Poetry Drawer: 5 by Grant Guy

the moon rises
a dog barks
a car drives over a broken tree branch

the branch cracks under the weight of the car

the moon rises
a dog barks


snap
snap

elastic broke

almost blinded him


when he looked out the window
all he saw was himself looking back

he cried a lifetime

then he laughed


words
i have no choice

they created me


eat
shower
work
supper
bed

no sex tonight

Grant Guy is a Canadian theatremaker, poet and visual poet and arts programmer. His theatre and performance have appeared in Canada, the United States and in Europe. He has published in hardcopy and online. He has visual poetry in the United States, Argentina and Brazil and in Europe. He is the recipient of many grants and awards.

Poetry Drawer: Self by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

The core of the self is a magnet
which pulls in the physical world
and the stuff of human nature,
good and bad.
Once trauma is caught there, it is hard to dislodge,
the power of the magnet being strong

In this space occupied by “I”
is sunlight, water, air and earth,
also a little child who remains worried and fearful,
petrochemical sludge,
viruses and bacteria,
a need to love and to be cherished
and a desire to avoid pain

In this space is pollen, sunlight dispersed in a different form,
and seed, infant plants,
who blow over high desert and grassland
past cows and squirrels
and fish finning in ponds.
In this space is intelligence
and strategies designed to enable survival
but which may actually sabotage survival
In this space are tools, ever more powerful,
with which we strive to dominate our world
In this space is art, and sensitivity

In this space is air,
sometimes still, or moving steadily or gusting,
or appearing as wind, at times fierce,
which carries spirit from the far corners of the past
into the space of the distant future
Our small parcels of light
meld with the brilliance that streams from our star
and our drops of water join the ocean

We may clothe those winds with fantasies of reincarnation
in which we are kings or queens or famous scoundrels
However hard we work to clear our minds,
sometimes we backslide
into bizarre, irrational ancient mythologies
because their fantastic fictions,
tailored to the human psyche,
ease pain and
give hope

But these fantasies
take us out of the here and now,
which is the only place one can be
Even the immortal soul is transient

Deadly pathogens and fatal hostilities
are fed by the greed, anger and delusion
which reside in all human hearts
We are like the Tasmanian Devil
When we feel threatened,
In this universe which, some claim, is made of love
we viciously bite each others’ faces

Like orange lava,
pollutants well up
to run uncontrollably downmountain
toward cities and towns
which fill with ash and sulfurous smoke

Meanwhile, the need to love and be loved
embraces all persons’ identical craving
and pain shatters against the jagged afflictions of others

Mitch Grabois has been married for almost fifty years to a woman half Sicilian, half Midwest American farmer. They have three granddaughters. They live in the high desert adjoining the Colorado Rocky Mountains. They often miss the ocean. Mitch practices Zen Buddhism, which is not a religion, but a science of mind (according to the Dalai Lama). He has books available on Amazon.

You can find more of Mitch’s work here on Ink Pantry.

Poetry Drawer: Rites of Passage: After the rain, there will be rainbows: The watchers in the rye by Dr. Vaishnavi Pusapati

Rites of Passage

Encountering grief is a rite of passage,
like love and yet unlike it,
for grief is a long time coming,
a tiger dancing in the dry grass,
our bullets are pills and sometimes we run out of them,
sometimes we play dead, hoping the tiger will go away,
sometimes we are tired of losing so much, we have nothing to
tempt or trade with grief, nothing to scare him away,
and grief takes no prisoners, has no calm, no qualms.
In our grief we speak of the dead so often now,
we wake them, we envy them, we sing them lullabies.

After the rain, there will be rainbows

Illness is like damping of wood
but once it dries, irrational hope will flicker,
with the confidence of candles
against raging stormy winds.
But damp birds don’t fly well.
So we sit and hope,
for hope is a waking dream.
We shiver to warm our bodies
and ask, for we can only ask, our bouncing heart
to settle, to brace for impact,
as we mould ourselves again, again begin
twig by twig, after the rain, when the nests are destroyed,
gone like the dead, gone like the wind.
We bring healing, twig by twig, for new nests and new hopes.

After the rain, there will be rainbows.

The watchers in the rye

No cow turns to see us pass,
or that distant running train,
we, holding hands, so that,
should we fall, we fall together.
We pass by where there was a yellow wood,
where now, a yellow building slants, stands.
We, white as snow, as death, as bones,
as birds’ eggs in nests who do not know
that the mother bird is dead, far away.
Dead like a plant in cosmic darkness.
We like statues, the scarecrows of the elegant house gardens,
eternally grave in all tricks of lights, watching
the all too familiar glint of the moon on broken glass,
on shallow eyes of broken people, the sick and sickening,
who once played hide and seek with us, sat with us in schools,
who we met at birthday parties and broke lunch boxes with,
who are taller than us now and their ears can’t hear us,

who we almost touch like the wind, and then refrain.

Dr. Vaishnavi Pusapati is a physician and poet, previously published in nearly 50 international literary journals and magazines such as Prole, InkPantry, Palisades Review, Dreich, among others).

Poetry Drawer: Opposites: Sweet Times: What Beauty by Danny P. Barbare

Opposites

What
goes
together

but
opposites

like
bread
and
butter
pickles
and
olives.

Sweet Times

Snow
sifting
through
the
clouds

cooking
up
sweet
times

like
a
delicious
dessert.

What Beauty

What beauty is snow
anyway
but for children making
snow angels
snowmen and having
snowball fights,
while
adults stay warm by
the fireplace
drink hot chocolate or
have a glass of wine.

Danny P. Barbare resides in the Southeastern USA. He works as a janitor at a local school and writes poetry in the evening.

Poetry Drawer: Ghosts of the Past by Ayaan Fahad

I stab the earth’s soft soil,
Murdering a pure life
As I dig into its malevolent heart,
Burying Ghosts of the Past.

They drag me along
In graves
Deep, dark, dismal.
To chasms abysmal.

Phantoms and specters,
Residing in the labyrinths of my brain,
In chambers of my heart.
A memento echoes.

An ember star glimmers,
Shining faint hope
Over the remnants
Of my memories.

The grave hauls me within.
Trapped amid its jaws
I plead for light,
Struggling to reach the surface,
Each crevice
Haunts me.

A rose wilts
Over my grave.
I drown in the earth’s soft soil,
One with its malevolent heart,
A miserable life murdered.
Till stars blow into oblivion
Bound eternally;
To Ghosts of the Past.

Ayaan Fahad is a poet from Lahore, Pakistan. He aims to write poetry that emotionally resonates with people and captures things left unsaid, incorporating raw emotion within his works.

Poetry Drawer: Return Revitalized: Circumnavigating the bee yards: for Denise Levertov by Mark Young

Return Revitalized

Take comfort
in, not the
small things
but the familiar.
Return to
raw Miles, those
first pick-up

bands that
occasionally found
Coltrane in
there, equally
raw. Or the
Sherlock Holmes
stories. Bach

for the first
time, de Chirico
& Hieronymus
Bosch. Byzantine
plazas, gardens
of earthly delights
which were

previously un-
known but
so familiar. An-
cestral memories, the
starting places
at which you
still stop by, to

stand still
for a moment,
focus, &
come out of
ready
to hit the
ground running.

Circumnavigating the bee yards

Take what’s on
offer & then
move on, an op-
portunistic journey.
Circles that trace
the outside of
other circles,
in the nomadic

manner of those
beehives that I
saw alongside
the gravel road
tracing the south
bank of the river.


for Denise Levertov

          some
of the time

the line
goes taut
o-
illogical

& I am
beaten to
the body

left only with
a grab-bag
full

of  glassy-
eyed

head-
lines

“…the last day the sharks appeared.”

Mark Young’s most recent books are One Hundred Titles From Tom Beckett, with paintings by Thomas Fink, published by Otoliths in June, 2024; Alkaline Pageantry, published by Serious Publications in September, 2024; & The Magritte Poems which came out from Sandy Press in October. 

Yu can find more of Mark’s work here on Ink Pantry.

Poetry Drawer: Minding Gaps Between Stops by Michael Roque

Sharp whistle shrieks
between stops
from December Street to Jan Way—
Two, four, eight
eye to eye,
face to face
on a one-way train—
thu-thud
THU-Thud!
THU-THUD!!!

On track to a transitional pause,
doors seal all into a lit tube
engulfed by black
for an extended enough time
to get attached—
to feel connection
while speeding spark-lit rails
to a next destination—
THU-THUD!!!
THU-THUD!!!
THU-THUD!!!
JOLT!

Meeting eyes break
with a whiplash
at a platform where all migrate
on, off the train.
Last looks,
farewells, goodbyes,
wonders—
if any meet again face to face
on surface,
in train, someday,
while simultaneously swapping each out
for a fresh gaze—
THU-THUD!!!
THU-Thud!
Thu-thud
thu—
thud.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Michael Roque discovered his love for poetry and prose amid friends on the bleachers of Pasadena City College. Now he currently lives in the Middle East and is being inspired by the world around him. His poems have been published by literary magazines like Cholla Needles, The New Yorker, The Literary Hatchet and others. 

You can find more of Michael’s work here on Ink Pantry.

Poetry Drawer: When Master-Mistress: These Wolf Eyes by Jim Bellamy

When Master-Mistress

When Master-Mistress madcap Jake fishes for veins and waters,
This lucent poem-page gets microphoned with ghosts and flashes;
And, wherefore a fatalism promotes sex for devishes and lashes, limers
Must annoint the birds of the worlds with bustlers and nailering swiners:
O, all this damned whored year, we have hardened
O, all these slammerings render puffers from adders and severings.

I intended to preach in a cold godspace but my penis daren’t pray.
And, these fractionatives hereby sunder-space from dogs on trays.
And the whirlers for dementives come sirenising for chronic slain
Wicked seagulls come easily for homers and proud slept eye-wind;
O, whence slazeners beget hurt from stoners then

To work all the nightlong days we protest for the skies of this mind,
Cosmos-made, delvered, shaggering with mad warblers under trees.
And, whenever summers snaps, a curtler for cad bumblers will use seeds
For some aldening blirter of a cat come loving and listening.
And we shall extemporise natural head-rests with shimmerings and tea,
And I shall abuse for the utmost best then fade to fucking graves.

These Wolf Eyes

These wolf-eyes will eternally feed mess to the meadows
Will, with a winded sun-at-sea gone grey, brokers for gallowers,
Shrapnelled, blurted, slammed,
Beget cool hard VDs from silly eggcups and teasers and facers
And I will send some deadener of a god-mumma come
Entissuing after a doubler of a walnut tree come sylvan for squirrels
And, whence wenders scrape doos on gut,
Me and macadam Eden-Aarons will wash all cups

And it was merely one million years ago when a ripply beauty came
Entertaining the all with prehistorics and fossilers and
Oh, and I have water-spind weedlers with contumely and distant rain,
Creepily enbriding some dodgy moon-flitters
And it was just about when true earth burned when hecklers on trains
Behested for stoned boys. I am alone in my vocal head-world.
I am intended to wed no-one.

We sink under vast rats as pilliory pled pillows with snaps and pearls. I
Have to hasten now to some maladies which,
Comedy-crafted, happens to die for bitchers as blakers use wits for wide
Woollen city-masques; and, oh, as we enbitcher for saviours,
Wiveners for dizzy farms will sickler for geezers unfound across sailors
And you are the famous child god used to own.

Do sweet memories forevermore affixed to lost valves and dementias
Or is it (with all the minds we seize) come charnelising after sickers; O, men
Must overturn the utmost sides of a swan-swarm
And, whatever the wynd of fears,
Me and madam macadam Naplers guested for pickers and lost spawns.

Jim Bellamy was born in a storm in 1972. He studied hard and sat entrance exams for Oxford University. Jim has won three full awards for his poems. Jim has a fine frenzy for poetry and has written in excess of 22,000 poems. Jim adores the art of poetry. He lives for prosody.

You can find more of Jim’s work here on Ink Pantry.

Poetry Drawer: Under Painted Grace by Michael Roque

Impoverished child—
for nickels, dimes—
bought by beauty.
Taught grace,
not from love—
but life confined.

Glamour-touched teen—
trained to speak—
to walk
for lust-filled eyes.
Stripped of name,
wrapped in robes,
to the highest bidding price—
child purity sold.

Woman fully realized—
through fog of an aged mind—
drifts upstream
from cherry-coloured Kyoto
to childhood slum
on a seaside,
the missing sister,
the parents long passed.
All gone—
without goodbye.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Michael Roque discovered his love for poetry and prose amid friends on the bleachers of Pasadena City College. Now he currently lives in the Middle East and is being inspired by the world around him. His poems have been published by literary magazines like Cholla Needles, The New Yorker, The Literary Hatchet and others. 

You can find more of Michael’s work here on Ink Pantry.

Poetry Drawer: A day from life of Klaus Werner Swamp-Man by Paweł Markiewicz

The marvellous winter has come
with the most tender Christmas Eve

Klaus Werner Swamp-Man awaits dream
august Moment is revealed

Klaus a forester lives alone
in a clear home amidst the grove

In the evening praying by table
he enjoyed freedom of silence

Oracular characters come
after rook has visited his

The rook knows from the black raven
that there are marsh-treasure hidden

Next hydra bangs on the window
she gives to Werner the obol

He enchants tenderly the guest:

The eternal moor! Dream with us!

Then a Stymphalian’s birdlet comes
flying in dazzling-brilliant ways

The bird gives away an obol
the man told him the gorgeous words

Eternal moory landscape dwell!
such for the ghosts a meek landscape

Hereafter attends – Dionysus
sir of numinous moory homes

Third obolus – given away
therefor can be valid Klaus’ dream

Oboli are being given

Be the fen full of tender myths!

Mister Swamp-Man boasts of marshlands
they are free in eternities

Rook is nidifying in tree
the plant stays over the moor-mist

Bewitched landscape and dreamy bog
and women dream of moory fog

Two women seem to have been enchanted of the boglet (Paweł’s neologism) plainly in a propitious way.

Paweł Markiewicz was born 1983 in Siemiatycze in Poland. He is poet who lives in Bielsk Podlaski and writes tender poems, haiku as well as long poems. Paweł has published his poetries in many magazines. He writes in English and German.

You can find more of Paweł’s work here on Ink Pantry.