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A
Poem By
Massimo Sannelli
Warhol was shot and treated, the private
garden
downstairs is the view: what,
what do you love more, more
than anything else? do show
it below.
mother is sleeping, facing
the table he is writing on
she sleeps, he writes in late
Summer, quietly. his tongue
excites a high child voice:
be glad, be kind, be good,
and where, and when,
and why, and get, go; on
the balcony, too, playing.
loved Warhol lived yet:
listen, now, go, do, you, too.
(
More Poems By Massimo Sannelli )
A Poem By Gerry Murphy
The Big Issues
Word comes through
that you are working your ass off
If there is one as lovely
in the teeming seraglio
of a Turkish soccer player,
I’ll eat my fez.
If there are breasts more shapely
beneath the vests
of Mao’s fearless militia women,
I’ll swallow my little red book.(
More Poems By Gerry Murphy)
A Poem by Patrick CotterPICKLED PRESERVES
I took out the jar of eyes to peer at.
The orange veins which were like satsuma sinews had
disappeared.
How weird.
The veins in my eyes should be capillaries I thought.
Capillary is more euphonous,
Veins are less luminous.
The vinegar solution in which the eyes swam had not had
the effect I had sought.
The colours of the irises were unbleached.
There were four eyes as juicy as peaches;
A pair of blue pale like the sky
And a pair of blue dark like the lake.
I left the eyes on the windowsill for some bird’s sake,
For any blackbird which might happen by
I would have preferred a sparrow but as I laid back on my
bed
I knew it would probably be a crow instead.
( More
Poems by Patrick Cotter )
A Poem by Sampurna
Chattarji
The S-Word
Sliver
I’d like to be
A sliver of orange
Turned inside out
And eaten
Snatch
There is a song
that comes between us.
I listen to it in silence.
He listens in sorrow.
I never ask him what it means.
I know.
And so, between us the song sits,
a mute accomplice,
a shred of doubt
between my teeth.
Stain
Last night,
when the moon came up,
the egg began to hatch.
A lightning crack.
A scarlet beak.
And last,
a vivid flow
of inconsolable turquoise blood.
Simmer
A boil sprouts on her knee.
As it festers she pesters it
to yield its oozing centre.
She worries the skin around it
inflamed with indignity.
She fondles it almost
but breaks off before it bursts.
Suddenly all over her they spring,
lewd, uninvited.
She boils over
like a cauldron
covered and unattended.
From her new book Sight May Strike You Blind (Sahitya Akademi,
2007)
(More
poems by Sampurna Chattarji)
A
Poem by
Tae Ho Han
Hymn of Wisdom
When I stand on the rocky cliff at the dark dawn,
the bare feet stick on the rugged surface.
The swift motion of an white antelope
in the running game of no cliff in naked feet.
The slow walk of a child who wears no shoe
extends its hand and asks me to hold it.
Right at the moment, to hold it after gluttonous
ascent,
I fall off the cliff downward into the voidness.
(
More poems by Tae Ho Han )
A Poem by Ashwani Kumar
Mother’s Hair Pin
Years ago, I looked like them,
And lived with them in their camps like;
A strayed winter and a traitor summer.
I took a pledge;
Iron will melt in our blood,
Drop by drop,
We will become free,
And inch by inch
We will become monument.
One Friday evening,
I retuned home; panting and shriveled
Finding me without a penny,
My mother offered me her only hair-pin and a rusted old lamp,
And told me not to worry about old clothes,
I knew I looked liked her and belonged to her,
I took a pledge;
I won’t fear strange shadows of war.
Every Sunday
I hunted for secret treasures,
Pried open icy-casket with her hair-pin,
And freed butterflies from the bondage of frozen-slumber,
One Monday Morning
The wicked ogres came disguised as hermits,
Granted me divine forest rights,
Advised to separate snails from caterpillars,
And I flip-flopped my conscience,
Tossed hair-pin in air,
Rubbed the rusted old lamp,
Once, twice, thrice,
I kept rubbing the spooky lamp,
Now, I don’t remember when I became my own ghost.
(
More Poems by
Ashwani Kumar)
A
Poem by
Therése Halscheid
A Woman Reflected in Woods
A deep sigh of trees,
streams of sun across the woodland floor
and a woman in light
undressing herself as the trees do
dropping their green disguises in autumn.
It is summer though,
where the woman keeps baring herself
to the trees, shedding not only her clothes
but each face she has given herself over time
as you know, we all wear expressions which,
over the years, hide who we are.
Still the forest’s sigh.
Still the sun. The woman….
Even the image of her body
has gone out, is reflected in woods, captured in bark
as if her flesh had grown wild with longing
to be where no one can reach
as if she needed her own life apart
to learn who she was.
( More poems by
Therése Halscheid)
A Poem by Peter
Waugh
I Write, Therefore I Am
I write because I write
I write because it’s a quick fix
I write because I must
I write because I seek an answer
I write because I love to eat fish
I write because my father said: ‘Don’t!’
I write because I die
I write because of the history of poetry
I write because I can’t stop
I write because it’s what I do
I write because I wrote
I write because the sentence has not yet come to an end
I write because it’s always a beautiful day but YOU can’t see it
I write because I was a paper boy in ’68
I write because my eyesight was too bad for me to be a Fleet Air
Arm pilot
I write because I couldn’t give it up
I write because it is my longest-serving friend
I write because all things are transient
I write because my father never listened to me
I write because my mother always listened to me
I write because I want to preserve the present as the past
I write because I am a camera
I write because it is an adventure
I write because I am a perfectionist, the world is imperfect
and poetry is an approach to perfection
I write because the road of a thousand pages begins with a
single letter
I write because of the Beats
I write because of the Mersey Poets
I write because they came to our school to give poetry readings
I write because it was something different to do
I write because nobody else did
I write because it was a dare
I write because it always gives you something to do when you’re
waiting
I write because I wanted to rebel
I write because I read Ariel in the school library and then
stole it
I write because my life’s development stopped at puberty
and I have tried to remain a teenager
I write because it’s a cheap hobby
I write because cannabis and LSD opened my mind to the secrets
colours of Otherland
I write because I read an purple-covered anthology by Geoffrey
Grigson
with poems by Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Corso, Popa,
Adrian Henri, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Baudelaire
and it blew my mind
I write because it’s fun
I write because I can write
I write because I can’t write
I write because it’s Sisyphus work and I’m a masochist
I write because it’s easy I do it off the cuff and I’m lazy
I write because I dream of being rich and famous
I write because I’m bored
I write because I love YOU
I write because I can’t express myself in any other way
I write because it opens my eyes, my ears, my heart, my mind
I write because I don’t know why I write
I write because I want to wrote just one great poem
I write because I don’t understand life
I write because I’m afraid of death
I write because I want to escape
I write because it’s a habit
I write because I used to make comic strip books when I was a
kid
– my masterpiece was called Drago the Gunslinger
I write because it’s a way to create and keep secrets
I write because it tells me new things
I write because poetry is a mirror
I write because others have before me
I write because I believe the world needs to be changed and I
can’t do it
I write because I hate 1st world capitalist imperialism
I write because there is no scientific formula for the sound of
the rain
I write because I believe in magic
I write because I grew up with the Beatles, the Stones and Bob
Dylan
and was captivated by the spirit of their songs
I write because a voice inside talks to me when my mind is
silent
I write because it is an act of self-affirmation
and I like breathing rarefied mountain air
in long deep breaths
I write because the poem is a journey and I am a traveller
I write because it opens windows and doors
I write because it’s a sexual act
I write because I don’t have any children other than hundreds of
poems
I write because I’m addicted to poetry and I don’t want to kick
the habit
I write because I can’t play any other musical instrument
I write because it’s a way to explore myself
I write because I love to lie with truth
I write because I’m a gatherer
I write because I follow the Great Spirit
I write because it used to get me girls
I write because it sets me free
I write because I’m a Houdini
I write because it relieves the sadness
I write because it heightens happiness
I write because I am obsessed by writing
I write because I can’t think of anything else to do
I write because it lets off steam
I write because it makes me feel like God
I write because it gives me a place to hide
I write because I am timid as a deer
I write because I am fearless as a lion
( More
Poems by
Peter Waugh)
A Poem by Roberto Piperno
It takes a poet
It takes a poet
To catch the hidden idioms
Of war - not just those of peace
Love and passion –
The hidden messages prompted
By ruthless compulsions
Or inaccessible orders
And by a sustained envy
For the stiff erections of guns
Or an obscure lust
Untranslated by the
Locked language
Of military books.
It takes a poet
Truly grasping the complex meaning
Of angles and facets
To decipher the most hidden sounds
Or better still
The in-visible reasons of exiled hearts
And unexpected alliterations:
He who remembers Babel
Has not ceased learning
New ways of communicating.
It takes a poet
To beat the fatal ex-communications
Of terrorism
Driven by unpredictable promptings
Of heart and mind
By sepulchral clashes of heaven and earth.
Perhaps it is the poet’s
The hardest most secret task
Of prevailing with words
Intensely and discharging emotions
Faster than any gun
And then silencing arms
And those bombs which noisily
Dig holes of silence around the dead.
Published in “Sala d’attesa” (ed.Campanotto)
Translation by Alessandra Contenti
Professor of Culture of English Speaking Countries.
( More Poems By Roberto Piperno)
A Poem By
LANA DERKAC (Croatia)
CHEST
Just where my rib cage should be
I carry a chest for shadows
At times I love the universe, timidly
The forest knows it for me:
silence is capital
At times
the shadows in my chest are still
not in the registers
and in rich catalogues of fear
At times my shadows are still not entered
into the forms for violation of beautiful weather
At times the unsurmisable
will appear from nowhere
only in some late weather report
In the place of a rib cage
I carry a chest with shadows
At times the paint peels off
and from it you read
the bodiless image of hope
(More Poems by LANA DERKAC (Croatia)
DAVOR SALAT (CROATIA)
A Town of Velvet
In its heart a town died. Now we pamper its remaining houses
and visit its flowering parks. And you look at me like a river
that revives time and within you fish multiply finding a way to
a lake kept secret. Your flip-flops spread the asphalt, your
palms velvet my poem about a vanished square. “What is a town?”
I ask you. “When all its inhabitants die, I give it birth again
and rejoice in its secret to which I know no answer”, is your
still more wondering response.
* * *
Not write down a single word from the final forest. Oh, that
immense flowering that burgeons with root sucked dry and
withered fruits. Your other flesh, the land that dwindles into
future seeds. And forever shut the eye that suffers splendent
clouds. Be prudent, for sons to dissipate, shady, for light to
charm the corpse. Although it whispers, great is the voice that
burns in shells.
* * *
Screws take fright, metal sheets slip their housings. The
taffrail resigns the sailor to the waves. Were there no sun, he
would unsheathe his sword and slice the birds remaining. With
him sink the engines too, deceived that he could breathe beneath
the sea. The watchers cannot take the scene, shift their eyes to
the fancied land. On their coats the buttons snap, the world
unfastens. The sun has darkened their every downfall.
Grass
I forgot you
in the grass
on the succulent autumn
cloack
now you’re hiding
from vagabonds
and the quiet knives
I restore past images
your shadows on the tips
of elongated buildings
silvery children
on the windows
and that last leap
then you became
an angel
and I forgot you
in the grass
* * *
Light slips down his cheeks. A gilded old man. Hands in
unconscious movement, snap the quivering air. Face crumples in
recollection, the eyes a sharp mirror of sunken friends.
Eternal, and yet ever more fragil, time rendered unseen has
taken him. He thrusts towards death, but inured to the twilight
his forehead recalls the light.
(
DAVOR SALAT )
A Poem by Yong Hag Shin ( Korea)
Faces of Words
Words grow flowers,
Flowers bloom in words.
Wars blow perfumes
Perfumes blossom in wars.
Words flow lights
Lights gloom on whores.
Words follow loves,
Loves broom words, wars, and whores.
( More poems Yong Hag Shin) |
