poem – Page 11 – The BeZine

Merge

The frenzied shrieks of a lapwing
more accustomed to singing
in the sunlight ring out
prolonged
The ceiling fan scatters
stinging mosquitoes
A street-light beams brilliance into the room
piercing darkness
with a gleaming shard

The night with
its primal instincts swirls in
no longer separate or still
soporific
It breathes quietly inside my head
and I begin to

merge

The walls are my skin
the slimmest of sheaths
They pulse with
every breath I take
I am the house

Buffeted by nocturnal silence
I inhale wisps of sterile moonlight to quench
my senses
until concreteness falls away
Unfettered and formless

I am the night

URMILA MAHAJAN worked for over two decades as an English teacher in various schools. Passionate about drama she now works as a drama consultant for schools.Her poetry has won several online prizes. She published her poetry book, Drops of Dew, with a foreword by Ruskin Bond, in 2005. Her more recent poems can currently be found at on her blog HERE.Her full-length children’s novel, My Brother TooToo, was published in 2010. Around the same time, her articles on using English correctly were a regular feature in a youth magazine. She lives in Hyderabad, India. Her hobbies include birdwatching, growing organic vegetables and of course, looking after her cat.

winter rain in my muse-like homeland

the eyesome fay at the crack of dawn in winter

is weeping

the winter rain in the form of magnificent teardrops is dropping down

it is to be mesmerized in glaciated dreams of muses

the shepherd boy hears the falling of the more tender rain like meek tears

the docile Nixie by Christmas morning

is crying

the winter drops in terms of mignonne teardrops are falling down

it is becharmed in a snowy soul of muses

the child of a falconer tastes these Apollonianly meek drops

the meekly miraculous Siren at sunset glow

bawling

the winter snow – wonderfully tearling-shaped – falling down

it can be ensorcelled in frosted muse-like hearts

the druidical companion looks at flurries full weird of the tearlets

the magnanimous Sibyl at midnight in December

crying

the winter snow-rain – marvelously tearlet-shaped – falling to the ground

it’s worth being enchanted in the hazy fantasy of the muses

the guardian of Winter Queen’s touches some Herculean traces of the rain

PAWEŁ MARKIEWICZ was born in 1983 in Poland (Siemiatycze). He has has English haikus as well as short poems published in the good literary magazines, including Ginyu (Tokyo), Atlas Poetica (U.S.), and The Cherita (U.K.). He has published some poems in Taj Mahal Review (India) and Better Than Starbucks (U.S.). He has also published poems at Blog Nostics as well as a short prose piece entitled “The Druid.” Paweł has published more than fifty German-language poems in Germany and Austria and three Polish-language chapbooks in Poland.

Grey Dawn in Chaco Canyon

Lean eye bone to wall bone,
thumb stone’s scars and fissures.
Draw myself into the narrow dark
into the lore:

Birthed from a molten core
bathed under six oceans, thrust
into turrets, wind washing dust
to the Gobi, cliff dust, my dust
Hint of damp. Once a slim straw
of water leaked from hidden lips,
fed the beans, kept the Anasazi alive.

My belly, the rockbelly
our motion placental.
I pull my eye away, cheek chafed,
lift my hand to the tenderness.

Lift my gaze to the cliffs
centuries of hard mothering.
Children hidden in her skirts,
love, a silent trickle from deep inside.

NANCY L. MEYER, she, her, hers: Avid cyclist, End of Life Counselor, grandmother of five. Nancy lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work may be found in many journals including: Colorado Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Bitterzoet, Indolent Press, The Centrifugal Eye, The Sand Hill Review, Caesura, Snapdragon, Passager, Ageless Authors, The Asexual, The Writer’s Cafe. Published in eight anthologies, most recently Open Hands Tupelo Press and Crossing Class by Wising Up Press.

Undersides

Lie under a stand of wild carrot.
Five-foot tall, blooms held up to the sky
like candelabras. Look up
at their undersides. Light
pierces each floret, tattoos
your cheek, frilly.

Quiet, hear the bluster of bees.
If the ground is not too lumpy
under your spine, rest long enough
to inhale the astringent stalks
stroke their hairy length.

Maybe a friend lies with you, little
fingers touching along the sides,
palms sensing the first warmth
of soil in spring.
Play along the rim of a fingernail.
Raise your clasped hands and sing
You Are My Sunshine. just sing it
before you feel foolish.

Or tell stories
dizzying over and over
down grassy slopes until
you create a new world. Then
sit up, a happy sick swirl
back when
that sensation was fun.
Before you notice the itch
from the grass or mind
the stains on your shorts.

Lie here long enough
to contemplate why you don’t usually
lie
on the ground
under wild carrot.
Why not,
since you are happy now.
Just imagining it.

NANCY L. MEYER, she, her, hers: Avid cyclist, End of Life Counselor, grandmother of five. Nancy lives in the SF Bay Area. Her work may be found in many journals including: Colorado Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Bitterzoet, Indolent Press,The Centrifugal Eye, The Sand Hill Review, Caesura, Snapdragon, Passager, Ageless Authors, The Asexual, The Writer’s Cafe. Published in eight anthologies, most recently Open HandsT upelo Press and Crossing Class by Wising Up Press.

Numinous

there is an immense ocean over which the mind
can sail upon which thought has not yet been launched

here with thoughts of benevolence the mind of so many
thousand years has worked round and round

in circles pervading first one direction then a second
there is so much beyond all that has ever yet been

imagined as I write these words I look in a third direction
then a fourth direction then above then below

I feel the whole air the sunshine lighting up the dark
ploughed earth identifying with all existence

as I write as I exist at this second a sublime initiation
I pervade the entire universe with thought so miraculous

strange and eternal feeling compassion with heart enlarged
wide everything I see and hear boundless like the ocean

the earth the trees the hills the birds eternal
purified of all ill-will the same sun the caveman saw

rise beyond the sea he too closed his eyes
and looked into himself becoming all existence

* Found poem. Sources: Richard Jefferies Autobiography and The Brahma Viharas

© Eric Nicholson

ERIC NICHOLSON is a retired art teacher who lives in Gateshead, UK. He has followed Soto Zen for over 35 years and occasionally visits a Zen Buddhist monastery near Hexham.

One Hundred and Eighty Degrees

until you see it and approach it
the unknown that keeps tugging unexpectedly

you’ve imagined perfection,
and after all the effort
find it ordinary

you try to recapture it
in the most promising light;
then, turn 180°
as with a camera

Voilà!
Perfect!

Hope.

It’s like falling in love.

ANTONI OOTO has and still looks for answers which he shares at times with poetry. He finds pleasure in reading the works of many poets such as WS Merwin, Jane Kenyon, Donald Hall, Elizabeth Bishop, Margret Atwood, and the humor of James Tate.“I read various poet’s first thing in the morning aloud. My wife and I discuss the structure, rhythm and beauty of the lines.” Reading poetry aloud (he feels) allows the voice to find a cadence that the reader might miss when seeing the words on a page. Antoni Ooto is a poet and flash fiction writer. He came to writing late after many years as an abstract expressionist artist. He eventually found his voice in poetry. His works appear in Front Porch Review, Amethyst Review, The Ginger Collect, Soft Cartel, Eldritch Lake, Pilcrow & Dagger, Young Ravens Literary Review, and many others. Antoni works in upstate New York with his wife poet, storyteller Judy DeCroce.

Simply a Song

What if the spiritual world were simply
a song, a song that stripped
away the world yet left us
home and listening

but not home as we knew it,
a deeper home that just kept
getting deeper until we were
no longer big enough to hold it

And we had to – no, wanted to –
let the ever-changing, ever growing
song be what it was
and not constrained by
small lungs and narrow mouths.

Accepting our acceptance
The song grew as we dissolved
and was not heard anymore
because it had replaced hearing
With being,

And then there was only being
And what is the Being is
heard by everyone who listens
but I was not there, anymore
Because

We are here

STEPHEN (STEVE) TANHAM is a mystical writer, poet and prolific photographer. He is one of the founding Directors of the Silent Eye School of Consciousness, a not-for-profit distance-learning organisation that offers a proven path to deepening our internal and external consciousness. Steve lives in the English Lake District with his wife, Bernie and their Rag Doll cat and Collie dog. Prior to founding the Silent Eye, Steve spent a working life in IT, culminating in running his own software company for over twenty years. Throughout his adult life, Steve has worked as a senior field officer (on a voluntary basis) for various mystical schools, including the Rosicrucian Order AMORC and The Servants of the Light.

Steve is the author of several mystical books. They are written as stories rather than more formally. These are available on Amazon in both print and ebook format. Steve’s Amazon Page UK is HERE. Steve’s Amazon Page U.S. is HERE. His WordPress website is suningemini.blog. Steve can be contacted on rivingtide@gmail.com

just sayin’

just mindin’ my businesss
just walkin’ down the street
move along move along
(you lazy loot… get your black ass gone)

just enterin’ my home
in this hood i don’t belong
don t shoot don t shoot!!
(tough luck kid! your color’s all wrong)

i’m just eighteen
the whole rainbow all in one
i was black before my father
i’m as old as the sun
the same DNA
as the moon and the stars
the bloodstains on my pillow
are no different than yours

please Officer PlEASE!
don’t point your gun at me
i’m not the enemy
i wasnt’ born i wasn’t mourned to be
white chalk on asphalt
what ? your murderin’ me is my fault?

you call me the ‘ n’ word
Martin Luther MalcolmX Mandela
you call me the ‘n’ word
and claim you are a brother
while you insult ass-ault
my father sister mother
(you mother!)

beaten in our fields
raped in our beds
the seeds you sow still reek
of oppression and dread
of lead and rubber bullets
of pointy gnarling teeth
you re the Boogeyman from Hell
come to get me in my sleep

you’re darker than night
you’re blinder than blind
i’m the candlelit vigil
of your impoverished mind
the nightmare the daymare of sirens screaming
another brother down !! let freedom ring ??
he died for your american dream!
shrouded in secrecy indecency bigotry
democracy of thee i sing? what a mockery !!
we choke on your hipocracyyyy

i’m talkin bout YOU Mister Evil
oounting blood like money
talkin bout YOU Snake Eyes gamblin away our lives
YOU Ms Fraidy Cat hiding behind your chagrin
tightening the noose with sympathy around our necks
just boys barely men we’re hep to your sins
to the legacy of hate of apathy the shudder of death
the fear of our own footsteps

strange fruit hangin’ from the old oak tree
roots steeped in blood and sorrow
hearts caught in our throats for eternity
who knows who’s next tomorrow

i’m just eighteen
the whole rainbow all in one
i was black before my father
i’m as old as the sun
the same DNA
as the moon and the stars
the bloodstains on my pillow
no different than yours

generations of tears
flow from ancient holy skeyes
mine eyes have seeeeen the glory
the in-justice of our lives
you conceived in love
what are you SO afraid of
the color of my skin
or the darker matter you’re made of
deface me debase me erase me
you can’t replace me
deny me or your own humanityyy
you can shackle my dreams
but the spirit flies free
you can shackle my dreams
but the spirit flies free
and

when i honor you
i honor me
when i honor you
i honor me
when i honor you
i honor me
when i honor you
i honor me

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.

I Pegasus

lift my hooves for gallop,
rise as my white wings open.
Wind rushes into my pricked ears.
Excitement whinnies from my mouth,
ripples through my flanks, drives me
towards a place that’s always cloudless.
Below me are snow-spattered peaks,
valleys where rivers wander, where trees
are laden with oranges, small suns
which pay homage to the sphere above.
Below me are huge cities with domes,
spires and innumerable buildings,
the tallest invade the blue of sky.
I miss nothing: the glassy stare
of cars stampeding like maddened cattle,
humans fleeing from burning towns,
forests felled like mighty armies,
the sea hurling itself in fury
at the land, barren fields thirsting
for water, skeletons of starved creatures.
I choose a verdant slope when I land,
hoof its milky grass and a spring
bubbles up from earth that’s rich
with squirming worms. Then I rejoice
for I am the breath in and the breath out,
I am the quickening which comes unbidden
to the mind, blossoms into words
that tug the heart, I am sounds which bell
the air and enthral the ear, shapes
and colours which come together
to sing. I counter hatred, destruction.
I will not be stamped out.

from Lifting the Sky (Ward Wood Publishing 2018)

MYRA SCHNEIDER has had eleven full collections of poetry published. Her most recent publications are Lifting the Sky, Ward Wood 2018, The Door to Colour (Enitharmon 2014) and the pamphlets Five Views of Mount Fuji , Fisherrow 2018) and Persephone in Finsbury Park, (Second Light Publications 2016). Other publications include books about personal writing, in particular, Writing My Way through Cancer, Jessica Kingsley 2003 and Writing Your Self (co-written with John Killick), Continuum Books 2008. Myra’s books also include three novels for young people. She was shortlisted for a Forward Prize in 2007 and her poetry has been published in many anthologies and well-known journals, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in Poetry Please and on Radio 3. She has co-editeD anthologies of poetry by contemporary women poets and is consultant to the Second Light Network for Women Poets. She writes reviews and articles about poetry and co-organizes the local Poetry in Palmers Green programme with poet Katherine Gallagher. She has run one-off poetry workshops in many parts of England, also in Ireland and Normandy and has tutored for The Poetry School since it was started by Mimi Khalvati in 1997. She lives in London UK. She has taken part in many poetry festivals and done readings all over the UK and in Ireland and Trinidad. She has also collaborated with up and coming artist Robert Aldous.

Pushing through Utopia

How we eagerly read so many new names 
       (like Rousseau, Robespierre, Marx)
         of social revolution
             in books at Berkeley, 
                  read of feasts of blood
                      and showers of murders through Western times

How it was quickly becoming something more to me than history 
      It was becoming an exploding passion
        as we sat on a mountain on the edge of America over the Bay
          dangling our feet to see how far we could go for pure freedom  
              pushing away the mind’s old dandelion utopias.

How John Muir pulsed in our veins, his steadfast embrace of rampant wildness 
          in his dangerous life, he challenged the just wear a dark suit men
               all my life sick on the edge before, made me more ready to jump
                    into more, all that I didn’t understand 

How to go further, trembling as I was, into Berkeley’s tempting rabbit holes
       hands and feet slither into a green New Age of ecology and equality 
           Into a light that saved trees and food that fed souls
                  how we broke all our molds, wrote over stingy rules 

How we stood together, norm creators envisioning in a blur of newness
       charting new ways with glittering eyes since we knew 
              we were climbing as one into the unchartered
                   without pretense or yesterday’s food

How we felt raw and naked in our bones beginning it all 
        Protected by beautiful Berkeley light
                Secure in our mysterious dreams pushing hard, way beyond
                      The rigid order of Victorian sight

©2019, Linda Chown

Don’t Be Stupid

Stars are out there, many, everywhere, all the time.
Try not to think about this all the time.

Those stars, they’re everywhere, even in us, all the time.
Don’t be stupid about this. Try not to think about this all the time.

If it’s important to you where Space ends, you may not
Be picking up the clothes you always drop on the floor,
For someone else to pick up. Learn to pick up, all the time.

Mountains change, rivers change, weather changes,
Volcanoes are still erupting, it’s colder some days.
Why is this so hard to understand? Don’t think about it.

We can’t remember everything that’s happened. That’s
Why we always mess things up. That’s not hard, is it?

Don’t be stupid. Another person is a person to appreciate.
You can’t appreciate only those who look and act like you.
This isn’t hard, but don’t be so afraid. Take a deep breath.

Stop doing that. Whatever it is you are doing, stop that.
Why are you this old and you are still acting like that.
This isn’t hard, it just takes practice. Don’t think about it.

Of course, we are water. It goes in every day. We wash up.
We wash what’s dirty. We are in awe of its beauty.
If you don’t know that, wade in, go under, hold your breath.

Stop asking for applause. Do what you need to do well.
What’s hard to understand about that? Are you still that needy?

The best line of that movie was Will it help? So stop worrying.
When has worrying ever helped you to get things straight?

We are all here, standing line. You can’t make us go away
Like that. Stop blathering so. You look silly doing that.

Are you a busy person? Nothing to admire there.
Everything else in the cosmos is not busy, but it’s there.
Staying busy will tire you out. Take a 2-minute time out.

Are you feeling any better? You know, there are no truths.
I know that’s hard, but get used to it. Don’t think about it
Ever again, just try doing everything you’ve done, better, that’s all.