O Habibitiy 

I am shaking as a leafless branch 
Your presence is a tremendous price of rebellion,
Would tonight's rain over my unnoticed heartache? 
With a drop of your kindness water, my thirst demise it.

A restrained lover is in a dream of a magnificent casket
I tried to resist winter's sun until I inferred your warm voice
The world's end is real, however, we still seek for the ark
Baghdad reveals the hanging corpses to illustrate my grief.

O habibitiy, true satisfaction can only happen once a year, 
Our tongues are silent from the words of compassion 
Love me with an earthy heart, and inky honey on the lips.
Montreal is the city that opens my eyes to fall in love with you.

Without any golden treasure, you love me with my sweats.
Without any colourful dreams, you love me with my bursts.
Without any valuable trophies, you adore me with my soul.
With some poems I wrote for you, I see that you are my habibility.


O habibitiy means my beloved in Arabic.

01/17/2022

Language of a Cursed Struggle

After I was evacuated from destiny’s festivity “womb”
I concede that I have to focus on improving myself 
from the world's major challenges of living sufficiently.
 
I spread kindness among others 
I serve as a good citizen of this earth
I fall in love with severe depression cluelessly.

Little stones are in my direction to walk barefoot to cure
My awareness’s become the language of a cursed struggle
I keep my decent smile in an intimate locker, swallow its keys.

Difficult times are pursuing the lightning I seek for  
I serve in-between seasons on a daily battle basis
Sitting on the chair, learning to apologize for the dark sky.

Allow me to enter into your heart, and listen intently 
Truthfully, I am here to relate my pain and connect with you
Take me to the calm shore, I will heal you with a wavey love.


Buried Treasure 

Our devotion should not be 
buried as forgotten treasure
Night abandons my torn’s past 
like an empty pack of cigarettes.

The moonlight sets our dreamy sails, 
as the seagulls and sea sing along 
to our shoreline love.
With eyes confiding to our mouths.

We expand our love on 
the spring treetops,
Rays of the summer sun
 breath of your creek.

Fly me away from the bars
Let my fantasy glow with the stars 
I truly love and miss you for so long
Yet, your perfume whispers a sad song.

01/15/2022

Steps To Be Orphan… 

 The sky is blue, 
but her heart is in the severe blues.
She lives in a world of brutal humiliation
and continuous barbarity. 

Your daybreak is colourful and cloudy 
Her daylight is black and darker than your grief 
Your dreams are the corners of the world 
As for her, her dreams were crushed from her 
-sleeping upon a bed of rock.

Your parents teach you how those birds fly 
While the guy who raped her destroyed her revolution 
As she realized that life unfairness taught her 
steps to be orphan, with chains invisible on her coffin.

The four seasons of the year were her friends, 
The summer sunrise whispers to her ears some of prayers 
The autumn pour warm above her salty face of her crying out 
The snow hides her wounds from society nonstop judgments  
The spring offers her the scent she deserves to be the queen of the world.

She doesn't have a cellphone 
or unreal images on social media.
Her eyes filmed what the world censor from us, 
She was the seen and read stories of homelessness.

Unfortunately, her sufferings grow into a dark cloud
It grows faster than the days of your days of joblessness 
With more flames of her tears burning the cages of birds
Those birds flow to heaven, while she is crossing barefoot 
to the bonfire and cigarettes of another unscared rapist...

Donuts

Do they still eat donuts? It’s easy to picture it:

a squad car pulls up to the precinct or station

a cop goes in, heads immediately for the lounge

that small area that smells of the burned coffee

they all complain about but drink, and there on

the counter is the box of donuts. Might be from

Dunkin or, better, that small bakery someone’s

aunt owns or at least knows the owner. No lean

and hungry look about them, some go for jelly

others for glazed or chocolate. Don’t you recall

the pudgy policemen we’d see downtown, always

friendly, knew everyone, and always quick on

the draw when it came to donuts and burned

coffee. You have to wonder, now that you have

a moment, do they still eat donuts, like they did

back when a policeman was a familiar face and

sometimes even smiled.


Gunless

Never owned a gun, my mother said

“no son of mine…” and so I never did.

Never really bothered me either. My

Friends went off hunting and I stayed

Home in my gunless house waiting for

Their stories to unload. Missed that

Part most, the stories that guns give

A person, the hunt, the perfect shot

The pats on the back standing over

The kill, elements we knew from TV

And the movies, so many war stories

Westerns and gangsters, everyone

With a gun, toting or carrying. Knew

All the words, tough masculine stuff,

“make my day” and variations of that.

I grew up in a gunless home, never got

To clean one, load one, aim it, and then

Pull the trigger – and never shot anyone

By accident or on purpose, never stood

Over some slow-moving animal, dead

Now because I had a gun and shot it.


What's Left

On quiet evenings like this

I wait till after dinner


To drag the rubbish and

Recycling down to the end

Of the driveway.

It’s dark enough to go

Almost unnoticed

By neighbors who always

Win the race to be first

With their leavings placed

Out for others to pick through

To pick up, to take away.

We produce so much waste,

The things left over after

We live our daily lives.

We crowd, we fill, we mess

Yes, we stuff, we cram, we jam

We crowd the world with leftovers

With trash, with recycling that

Will never be recycled

With what is left over of our time

Here

We will fill it soon and then we’ll…

J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Third Wednesday, Black Coffee Review, Kitchen Sink, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, Journal of Expressive Writing, Lightwood and Highland Park Poetry.

Herb tea

each afternoon
we set out our herbs 
on their rack
to a spot they could finger
some sunlight. 
we thought ahead; 

propped open the door
with a painted blue chair 
from the balcony. smells entered;
air softened, like water in cups
of herb tea. and sometimes 
it was herbs, but hops 
blew more often,
roasting like biscuits
in fumes rising out
of the guinness factory,

set up across 
the way on the river,
which was really quite 
nearby. 
 
Where I am

inside; I’m a cell
passing protein. 
my window a frame
on a bright
concrete yard. 
yellow leaves climbing
the wall and distress marks,
broken through brick,
the bones of a long- 
rotten pigeon coop. I own
one small fridge,
and a storage heater 
and a painting 
done in orange 
of a tall city 
landscape; dublin,
overlooking the quays.
picked up for 70 euros
in a shop on camden st
when I was last working. my teapot, 
brown as old blood
and my books
are all thumbed for the first half 
and forgotten. I 
am a torn-up chip bag,
lying on the road,
looking at lights 
in the ceiling.
 
My defence.

if I remember correctly,
in our two years together,
it was the first time 
you’d learned 
that I’d cheated. 

but, in defence
of my defence:
at that point
we'd lived
different cities
for 8 months 
and going longer.

in the morning
I called you,
broken as an angry 
drunk's wineglass
and hungover
as a drunkard
as well. I got up – I went 
to the city. took a train
and wandered london
like a bottle
on a brutal 
sea.

people 
were everywhere.
 
Water ingress.

there were storms
blowing east
from late sat
until afternoon
sunday. now the ceiling
of the entrance
to the branch
over Patrick St,
circles of stain
like a burned
dirty stove-top – 
and leaks 
getting through
in two places
at least. above
the main entrance
it's pooled
on the flatroof, 
and through
some electrical
conduits. taking calls
monday morning
I organise contractors, 
issue blanket POs
for supplies and a P1 
priority. the news
of the closure
and all the redundancies
were made public there
only last friday. customers
pretty soon coming to check
on their money. this sends 
the completely wrong 
message, I'm told. 
 
We'd planned on the beach

we'd planned 
on the beach
for an evening
but in absence
some wind 
had kicked up.

we sat in the car
in the wide
empty carpark,
drinking cold
tea from thermos,
and sandwiches meant 
for the sand. the dog 
was quite anxious – 
had detected, I guess
the piss of dead fish
on the tideline. 

I took her a minute,
hoping wind 
would discourage
enthusiasm – 
sand in my eyes
and the leash
in my fist
under pressure – 

the atlantic a doorbell
and crouched 
behind dune-piles,
pretending that no-one
was home. 
.

DS Maolalai has been nominated nine times for Best of the Net and seven times for the Pushcart Prize. He has released two collections, “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016) and “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019). His third collection, “Noble Rot” is scheduled for release in April 2022.

Heaven and Hell
(Hieronymus Bosch, in scrambled haiku)

a peacock, three Eves
with four apples up on top
dark twins flank six white thighs

*

a woman torn asunder
by silver spiked saw
all breast and sinew

*

grown from fish gums
rabid incisors, dark claws
how we are hungry

he is the keeper
of dead birds, their ocular 
sockets oozing death

*

a man with a platypus bill
points to the words on the page
hooked crooked nose, a flashlight

*

the gourd drums, 
the cockroaches
the sloped ukeleles

*

butterfly wings  
salamander feet
a parade of devils

*

pterosaurs and frogs
sail through the constellations
feathers like silk, hook web flippers

*

slippery, sex stuffed with
moonlight, cock and buttock
cuffed, cucked, drowning

*

the pigment is cracking
the bonfires are crackling
the witches are cackling 

soot, smut, braided angels
fingers in her sex, mouth open
drowning men are swimming

*

owls, line laundry,
hooded heads and varicose veins
stingray, crab, a basket of wolverine


*

the lamb of the world 
in a tunnel below the loam
the keys to death and hades in her hooves

*

sail away 
sail away 
sail away

*

you are the doctor
at this table, this emptied heart
these fractured bones

*

my ears and my feet
have been severed by arrows
hell's sharp blades

*

the water is green life
and your wife's skin is red
blood, trickling from struck branches

a murder of crows
streaming from the crack of your ass 
from his, gold coins.

*

a cauldron, an oboe, 
a man vomits into a portal,
another man is born from blue.

*

three fey faces feed
on blackberries and pigs
a martyr is hogtied and stung with arrows

*

this is the house of empty barrels,
and an old and spooky widow
eyes glued to the window

*

the bridge to nowhere
the ladder to an overpass
that slides back down to earth, or hell

*

a reindeer is a centaur
a fig leaf is a burial cloth
a bovine jangles goblets and red silk

*

the gooseberry orgy, naked 
circling the giant spiked fruit, mouths open, 
dice, vice, stockings, and scorpions

*

the bull ruts until the woman's thighs 
fall open and she cries with relief 
at entry

*

a nun screams at puncture
porcupine quills, claws of skunk
sex with white teeth and a mask

*

plucked bird, polka dotted fox hijab
pewter vessel of bitter water
a turtle, a crystal ball in his rubber throat

*

there are ladders across hell
the miners and their shovels
hoist volcanic ash, ashes to ashes

*

the arrow, the bullet
they are aimed at the swan
watch how her wings span death, then life

*

frail white eggs glow
among cymbals and harps
so long ago, the garden

Lorette C. Luzajic

Lorette C. Luzajic writes poetry and flash fiction inspired by visual art. Her works are widely published and nominated. She is the founder and editor of The Ekphrastic Review. She is also an internationally collected visual artist.

NOT MAJOR HOOPLES BOARDING HOUSE:

I just returned from a long mostly silent journey.
To discover I just inherited a twelve-room house.
It feels vaguely like the last house. 
But don’t ask me its location.
Exterior needs a little paint but don’t they all.
Remodeling seems to be a work in progress, just like so many of my paintings.
There are tenants occupying most of the rooms.
But even those that are currently empty one often hears the whispers of the past.
It’s rumored that Tiny Tim produced his best music in room number three.
The Venus room looks wonderful, but Saturn has done the decorating.
Surya shines bright and bold, but I find it too hot…Jim Morrison felt the same way.
A hell of a fight breaks out in room number six, Mars breaks a window or two.
The Moon is milky sweet but is afraid of Rahu’s shadow.
That snake scares me too.
Why oh why did they decide to be roommates!
Mercury is fast but sometimes outruns himself and forgets to lock the door.
Jupiter is gracious and our guiding light, watching over everyone like a sleepy owl.
In time they all will transit to other rooms.
Google maps says follow the neon sign shouting Color TV and Free Coffee!
Damage deposits and thirty days’ notice required.

SHADOWS:								

My dear departed wife collected dolls.

I am now collecting shadows.

Storage is not a problem.

This collection is not for sale.

I normally don’t play favorites but this one has all my attention.

Its exact location is hard to pinpoint.

Google maps does not help.

It often appears under a passing cloud or nestled beside me in the warmth of my shadow.

Often it shows up in a dream, wearing a blond wig and a t-shirt that says I love Cairn Terriers.

I even wrote a long and beautiful love letter to it, but it was too long and too beautiful.

Now it’s gone AWOL… was it stolen or just a runaway?

Is there an app for this?

Searching Frantically!

I might put on a milk carton… Have You Seen  Me?

My friend Jenny collects sentences.

Frankie Laufer is an oil painter and writer living in Walla Walla, WA. His paintings have been shown in both the SF Bay area and Eastern Washington state. His poems have recently appeared on Piker Press.

The expressive nature of both painting and writings creates the possibility of rediscovering lost or forgotten feelings and the possibility of new discovery.