In The Murky Hours There Was Still Hope

In the murky hours are the murderers,
freshly convened,
flippant and fickle,
with whines and snivels.

Malevolently intent on revising the rules,
and lopping off the light.
Deeply resentful,
always resorting to cunning,
enabling complicity in their crime.

Crushing an incalculable number of vexing secrets
set for the future to be told or heard.
Their annihilation
all enacted with feverish haste.

A sacrificial onslaught of hostility,
the appointment of a shadowing stab,
leaves them rapidly breathing around the stench of bloodshed
from wounds to be overcome,
leaving graves shaped like bulbous domes
hidden under silk.

They try to beg meaning from
haphazard blackbird dreams
that burst into flames upon awakening.

They hone mosaic transmissions,
coded in sombre shades
within the gloom and seep of murk,
encrypted to discredit legends.

When all is torn, crushed, spilled,
when fume and reek have become the prize sought,
it is the poets’ job
to exhale inky breath across paper landscapes,
to bring back life to thought,
to find the almighty past man’s destruction.

Express Mark

In sunlight, we pass through gates,
hung in the middle of rush-clad walls,
gates which once bore
the bruise of broken door hinges.

Everyone observing stones cut into
concrete images,
brimming with geocentric activity.

The once imposed form of empty vessels,
strewn about long ago,
currently to be filled with
a bioluminescent blue-violet thick jet of light,
unconfounded,
in its aim toward an express mark
of interwoven destinies.

There’s apparent understanding hoped for,
and to a considerable extent,
we relish the recovery of our strength,
after the feel of shipwrecked bodies,
and we will complete a sojourn
rather than be held in complete confinement.

All due to the impressive profusion
of one large empire of artists.

I Paid A Visit

I paid a visit to a person of certain origins,
who, after hearing the clarion call,
became determined to get past vague language,
and dip us into a charming melody,
using an eloquent speech.

From the brushing of clouds
comes that melody,
an etched rhapsody,
once confined by a back door locked,
where a few of its remnants were left on a stoop,
the entire symphony now recovered..

The majority of those troubled
and alarmed by the liability of war,
by the havoc of battle,
those clad with a doctrine of fear,
those who have theorized some popular notion
of who is to blame for the catastrophes,
to them goes this speech.

Live
to be better off emotionally,
with a higher sense of people’s’value,
than corruptible vicars,
sultans, chancellors, and counts,
causing formidable misfortunes.

Live
to hear more tender strums within all seasons
than all the above who forget the names,
by sterile fail,
of all the living and the dead.

Live
to burn hotter in the quest to cleanse one’s soul
than these short-sighted,
who will trade music and science for occupational malevolence.

Let them not be those who lead the charge.
That being said, you now know
what we need to do to preserve the peace,
and win the song of the world.

Linda Imbler’s poetry collections include nine published paperbacks: Big Questions, Little Sleep First Edition, Big Questions, Little Sleep Second Edition; Lost and Found; Red Is The Sunrise; Bus Lights; Travel Sight; Spica’s Frequency; Doubt and Truth; A Mad Dance; and Twelvemonth.. Soma Publishing has published her four e-book collections, The Sea’s Secret Song; Pairings, a hybrid of short fiction and poetry; That Fifth Element; and Per Quindecim. Examples of Linda’s poetry and a listing of publications can be found at lindaspoetryblog.blogspot.com

Sunday afternoon

The sky remained closed all day
and without much success we
invoked Satan. None of us knew
how, so to pass the time until
we could start drinking in earnest
we talked about people of old
and how they were crushed by
the elements, the planets in their
eternal orbits, the moon in its
orbit and the sun that rose time
and again, shining on us and then
setting again, each time at a different
time, boys we were, almost men.

Manual for cleaning a bunch of sprat

With a wooden handcart we brought
bales of wood shavings and sawdust to
the smokehouse where my uncles hung
herring and mackerel on skewers between
blackened brick walls over smouldering fires.

Herring swam in dense schools beyond the
Dogger Bank, mackerel closer to the coast.
Boats brought the catch ashore in wooden
barrels for further processing in the semi-dark
shadow realm that since disappeared like its ghosts.

Winter in Holland

Displaced trains, orphaned rails, travellers
lost, the despair of forgotten platforms,
drivers hibernate, gates frozen solid, ticket
machines of no further use, announcements
once announced fail to materialize, no one
can get a signal here, everything is snowed
over and wild animals play on abandoned
tracks throughout the whole of Holland.

After the storm

On the beach, the high-water mark,
Unrecognizable fragments connected
in a deathly grey tangle under a sky swept
clean. Seagulls. Some movement left in the
surf, remnants of storm and gusts of wind
extinguish in the white breaking of waves
as far as the eye can see skeletons of ships
thrown on the beach, sea monsters, shells,
carbide white as snow, planks eaten by
the salt seawater. Ship’s wood. Flotsam.

Enno de Witt is a published Dutch author and poet, an artist and musician, webmaster and editor. For him, writing poetry is a sheer necessity, like breathing, sleeping, drinking and eating. His poetry is founded on the bedrock of the classics, Dutch as well as international, and revolves around the Eternal Questions, often using imagery pertaining to his younger years, growing up on the seashore amongst wild heretics.

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

I was ok before you came,
I was worse off after you left,

because you passed so quickly,
but you left behind the thunder of your heels,
the swift swing of your neck,

your mood-swings like the moon-tides,
like pollen in the spring air,
so pervasive, everywhere
like seaweed under the waves.

Back then it all made me sick,
but not now.
I’m more sick now than you are gone.
So very gone.

I have to chose my poison,
because it’s hard to be sick and lovesick on the same page.

Albert Rodriguez is an American writer. He received an Associate of Arts in Writing & Literature from Borough of Manhattan Community College. He is currently working on his first novel and other smaller writing projects. When he is not writing he works as a handyman repairing old Manhattan buildings. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and kids. 

100 Titles From Tom Beckett
56: Translate Objects

We started by creating a scene.
Then came the arguments.

The first argument set what
import format to expect, set

the attributes. The second argu-
ment set the format to output.

A translated object doesn’t
change — it just goes some-
where else. At least that’s the
translation of Euclid’s defin-
ition of translate. That if every
point of a shape or figure is
moved by the same distance
in a predetermined direction,
even though it may end up
in another place, it’s still the
                                        same object.

Animists believe that all objects
share the breath of life. Trans-
lated, that means everything’s
got a soul. Or a brand new bag.

Hi. I just found a way to move
objects around. Was wondering
if this is the best way to do it.

Nothing to merit treatment

What does Proverbs 26:24 mean? Meta-
phorically: the glaze covering a clay
pot may be attractive, but it’s just a thin
disguise. She preferred solar flares light
up the undercarriage. A battle of concepts.
Fashion crime, thought crime — they
don’t break the law despite the will of
the one who practices them. Some doc-

trines are intuitive, others invoke Stare
Decisis, “let the decision stand,” adher-
ing to a precedent that determines the
relative weight to be accorded to different
cases. Always the chance of being more
upset by the things that you didn’t do.

TyouBE

Instead of writing one or
several poems — which is
what I should be doing —
I sidle into YouTube & into
a sequence of songs that —
effort for output —seems
much more productive,
even though it will end up

being a private poem. But,
hey, I’m in there singing
along, even if the only evi-
dence of that is some cryptic
reference in a public poem
written many months later.

Mark Young was born in Aotearoa New Zealand but now lives in a small town on traditional Juru land in North Queensland, Australia. He is the author of more than sixty-five books, primarily text poetry but also including speculative fiction, vispo, memoir, and art history. His most recent books are a pdf, Mercator Projected, published by Half Day Moon Press (Turkey) in August 2023; Ley Lines II published by Sandy Press (California) in November 2023; un saut de chat published by Otoliths Books (Australia) in February 2024; and Melancholy, a James Tate Poetry Prize winner, published by SurVision Books (Ireland) in March 2024.

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

Image by Thomas Fink, who has published 12 books of poetry– most recently Zeugma (Marsh Hawk Press, 2022) and A Pageant for Every Addiction (Marsh Hawk, 2020), written collaboratively with Maya D. Mason. His Selected Poems & Poetic Series appeared in 2016. He is the author of Reading Poetry with College and University Students: Overcoming Barriers and Deepening Engagement (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), as well as two books of criticism, and three edited anthologies.  His work appeared in Best American Poetry 2007. Fink’s paintings hang in various collections. He is Professor of English at CUNY-LaGuardia.

100 Titles From Tom Beckett

Rus Khomutoff is a neo surrealist language poet from Brooklyn.

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

Inside Ashes

After every finished poem,
ashes smile.
My numbed limbs find shelter
in fugitive lyrics, inside
ashes.
I want to jump out to the
world, where stages have been
set up to accommodate words;
where flowers and chairs have been
arranged to welcome lyrics.
I search new syllables inside
flowers; — in vain.
I find new sense of
burnt out lines
drowned in ashes.

They come up like
fresh twilight
in a summer evening.
I realize ashes have a
different warmth,
full of love and the
magical depth
of twilight.

Resuscitated, I feel like
rising from the ashes.

These Lines Are Bitter

Do not sail your tongue
over these lines.
These lines are bitter.
They contain black smoke from
every battlefield schemed by us.
They have deep wounds, visible
and invisible.
From every wound visible,
blood drips. Do not sail
your tongue in blood.
It’s thick
and bitter.
Here, flowers have
refused to bloom.
Agonies only carry
these lines, aptly.

Do not touch these
with your decorated eyes.
These are full of tear gas

and failed promises.

Obscure Book

You are a chair.
I’m all dust on the soil.
You’re a designation.
I’m the obscure book looking
from the corner of a
tinned rack.
You’re a crowd.
I’m the lonely bush
by the side of the road.
You’re a festival.

I’m still searching the
festive light.

Unscripted

Here you come, slowly
like long-awaited thoughts,
yet to bloom in a poem.

I’ve seen you already, —
like clouds see the river, —
from a secret 3rd floor window.

I’ve seen you long ago,
like the sudden childhood flower,
yet to acquire a name.

I’m also searching the name of
the river and the unscripted poem.
in my secret chamber

But I’m sure they will
forever
remain untitled.

Aneek Chatterjee is from Kolkata, India. He has published more than five hundred poems in reputed literary magazines and poetry anthologies. He authored and edited 16 books including five poetry collections. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Dr. Chatterjee received the Alfredo Pasilono Memorial International Literary Award. He was a Fulbright Visiting Professor at the University of Virginia, USA, and a recipient of the ICCR Chair (Govt. of India) to teach abroad. 

Nobody is Reading Poetry

Nobody is reading poetry,
I reiterate in my bed,
my head repelling the pillow
with multiple authorships at stake.
This is the age of ridicule
and trendy trivialities
readily uploaded on the internet.
I sigh and with difficulty
close my reluctant eyelids.

Nobody is reading poetry
which is being bled
at the altar of social medias
that are preoccupied with current affairs,
such as posers,
disasters,
and pointed fingernails.
I think of ailing Muses
desperately awaiting remedies
that resuscitate
in vain.

This Siege

‘This siege,’ I state.
He attempts to interrupt with a piercing gaze.
‘This siege’, I repeat.
He beckons with his forefinger to me to discontinue.
‘This siege has not weakened me,’ looking him in the face.
‘Can’t you see that pressure has not made me yield.
What have you gained from the deaths of my peers,
the crucifixion of my dreams,
and the maiming of my career?’

His features twist with a menace
that he fails to conceal.

‘Intimidation and blackmail are not the way,
to win people over to the implementation of your ideals.
What’s so successful about your enterprise,
a fraternity of slaves,
whose loyalty is enjoined
by subtle threats and fear?
What a waste!’

Earthquake Tremors

They aim at that part of the brain
that maintains balance and equilibrium
and make the strings of hearts vibrate
to its contagious electricity.

I sway tremulous like a half-cut tree
on the onset of an eternal delirium.

These headaches I have that harass my day,
the weakened joints,
the lethargic ankles,
the feeble feet that now feel faint
the bewildered eyes,
the reluctant tongue
are my own unacknowledged diagnoses
of the Tremor-Shock Syndrome, TSS.

Dr Susie Gharib is a graduate of the University of Strathclyde with a PhD on the work of D.H. Lawrence. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Green Hills Literary Lantern, A New Ulster, Crossways, The Curlew, The Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ink Pantry, Mad Swirl, Miller’s Pond Poetry Magazine, and Down in the Dirt.

Susie’s first book (adapted for film), Classic Adaptations, includes Charlotte Bronte’s Villette, Virginia Woolf’s The Waves, and D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

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

Waiting for the Bluebird of Happiness

I could have been better. I know that.
But I was asking questions that could
not be answered. My spells turned out
to be voluntary and self-sustaining.
The vast fields I traversed
were greener than my waistcoat
traded from an armless man
who needed fresh shoes.

We all live in our own little dream.
If I gaze at my hands I feel
waves of blue-grey guilt,
and a wish to run at the field ram
harassing the billowy sheep
in order to relieve myself of this feeling.
The ram always wins, so no guilt
would stem from that collision.

Yoga Mat

Give me shelter or simply take away my boots
so I may better freeze to death on this yoga mat
and leave all my worldly belongings to another
broken person, or a cat who needs somewhere
to rest it’s little head. I’m easy to please, man,
just give me a chance to show you I’m as human
as anyone else on the planet, albeit I’m nowhere
as good as most people. My mother dropped me
on my head when I was a toddler, after my father
dropped her on her head. What goes around,
they say, those people who always have something
to add that makes no difference to anything.
Hey, don’t get down watching me lie upon
a stinking yoga mat I found in a trashcan.
I wore it like Rambo for a while, but it lacked
gravitas and made it hard to defend myself
against gremlins and demons and warlocks.
They all come for me at night, that’s the thing.
They won’t leave me alone. In the pitch black
darkness they can handle me with many hands.
Otherwise the tiger in the tank reverses course
and without delay roars out from the gas cap.
That’s the story from the jungle, friends.
Take us home now, Jerome, we have horses
to feed and cows to milk and a small black cat
waiting for a cozy yoga mat to call it a day.

Comforting the Enemy

Show me the way to the bedroom,
I’m so tired I could sleep for a year.

Don’t be afraid of the bandages.
Tomorrow, medics will change them.

But show me the way to the bedroom,
don’t be afraid, I will not harm you.

Don’t be alarmed, we are just people.
Yes, I am less than I was, nevertheless …

I only want to sleep the sleep
of the nearly doomed, of the blessed.

Fluff up the pillow for me, please,
my hands were lost in the war.

Some say the war isn’t over,
I say it’s over for me. Do you agree?

Pull the blankets to my throat, dear,
same reason as before.

Sicilian Canadian poet and short story writer Salvatore Difalco lives in Toronto, Canada. Recent work appears in RHINO Poetry, Third Wednesday, and E-ratio.

So me and Hazel.
Here we are. Sitting on a
bench at the new mall.

Saturday morning.
First the dog park. Then the mall
for compensation.

The sweet kind. Ice cream.
Chocolate Cookie Dough for me.
Pup cup for Hazel.

Ice cream. The best cure
for bad dates. Can’t believe his
dog bit Hazel. Geez.

Dating. Not my thing.
Should have listened to myself.
Why didn’t I? Why?

Well, I’m listening
now. No more dates. No more men.
None. I’m done. Promise!

Ice cream and Hazel.
She’s the best date. No stress. Yeah.
Dogs are much more fun.

Laura Stamps is a poet and novelist and the author of over 65 books. Most recently: THE GOOD DOG (Prolific Pulse Press, 2023), ADDICTED TO DOG MAGAZINES (Impspired, 2023), and MY FRIEND TELLS ME SHE WANTS A DOG (Kittyfeather Press, 2023). She is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize nomination and 7 Pushcart Prize nominations.

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