Darkness covers me like a blanket
Shadows surround my thoughts
My arms wrap tightly around me
Deserted, no one home
You keep me isolated
My only friend, just you
Smiles ne’er intrude our space
With you, I’m safe and whole
The thorns of my emotions
Keep rising from deep inside
Always in your shadows
Always in your arms
I cannot see the rose
Only thorns of pain
Madness all around me
It keeps me huddled tight
Tomorrow won’t be different
It will always be the same
Fear keeps me shaking
My spirit is tattered, worn
Darkness gives me comfort
Forever, all alone
My prayer is you’ll
Remember me and return home
…biography goes here, with ellipses in front. Link to known social media accounts, website, and / or blog. Delete the words if no links. Edit the Find the The BeZine button link to include the names where it says FirstName and LastName. If there are more than two names, add a plus-sign (+) and additional names, in order. Add Social Media links if we have (do not need to, but can delete the social media block if none). Replace art to the left with a photo. (Use the NO photo block if there isn’t one, not this block).
When I lift my eyes to the sky the magnificence of colors in creation soothe my troubled soul. I swim in turmoil through turbulent waters navigating the human condition…wiping away the dilemma of days lost in the rapid passing of time. Hours devoured pursuing a flat line of self-serving deeds…combative aggressive types intensify the hype vicious in their pursuit of power. Greed the cataclysmic seed to success reigns…yet the fortissimo sound of unified voices harmonize in hope.
When I lift my eyes to the sky the magnificence of colors in creation soothe my troubled soul. News of the day rocks reason in a season taunted by hostility. Demonic voices destroy tenuous threads of sanity. The rata tat tat of assault rifles signifies the right to bear arms and declare war. Babies cry with fear wanting mother love…papa love…family love…wailing and weeping… drowning in a sea of retribution…yet resilient gurgling musical tones supersede the sound of terror singing “Joy Cometh in the Morning!”
When I lift my eyes to the sky the magnificence of colors in creation soothe my troubled soul. War ravages the earth. Cultures clash…civil war erupts…ideologies abruptly declare the right to eradicate with hate ideals of difference. Poison toxins contaminate breath…bombs explode…bullets mock life laughing at resistance mowed down in the name of dogma…yet a peace encompasses the universe tolling a bell of love that cuts through strife heralding the fragility of life.
When I lift my eyes to the sky the magnificence of colors in creation soothe my troubled soul.
In my body rattle the dead
like beads shook-up with longing
in Rachel’s ovaries.
Oleander, calendula or olive,
Only the living sow memory,
open their eyes each dawn
to scan the fields.
I buried a tooth for every
kindness I recall.
In the days between Yizkor
and Yom haZikaron, some being
of smoke fills my throat.
Is an organ implanted in a
body, a tree’s grafted limb?
What is your heart’s fruition?
Ima from Kafr Qassem,
where exactly are you now,
Neshama sheli?
I think I should ask your
home-town Sheikh, who wrote,
organ donation will be halal.
I ask my heart: do you hold
two souls? We’ve cradled one
another, not months, but years;
should time condense to tissue,
This, then? —a culture unfolding,
beating its wings, in another.
—and we all hold our parents.
Do I contain four souls—
No, her parents—six?
My heart is splitting
And living.
This heart—what does it mean to you?
Shireen’s question
like rain pelting earth
When that had done rattling
in my head, I asked my heart
how do you feel?
She burst into streaks of water,
throat of smoke: my kids—
How old are you now?
What have the years been for you?
Who has cared for you?
We used to tell
the younger ones, stay together
and take care of each other
But our children begin
by scanning the fields
for a few stalks of kindness.
Walking home from church.
Like seeing the sun rise
over the week ahead,
mind full of penitence
a righteous child, wrapped
in reverential warmth and
a sense of duty fulfilled.
That place of comfort,
as short lived as chocolate
such pleasure lies in this
some selfless, priceless
kind of self-indulgence
in your own kind of God.
Who can resist that path
to an easier peace where,
one day a week, the ad-man
cannot get to you; where
you miss nothing; where
those urges play no part.
Where has Sunday gone?
This poem was previously published in The BeZine in March 2018. The author thought it timely to present again because of its poignancy in the light of how children might be dealing with the change to their lives in Ukraine … far more violent than we have had to cope with in the West in the past two generations, by simply growing up. He is currently an Associate Editor of The BeZine.
John Anstie …
… Qualified as a Metallurgical Engineer, for the first quarter of his working life he worked as a scientist and engineer, for the second quarter, as a Marketing and Export Sales Manager, both in the Steel Industry; in the third quarter he held a variety of roles in IT and Project Management and was Master of his own company. The last quarter could well be his most fulfilling, if of least financial advantage, as a writer and singer in a small local chamber choir and with one of the UK’s finest barbershop choruses. Married with three children and six grandchildren. He is currently an Associate Editor of the BeZine.
Smoke rises on both sides
of the border.
Plumes of smoke unfurl
into a blue sky over Gaza.
Ribbons of smoke curl upward
over Tel Aviv.
The sound of sirens blare,
hearts pounding seek safety
before the next bomb falls.
Where did peace go?
Wasn’t it here a moment ago?
My Israeli brother,
why can’t you
see me?
After the smoke clears
and the bombs stop
falling, I will still
be your brother,
my hatred of you
for not seeing me
only deepening.
You are still
stealing my
bowl of
lentils,
thinking
God won’t
see your
tricks.
Have you
forgotten
the word
for peace—
salaam?
Why do I feel
like I’m talking
to the wind,
that no one
is listening,
that you
cannot hear
my words
anymore
than I can
hear yours
over the sound
of bombs
exploding,
that you don’t
understand
you are killing
your own brother?
How do you spell
love, brother? Can
you tell me? Or
doesn’t the word
exist in your
vocabulary?
My Palestinian brother,
why can’t you
see me?
After the sirens
fall silent and
your rockets stop
hitting our homes,
I will still be
your brother,
wishing you
had never
been born.
You are
still murdering
my brother,
thinking
no one will
see, not
even God.
Have you
forgotten
the word
for peace—
shalom?
Why can’t you hear
what I’m saying?
Is it too much
to ask for you
to open your
ears and hear
my words, my
wish that one
day we might
talk to each
other like a
normal family,
like normal
brothers, if there is
such a thing.
That one day
we might stop
trying to kill each
other and listen
to what each of us
has to say?
How do you spell
trust, brother?
Can you tell me?
Will we ever learn
to trust each other
long enough to see
the love in each
other’s heart?
is the author of Writing Yoga (Rodmell Press/Shambhala) and editorial director of The Jewish Writing Project. He received his BA from Columbia University and his MFA from Vermont College. His poems and personal narratives have appeared in Soul-Lit,Poetry Super Highway, Atherton Review, Elephant Journal, Blue Lyra Review, Tiferet Journal, Hevria, Poetica, Jewthink, The Jewish Literary Journal,Mindbodygreen, Chicken Soup for the Soul, and elsewhere. He lives in Sarasota, FL.
When children play the game of war,
The ground quakes under foot,
The air smells like gunpowder,
The water turns to a hue of colors.
When children play the game of war,
They dig pits, they dig graves,
They smile quietly, cry out loud,
Intuition keeps them hanging in the sky.
When children play the game of war,
Hearts beat at a fast pace,
The weakened bodies require rest,
The eyes look there, where hopefulness breathes.
Across the border
Persecuted on all sides
with grounded hopes deep in our souls
with the question almost dissolved on our lips
will we meet again?
Mother, brother, sisters, cousins and friends,
The war adds meaning to life,
comparable with nothing else.
I fled the border that separates
the buzz of war with a false calm;
I look forward to doing something,
Freedom to leak out of the sky!
…is a well-known poet from Ferizaj, Kosovo, writing in his mother-tongue, Albanian. He was born in 9 March 1968 in Pristina. He is the former manager and leader of “De Rada,” a literary association, from 2012 until 2018, and also the representative of Kosovo to the 100 TPC organization. In addition to poems, he also writes short stories, essays, literary reviews, traveltales, etc. Faruk Buzhala is an organizer and manager of many events in Ferizaj. His poems have been translated to English, Italian, Spanish, French, German, Croatian and Chinese, and are published in anthologies.
Some plant bombs
or exploding, bloody
poppies. But you
sow slowly opening
prayers, you sow
roses, you grow
soul. Lovers, you
pluck Beloved, petals
sweating, heavy with
holy odours, you pack
pink kisses of peace
on your backs, a peace
so volatile, so sweet, you
make acres of rose oil
near Kabul and wash away
screams, wash away
war from its streets, wash
away horror with your
rosewater, you
perfume your homeland
like a mosque.
…is a Canadian poet living on the prairies in Saskatchewan. Her verse has appeared in various lit mags including EVENT, The Malahat Review, Contrary, Vallum, CV2, Sequestrum, and Barren. She was longlisted for the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize.
Let the wall climb.
Let it rise.
Let it cling to the sky.
Let us keep them out,
keep us in,
them and us
us and them.
Let us divide kin from kin,
neighbor from neighbor
village from village.
Call it the wall of lament,
of wrath,
of greed.
Call it the senseless wall,
the aching wall,
the burning wall.
Make it a wall that can be seen through without being seen,
a wall that can be listened through without listening.
Make it a wall of ignorance that cannot be ignored.
—2011
Now is the moment…
Now is the moment
the moment before the dawn
the moment that belongs to us.
The moment before
the warm sunlight filters
through shutter slats,
spread wide like fingers.
The moment before pillars of smoke
before the reek of burning rubber,
before the shriek of sirens.
The moment of intimacy,
The moment when your body spoons mine,
when your arms strengthen me,
when your hands cradle my breasts.
The moment before the dawn
The moment of reverence,
of stillness.
Oh yes, my love
this is our supreme moment.
Shall give you amazing almond orchards,
in full bloom.
row after row,
tree after tree,
white on white.
Shall give you this and also my heart
blooming white.
Shall give you endless terrain,
petals on petals,
alluring
sweet fragrance
wondrous
almond blossoms.
Shall give you this and also my heart
surrendering white.
A distant billow of smoke,
the crackle of gunfire,
Shall give you,
my hand
as we wander between trees
between almond blossoms
between confidential kisses.
…is a painter, teacher and artist who writes poetry. From an early age she began journaling. The words soon became poetry and part of her paintings. She embosses the words into the paint. Ms. Chai has exhibited in Detroit, New York, Tel Aviv and various Kibbutzim, in group and solo exhibitions. Shira has been a member of Kibbutz Ein Dor since 1983. She has recently published poetry in ARC 25 and 26, journals of IAWE (Israeli Association of Writers in English).
The Strait of Gibraltar
Is all a glisten this Veterans Day morning
Sunlit pieces of history
Matriculate and spin in holy flatness
Sun surge cups my heart in praise of
All that came here before.
The wars that surged the coasts
that impinged like furtive eyes
The blood rich battles, the hurry
for winning in this tight radiant channel
This light could dissolve me in my room
Looking at painting floating on the wall
Being nearby this way to Miguel de Cervantes
Maiming his left arm at Trafalgar
In a night smile I touch Miguel de Cervantes
Fighting here and Lord Nelson, caps,
swords and daring Emma Hamilton with a flair
Their ships flaunting the air in zealous lust
pushing madly through,
pushing through fervor war hysteria
aligned in light, bare blood and bones
In this wild thin space, earth enclosed
To win more in the sea and the sun
Floating in this straight strait
To be up to this glorious moment
Wild living in this brooding loud and dazzling glory
While I drift sorely trying to get earthly
Balance back.
Quote here—add return / line break
only if more than half-way across page.
Make regular block when adding this.
—Attribution (source)
How War Kills Silence
Skews the words buried
There. How in the Valley of the Fallen,
the skins of Franco’s Murdered stink war and shriek
Deja me estar let me be me
In a silent light which welters
Peaceful living in a bright sky
My soul springs a strange hardiness
To accost the noise of the killers whose rampant madness
stifles the splendid sound of soundless Beethoven
I say no pasarán
Today is like waiting on
the Titanic for rising
water to eclipse us.
Visions of Marcelino Peñuelas
telling of fascist censorship with the great
charm of the Spanish language full of lips and dips.
I hear Malvina Reynolds singing in the back seat,
her spirit constant and believing.
I see all these fighters who would not back down ever.
No pasarán
And me facing a siege of ice
darkening when I want to
read and write. Primeval. Humbling.
Pegging about with flashlights.
Rose and Jack faced inevitable waters
but they had each other.
Robert Frost knew the terror of ice
"But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice."
Tonight the taps will resound
like thunder claps and I will
memorize my words and see the great ones
fighting for a promised land.
For A New House Before the Election Poem
It was a military mob,
swarming
as a hive might, quite.
A concave movement.
A kind of cleaving.
The rotten pieces hanging
as a gang would
in that shining
knot of pain evil brings
ready to bite and cling and stick to.
We the people must leave our dens
and walk to forever to cut them out
to let our strong peace beauty spread.
She said I’ll blow your house down.
She said this evil has lit too many fires.
I’ll blow your house down, she said.
…is a poet professor musician who now lives in Michigan although her past is coastal: Spain and California. Author of four books of poems and currently finishing her next book, Sunfishing, Linda is a life-long activist, sun lover and dreamer. A hopeless romantic, sometimes inequities everywhere drive her to despair and to writing action.
I was fifteen
in a small Alabama town
when I first heard your name
John Lewis
then
Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Their clubs cracked your bones.
Their tear gas clogged your lungs.
Their iron pipe almost ended your life.
But you stood up.
You walked on
for fifty years plus more
modeling resilience.
When you died
the earth slowed
the sun dimmed
the air thinned.
The world would never be the same.
Full smile baritone voice
departed.
Yet we are not alone.
You left us with your words
Walk with the wind, brothers and sisters,
and let the spirit of peace and the power
of everlasting love be your guide.
Thanks to Robin Jonathan Deutsch @rodeutsch for making this photo available freely on Unsplash.
…raised in the Appalachian South and now living in Southern California with another writer and two feline boys, is a writer/teacher whose poetry and fiction appear in numerous anthologies and journals including DMQ Review, The Los Angeles Review, and New World Writing. Her recent collections of poetry are Good Trouble, Origami Poems Project, and Hell Hath, Maverick Duck Press. Lynette’s War, a micro-chapbook, will be issued by Ghost City Press this month.
Honeysuckles beam in a tantrum / we share mortality / calculate the distance // the restrictions of the virus allow no nostalgia/emissions thicken / coughing // the sun blinding / incongruous spring hibernation / shift to pretended colder weather // long for a haircut, a hug / the spell of loss / the peacefulness of surrendering to unchangeable rules / fragments of freedom // occasional gusts of wind whisper secrets / wild beauty of magnolia petals rot on the pavement // kiss me and promise to come back when peonies bloom
Built to match existing, architectural plans
After ‘Diary,’ Rosa Lyster, LRB 7 October 2021
Built to match what remains of the house
after hurricane Laura,
lifting the roof like a lid
and driving a tree through the kitchen wall.
October is hurricane season,
bodies of water through the window: the Mississippi.
Water reflects the rain clouds above,
people stand around in chest-high floods
trying to return everything to its former state.
But they say it is best to stay away,
there are too many things in the water
that will kill you.
Your belongings destroyed;
they will never go back.
I don’t mind failing in this world
I don’t mind failing in this world,
there is so much to do
like boiling an egg or rediscovering a favourite scarf
that went missing.
I don’t mind failing in this world,
the days wake around me
the rain arrives soft
and the wind is gentle.
I don’t mind failing in this world,
I watch the clouds creating figures,
the grammar of imagination
catches the winter sun.
Coffee is warm in the morning,
my hands brimful of gleaming stones.
You are not supposed to be rude
sensations of spectacular germination
a sincere glow of oxygen
tie your hair up
wear the apron and the cap
respiration
in the monsoon scenario
sensitivity of nutrition and excretion
gnarled lock at the back gate
the depth of the quarry
explode in the tasteless whale
at the margin of the swamp
the growth and move of living things
tuck your shirt in
hand gel ventilation
infinite reproduction of simple stem cells
the music of the cymbals
how many woodpeckers would make spring?
let the office know
abysmal trophies
the homeless athlete
On giving up
On giving up
‘the idea of giving up figures in our lives, as a perpetual lure and an insistent fear.’ Adam Phillips, ‘On Giving Up,’ LRB 06/01/2022
The option of giving up
thoughts progress
to final decision
indecision
Giving up
up up up
leaving ourselves out
sense of impossibility
lack of orientation
Giving up
makes us fearful
aware of limitations
proud of the abandonment
ascetic
Giving up
sabotage capacities
resist fulfilment
and ideals
deny survival
Giving up
desires and pleasures
withdraw from sufferings
reconsideration
sacrifice
up up up
a jerky path
of terminal disillusionment
The delay of summer
New things to die of were being added each day… Sheila Heti, Pure Colour
Winter comes and goes
the wind is still fierce
snow piles in the streets
on corpses with hands tied up behind.
I can see faces freckled with green scars
dotted in scarlet
looking like action painting.
At the back of my shoulders
the sun spreads its warmth.
My bones feel the desperate calls.
Can you hear them?
Can you hear them?
They scrape luminosity in underground shelters.
The first draft of the conflict
is not progressing
into a final draft.
The enumeration of atrocities
I can see.
I can see the dandelion
upright in the cold
then closing in a withered bud.
The yellowness of the summer yet to come
will ever disclose its brilliancy this year?
The grey heron lingers near the lake
like a sacrilege,
wildflowers resist the delay of summer,
water reflects fractured walls.
…lives in Surrey with her family. She obtained her Master of Arts in Creative Writing at Lancaster University and has published her creative work in various magazines and reviews. Her short collection Negotiating Caponata was published in July 2020 by Dempsey & Windle. She completed her PhD degree on Margaret Atwood’s work at the University of Reading and graduated in April 2021.
I hear horrible things on the news, in movies
and call her up to ask if they’re true
what it’s like to live around such atrocities
if she doing anything about it herself.
She laughs and tells me that everyone
hates Israel, that she’s gotten used to living in a country
that outsiders just don’t understand. “It’s all lies,”
she adds, says something about anti-Semitism
and Arabs, and how people mostly just want to live with their own
but that people are welcome to live wherever they want
she doesn’t mind.
…has worked as a freelance writer for over 30 years, with over 7,000 published articles, poems, and short stories and 40 books and chapbooks—most recently, the nonfiction books, Music Theory for Dummies,Walking Twin Cities, Tattoo FAQ, and History Lover’s Guide to Minneapolis, and the poetry books A Wall to Protect Your Eyes (Pski’s Porch Publishing), In This Place, She Is Her Own (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), A Perfect Day for Semaphore (Finishing Line Press), I’m in a Place Where Reason Went Missing (Main Street Press), Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Folios of Dried Flowers and Pressed Birds (Cyberwit), and Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press). Her writing has been nominated for a National Magazine Award, a 49th Parallel Prize, an Isaac Asimov Award, eleven Pushcart awards, three Dzanc Book’s Best of the Web awards, a Rhysling Award, and two Best of the Net awards, and she has received two Midwest Writer’s Grants, a Plainsongs Award, a Sam Ragan Prize for Poetry, and a Dwarf Star Award from the Science Fiction Poetry Association.
You are in Ukraine, take off your sandals,
for the place where you are standing
is holy and the air you are breathing is holy,
touching rays on your face,
drifting through the noise of madness
from the other side of the dark,
still, the lips touch the air
and this body is a foreign language
addressing a foreign world,
and its foreign skies. I say,
take a deep breath, my love,
let us embrace this great void as an old friend,
perhaps then we shall discover each other
far on the other side of alone.
Have you heard a song of braves?
Take your sandals off your feet,
the place when you’re standing is holy,
every grain is the heart of a child,
the grain of truth—
breathing through the golden shadows.
Have you heard the laughs and smells?
This is the greatest afternoon of freedom.
See the rays over there? Did you hear songs?
Yes, songs from the frontline? Mariupol.
The pearl encircled by rays.
Muscovites hate the rays, ray means freedom,
they don’t understand freedom, they hate themselves,
that’s why they hate the world, hiding faces in the dark.
“This is the end, beautiful friend,” remember?
We need victory, over the spiritless corps,
not just a peace—
peace is a luxury, as this second is one more
deadly breath of time, we do not have much time
for peace, we have time only for victory.
Even shadows shake when mother’s voice
echoes from far beyond. How can you say peace
should give you comfort? Peace does not dwell
on the other side of war, but victory.
Maybe there is no peace in the world,
that’s why we should win.
See the voices of kids how colored the ground?
Each thing born from those rays is our hope.
Who can succeed with all those rays,
full of those voices? Rays blow through the blood.
Who would like to dictate to you?
Who among us is right? Most valuable?
Who most resembles God? Have you ever seen God?
Touch the rays in Mariupol and you will see.
If there is peace deep in the ground,
it should feel the fear and joy,
If there is peace it should be a memory,
but memory is not powerful enough,
is not beautiful at all, never forget we are free,
that’s why we can see the rays.
We can smell the rays, touch them
with every beat of our hearts.
We are dying, we are living, not complaining,
we touched each other with our hearts
because we were born in the hearts of each other,
because we required life, because we all are in the war.
Touch the rays. Peace.
I was standing alone in front of the stillness
of March, not expecting the flow of memories.We are living without love, that’s why the war
can’t be measured by history, by ashes, by art.
Without today we breathe between yesterday
and tomorrow. Do you know something about time?
About time, yes, and its insanity?
Do you know something about yourself?
About me? How I lived? How I loved?
What I did? Maybe you can predict future?
Time should have some meaning for you.
For me it’s insanity.
I felt history’s neurasthenia in that very afternoon
when I was standing in front of the stillness of March
and not expecting the flow of seconds. Nerves of time.
I understood and I did not expect to be alive,
time is meaningless and it’s suppressing us.
I didn't expect to feel that deadly second again,
in emptiness, but my heart was able to beat again,
my heart is remembering, after centuries,
how to beat again in the frozen silence of fears,
war, in the raw,
cold breeze of the laughs
and howl.
96 year-old man.
Mr. Romanchenko.
Survived the concentration camps:
Buchenwald,
Peenemünde,
Mittelbau-Dora,
Bergen-Belsen.
Yesterday he was killed
by the Russian missile
hitting his apartment building in Kharkiv.
Russia, the "denazifier,"
did what the Nazis
couldn't do.
…is a Georgian/American award-winning poet and novelist. The 1st place winner of The Artist Forum Poetry Award in New York 2021, the winner of the Finalist Award in the 2020 Best Book Award National Contest by American Book Fest, the finalist and shortlist winner nominee of the Adelaide Literary Awards for the category of Best Poem, the winner of the Spillwords Poetry Award. He is named asA Literature Luminaryby Bowery Poetry, The Stellar Poet by Voices of Poetry,TheIncomparable PoetbyStatorec, The Brilliant Grace by Headline Poetry & Press and An Extremely Unique Poetic Voice by Cultural Daily.
american blacks: pale brown
slavers hunted/ bought
flesh from africa
why not cheap
american talent? Bottom
line:
give native american heavy metal
long wooden handle
count rest of your sad life in seconds MF.
WARRIORS: (sea: come home caring their shield, or on it/
sea: why is a king a king, and a slave .../
sea: tight packers, or loose packers/
sea: colonial era>>><<< sea: "heart of darkness",
sea: "he said he loved you."/
sea: "apocalypse now"/ Sea: "words no good"
Note: “sea” is not a mistake.
They say,
“He survived the camps”
They say,
“He came back from the war”
They say,
“He recovered from the illness”
no one survives
comes back
recovers
only a thin sack
knotted
around his naked body
shelters his face from the dirt
Published in “The Last Stanza” 2011
a soldier bleeds
a soldier
bleeds then dies
a woman bleeds or
doesn't
another soldier
is born
…is a Chicago born artist and poet Ira Director who has published in journals and e-zines; exhibited in galleries and contributed to the International Mail Art Network. Poems and paintings may be combined, with both integral to the pieces. In 2002 he instituted Poetry from Bar-Ilan for poets to read their works in public venues, and produced it for over 10 years. His contributions to the arts span over 50 years.
Invading nation
annihilation, desecration
without conversation.
Invading nation
altercation, condemnation
without invitation.
Bombs landing
on people standing,
no permission or intermission.
Crumbling bricks,
Russian tricks,
no remorse, war in force.
People crying,
people dying;
homes deserted, justice perverted.
Landscape battered,
thousands scattered;
next excursion to border incursion.
Bully bashing,
Ukraine crashing;
History veiled as the World derailed.
No relief
from disbelief
that leaders kill just for the thrill.
Bloody bombs,
Burning bombs
Breaking lives and worlds.
Bleeding bombs,
Blasting bombs
Broken bodies curled.
Body bombs,
Car bombs,
Intent on dying.
Big bombs,
Baby bombs,
GOD is really crying.
Who are they
Who die to kill,
Who seek their glory
In one last thrill?
Who are they
Who make their plan
To obliterate all
That belongs to Man?
They’re Devil Blood,
They’re in Satan’s purse;
They thrive on pain
And pray a curse.
But still the bombs
Are bursting through
With no regret
For them or you.
Battered people
Hurting people
With bombs.
Black bombs,
Blue bombs,
Bruised bodies.
Brown bombs,
Red sand,
Screaming land.
…was born in Johannesburg, lived in Durban, and now lives in Port Elizabeth. She won of the “Hilde Slinger” cup for poetry in 2009 and again in 2013, and the “Fay Goldie” cup for General Success in the World of Publishing in 2011, both from the South African Writers” Circle. Nine of her poems were published in “Signatures” an anthology of Women’s poetry (2008), and shre represented “Live Poets’ Society” in “Poetry Africa” that same year. In 2006, “A Scorpion Sings,” her first anthology, appeared. Other anthologies published between 2006 and 2015 are: “Count Catula of Shadoland & Friends,” “A Peace of Me.” and “A Scorpion Sings Again.”
In grad school behind a wall
of books, sealed into the words
of Poe, Stevens, Hemingway
Faulkner, Salinger, Albee.
Dominoes fall
and Goliath lies,
claims a David
from Viet Nam
dared sling a torpedo
at one of our ships.
We attack Communism
and those fierce, small,
black-clad people
as if our economy
depended on it.
In love with Lydia, a young nurse,
fingers as gentle
on my body and soul
as her patient hands on the dying.
That was our life.
I dropped out of school,
buried my love of books,
chose a love of marching.
Lydia nursed us through protests
to foment a revolution
that had no more chance
than our nation could keep
from shooting missiles
at foreign lands.
Once again the world is at war,
this time another Goliath
against another David,
its own brother
as Russia attacks Ukraine.
The bombs fall and people flee
just as they did so long ago.
This is our life again.
In our apartment building,
when I was a child,
old Mrs. Greta Shultz horrified me.
We lived by an airport,
every whining sound of jets
sent that creaky lady
scuttling under the kitchen table,
duck and cover every time,
air sucked in, moans--
for her an American Luftwaffe,
Slaughterhouse Dresden memories--
her mind recoiling
at the screaming sounds
from her younger girl day/nightmares.
Despite heart-felt pleas,
Greta was safe under the table.
After years of marriage,
we rescued a dog.
She had been caged
for months in cold wire.
We gave her our warm and safe home.
But when my wife ever went out,
Butter would mewl by the door,
shiver and shake
till the door opened,
de-plane on my wife's lap.
No coaxing mattered.
You can’t unlearn old tricks.
Stalin: A Slice of Death
At twelve I was aware of the world.
News flash during Ramar Of The Jungle:
Joseph Stalin dead of a heart attack.
I jumped up and yelled through
my house as if the Devil
himself had finally been slain.
When he had a traitor executed,
the whole family was killed
like Achan’s tribe at Jericho.
Terrorizing the population,
sent his soldiers into big cities,
to murder a few thousand innocents.
Slew over half of his advisors.
Would throw parties, shoot
those not drunk enough.
Chased down Trotsky in Mexico.
Axed Leon, his comrade
who dared to oppose him.
Loved flowers but at the end
nightly commanded his gardeners
to decapitate every blossom
and replace the flowers the next day
for another pogrom of his garden.
Absolute power over more people
than anyone in history, estimates
of over 20 million slaughtered.
Why obeisance to the One,
allow One to dominate us,
allow One to kill so many,
allow One to hoard the wealth,
bend the knee to One,
kiss the ring of One?
…a retired special education teacher, has published over two hundred poems on over eighty sites, a few being: *82 Review, Bindweed Magazine, Gyroscope Review, Courtship of Winds, Young Raven’s Review, Sledgehammer Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, Poesis, and Monterey Poetry Review. Recently his first poetry book—I was Young and Thought It Would Change—was published by Cyberwit Press.
Eens zal deze verschrikkelijke
oorlog toch wel aflopen,
eens zullen wij toch weer mensen en
niet alleen Joden zijn!
—Anne Frank [1]
Jews! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
Muslims! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
Christians! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
Genitalia! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
Hurting! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
Running! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
Space! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
Color! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
What we eat! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
Emojis! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
Features! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
Named! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
Loathing! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
Enemies! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
Country! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
Afraid! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
Bordered! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
Shattered! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
Stanzas! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
Emails! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
Dialect! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
Ists! just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
just not and again people be we’ll when come will time the
the time will come
come time war when
will come when
when over the war
people will time
be people again
not again people
again and this not
not just time and war
and we’ll be when time
we’ll be again time
people in time
and we will be just
…has work appearing in Sweet Lit, Ellipsis Zine, Moist Poetry Journal, Yolk, Spoken Word Scratch Night, Writing Utopia 2020 Anthology, The Selkie, Together: An Anthology, Thimble, Nailed, Pathos, other publications, and is forthcoming. Leslie was chosen to be a reader for one of Octopus Books’ open reading periods. She earned an MSc Creative Writing, Poetry, with Distinction, from the University of Edinburgh in 2020.
The BeZine 