Earlier, my village lane, Accompanied by the gentle breeze, Was the haven, For the tired traders and tillers To resume their chores.
Earlier, the lush green field, Bordered by dahlia blooms, Was the seat For the crying, lone lads To attain stamina, smile for play.
The shades of sal-trees, Dancing with the chirping mynas, Provided shelter For the overburdened parents To barter their traumas for new errands.
But now the lane, The green field and the sal-trees Brood for sheltering The honest statesmen, administrators To adopt corruption and dishonesty.
Bimal Kishore Shrivastwa, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of English at Degree Campus Tribhuvan University, Biratnagar, Nepal. An anthology of his poems is published from Litlight Publication, Pakistan. Other poems from Mr. Shrivastwa are published from the UK, USA, Bangladesh, India, and Nepal. Besides teaching, Mr. Shrivastwa loves indulging in anything creative.
Rejoice or dislike, detest or love the way this world works, You can think whatever your internal soul says. No matter even if the absolute reality is denied by everyone, It will remain the same and doesn’t need fabricated support.
Agree or disagree, whatever you want to do, Here, the arena is highly rooted in fabricated relative reality. Fabricated reality supports fabricated epistemology, And fabricated epistemology brings delusive humanity.
Fabrication dilutes the reality of changing absolute reality, For what it strengthens its inner monarch— To create an even more practical yet delusive understanding of the world.
Many dark souls are likely to be hidden within this fabricated world, This world— where the golden sun emits the black rays. But the world with absolute reality that we merely have time to dive in, is unbound in our fabricated relative reality.
And this world, with fabricated realities, May be shielded by the computer assimilation. Or a dream of somebody else’s, from where we can never come out, Because we might not actually exist.
Rajendra Ojha (Nayan) is a Nepalese poet, philosopher, social researcher, social worker, and EU-certified trainer. He also served as a citizen diplomat for three months under the ‘Ministry of Population and Environment’ in 2018 in Switzerland for the diplomatic program of the Minamata Convention, which was held in Geneva, Switzerland. Poems and philosophical writings of Rajendra Ojha have been published in various national as well as international literary journals from Nepal, the U.S.A., India, China, Russia, Spain, Myanmar, England, Greece, and Pakistan in both Nepalese and English. He has also published two anthologies, ‘Through the World’ (a collection of experimental poems) and ‘Words of Tiger’ (a collection of philosophical and psychological poems), in 2011 and 2019, respectively. Mr. Rajendra Ojha has been honoured by two major prestigious awards named ‘Asia’s Outstanding Internship Solution Provider Award 2020/21’ and ‘Dadasaheb Phalke Television Award 2023’ respectively for his work as a ‘Social Researcher’ as well as a ‘Social Worker’ (activities related to social responsibility), respectively in 2021 and 2023.
The brain itself is not a muscle If you never bothered Its ok to not be ok It’s a selfie obsession
Think Fast
You only get one try Three nights as the sun shines The birds have left the trees The light bores onto me Ain’t no magic tool to fix it To call it quits or destiny
Immersed Over
Smells bloom when the bright, sunny sunflowers shine hot people happy tourists in a photo day view narrowly wafted in that floral breeze with Bees around the Crowd a providing towering shading visitors from the sun’s fragrance tree skyscrapers’ collecting a swarm of breathtaking looks The nectar of an album immersed over
Pei-Chen Ng is a student of poetry based in California. She continues to hone her craft through workshops and community writing groups. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys painting and swimming, finding solace and inspiration in these creative and physical activities.
where is the sky from where are the drops of silence from where are the freckles of the mirror from where are the human silhouettes of the scream from where are the silent indignations of the apple wind from where are the woollen night milky lips of the cemetery from under my iron blanket-eyelid
cycle of return grass sings glass hurts bones crunch ears shrink leaves cry hands pray bush rises and forest opens autumn rain
the birds’ needles go to sleep in the cherry tree and they wake up on the branches of falling leaves
the look opened the night cries so the pupils meet another dead suicide
my hands dream of dying as a hydrangea
sleep can’t sleep quiet don’t keep quiet speak lips are dry drink river is dry eat stomach burst die it’s too late the cemetery is asleep
Mykyta Ryzhykh has been nominated for Pushcart Prize. Published many times in the journals Dzvin, Dnipro, Bukovinian magazine, Polutona, Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Divot journal, dyst journal, Superpresent Magazine, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Alternate Route, Better Than Starbucks, Littoral Press, Book of Matches, TheNewVerse News.
Nuanced woo sleeves the trees absolutely, limbs, trembling arabesques, re-enacting their valedictive wave-shrug to April.
Constellations of light-green stars allay the grey disposition: blazed artifice erasing rafts of winter entropy.
Feathered seraphim inhabit the grove’s ethereal umbrella (abstention from fussy havoc not optional), daft sanctuary for the ephemeral.
Great Blue Heron
Look, I want to love this world as though it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get to be alive and know it.
—Mary Oliver, ‘October’
Busy inhabiting my world— blazing car, radio blather, coffee buzz that wouldn’t last—
I somehow caught a left-hand glimpse, so quick I didn’t see you flinch, yet so outstanding, you could’ve been
a plastic cousin to the prank flamingos that another morning enthralled my neighbour’s lawn.
Stark still, ankle-deep in that transitory water, only the one side, one-eyed,
wide as disbelief, you looked just like you looked, posed in the Natural History Museum,
1963: for again, all those slender angles, the spear of your bill,
that deathless intensity marking your stick-form way, only now in a mid-May puddle poised
between the intersecting rushes eastbound, 196, southbound, 31. And you, still doing
what you’ve never known you do, still finding your life wherever you find yourself—
while I, still fixated as always on finding myself, as if that were to find a life,
saw again how wildly I am alive— how I always want to know it.
When the Water and Sand Dance
When the water and sand dance, whence (whence?) their music? What is that music? What sense, what composition surfs itself in? Yes, the water—its bazillion droplets, the mini-jetsam line it etches. Yes, the sand—its gazillion granules, the sponging gauze-and-muslin of them. But what but mind imagines there’s music? Perhaps the end of your century also hauled along its ton of sadness as did mine. And perhaps the years have finally worn it down to barely nothing of your day-to-day. The sun and shadows play again their fetching fine effects. The moon and birds and even dying leaves relieve your smallest residue of gloom. But mind—must it remember anyway? And is it therefore grateful, more than happy in that moment, to cue its private music, then tune your needy ear to every measure when the water and the sand dance?
Walking the Beach, We Show Our Ignorance about Stars, Constellations
before mentioning the dead ones mixed in, the snuffed ones, how they’ve guided the race, we figure, since long before the faintest flicker of a first-hand myth; but dead, even then, and now, this side of infinitude, this side, let’s say, of Gilgamesh, how the discerning words of the long gone still illumine our forever primitive way.
Gazpacho for the Soul
How much better it is to carry wood to the fire than to moan about your life.
—Jane Kenyon
How much better even to muster a quick sample of what is better:
*
Finding the old apples scattered out back for the deer vanished while you slept.
*
Leaving the lit tree up well past New Year—a new who-cares tradition.
*
Not only seeing but hearing your granddaughter’s Instagram giggling.
*
Road-tripping to Chicago, those skyscrapers arising over the Ryan.
*
Doing burger Thursday at the What Not, stressed-out Will for your server.
*
Reading at 3 A. M. with your reassuring spouse, who can’t sleep either.
*
Cycling the back roads south of the new house, turning west toward the lakeshore.
*
Counting out haiku with your deep-brown-eyed daughter: re-frig-er-a-tor!
*
Switching from notebook to computer, suspecting a poem’s in sight.
*
Beating your fetching wife to the punch: Happy ‘Leventh Anniversary!
*
Having the silly luxury to reckon a best order for all that’s better.
True North
The lone crow on the lone pole where the weathervane used to whirl insinuates my need for misdirection.
He is an arrow of skittish attention, of scant intention: the cock and hop, the flick and caw toward anything
on the wind. Now angling east, now south by southwest, he designates with beak then disagreeing tail feathers,
with a lean-to and a shoulder scrunch, with an attitude from his beady black eye— as if he were ever the one to judge.
And once he’s spun like a pin on a binnacle past all points of some madcap inner compass— once the clouds have bowed to push on
and the grasses have waved their gratefulness— he unfurls the shifty sails of his wings, and the breeze relieves him of his post.
D. R. James, retired from nearly 40 years of teaching university writing, literature, and peace studies, lives with his psychotherapist wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan, USA. His latest of ten collections are Mobius Trip and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020), and his work has appeared internationally in a wide variety of anthologies and journals.
You can find more of James’ work here on Ink Pantry.
There’s a world in the word “I”, which is you, a universe whizzing with activity, a wild ride no one will ever afford lifetime admission to
There’s a world in the word “forgot”, which is us… or me. Our shared yesterdays reduced to stacks of files shredded to make room in a limitless cabinet.
“I changed my mind.” A silent truth unspoken that would have been such a sweet sentence to hear you sound out.
Self-Absorption
Self-absorption sits on top of the senses, cutting circulation off to clear thoughts. Delusion straddles a reliable horse ridden rugged, strains four legs forward toward dreams, things— wants.
Stomps his hooves, tosses the head. Neighs, blows, snorts— for food, for rest— but is spurred to speed up.
Self-absorption— Me, me, I, I on the mind, the thoughts it thinks— thoughts so loud they drown out the heat, the sweat on the brow, the pet horse’s needs.
Drags his hooves, hangs the head. Not a neigh, blow or snort for food, for rest it needs— just digging, skin-scraping spurs shrieking for speed.
Outside self-absorption, the mind boiling over with “Me”s and “I”s— the faithful horse dies. Now, two legs untrained, find loneliness on an isolated plain.
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 outside of the US and is being inspired by the world around him. His poems have been published by literary Magazines like Aurora Quarterly, Veridian Review, and Cascade Journal.
Everyone remembers the forest leads to ruin the world needs space to be related to nature
Even though we are unmarried hope still lies in the sheath of fate woven into threads of colour
Powerful axe swing the tree falls and the fruit from it causing global warming due to human negligence
It is important that someone warms up while humanity suffers glaciers are also melting accordingly, nature does not tolerate carelessness
Lots of floods and tears in baby fat which every day he just wants real play and fun
Glaciers when they melt general unrest is created because panic reigns in people and the world
So let’s take care of the trees because every day is special and let’s protect nature she is everything to us
NEMOJTE SJECI DRVECA
Svi se sjecaju šume vodi u propast svijetu je potreban prostor biti u vezi sa prirodom
Iako smo neoženjeni nada i dalje leži u korica sudbine utkana u niti u boji
Snažan zamah sjekirom drvo pada i plod sa njega izaziva globalno zagrevanje zbog ljudskog nemara
Bitno je da se neko zagreje dok covecanstvo pati gleceri se takode tope shodno tome, priroda ne podnosi nemar
Puno poplava i suza u bebinoj masti koja svaki dan samo želi prava igra i zabava
Gleceri kada se tope stvara se opšti nemir jer vlada panika u ljudima i svijetu
Pa hajde da se pobrinemo za drvece jer svaki dan je poseban i cuvajmo prirodu ona nam je sve
Maid Corbic, from Tuzla, is 24 years old. In his spare time he writes poetry that is repeatedly praised as well as rewarded. He also selflessly helps others around him, and he is moderator of the World Literature Forum WLFPH (World Literature Forum Peace and Humanity) for humanity and peace in the world. He is the world number 44 poet and 5 in the Balkans. He has over 10K of successes on Facebook.
Your reflection is gone. Mine is all that’s left in these waters.
Your voice isn’t here either. The woods are full of bird song, a rustle or two in the brushes, but nothing human.
In the house, you’re merely missing.
But here, in the forest, you’re never coming back.
The grander the scale, the greater your absence.
Her Seventieth
If lives grew vertical, she’d be at
the highest point. The burning candles
would celebrate this milestone as if she were Hillary and Norgay
conquering Everest. But a life’s ascent
is as brief as a prayer, slopes downward for a time
before dipping precariously. So she looks up
at the years lived already and down at those to come.
She’s less Sir Edmund and Tenzing
and more Florence Hillary and Maureen Norgay.
Those two both have trouble going up and down stairs.
He’s the Champion of the World
He’s shy they say but I believe that’s just focus. He ran a great race today. His new book is in the stores and garnering rave reviews. And what of his concerto. Or the flex of his upper-arm muscles. And to think, a CEO at his age. A leader in touch-downs, a mountain climber par excellence.
He’s never been married. But the task at hand is a wife. Run, write, compose, work out, rise to the top of the business world, then catch the ball in fluid motion, while pegging your way up Everest. What’s not to love.
He gets anxious when he stops like this. What if the world goes on without him? The price for dalliance is living like the rest of us. Marge is just about to introduce him to her daughter Sarah. He nervously shakes hands. Their eyes lock. He’s doomed to lose his titles.
Sitting by the Pool, Watching the Swimmer
Twilight sets in but she’s still doing laps of the pool. What was once smooth and blue is now vague and shadowy. She’s pulling herself through water, kicking her feet like flippers to double down on her intent. Every afternoon, it’s thirty times up and back, which is about a hundred swims in my reckoning but just the one long marathon to her. She conquers something that, to my mind, is not in need of conquering. But, then again, she writes no poetry. And nor does she see the need. She’s streamlined, perfectly built for gliding through water. I’m romantic, contemplative, easily distracted from the real world. I’d likely drown if I applied this elsewhere.
A Year of Solitude
Who said it would be okay? And I will know it when the time comes? And where it lands it will stick? And maybe it is here already?
Was it the sound of her footsteps? Or waves lapping the shore? Or the creaking of these floors? Or the fluttering green leaves of my backyard oasis?
Meanwhile, there’s all this stuff I’ve been writing, the pen, the paper, the overhead lamp, the desk, the coffee, in hope that the work, once completed, will be an answer to all or any of these questions.
But now, there’s me on one side, the unknown on the other. There’s what I know now and the mystery of what I will become.
I’m home. It’s quiet. Outside ploughs the soil with rain. Dark clouds match it with headlights. Blue curtains keep me separated. Creation is the perfect foil to this weather. And so is holding out for the next thought that comes to mind. Too bad, they’re getting harder and harder to think.
Yet what I hunger for doesn’t change. That much life has taught me. And, with each lesson, it gets worse. For I’m all alone and marking my own papers.
The Usual
I often wonder where I would be without the predictability, so much more common than randomness, as every scene feels like the one I always come across whether it’s children playing in the park or a sale sign in a furniture store window.
Your “good morning” is like reading the same page of as book that I read yesterday and the day before. And the taste of every vegetable on the tongue never varies whether it’s boring spinach or crunchy and invigorating raw carrots.
Yes, people fall from cliffs. Or they win lotteries. They’re shot in a case of mistaken identity. Or they’re spotted by an agent, turned into a movie star.
But mostly everyone who enters a room leaves that room unchanged. Each footstep is a continuation and a preview of footsteps to come. The words we say, we’ve spoken before. The face in the mirror is unsurprised by the face looking into it.
With so much sameness to back me up, I feel secure when odd things happen. Like when I pause for a moment when a car nearly hits me. I can return to where it doesn’t.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa and Shot Glass Journal.
You can find more of John’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Yes, some of us will never leave the lane, smell of urine, bound by bricks with smeared bloody handprints. We will run behind your vehicle leaving the place, watch it go holding the last lamppost, and if we meet again you have run a circle, you belong to the ones who fail to don the art of leaving. We shall nod, two circles that should not have formed the Venn Diagram. My child will tug my hand, and you will become another poster of a missing person torn away by happenstance.
Hold Your Breath To See If You Are Alive
The late descent of the drop of rain startles the beetle. One whole day has dried away, and still leaf has been holding the last spell. Sometimes you hold your breath as long as you can. For no reason. When you exhale no gale stirs up the yard. The junked out coaches shiver as if a new fixture is scheduled for them.
The Dilemma After The Game Night
Last night your team lost to your team, and you cannot celebrate because it is unsafe.
Your new country now smells of stale beers, and its streets paved with plastic thin aluminium reflect the sudden sun, and wring out a groan.
Your old country echoes stale cheers, and breakfast conversation keeps the alive. People discuss which players will leave and join the country where you pretend to mourn.
Golden Prohibition
My hand on your thigh and yours on mine draw a sign we have seen on every prohibition.
No parking here. I know. No swimming. No loud noise. No littering.
Perhaps ours end a long fight. Perhaps open a tired conversation that will birth shattered mirrors. Tonight, oh tonight, they’re ‘No War’. We hold each other ‘s thumbs and let the rest of our fingers wing into deep azure.
Kushal Poddar is the author of ‘Postmarked Quarantine’ and ‘How To Burn Memories Using a Pocket Torch’ has nine books to his credit. He is a journalist, father of a four-year-old, illustrator, and an editor. His works have been translated into twelve languages and published across the globe.
You can find more of Kushal’s work here on Ink Pantry.
