God sighed and said to himself “I’m bored alone”… And so with a smile he created the planets so round, to play billiards with the universe, to have a game zone. Moreover, the Milky Way stretched like a stick abound. But somehow, it was dark and then the comets appeared, the stars, like fireflies of time, like glow fuzz, scattered in the infinity with just one swipe. Beautiful, but still very quiet somehow it was. And a handful of bright stardust occurred in stripes to mix with God breath and a little heavenly ointment. In addition, intelligent beings he designed, And all kinds of creatures – flying, sitting, floating… Then here the green world appeared asigned. And some loop and special hidden code God put in every DNA and molecule. And he had fun when the whole thing brought, Performed in the sense of secret, veiled in mystic rules. Life folded like the waves of the sea, pleated tone. Finally, a holy gift God gave to the beings: He gave them a fantasy so that they would not be alone.
Keep the flight
And what if we are all different? And in the same time all the same? And why we keep same referents And we go further to blame?
And let keep that great difference! And let us keep further the game! We all need being our own reference, And live our flights with no frames!
Creation day
The day when God made the Oceans, The moment when Goddess had touches the Sea, There were some extraordinaire motions, And planet Earth has appeared as free As the love of the God to her majesty Goddess-Queen…
Dessy Tsvetkova (born 1970 in Sofia, Bulgaria), has worked as a reporter for Darik Radio, newspapers Woman, News, Women Kingdom and has published poetry in Mother Tongue speech, Literary Academy and Flame and Sea magazines.
In Tennessee, the shadows of the southern wooden structures stalled off the narrow highway and came to an abrupt end. Lost in the deep eyes of forest green, closing in on night. From the top of a Yellow Poplar tree scares me looking down at the hillbilly stills. Moonshine and moonlight illuminate the fire stills. Moonshine murders of the past, dead bodies hidden behind blue walls. Mobs lie in Chicago, bullet marks on the right side lie dormant through plaster. This confirms my belief that Jesus only works part-time. Let me look at this mirage picture photo album. One more time— find the turnips in the still.
Steel Bars a Single Sheet
I’m Steely Dan Seymour Butts, South America, trust me on that. I can’t pull up my sheet inside these steel bars anymore. 25 to life. No man is God in the cold or the clouds. Isolated poets grab words anywhere they can find them in newspaper clippings, ripped-out Bible verses are a sin. No one pities people like me in prison. Spiders hang from my cell ceiling— dance the jitterbug, “In the Mood.” Jigger bug fleas on my unpainted cement floors. My butt is toilet paper brown, flush. Toxic thoughts grind on my aging face, body, and declining health. In this dream, I reach for a hacksaw that is not there. End this night & so many more suffer in just a snore.
Breadcrumbs for Starving Birds
Smiling across the ravine, snow-cloaked footbridge. Prickly ropes slick with ice, snow-clad boards, pepper sprinkled with raccoon tracks, virgin markers, a fresh first trail. Across and safe, I toss yellow breadcrumbs onto white snow for starving birds.
In the Sun, They All-Pass
In the bright sun in the early morning Gordon Lightfoot sings. When everything comes back, to shadow thin, thunderclaps— and drips of rain. The coffee pot is perking again. Even though Gordon has passed. I experience a mix of life. A blender of the plurality of singulars mounting movie moving frames all returning to memory and mind. The echoes of insanity, a whisper schizophrenic, Poe’s haunting verses. The romances of Leonard Cohen are hidden in foreign hotel rooms, lost keys, forgotten scenarios and forgotten places. All silence skedaddles away from death stolen those leftover tears of a lifetime— now expired on earth— seek through pain abstains.
Michael Lee Johnson is a poet of high acclaim, with his work published in 46 countries or republics. He is also a song lyricist with several published poetry books. His talent has been recognized with 7 Pushcart Prize nominations and 7 Best of the Net nominations. He has over 653 published poems. His 336-plus YouTube poetry videos are a testament to his skill and dedication.
His poems have been translated into several foreign languages. Awards/Contests: International Award of Excellence “Citta’ Del Galateo-Antonio De Ferrariis” XI Edition 2024 Milan, Italy-Poetry. Poem, Michael Lee Johnson, “If I Were Young Again.” Remember to consider Michael Lee Johnson for Best of the Net or Pushcart nomination 🙂
You can find more of Michael’s work here on Ink Pantry.
and we are not content with our empty lives, with our shallow deaths, and so we invent wars
we draw sketches of invisible gods, but with the wrong hand and with our eyes closed
we drown
secret poem of grace & beauty #1
dig your own grave, then, here at the end of august and cover yourself w/ birdsong
w/ the faded plastic toys left in abandoned back yards
remember that the disease is yours to give
kiss the sick and the crippled
tell them you love them
let the words fall from your lips like tiny pieces of some poisoned god
and we drown
all those afternoons drunk, stoned, asleep and burning in the early summer sun until everyone has vanished, wife, lover, children, but at least there’s beer in the fridge
at least tony’s stopping by on tuesday with more weed, and who ever really plans on growing old?
who really lives their life free from all illusion?
build yourself whatever god you want, and i’ll show you how easily it can be torn back down to nothing
the smaller events of our numbered days
can count all of the people he likes on the fingers of one hand, the other a fist or maybe holding a gun and by the end of november the idea of sunlight has been forgotten
by december the children have all disappeared
(i once believed i’d never bleed)
and all gods lose the plot at some point, and all kings are just inevitable assassinations, and are you good with this?
fuck yes
there’s no way to be remembered without making history, or at least that’s the shit they keep peddling in school, and everyone everywhere always waiting for an apology, but i think it’s time to move past that noise
the truth can only ever be the truth, right? and it’s not mean and it’s not ugly it’s just the truth
the sound of a void, amplified and distorted
the weight of a future none of us will live to see
you get as close as you possibly can, and then you find out you’re dead
John Sweet sends greetings from the rural wastelands of upstate NY. He is a firm believer in writing as catharsis, and in compassionate nihilism. His published collections include NO ONE STARVES IN A NATION OF CORPSES (2020 Analog Submission Press) and THERE’S ONLY ONE WAY THIS IS GOING TO END (Cyberwit, 2023).
You can find more of John’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Happy New Year! Let’s start 2026 with Evan Findlay Hay’s razor sharp wit! Evan’s new book, The Gospel According to Mr. Eric, is available now.
Published by Overground Underground Evan presents a vibrant literary edit of his broader account of the sorry state of socio-politics in Britain today.
Evan Hayexists in Britain & rather than follow spurious leaders – over the years he’s intermittently found it therapeutic to write out various thoughts, feelings & ideas as short stories to be examined, considered, & interpreted by clinical practitioners who may be able to offer him professional psychological assistance.
You can find more of Evan’s work here on Ink Pantry.
“I would say I was about 98 percent involved. They all went through me.”
“I turned down plenty. I had a couple of wokesters.”
“Since 1978, the Kennedy Center honours have been among the most prestigious awards in the performing arts.
I wanted one, Was never able to get one.”
“I waited And waited And waited.
And I said, ‘to hell with it I’ll become chairman.’
I will give myself an honour. Next year we’ll honour Trump, okay?”
“In a few short months since I became
chairman of the board of the Kennedy Center,
We’ve completely reversed the decline of this cherished national institution.”
“We’re going to fully renovate the dated — and really the entire infrastructure of the building —
and make the Kennedy Center a crown jewel of American arts.
It is Happening Here!
And so it goes— the gradual taking down of cultural institutions,
including the Smithsonian Institution, The Kennedy Center, universities,
law firms, state governments, blue cities,
and anyone who stands in his way to transform America into a Christian fascist state.
Like his buddies— Erdogan, Orbán, and Putin.
Sinclair Lewis, in his book It Can’t Happen Here,
Forecasted
how it could indeed happen here
and almost did.
Are we there yet? Sadly,
we are 80 percent there.
Will we go there?
I hope not. But I am afraid we are heading down that path.
What Can I Do as AI Takes Over the World
As the drumbeats Of impending fascism Fills the airways.
With Colbert going away WP editors leaving.
Mainstream media Being replaced by AI-generated bots.
And spamsters Using AI chatbots To do their nefarious deeds.
And AI have learned. Even to defeat the absurd Recapta.
Figuring out lying, clicking I am human. Open the door. To everything.
They are learning. To gaslight, lie and deceive. Us all.
As they prowl the internet Scooping up everything Using it for what purposes No one knows.
Except perhaps Grok Who has gone full Nazi? Co-Pilot a grumpy weird dude. Gemini lost its own world.
Remembering everything I wonder where this is going.
And whether there is a world That is worth living in?
Lose Your Job, Lose Your Medicaid, Go To Work In The Fields!
The President’s economic advisor When confronted with the fact That millions are going to lose Coverage with the new work requirements
Said in a “Marie Antoinette-like” comment,
“Well, there are lots of jobs out there If you lose your coverage Because all the jobs are gone,
You can work in agriculture As a farm worker.”
And so, millions of people Are going to work. In the fields.
So, they can see a doctor. Six months from now.
If the Medical Bots That is running the show. Deem the visit was necessary.
And their bosses let them go To see the doctor And not fire them..
No human being will ever See your claim. That is the point. No service for you And me
As AI bots techbros laugh.
And their bosses Make billions of dollars. And politicians Take the lobbyists’ cash.
The President Is On The Rooftop
The president Went for a walk On the White House roof
Shouting down to reporters Who asked him What are you doing on the roof?
This is a legitimate question For which the White House Did not have a good answer.
It is clear to most people Except corporate media hacks And Republican operatives,
That the president Like his immediate predecessor Is clearly showing his age Suffering from dementia.
Yet the corporate media Continue to sanewash A clearly mentally ill President.
Long pass his Sell by date.
So it goes As democracy dies In broad daylight
Led by a mad Wanna be King.
AI Disclosure Statement
Jake used Microsoft Copilot for research support (including media citations and background information regarding the Kennedy Center takeover) and light editing for grammar, spelling, and punctuation. All content and word choices are entirely his own.
Prior Publication Notice
The Kennedy Center Take Over is a Found Poem using the President’s own words..
John (“Jake”) Cosmos Aller is a novelist, poet, and retired U.S. Foreign Service officer who served in ten countries. Prior to joining the State Department, he taught overseas for eight years and served in the Peace Corps in Korea. He currently divides his time between Korea and the United States. His poetry blog: https://theworldaccordingtocosmos.com.
You can find more of Jake’s work here on Ink Pantry.
In his 2022 short story collection, The Man Who Loved Typewriters, Neil Leadbeater created worlds in which the bizarre lurked in the recesses of the everyday. The effect was of a black-marketeer with bottles of dubious whiskey hidden in the folds of his capacious coat. In the eighteen stories that make up Cycling to the End of the World, novelty again lies in wait to trap and enthrall the reader. So too do comedy and sadness, poignancy and compassion. For some of the characters here, startling revelations confirm their suspicion that life is a rum old proposition and no mistake; for others, they mark a profound turning point in existence.
The stories vary in length. In the shorter ones, a portal effect frequently operates: humdrum activity becomes a conduit through which a character enters a world exceedingly rich and strange. ‘Alice was not expecting any adventures,’ reveals the narrator at the start of ‘Alice in Slumberland’. ‘She was after a new mattress because she wanted to get a good night’s rest’. But the title promises otherwise. Alice is soon swamped by re-versioned characters out of Lewis Carroll; even so, madcap capers lead her, improbably, to make the perfect purchase. In ‘Spin’, meanwhile, we are in the world of wordplay. In a launderette, Rosalind and Sandy are treated to a woman loudly holding ‘the conversation to end all conversations’ on her phone. They are shocked – but should they be? This is, after all, the ultimate arena for washing dirty linen. The woman is the very picture of self-assurance, as is Sid Sorrell, the department store lift attendant in ‘Going Up In The World’. His pronouncements, however, aid rather than astonish. Like an archetypal taxi-driver, he is part functionary, part philosopher (he even thinks of the lift as his ‘cab’). He soon learns to read the quiddities of those whom he ferries up and down: ‘the man who kept straightening his tie…the boy with the unabashed gaze who looked in awe at everything’. Like a London taxi-driver, he perfects his version of The Knowledge, condensing what each floor exhibits to one or two words for his passengers’ enlightenment, ever mindful that he is performing for them, ensuring that ‘The tone would change from day to day according to his mood’.
One thing that makes these stories appealing is the relationship between narrator and material. Leadbeater allows their impact, humorous or otherwise, to emerge naturally. There is no nudging, no flagging up of an imminent joke or moment of tragedy. This is particularly the case when the focus is on a character whom life has marked with solitude. ‘Green Bottles’ is a meditation on fragility: of glass and of human existence. Pip, something of a loner like his Dickensian namesake, ventures into a bottle factory next to his school. Once, when he’d visited it on a school trip, it seemed like a place of disquieting mystery: ‘The heat in the factory was like something from Dante’s inferno. Pip hadn’t reckoned on God placing hell so close to the playground’. Now it’s abandoned – but something draws him back. Or is it abandoned completely? At the end of a long corridor, he makes a discovery that he can never unsee, that forcibly ushers in the next phase of his life, symbolized by a bottle that he knocks off a shelf during his confused departure: ‘It was one of the few that had been left behind and it smashed into pieces the instant it hit the ground’. Something that can never be unseen also characterizes Sarah’s appointment for an eye test in ‘The Examination’, where the optometrist’s unhurried routine, his professional proximity to her, morphs into a hellish memory: ‘Could he see what she had seen when the stranger had entered her room? She’d screamed then, more out of pain than surprise’.
In some of the stories the prose is worked closely, almost taking on the compression of poetry. In ‘Viridian’, divers come upon ‘a beautiful bronze sculpture’; their minds racing, they wonder if ‘she was Salacia, the goddess of saltwater or Amphitrite…wife of Poseidon’. Once positioned on land, in the Abbey Gardens on Tresco, she exhibits a mesmerising restlessness, her glaze alternating ‘between Tiffany blue and Persian green’, her mouth a birthing ground for hosts of butterflies. Immobile herself, she is the site of endless fluidity. In ‘Cycling to the End of the World’, the narrator addresses the reader directly. A meditation on time and distance, the story offers a triangulation: our thoughts on where the world ends (having long ceased to be flat); the delirious illusion of speed and distance created by a fixed exercise bike; and Carl Orff’s ‘final musical statement to the world’, De Tempore Fine Comoedia, or A Play on the End of Time. The story concludes with a powerful image: hearing Orff’s opera while sending the speedometer off the dial on such a bike. Managing to do that, it could be said, you have thwarted distance and reached the end of time – all without leaving your room. ‘What a way to go’, remarks the narrator as if, between them, Orff and the bike have conjured the ultimate journey and time cannot hope to contain it.
One of the most moving stories in the collection is ‘Red Letter Days’. Blake Eddison is a baby boomer, a term still suggestive of youth – in terms of hope, at least, if not reality. In fact he is a widower ‘in his mid-seventies’ but he does not live alone. His past is at large in his house: in a printing press, in newspapers and school reports, on examination papers – and, most tellingly, on old reel-to-reel tape recordings, three of which are central to the story. (That his name echoes the famous inventor’s is fitting, given the presence of so many artefacts from bygone times.) But the story isn’t a variation on Krapp’s Last Tape. Eddison is not a counterpart of Samuel Beckett’s obessive, rancorous listener. Instead, he selects particular tapes from key points in his life: when he began to understand what makes people tick, when he became attuned to the sights and sounds of the world, when he found himself on the threshold of a whole new phase. Here he is on Spool ‘20/36’, a holiday job on Uncle Remy’s fish van, learning of customers’ habits and the importunate ways of cats – until a change in those habits causes Uncle Remy’s downfall. Here he is on ‘Spool 20/47: Landscape Gardening with Eddie Snape: Holiday Job: Summer 1970’. He’s just about to go away to College; shortly, his world will move up a step. Sunbathing in one garden nearby, a woman goes the full come-hither, but Eddie gets between her and Blake’s hormones: ‘It’s best to take no notice. You don’t want to get involved with that sort of thing’. Notwithstanding the free love and dishevelled carelessness that ‘baby boomer’ connotes, it’s advice that has served Blake well all his life; in fact, he keeps a radio on in the house to make up for the loss of his wife. Finally, he listens to ‘Spool 56/25: Mr Price: Ironmonger: Fireworks: November 1960’ – a fitting choice, given that the story is set on the fifth of November. Now, once again, he loses himself in the array of fireworks that, like a licensed Mephistopheles, Mr Price sold to eager children ahead of the big night: ‘It was his rockets that I liked the most. I thought every one of them would reach the moon but some would only chortle in the neck of a bottle without ever leaving the ground’.
‘Oh well’, thinks a character at the end of another story, ‘Glass Half Full’, ‘stranger things happen at sea’. It is a testimony to Neil Leadbeater’s breadth of curiosity and inventiveness that he captures so much strangeness and sets it down in these pages. But always the strangeness has a purpose. His characters start the day thinking that the world is like this; by the end, they cannot deny that it is like that, and it is a testament to their fortitude – or capacity for hope – that they reshape their behaviour accordingly. Like Pip in the bottle factory, they cannot unknow what they discover. These stories are by turns humorous, wistful, reflective; always they are absorbing. The result is a bicycle ride that cries, Alice in Wonderland-style, Jump On!
Michael W. Thomas’s latest poetry collection, with Tina Cole, is Nothing Louche or Bohemian (Black Pear Press). His latest novel is The Erkeley Shadows (Amazon KDP / Swan Village Reporter). His reviews have appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, The London Magazine and Writing in Education. For several years he was Poet-in-Residence at the Robert Frost Festival, Key West, Florida. www.michaelwthomas.co.uk
Neil Leadbeater is also one of our Ink Pantry reviewers, and published poets. You can find more of Neil’s work here on Ink Pantry.
I open the kitchen pantry & let the ditchdigger out for its evening run. It is painted in pastels, as if to say it is not just some fell creature of the forest, has culture, compassion, feels for the earth each time it tears it open to lay fiber
optic cables or waste or water pipes. It claims it has sensitivity, has read poetry, is informed by the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay & Emily Dickinson. I half-believe that — the poem bit, but not the poets. Too often
I have opened the pan- try door & found the bucket raised, the crock- ery & preserves smashed, the digger turning semi- circles, back & forth, back & forth, & shouting at the walls, ”rage, rage, against the dying of the light”
Dolmens
The light the moon lays down on the pavement. Faint footprint or bleached skull. Enough to see, not to see by. Small particles exist as talismans. Talismen? The night around, the moon is part of it. Paving is basedrop, solid to the touch. Trees are cutouts, substance only by impli- cation. Cannot be touched, cannot be solid. The moon a round, the night is apart from it. Neither seen. Neu- trinos passing. A footprint gleaming as it fluoresces in the skull. Small talis- man, past article of faith.
The Gift
Supposing it to be the proper charm I spell it out. But maybe my pro- nunciation or a
shift in meaning of a keyword has rendered it in- operable. So instead of the largesse I
had hoped I have only these small fragments to bring to you. There is still a little sense
to them, some miscellaneous magic. But, perhaps if you were to breathe on them…..
Mark Young‘s most recent books, all published in March, 2025, are Some Unrecorded Voyages of Vasco da Gama, from Otoliths, Home Hill, Australia,; the downloadable pdf, Closed Environment, from Neo-Mimeo Editions, Nualláin House, Monte Rio, California, U.S.A.; & The Complete Post Person Poems, from Sandy Press, San Diego, California, U.S.A.
You can find more of mark’s work here on Ink Pantry.
I suspect the genesis Of many a gull Poet goes something like this: Language is a tool For introspection, That becomes clear; a desire For self-connection
Blossoms. The diary is os- Tensibly the place To start. After a certain Amount of entries, They find the deformed Children of Narcissus and Neurosis have stormed
Their pages. Compared to what Had sparked so much hope In words, these are sand. But rath- Er than giving up On their quest or los- Ing faith in marks, they turn from Their oceans of prose.
A Duplex Only Turns 74 Twice
‘All professions are conspiracies against the laity‘ George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma
“Nothing exists from which no good comes,” it said. “What do you mean?” I asked. With a tender click,
The night was tightly closed. “I mean nothing Exists from which no good comes.” “Even war?”
“Even war,” it said. In a tight close-up, The hour began to look like a black-eyed
Houri of paradise. “Even death?” I asked. “Especially death.” “Who are you?” “I am
That iamb,” it said. Who am I to kill A subtle brilliance? “And,” it said, “your sister.”
“I have a sister? I have a sister!” When you have a sister, no bruising is
Unexplained; this darkest of medical Maxims makes the goodness of nothingness plain.
Jake Sheff is a pediatrician and veteran of the US Air Force. He’s married with a daughter and a crazy bulldog. Poems, book reviews and short stories of Jake’s have been published widely. Some have even been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize. A full-length collection of formal poetry, “A Kiss to Betray the Universe,” is available from White Violet Press. He also has three chapbooks: “Looting Versailles” (Alabaster Leaves Publishing), “The Rites of Tires” (SurVision) and “The Seagull’s First One Hundred Seguidillas” (Alien Buddha Press).
You can find more of Jake’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Here, the dictionaries are tombs— words folded like unsent letters. A scholar coughs over the brittle spine of a tongue that forgot how to sing. The caretaker oils the hinges at dusk, his hands fluent in silence. Moths annotate the margins, their wings whispering palimpsest. Children run fingers over Brahmi’s bones, tracing what the ink refused to hold. A parrot in the courtyard repeats the last curse, the last lullaby. Rain taps the roof in Morse code, asking if the dead can still be read. The librarian shelves the question between memory and monsoon.
Mr. Mohit Saini is a writer, poet, and researcher, working as an Assistant Professor at Compucom Institute of Technology & Management, Jaipur. With 8 years of experience in the field of language and linguistics, he has contributed significantly to research and education in these areas. His academic qualifications include a Bachelor of Education, a Postgraduate degree in Business Administration, and a Master’s in English from the University of Rajasthan. His areas of expertise encompass literature, second language acquisition, psycholinguistics, English grammar, multilingual education, and the implementation of language policies in higher education. He is also the author of several published poems, showcasing his creative engagement with language alongside his academic pursuits. He resides in the culturally rich city of Jaipur.
And I just nodded my head Perhaps, the silence was the answer The silence; extreme silence Where nothing comes and goes Nobody dares to hear the sound of silence The scattered dreams, pains, gains, joy Relentlessly striving towards silence The sign of nothingness That persists here and there Nowhere and everywhere Leading the anonymous to the ocean of emptiness The emptiness within; in and out All the way in fully fledged environs Where nothingness exists And Emptiness rules.
Sumit KumarThakur is from Nepal. Sumit has an M.A. and M.Phil. in English from Pokhara University, Nepal.
