FOUR SEASONS WITH DEAD LEAVES… 

Passed four seasons with the dead leaves,
Which season we have expected other than this, 
Why haven’t we bloomed in any season? 
Why have all of them hated us, 
What bad evil have we done to them while, 
We were busy with ourselves and the world?…

Shamsiya Khudoynazarova Turumovna (February 15, 1973) was born in Uzbekistan. Studied at the Faculty of Journalism of Tashkent State University (1992-1998). She took first place in the competition of young republican poets (1999). Four collections of poems have been published in Uzbekistan: “Leaf of the Heart” (1998), “Roads to You” (1998), “The Sky in My Chest” (2007), “Lovely Melodies” (2013). She wrote poetry in more than ten genres. She translated some Russian and Turkish poets into Uzbek, as well as a book by Yunus Emro. She lived as a political immigrant with her family for five years in Turkey and five years in Ukraine. Currently lives in Switzerland. Married, mother of five children. It was not possible to publish poems and translations written by the poet in the next ten years.

Purpose of Everything

If one is to drink water, 
urinate to dispose water,
and later be thirsty again.
What is the use of drinking water? 
If everything is for naught?
Why do most creatures eat, sleep, labor and fight to survive?
Some believe in life after death, 
but there are those who do not. 
Why do they persist doing good 
when there are others doing bad?
If everything is for naught? 
Why mate, procreate and strive daily in order to have better life?
Why do people even care to seek to understand when all is for naught?
Why do people seek power, fame, and glory when all is for naught?
Or is everything really for naught?

Deadliest Weapon

Guns to be banned. Knives to be banned
I am waiting for when rocks are banned. After all, a rock was known to be the first murder weapon. Or so I heard about Cain and Abel.
But then, how should we go about herbs, drugs, missiles, bombs, media and tongues? 
Mind is the deadliest murdering weapon I think. 
With so many ways of killing weak and innocent ones, even without any logical reason at all. With so many wicked moves for different kinds of death, not only by losing one's life.
So sad that it is innocent ones being snatched from the living stage, and the culprit never dies, just changing names and bodies to dwell in.
So sad, when the culprit is being protected, while the innocent ones are ignored. When data is accepted without confirming the accuracy of information.
So sad, that right belongs to the might, and blame belongs to the shield. When one is compelled to stand on the sides or be a collateral damage as well.
So sad, that a candle lighted to face the darkness seems to be losing a battle against a collective wind that trespasses a private room.





Lilian Dipasupil Kunimasa was born January 14, 1965, in Manila Philippines. She has worked as a retired Language Instructor, interpreter, caregiver, secretary, product promotion employee, and private therapeutic masseur. Her works have been published as poems and short story anthologies in several language translations for e-magazines, monthly magazines, and books; poems for cause anthologies in a Zimbabwean newspaper; a feature article in a Philippine newspaper; and had her works posted on different poetry web and blog sites. She has been writing poems since childhood but started on Facebook only in 2014. For her, Poetry is life and life is poetry. Lilian Kunimasa considers herself a student/teacher with the duty to learn, inspire, guide, and motivate others to contribute to changing what is seen as normal into a better world than when she steps into it. She has always considered life as an endless journey, searching for new goals, and challenges and how she can in small ways make a difference in every path she takes. She sees humanity as one family where each one must support the other and consider poetry as a voice for Truth in pursuit of Equality and proper Stewardship of nature despite the hindrances of distorted information and traditions.

Emotions  

Feeling sick is a feeling that will come and go. 
The heart will tremble, the heart will break,
It will make your heart beat again,
It's a powerful feeling, to burn from the inside. 
Sometimes you can't hold back the tears
It has rained and it is flowing because of the sadness. 
You can't remove the pain from your heart, 
Hiccup - hiccup out of resentment. It's futile to protest the world, 
This is a prison for everyone. 
Someone's punishment is fun, fun, 
For some it is hard labor, pain, torture.
Fates are written for everyone, It's hard to get rid of it. 
No matter how far he goes, 
He came again and passed through his birthplace. 
He did not break hearts, if we approach privately,
Everyone will respect each other, 
It would be great if we could live by the law. 
Then the world will also respite.


Elmaya Jabbarova was born in Azerbaijan. She is a poet, writer, reciter, and translator.
Her poems were published in the regional newspapers «Shargin sesi», «Ziya», «Hekari», literary collections «Turan», «Karabakh is Azerbaijan!», «Zafar», «Buta», foreign Anthologies «Silk Road Arabian Nights», «Nano poem for Africa», «Juntos por las Letras 1;2», «Kafiye.net» in Turkey, in the African's CAJ magazine, Bangladesh's Red Times magazine, «Prodigy Published» magazine. She performed her poems live on Bangladesh Uddan TV, at the II Spain Book Fair 1ra Feria Virtual del Libro Panama, Bolivia, Uruguay, France, Portugal, USA.

I AM YOUR FLUTE
 
Hold me in your hands, my dear God 
use my body and words 
Hug me tight and rule my life 
I am yours, I am your flute 
I don't see my life any other way 
than in your safe hands, play so that 
by your sound I feel that I am alive. 
Your turns of fingers and lips make me lose my "taste" for this world of lies. 
I'm yours, I'm your flute,
hold me and never let me go from your embrace. 


DON'T LOOK AROUND 

When those people close the door of their heart 
it's their choice, thank you 
because when you are rejected, you are accepted by God. 
The disappointment is not without reason 
it's all a lesson of life, 
and we are relieved when the tears flow, 
we get rid of sadness. 
When someone doesn't want your company,
give thanks to God, for God places the pieces as on a chessboard, 
everything has already been played, we are observers. 
Never beg for the friendship you want 
Respect those who love your company and never look back for those who leave. 
When there is no sincerity, 
God separates people. 

Maja Milojković was born in 1975 in Zaječar, Serbia.
She is a person to whom from an early age, Leonardo da Vinci's statement "Painting is poetry that can be seen, and poetry is painting that can be heard" is circulating through the blood.
That's why she started to use feathers and a brush and began to reveal the world and herself to them.
As a poet, she is represented in numerous domestic and foreign literary newspapers, anthologies and electronic media, and some of her poems can be found on YouTube.
Many of her poems have been translated into English, Hungarian, Bengali and Bulgarian due to the need of foreign readers.
She is the recipient of many international awards.
"Trees of Desire" is her second collection of poems in preparation, which is preceded by the book of poems "Moon Circle". 
She is a member of the International Society of Writers and Artists "Mountain Views" in Montenegro,and shealso is a member of the Poetry club "Area Felix" in Serbia.

Anointed with Timeless Joy

I want to dance in the sunshine of my soul; 
Laugh in gales of greedy delight at nothing at all. 
I want to strip bare and bathe in rain-drenched blossoms 
Falling like snow from the flowering pear tree 
And let down my hair to cling in rivulets down my back. 
I want to go fast down life’s slide on my belly 
And land laughing in the dirt at the bottom of the world. 
I want to count the stars of midnight and ride the comets 
Across the universe, bare-back, with my spurs dug in. 
Dusty eons and frozen grains of sand in the hourglass 
Mean nothing but being alive in all the soul’s timeless joy; 
Spending golden moments lost in endless beauty; 
The breast of time rising and falling with the tides of the moon. 
Each breath is a lightness of knowing, of remembrance 
Moving rhythmically to the drums of everlasting madness 
While strolling leisurely through the light tunnels of infinity 
With a silly grin spread across my wonder of existence. 
Endless joy is sparkling eyes, and a laughing soul in bare feet. 


Breath of Life Sonnet 

Oh, the intemperate swells of the heart 
That drown me in their wake when you appear, 
That melancholy stills when you depart; 
And comes again to life when you draw near. 
Ancient forgotten love spells seem to call 
Like fading siren’s songs from long ago 
And all the sighs that held me so enthrall 
Whisper once again how I love you so. 
Come to me from the tunnels of the wind.
Let not our time on earth be lived in vain.
Love is a living force that has no end - 
A breath of life for us to breathe again.
 Love is a magnet that pulls heart to heart; 
Once together, no force can pull apart. 


Prayer at Twilight 

You are my thoughts in the shadowy lane at twilight; 
So real I wonder if you can hear my footsteps 
Crunching over the stones beneath my feet as I walk; 
Or the whisper of the grass when I step off the path. 
Can you hear my voice as I speak to you in make-believe, 
Imagining your hand in mine and you walking beside me? 
The stars hang above the treetops like tiny lanterns 
Waiting for the breath of God to blow them out 
When dawn peeks breathless over the hills of morning. 
I will be long in my bed before the new day arrives, 
Snug under the covers of night and its holding 
Of my treasured dreams of you in earnest longing 
Tucked in my lonely heart missing you with each beat. 
My fervent prayers at night are always the same words, 
Let him be safe, healthy and strong and missing me 
As he seeks my soul in the long shadows of twilight 
Down the silent starlit lanes of his stalwart soul. 

Annie Johnson is 84 years old. She is Shawnee Native American. She has published two, six hundred-page novels and six books of poetry. Annie has won several poetry awards from world poetry organizations including; World Union of Poets; she is a member of World Nations Writers Union; has received the World Institute for Peace award; the World Laureate of Literature from World Nations Writers Union and The William Shakespeare Poetry Award. She received a Certificate and Medal in recognition of the highest literature from International Literary Union for the year 2020, from Ayad Al Baldawi, President of the International Literary Union. She has three children, two grandchildren, and two sons-in-law. Annie played a flute in the Butler University Symphony. She still plays her flute.

Three, Two, One......Done

My heart has been dragged, ragged and bruised.
Every drop of its weary blood has been used.
I have wrung it dry and left it out to die and still
It feeds my thirsting brush and starving quill.
My soul has been battered, tattered and sold
Every piece set in stock; paid out in fool's gold.
I have set it out on the world to the point of no return.
Still in everything I do.......... I can see......... I feel it burn.
In giving my heart and soul my mind has left me.
My passion has led me to the point of insanity.
All that I love has gone from peace to war.
I'm left staring in madness at a black door.
No reflection from the depths of the abyss.
Pain and sorrow have become my bliss.
Oh hell, I remember the destruction
The end and rebirth of creation
Three.........two........ one
ONE......it's done.


But A Droplet 

If you could catch my fall
My tears would tell it all.
You might be able to see
Your way through me.
If you could break the surface
You would see secrets I can't confess.
But I am but a droplet
That you will soon forget.
You will never see me blossom
Nor know what I have become.
If you could see beyond the reflection
You would see behind my rejection.
You would know I'm entangled in tears
I've let grow for so many years.
If you could catch my fall
My tears would tell it all.
I am but a droplet 
Wishing it could forget.


From South-Western, Michigan, Jerry Langdon lives in Germany since the early 90's. He is an Artist and Poet. His works bathe in a darker side of emotion and fantasy. He has released five books of Poetry titled "Temperate Darkness an Behind the Twilight Veil", “Death and other cold things” “Rollercoaster Heart” and “Frosted Dreams” Jerry is also the editor and publisher of the literary magazine Raven Cage Zine poetry and prose. His poetic inspirations are derived from poets such as Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Frost and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. As well as from various Rock Bands. His apparently twisted mind, twists and intertwines fantasy with reality.

“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.” Explain and elucidate the significance of the following line in the light and perspectives of Austenian feminine characters.

Jane Austen’s feminine figures including the heroine Elizabeth Bennet and the manorial role of Charlotte Collins Lucas have agonistic perceptions or differing opinions with relation to marriage, conjugality, intimacy, self personhood or individual fulfillment.

Charlotte Lucas’ preferences of conjugality or marital alliance with Mr. William Collins, surmounts the touchstones of mercenary wedding, prudential matrimony or materialistic marriage lacking of admiration, love, romance unlike Elizabeth Bennet’s relationship. Economic futures and financial security are everything that a woman would be intending for a sustenance of livelihood and, in this sense, Charlotte is not an exception. Elizabeth Bennet despises such courtship or conjugality which lacks romantic love in engagements or relationships and this is evidently crystal clear by Elizabeth’s dialogical interiority demarking, “she [Charlotte Lucas] had sacrificed every better feeling to worldly advantage”.

Elizabeth Bennet further proceeds, critiquing her formerly intimate acquainted friend, Charlotte Lucas’ fiance, “Mr. William Collins was neither sensible nor agreeable; his society was irksome, and her attachment to her[Charlotte Lucas] was imaginary.”

Elizabeth possesses the sentiment that a woman’s wellbeing is either affirmed or jeopardized by the social institution of marriage. Jane Austen, through Elizabeth Bennet, says to regard marriage as the union of refinement and self-improvement. Charlotte Lucas’s marriage guarantees money, wealth, or fortunes but at the stakes of a husband famed for being conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, or silly.

“How despicably have I acted!… How humiliating is this discovery!” Elizabeth’s exclamation of being cheated by the befoolery and fraudulence of Wickham ameliorates her fragile relation with Mr. Darcy. Her marriage exemplifies the acknowledgment of “I marry for love and not for comfort” and “advantage to the union of both”.

Charlotte and Elizabeth: Multiple Modernities In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Author: Melina Moe, Source: ELH, Vol 83, No. 4, Winter 2016, pages: 1075-1103, Yale University, Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Describe Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as a form of romance novel genre with textual citations and references to features of spatiotemporality.

Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice (P&P) is a social criticism upon the family life and English society from the preNapoleonic French revolutions to the post Austenian Regency England. Throughout the bicentennial adaptations, translations, transmutations, simplifications, continuations, dramatization and theatrical embodiments have evolved the emergence of spatiotemporality from Netherfield to Meryton, Bath to London and Derbyshire Pemberley.

Explicitly Longbourn Meryton Hertfordshire ladies especially the much piquant Bennet household, have attendance to participate in marital ball festivals occasioning the neighboring estates to be exalted in revelry and merriment of the marriage market. Herein, haughty and arrogant Fitzwiliam Darcy’s manifested appearance harbours a presentiment of ‘above station…above company…’ attitude.

Upon facing to see Elizabeth, he declares to Bingley, “She is tolerable but not handsome enough to tempt me. I am at present in no humour to give consequences to young ladies sighted by other men.” Bath is the haven Gardiners and Elizabeth Bennet have a harangue of marital alliance discourses pertaining to conjugality and relationships with her family relations therein, “Pray, my dear aunt, what is the difference in matrimonial affairs between the mercenary and the prudent motive? Where does discretion ends and avarice begins?…My dear, dear, aunt,” she cried rapturously cried out. What delight! What felicity! You give me fresh life and vigour. Adieu to disappointment and spleen. What are men to rocks and mountains?!” Oh! What hours of transport we shall spend! ….Lakes, mountains and rivers…generality of travellers.”

Jane’s struggling resistance to recovering from depression and mood swings and the visitation of Miss Bingley at Gracechurch Street happens to be a lengthy dialogue between microcosmic spaces and timings. Screams and tantrums of Lady Catherine Debourgh metaphorically bespeaks Jane Austen’s own rages and this is destined to be venued at Lady Catherine Debourgh’s residence of Rosings and Hunsford parsonage of Kent where Mr. Collins curates. “Mr. Collins, you must marry…Chuse properly, chuse a gentlewoman for my sake; and for your own, let her be an active, useful sort of a person, not brought up high, but able to make a small income go a good way.”

“This is a most unfortunate affair and will probably be much talked of. But we must stem the tide of malice, and pour into the wounded bosoms of each other the balm of sisterly consolation.” Then the novel’s narratological obsequiousness and space time travel furtherance of London to East Sussex Brighgton occurs with Lydia and Wickham’s scandalous affair into an elopement. Elopement of scandal in the sense, that ladies of Regency England should have marriage settlements with family’s consent and approbation. This grimes the scandalous affair to exploitative financial pecuniary usurpation by George Wickham and the disregard for moral opprobrium amongst of the Bennets amongst the gentries.

Until Darcy’s rescue, the family would have sunk into pangs of disgrace and eventually lost esteemed value. Vindictiveness of Elizabeth for heroic Darcy’s “blind, partial, prejudices and biased viewpoint and sentiment ameliorates salvaging of climax, “I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away where either where concerned. Till this moment, I never knew myself.” Deberyshire’s “Pemberley grounds” becomes the heyday of truth that Darcy’s impersonation imitates none the less as “”He is the best landlord, and the best master,” said she [housekeeper Mrs. Reynolds] “that ever lived; not like the wild young men nowadays, who think of nothing but themselves. Elizabeth Bennet’s admiring wish for being the mistress of Pemberley turns a sublime touch of reality after the philanthropic and humane attitude of Darcy’s revelations with subsequent rescue efforts for George and Lydia.

In this relevance, Elizabeth Bennet is interpreted to be a stormier traveller of space-temporality from out of the library to the ball room and then up to the altar. The setting for ending strikes the Pemberley with Darcy’s denouement, “I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words which laid the foundation. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”

To the viewpoint of literary critic Andrew H Wright, “To say that Darcy is proud and Elizabeth is prejudiced is to tell but half the story. Pride and Prejudice are both faults but they are the necessary defects of desirable merits: self-importance and intelligence. The novel makes clear the fact that Darcy’s pride leads to a prejudice and Elizabeth’s prejudice stems from a pride in her own perceptions. And the tragic ironic theme of the book might indeed be said to have centered on the dangers of human intellectual complexities.”

Further Reading Johns Hopkins University Publishers Press, Celebrating The Bicentennial: Jane Austen And Her Recent Critics, Barry Roth, Ohio University, Studies In The Novel, Winter 1976, Vol. 8, No. 4, pages: 474-481 http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/dighum/2016/12/01/mapping-pride-and-prejudice/

Pride and Prejudice Editorship of Donald Gray 1. Claudia L. Johnson, Pride and Prejudice and the Pursuit of Happiness 2. Susan Fraiman, The Humiliation of Elizabeth Bennett

Marriage, almost inevitably the narrative event that constitutes a happy ending, represents in their view submission to a masculine narrative imperative that has traditionally allotted women love and men the world. Ironically perhaps, such readers have preferred novels that show the destructive events of patriarchal oppressions, for they complain that Austen’s endings, her happily-ever-after-marriages, represents a decline in her protagonists. In the light of this commentary explain the significance of the ending of Pride and Prejudice.

Or explain Pride and Prejudice as Marxist-feminist criticism of nineteenth century English society. ‘’As in much women’s fiction, the end, the reward, of women’s apprenticeship to life is marriage… Marriage, which requires [heroine and protagonist Elizabeth Bennet] to dwindle by degrees into a wife.’’ Nineteenth century women’s lives are satirized by Jane Austen’s romantic fiction through burlesque comedy, irony and most tellingly of marriage
as a self-knowledge; the overcoming of egoism and the mark of psychic development.

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice’s ensuing narrative with the aphoristic maxim of that, ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife’. On the contrary, ironically, young bachelorettes such as the Bennet family maidens and Charlotte Lucas are in the dire urgency of procuring their wealthier husbands for securing their fortune which the marriage motif exerts throughout the narrative culminating in the resolution or reconciliation amongst the hero and heroine, notably Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet.

Literary critics like chivalry balladic romance novelist Walter Scott’s shrewd observation of Elizabeth’s changing heart at Pemberley rekindles her blind, partial, prejudice or biased opinions to enlightening truth and light. Elizabeth Bennet becomes admirable of the tastes and judgment imprintings and engravings of the Derbyshire Pemberley mansion of Mr. Darcy. This resemblance salvages her vindication of her behavioral attitude and
sentimental temperament to love and matrimony after hearing of the housekeeping stewardess’ narrative; “the best master and the best landlord that ever lived, not like those wild young men of nowadays, who think of nothing but themselves’

The justification of George Wickham’s verdict of ‘..imprudence of abominable Mr. Darcy..’ is revealing to be unfolding treachery to Elizabeth Bennet, and this hints to the material prospects of usurpation of wealth and fortunes by veteran social class and working class bourgeois exploiting marriage to be surfeit of worldly advantage and materialism.

Darcy has tied the knot of ignorant and imprudent Lydia with the impecunious George Wickham and thus safeguards the Bennet family from the apocalypse of social disenfranchisement and infamous disempowerment. ..

Deconstructionist Judith Lowder Newton’s exclamations of the Marxist-feminist close reading of Pride and Prejudice emerges the revelations of ‘fantasy-wish-fulfillment structure where the boy meets -the-girl-leads-to-marriage’ convention.

On the contrary, the fairy tale structure and the materialist language which pervades the novel emphasizes rather than represses or obscures what Terry Eagleton terms ‘the fault lines of the nineteenth century English society’

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice are both revolutionary and romantic and even unconservative to be true in Butler’s lucid rhetoric, ‘anti-jacobin tradition’ Through ironic reversals and miraculous coincidences Austen has pointedly observed sentimental ideals and novelistic conventions on the one hand, and the social realities of sexist prejudice, hypocrisy and avarice on the other.

Further Reading & References

1. The Continuity of Jane Austen’s Novels, Author: Juliet McMaster, Source: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Autumn 1970, Vol. 10, No. 4, pages: 723-729

2. Can This Marriage Be Saved: Jane Austen Makes Sense of An Ending, Author: Karen Newman, Source: ELH, Winter 1983, Vol. 50, No. 4, pages: 693-710, Johns Hopkins University Press Publishers