Knock Knock: A Poem for Ukraine Knock knock. Who’s there? Ukrainian boy. I have walked from far, Over fields of snow And ice of roads And cities at war. I don’t know you. Are there any with you? My family is gone, I don’t know where. I’m here all alone. May I come in? I have a number On my hand. Can I call? Not on my land! There’s a country Down the road. Try them there. It’s far, and I’m cold. Knock knock. Who’s there? Ukrainian boy. Can I come in? I’m so tired, And the wind is so cold. . . . Why are you here? What is that In your eyes? Is it tears? Is it sadness or fear? No, it is ice, It is melting there. Go down the road. There is nothing for you here. Knock knock. Who’s there? Ukrainian boy. Can you say where I am? I saw ghosts on the road, They looked like my papa, My mama, my sister, My brother at home. Has anything happened to them? Will you please let me in? I’m so tired, I don’t think I can walk any more. I can’t feel my hands. May I come in here? What is that number Written out on your hand? When I call, there is silence At the other end. Come in and rest On my bed. No, it’s snow . . . When you sleep you will never Fear war again. No, no, I must go, How will I get home If now I don’t go? Come in and rest, Come in and rest, Come in and rest Until you must go . . . Knock knock. Who’s there? Who knocked at our door? Show yourself if you’re there! But there was no one there, Only the sound of the wind, And the snow in the air. The Sunken Palace The curlew calls in the sycamore tree. Do you hear it? A boy’s laugh follows. A rustle of gold flickers over the lake. The sky is cold and on fire. Do you see the fair one, the kind one, the holy? She is not to be seen on the tower. There is only a shadow to be seen in the arch And an iron gate as it closes. He is gone now, and she is not here. Their story, our story, is over. The palace of love was a fable. The rain Fell for long on the meadow. At the season when the moon was a song in the snow And the wind was a shout in the mountains, The ghosts of the palace where the ballroom had drowned Danced in a lake of shadows. The Sound of Falling Trees “There’s no such thing as ‘being a poet.’” —T. S. Eliot It used to be an almost embarrassing compliment. If someone called you that, you skipped a heartbeat of secret bliss, as if the most beautiful girl in class had just blown you a kiss. Now it is almost an embarrassment. “Writers in San Francisco,” New York and L.A. smile to each other with a wink and a nudge. “Aren’t they all poets? They can be safely ignored, left to PEN and AWP, unless you go in for the penniest of penny stocks. They can’t even make themselves any money, let alone the likes of you and me; they’re famous only if they die (I know it sounds bold, but it’s so true) by a monumentally gaudy suicide.” It’s not much of a compliment anymore, yet it is still a kind of destiny, a kind of fate: a compulsive need to find new words for old emotions, old and raw, and make them ring like bells in the winter air— clear and true and fading into oblivion— the crash of trees falling deep in the forest even when there is no one to hear. _____ Christopher Bernard’s latest collection of poems, A Socialist’s Garden of Verses, won a 2021 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award and was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ “Top 100 Indie Books of 2021.”
Poetry from Jerome Berglund
Jerome Berglund graduated from the University of Southern California’s Cinema-Television Production program and spent a picaresque decade in the entertainment industry before returning to the Midwest where he was born and raised. Since then he has worked as everything from dishwasher to paralegal, night watchman to assembler of heart valves. Berglund has exhibited many haiku and senryu online and in print, most recently in Tofu Ink Arts, Vermillion, Hey I'm Alive Magazine, and Fauxmoir. He is furthermore an established, award-winning fine art photographer, whose black and white pictures have been shown in galleries across New York, Minneapolis, and Santa Monica. You can read Jerome’s earlier published works collected in Bindle Bum and Paint Chips, available through Amazon.
Poetry from Michael Robinson
Whispers of the Wind Trees standing tall reaching to the sky. When the wind dances between trees, Leaving a trace of mist on the ground. Leaves blow from one place to another. A sound of a leaf brushing one another. Clam finds a place among the breeze. Serenity accompanies the whispering. As the wind leaves a trail of freshness, Clarity leaves me with a quiet soul. Cemented Freedom In the inner-city among the cemented sidewalks, Buildings of cement reaching towards the sky. Cemented bricks and cemented hearts that cry. Among the cemented world lives freedom. Freedom comes as flowers grow free. Cardinals sing among the trees at dawn. God’s freedom among the cemented city. Freedom as the wings of the cardinal’s flight. Among the flowers there is a life of beauty. The Garden of Friendship For Mary Kirsch The sunshine, rain, and snow flowers grew. As did our love for one another in hardship, Flowers grow in the cracks of the sidewalk, And through our fears and doubts of life, Quietly as the candles burned on the altar. We sat together with our hearts open. In the garden love still grows, Flowers grow through the cracks. While we see the petals of the heart. Summer Beauty Her skin was the color of caramel And her eyes the color of cream, With a smile that warmed my heart. She spoke like the wind in summer. Seeing how gracefully she walked. Reminding me of the beauty of life. She sat by the window looking at me. A moment of eye contact between us. Remembering that glance in my prayers.
Poetry from John Grey
JOE UP LATE IN A SEAPORT Downtown seaport. one in the morning, bar closes, Joe hears the shouts of the drinkers as they stumble out into the street. New moon makes nothing clear, gray clouds haunt the night sky, boats rock, docks creak, and, for human sounds, it’s Joe’s cold breath against the alcoholic choir. The men slowly struggle up the hill to their homes, their sleeping families. Joe stands by the memorial statue for all fishermen who died at sea. The drinkers look elsewhere. They don’t like to be reminded what a storm on the waters can do. Joe imagines it’s just like this, with men, once the street lights lose track of them, vanishing in darkness. Until it’s just him. And a marble sailor gripping the wheel. And that whiff of liquor, tinged with salt, intoxicating. A DRUNK IN HELL Stars are Basin Street at midnight. hung like rosary beads, like the glow of cigarettes in the mouth of the snickering moon. I prefer it when the clouds roll in, white and puffy as used condoms, heavy as mud on a coffin lid, the dark dogs of weather snarling through the grill of a sudden rain shower. Clouds gather like mourners at the nuptials of death and booze, of the sax solo boiling away from a nearby club and the passing taxi pissing water down my pants' legs. I'm heading home in the wrong direction, crashing through Saturday night's demented party, a parade of one, liquored up, beaten down, a float that stinks of a hooker's breath - you'd think life would know better than to let me inhabit it. Maybe I'll just crash now. Maybe I'll drop where I am and if no one finds me, so much the better for them. But there's always a cop, always the cry of "Move on, buddy." So I move on like the clouds, so the stars can reappear. They're not light, they're fire. It's their job to burn a hole in me. FLOOD VICTIMS Anna's rolling in the mud. Husband Dave scoops up large lumps of sludge in his hands, watches it slowly drip through the cracks between fingers. This is what you do when the flood retreats and the land's a sea of slush. No dimples in a baby's chin. No soft pink squeeze of flesh. Nothing clean as a fresh white towel or a pressed Sunday suit or a bread roll and a pad of bright yellow butter. Some people armed with shovels try to dig the town out from under this deep brown muck. Why fight it, says Anna. I battled the disillusionment of marriage, the burden of children, the grind of two jobs, and the river still overflowed its banks, washed away all homes and cars and life before it. Others pick through the dark caked graves of furniture, food and family heirlooms. Dave had nothing worth having, now he owns a house of silt. The arguments are buried. The disappointments can't breathe. So what if the town smells like rot, mildew, decaying corpses. Anna can live with the stench. Dave can live with Anna. READING A BOOK GETS ME HOT kind of reading, love-in-book form, feel urged to utterance, plunge my waterbody into your fish-tank – sex, notwithstanding deaths, the critical mass of human endeavor, on the countertop, in the aisles, a lovely dove inside a man’s hands as his face imitates the one who killed it – sex, this American sex, I’d step way out of line to have it, devour everything in its path, thrash like a drowning man if it was air – in human terms, the liquid violence, as a young boy, stranger than Chinatown, even in diminishment, the loudest noise a guy can make -. nerve and pulse reach into the dark places, a body far from home, a blunt butcher carving his way into the interior of a pink palace – and it’s this book that does it, sears my hands, steams my head – who wrote it? I did – when was it written? after I’m done - DANCE NIGHT Having started in thought, I ended with dancing. Not as embodiment but because thinking wasn’t getting me anywhere. I hadn’t the patience for old lovers. Nor the mind for wondering what went wrong. And my limbs were crying out, “Why not us!” The results of the mental process were as meager as hummingbird feathers. And nowhere near as fetching as the woman I was with. Music was playing. We stepped out on the floor. My legs mule-kicked, My arms flailed. I shook my body like interrogating a suspect. And, all this time, my head was bobbing. But just for identification purposes.
Poetry from J.J. Campbell
from time to time i saw a lighter and a spoon on the nightstand by the bed she saw me looking at them and uttered she only does that from time to time i told her it wasn't any of my business your life your choice she kissed me with a tear in her eye i was her first non-hypocrite in a long time ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- falling in love again i know i am running out of chances of ever falling in love again i wouldn't say i'm desperate but i know i can hear the old soul in me growing impatient the joys of being a loner... but it isn't like they are beating the door down to find me one broken soul has stepped up and thrown her hat in the ring now, it is up to this broken soul to actually pick the fucking thing up ------------------------------------------------------------------------ have her way with me the latest muse wants to come over and have her way with me of course, the middle of a pandemic and suddenly i'm popular again i have the luck of someone that's been dead for years and if this is the after life i'm really happy i didn't waste all that time in church ----------------------------------------------------------------------- surrounded by death all these years surrounded by death you can't help but think about it every now and then and as much as i love to die in my sleep i know the chances get slimmer and slimmer each year the evil side of me wants to die on the toilet like elvis oh, the fucking irony the poet in me wants to die inside the wife of someone else in reality, i'm sure it will be by attrition or right before i was supposed to suddenly be rich ----------------------------------------------------------------------- in the arms of my first love i had a dream last night i died in the arms of my first love i know i should tell her about the dream but i'm not sure what that would accomplish all the miles between us aren't getting closer anytime soon and knowing my luck, when they do i'll be too late i know i am officially old when my life becomes lyrics from a social distortion song
J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is old enough to know better. He’s been widely published over the years, most recently at Black Coffee Review, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Beatnik Cowboy, The Black Shamrock and Cajun Mutt Press. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)
Poems from Nadja Moore
Little ghost There was a cabin in the woods And snakes on the road In that place In the middle of God knows what With the sheep And the neighbour’s goat My brother felt like talking to With a sheet on my head I tried to make my sister move I tried to get her head Out of those books And her eyes Were glued to the page And I wished They were glued to me And looked at me Not through me. My arms were extended And I sung “ooooooh” Then stopped, Then sung again “oooooh” Until she told me off And I made myself small And haunted that house Covered in white And desperate to prove My father wrong In that Everything Was not alright. A lesson learnt in Franco Manca I became irritated at the thought of this man telling me that the pizza I ordered half an hour ago was only just being prepared. My way or no way. I want to eat in, he does not. I want a million dollar man and he wants trees. Sometimes, no one gets what they want.
Nadja Moore is a writer based in Surrey, UK. She has a day job, a roommate, a band called Lilies in my brain and no pets. Her poems have appeared in Horror Sleaze Trash and Terror House Magazine.
Poetry from David Dephy
I Command the Chaos I command the chaos — turn into order! I command the death — turn into life! I command the war — turn into peace! I don't want to know a thing anymore. You know my soul yearned for knowledge but from this day on, I don't want to know a thing except for, will I be able or not to love you. Is it possible that the world has earned some relief? The wings cut the skies a dream hides reality within itself and what if I learn the truth? So what? Will I keep faith? The will, the strength to save myself, will it stay with me? I command the darkness — turn into light! I shall linger on this planet a while longer and I am closer to you than to anyone else and a realization of my existence here brings such bitter tears which I cannot explain but I still have the path to reach those peaceful pastures so, I'll stand up again and tell you that I shall gather strength and something will happen, as if by accident and we shall walk toward each other again. I command the sorrow — turn into calm! I command the noise — turn into silence! David Dephy DIVINE UKRAINE Your eyes are the eyes of God. Your breath is mother tongue of Earth. Your blood is a symphony of fire. Your lips are the truth-tellers, no one can take your golden mystery, no one can feel you without admiration. Your heart is garden of kisses. Your ears are pearls of expectation. Your words are constellations – the faces of heroes, encircled by rays, drifted on the minds of the world, their smile, their look, their strength and its innocence, a tide that tugs at us. In times like these, a sense washes over us, and we gather together in the deadly noise of millennium and this stillness, a stillness that never wavers. All we have become, divine Ukraine, is what your innocence has made of us. The naked homeland of freedom beats right in your heart. David Dephy March 1, 2022 New York TAKE YOUR SANDALS OFF YOUR FEET You are in Ukraine, take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy and the air you are breathing is holy, touching rays on your face, drifting through the noise of madness from the other side of the dark, still, the lips touch the air and this body is a foreign language addressing a foreign world, and its foreign skies. I say, take a deep breath, my love, let us embrace this great void as an old friend, perhaps then we shall discover each other far on the other side of alone. Have you heard a song of braves? Take your sandals off your feet, the place when you’re standing is holy, every grain is the heart of a child, the grain of truth— breathing through the golden shadows. Have you heard the laughs and smells? This is the greatest afternoon of freedom. David Dephy 3/12/22 New York EMPTY STROLLERS IN FRONT OF YOU See the empty strollers over there? In front of you. Now you see what Russians are. Don’t say a word. Take a deep breath. Now you know what has happened, why, how, where and when— right here, not so far— Not so far. Just a second ago, they were alive. My sweetest friend, they were loved. The peace offering love— Earth and heavens made sacrifices to that love, the dews of their smiles are the words of holy. Who ever heard or felt anything more divine? Is there something precious we are longing to find out there? Their voices hit your senses, burst your temples, burn your breath. See the rays? Or the black smoke under flawed stillness? This is the other side of our happiness— and its silence means the end. David Dephy March 18, 2022 New York
David Dephy A Georgian/American award-winning poet and novelist. The 1st place winner of The Artist Forum Poetry Award in New York 2021, the winner of the Finalist Award in the 2020 Best Book Award National Contest by American Book Fest, the finalist and shortlist winner nominee of the Adelaide Literary Awards for the category of Best Poem, the winner of the Spillwords Poetry Award. He is named as A Literature Luminary by Bowery Poetry, The Stellar Poet by Voices of Poetry, The Incomparable Poet by Statorec, The Brilliant Grace by Headline Poetry & Press and An Extremely Unique Poetic Voice by Cultural Daily.