Mystery of Love
Mesfakus Salahin

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The day is long
The night is endless
The dream is a mirror
A frame is imitated where
I hear a sound whispering
Mystery of love
That comes from the lap of Nature.

The fragrance  of roses
Smiles with the shining morn
About an angel
Who walks in the stair of breath
Plays in the garden of heart
Sleeps in the field of silence.
      I see and see 
      She lives in me
      Is this love?
...............then
     I am in love.

The fountains walk
In the heart of sea
Spreading a message supernaturally
Through waves
Love is strange to a stranger
           I feel  it
I sacrifice myself to love
And request to you.

when all is said and done 

when all is said and done
and our stories have been told
fade with me 
into the ground  
once we were 
life and flourished
flowers in spring

a dance upon the 
checkered floor
laughter in corridors 
of museums and gardens

yes once we were

once we acted upon
this stage 
once intertwined within
this ballet 
this grand facade of life
turn pages once white and crisp
now yellowed and stained
with time
dance with me in quiet dreams 
and in photos
dance with me 
in stark contrast to realities
of the dangerous world

we once did dwell
and while we rest
while angels swirl
and mortals may cry
they hold us dear
and candles flicker
our memories live on

our spirits sour forever




Seasonal Song


Season of rebirth,
shadows in the trees,
leaf's in hibernation
Spring hovering in 
dagger breeze.

Pessimist Winter,
that old frozen fool,
sliding away, clinging;
losing his grip slowly,
but soon
the inevitable will 

happen. 

Everything turns, even 
seasons, old man
Winter must
relinquish
and disperse 
giving dominion to
life again.  


Mystery veil lifts, reveal
intricate truth of mortal
waves crashing.

Compassion intermingling
with muddy river, burst at
the seams; flowers and dreams,
transcend and fusing. 

Life and death,
emotionless hand
of Winter,
and pollen-infused innocence
of Spring.


Show Me Mercy (forever a victim of the undertow)

Death picks us, off one by one,

like soldiers into the firing line,

like another sunrise; or cloudy

day.

A loveless night, passed out on

the beaches of Florida, a Niche

book laying limp by my side.

Karaoke and beer made me feel

like feeling again, helped me climb

back into the intellectual realms

again, here we go again, college

round 3.

Just wanting to live life and yet so

addicted to that psychological mumbo

jumbo.

Oh Jung! Oh Freud! Oh Janov!

You always speak to me!

You speak to me in riddles and rhymes,

intermingling with interludes of

Hesses' Glass Bead Game, and that

Siddhartha; electronic music swirling

always in my skull; ear candy from the

early 80's; I am forever the New Romantic.

I am forever a victim of the undertow.

L. Wayne Russell is or has been many things during his lifetime, he has been a creative writer, world traveler, graphic designer, former soldier, former sailor, amateur photographer, aspiring guitarist, singer, and creative writer. Wayne has been widely published in both online and hard-copy creative writing magazines. From 2016-17 he founded and edited the now-defunct online creative writing magazine, Degenerate Literature.

In late 2018, Wayne was nominated for his first Pushcart Prize, in addition, in 2019, he was nominated for Best of the Net. In 2020, Wayne had his debut paperback book of poetry published by Guerrilla Genesis Press; Where Angels Fear is currently still available for purchase on Amazon.

Poem



my word

              your word

my word

              your word



the same       different





the cat’s got our:your tongue





Poem



teat

teat



              rush hour



TOOT



              romance between 3:30 & 5:30 pm



Poem





?



for all/no



occasions 




Poem



It hurt my mother

It made me laugh



Make the bed



Father broke wind



Poem



A horse a horse

my …….



Is that porridge i see before me  




After about 5/6 years absence I have returned to writing. Before the five years I had many poems and short stories published online and as hard copy. I have had four books published: On The Bright Side Of Down (a collection of stories, prose poems and poems, Bus Stop Bus Stop (a collection of stories based on my experience of transcontinental bus travel), Blues For A Mustang (A collection of poems) and The Life And Lies Of Calamity Jane (a novella).



The poems submitted here do not reflect the previous work. The poems here a very reductive. They reflect more of the short (very) minimal theatre pieces I began during the time of COVID.You can view them on my Facebook page. In those works the object or the gesture was the event.  In these poems the words are the event. Each word and/or line can be connected as pieces of shards by the reader or each line and/or word can be seen and interpreted as is.



Recently had 5 poems accepted for a Spring issue of a poetry journal. The editor wrote I had a unique perspective. I do not know about that. Recently I dicovered Vsevolod Nekrasov has a similar perspective. But the poems are the current me.

PANTS ON FIRE

I'm not really this upset 
but despair reads better on the page.
And no one dips into poetry 
so they'll know how good I have it.

They're searching
for the anguished cry of someone
worse off than them.

So lying on a beach,
I give them dark and dismal.
High up on a mountain, 
I spread the verse with depths.

In love and loved becomes, 
with a click or two of the keyboard, 
unwanted and alone.

Poetry is the great lie. 
There, you heard it from me. 
So it must be untrue.



ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

Now I prize 
the reformed alcoholics-
	all throats are dry,
	all keep this to themselves.

Instead 
of ripping at their own skin,
they sit in chairs
too tight for trembling
	and let the process work.

A month, says one.
Almost a year, says another.
Over two years, says a third.

Together in one room,
	they are a calendar
	of willpower and abstinence.

I drink to them
by crushing the glass.
in my hand.




HE PART ONE

He drinks.
He embraces me like an old friend. 
He finds his life works best
when people have  never seen the like before.
He has developed a number
outside the realm of 0 through 9.
He has the inside track
He hasn’t seen his ex in years.
He can make things out of stone and wood.
He leaves it to others to light his cigarettes.
He nibbles on whatever’s within reach.
He tosses trash at the feet 
of the guy sweeping the sidewalk.
He returns nothing he borrows..
He says he wants her exclusively for himself
He survives off a settlement for a car accident.
He transmits pleas skyward.




CARL SMOKES

Ten chimneys worth of vapor 
had climbed his nose, his cheeks,
drawn by the amber of his eyes.
His is the satisfaction of expression.
And the relief that it works so well.
For he is an illustration  
from out of poetry’s flaming words of poetry
Though just the scaffolding 
for he has yet to write anything down.
He’s staving off the pressure with a cigarette,
while he craves the presence of a sperm whale
that writes, with its fluke dipped in ink,
in some elemental alphabet with giant letters.
Yet he’s really clipped wings on a bird.
The Ring Cycle minus the ring.
A dropout from modesty and self-advisement.
A prisoner behind a tall wire fence.
The last breath of a trout in a net.
No one is hypnotized by the yellow of his sun.
No one reads anything into an empty page.



RUSSET CONES

I ask morning, as someone who is never really here,
just how secure is this room, these floorboards,
the walls, my body…and my life.
The light says something like,
“That’s my little secret.
In the meantime, why don’t I just shine in your face.”

I wonder in whose novel I have awoken.
And why the fierce dog below is staring up at me.
His concentration and my lack of gusto are appalling me.
But I agree with the beast that maybe we could rassle later.

I spend twenty minutes talking to the mirror
with my diffident face on.
But glass doesn’t recognize humility.
It only speaks in emojis anyhow.
My downward mouth cannot be held back.

The woman at the kitchen table looks up at me 
from her incorrigible remoteness.
How many years has it been since we first thought
we could anchor each other.
Now, she takes me for the back cover of a book –
one that she puts back down,
says, no I won’t be reading you today.
She could, at least, skim through the damn thing!

I try to not to say things that are merely anger.
That’s what pen and paper are for.
The lady of my life has perfected the silence, the obdurance, of the hill.
I look out the window.
Day is out there having followed me from upstairs.
It’s quite colorful, to be honest.
And not so distant that I can’t step out into it.
“Good question,” it says, when I haven’t even asked it anything.
“If you’re looking for the russet cones of red spruce,
focus on the top of the tree.”
I had not intended to. And yet, maybe I just will.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Floyd County Moonshine. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and Open Ceilings.

Jalapeno Quietly Gazed At

Plump jalapeno
intones shapely strawberry rumpus
green today but one day blush
percolating solar swelling
shock for the curious ovivorous
	dangles on aortic question hook
	stemmed at a bifolial end (between bilabial leaves)
		punctuational singleton frog-plop pepper slung over
		Basho’s garden as bosom equation derived into one dimension
									concentrated

Author bio (proving I am not a bot or AI plagiarist)

Terry Trowbridge’s poems have appeared in The New Quarterly, Carousel, subTerrain, paperplates, The Dalhousie Review, untethered, Quail Bell, The Nashwaak Review, Orbis, Snakeskin Poetry, Literary Yard, M58, CV2, Brittle Star, Bombfire, American Mathematical Monthly, The Academy of Heart and Mind, Canadian Woman Studies, The MathematicalIntelligencer, The Canadian Journal of Family and Youth, The Journal of HumanisticMathematics, The Beatnik Cowboy, Borderless, Literary Veganism, and more. His lit crit has appeared in Ariel, British Columbia Review, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Episteme, StudiesinSocialJustice, Rampike, and The/t3mz/Review. Terry is grateful to the Ontario Arts Council for his first writing grant, and their support of so many other writers during the polycrisis.

                Keeping Busy

Something to read, something to write

Even conversations can be planned out

To take up a measure of time, and time

Needs filling. It’s a bitch the way it works.

We wake to it, know something must be

Done or the emptiness will haunt us, will

Remind us that our place in life can easily

Be filled by others. “Busy” seems like a silly

Word, something our parents and our early

Teachers would say when they’d notice us

Slacking or preoccupied with the nothingness

That naturally surrounds us. “Get to work”

Became a slogan we turned into this bit

About needing something to read or write

Something to mark the time, to eat up time

Before it eats us up and spits us out.

       

           Time Spent

Retired people go on vacation

Trying to remember what it’s like

To need time off

To need time away

But for them

Time off has become a constant

And time away seems odd when

There’s so little left to get away from.

Retired people vacation

Trying to forget

What all this time off

And all this time away

Are leading to.

 

           About Place

Home game or away

It’s all in how

You play.

Walk down a street in NYC

Let’s say

Or in Buenos Aires

Both are big apples to chew on.

Then walk down a street

Any street

In Winooski or So. Burlington

And feel the difference.

Big apples or small

It’s all in the way you play it –

Big screen or small, big stage

Or just down the hall.

It’s all in the way you walk

And talk about

Being there or anywhere.

It becomes home or away

In what we say

About it.