Project Tag: poem

A Christmas Connection

This quarter The BeZine focuses on “A Life of the Spirit”. Read here and be inspired by others who show us that the word “Spirit” comes in many forms, shapes, sizes and meanings. I chose to write a poem about part of the “Christmas Spirit”, which is spending time with loved ones at Christmas dinner, the connections we have with others we cherish. But what about those who don’t have anyone to enjoy that event with?

The holidays can be extra challenging for the elderly. Often alone, with no one to spend these special days with, they can get depressed and lonely. Please make an effort this season to check in and spend a little time with any seniors you might know who could use a smile or two, whether they’re family, friends, neighbors or even strangers in nursing homes. Give the gift of your time and attention to someone older. It’s one of the greatest presents they can receive. 🙂

~ A Christmas Connection ~

He shuffled softly down the well-lit aisles,
Searching for a Christmas meal just for one.
His wife, God rest her, was gone a long while,
And he knew the kids weren’t able to come.
Of course they were busy, lived far away,
But he missed their smiles, and the grand kids, too.
“We’ll see you next year!” They would no doubt say,
Though their short visits were still far too few.

She came looking for a Christmas repast,
Stopped in front of the frozen t.v. meals.
Her faint breath frosted the door of thick glass,
Of the case which housed the advertised deals.
Her mind caught in times of holidays past,
She recalled the faces and names held dear.
Of all those remembered, she was the last.
Old and lonely, she now found herself here.

The man paused in the frozen dinners aisle,
Drawn to the woman’s soft, sad demeanor.
He wondered if he could coax a small smile,
Ambled closer, picking out a dinner.
As she reached for one, it slipped from the shelf,
Fell to the floor near the elderly man.
“Turkey Pot Pie? Almost got this, myself,”
The man smiled gently, the box in his hand.

Cheeks pink from embarrassment, she smiled too.
“Thank you,” she said. “I don’t cook anymore.
It’s just me now, so no real reason to.”
He nodded agreement, closed the case door.
“Forgive me if this sounds forward,” he said.
“But would you care to have dinner with me?”
Afraid of rejection, he rushed ahead,
“I’m by myself, too, and it’s rough, you see?”

“No one should be lonely on Christmas Eve.”
Her eyes got bright and she nodded assent.
She said, “Nor hungry either, I believe.”
He laughed, “I agree, one hundred percent!”
“I’m Josef,” he smiled, and gave a small bow.
“It’s nice to meet you. May I call you Joe?
I’m Marie,” she answered, less lonesome now.
From there, their friendship continued to grow…

© 2019, Corina Ravenscraft

CORINA RAVENSCRAFT ~ dragonkatet (Dragon’s Dreams) ~   posts about things important to her and the world in which we live. She  champions extra important political, societal and environmental issues, etc. Sometimes she waxes philosophical, because her blog is a place where she feels she always learns about herself, too, by interacting with some of the brightest minds, souls and hearts out there. It’s all about ‘connection(s)’ – by which she doesn’t mean “net-working” – with people for personal gain, but rather, the expansion of the 4 L’s: Light, Love, Laughter, Learning.

Progress

Last year, a wheelchair and sessions of hydrotherapy –
the water supporting your crumbling back
as you strode, slo-mo,
across the pool.

These days, no wheelchair. Exercise and calcium pills
have strengthened your muscles and bones,
but the pain still nags you
for Cocodamol.

A wheeled walker eases the stress on your back,
so you’ve stretched your walks ‘just round the block’
to half a mile
and the local shops.

Now you’re taking lengthier walks from the holiday let
down to the beach and to the restaurants in town.
No faster than you were,
but what great strides!

© 2019, Mantz Yorke

MANTZ YORKE is a former science teacher and researcher living in Manchester, England. His poems have appeared in a number of print magazines, anthologies and e-magazines in the UK, Ireland, Israel, Canada, the US, Australia and Hong Kong. His collection ‘Voyager’ will be published in February 2020.

The Valley of Death

“Whosoever believes in Allah and in the Last Day,
and does good deeds – all such people will have their reward with their Lord,
and there will be no reason for them to fear, nor shall they grieve.”
Surah Baqara The Cow 2.62

After Jamie Dedes’ poem

Every night I am taken to a place unknown
in a state, motionless, quiet, still like
a huge stone, unfelt, unheard, in oblivion
not knowing light or darkness or any color,

I cannot see the sky or stars or birds that
fly, or clouds that float in the vast blue
nor the sand or soil beneath my feet do
I feel, nor dainty flowers in my view, nor

fragrances in my senses do come, no one
is near me to hold or hug or comfort-
the last I remember, just a sharp pain rising
from the back, between the shoulder blades,

I was light as a feather, I was flying in a void
A blurred vision of
The softness of a pillow, a white sheet a warm
blanket cover and the faint odor of menthol

vaporub, fingers gripping the glowing beads
of ‘tasbeeh’, no consciousness of time –but
awareness of boundless dimly lit space
a dark shadowed ethereal plain, silent,

neither warm nor cold, no door floor or
fold yet there was someone beside, out
of sight, a shake a light touch and I was
awake,where had I been ? How did I survive ?

How am I alive? my struggle begins but
I believe I am blessed with another day
to work and pray, come the night,
slow is the breath-as sleep drowns, in the

Shadow of The Valley of Death

© 2019, Anjum Wasim Dar

ANJUM WASIM DAR was born in Srinagar (Indian Occupied )Kashmir,Migrant Pakistani and educated at St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi. She holds an MA in English. Anjum has be writing poems, articles, and stories since 1980. She is a published poet and was Awarded Poet of Merit Bronze Medal  2000 USA .She’s worked as Creative Writer Teacher Trainer and is an Educational Consultant by Profession.

My Valley of the Shadow of Death

“When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.” Tecumseh

Night makes way for morning
The clouds tumbling in like
Cotton bolls blown across a
Field of promise, sun ablaze
Tinged with crimson and saffron
Grooving to the rattle and the click
And caw of our city corvids, and
Hear too the blue jay’s whispered
Song, the mourning dove’s coo

In my kitchen, five stories up, is a
Breakfast reminiscent of my father
Broiled trout, roasted potatoes, and I
Pull cartilage from the fish, evocative
Of a trachea, and salt the potatoes
To the humming of O2 concentrators
I drag on a nasal cannula, life support
In this, my Valley of the Shadow of Death

© 2019, Jamie Dedes

JAMIE DEDES is a former columnist, publicist and the associate editor to a regional employment publication. Currently she is a homebound freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. Jamie manages The BeZine and its associated activities and The Poet by Day jamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights and encourages activist poetry. Jamie’s work is featured widely in print and digital publications. Her primary professional affiliation is Second Light Network of Women Poets.

A Shower of Roses

“I will let fall from Heaven a shower of roses.” St. Therese of Lisieux 1873-1897

I didn’t ask for roses
when I whispered Pray for me, Therese,
but it’s the way you often answer.
A blush of winter buds.
A single bloom at my feet.

Now, in this humid,
dog-eared June,
I see roses white as breast milk
on the bush I pruned last year,
abandoned to frost.

Regrown, it tempts me outside.
I forget aches and pains
and weariness of soul.
I sweep dust from the path
and peg clothes on the washing line.

Some theologians say roses
doesn’t mean roses, just blessings.
But you loved the flower, Therese;
watched roses sway in the courtyard
as you lay dying.

Handed one, you crumbled it
over the crucifix
on your bedsheet and smiled
as petals fragranced
His wounds and holy face.

© 2019, Sheila Jacob

SHEILA JACOB was born and raised in Birmingham, England and lives with her husband in Wrexham, on the Welsh border. Her poetry has been published in several U.K. magazines and webzines. She recently self-published her short collection of poems that form a memoir to her father who died in 1965. Sheila finds her 1950s childhood and family background a source of inspiration for many of her poems. You can connect with Sheila by email: she1jac@yahoo.com

 

stillborn

you are always with me
even when you are not

Life’s full empty room
Breath’s bittersweet sigh

color of Nothingness
transparent as angels
color of darkness
perforated with light
color of tears
fallen
from the dotted blue blanket of Sky

you are always with me
even when you are not
suspended like the crescent moon
the alphabet of stars
the space untraveled
between us

as if
inextinguishable
presence and absence
relinquish their names
surrender themselves to the Invisible

as if
only
without holding
may we trembling feel
the infinite nearness
of our immense
aching
fragility

i marvel
at the innocence
of your tiny unopened fists
how

butterflies still
fly from your lips
how mine drown
in the drool of gurgled silence

how
even as the umbilical cord
untangles around my neck
my voice so far away
is trying to reach you–
buried so inexorably
in your muffled lullaby

i am always with you
even when i’m not

© 2019, Antonia Alexandra Kilmenko

ANTONIA ALEXANDRA KILMENKO  is a former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion and she is widely published. Her work has appeared in (among others) XXI Century World Literature (in which she represents France) and Maintenant : Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art archived at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. She is the recipient of two grants:  one from Poets in Need, of which Michael (100 Thousand Poets for Change) Rothenberg is a co-founder; the second—the 2018 Generosity Award bestowed on her by Kathleen Spivack and Josheph Murray for her outstanding service to international writers through SpokenWord Paris where she is Writer/ Poet in Residence.

What We Gather

Taking nothing with you 

leaving nothing behind 

I find only your scent 

 

Floating   unbounded 

without your breath of spirit 

to hold its bouquet — 

 

it passes through me now 

while still it lingers 

Holding on     while letting go 

 

is never easy 

Holding on      while letting go 

is breathing out while breathing in 

 

is water slipping through fingers 

is loving with your eyes wide shut 

and your heart slit open 

 

Flowers 

cut down in their prime 

lose the earth 

 

only to return to it once more 

while women with parched lips 

still chant the names of rivers 

 

and other beds gone dry. 

Every day 

I gather at the river– 

 

                        river of tears 

                        river of refuse

                        river of dreams 

Every day 

I kneel in the banks of my memory 

making large withdrawals 

from smaller deposits 

of dwindling return 

 

Today                                                                      

the darkness flows within me 

and without me 

Tomorrow 

I will gather   and be gathered

 

Each experience

but yet another flower

 

for the vase

 

© 2019, Antonia Alexandra Kilmenko

 

ANTONIA ALEXANDRA KILMENKO is a former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion and widely widely published. Her work has appeared in (among others) XXI Century World Literature (in which she represents France) and Maintenant : Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art archived at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. She is the recipient of two grants:  one from Poets in Need, of which Michael (100 Thousand Poets for Change) Rothenberg is a co-founder; the second—the 2018 Generosity Award bestowed on her by Kathleen Spivack and Josheph Murray for her outstanding service to international writers through SpokenWord Paris where she is Writer/ Poet in Residence.

Two Poems by Rae Rozman

I want to talk about you
with someone who doesn’t remember your name
who hears our stories as new
leans in on knitted fingers
and asks me to tell her more
tell her how you made me feel
says she sounds beautiful
and means I can tell you loved her

Quiet love, ask me my name
and I will tell you
that the mountains have whispered ballads
about a woman who asked for nothing
but a symbol of anonymity

A goddess in her right,
she stood on the edge of everything
and wished only to be on the verge of a dream,
only to be a breath from somebody

© 2019, Rae Rozman

RAE ROZMAN is a former seventh grade English teacher and current middle school counselor. Her poetry often focuses on themes of queer love (romantic and platonic), brain injury, and education. A Jewish femme dyke, her personal is political, and all of her work is written through the lens of living on the interstices of identity. Rae has poems published in the Stonewall’s Legacy poetry anthology, Nixes Mate Review, and forthcoming issues of Trouble Among the Stars, MockingHeart Review, Eldritch Lake, and Black Coffee Review. An avid bookworm, Rae can often be found curled up with a YA novel to discuss with her students. She lives in Austin, Texas with her long term partner. For poetry, book reviews, and pictures of her rescue bunnies, you can follow her on Instagram @mistress_of_mnemosyne.

Healer

She said when she ran, thunderous
footsteps followed her like parasols.
In the 5D realm of lucid crossing blur,
truth skims her mind’s dusty corridors.
Ancestors free their undelivered lives
from graves as true beings of ether.
The pledge is simple the first time
they visit; they are meant to whisper
in ears; feather noses with their words –
cause the itch, steer it to urgency –
she said when they spoke, they sang
of destinations. Her visions grew loud
as ears dubbed near and far sightings;
faint-pitched ringing, the warble of air
entering thin enclosures, and the walk
of feet on breaking ripples. Her mind
hovers above her sleep as she wakes;
light hatching a misplaced apparition –
landing of a mayfly on night’s shoulder.

© 2019, Sheikha A.

SHEIKHA A. is from Pakistan and United Arab Emirates. Her works appear in a variety of literary venues, both print and online, including several anthologies by different presses. Recent publications have been Strange Horizons, Pedestal Magazine, Atlantean Publishing, Alban Lake Publishing, and elsewhere. Her poetry has been translated into Spanish, Greek, Arabic and Persian. She has also appeared in Epiphanies and Late Realizations of Love anthology that has been nominated for a Pulitzer. More about her can be found at sheikha82.wordpress.com

ToSayThinking

We need above all to learn again to believe
in the possibility of nobility of spirit in ourselves.
Eugene O’Neill

To Say Thinking

Benjy was say-thinking his turbulent way out loud,
that Caddie smelled like trees, he knew to know
And I cannot breathe I said under my chest breath
And autumn flowers they fill my lungs
with flower dust, a mildew I cant touch.
Ibsen’s Oswald in his stunned syphilis
called out. And I’ll ever forget this need:
Give me the sun, he cried, Give me the sun.
Like anyone could ever give that. Benjy peered through a fence
Smelling honey suckle. I can’t breathe, i said, my father’s gray shirt
had oval wear holes and Oswald was radiant there with hope
that he might live with some brightness.

This spirit land needs what folds under, how we know our songs in the deep,
How we touch each other’s skin where it is all most open. Most acute.
Spirit land makes us burgeon brighten and bespeak what we are.
Eugene O’Neill, in his wonder, thought spiritual realism truest: it was, he said,
really real in the sense of being spiritually true, not meticulously life-like.
No one much listened to his words then, being full as they were then of that thing obsession.

You know, really spirit is right here, before, in us, in you when we stop making words
And just let the say-thinking part emerge to show us out, in,
The fresh hot baked side of us. The shivers of skin. How we surge to quicken
And fall in far to loveth. My mother a true spirit woman felt so different to the world,
her noble heart-self rang to us each and gave forth holy.
She wore flat round clip-on earrings, not danglies.
Between these dull stone bubbles her face gave out spirit shapes,
for she was our flag in the wilderness of materialist monotony.

© 2019, Linda Chown

LINDA E. CHOWN grew up in Berkeley, Ca. in the days of action. Civil Rights arrests at Sheraton Palace and Auto Row.  BA UC Berkeley Intellectual History; MA Creative Writing SFSU; PHd Comparative Literature University of Washington. Four books of poetry. Many poems published on line at Numero Cinq, Empty Mirror, The Bezine, Dura, Poet Head and others. Many articles on Oliver Sachs, Doris Lessing, Virginia Woolf, and many others. Twenty years in Spain with friends who lived through the worst of Franco. I was in Spain (Granada, Conil and Cádiz) during Franco’s rule, there the day of his death when people took to the streets in celebration. Interviewed nine major Spanish Women Novelists, including Ana María Matute and Carmen Laforet and Carmen Martín Gaite.

An Epitaph

I prized my strength.
Like a great oak
I towered on
the land I broke

as if red clay
were ruddy gold.
None moved me till
Christ broke my hold.

Come in His hand,
I yield and give
like windswept reeds
and yet I live.

© 2019, William Conelly

WILLIAM CONELLY took both his BA and MA degrees under Edgar Bowers at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This was after his military service. Unrelated work in research and composition followed before he returned to academia in 2000.  Since then he’s served in both the US and UK as an associate professor, a tutor, and a seminar leader in writing and English Studies. The Able Muse press brought out a collection of his verse in 2015.  It’s titled Uncontested Grounds and may be reviewed at their website or via Amazon.  Dual citizens of the US and UK, Professor Conelly and his wife reside primarily in England in the market town of Warwick.

Paradoxical Time

“To be human is to be whole, but to fail to see this wholeness.”  Thomas Lloyd Qualls, Painted Oxen

We are

koans

poems

riddles

rhymes.

We pass our days in paradoxical time.

© 2019, Jamie Dedes

JAMIE DEDES is a former columnist, publicist and the associate editor to a regional employment publication. Currently she is a homebound freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. Jamie manages The BeZine and its associated activities and The Poet by Day jamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights and encourages activist poetry. Jamie’s work is featured widely in print and digital publications. Her primary professional affiliation is Second Light Network of Women Poets.

It Was Love Kept Me Anchored

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”  Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

One winter I ate the sun, it warmed
It warmed the moon dancing with my heart
It calmed the seas that ran in my veins
It drew spring flowers from crusts of ice

I wrote a poem to the sun, to the future
I wrote another to the eons gone by
Still another told of history’s lessons
But it was love kept me anchored
Earthy, yet not earthbound, love

© 2019, Jamie Dedes

JAMIE DEDES is a former columnist, publicist and the associate editor to a regional employment publication. Currently she is a homebound freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. Jamie manages The BeZine and its associated activities and The Poet by Day jamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights and encourages activist poetry. Jamie’s work is featured widely in print and digital publication. Her primary professional affiliation is Second Light Network of Women Poets (U.K.)

The Flood

 

I fold a piece of paper, a ghost from the past.
Will it rain tonight, as has been forecast?
If a downpour falls, will flash floods follow?
Water would erode the lies and the glitter,
I hear, that I freely threw out on my way.

I fold a piece of paper, a ghost of the past,
faint shadows of words once boldly painted black.
When the downpour comes, will the flash floods blast
through the rock walls that grief has packed?
Will I sift fool’s gold from that loosened silt?

I fold a piece of paper, a ghost from the past.
The fortune in my cookie was never meant to last.
I don’t know if that’s good or bad. At dinner,
the conversation turned. Falling rain drowned
out whatever sense that may have remained.

I fold a piece of paper, a ghost of a crane,
in the hopes that peace will come into my refrain.
Will the rushing waves finally clear a way?
I wonder if that time comes, will I be able
to travel the paved road that remains?

I fold a piece of paper, a ghost from the past.
Will it rain tonight, as has been forecast?
If a downpour falls, will flash floods follow?
Water would erode the lies and the glitter,
I hear, that I freely tossed in the way.

—Michael Dickel ©2019

 

 

Michael Dickel—Digital Self-Portrait from Photograph
Michael Dickel
Digital Self-Portrait from Photograph
©2019

Michael Dickel is a contributing editor for The BeZine. He writes, creates art, and teaches in Jerusalem, Israel, where he lives with his wife and two young children. The World Behind It, Chaos… (WV? eBookPress, 2009), one of his first books, includes photographs and digital artwork from photos in a free PDF eBook format. His resistance chapbook of poetry, Breakfast at the End of Capitalism (locofo chaps, 2017) can also be downloaded for free as a PDF (or purchased in paper). His latest collection of poetry, Nothing Remembers, came out from Finishing Line Press in September, 2019. Other books include The Palm Reading after The Toad’s Garden, a collection of Flash Fiction (art by Ayelet Cohen), and War Surrounds Us, a collection of poetry, both from Is a Rose Press.

 

Hope Spoke

Find me, hope said
where headwaters unfurl
and roll across eons of rocks
polished by the playful tumble
of a rumbling stream. I stir belief
in the faintest trace I leave
under layers of a forest bed
the faint murmur of a mountain spring
where the ascent of a desert trail
is more than water
and the curl of a wool blanket
around the thumb of a sleeping child
is more than warmth.

Find me
where daydreams break
and flood the order of days
bridged by that narrow crossing
between duty and yearning. I destroy walls
from the rigid constructs I emerge
from labyrinths of complex reasons
the unwanted changes and the changing wants
where the hunger on the abundant earth
is a promise made
and the bend of the searching sun
under the months of winter snow
is a promise kept.

Find me
where smoke rises
and lifts the ghosts of mourning
entrapped by a constant churn
of candle stubs. I unite breath
under melting symbols I bow
to the church of the desperate fate
the humble faith in the big mistake
where a vow of strange forgiveness
is more than peace
and the prayer for a shamash flame
or the chant to an endless knot
is more than peace.

© 2019, Oz Forestor

OZ FORESTOR is a former journalist. He began writing short fiction, poetry, and essays when he realized the topics that don’t make news are more interesting than news: class struggle, un-planet Pluto, geriatric romance, power psychology, migratory birds, Nazi-era art suppression, trees.  Forestor’s nature-themed poetry chapbook sold out–all three copies- when he was nine. He enjoys hiking, travel, is prone to getting lost, and does not believe in GPS technology.

The Believer

I have faith in the darkness

that surrounds me—

in the holy unspoken prayer

the unborn child

the photograph coming to light

 

So small am I in my inertia

like Nothing hurtling through

the eternal chasm of my loneliness

And   yet only out of the depths

am I able to climb deeper into That

which holds me suspended

in the knowable Unknown

 

I do not know if I am

sinking or rising star

morning or evening

What does it matter?

I just keep climbing

out of myself

out of that dark hole

I have dug once too often

 

into the Holiness

into the Holiness

© 2019, Antonia Alexandra Kilmenko

ANTONIA ALEXANDRA KILMENKO  is a former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion and she is widely published. Her work has appeared in (among others) XXI Century World Literature (in which she represents France) and Maintenant : Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art archived at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. She is the recipient of two grants:  one from Poets in Need, of which Michael (100 Thousand Poets for Change) Rothenberg is a co-founder; the second—the 2018 Generosity Award bestowed on her by Kathleen Spivack and Josheph Murray for her outstanding service to international writers through SpokenWord Paris where she is Writer/ Poet in Residence.

From One-hundred Lost Letters

From an ongoing project in which I reflect on what St Thérèse of Lisieux may have written to her spiritual director, Père Almire Pichon. All the letters she sent to him in actuality have been destroyed. 

4

The tunnel through the mountain,
its black rush, crash of sound –

o my father, is this head-on death?
I have hankered after martyrdom,

the drama of severance, and yet
the sheer void, the long-drawn

clamour of hollowed-out rock –
a nothingness I had not intimated,

nor had I prepared for the shock
of hurtling back into the light.

25

I have retrieved, Mon Père, the grace
of clumsiness. Just now I dropped

my copybook: its cracked spine
fractured all my limping words;

earlier I knocked the bread
from basket to refectory floor;

for penance, I wear broken crusts
around my neck. I think of them

as sacramental; rough-cut hosts –
and I their battered chalice.

32.

With all my clumsy sentences and songs
I hope to make you smile, Mon Père,

the way a child delights her mother’s heart,
or a poor girl, given fine sandwiches

dreams against the tree, while Papa casts
for the bon mot, a flash of fish –

it seems I have one bouquet I can share,
the holy moment of the lips and eyes

as though I tender in my catch of time
a little sliver of eternity.

© 2019, Sarah Law

SARAH LAW lives in London and is a tutor for the Open University and elsewhere. Widely published as a poet, she edits the online journal Amethyst Review, for new writing engaging with the sacred.