Kritya :: Poetry In Our Time

Poetry Books
By
Kritya publication

See the link

A Poem By David Rachlin

Shrine #1

This shrine will honor the secrets
of rusting things
which gave up their metal
to become the filigree of decay

I will lean those old photographs against the wall
and remember that low Dutch sky of Terschelling

and the harrow, rusting in the mist
and the man whose field it was
shaded by the passing clouds and his doorway

Or that long street in Midsland
with so many brick homes with flower boxes
and the woman watching me
photograph the rusty bicycle along her fence
and the light snow that fell
on her glass milk bottles

Now all that's left are the glossy rectangles
of light and dark
bent from their rest in a drawer

I will watch patiently
as other things take to the air
and oxidize in their crisp orange bloom

( More Poems By David Rachlin)

A Poem by Billy Ramsell

Poem

I waited ten years for her beauty
in this house I built by the water,
gave up my career, forgot my duty
to my son, to my unborn daughter.

The nights when she came smelled like nectar;
I sang her flowers, kissed her sweet tears.
There were other nights. I recollect
the endless waiting, the cold bed, the years.

So long. ..Where is the rest of my life?
I cannot imagine the face of my daughter.
I will wander the roads in search of my wife,
my son who calls another man ‘father’.

( More Poems by Billy Ramsell)

A Poem by Ila Kumar

Flower, Moon and Night

Now
Nobody writes poetry
Fragrant with the perfume of flowers.

The night may have bathed
Maybe for a just a moment
With moonlit flowers
But nobody speaks
Of that captured moment
Frozen there,
Of the moonlight
On the yellow banks of dawn
During the rainy season,
Of the cosmic love created
Sitting under the weeping Hydranths.

Just now
Passed by the street
A child, with its mother,
Shouting with pleasure
Like the young one of a deer,
Tottering on its feet
Jumping here and there
Is its nature.

Nobody speaks of Nature
Moon, night and flower

(Translated by DG Jog)

(More poems by Ila Kumar)

A Poem by Rati Saxena

*
Embrace, it was in the last line in the letter
Embrace, I read as it is the only word

Exact in the middle of my head, sleep alighted
Sleep by sleep I burned and turned in to ash: entered
in to dark coolness

Embrace, Embrace - the pain wake up
Embrace, the sleep murmured
Embrace, the death smiled
Embrace, and
nerve by nerve I blossom in to white lily

( More poems by Rati Saxena)

A Poem by Andres Ehin

deep, below ground, breathe

                         birds
                         buried in dirt
if you dust one clean
                         her cornflower plumage
                         will luminously shine
such birds are
                         moose beetle swallows
                         ultramarine mole-eagles
with these birds
                         estonians play at being cherokees
                         cherokees play at being estonians
but these birds will allow
                          only the indigenous
                          to pluck their feathers so blue
we estonians and cherokees hail
                          from the land of tricoloured dogs
                           and underground birds
but where are we headed

( Translated by Patrick Cotter)

( More Poems by Andres Ehin )

A Poem by Tom Lombardo

Rains

The latex snaps, the tube of KY squerches.
Bend over the table, please. Dr. Takahachi's

finger forces through the tightest human muscle.
Sorry. It's the cheapest way to look inside. I startle

as he blindly palpates a gland
the size of a newborn's clenched hand.

He probes for tiny tumors,
the things that feel like infants' knuckles.

Looks good. It's time we run your
P.S.A. I feel a snap, like peristalsis. All our

men eventually suffer Benign Prostatic Hypertrophy.
Ah, morbidities-Urgency, hesitation, frequency-

strangling millimicrons by the hour.
If we survived 150, we'd all need a catheter.

A century ahead of time, flowmetry
in milliliters measured by the second, me-

Within the normal range. Come back next year.
He calls it watchful waiting. That year

I watched for nothing. Now, I wait
for transurethral resection of the prostate.

Tiny blades, remotely, Takahachi TURPs
through my prostate's transurethral axis.

Oh, where the waterfalls of yesteryears?
Returned to oceans. Air and clouds

blown back to me. When I hear them,
I stop the car, highway pines, a stream.

(( More poems by Tom Lombardo)

A Poem by Yasuhiro Yotsumoto

I’m leaving!

My son who left for the kindergarten in the morning
came home at night as a 35 year old man.
Your are late, I said.
Yeah, looking up at the cuckoo clock with affection,
he replied in a man’s thick voice.

What have you been doing till so late, asked my wife.
Well, he showed that smile of his, and told that
He’s been married for three years, working as a space engineer,
summarizing his life in the same way as I once did myself.
Hey, isn’t he already quite grey haired!

I found it odd to get my sake cup filled by my son who was the same age as I, and murmured “thanks, that’s fine”.
My wife stared at us, comparing my face to his, his to mine,
when he started to tell us about the planet in 30 years, which
knocked us both with horror and surprise.

How have you survived in such a terrible world!
Environmental disaster, population explosion, nuclear weapons,
racialism and terrorism.
Sure, I can see the seeds of the problems right here and now,
and this here and now has somehow turned into the irrevocable past for my son and his family in the future, confusing as it may,
it is only clear that they got the worst case scenario.

Say, what if Mom and I try to change all those from now on?
I’m not sure, Dad, once it’s done it’s done.
My wife held him on the sleeve and begged him to stay home in an oddly theatrical manner.
I see his point, it would go against providence.

It’s all our fault
yet my son utters not a single word of reproach.
Could it be because I am already gone from his world?
I am mildly curious about it,
but it really does not matter one way or the other.

“Don’t worry about us. If we are lucky, we can win the lottery for the lunar immigration”
With his one hand on the small of his back,
he shook my hands with the other, kissed my wife
on the cheek like a western foreigner.
Midnight darkness falling behind him,
he said,
I’m leaving, in a 5-year-old voice.

( More Poems by Yasuhiro Yotsumoto)

A Poem by Bobbi Lurie

EVERYWHERE THE FACES OF ANCESTORS REPLACE CHILDHOOD

the establishment puts us through greedy displays of success
and the wind-swept creatures hate us more and more

*
our aptitude for cruelty increases
we forest our children into tree trunks/into twigs

*
waking up is a sad habit

*
that your hand/ my hand

*
flesh our single gesture

( More Poems By Bobbi Lurie)

A Poem By Michaela Sefler

MATERNAL TRIAD

Opposites , fire and water,
and air in between
balancing ,
each one absolute, reining.
Standing alone
coming and going
together
a triad of endurance, sustaining.

(More Poems by Michaela Sefler)

A Poem by Liana Alaverdova

BEFORE WORK

Oh, what a shock: at six my clock goes crazy!
I cling to sleep curled in a heap – I’m lazy, lazy,
I’m wrapped in sleep; I’m trapped in sleep,
It blears my eyes; I cannot rise.
But all is lost, I’m double-crossed,
Can’t let it faze me!
I throw off sleep.
With one swift leap
I’m out of bed.
I clear my head,
Put on my blouse,
Put on my house,
Our street to start the day.
Put stockings on,
My kids, my mom
And now I’m underway.
I put my coat and hat on,
Don vertical Manhattan.
It looms in all its splendor.
To impressions I surrender:
The spiky buildings disappearing into clouds;
People rush (why must they push, when they’re in crowds?).
Taxis, cars, men with cigars throng all around.
My world becomes a dizzy sum: sights, scents, and sounds.
The horn’s shrill bleat, the smell of meat, signs everywhere
In scores of tongues; I fill my lungs with chill, damp air.
Then it all stops.
I‘m here at work; I mustn’t shirk.
The curtain drops.

( More poems by Liana Alaverdova )

A Poem by Fish and Shushan

some people are too big and beautiful
to fit into pictures or short stories
they are kept instead in long russian novels
waiting for princesses to crack the binding
so they can spring from the pages like fleas
into three, four, and five dimensions of life
this story begins with a kiss
so you know its going to be good
and there are lions and bears
and astronauts and moons
if you don’t like kisses.
two beautiful people walk into a room
with the crazy tension of a stretched rubber band
one looks like a woman
the other a bear
who is fighting to keep
its belly from exploding
the bear is also trying to be polite
and not say, “i want you.”
the woman hops like a robin
afraid to look the bear in his eyes
but also wanting him to make her
and that is what happens
the rubber band stretches
there is aching in stomachs
and between legs
hearts move inside
their rib cages (like birds)
the band pulls out
as far as it can
but then it snaps
and she has her
up against the wall
with the rushing force
of a hundred eagles
wind in screams
crashing forward
and being sucked
into mouths
hands search for soft
skin under shirts
for shoulders
bodies are shy
and not yet touching
but they are slowly falling
into each other’s gravity
it is inevitable
everybody knows this.

( More poems Fish and Shushan)