Departures

losing CO2 in the Jet2 queue,
staining Carhartt with heartache, 
barcodes beep & promises pall

between staff & sightseers 
& parents cheering up children 
& new lovers arriving
chinos & eyes empty
into a grey tray, passing 
Saint Peter with an automatic 
& cutting through pictureless clouds
to arrivals, you were waiting,
& you opened your arms, like wings





Villa Diodati

like a leaf, you were ambered,
acquiescent, ambling the grounds – 
gravel crunched with Converse 
& a tableaux daydream: 
Byron sailing, or the Shelleys 
in love – & then, the villa doors 
unveiled untouched antiques
& portraits eyeing every word 
like the porcelain it was spoken over – 
& sobering outside, ringtones 
revealed Omicron will part you,
for months or more, before
the sun left for another city,
& the stars began to emerge
with the shyness of spiders




Geneviève


there you were: star-crossed
                      & stark, nipping the neck
               of Calvinus, flicking Winstons from windowsill, 
                              scribbled MA sonnets 
                        & scrunched love letters smothered
                                                    under feet & frown, 
                                          Twelve Carat Toothache
                                     cutting the silence,
            your rib cage crushing, lungs 
                                   heaving in the June heatwave
               with undiagnosed pneumonia
                                  & pleural effusion, 
                                 coughing blood
                            & wheezing cheater




Light Years

another spin around the sun, & since, I’ve learnt that every mirror needs light: if light is c = 1/(e0m0)1/2 = 2.998 X 108m/s (James Clerk Maxwell, circa. 1864), it’s the magnetism keeping us close – if light is electromagnetic radiation (Wikipedia), it’s the life of moths – if light is a wave, it's scattering most from our hearts of silvered sand & limestone – if light is The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), then it’s you refracting all my colours – & if light is a distance, it’s always between us, because I have realised there is not a greater love poem than a blank piece of paper, or the cursor, blinking for us to begin, reflecting me in the screen where you have been waiting for light years 

Capetonian Dillon Israel’s dream: on starting out, the unproduced playwright and his city

Dillon Israel is a South African actor, creative, storyteller and an unproduced playwright. He lives in Ravensmead, a quiet suburb in Cape Town, near Tygerberg Hospital. He enjoys cooking, baking cakes, making desserts and he loves the outdoors. He reached out to me. He was looking for a mentor. He has a lot of energy. I can hear it in the sound of his voice as I listen to the voice messages he sends me. I came into contact with Dillon Israel in September of this year.

He is twenty-nine years old and wants to “make it”, like so many people in this country in their twenties, hungry to work in the film and television industry. He loves watching South African television, Chinese films and Turkish shows. He asks me to explain the meaning of his dreams. I tell him that there’s symbolism and meaning behind everything in a dream. We have become friends. He shares with me his hopes and his dreams. I tell him that he was born with a gift, but whether he believes me or not is another matter.

We talk about our struggles and depression, loneliness and hardships, the church, mindfulness, having an “attitude of gratitude” and prayer. We talk about our problems, the major issues in our lives that we have in common, we laugh, discuss the antics of our dogs. We tell each other that our mothers find it difficult to say they are proud of us but that we know they are proud of us anyway. We have brought happiness into each other’s lives.

By day he attends a college situated in Bellville in Cape Town. He loves his mother, his dog, Snowy, watching films on Netflix, his niece, writing, listening to Adele and gospel music, making malva pudding on a Sunday, going to the shops with his mother and, like the North American writer John Irving, being alone. Dillon Israel is a young man who prefers his own company to that of others. He lives faith and has a spiritual outlook on life. He prays, has taught me to remain prayerful in my own life and encourages me in my own faith.

This Capetonian storyteller is soft spoken, thoughtful, highly sensitive, an empath, what you would describe as a dreamer and he thinks before he speaks. Nobody has encouraged him to pursue this dream, writing for the stage. Not his family, not his teachers in high school and not the “drama people” he reached out to in the industry. Most certainly, no one has ever told him to become a poet. When I tell him that he can achieve this, he is nervous. He says that he doesn’t believe me. I hope his thinking will change his belief system.

This is why I text him on a daily basis and motivate him. I want to inspire him as much as he has inspired me. I can’t understand the world we live in where teachers do not encourage their students to read and to write. Both are difficult to master but can increase the learner’s self-confidence and help develop personal growth, improve self and lead to an individual having a fulfilling life. I want his dream to come true like mine did. I don’t want him to struggle as I did in youth in making my dream to become a full-time writer a reality. I tell him he has his entire life ahead of him. That he has enough time for the inner vision that he has for his life to manifest and become a reality. I ask Dillon Israel if he reads. He doesn’t like reading, he says. He prefers watching television and series on Netflix. I can’t relate.

I grew up in a house filled with books, rarely watching television. Books were my university, my school of life. It was Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast that inspired me to go back to writing after a period of illness and hospitalisation for manic depression. I found a message of hope in Salinger’s Catcher In The Rye, in the novels of Fitzgerald, the masculine power of Jay Gatsby, John Updike, and in the poetry of Rilke. These authors, Rilke, brought me back to life. We come from two different generations, Dillon Israel and I. We are as different as chalk and cheese, two polar opposites. I tell him that in this industry you can’t take rejection personally.

I tell him to always be humble and kind, like the country musician Tim McGraw’s song. I give him life advice. I give him writing advice. I tell him to write what he knows, that he should write from his own life experience, that he should make characters out of the people he knows, passersby. I tell him to do a poetry course with award-winning South African writer and poet Finuala Dowling. I tell him that doing an online course in creative writing will help him. Already his English is improving. I talk to him as if he was a younger sibling just about to start out in the world. I talk to him about looking for opportunities, I talk to him about responsibility and the writing life, seeking daily inspiration. He tells me I’m changing his life. When I think of Dillon Israel painstakingly writing in a notebook on his desk I think of the poetic genius of Ocean Vuong.

Today he is listening to Jimmy Swaggart. We don’t have much time to talk. I’m working on a novel with both a modern and historical context and perspective and he has a project that he’s working on for college. I send him links to poetry by Russian Anna Akhmatova (“Memory of Sun”, Austrian-German Rainer Maria Rilke (“You Who Never Arrived”) and the North American Charles Bukowski (“Bluebird” and “So Now”). He is excited about writing. So far, he is making a lot of progress. He has disciplined himself and I am impressed by his confidence, his style of writing and I’m just happy that he is happy, that he’s starting to believe in himself.

It’s such an honour and a privilege to help another person, suffering for their art, to help them achieve their dreams, to tell them that absolutely nothing stands in their way. He might not know who Athol Fugard is, the late Taliep Peterson and Dawid Kramer’s productions that made it to New York and the United Kingdom, but I can inspire him to reach those heights. Maybe one day he gets to “pay it forward” and mentor someone of his own.

I confide in him my love of Barbra Streisand films, Yentl and The Way We Were. He tells me his parents used to enjoy watching films like that. I feel my age. We forget about the lonely journeys that forge our poetic and literary forays. The childhood that we create in our imagination, the childhood from memory. I feel that mentorship is a calling. I fear that people think there is no more reading of books to be done. Now there is the reign of social media that has taken over our access to information. I believe in dreamers. I too was a dreamer once upon a time. I say good night to Dillon and his Snowy and finish watching a documentary on Anna Akhmatova. Afterwards I write a poem on aspects of the personality affected by loneliness.

The music in the poetry speaks to me, speaks to my soul. Tomorrow, Dillon Israel will set off for college, nurture the dream of being a playwright, and writing for the stage full-time in his heart. I’ll be at my desk working on my latest novel.

An Ecstasy

Whether beloved

Buddha or saint

Your breath quickens

Lips part pulse

Races your lids grow

Heavy so heavy

You aren’t bothered by

Your hair a bit disheveled

(I wonder if Saint

Teresa’s toes curled)

We cannot help ourselves

We ache for bliss

Mystical or corporal

Seek out an ecstasy

Seek to lose

Ourselves in the vast

Expanse of another

For a moment euphoria

Unburdening our identity

Setting aside agenda

Ownership power

The shame of suffering

Unleashing devotion in

Willingly relinquishing

Our bodies our souls.

How It Is

Here’s how it is

As I understand it

(Have I got this right?)

We go about our business

Scurrying about the planet

Clumsily clamoring for a spot

Spinning round the sun

Occasionally looking up

All crowded into a precious

Little space worshipping

Pondering upon the stars

And of course God who

Resides beyond those stars:

A lanky decrepit white man

Dementia setting in

At the very least quaintly

Absent-minded though still

Omnipotent and omniscient

Who merely surveils

Suffering from afar

Lazy old voyeur

And once in a great while

Sends someone special

When we get a bit untidy

On the seasonal precipice

Of self-destruction when 

We slaughter one another

Over slight differences 

In interpreting God’s

Incompetence God’s love

Another Silence

For those sages

Lao or Chuang Tzu

(Maybe even Siddhartha)

Silence came naturally

Nirvana turned slowly

Silence now requires

The unattainable –

Far too much patience

To be at all effective

To have any impact

Upon our lives

Our intricate elaborately

Constructed karma

The well-intentioned

Vows of silence

Of monks and nuns

In serene monasteries

Seem quaint but futile

Solutions to the clamor

Of a peevish throng

And I am thinking

Anymore silence

Is rather irresponsible

A reckless wu-wei

An obsequious inaction 

All spins too swiftly

Suffering too pervasive

Comes hard and fast

Though priceless

We’ve run out of time

For mute circumspection

To adequately flourish

David Sapp, writer and artist, lives along the southern shore of Lake Erie in North America. A Pushcart nominee, he was awarded Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Grants for poetry and the visual arts. His poetry and prose appear widely in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. His publications include articles in the Journal of Creative Behavior, chapbooks Close to Home and Two Buddha, a novel Flying Over Erie, and a book of poems and drawings titled Drawing Nirvana.

Essence of Love

Thee, heavenly eyes,

Astonishingly invites,

the butterflies to flight

and invades the engaging delight

Yet, When my heart strikes 

Sensuously Thee, impression excites

Again, our memories reunite

And echoes the enjoyable night

Thee, the dazzling sensations!

Multiples the frenzy attractions

O’ Silk and soft redemptions

Unlash and splash the attention  

Ah! Transparency reveals 

When thee, heavenly heal

And yes, our generosity ever deals

As thee, enthrallingly appeal

Yes! The Love senses!

Thee, mysterious smile, unveil the mate

The essence of loveliness encapsulates 

And altogether the imprints activate

Ah! Every instant trace my sight

Yet then, I am delicately alight

Cuddle with a pigeon often at night

Oh! make me live a thousand might

Thee, Beautifies the beauty

And slightly mesmerize the duty

Joy and jumble in a fragrance of fumes

Cup and cure the color of resumes

Smiles

Yes! Essence of emotions

Whispers every single night

Like an exciting notion in flight.

 

A Floral Fragrance

You are a Fragrance embedded in my mind

You are a Fragrance of an exceptional kind

Fragrance of beautiful red roses 

Fragrance of cherry blossoms in poses 

Intensifying to the heaven

Fragrance extended and embedded at eleven

That is always fresh, pleasant,

and cherished the fumes of his scent

Yet, a sensation, an affection

And musical memories of discussion

Still imprinted and implanted

Glint and softly granted

You are a Fragrance fused with zenith and Zeit

Wrap with loveliness and yet too quiet

Polishing an underdone art

Bringing a light to the sensitive sight

Pleasure, pain, struggle, and delight

O’ The lesson of all kinds

Just like the embedded fragrance forever in my mind

Invisibly color the uncolored

And fade away the veiling blurred

Sparkling eyes having visions inside

Innocence offers ravishing rides

O’ The fragrance of generosity and humble

Regards, Respect, and dignified dale make it a bubble

A feeling of expressing is now double

Fragrance of all styles

Fragrance that touches the unheard miles

Grooming the dimness into eager lights

O’ the Dazzlingly fragranced like a hearth

Dispersal at the end of your breath.

Tajalla Qureshi, a radiant literary gem from Pakistan, stands as a beacon of creative brilliance. A wordsmith par excellence, she masterfully blends introspection, devotion, and creativity into compelling narratives that transport readers to enchanting dimensions. Her art lies in weaving words into wonders.

 Additionally, a true polymath in the literary world, Tajalla’s portfolio spans poetry, creative columns, essays, and flash fiction. Each piece is a testament to her unyielding passion and finesse, intricately designed to evoke profound emotions, spark vivid imagination, and inspire the human spirit. 

On the flip, celebrated as an international interviewer, columnist, and editor, Tajalla’s voice resonates far and wide, captivating audiences around the globe. Her unique perspective, lyrical style, and profound insights have cemented her place as a leading figure in contemporary literature. Furthermore, her work exemplifies the transformative power of words. With every sentence, she crafts an intricate tapestry of emotions, ideas, and lived experiences, inviting readers to embark on a journey of introspection, growth, and boundless wonder.

4 Poems on
Iconic Writers’ Habitats

Chateau Marmont
(1929-present)

a Gothic French princess on a hill
overlooking the Sunset Strip
a white stone beauty with
a casual toss of gray
head of slate roofing
earthquake proof, turreted
the castle still stands
almost a hundred
years of tread and wear
parties, scandals, affairs
of musicians and actors
of writers making history.

They came under cover
of darkness entered silently
through the garage, no need
for anyone to spot them
no bright-lit lobby
their shame, their value
in the critical eyes of a culture
where privacy not guaranteed
but at the castle they could
mourn, drink, create
inspired and protected
by the knowing kindly staff.

A glamorous shabby-chic
version of the Loire Valley’s
Chateau d’Amboise
opened as apartments
on the teeter edge
of the stock market crash
cheap rooms with cachet.

The movie studios funded
Chateau suites for cheats
to preserve their stars’ gleam
the new owner made it safe
for Hollywood royalty
the hunchback manager
the in-house phone operator
the Garage Boys valets
and maids always silent
on the misfits, iconoclasts,
outcasts, deviants, gays
after the drunken fights
trashed rooms, broken hearts
the news had no clue.

The New York writers came
uncomfortable in LA
at home in the Chateau
Hollywood-on-the-Hudson
and they wrote scripts
Rebel without a Cause,
Sunset Boulevard,
Music Man, Ben-Hur
articles by Dominick Dunne
on the infamous O.J. trial
and so much more.

Run by eccentrics for eccentrics
the castle fell to careless hands
holding companies, banks
threatened foreclosure
the downslide of the aging belle
at the seedy top of the hill
shag rugs patched with tape
peeling paint in shreds, must
furnishings broken fixtures
shabby-genteel, a place
outside of time.

The new owner updated
an elegant conversion
with old-world charm
a historic cultural monument
where hijinks could continue:
Jim Morrison fell off the roof
a lyricist shot himself
John Belushi overdosed
the hideout hit the papers
the Chateau an open secret
of legendary, fashionable funk.

A new era, a new owner
New York nightclub magnate
full restoration upgrade
to a chic upscale loftiness
a buzzy bar scene, swanky
showbiz party exclusives
splashy bashes for the stars
their premieres and awards.

So now the old girl
looks down a long nose
from her perch on the hill
over the new Hollywood
still classic, still historic
with a modern LA brand.

The Chelsea
(1884-present)

“You’ve got a great future behind you.”
—old billboard in Times Square

New York’s most illustrious
third-rate hotel the place
Leonard Cohen made love
to an unforgiving Janis Joplin
and Thomas Wolfe wrote
You Can’t Go Home Again
and Arthur C. Clarke 
2001: A Space Odyssey
Arthur Miller the play
on his iconic ex-wife
Bob Dylan the lyrics
for Blonde on Blonde
and Dylan Thomas drank
until he died young.

The largest, longest lasting
creative community
in the world designed
as a haven for artists
in the old theater district
a cooperative building
twelve stories of red brick
in Queen Anne Revival style
with wrought iron balconies
a homey atmosphere
in-room fireplaces
a rooftop terrace
a basement kitchen
with dumbwaiters
private dining rooms
and a public café.

Attracting a cross-section
of all social classes
the rent affordable
the rooms soundproofed
for musicians and writers
north-facing windows
in studios for painters
short-term or long-term
a friendly residence
an experiment in living
in harmony with others.

By 1905 the co-op failing
financially forcing subdivision
from 125 rooms to 300
smaller spaces
then bankruptcy
after the Depression
and Hungarian émigrés
purchased and protected
the hotel and the artists
for 75 more years.

The theater district gone
meant a downhill slide
a rundown neighborhood
seedy offices, tawdry bars
and gradual hotel decay
clanging heating pipes
shabby rooms, dirty rugs
with further subdivisions
to 400 dingy rooms
still popular, still housing
knowns and unknowns
long-distance truckers
pensioners, burlesque dancers
novelists, crackpots, drunks.

A miniature Ellis Island
of the odd and avant-garde
through the ’40s and ’50s
the bohemians, the beatniks
Kerouac and Ginsberg
and the drug-fueled ’60s
Christo and Warhol
Pop artists, rock bands
Jefferson Airplane, Janis
slugging Southern Comfort
Alice Cooper with a python
wrapped around his neck.

Marijuana smoke wafting
tattered halls, tattered tenants
paying overdue rent in art
displayed on lobby walls
and hiding from hustlers
pushers, hookers, pimps
holdups, gunfire, junkies
room fires, overdoses, leaps
from the roof or out windows.

A city no longer doable
for artists, the young or old
the hotel sold, closed down
the power of the creative
community forgotten
as history made way
for the fortunate few
rooftop gardens torn up
the wall art torn down
rooms gutted and enlarged
into 155 elite suites
a lobby full of new art
a lobby bar full of chic.

In the city of ashes
the city of gold, the Chelsea
on the Register of Historic Places
the icon casts a glitter sheen
for influencer appeal.

Key West

The southernmost isle
once called Cayo Hueso
the island of bones—
bones from a battle
or Indian burial ground
so there was always this
legacy of lawlessness:
pirates, wreckers, smugglers
drugs, drinking, wilderness
only reachable by boat
the glistening white sand
water jade green and aqua
where ocean and Gulf met.

Pirates hunted for booty
until the Navy arrived
built a base, a busy port
for Greek sponge divers
for Cuban cigar makers
treasure hunters seeking
shipwrecks and sunken gold
then the hotels and shops
cottage homes and bars
the Conch Republic born
of Caribbean and Cuban influx
and escapees from elsewhere
creating a rough culture.

Henry Flagler linked the chain
Palm Beach to the Keys
the East Coast Railway
and a hotel for visitors
escaping winter storms
Prohibition’s restrictions
to where liquor flowed
the Conchs smuggling in
fat boatloads of booze
after a deadly hurricane
blew down the railroad
the Overseas Highway
the route to Key West
the tropical oasis
otherworldly, exotic
a seaside sanctuary
where art could flourish.

Hemingway in residence
fishing, drinking, writing
his most significant works
he nicknamed his island
the St. Tropez of the poor
and Tennessee Williams
bought a bungalow refuge
brought gay friends to stay
in the laissez faire outpost
of the next literary star
Thomas McGuane filming
his rock ‘n’ roll novel
Ninety-Two in the Shade
his pal Jimmy Buffett
on the soundtrack
with no real music scene
in the eclectic bars where
everyone gathered, all types:
politicians and criminals
hippies and rednecks
artists and bums and
he sang for free drinks
began to write story-songs
on the laidback island life.

When “Margaritaville” hit
the charts and the tourists
flocked to the happy hours
cheeseburgers in paradise
cruise ships, mad crowds
crime, trash and trinkets
new rents and home prices
nobody could afford
so the writers left
the millionaires, developers
vacationers and wannabes
an alcohol-fueled theme park
the old island of bones
the legacy of pirates
seeking others’ treasure
blind to it themselves.

Provincetown

A finger of land at the very tip
a sandbar to mainland Mass
a salty spit of gray isolation
after the Mayflower anchored
the women washed, their men
stole Indian corn, skirmished
before moving on to Plymouth
and Portuguese whalers arrived
harpooning thick pods to sell
whale oil, bones, baleen, the cod
catch plush so they sent for family
the railroad down from Boston and
the Cape Cod School of Art
in the diverse community
of immigrants, artists, outsiders.

Ensconced in a lunar dunescape
in the old Life-Saving Station
young Eugene O’Neill penned
19 short plays, 7 long, his first
performed in a decrepit fish shed
Bound East for Cardiff giving birth
to modern American drama
Anna Christie about the fishermen
on the island: a grand place
to be alone and undisturbed.

John Dos Passos down the street
on Commercial faced the harbor and
Norman Mailer’s house where he wrote
the majority of his books in summers
and spent his final years in:
the freest town in America
that was naturally spooky off-season
a place for murderers and suicides
with cold sea air with a bottomless chill.

Painters came for the crystal purity
of the aquatic light, translucent
fleets of squid, flocks of white
gulls drafting faded scallop boats
squawking terns chasing scarlet crabs
red-faced men on creaky piers
inhaling deep the briny scent
the slap of foamy waves
against the rocky shore.

Mary Oliver wrote for decades
lush poems on the beauty
of the island she called home
the skittish skunk, rusty fox
glistening sand and scrubby pines
the endless surf, the unending call
of the foghorn’s haunting note
winters windswept and desolate
and summer’s blast of blues
sunset orange on the salt flats
soft music in the misty dawn
of inspiration and retreat.

Greyhounds

Have you seen those women?
The confident ones?
The ones who boldly stride.
Like greyhounds they race past my garden.
As I
Barefoot
Heavy breasted
Kneel for the pulling of weeds.

THIS ACTING GIG

The world is overrun with plays,
with busy sets,
overwhelming characters.
The actors are passersby, strangers,
who fire their perverse blanks
inches from my temple.

The cars, the trains, are part of it.
The ruined buildings and
their ceaseless shadows too.
My footsteps on the blunt sidewalk
are the interminable soundtrack
to the tale which keeps on telling.

It’s a love story.
But I’m not the leading man.
It’s a drama.
Simple conversations
are so fraught with dread.
It’s a comedy.
The audience awaits
my very next pratfall.

Sometimes, I wonder
what am I doing in the cast,
why are they all looking at me,
what do I say next.

But then comes the great relief
of forgotten lines
suddenly remembered.
I’m an actor again.
I inhale my motivation.
I exhale my interminable bows.

DIARIES

Each cover had a lock

And there were five of the books in total,

one for every year from when she was 12

to her time as sweet 16.

She says she recorded everything

from the most mundane

to her deepest, darkest thoughts.

A page might consist of

what she wore to school

coupled with her feelings

toward her stepmother.

She held nothing back.

I asked her whatever happened

to her diaries.

She replied that she had stored them

in the drawer of her bed,

until she was twenty

when she took one out, began to read it.

The author was a stranger she concluded.

And it wasn’t much of a story.

So she threw them on the fire.

And those five years seemed grateful

to go up in flame.

They crackled and spat for a time

but ultimately were nothing but ashes.

Only the locks remained.

She let them simmer there.

For all I know, they simmer still.  

HAVING LOST SOMEONE

In the darkness,

overcome with grief,

maybe a hundred,

a thousand, restless souls

throughout the city

whisper as one,

“What do we do now, sad people?”

I’m not saying

they’re the ones

gathering under the streetlamp.

But there’s a great sob

coming from that direction.

And I can’t believe

those are tears of light.

THE OSPREY IN THE MARSH POND

Sheer horror in the water,

a young osprey floating on the surface,

wings fumbling for momentum,

puncture wounds oozing blood.

One of the young birds I’d been watching,

so near to being fully fledged,

but now turning in an infernal arc,

as the parents screech from somewhere above.

Feathers that dealt him flight,

now tilted and waterlogged,

dark eyes scanning his slim chances.

I lift him up, place him on a rock.

No gratitude, just all fear.

My trespass shrinks before his dying breath.

It’s quiet in the clifftop now.

Noon sky turns to midnight.    

THOUGHTS OF A WRECKING BALL

The building is flattened,

steel and brick and glass

scattered in all directions.

The wrecking ball

sways slightly back and forth,

like a mind ticking over.

124 North Main is a done deal.

What’s next?

120? 128?

How about the fast-food joint?

Or the book store?

Or the restaurant with the fat cakes in the window?

And there’re always the guy,

one good swing away,

riding high above the ground

in his little cabin.

He’s God.

I’m his wrath.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, City Brink and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”,” Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Hawaii Pacific Review, Amazing Stories and Cantos.