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