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poetry

Satish Verma, 11 january 2015

DILEMMA

There was the hunger
and suicide.
In favor of my brutal truth
or virtue of my failure,
I do not want any comments on my trauma.
Morality has a dubious equation
with power, provoking my anger.

The days were full of abandoned kilns.
No more shaping of containers
in which one can put the moon,
and honey and roses.
Everything was turning brown
with infinite, sulphur smelling teeth
ready to bite into golden flesh.

Convicts behind the walls were playing
with mirrors to throw the light on slick
towers. Death was laughing, waiting on the trees,
eating black berries.
And I was forced to taste the blood of sky
with sodium –
in sanctum sanctorum.

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Satish Verma, 10 january 2015

ECSTASY

A pink rose was set to strip
letting the leaves fall.

The roots were jealous of a thorn
for stealing the blood from heart.

It was the last page of a book,
no more commas, no full stop.

The dead tongue now seeks syntax
of the lips that smell like enemies.

Two hard little breasts start a dance
like geraniums on bush.

Between the shadows of thighs
slept the pride.

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Satish Verma, 9 january 2015

SHARKS

They manipulated the words
to cross the corridors of essence.
Crib was empty, child was stolen.
At blood stained altar
there was no clue to mystical death.

The contents now matter. Time
displays tools of murder,
snaps the sheet from the bed,
kills the neophyte at water hole,
unsucked breast swells, weeps endlessly.

Apes are coming.
Duplicates look brilliant like novae.
It was becoming crowded. Becoming
was destroying the matter. Fear
moves in water, on the earth.

Faraway a cuckoo sings
a saddest song.
Come, belong to my tears, drops
of my soul’s vessel, kiss the eyes
of planet earth.

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B.Z. Niditch, 9 january 2015

PERHAPS

(for Tadeusz Konwicki
22 June 1926 – 7 January 2015)

Perhaps watching
the Konwicki film
"Salto"
with Zbigniew Cybulski,
the Polish James Dean,
last night,
brought back
the times
after lectures
when we would sneak
into art theaters
for two foreign films;
then afterwards
how we would lay
on warm blankets
intertwined with
the grass
by the Charles River.

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Scott Mitchell, 7 january 2015

Ensemble

Sonatas, be surely defined
when closed lush lips, to his soul
whisper the sweetest wine
Horizons, be known to endure
in low light when the moon ignites
as he consumes what once was yours
Stars, grasped as a tigers mane
stilettos point to the sky
in sharp reciting of his name
~
Scott Mitchell
2015

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Ankit Damani, 7 january 2015

Crater

I once had a birthmark on my left shoulder.
A baby screaming in agony bore this mark,
the result of an injection
which was meant to protect
my helpless body from infection.
From danger.

A neat little sliver of protrusion
surrounded by a crater,
the moat to my microcastle.
It once proudly stood alone,
a landmark against impurity.

My forefinger would sometimes
drift off towards it and circle cautiously,
perhaps its feeble attempt at time travel,
taking me to my days of perfection,
of honeydew and home movies.
I would once again feel familiar fingers
that ran over the lonely guardian,
as they washed my flawless skin,
fingers kneading all along
those puny yellow-brown arms.

I may still have the mark today, but I can't be sure.
My forefinger doesn’t drift anymore.
It wouldn’t dare to navigate around the
swarm of pustules, boils, cysts
that now stand tall, surrounding the terrified knoll.
The moat rendered hopeless.
Furious volcanoes, land mines
so eager to burst forth from
this toxic, etherized land,
pulsating like a horde of smartphones
buzzing in sync to form an earthquake.
Nothing could stop them but goddamn,
do they infuriate the perfect child in my dreams
who glares at me scornfully, every night.

My eyes cannot meet his.

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Michel Galiana, 7 january 2015

Quelvénic Grove

1. - As I did rove Quelvénic Grove
My toil was well rewarded:
I saw a doe wearing a blue
Cover that two stags guarded.
Both of them clerks, I dare remark.
Get up, Lord, you must withstand!
Hunt them at least, none of these beasts
Should desecrate your woodland! -

2. The three poor beasts, as noise increased
Fled the grove early that day,
Took up abode near the highroad,
Till a baker came that way.
- Give us some bread. It will be paid.
For this young girl is hungry.
She followed us. 'Twas perilous
To leave her room, most surely.

3. No one allows that she follows
Her own heart. She escaped.
Her kith and kin will call it sin
That her own life she shaped.
And, the poor thing, she may now sing,
Tonight she will cry sadly;
When tears are shed and all is said,
She'll die tomorrow, early. -

Translated from the Breton

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B.Z. Niditch, 7 january 2015

"IDA," A POLISH FILM

Only if you had been
an adolescent Marxist
in a post revolutionary era
or a later day Christian
after a religious age
has passed you by
at a May Day march of time,
when only children
inspire your absence
from the lost crowd
by the river's edge
alone with your notebook
holding onto a birch branch
with your carved initials
waiting for your lover
or in the silence of a monastery
from a retreat by iron doors
could you expect "Ida"
to surprise you.

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B.Z. Niditch, 7 january 2015

POLISH NEW YEAR

Despairing of fathomless cold
birds wait on the fountain
for rain water over stones
by the war memorial,
two friends from the country
wrapped in leather jackets
sleep in turn after celebrations
of the new year's century's peace
one wakes with a poem
the other turns his back
and finds his lost motorcycle
by a church's stained window.

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B.Z. Niditch, 7 january 2015

POLISH WINTER

(in memory Stanislaw Baraczak
died December 27, 2014)

Old walls of Warsaw
joined in your silence
shadows disappear
over voiceless hours
in the blood of snows
writing a diary
to friends back home
staring from fallen words
of ink from my desk
at my proof-read letter
wanting to be dispersed
from our own reflections
of my film and poetry
twentieth century reviews
now translated.

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10 - 30 - 100

Latest items:

poetry

DILEMMA

ECSTASY

SHARKS

PERHAPS

Ensemble

Crater

Quelvénic Grove

"IDA," A POLISH FILM

POLISH NEW YEAR

POLISH WINTER

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