Dreaming Under the Summer Stars

I think we searched the roots of the night
feeling our way through the stars and moonlight
bumping into our own shadows.

                    you wrote my name with the stars
and made a love song with the wind
I watched the night play with the heavens.

walking barefoot in the summer grass
   with the scent of lilacs and the kiss of rain
and thunder was rising in my heart.

               silence was sung by a string of stars
and the moonlight fell upon us with its fingers
dreams were reality and you left like a shadow.

decades of nights and hours of summer dreams
       fade with time but grow larger in memory
where time can’t control this kind of passion.

The Scent of Roses and Starlight

a soft kiss moves within the night’s mist
     and the stars bend their eyes from heaven
because I loved this strange blush upon my shoulder
time brings back the memories of the immense light
     as it overshadows my deep blue eyes.

these eyes that had no sight without him in them
no vision without the love that was a mere falling star
there are no feet that could carry my soul away like he has
time revolves around each lost moment in my eyes
and memory lives and dies each second in my soul.

to never notice the sky being so large and empty until now
maybe the stars have chosen to hide me from my dreams
to cover my lips with clouds of intense loss and silence
or to sever the fragrance of roses and moonlight to my mind
there comes a remembered thirst upon my spirit.

to live in the daylight and only wade through darkness
or to stumble in the pale light of a lasting lunar passion
O’ where are the stars I once saw and counted as riches !
where am I  to be lost in the midst of strangeness !
to walk in the shadows cast by the bending stars.

Myrtle Thomas is a contemporary poetry writer who writes of ranging topics and observations of life. She has been published in the ‘Otherwise Engaged A Literature and Arts Journal’ and in ‘The Writers and Readers Magazine’. She lives in the USA and is retired from a large manufacturing company which affords her time to write.

Neil writes: Each poem in the sequence seeks to distil the essence of one of the great maestri, either by capturing their personality or focusing on a formative moment in their life or career.

Nikisch

The father, they will call him,
of modern conducting:

the man who cut the guy ropes
on the past, detaching the art

from periwigged tradition,
staffs beaten on hard floors.

The man who set the blueprint
for a century and a half

of maestri – economy of gesture,
communication as a non-verbal act,

the score as holy writ, understood
on the deepest, most intimate level.

Boskovsky

Intended or not, there’s a hint
of the vaguely pejorative:
waltzmeister instead of Maestro;
the chocolate box evocation
of old Vienna on the album covers.

It’s too easy, the cloyed recoil
from the Musikverein’s opulence.

Listen: done-to-death repertoire
is brought back to life, agile
and joyous as it was ever meant to be

with a seriousness of purpose,
a depth, that would befit Bruckner.

Richter

Maestro, choirmaster, organist,
harpsichord virtuoso; workaholic.

Driven; relentless; no quarter
asked of himself or given.

Workloads shouldered in an agony
of against-the-clock momentum.

“My time is now” – raison d’être
as epitaph in waiting. Self-discipline

as an act of self-destruction.

Mäkelä

In interview, he is charm
itself; enthusiastic
to the point of boyish:

the transformation comes
as he takes the stage,

metaphysical as it is palpable –

a rising, a deepening;
something to do with stature,
with aura. Something to do

with an almost impossible synergy.

Neil Fulwood was born in Nottingham, England, where he still lives and works. He has three collections out with Shoestring Press: No Avoiding It, Can’t Take Me Anywhere and Service Cancelled, with a fourth scheduled for publication next year.

For Peace comes slow
A sudden birth
Unexpected win
Balms your soul
A royal blue impish touch
Sometimes
A hurricane
It just
Soothes
For Peace comes slowly
More difficult
Than Love
Loving One
Each breath
Each Eyelash
It is private
A fine jewel
Must be hidden
Kept
Under your shirt
For peace is precious
Than Love
Itself.

Text-messy age

The e-mail kiosks lock
on to me as I
cruise the Mall. My exo-
skeleton — beltbuckle,
glasses, the tips of
my shoes, even the
decidedly feminine gold chain
I have around my wrist —
lights up with messages. They
are not for me; I am being
mistaken for someone
else. But there are few
shops in this part of
the strip & I’m a snoop be-
sides, so I read them with
half an ear, even though
my heart is in the jeweller
looking through their
recipes for eloquence &
my soul is in the toystore
set on rich dark fruit
cake laced with brandy.

Strange, dear, but

true, dear. The Cole Porter song enters
my morning mind as if it had every
right to be there, as if it lived there &
was returning home after a night out.
But not simply the song, a specific rend-
ition of it. k.d. lang’s, first heard on the
Red Hot + Blue tv special & subsequent
album compilation. What is stranger is

how to interpret the locus of the singer,
of the mindsong. In the video, k.d. lang
sings as if she is person who is being
sung to; & in my mind, it is also as if I
am the recipient. To personalize, it is the
not-I singing to the other which is me. It’s
a tableau that has a logic only because
of its similarity to that Magritte painting

La reproduction interdite in which a man
is looking into a mirror in which his re-
flection is thrown back, but as if seen
from the back. Twenty years ago I wrote
of this painting: “Shown from the back
the image is androgynous — think k.d.
lang in her man’s suit phase.” & here she
is again. Strange, dear, but true, dear.

I-less in Gaza

Nothing makes sense
anymore. Everything
does. I bind my camel
to a smokestack
at the edge of an
anticlimax & set the
guidebook alight to give
me light to better
read it by. The hidden
pattern in the last
flicker of a hologram
tells me I’m
in Machu Picchu
where I shouldn’t
be. Entropy arrives
to peck out my I-
balls. Equilibrium. It’s
a eunuch experience.

Mark Young was born in Aotearoa / New Zealand but now lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia. His most recent book — his sixty-second in fifty-five years — is with the slow-paced turtle replaced by a fast fish, published in 2023 by sandy press.

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

The Frog’s Voices

I listen to the voices of night frogs croaking,
in the late hours of the night, and try to
understand the meaning of their messages
echoing off the silver moon:

Their hoarse voices curl through my sleepy,
mind, sewing strange thoughts from long-
forgotten memories, in my mind. In the midst
of their croaking, they speak to me
in their language of sorrow.

During the fading hours of the night, I search
for metaphors to translate the
meaning of the frog’s melancholy
mutterings as their voices continue
to burst into the mysterious emptiness
of the moonlit night, but all I end up with are
strange symbols.

When I Am Old

When I can no longer see
stars crawl lazily though
the vastness of sky

on silver moonbeams,
or the beauty of verdant trees
in secret hollow glens,
and my weary bones
and ashen hair
tell me I am no longer young
and it is useless to
believe in magic anymore
or see elves and sprites
dancing in meadows fallow,
I will feel sorrow’s weight
upon my shoulders.

Long Lost Memories

Amidst the cold, brisk gales
        On an abandoned winter night,
Long-lost memories
        Suddenly burst forth
 Inside the billowing steam, spewing
        From an ancient iron horse
As it disappeared into the
        Unforgiving gap of dark fears
Riding on rusted iron rails,
        And I wept in sorrow.

Memories of Grief Were Forgotten

Emerging in the hours of an iron-colored metallic
night, rusting symbols covered with an aging patina
of dark contractions whispered across an old man’s
ebbing life, causing him anguish.

Crystal poems written in scarlet ink were shattered
by metaphorical hammers pounding words of grief
into gloomy synonyms and causing dark allegories
to ache inside the cold dreariness of his aging mind.

Images of broken tombstones in a field of unknown
graves entered his consciousness and his trail of
tears melted into the cemetery’s soil, damping it
with more sorrow than it could hold.

He sensed dark, once-forgotten memories being
awakened, but as sharp pangs of grief started
piercing his collapsing mind, the tainted memories in
the blink of Meng Po’s eye were forgotten, and
calmness ensued.

What Are Those Strange Images, Which I Think I See?

Is it helplessness
Suspended in rust-coated visions,

The hallucinatory echo of
An old broken tenor saxophone,

An antediluvian sea where
Dead things scream at midnight,

A place where abandoned women
Cut their hair with broken glass shears

While they painfully paint crimson roses,
On their bedroom walls?

Is it a shattered, rusted nightmare that
Tastes metallic like rusted blood,

Desires twisting like toxic tendrils
inside poisonous mushrooms,

A white psychedelic pill that
Confuses similes with syntax,

Or a dark poem about death inside
A nightmare that haunts a poet’s mind?

Is it a melancholy song sung by
A bone-thin chanteuse in a shadowy bar,

A decaying memory corroding
Atop a broken cement tombstone, or

perhaps a cemetery where ghosts devour reality, and
whose skeletal hands scrape at your bones?

James, a retired Professor and octogenarian is a Best of Web nominee and three time Pushcart nominee and has had five poetry books The Silent Pond, (2012), Ancient Rhythms, (2014), LIGHT, (2016), Solace Between the Lines, (2019), and Serenity (2022), 1770 poems, five novels, and thirty-five short stories published in scores of national and international magazines, anthologies, and books. He earned his doctorate from BYU, and his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, SLO. He lives in Santa Ynez, California, with his wife Sandy, and a dog named Scout. His great, great aunt and uncle, Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt, and John James Piatt were prolific poets in the 1800s.

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

He’s making
A mental list
Of the things
He misses
And those
That he doesn’t,
He has
Awful in-laws
In his
Does not miss category,
Then he realizes
That those people
Actually belong
In their own category.

Taylor Dibbert is author of the Peace Corps memoir Fiesta of Sunset, and the forthcoming poetry collection Home Again.

Summer is Dying

Outside, summer is dying into fall,
and blue daddy petunias sprout ears—
hear the beginning of night chills.
In their yellow window box,
they cuddle up and fear death together.
The balcony sliding door
is poorly insulated, and a cold draft
creeps into all the spare rooms.

Bowl of Black Petunias

If you must leave me, please
leave me for something special,
like a beautiful bowl of black petunias—
for when the memories leak
and cracks appear
and old memories fade,
flowers rebuff bloom,
sidewalks fester weeds
and we both lie down
separately from each other
for the very last time.

Memories Past

(Hillbilly Daddy)

I settle into my thoughts
zigzagging between tears
my fathers’ grave—
Tippecanoe River
Indiana 1982.
Over now,
a hillbilly country
like the flow
catfish memories
raccoons in trees
coon dogs tracking
on the river bank,
the hunt.
Snapping turtles
in the boat
offline—
river flakes
to ice—
now covered
thick snow.

Now That I Desire

Now that I desire to be close to you
like two occupants sharing a twin bed
sensing the warmth of sweating shoulders,
hungering for your flesh like a wild wolf
leaning over an empty carcass,
you’re off searching unexplored cliffs,
climbing dangerous mountain tops,
capturing bumblebees in broken beer bottles for biology class,
pleasing plants, parachuting from clouds for fun.
In shadows, you’re closer to life, nonsense,
a princess of absurdity, a collector
of dreams and silent sounds.
In clouds, you build your own fantasy.
Share it with select celebrities.
But till this captive discovers a cure for caring,
a way of rescuing insatiable insanity,
or lives long enough to be patient in longing for you—
you must be vigilant,
for with time, snow will surely
blanket this warm desire.

Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. Today he is a poet in the greater Chicagoland area, IL.  He has 289 YouTube poetry videos. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 44 countries, a song lyricist, has several published poetry books, has been nominated for 6 Pushcart Prize awards, and 6 Best of the Net nominations. He is editor-in-chief of 3 poetry anthologies, all available on Amazon, and has several poetry books and chapbooks. He has over 453 published poems. Michael is the administrator of 6 Facebook Poetry groups. Member Illinois State Poetry Society. Do not forget to consider me for Best of the Net or Pushcart nomination!

boots, smelling of here and there, long roads, unending hours

motel beds and sullied skin, roughage along rugged cheekbones

harsh winter, seasons on turn, fireplace or heartburn, calm water-blue eyes

oregano flavoured evenings, albatross wings, words exchanged in hello or goodbye

one closed door after the other, new room, unkempt future, checked bills

half-eaten dinner for rats, tips on a desolate corner table, future sunrise

ignition key on the move, tyres screech release, to a new dream, new flag down

through untold stories, haunted myths or chinese- whisper, shadows live on

Born and brought up in Kolkata, India with parents having an intense interest in literature, Raja Chakraborty grew up in ambient surroundings. Chakraborty is a bilingual poet writing in Bengali and English. To date he has published five books of English poems, and six books of Bengali poems/rhymes. He is also a regular contributor to magazines and anthologies.

Goose – 1

This, a good place to begin
the circle, dear jogger, opens up
the park and the morning.

You should not stir the goodness
or the goose.
The skein of the waterfowls are scattered
in the pasture.
Today’s mood made them shells holding
a hollowness and a howl for the sea.

*

When the exotic wings glide in
the park the goose fights for her
boundary at first.

Zen eventuates. She settles between
the flocking birders and the winter’s
slaty sun.

We, the local walkers, already gave her
pet names. The goose stares hard
with its hundred names, native pride,
doubting vigilance.

The Mystery, Life

My mate finishes pissing.
He plays drunken bird toy
swaying on the port bow.

“Now we are out of wine
in our blood.” He slurs.
His voice is ash and sand.

The current streams five shades
of the river. A conical buoy oscillates
midst this concurrence.

“You may drown.” My shouting
sounds gay, buoyant. Sometimes
he does drown, emerges eaten by the fish.

And then we steal the boat
from the pier leased by his father
again and again.

Brother Blood

The brother who opens your id
and loses the key,
makes you drunk and piss
in your own yard as your wife
watches from the first floor boudoir
returns.

You know the grey. You know the why.
You know the honey
and the sting he hides.
You lower your guards in the ring,
let the blood ooze, trickle
down your chin and yet do not wipe
the corner of your mouth.

He offers your children a lift
to their school,
takes them for fun instead.
Nothing sharp, not more harm
than one pale ale too many,
your wife sees a blade
whenever sun catches his glasses.

He returns. He disappears.
You know where. You know why.

Kushal Poddar is the author of Postmarked Quarantine and has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of ‘Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages, published across the globe. 

My brick home of tough times
Looks like
My miniature islet.
Like some fantasy lovers
Dancing under the whole stranded sky
My miniature of an islet home
Has no address.
I cannot whisper my ill wind of ease
To my miniature islet home.
I admire members under its roof
The love is danced,
The love is greeted,
Love is treated.
To a remembered beloved
I address my islet.
One home I should build
For Imagination,
I often knock its door
Where my imagination wakes up,
Becomes a task doer,
Makes the world fitted in a room
More spacious.
But I want to walk in my garden!

Sushant Thapa is from Biratnagar, Nepal. He has published four books of poems: The Poetic Burden and Other Poems (Authorspress, New Delhi, 2020), Abstraction and Other Poems (Impspired, UK, 2021), Minutes of Merit (Haoajan, Kolkata, 2021), Love’s Cradle (World Inkers Printing and Publishing, USA and Africa, 2023). He is an English lecturer to undergraduate level students of BBA and BIT at Nepal Business College, Biratnagar, Nepal and Master’s level at Degree Campus. He also teaches English poetry to M.A. English students at Degree Campus. He holds an M.A in English literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He has been published in print, online, school book and anthologies around the world. He also writes Flash Fictions, Short Stories and Book Reviews.

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