A Trilogy of Descort Poems by Amita Sarjit Ahluwalia

 

A Trilogy of Descort Poems



STAY PUT

Stay put.

Will you make me twenty steel boxes, please?
Let’s cook cluster beans and milk pudding.
You are twenty-eight today- what’s going on in your head, I wonder.
What a blue sky behind the fall colours of the foliage!

Her shock of grey hair and dark glasses shocked me.
Another house is waiting.
There is a garden in a garden city.

Their son is named Song: I thought it was a girl’s name, but they are deeply in love, so I give credit for craziness across states.
There is a quarrel between two parts of my mind, making me schizophrenic.
Stop.
He used to run a school in her language.

Some are jealous, others admire, some hate, are ready to die and kill, money is involved.
What happened to the street children’s library could be a matter of interest.
Please go away- leave me alone- I can’t bear anything- terminal gradual heart failure.
Golden birch cones.



PALE HANDS

Pale hands from poetry became for some a Victorian painting reference.
Think of Tess, and Angel Clare - but she was hanged.
O Sole Mio!

I’m sorry.
You will see the thinking is conflicted.
The Horse Painter was exiled but to some he was another Picasso though barefoot.
How different do you think you are from me?

Some words are better in Urdu.

The split personality, the attention deficient disorder, could be the heritage of a green - eyed girl named after mint.
I saw them getting married years ago.

Six deliveries later………
I must learn to give up things, one at a time.

DILEMMA

The idea was to depict an inner conflict in an appropriate form.
Damn.
All I write is dried grass ready to be set fire to. Say pass.
You irritate me by being reasonable.
Do you not understand?
I’m pulling my hair out from the roots in big handfuls in utter frustration.
It’s a matter of life and death for me — a short leftover life, a painful lonely death, most likely.
You expect me to smile!
Everybody can see through me and my frivolous excuses: who am I trying to fool, anyway?
I’m too strong
For anyone to make me do something inspite of myself -
I do not believe in love, either, so that’s out, anyway.
Spoiling for a fight, he says. I’m not falling for that one, he says.
The solution of my problem lies
Not in words but in action.
Inaction.
I’m addicted to inaction.
such are the horns of my dilemma good intentions lie impaled hurry up please it’s time missed train catch another next stop cuttack neither here nor there e e cummings type don’t go seeing things

Amita Sarjit Ahluwalia is the pen name of Amita Paul, a retired civil servant who is at heart a poet and teacher. She writes , mostly poetry, in English, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu. She was awarded the NISSIM International Poetry Award 2019 and the Reuel international Award 2020 for Non- Fiction Prose, while Destiny International Community of Poets UK, declared her Poet of the Year 2020 as well as Critic of the Year 2020, and again in 2021. Her work has been published in several international anthologies and also in many journals and online magazines such as Das Literarisch, Doaba, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Yugen Quest Review, Setu Bilingual Magazine, GloMag, Fasihi Magazine, and Spillwords.

Allhallowtide Revels - By Greg Patrick

Allhallowtide Revels

By Greg Patrick

“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.” - W.B. Yeats

Night cast its dark spell over the dreamscape of mist-crowned ruins haunted by ancient rallying harpsong, like a muse seeking a bard to give it's echoes of battle and lover's sigh voice and standing stones, like glowering guardsmen under weight of sky stand in the austere ranks of their lost mystery.

From a circling raven's aerial perspective, the shadows of the standing stones realigned as shadows drew in dark array like sentinels in anticipation of a dark lord's arrival...

It is the vision of mortal man not their sight that surpassed that of the hunting beast, a solitary figure reflects, meeting the eyes of a wolf trailing red deer through the labyrinthine glade, pelts lit in twilight like dispersing flame as they melt like a black knight's heart before the ravenous cry of the wolfpack like a heraldry ushering in the night.

What dreams do you behold then, sage of the oaks and highlands?

He sighs as red maws are raised in thanksgiving over a kill, antler-crowned head fallen like slain king sacrificed.

What nightmares walk this eve, masked to beguile mortals?

Where does nightmare end and dream begin?

He closed his eyes in pale cowl as if averting his face humbly before a passing red queen as the sun sets in last flaring splendour. He raises his arms as if beckoning darkness forth, as if challenging their appointed champion in an age-old battle, a ritual, a sacrifice. Arms splayed as if to embrace death like an old friend.

He is silhouetted in that pose against that setting sun and the living shrine of trees.

Like a haggard scarecrow in vigil over swaying fronds of harvest, like the waves of a dark sea.

He stands before the fall of night, as the others arrive, soundless as ghosts..and between his spread arms the bonfires are lit.

Only then the war horn sounds like a challenge to darkness itself. Its bray heard across the land, trailing off with the last light of the dying sun…enough to wake the dead.

And before the harvest feast of the dead was borne across the dark sea, the red wakes of ships from the greenest shore, the wakes of men in the new world fallen as if to the scythe as they fight and die for a maddening word called "freedom" to the haggard souls issued guns and uniforms to fight for a cause they didn't understand, uttered by statesmen, as hollow as carved lanterns from hollowed orbs, set to hold evil at bay. The fields of mist-enshrouded moor cast in red mystery by the dusk the sun reduced to a knife-like slash upon the horizon as if in offering to the rising dark. As if lit by the red flourishes of a druidic bonfire the faces of men in blue and grey and banners of green, the blood-chant of hearts, the battle cries of the bloodline of the Gael as they march into the immolation of fire, as if oblivion was peopled by angels, as if freedom was known a legless man before blood sacrifice, as if a druid beckoned as of old for youths to step forth to the fire and blade, for the survival of the people.

A new land, old blood, a timeless evil on this night. The old customs of the land forsaken in the great hunger, haunt still.

A lone figure rises from among the fallen, whispers their names…yet only the chill wind of fall replies in ghostly echo.

He stands swaying before a sea of bonfires lit on the heights, like a youth who had eluded the demand for sacred sacrifice.

He staggers, each step agony, but a beautiful agony, alive. The knowledge a battle cry, a luxury.

Hands raise groaning from ashen faces as if the palms crave a treat from his sack..anything, hands reach for him, each face a ghostly mask as he pulls away, as if they seek to pull him down to their dark world.

He sees a horse like a raft in a dark maelstromic sea as he struggles to remain conscious and standing, knowing if he falls, allows himself to. He won't rise again. The horse strains against the fallen forms that tether it. Two men dead, grappling over a regimental banner.

He raises his hand, caressing the heaving flank of the horse as if in some reverence, the only other living thing in some ancient bond between horse and warrior.

The stallion shies from the bloodied sabre he steadies his hand to wield, to sever the bindings to death.

He soothes the fine beast, croons to it in his ancient Gaelic tongue, like a song to the night.

The wind swept through his hair like a ghostly battle cry. He closes wind-stung eyes as he feels borne from field of battle on dark angel's wings to angelic arms.

He never felt so much a rebel as when he chose not to die. A belle waiting under cover of darkness for tidings of battle. The wind sweeps her hair like a bonfire's flame burning through the rain.

She awaits one among those who marched into the sunset. A stranger from across the sea. One of many that had tripped to the shores of a new land from coffin ships, escaping the famine, sunken cheeks and haunted eyes that betrayed a deep mourning in stone-set features.

"Expendable labourers" to be exploited on plantations or marsh construction..one far below her station it was thought. Yet when eyes raised in an act of unashamed rebellion held her eyes and did not look away as the sun set over the cotton fields.

Something phoenix-like in its enchantment borne in gaze that still burnt with the fires of thatched cottages that still burnt with a lad's dreams of warrior heroes and princesses to fight for, something touched another soul tangibly as a ghost granted form and face to dance with his bereaved lover before dawn..They were to elope if the valour by which he distinguished himself in battle did not win him standing in the proud society. She lingered even as horses returned riderless. Even as the bugles of the Yankees shrilled like a banshee bemoaning the fallen of the clans.

A horseman approaches, a messenger reigning in. He does not pass

her to the belles thronging the balconies and terraces of the manors

overlooking the countryside, frightened eyes and faces lit in flashes of distant artillery.

What news...?

Silence…

The man is slumped over the horse’s neck, slain surely. Head bowed, lips moving in soundless incantation. She looked up only as a hand cold as the valediction of Orpheus' song to lost love, caressed her soul, eyes looking through streaks of red like crimson warpaint

gazed into hers like a thirst-maddened nomad intoxicated by the oasis..

"Your hand is as cold as a ghost's."

"Yours as well."

In some rapture haunting the night, heart and soul he bows formally and sweeps her into a waltz, dancers lit in the eerie crimson splendour of the cannon and rockets. Some chant in the old tongues, songs of cheer or love, or marching songs of their adopted land.

The eve seems haunted as the surviving soldiers of other regiments return, bearing candles and lanterns. The lights weaving eerily as cries of recognition greet them, eyes frantically scan the faces for a loved one. Brogue and drawls mingle, any sense of divisions abandoned.

As if ghosts seek to be reunited with the light and past lives the soldiers, wounded, or shaken by the ordeal of battle, return.

Cradled heads weep into chests, laughter, mingling with sobs.

Names cried out searchingly into the dark at the approaching ranks of shadows.

As if in a ring of fire the rebel and his lady dance, unchallenged, the others cease and watch in silent wonder, till he bows and raises gloved hand to his lips.

Eyes lit as if of its own fires as if something of death was overcome

that All Hallows Eve and in tear-blurred eyes the figures thronging and applauding seemed the crowds of the clans of the mist-enshrouded hills of Connemara amid the bonfires of Halloween, faces long gone to hunger seem to be seen in fleeting recognition, as if the dead wished the living a fond farewell before the dawn, and as if a portal in the hollow hills opens for the wandering dead to return till next year's revels the sun rises as if in promise to the living. As souls find their way back to bright threshold by dawn with a wistful look back, before turning again back to the light. Too late to go back. The doorman will no longer allow those with masks. Shadow and light go their separate ways. Doors close till next year.

He pulled her onto the horse and turned away as if holding onto a dream, fearing it will disappear with opening eyes.

Night of dreams and soldier's nightmares., where death mingles with life and dream with nightmare in a great masked ball by the fires of sacrifice raised to keep the dark at bay.

Greg Patrick - A dual citizen of Ireland and the states, Greg Patrick is an Irish/Armenian traveller poet and the son of a Navy enlisted man.  He is also a former Humanitarian aid worker who worked with great horses for years and loves the wilds of Connemara and Galway in the rain where he's written many stories. Greg spent his youth in the South Pacific and Europe and currently resides in Galway, Ireland and sometimes the states.

Five Poems by petro c. k.

 

Sugar and Crematory

 

burnt out and about 

the citizens that have 

a good exit strategy 

 

 

Inhaling Osiris

 

Slowly shadowing butterflies 

     shower with the moss 

the other colours 

    begin to make a new ache 

at the edge of tomorrow 

    designing their landscape

ambushing the numbers

    of twilight trysts

 

 

Remember That Little Doubt 

 

Flames become a problem 

for the drought 

 

a lot of frayed nerves

trail into the night sky every day 

 

An ambulance in the distance 

of the reassembled molecular horizon

 

leaving behind the static page

that burns down to the final word

 

 

Don't Bogart the Norm

 

Clip joint defunct

without the thuggish stud

 

This gruff judge 

preens regret

 

Ugh gorgeously 

Bette Davis eyes are not done 

 

 

That Birds Dredged Idyllic Beds

 

             After you have been 

created with the most common sense 

 

and the days before the horses

            leave the country 

 

and the days before the fields 

           are the depths annexed 

 

A night gardener of your zen garden 

          says being the coy water lilies 

 

          gets the most vivid graft

of everyday phototherapy 

 

petro c. k. is a temporal being living in the primordial emerald landscape of the Pacific Northwest. His creative life has just recently included writing, with haiku and other short-form poetry already published in dozens of journals. In between bouts of existential dread and listening to music that 99% of people find too weird for them, he is working on his first collection of poetry.

Influenced by surrealism and dada techniques, the poems presented here have been created in part by using predictive text.

Three Poems by R. W. Haynes

The Wheels


Let the Platonic dialogue spin its wheels

Sometimes. Let the claim of verbal satisfaction

Defer respectfully to that of action,

Leaving peace to operate its deals.

Do not worry overmuch for ancient lies,

Glittering theories or complacency

Born from the smugly-captured victory,

Which time’s own conscience fervently denies.

So spoke the youthful sage, his counsel bold

Enough for foolish youth, his heart

Untested by being slowly pulled apart

In a hurricane and left out in the cold.

Smiling at these words, his friend replies,

I know you, friend, despite this brave disguise.



If wisdom were salvation for the mind

We’d luxuriate in cordial content,

Never wondering where courage went

Or why debates all leave us nearly blind.

Here you float on formula again

In hope your blithe defiance is in tune

With cosmic operation’s vast cartoon,

A game you plan to roll the dice and win.

But doesn’t real wisdom hesitate

To shed its secret tolerance of pain?

Do not its contradictions render plain

A simpler tension than you obfuscate?

I like the fact that art makes Justice blind,

And so should Truth be in the groping mind.




Not Enough Betrayal

For Billy Joe Shaver


So you can throw a brazen spear through

A sea of marshmallows you have decorated

With lovers’ livers crushed and desiccated,

And feed them to your crocodilian crew,

And you can fly down quickly at warp speed

To tear off ears, gouge eyes, and maul

And fly back safely, tickled pink by it all,

And laugh insanely while your victims bleed,

But guess what, honey, guess who doesn’t care,

For in my mental bar-room I’m immune,

And all your malice, all your evil action,

May give your foolish mind some satisfaction,

But in my ears I hear a magic tune,

Turn up the drama, then, Miss Jezebel;

Stoke up the fires of your imagined Hell.



So if this looks like buffoonery,

Think again. However serious we were

And whatever gaudy mask you prefer,

I ask that you take this play seriously.

But then of course that’s where the fun comes in,

And as you race to organize your face

A noisy little clown car pulls up in place,

And all the mad hilarity begins again,

As frantic comedians dash about,

Confetti cascades in a mock hurricane,

And a mob of foolish firemen in this rain

Pretends to put the fires of passion out.

Buffoonery? Nah, this is normalcy.

And I’m not laughing. Can you be?




Demanding Humiliation


Demanding humiliation again and again,

He bounced like the ball in a pinball machine,

Graciously shiny, elusive and mean,

Resisting gravity as if it were sin

And virtue burned bright in mere mobility.

As green birds wrangled with family outside,

Their clashing inspired in him a kind of pride

That aged at last into philosophy,

And, as his eyes focused, he saw at last

A vast train of miracles barrelling

His way and heard the birds begin to sing

Hosts of alleluias for future and past.

What was he to do? Go or stay?

Get plowed under or jump out of the way?

R. W. Haynes is Professor of English at Texas A&M International University, where he teaches early British literature and Shakespeare. His recent publications include studies of playwright/screenwriter Horton Foote. In 2016, Haynes received the SCMLA Poetry prize at the Dallas conference of the South Central Modern Language Association. Two books of his poems (Laredo Light and Let the Whales Escape) appeared in the summer of 2019, another (Heidegger Looks at the Moon) in 2021, and, forthcoming in 2022, The Deadly Shadow of the Wall.

Five Poems by Fabrice B. Poussin

 

In Search of the word

 

A conductor’s apprentice he seeks the strings of the cosmos

plucking at the occasional breeze through leaves of his thoughts.

 

Dreaming of Chopin on a shore of pebbles complex as the last snow

he gently taps an index as he searches for the darkest ivories.

 

Perhaps the rhythm of an Africa he lost long ago will animate his soul

drumming through the spheres a message sweet as a heavenly nectar.

 

Breath fresh as that of a new born in the early morning mist

he calls to the depths of space with the melody of the reed.

 

Musician he knows the immaterial orchestra surrounds his presence

child in the first lessons of the metronome he remains silent.

 

Twirling drunken artist desperate for expression he stumbles

still and forever unable to capture in the air a sound to make up a sign.

 

 

Noise

 

Six AM on the hill as

fog settles upon the antlers

of deer frolicking unaware of

the troubles festering below

trains clamour in the dense night

in a chain of unending defeats.

 

Seconds would flow slowly if they could

groggy too from a peaceful slumber

but the silence is too much for man

as he reasserts his dominion upon the trees

roaring at the wheel of his infernal machines

trumpets blaring his only token to existence.

 

And they scream those children of inconsiderate days

needless maleness affirming obscenities

into the ears of the innocent quadrupeds

puzzled by the sirens of the dying

when fires burn across town

and teenagers set the alarms of prized heaps of oil and gasoline.

 

Six AM still and I would rather awaken in the jungle

with the laughter of hungry hyenas

the groan of an old crownless king

the uncertainty of another day

than to live among the wild

humans deprived of the souls we once loved.

 

Ritual

 

Forgotten in a frigid room of tile and ice water

a counter as cold as the stone of his recent slumber

the fragrant aroma lives in every pore

companion to a cream and the freshness of the blade.

 

Morning ritual never bypassed, the tools now rest

silent, covered in the memories of their soul

thin rays of a noble sun attempt to break this death

rejoicing in what may still remain.

 

He lives, they scream; in another world they too survive

it only takes a moment of quietude to hear again

the soft touch of the razor to the dying hair

under the sharp gaze of those unfailing greys.

 

The old cologne, the razor and the delicate suds

in awe of what he once was dare not make a slight move

they will wait until it is time to journey to oblivion

dust, on the mantel by the abyss of the mirror.

 

 

Little Thing

 

She looked at the giant a million miles above

attempting to escape on all six in the dirt

it had not been a moment as she thought

since she had devoured a particle of dust.

 

The monstrosity continued on its merry way

moving mountains at the bottom of a sole

infinite in its blind power to achieve oblivion

upon a world suspect only to its gentle kin.

 

A tremor soon shakes their home like a quake

so strong to swallow all things, redemption

the killer has collapsed under an unseen thumb

pressing on a life so feeble in its illusion of invincibility.

 

Within the carcass a little thing crawls

warm in the home of these shrinking entrails

it seeks a place to raise its immense family

food aplenty in the bounty of this fleshy planet.

 

Tomorrow will see another light

a dimming sun will become supernova

victim to its own appetite for eternal strength

it may even beg for a respite.

 

Sitting atop the cozy enclave of a palace

he contemplates the cadaver of a brother

stabbed in the heart by such a little thing

another sun’s life shuddered by a tiny moon.

 

Symphony

 

In the thick darkness of his den

composer of many sonatas he sits

blank music sheets waiting for his hand.

 

He gave up the drink long ago

finding the void a greater inspiration

enveloped in the shroud of upcoming ecstasy.

 

He drew the spots and let them dance

on the sheet where he once dreamed of her

falling back into a sleepy mood in her embrace.

 

In a dreary afternoon surrounded by icy mists

a gentle hearth brought life to the air

staring through a dark glass her image came to.

 

An evening like so many more and a sigh

inviting the apparition to come into his chambers

so life came to the notes in a fantastic symphony.

 

Another dusk would set onto the adorned parchment

quiet among the creatures of his night

under a crescent moon scarred with her pains.

 

For a while he was whole again in the desert

of an existence made of mere illusions of an oasis

living with her who yet was unaware of the gift.

Fabrice B. Poussin - teaches French and English at a university in Georgia, USA. His work in poetry and photography has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and many other publications worldwide. His collections “In Absentia,” and “If I Had a Gun,” were published by Silver Bow in 2021 and 2022. 

 

 

Five Poems by Edward Lee

 

THIS INEXPLICABLE NEED

 

The silence you left

comforts me

more than your voice

ever did, or your touch,

or, for that matter,

your very presence,

my existence one of constantly coiled apprehension

that I might disappoint you,

anger you,

lose you,

 

all of which I did,

and more, but

that is not why you are gone;

 

your heart simply ceased,

quickly, surprisingly.

Your heart ceased

and now you are gone.

 

I miss you,

without missing you,

the comfort of silence,

the absence of the fear

of angering you,

not enough

to calm my need for you

beside me, this inexplicable need.

 

 

LIES/TRUTHS

 

Told too many people

too many lies, so,

many of those people

no longer believe

a word I say,

most of them unwilling

to listen to any word I say.

 

I can't blame them,

I suppose. I don't, most

of the time, though those times

I do mind, those times

when I am telling the truth,

it scratches under my skin,

to tell a truth

and be thought a liar

(and yes, I know exactly

how that sounds).

 

If I haven't re-earned

their trust by now,

I never will, and

why are we wasting words,

true or otherwise,

on each other

when there are thousands of people

who have never lied to them,

and thousands more who do not know

that I had told more lies

than any one person ever should

even if they lived a dozen lifetimes?

 

 

WIFE AND CHILD

 

Died so many times before,

some demises brought on by my own self,

others given to me by the world,

most of them aided by the disease

which blackens my brain, my life

the offspring of its wide spread,

 

but I don't want to die

anymore, or at the very least,

only once, and sometime in the time

left before me, some far distant time,

but no, not now, not now

that I have something

to live for, something worthy

of survival, no matter the struggle

to achieve that survival.

 

 

SILENCE

 

Your absence is apparent

every time I enter the house,

the comforting presence

of you that once filled the air

before you even entered

the room.

 

I suppose I'm trying to say

I miss you without saying it,

but where is the harm

in saying it, when I have never

had any issue with voicing

what was in my heart (though

what was in my head

was always harder to shape into words,

this hard contradiction sometimes

stunning me into silence, but

you had grown used to it

across all our years together).

 

I miss you. I miss you.

Though I would not ask

for you back

if it meant that

all the pain

you left behind

was waiting

to wrap you

in its cruel arms again,

like a violence so silent

only the damage it bestows

can be audibly discerned.

 

 

ROPE FOR SOUL

            For PW

 

I would have sold my soul

for a rope that could have anchored

your soul to your body

for a moment longer,

just so your daughter

might have arrived there

in time to say goodbye.

 

But I don't believe

in such fancies

as the soul,

 

though I would

if it meant

I could have sold mine

to hold onto yours

for those handful of minutes

as she rushed to the hospital,

the call of the doctor still loud

in her semi-sleeping ear.

Edward Lee's poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Blue Nib and Poetry Wales.  His play ‘Wall’ received a rehearsed reading as part of Druid Theatre’s Druid Debuts 2020.

He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Orson Carroll, Lego Figures Fighting, and Pale Blond Boy.

His blog/website can be found at https://edwardmlee.wordpress.com

One Poem by Angel Edwards

 

Guardians

 

Stands the stone angel

inanimate record keeper

stone pen with etched plume

writing in

stone made opened ledger

 

in still attendance

dance three porcelain cupids

newly ground snow white designed clay

already show slightly chipped wings

these ornaments

are fragile things

they are not built to stay

 

for now they live

in the moonlit graveyard

but they do not live

The stone angel record keeper

the three porcelain cupids

they have never lived

they will never die

 

watching over

the once living

long gone or newly dead

their presence

calmly thrilling

respect yet

best not

regard them with dread

 

guardians of the graveyard

Angel Edwards is a singer songwriter guitarist published writer published poet with 4 books from Vancouver BC Canada. Member of AFM local 145. BMI SOCAN

http://www.angeledwards.ca