A whale, his spiraling
tail whacks waves
to white spritz;
slowly he moves and feeds;
plangent down he weaves,
comes up like a gentle reef;
water breaks around
before behind
his glorious weight;
his eyes yard upon yard apart
across his bulk turn and look,
his enormous flippers folding,
opening, abaft his massive head.

Majestic mammal,
fish you will never be.
Like some overgrown living fuselage of flesh
you move your ponderous blood-warm body
through lonely seas;
tropics to the pole
the ghastly cold,
the fostering warmth
make no difference to you.

Your blood, our blood circles,
loops endlessly;
you’re with us in this; your heart
pumping heat and life
against the immortal unforgiving sea.

Waving slow and steady,
your great flukes send you below;
the waters part, down you drive,
shining, disappearing
in the safety of
the dark and bitter sea;
for you the better home,
the deep made bright
by your gentle presence.

 

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Bay Area Poets’ Coalition, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal, and a number of other on-line and in-print poetry magazines. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies. He has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, N.Y. Harvey was born and worked in upstate New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired.

“Amma, when I come the next time,
prepare me some Welithalapa.”
Saying thus you left for work

But all of a sudden like one of your
most remarkable surprises
You came home deposited in a reddish wooden box,
meritoriously adorned with white coloured flowers

I fanned your face with a handkerchief
just to chase the flies away
And caressed your forehead gently
putting some tufts of hair to the top of the head
You were our only son, the greatest treasure of ours

As you were so catching and handsome a young man
and an influential commander in the Army
We had dreamt of a grand wedding ceremony for you
of sublime calibre
with the accompaniment of music
Yet I heard the smoothing rhythm
of neither the violin nor the piano
except the deafening cacophony of brownish iron horses
that they called a respectable gun salute,
and the lachrymose craws of the participants
I can remember,
unlike the others I didn’t weep or whimper
except at the moment the telephone glided from my hand
hearing the very news!

I curse it,
the horrible death messenger

Huge banners of milky white colour
fluttered in the air
On them in plain black letters
inscribed the cliché, “Anichchāwatha Sankhāra.”

Your coffin submerged slowly in to the grave
I exclaimed
clamouring and wriggling to loosen the clasp
that mitigated against my movement,
you could not be in that gloomy pit all alone
Yet the gathering was deaf

They say that now I am going mentally out
I am neither crazy nor violent
But definitely, so should be those war-mongers

Oh, forgive me, my putha, my golden gem,
for not having made Welithalapa for you.

 

Previously published in Synesthesia Literary Journal (July 8, 2016)

 

Indunil Madhusankha is currently a Lecturer in the Department of Decision Sciences at the Faculty of Business of the University of Moratuwa. Even though he is academically involved with the subjects of Mathematics and Statistics, he also pursues a successful career in the field of English language and literature as a budding young researcher, reviewer, poet, and content writer. Basically, he explores the miscellaneous complications of the human existence through his poetry by focusing on the burning issues in contemporary society. Indunil’s works have been featured in many international anthologies, magazines, and journals.

I walk through this poem one step at a time.
I walk in a mastery of this night and light
my money changers walk behind me
they’re fools like clowns in a shadow of sin,
they’re busy as bees as drunken lovers,
Sodom and Gomorrah before this salt pillar falls.

In a shadow of red rose pedals
drunken lovers walk changing Greek and Roman
currency to Jewish money or Tyrian shekels-
they’re fools, all fools, at what they do.
Everyone’s life is a conflict.
They’re my lovers and my sinners
I can’t sleep at night without them
by my bed grass near that sea of Galilee.
Fish in my cloth nets beget my friends, my converts.
I pray in this garden alone sweat
while my disciples whitewash their dreams.

The rose has a tender thorn compared to my arrest,
and soon crucifixion.

It’s here this morning and this night come together,
where this sea and this land depart,
where these villages stone and mortar crumble.

I’m but a poet of this ministry,
rose petals in a dark room fall.
Everyone’s life is a conflict.
But mine is mastery of light and neon night
and I walk behind these footsteps of no one.

 

 

Michael Lee Johnson lived 10 years in Canada during the Vietnam era and is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada.  Today he is a poet, freelance writer, amateur photographer, and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois.  Mr. Johnson has been published in more than 1072 publications. His poems have appeared in 38 countries, and he edits/publishes on 10 poetry sites.  Michael Lee Johnson has been twice-nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is a four-time nominee for Best of the Net.  There are 189 of his poetry videos now on YouTube.  He was Editor-in-Chief of the poetry anthology Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze, Editor-in-Chief of the poetry anthology Dandelion in a Vase of Roses, and Editor-in-Chief of Warriors with Wings: the Best in Contemporary Poetry.

Michelangelo
with steel balls
and a wire brush
wishing he was
wearing motorcycle leathers,
going wild and crazy,
stares cross-eyed at the
Sistine Chapel ceiling–
nose touching moist paint,
body stretched out on a plank,
bones held by ropes from falling–
delirious, painting that face of Jesus
and the Prophets
with a camel-hair brush;
in such a position, transition
a genie emerges as a poet–
words not paint
start writing his sonnets,
a second career is born–
nails and thorns
digging at his words,
flashing red paint:
it’s finished.

 

Michael Lee Johnson lived 10 years in Canada during the Vietnam era and is a dual citizen of the United States and Canada.  Today he is a poet, freelance writer, amateur photographer, and small business owner in Itasca, Illinois.  Mr. Johnson has been published in more than 1072 publications. His poems have appeared in 38 countries, and he edits/publishes on 10 poetry sites.  Michael Lee Johnson has been twice-nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is a four-time nominee for Best of the Net.  There are 189 of his poetry videos now on YouTube.  He was Editor-in-Chief of the poetry anthology Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze, Editor-in-Chief of the poetry anthology Dandelion in a Vase of Roses, and Editor-in-Chief of Warriors with Wings: the Best in Contemporary Poetry.

I had another encounter
With the divine recently
Another cosmic cat perhaps
Perhaps not
Who knows what cats are
Are they alien from another dimension
Or was he channeling God?

I call him the Buddha cat
For the cat loves
Sitting in a meditative pose
Not moving
Just starting at me
With his soulful deep eyes
Boring into my soul
exploring all my secret thoughts

The Buddha cat
Does not move
Does not react
As he is so deep
Into his interior mediation
Truly in tune
With the cat universe
And the cosmos as well

The Buddha cat
Seems to be
One with God
One with Buddha
One with Allah
And all the other
Billion names of God
Known and unknown

The Buddha cat
Can teach us all
About the art of meditation
As he zones inward
And loses his soul
Joining the cosmos
And becoming
The Buddha cat

The Buddha cat
Lives in a modest
Town house
In a modest suburb
Proving yet again
The divine spirit of God
Is everywhere all around us

The Buddha cat
Reminds us all
To look for god
In the everyday

All around us
If we but have eyes
To see

 

John (“Jake”) Cosmos Aller is a novelist, poet, and former Foreign Service officer having served 27 years with the U.S. State Department serving in ten countries – (Korea, Thailand, India, the Eastern Caribbean (lived in Barbados but covering Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St Kitts, St Lucia, and St Vincent) and Spain, and traveled to 50 countries and 49 out of 50 States. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, he taught overseas for five years and served in the Peace Corps in Korea. He has an MPA and MA degree (Korean studies) from the University of Washington in Seattle. He has written four novels, 900 poems, and 50 short stories. His work has appeared in over 25 literary journals.

In and around myself, gone adrift,
AWOL to social norms and mores…
I was perfecting human error, if asked,
the little rebel without a get-out clause,
the born loser bearing loss and the cost of it.

Last millennia, at the turn of the century,
and still the memory welts and weals.
A fog defined by lack of definition.
A blur from living with both eyes smashed.
Lunatic-saint baptized a hero-victim.

Until the hour comes upon me
and death is the fold.
When I see how the precious things
were there to be wasted.

 

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with over 1,400 poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press); An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy (Cawing Crow Press); Like As If (Pski’s Porch); Hearsay (The Poet’s Haven).

There were a lot of ragwort plants
around the library.
Some were bare of leaves and covered
with orange and black stripy jersey caterpillars.
Others were lush and green with leaves
and devoid of caterpillars.
As usual, the family planning strategy
of the cinnabar moth
left much to be desired.
I began to transfer them carefully
from the leafless to the lush.

I stood back to admire my achievement,
momentarily disconcerted
when a rather stern-looking stranger
asked what I was doing.
I explained.
“Huh”, she said,
“I’ve been doing the same over on the other side.
I thought it was only me who does this.”

It was a strange way to begin a friendship
but it lasted
all her life.
I think maybe I should go to the grave
in the woodland,
where her body lies,
and scatter a few ragwort seeds.
Maybe the moths will come
each year
and make
a living memorial.
She would like that,
I think.

“Stripy Jerseys” first appeared in New Reader Magazine.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places, and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy, and reality and writes hoping to find an audience for her musings. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud ‘War Poetry for Today’ competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including Apogee, Firewords, Peach Velvet, Light Journal, and So It Goes. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/.