Her Face tickled by the zig zag stubble in the sea weed She wore a Silk Rorschach mask to sleep in the clay Like an Alabaster Ghost Woman face to face with a squid Sleepy eyes, reading they start to wrinkle Wild waves between her toes not her hand to catch Sun sets star begin to twinkle Woman raised her cap in an abruptly fetch A bit damp waltzing as the cat’s tinkles’
Lobe to Lobe
Old Octopus woman camping on water Lobe to Lobe Gathering Tuff from the midland bogs Lost her new red cap at stone cutters yard Passed by the half-life of the old tramp Dumping water and stones, from her left boot Ninety nine times’ guilty only circumstantial Un-weeded garden, grows no more Wrongfully condemned, one more outrage Curbstone requiem’s mass funeral was yesterday They still love reading about her today
Sleepy Whale #203
Blood wet Irish Cephalopod Try to remove haunting remorse Of our Soul’s divorce Lonely silence drinking the Church Broth Emunctory wroth Star thrown shadows follow the nights’ course Like her burr sticking in the mane of a horse Ruddy Wool’s haunting moth Meadow of her murmuring water Great brightness is the complaint Robbing peter to pay Squatter’s Pub Mercy of God, oh so faint Henchman began the slaughter Islamic of Sages and Saints
Terry Brinkman has been painting for over forty five years. Poems in Rue Scribe, Tiny Seed. Winamop, Snapdragon Journal, Poets Choice, Adelaide Magazine, Variant, the Writing Disorder, Ink Pantry, In Parentheses, Ariel Chat, New Ulster, Glove, and in Pamp-le-mousse, North Dakota Quarterly, Barzakh, Urban Arts, Wingless Dreamer, LKMNDS and Elavation.
You can find more of Terry’s work here on Ink Pantry.
April and its madness, December and its sadness, n between green things grow, are harvested, eaten, covered in snow. The world turns brown and bare but you are glad you’re still there.
Trees creak in the cold wind. Bones and joints ache along. For better or worse you’ve sung your song, and would again, given a chance, if any stranger should listen and offer another dance.
The Islands
Beyond the sea where crabs walk low along beaches white as snow, the wind lifts the fronds of coconut trees, and locals dance whenever they please.
Strange as it seems
It’s just another day. One of the kind that comes in a package of seven, at a discount we are told, but who really believes advertising.
I saw the sun rise through a crack in the blinds. It woke me from a dream where words were being said that I thought I should write down. They sounded important. Possibly divine. Asleep I could not lift a pen, On waking I forgot them all.
I settled for bird songs from new residents crowding freshly planted fruit trees in the garden. The trees seemed too small for nesting. Maybe the birds were trying to get in on the ground floor while the tenement was under construction, growing homes for growing families.
This was something I could write about, though I could not understand the meaning of the words then or now. Another divine muddle. Another day. I should be used to it, but never am.
The signifier and signified
Words. Words. I learned to speak. I learned to hear. I learned to read. I learned to write.
Words. Words. An evil fix. Better to grunt and point and be misunderstood
than create civilized noise, supposedly articulate, but always insufficient for the need to communicate.
What I shall leave you
Ah, my children I will leave you no gold, only boxes of untyped poems, barely legible or a total mystery to the eye.
It will be your problem then, all those words that had to get out, as much a part of me as the flesh I wore.
What will you save? What will you burn? Which, if any, of these strange offspring will survive?
I hold no illusions. These small beasts will waste away, shrivel, disappear.
The only works of mine that will go on are you. Composite works of which my contribution was less than half.
That’s fine. As it should be. You were the best art I could create, with ink still wet and many pages left for you to write on your own.
Because
Why write it if it will not last?
Why think it if it will only stay in your head?
Why say it if you don’t mean it? Or if it will hurt?
Why open up to anyone in anyway if what you need to let out will get you beaten, imprisoned, killed?
Why say or write or think at all?
Just sit in silence, unblinking, unmoving. Be a part of it all but not a moving part. A rock or a pillar
or a stone thrown through the sky, unaware and uncaring of where you will land.
December Birds
I listen to birds fighting on my roof. Dozens of them. They make so much noise and tear at shingles. I can’t understand what they say, the subjects of their arguments.
My cat would kill them all, just for fun, if he could, but can’t get up that high, can only watch from a window, snap jaws and wave paws at desires he can not reach.
As for me, I would like to understand what all the fuss is about, wish they would not poop so much on my car, and think how similar their struggles are to rivalries in offices, neighborhoods and among nations.
So much noise and violence. So much of which I can’t comprehend.
Eventually someone will have to fix all that got broken, clean up the messes left behind, when the current flock finally decides to fly south.
Joseph Farley is former editor of Axe Factory, Poetry Chain Letter, Implosion, Paper Airplane and other zines. He has had over 1300 poems and 130 short stories published so far during his 40 plus year writing career. His fiction books include two story collections Farts and Daydreams (Dumpster Fire) and For the Birds (Cynic), and a novel Labor Day (Peasantry Press). He has also penned nine chapbooks and books of poetry. His work has appeared recently in Schlock, Horror Sleaze Trash, Home Planet News Online. Corvus Review, Ygdrasil, Eunoia Review, US 1 Worksheets, Oddball, Alien Buddha Zine and other places.
You can find more of Joe’s work here on Ink Pantry.
He was a cipher A nameless Govbot He was a spook He was invisible.
He was a secret agent man He had many names Many fake identities. So many tales he told.
He no longer knew What was true Or just another lie.
No one knew his real name Just “Big Daddy” To those in the know
He floated through life In the shadow world Death following him In his wake.
As he carried out his secret missions For an agency that did not exist.
he thought that when he died no one would mourn him,
for no one knew him.
who he was lost in the shadows
He was fine with that the price of living in the shadow worlds.
What Is Love, Tell Me If You Know
What is love, tell me if you know
Love is what it is Those who know don’t tell And those who tell don’t know
Do you know what love is, Joe? And how can you make it grow? More than just biochemistry It is pure madness
What is love, tell me if you know
Love is what it is And sometimes Love is what it ain’t That’s the Zen of love
What is love, tell me if you know
Based loosely on the classic Tower of Power Song, “What is hip?”
What Is Hip Lyrics
[Verse 1]
So ya wanna dump out yo’ trick bag Ease on in a hip thang But you ain’t exactly sure what is hip So you started to let your hair grow Spent big bucks on your wardrobe Somehow, ya know there’s much more to the trip
[Chorus] What is hip? Tell me, tell me, if you think you know What is hip? If you’re hip The question, “Will it show?” You’re into a hip trip Maybe hipper than hip What is hip?
[Verse 2] You became a part of a new breed Been smoking’ only the best weed Hangin’ out with the so-called “Hippie set.” Seen in all the right places Seen with just the right faces You should be satisfied, but it ain’t quite right
[Chorus] What is hip? Tell me, tell me, if you think you know What is hip? If you’re hip The question, “Will it show?” You’re into a hip trip Maybe hipper than hip What is hip?
[Break] Come on
[Refrain] Hipness is. What it is Hipness is. What it is Hipness is. What it is Sometimes hipness is, what it ain’t
The Market Rules Us All
The market rules all We are nothing but products The rights to us Have long been sold
Bow down and worship The all-mighty market
Everything we do Everything we see Everything we are Nothing but our brand
Nothing human left over Nothing authentic left over
Nothing but lies Fake news nonsense
The world does not care one whit About you and me As people
It is all about the profits that can be made By exploiting our labour
And once we are used up We become a liability And a burden
If you have not made it to the top By age 55 You are a loser And should be retired Forced to live out your life On your miserable pension
As you wait to die No longer useful To the Masters of the Universe
And true love Nothing but an illusion
It is all about the sex, baby And how getting your baby Ahead at all costs
Who cares about love? It is nothing But a secondhand emotion As the song puts it
Love is nothing but a sexual commodity And we are all nothing but interchangeable Commodities in the marriage and love market
And porno values rule the bedroom As we are nothing more than used body parts
Who cares about friendship? It is all about how they can use you And you can use them To get ahead
True Love and genuine connections Cannot survive In this toxic soup In the modern materialist world
God and spirituality Nothing but a scam As our so call Christian Leaders
Proclaim their love for you All they love is your donations And they too are part of the market
Jesus if he ever comes back Will no doubt Be used to sell more goods
As the right to Jesus Has also been sold
Green Trees Don’t Make It
Everyday I look out and see The ugly green trees Standing guard in front of my house
And I think to myself Who owns the trees? And what do they think of us?
Are we their friends? Are we their enemies? Do the trees think? Or do they silently watch us, Spies to the celestial emperor?
I have pondered this question Many a morning Who is the owner of these trees? And why do they silently watch us?
I wonder if the trees don’t hate us And why they don’t protest Every day as we drive back and forth Emitting poison gases from our mechanical asses Right into their unprotected faces
And every night we eat our dinner And then give the trees Our polluted leftovers
And laugh as they silently die From our acidic fallout Constantly floating down on their skin
Yes, I wonder about the trees And the birds and the bees And everyone else
What are they thinking? Are they plotting revenge? Or are they merely there
Silently, watching, plotting, Designing fiendish plots of revenge Dreams of vast nuclear destruction
Cosmic diseases wiping out everyone in the ass Yes, I wonder and dream and ponder
What is the meaning of those silent green trees? Standing on the corner
Quietly condemning us With their quiet tears, and falling leaves
In the winter they stand Naked and alone Covered with ice-cold snow As we drive by nice and warm
And we don’t care As they stand out in the cold Shivering, plotting warm plans of cosmic revenge Is it too late for us To become friends with the trees?
Or will the day come When the trees will wake up And gather together All of the other slaves of humanity
I have a vision One morning I will open the door And see an army of wild things Led by the green trees Coming to arrest me For crimes against nature
And I will plead, I did not know And they will laugh and turn me all of my kind Into silent tombs
And we will stand out in the cold Like the green trees Plotting dreams of revenge Forever and ever
Until our day finally comes And we can go out and kill all the wild things Perhaps we already have
First earth day poem written in 1977
The Communists Are Out to Get You!
Watching right-wing politicians And news pundits One can’t help
But wonder If we are living In a strange alternative universe
For to hear The line of Marjorie Taylor Greene It is 1955 all over again
Communism is on the march Marxists out to destroy America Radical left-wing demons trying to cancel Normal patriotic white Americans
Who dares to stand up To the communists All around us
And they fill the airwaves And the internet With constant fear And paranoia
About the alleged Communist Paedophile Satanic LGBT Trannie conspiracy to turn us all gay
And the black life matters folks And Antifa Coming to kill white people And to take away our guns
And other fear-mongering memes 24/7 Be Afraid be Afraid The commies are after you.
John (“Jake”) Cosmos Aller is a novelist, poet, and former Foreign Service officer having served 27 years with the U.S. State Department serving in over ten countries including Korea, Thailand, India, Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Spain. He has travelled to over 50 countries, and 49 out of 50 states. He speaks Korean, Thai, Spanish and studied Chinese, Hindi and Arabic.
You can find more of Jake’s work here on Ink Pantry.
I sit on an empty bench In a city that has bared itself to me Paint is peeling off Recently spruced up community halls The makeover is laughable The road rollers are parked in a corner
I wrap my arms around this half-baked reparation Intimacy with the city’s quirks Gives me warmth In ways I keep seeking from relationships
Asphalt, gravel and soil Will start churning around as the day starts…
Memories of an ancient road repair The sounds disturbed a grandma With feverish delirium What could a grandpa do? For roads had to be flattened and smoothened
There was the prettiest girl I met every summer Floral dresses Dimples that dented her visage For me to park kisses there
I strain to recall her name… A first love Fading somewhere Into the night’s oblivion
Vandana Kumar is a French teacher, translator, recruitment consultant, Indie Film Producer, cinephile and poet in New Delhi, India. Her poems have been published in national and international websites of repute like ‘Mad Swirl’, ‘Grey Sparrow Journal’, ‘The Piker Press’, ‘Dissident Voice’, ‘Borderless journal’, ‘Madras Courier’, ‘Outlook’ etc. She has featured in literary journals like ‘Fine Lines’ and anthologies like ‘Harbinger Asylum’, ‘Kali Project: ‘But You Don’t Look Sick’ etc. Her cinema articles appear regularly in ‘Just-cinema’ and Daily Eye. Her debut collection of poems ‘Mannequin Of Our Times’ was published in February 2023.The book has been awarded The Panorama International Book Award 2023.
I want to tell the same story over and over I want to tell the same story over and over again tell the same story
over and over over and over again
again
the same story
poem
khlebnikov sing me a song khlebnikov sing me a song khlebnikov sing me a song
khlebnikov
KHLEBNIKOV!
sing a me a song ?????????
Bo-beh-o-bi Veh-eh-o-mi Pi-eh-eh-o Li-eh-eh-ey
Gzi-gzi-gzeh-o
poem
there is somebody knocking on my door
who’s knocking on my door
there is somebody knocking on my door
look yoko ono is making a tuna sandwich
Poem
for Sterling Hayden
I don’t think you have the foggiest notion of the contempt I have had for myself
since the day I did that thing.
After he named names.
I know
It’s may not be the best poem you have read
Well, if I had named names
What might I have arisen to
poem
the law the law the law the law
the ass
Grant: After about 3/4 years absence I have returned to writing. Before the five years I had many poems and short stories published online and as hard copy. I have had six books published, only 4 I will talk about: Open Fragments, Bus Stop Bus Stop (a collection of stories based on my experience of transcontinental bus travel), Blues For A Mustang (A collection of poems) and The Life And Lies Of Calamity Jane (a novella) do not reflect the previous work.
Today’s poems are a very reductive. They reflect more of the micro theatre pieces I began during the time of COVID. In the micro theatre pieces the object or the gesture was the event. In today’s poems the words are the event. Each word and/or line can be connected as pieces of shards by the reader or each line and/or word can be seen and interpreted as is.
I attempt to reduce to the necessary words, but often I inject (my kind of) humour, with zags that bounce out of nowhere.
Grant Guy is a Winnipeg, Canada, theatremaker and poet. He has 6 books published and his poems and satories have been published internationally online and as hard copy. He was the 2004 recipient of the Manitoba Arts Council’s Award of Distinction and the 2015 Winnipeg Arts Council’s Making A Difference Reward.
The lush maize in the farm, Like the celebrating cheer-leaders, Are waving their green heads in jubilation, Not bothering when they would wither.
The canaries in the horizon, Like a rejoicing kite at its flight, Are chirping ditties of prime life, Not musing on the approaching winter.
Have they, rejoicing at present, Lost anything? But why am I, reflecting on our short lives, Losing my present?
Bimal Kishore Shrivastwa, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of English at Post Graduate Campus Tribhuvan University, Biratnagar, Nepal. An anthology of his poems is published from Litlight Publication, Pakistan. Other poems from Mr. Shrivastwa are published from Bangladesh, USA, India, and Nepal. Besides teaching, Mr. Shrivastwa loves promoting anything creative.
Jack wears sunglasses to ogle the young man’s dimples reddening under bolder and bolder quips of the older man’s flirts to see the smile he admires while Matt pouts, “I have dimples too,” and Jack, “Let me see,” smiles until distracted by baby falling, crying, hugged by mother’s love.
Darkness Safe
Darkness except for a sunshine beam descending to and into my chest as I sit in a wooden chair.
Eyes closed but staring upward, inward through the beam to geese flying across the blue sky to glide and ski upon the lake where heads tuck under wings for darkness safe within a womb.
Old Moment
I kneel to check my car tire’s pressure, but the tire gauge is old, and no longer works. What’s with that?! Tools are supposed to work forever, and I have a tool that doesn’t work! Bah!
The tires frown in deflated anticipation so I decide to squirt air in all of them until I can buy a new tire gauge and check them properly. As I try to stand my legs rebel and quiver like a pond rippling after a stone thrown in its gut. “Great. Here I am a capable woman checking my own tire pressure with a tire gauge that doesn’t work and I can’t stand up! Shit!”
I’ll die out here. A petrified woman statue kneeling on the pavement parking lot. An obstacle bigger than a speed bump for other drivers to swear at. I am a turtle upside down on its shell. My legs kick the air. I struggle to right myself. I want to lie down and let the summer sun suck the life out of me — a dried worm rusting on the sidewalk. I should have gone to the tire store. I could have kept my old tire gauge. I could have kept my young legs.
Designated Driver
The man thinks his car deserves two parking spaces in the crowded lot or he can’t back up well and uses the white line as a middle guide backwards.
I want to park so close to his car door that he can’t get in, and he’d have to wait until I chose to show up and exclaim, “Oh, my! I’m so sorry. I knew I could squeeze in here. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
Or I’d like to see if he’d open the passenger door and crawl over the seat and console to plop his body behind the wheel; all the time calling the driver next door an asshole and bastard even as he reads the note under his windshield wiper repeating his asshole and bastard designation.
Opens to Darkness
The door opens to darkness. If I step through, will I fall for eternity annoyed by my screaming and wishing for death and silence?
The door opens to darkness. I want to step through to the blank dream of imagination quivering for my offerings.
The door opens to darkness. A nightmare haunted house spotlit by scenes barred between my fingers covering my eyes wanting to see but not see.
The door opens to darkness. A snake pit writhes just passed the strip of light once at the threshold before the door slams shut.
Diane Webster’s work has appeared in “El Portal,” “North Dakota Quarterly,” “New English Review” and other literary magazines. She had a micro-chap published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022, and one of her poems was nominated for Best of the Net.
In summer days, in the middle of a paddy field a mango tree among all other trees It’s only leafy green which grows taller protecting shade seekers.
Like Buddha’s Pipal tree this mango tree – an epitome of peace where birdsong is a trance.
After school three boys gather under it as usual to fulfil their desires-
They dip unripe mango slices in burning hot chutney with Pantras*, offer it to farm workers, quench their thirst with tube water fresh, cool and satisfying.
They have no fears nor do they ever shed tears as they have all they need air, water, food and shade.
*Pantras is a Tharu dialect for Acmella Olerace
Kuma Raj Subedi, MA / MTESL, is a lecturer and an Australian poet. His numerous creations have been published on various platforms: online and in print, such as Misty Mountain Review, Indian Review, Muse India, Sahitya Post, Scarlet Dragonfly, Aksharang, The Gorkha Times, Of Nepalese Clay, The Indian Periodical, Nepalnamcha, Poetishes, The Offline Thinker, Setopati, Poeticia, The Rising Junkiri, Sahitya Sangraha, The Writer’s Cafe etc. He often writes about issues such as women’s suffering, memories, religion, nature, migration, love and culture. He is also a member of the poetry reading groups Friendly Streets Poets and TramsEnd Poets in South Australia.
a long walk home on a less sunny day harmattan haze the paper boat sail into the wind
one-way ticket in the mail mass burial of all the emotions with no funeral
Christina Chin is a painter and haiku poet from Malaysia. She is a four-time recipient of top 100 in the mDAC Summit Contests, exhibited at the Palo Alto Art Center, California. She is 1st prize winner of the 34th Annual Cherry Blossom Sakura Festival 2020 Haiku Contest and 1st prize winner in the 8th Setouchi Matsuyama 2019 Photohaiku Contest. She has been published in numerous journals, multilingual journals, and anthologies, including Japan’s prestigious monthly Haikukai Magazine.
Uchechukwu Onyedikam is a Nigerian creative artist based in Lagos, Nigeria. His poems have appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly, Brittle Paper, Poetic Africa, Hood Communists and in print anthologies. Christina Chin and he have co-published Pouring Light on the Hills (2022).
