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Poem by Ashlie White
White walls in Amsterdam
Windows have always been sweet wrappers
through which trees whisper sweet nothings
grow sideways, note silence
You invented a new colour to spray paint red
for the children who want biscuit tins for houses
dizzy spells
there goes
the dizzy spells
when taking a birds wing span literally
firstly I'd write you down in figures
followed by ticking tiny little boxes
what’s with these tiny little boxes
I've taken to throwing up concrete slabs
bits of scrap metal giving me throat tickles
doorways and chimneys meet you in the parking lot
then comes the pattern of the rainfall
before the moon gave birth and the sun got high
I was somewhere else
tell me I’m somewhere else
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(
more
poems by Ashlie White )
A Poem by
David Austerweil
The lights keep burning
out
The lights keep burning out:
first the kitchen, then the living room, now the bedroom.
It's cold and the days are short.
The house wheezes.
I lie in bed by the one good lamp,
unable to read this Sanskrit love poetry,
wondering when you'll come home.
( more poems by David Austerweil)
Poem by A. Esmailpour
To Mohsen Makhmalbaf and his picture-poetry: Silence
The leaves dancing over the water
the child fallen intoxicated on
the grass of the autumn
unconscious
The horses are silent
dreaming the stars
oh, what do they expect
the yellow, orange, and copper leaves?
they do not know
falling on the cold water
rolling, hearing the sound of wind
kept from sleep
by the sheep’s bleating
The leaves whirling
the child in coma
the star silent
the bunch of grapes playing zither
pulse beats acute
colours gone blind
Springs are weeping
the grassland is dizzy
dead hearts listen to dumb pulses of the stars
in the canary’s eyes infatuated with the sun
The leaves are falling
the clouds extinguished
the icicles impatient 8 Nov. 2004
( more
poems by A. Esmailpour )
A
Poem by
Nikhila Naik
Nina
The stars are rising
It is getting dark.
A swing is creaking
In the park.
From my window
I can see
Someone moving in the park –
A silhouette.
Mother is busy
Getting supper ready.
Father is lazing
On the couch in his study.
I step out the back porch
Through the evening haze
To where Nina is waiting.
Together we gaze,
Into the magical sky.
We lie on the moist grass
Facing the stars,
Whiling the twilight hours.
It has been many years now
Since Nina moved away.
Now I sit alone in the swing
Enjoying its idle sway,
Reminiscing the old days
When our hearts were carefree,
And we would absorb the night sky
In all its glory.
In my heart she has made
An indelible mark.
The stars are shining
The night is dark.
(More
Poems by Nikhila Naik )
Poems by
Meena Kadasamy
NARRATION
I’ll weep to you about
My landlord, and with
My mature gestures -
You will understand:
The torn sari, disheveled hair
Stifled cries and meek submission.
I was not an untouchable then.
***
I’ll curse the skies,
And shout: scream to you
Words that incite wrath and
You will definitely know:
The priest, his lecherous eyes,
Glances that disrobed, defiled.
I was not polluting at four feet.
***
How can I say
Anything, anything
Against my own man?
How?
So I take shelter in silence
Wear it like a mask.
When alone, I stumble
Into incoherencies...
(more
poems by Meena Kadasamy)
Simon D Harrison
Just A Wash of Sea Evening
Beach-gritty towels drape the balconies
of squat white cubes, their daylight colours
dimming to a faint red; on the hills above
the Coral Bay road house lights fleck on,
sharp and white as quartz, clustering the slopes.
A tin shack selling fruit and souvenirs
casts corrugated light onto the road
like a vast crinkled lantern; all around
the steady dissonance of sea and sand
tussles the evening silence, washes all
the bitterness from a citric sunset.
( more
poems by Simon D Harrison)
A Poem by
Patrick Joness
Dandelion
(to my mother and father)
from the mouths of corpses
the seeds fly
into inside
the ocean is
weeds eclipsed by yellow suns
light stutters through
wait and watch
the epiphany said
collapse and start again
companion to isolation
friend of regret
slow breeze blow through time
a
child's breath mending sight
starting clocks of the unending daylight
so lay down in seed dawn
away from the deep cut night
inherent beauty of scattered souls
searching sacred earth for another place
as with these holes we become whole
fly fly away
what we have been is what we are
mother of millions fathers of forever
fly fly away
into the inside
and
what breaks, becomes
for
we are the traces
the traces
left for the next
the next;
(more
poems by patrick jones)
A poem by
V. SANTHA RAM
Waiting
Waiting is ever painful
When you
Await someone
To respond
Whom you think about
Sincere and true
At times mind is unmindful
For slips and err
Yet there is consolation
In pain too
Sensibility and sensitivity
Are too often,
Human weaknesses
Expressions in terms of words
May lack depth and width
To convey meanings in content.
Then you pray
To get solace
In quiet silence
(
more poems by V Santha Ram )
Poems by Rehan Qayoom.
Modern Snow
So still so silent so serene so wan
So deathly white as if all life had gone
This dawn I see the snow has conquered Earth
and thickened all my soul in mists of mirth
Snow takes the life from where it falls away
as it has stole from me my heart this day
And left me to dictate my numbers plain
my Muse's musings in my Muse's strain
Its biting drafts in London's chaplets blow
and forbid any Christian soul to go
So they return not once throughout the year
but I, a Muslim, struggle upto here
Mute in this church now locked and bolted long
no more whose spire invites the Christmas throng
Wherein the poet Coleridge lies dead still
'Here the southern slope of Highgate Hill'
(More
Poems By Rehan Qayoom.)
Poems by
Fez Ahmad Fez
Stay Close
Stay close to me
My killer, my cherished, stay close
The moment the night crawls
the black night crawls having drunk the blood of the heavens
Carrying a musk balm, carrying a diamond lancet
arrives mourning laughing, singing
Arrives clinking the crimson anklets of pain
the moment when hearts drowned in bosoms
Begin searching the path of hands hidden in sleeves
in anticipation
And the regression of wine too like children-sobbing
When the peevish ocean agitated doesn’t divert when diverted
When no precept is made when made
when nothing goes
The moment night crawls
the moment the dwindling, dreary, night crawls
Stay close
my killer, my cherished stay close to me!
(1963. Moscow - Russia).
Translated by Rehan Qayoom.
( more poem by Fez
Ahmad Fez)
Poem
by Meghna Mudaliar
Untitled
(For Ryan)
"I have 'hurt' in all the colours
of the rainbow," you say.
"Which would you prefer?"
I gaze at the selection
Nose pressed up to the quiet glass.
I don't know.
Indecision can be mouth-watering.
That one, perhaps
That one over there
Nestled between the bottled solitude
And the glazed treachery.
Yes, I’ll take that one.
This is just the shade I wanted!
The colour of the spider webs
That once spun luminous mirages before my eyes
Prismy designs that promised eternity
And blinded me with draconian abandon
As penalty for my reliance.
(A sentence I serve, characteristically, with clownish
solemnity).
Perhaps I can't see your colours
for the white.
( More
poems Meghna Mudaliar
)
Poem by Rati Saxena
Eight Bars and One Window
*
One window and eight bars
cut into eight parts
a coconut tree, and peeping from behind it,
a leafy jackfruit tree.
Some bird calls.
Some kid bawls.
Some plane crosses.
One day’s done.
**
Between Khajuraho’s statues and Bastar’s figurines,
a vase of pens.
On this window-sill, see the whole country.
Wait,
Don’t forget, even the puppets of Gujarat
hang from these bars!
***
If this was not a window
Would it be a picture?
Then the leaves wouldn’t move
The birds wouldn’t sing
And I would be not on the inside
But on the outside.
(Poem
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