path and the surrounding ones and who made them through the summer way, the autumnal breeze, the winter snow wafting or the spring rain light and kissing the air? the aged tree, fallen a long time ago, off the ridge and across the valley floor, its root system exposed and looking like a thousand intertwined phantoms from an underworld unknown. up there somewhere, red sumac that receives the snow, and the sumac is calm, stoic, for maybe it knows something on the other side of drama or has never believed fully in the world. yes the blue sky peaks out briefly but soon, too soon, it is grey and overcast again. the evergreens and old leaves, the valley and ridge and the small and large paths see it through always. so shall we.

Poems

***
no one except the ground 
knows how tired trams say goodbye 
to each other

***
a hungry belly 
gives birth to a rifle

***
The sky is moving
The ant's gaze falls into the suggestion of life
Failure of life after adulthood

Older children are moving into the abyss
The abyss from which it all began

The iron tooth of a smile haunts the blind
The ash sketch of a heart beats like a real one

Who fell into whose life at that moment when a billion natural coincidences came together?
Gender, age, physical (etc...) contingencies of thought over the abyss of existence
Examination of immediacy, a patch of eyes, a rush of touch
And overhead the sky is in continuous motion

Reprint by WordCity Literary Journal
 
***
Handsome boy playing games
Here will be a checkpoint of childhood
Here will be parting with illusions
There will be grass of hearts
There will be a teddy bear like das tod
 
Women's hands do not bake bread for him
A lover or mistress will not make him happy
A boy is playing a game of war in a game of disappearance

Reprint by WordCity Literary Journal

***
Restoration of the sand from which we molded the largest palace
The last moment before parting
 
Bergmanian is leaning against the blue sky
Peonies of views became a dream of tired palms
And above the heads of the trees appears the trunk of antiquity
Thus begins the wild sunset of the little hearty sun

Reprint by WordCity Literary Journal

***
grapes ripen
pupils (eyes) learn 
to recall the past

Reprint by Ranger magazine

***
Аgony
АgonyАgony
АgonyАgonyАgony
АgonyАgonyАgonyАgony
АgonyАgonyАgonyАgonyАgony
АgonyАgonyАgonyАgonyАgonyAgony
Аnd then the skin turns to dust like jesus never existed

Reprint by Ranger magazine

***
eating pudding 
is the same 
as what one 
can do
іn an unknown war
.?!+=[]<<€£¥$₽*%
(but it's free)

***
Green multi-meaning people
The last viola adjacent to the heart of the air coffin
Someone was knocking on the door of every house that night
Everyone was knocking on the door of some house that night
In order to light a candle of hope in the window
Forever

Reprint by Slant


***
Everyone likes you so much that it feels like you're dying
Wild dog masks instead of faces and their own bones are gnawed for dinner
Dog masks of tenderness insomnia of honor
How often are wars called just?
How often do we fight for our own love?

Reprint by Slant

***
Smile to the hidden camera
The gas chambers are the tuning forks of death
The art of escaping in time
The art of being invisible
Inexorable time: instead of a walk in the parks, I end up on a photo session of police surveillance cameras

Reprint by Slant

***
Constitution of meaning
The existence of life for the sake of the existence of the grave

Beyond the grave —
Nothing from which 
Everything began

Reprint by Slant

***
Dancing in the silence
The silence of the movements 
Is inevitable
A shovel digs out the plague

Reprint by Slant

***
Red triangles pop up in front of my eyes
A bird graveyard grows under the bed

What message is carefully carried like a twig in the beak of a bird?
How many cemeteries would it take to justify all the wars in the world?

***
The sea is like grief
We are all rowers
We are all drowners

Water counts its quantity
We are all counted
We are all (united?) units

We floated up from the bottom to start drowning

***
The tree plays with its branches
The tree plays with other people's children
The tree becomes a home for the birds

Can a person become a home for someone?

***
A dog walks in the woods just to be a dog
Grass asking ass about shit
And glass of silence is woven into the conversation

Nobody picks up after a dog that doesn't have an owner
Grass doesn't care
The grass can take anything

The dog wants to die
Вut won't


***
1
I leave the black room and see the night
There are no butterflies visible outside or inside the stomach
Only black figures surround everything around
The cold dissolves after turning on the heater
[That's what I call the sun now]
I haven't seen the sun for a long time
And my grandmother will never see anything again

2
I have a few hours left before the apartment doors are locked. Outside.

3
Nobody will come
Nobody's coming back
Nobody will rise again
There's not enough air for anyone
No one has enough love

4
The glass against which the bird is pressed is silent
I conduct the notes of silence

The grass warmed by silence grows
Music turns into vapor

5
Oak trees say nothing at night
However, just like during the day

My hands are overgrown with leaves
I'm full of humility

Reprint by Ice floe press



Dead daughter

What would I say to my daughter when war broke out?

Perhaps people are animals, but with the difference that people kill even when they are not hungry. Why kill a man if you can't eat his meat?

Perhaps I would have told my daughter that she is an adult and must form her own attitude toward what is going on.

Perhaps I could tell the world history of wars, if history were not a whore.

Perhaps I would have tried to explain scientifically what was going on.

Perhaps I would have said that over the course of thousands of years the human brain has degenerated and shrunk in size faster than it had previously grown in size for hundreds of thousands of years.

Perhaps I would be silent.

Perhaps I would have taken a piece of paper and drawn a human being in the shape of a bird. Surely, I would have drawn a cage for the bird.

Perhaps I would have bought a dummy gun at the market and pointed it at my own daughter to explain what is exploding outside the window.

Perhaps I would run away from home so I wouldn't have to look for my daughter to explain the inexplicable.

Perhaps I would have said: "It's okay, nothing's going on."

Perhaps I would be silent again. Or screamed. Or cried.

Perhaps I would have scraped a crushed ant off my shoe and shown it to my daughter.

Maybe I would apologize to all the children of the world for being a fucked-up adult.

Perhaps I would have torn all the toy soldiers' limbs off for clarity and honesty.

Perhaps I would have died.

Perhaps I would have told my daughter that there is nothing after death.

Perhaps I would have drank myself to death.

Perhaps I would have shown my daughter all the war movies of the world so that she would take a stand on her own.

Perhaps I would have written my daughter an e-mail explaining what was going on.

Perhaps I would have torn apart all the children's toys so that my daughter would finally understand what war is all about.

 

I didn't say anything to my daughter when the war started.

Because I don't and never did have a daughter: I only have the war outside my window.

Reprint by The Wise Owl

AT MORNING..

A soft voice roars from my window,

Whispering in my ear like a promise,

I wake up with open arms like a debate,

At dawn..

A thousand eager eyes are hot in my body,

The sun caresses and casts a sultry glance.

The heart is a lamp, the altar is waiting to make a bond between us,

At dawn..

A smile fills my face,

I run and wake up the steppes.

Take it from me, I have an eltar smiley,

At dawn..

The bird that hit my window is chirping,

Swallows swoop in and sing.

At this time, flowers bloom on the porch of the heart,

At dawn..

It lands on my face like a butterfly,

Sorcery removes hair and sadness.

In my chest, love insists, live,

At dawn..

My passion spreads into love,

A long way of appetite opens.

Life’s hand in my arms when I’m cringing,

At dawn..

If I write wings, the blue sky seems to fly,

The sound of the soul, like the melody of nature.

Is it the flight of a bird of dreams,

At dawn..

You ask for happiness, I ask for happiness, happiness in the palm of your hand,

Happiness is in your hand, I will shout mountains of words.

I will be full of enthusiasm, good luck eyes.

At dawn..

Mulikboyev O’tkir Kochkor oglu Koshrabot district, Samarkand region, Republic of Uzbekistan