David Chorlton

 

Chinese Landscape




The old Chinese painters
made landscapes out of air.
All it took was an inkstone and time
to look at a rock until it was a mountain
and grew into a range stretching across a continent
the planet could not contain. Then the universe appeared
with all its stars and moons and fire and the Earth
spinning back to reveal its peaks and valleys
where a river ran beneath a bridge with
a poor man pushing his cart slowly
home and a monk in his hut who
imagined himself warm and the
gate to a temple and a sparrow
and a twisted pine tree and
a monkey’s breathy fur
and crevices and cliffs
and fruit orchards
all falling into
place so they
fit on the tip
of a brush.



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  ( More poems by David Chorlton)

 Poems  by C P Aboo Backer

Alone In The Corridor

Alone in the corridor
I waited the Dog of eternity
In God’s house
Out in the lawn
The crowdy noises
Buzzle with a hiss

It is Politics
Clad in handspun stuff
Invariably worn by
All animals alike

Array of symbols
Invites unrest
Images die in nest
Poems in chest

Life is numb with pornography
Solemnized by aesthetics
“Arise Ye! Starvelings!”
Call up on slums
Black and brown and white

Far away from each other
Within the cold homes
Sleep the spouses awake

A dove coos in the nest
A drop sprinkles
Between the breasts
Streams Rivers and Seas

Darkness wakes me up
In the mid of dreams
Of triumphant Wars
And trumpeted dance

Pumpkin Dance and Pumpkin Song
Tire the slave to sleep
Unaware of wages
He dreams images

Here comes the Dog
Rump of carcass in teeth
Yet lean and hungry
To devour me deep

Feverish from the cool of cinema
I ran out to the lawn
Symbols surround
And howl in wolfish sound
And dance in natural rhythm.

No, there is no antonym in poetry.


Pumpkin Dance and Pumpkin Song

It is the dance imposed on Adivasis of Wynad in Kerala as a ritual. During
this the slaves are required to do work on the fields and elsewhere
without any wages. It is imposed on them as a divinely ordained duty.
The masters of the soil are thus expropriated in a "godly" way.


( More poems by C P Aboo Backer.)

  Maurice Oliver  Poems

 "Imagine That"! Says The Hospital Curtain

Sometimes my grandfather takes me to the hospital with
him. I'm supposed to smile at the sick people at the sick people. All they
do is lay around watching TV all day. There's a lady
there with a snout instead
of a nose. It blooms every Tuesday. Even the ants come
in from outside to see it. They march down the window
sill single file. Then there's the man with a mole
that's bigger than a house and painted gray. It flies
like a homing pigeon and comes back when it gets
hungry. All the nurses wear white hats. I'm not
exactly sure what that means but they could be "good
guys" if they weren't ladies. When my grandfather goes
to the restroom I lean out the window and wave at the
cars in the parking lot. They never wave back but I
can still see their eyelashes through the horn-rimmed
spectacles. The hallways are clear except for the
gurneys. They stand around pretending not to be there
but if you push them they'll squeak loudly. Oh, and
the other thing is sick people like a lot of curtains.
They even have them around their beds. I think that's
kind of funny but my grandfather says I shouldn't
laugh because some of the people may go see God's
outdoors. I wouldn't mind going myself if I can take
the box of crayons and the coloring book I found in
the room with all the pop machines. A folding wheel
chair. A shiny needle. A doctor being paged. A
reception desk's candy jar. And up more stairs is only
more beds and curtains or just stand where you are
keeping quiet, behaving yourself, especially not
fidgeting.


(More Poems by  Maurice Oliver Poems )

  Poems by ANNIE GEORGE
 

Frances LeMoine's  Poems

 Why some stay alive:

soap less, warm baths of olive oil and milk
in a clean, white tub.

twenty matches for twenty cigarettes.
unordered coffee with a splash of un-asked-for bourbon
at Jozefina's on a
cold colorless Saturday morning.

slight smile from someone you almost know
and who almost knows you,
like a seed about to shoot.

a rosewood rosary blessed in Rome.

that picture of you,
half-facing the camera,
that I look for every so often,
but cannot find,
and is there.
There it is.

A chestnut, for inspiration,
puffy hear halved.

 

Poem by  Pavan Palakkad


 THE MASTERS

No home, no state, no country, no command wades

safe
In the ocean of life
Where rulers compete not to rule,
A mote better than the contenders,
For happiness of the people.
Decay is native to where self is prime
And the other beggarly
For once, cheer the self
Gone, wear the mask to mask the mark.
Such a ruler gallops like a horse unbriddled
In quest of self serve
He speeds for nothing but games of skills,
Where a friend is an enemy and an enemy a friend.
Grapple for pelf and let go profit of the mass.
Lynched is the Nation from the depths.
It's time we face it by sitting; but stand by

sitting.
Face calmly but boldly; game of politics by rulers
By the magic wand "Vote".
Vote but vote diligently,
Seek rulers who care, protect and provide for
Utmost bliss of us all
And take the Nation to peaks of glory.
Never again vote, betrayed by emotions of the mind
And bid for doom
Not of the self alone but of us all jointly
For, the voters are the masters, not the slaves.




  (More poems by Pavan Palakkad)
 

 Poem by M K AJAY

Poems by N Marion Hage

Growing Grace

Graceful aging is foreign to this skin.
A stranger’s face has grown around my eyes.
When I look into the dastardly mirror, I say, “This
Gray ghost cannot be me!”

Should I cower at the thought of feebling hands?
That which I hate has plundering of my youth,!
Yet, I question; might the very thing I rail against
Be that which causes me to grow in grace and graciousness?

The years have surely bent my sore knees, humbling me.
I no longer decline humilities advances,
But seek to learn what lessons she would tell.

In the spring of my budding leaves, I never imagined
The winter whiteness of my snow-covered cap.
Nor, did I anticipate the bone-chilling coldness
Of missed opportunities, and friends passing.

Yet, there is a hope of spring, even in this cruel
Winter cannot steal from my life.

I have become more forgiving, less judgmental,
Seeing my own fragility, and I comprehend how desperate sorrows
Can break even men of great convictions,
Grinding their hardest edges into dust, till they beg and plead
For mercy.

But for the grace of God, I see that I am nothing. But by the grace
Of this same God, I am enriched, and smell a new spring
In the air; a greater spring that will carry my soul into
An undying land, where the rich gardens bring
Only calm and peaceful rest to the weary soul.



 (More poems by N Marion Hage )

A  poem by Durlabh Singh.
 

 Woven By Sunsets



Woven by sunsets
She sharpens her claws
To take revenge on victims
To prove her ability to storm.


Broken charade of her life
Concealed under glance of beauty
A beauty that soon be fading
Turning skeletons to bare bones.


I wish she had fester feeling
To see high seas or starry nights
The lone pathways of her mind
Wish could whisper into her pains
Simple advent of some new dawn.



Her claws are sharp
Her teeth are blood soaked
She would never command
Some chilling call for intimacy.


Only the empty ego
And her awakenings
Will rule over stubbornness
And all her artless meanderings
Will end in wanton wilderness.



( One more Poems by Durlabh Singh.)

(One more poem  by Pawan Karan)