Three Poems by Amrita Valan

 

Hocus Pocus an Ekphrastic



Abra ca dabra sayeth she
Bewitching wench
A brunette witch
As I wish so mote it be.
Into the fire I seek thee.
The fathomless crystal ball,
My fierce gaze, mythical.



Lithe as a supine serpent I,
My waving body twist, into
Knots to tie,
The intended charm, to
Plot the harm.
To cast my sorceress spirit,
And seek yours, right to
The gates of hell.
Ball of fuming fabulous fire,
Upon the force of my imperious
Command, become a ravenous
Rotating gyre, fly free from my palm,
Paradisiacal provident sphere.

Prodigal expelled to find chosen one,
The designated sun of brightest brilliance brings,
Freedom's celestial lordly being,
In this frosty space to enthrone the king
Make believe mythical fantastic skies
spellbinding sinister sight, pyromania, of
Byzantine nights of might.


Reign, revolve in grace of light,
Turn and burn, and return again
In ageless gyre, defy, defy the pull
And push of gravitational pyres...
To attractions, repulsions be thou resistant,
Beacon siring eternity.
This focused beam of my powerful throw
Druidic Celtic chant in mythic poetic flow,
Coiled hand in vicious clawing throes,
Coitus of cosmic countdown show.


Now I set thy tempest free,
Universal chaos in motion be
Rip consciousness, shredded
In wild photonic spree, as by the spell I chant,
I cast out thee!


Candlelight vigil past time's speeding arrow
Released into firmaments of sunset's morrow
Sunder armaments of temporalities float
The battlements of Time and space toss
Fulminating glow!

 

Impermanent Eternity

 

Permanence is in itself transient

Because every beginning presupposes 

An implied ending

Every ending conceives 

A new beginning

And the Big Bang

That started it all,

Was the moment

Nothing became

Something,

Permanently.

 

And if it was God 

Divine genesis,

No big bang at all

His Word made flesh, then,

It is his Silence 

That intrigues me.

 

What were his thoughts?

In the silent void

Without words?

 

If 

Successively bigger bangs

Create bigger universes

The river of chronons

Looping endlessly,

Wondering if

THIS,

Wonderful symmetry

Of space time

Should veer off,

Wandering into asymmetry...

 

If Matter should happen, 

Should the mind 

Cease to matter?

 

For the dense congealed 

Singularity

That expansion become

Space time

Did it create mind

Or did 

Mind create it?

 

The tells glare from the 

Gaps in between the tale,

The silence of an 

Indomitable universe

Ruthless, fecund, self-contained 

Oceanic egg.

 

 

Your Dominance of My World

 

Your green gilled breath

Your chiselled health

Your eyes your voice

Teardrops and crystal

Your heart so raw

Your hands so soft

Your throat 

My feathered stalk

Your romping walk

You are tenderness

You are genderless

Your Onyx naivete

Innocence radiates.

Your mind so hard

Diamond razor sharp

Bright as bone

Through broken flesh

Oh my flower, you are

Yet to come, to fruition.

 

How fierce my fears

My tears, my reveries

prayers,

That  you may find 

Long lasting roots.

 

Your virgin stem

Your mobile face

Your trusting grin

Your emotions

Contained in

 

A wanton need to spill

A calling to heal

May positives seal

May you make

The real deals.

 

Broken in storms

Yesterday's warmth

Maybe your alms

Your inner Psalms.

 

My child no more

My boy no more

But you will always be

My son, my morning star 

Young man in the making

The risen sun of my 

Mortal hours.

Amrita Valan is a writer from Bangalore, India and has a master’s degree in English Literature. She has worked in various professions, ranging from the hospitality industry, BPOs and as content creator in deductive logic and reasoning in English.

She is currently a stay-at-home mom to her two boys.

Her work has been published in many anthologies and online journals. The anthologies include, Poetica 2 and 3, To Be or Not To Be a Writer, The Poet’s Christmas Childhood and Faith anthologies, Divided: A Poet’s Stance, The Ink and the Sword, Down the Rabbit Hole, Fire and Ice, Earth Wind Rain and Fire Anthology, The ImpSpired Vol 7& 8 Anthology, The Alien Buddha Wears a Black Bandanna among others. Her poems and stories Have featured in Spillwords, Café Lit, Café Dissensus, Shot glass Journal, Oddball magazine, Modern Literature, Indian Periodical, Potato Soup Journal, Literary Yard, Poetryand Places, LothLorien poetry Journal and Portland Metrozine among many others.

Arrivederci, (Goodbye till we meet again), her debut collection of fifty poems about arrivals and departures, farewells and hopes of reunion, love loss grief and recollection is published on Amazon as of 7 May 2021.

 

Four Poems by Peter Mladinic

 

Message in a Bottle

 

I took a green bouquet in my left hand

to the ocean. Ocean flowers,

green roses for your green eyes, Mother.

 

Take my imperfect love bundle, Mother

who rocked in arms, as I slept,

whose body vessel brought me this shore.

 

Carry me on nothing to fear,

take this me-dream green destiny of forget

into your bosom’s roses, ghost,

sky flame, ship minuscule on the horizon

of boarded glass.

 

Where ocean and years hover,

plums drop from branches,

near a window a white cloth’s gold crumbs

leave no trace

at all.  Your hands’ oblivion knuckles clouds.

The sea’s drowning hand waves far out.

I think it time, retaliation, the eyes in a face

of sand, the answer that is and is not.

 

I fling feebly to your vast

wave crested nothing, ashes.  Kisses

of milk-box near steps

cloud the curved bottle’s message:

the all of a corner’s broom, April showers.

 

Roses of the sea lie on the ocean floor.

Apples fall from eternity’s green branches.

 

Up and Out

 

Champion pole vaulter Bob Richards is up,

the abandoned air base is out.  Bob

Richards, not to be confused with the great

Wendy Richard of East Enders and

Are You Being Served?, vaults on the box

of Wheaties, breakfast of champions

and with strength, skill epitomizes Up,

as does the air base Out: lots of macadam

to venture out to where earth meets sky,

 

a body could walk forever runways empty

of aircraft.  Cracks with weeds form

a pattern, as did Bob Richards with his up,

over the bar, down, pattern of practice to be

in the Olympics and at meets that lacked

Olympic fanfare. All it took to do that up

and over, his one aid a pole, moves me,

as does the airbase’s abandon,

its lots of walk out far as the eye can see,

 

its horizontal, like its sky, void of gliders and

planes. Though a few years back, a glider

fell, its pilot’s life lost, I heard. I wasn’t there

then. I was in a room without windows,

monitoring students writing to a prompt

called Now I’m Paying for It. 

Each had a different It, most, a lot to say.

I wasn’t sure that prompt would work.

One by one, they stood and read aloud.

 

Chapter from an Egyptian Novel

 

He looks for his lost love

only to find that she died

and that he attended her funeral

and didn’t know it.

He dreams about his father

taking him into a cemetery

pointing to a stone and saying son

this is your grave.

He searches for his lost love.

He plays the piano.

A bird flies through an open window

and then out the window.

He marries a woman

with green eyes, they have a son

a house on a lake.

He searches for his lost love

the love of his youth

the girl who was like a rainbow

a mountain an orange flower a river.

He was not aware the funeral

he had attended

was for her.

He worked at a large

company, so large

he didn’t know his supervisor,

except in name, whose

wife died.

And out of a sense of obligation

partly out of sympathy

partly out of boredom,

he straightened his tie in

a mirror and then took

his seat among mourners.

It was her coffin up there,

in a pavilion, on a

platform.  He

could barely see it

through all the flowers.

Selfie

 

“She even thinks that up in heaven

Her class lies late and snores”

I see, it’s a poem printed on a white board.

I’m with you, behind the bulk of gold

podium.  All these desks. I just popped in.

While it’s just you and I..see, I know

my pronoun cases. Cases, Casey.

 

Jose said to George, She was just a kid.

You came into her bedroom, unzipped…

the unmentionable, Jose nailed it.

A father flies across the courtroom,

a bailiff pries father fingers from Jose’s

throat, but George...Score one for Jose.

It worked. I walked out a free woman.

 

You’d think a father...I never knew Caylee’s.

What happened?  You’ve read about

Cindy a nurse, George a doting grandpa ,

the backyard pool, the shallow grave,

Zanny the Nanny, Universal Studios

I work there. I’m here, with you.

What’s the weather like in Orlando?

 

Do I like chocolate martinis?

I like to party, the Orlando club scene.

I’ll toast a memory, Casey Anthony,

Mother of the Year!  Tone is everything. 

Jose, demonstrative, emphatic,

to George, “your daughter’s mouth!”

Caylee’s taped corpse, Zanny the Nanny.

 

You’ve written, If you take “even”

from the first line, the poem

is no longer Cullen’s classic quatrain

“To a Lady I Know.”  Tone, nuance..

I should write fiction. Casey Anthony,

Mother of the Year. This podium

you hide behind. All these empty desks.

 

While it’s just you and I, let’s you hold

the iPhone, there, mom of the year’s

arm round prof of the year’s shoulder.

Don’t get that “she even thinks..”

in the picture. Big smile, here at Clovis

Community College, you and me,

big smile, lie our way to the truth.

Peter Mladinic’s fifth book of poems, Voices from the Past, is due out in November 2023 from Better Than Starbucks Publications.  An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, USA.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Five Poems by Desiree Batiste

 

Following Greatness

 

Strolling with Frost

on the road less travelled

Reassuring Poe

his nightmares will

plague him nevermore

I fell into Whitman's

leaves of grass

and picked myself up

to continue the trod

through Longfellow's

footprints on the sands of time

Johnson and I

hear the echoes of

the change of seasons

My only unwanted companion

being the shadows in my mind

reminding me of just

how black the darkness was

which I survived

Each time when I thought

it was the end

when I fell into nothingness

as a way to save myself from

all the pain which I

remained trapped in

Poet voices would whisper to me

“You've got this!

You are one of us!”

and so, I jumped up

dusted myself off

and continued my unpredictable journey

through the unknown

ahead of me

on Frost's road

and thank God every day

that this was the path I chose

leading me ever closer

as I am following greatness

 

*This poem incorporates snippets of poems from: Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”; Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”; Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”; Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Time” and Michael Lee Johnson’s “Sundown, Fall”.

Hourglass

One tiny grain of sand

For every tear I’ve shed

Every punch that landed

All the times my heart broke

Each time I was brought to a lower low

The grains continued to fall

Somehow it feels like time slows to a crawl in misery

And pours out faster in the light of joy

I know I’ll never stop the sand

There’s no chance to flip the hourglass of life

When the sand runs out

And we finally leave this world

Ashes to ashes and dust to dust

My hourglass will shatter

Releasing my spirit

Paroled from my mortal sentence

Ready to begin life everlasting

Free of the constraints of time

Only peace is possible in this place

Outside the hourglass

On the Floor

 

I need a snack / Munchies for TV time / I go in the kitchen / and pull out a skillet / so I can sauté / some chicken / for a salad. I put olive oil / in the skillet. / The new bottle / pours out fast / and when I pull back / I spill some on the floor. / “I’ll clean it up later” / I say to myself. / I grab the chicken / from the fridge. / When I open the package / juices and meat blood / spurt onto the counter. / “Where’s a wipe? / I need to clean this!” / I get the bleach wipes / and wipe the counter down. / I go to put them away / and accidentally / knock them over / Bleach goes onto the chicken. / I pale and realize / now there will / only be salad. / I grasp the head of lettuce / and put it on the counter / then get a couple of tomatoes. / I wash a tomato / and take it over / to the cutting board. / It’s slippery and / I lose my grip! / I try to grab / for it / and slip in the oil / on the floor. / I go to stabilize / my balance / and end up smashing / the poor tomato / with a squish. / I wince, seeds are / between my toes. / I reach for the lettuce / so I can chop it up / with the last tomato / and have this / basic salad. My hands, still wet / from washing the tomato / slide on the surface / and launch the lettuce / into the corner of / the kitchen. / The corner / which has all manner / of crumbs and dropped things. / I watch it… / you guessed it… / hit the floor / and roll / through the oil / then stop in the / joint of the corner cabinets. / I shake my head / and exhale, / knowing that this / simple task / was beyond my ability / to execute. / I pick up the lettuce / and see Oreo cookie crumbs / a dried piece of / shredded cheese / and many different / colours of cat fur. / I shake my head again / as I look over / the kitchen floor, / which lost the / Battle of the Salad, / as did I. / People don’t believe that / diets are hard / but the struggle / is real! / I shrug at the mess. / “I’ll clean this up later. / Guess I’ll have to / order pizza. / What a shame!

She is Not Me, but I am Her

 

Standing here now

The woman before you

is nothing like the ‘me’ of then

 

I cannot see how

I survived all I went through

I knew I’d escape, just didn’t know when

 

I wish somehow, I could go back in time

and talk to my former self

to chisel wisdom into concrete ears

 

I wouldn’t try to change my life

or try to amass wealth

but just try to leave some comfort to pass the years

 

I still want the life I have now

It’s all I could have wished for

and I’m thankful it’s mine everyday

 

But there’s a part of me that doesn’t like how

behind every closed window and locked door

stood an obstacle in my way

 

Obstacles make us grow and change

That’s not the part I don’t see

or why I’d reach out to the me that’s malleable

 

I must ask; I find it so strange

as I look over that past ‘me’

Did you know that you’re valuable?

 

Of course, you don’t

That is why you gave up

and threw your hopes away

 

You say you’ll try harder, but you won’t

All you say is “how high” when someone says “jump!”

You wish for no tomorrow because of the pain felt today

 

What would I say to her?

That ‘me’ of 1995 with strong will?

I would gently take her hand

 

and say, “I know things are horrible, sure

and they’ll get even worse, still

but you need to hold fast to your faith

 

Remember life is a miracle returned to you

This is a blessed second chance

Your decisions will shape the path we walk”

 

She will know it’s true

She will walk away without a second glance

and think, “thanks for the talk”

 

But the words…they’ll take a while to sink in

A seed planted which needs time to grow

into the hedge maze we now traverse

 

Each time we get lost within

she will come to know

when dealing with time, there is no reverse

 

The maze is changing behind us

giving us only options forward

Pushing us towards the present

 

Each time we make a fuss

or try to make the struggles beyond hard

the memory of our talk will be heaven-sent

 

That wall behind us, made of leaves

pushing against our back

guiding us to the now

 

cares not for sobs and heaves

cuts no slack

Only knows you must move forward but cares not how

 

Step after step, year after year

Heartbreak, time and again

Scars that heal, but never stop bleeding

 

Determination replaces fear

even at times when

she cries she is not getting what she’s needing

 

Do I think she will remember the words?

Will she keep moving on our path

or will she go a different way?

 

She’ll be drawn to what she yearns

But how can you be sure? Picking leaves off my back…

…because I’m here, now; with you today

The River

 

Go with the flow, they say

try to let go

Sometimes the pull

is rushing me forward

Cold rollercoaster hands

throw me this way and that

Fear grips until

the inevitable moment

when I am becalmed

Floating as driftwood

without a care in the world

Please stay forever!

Let me just meander aimlessly

in slow peace

Not meant to be

Not for me

Smashing against the rocks

A rude wake-up call

I feign surprise

but suspected all along

I am tossed once more

never knowing when

peace will return

I can’t fight it

We’re all in it

A part of it

The river of life

Desiree Batiste is the author of the book, "The Shaping of a Diamond", an inspirational 27-year journey of survival and perseverance told through poems.She was born in 1979 in Mesa, Arizona. She currently lives in Buckeye, Arizona with her husband Michael, daughter Kaylee and their four cats: Sketch, Pixel, Trace and Slim Shady.

Desiree uses poetry and writing as a cathartic way of healing from her past experiences. She has more books in the works: a second poetry anthology, a psychological thriller fiction novel and her autobiography.

Ten Haiku by Daipayan Nair

 

Haiku

 

autumn lane —

the madman face to face

with a puddle

 

 

guava sunrise —

grandma tucks the pallu

at her waist

 

 

burning husks …

mom's incense

in every room

 

 

she jumps

on the packed bus

jasmine gust

 

 

the child

cups magic in her hands

red admiral

 

 

swallowing

a painful lump

of ice cream

 

 

no bites

except for mosquitoes

daybreak

 

 

Bihu

the stack of hay

on a bicycle

 

 

noon fair —

a cheering crowd encircles

the cockfight

 

 

hillock climb —

the tea plucker fills her basket

with folk songs

 

 

Daipayan Nair - Hailing from Silchar, Assam, India, Daipayan Nair is a haikuist. He writes micropoetry, mostly haiku and tanka poems. His works have been featured on various international platforms and weekly columns like Haiku Dialogue of The Haiku Foundation, Haiku in Action of Nick Virgilio Haiku Association, and FreshOutMag. He has also been published in the Frogpond Journal, the prune juice journal, Under the Basho Journal, Failed Haiku Journal, Cold Moon Journal, Scarlet Dragonfly Journal, Triya Mag, Kingfisher Journal, Poetry Pea Journal, Time Haiku Journal, Failed haiku — a journal of English Senryu, the Akitsu Quarterly, The Wales Haiku Journal among others. His haiku, senryu and tanka have appeared in  the prestigious monthly of haiku KATHA from Triveni Haikai India. His recent collection of haiku and senryu titled "tilt of the winnowing fan" was published in 2022 by Hawakal.