Dr. Kailash Nath Khandelwal
Editorial
Putting an issue together is a small act of arrangement. The manuscripts come in as separate weather systems: lyric, story, argument, tribute. An editor’s job is not to force them into one climate. It is to let them sit close enough that a reader feels the pressure change from page to page. This quarter did most of that work on its own. Submissions arrived from Brazil, Canada, France, Greece, India, Lithuania, New Zealand, Russia, Serbia and elsewhere, and kept circling back to the same handful of questions: what a life is for, when success and happiness are not the same thing; what time does to a conscience; what we owe an earth that still shades us; and what a poem, a story or a critical essay can still legislate when public speech has shrunk to a password and a swipe.
Christina Wilson
There Be Dragons
Just one last shot, the needle‟s now hot,
He makes a tight fist and finds the right spot.
The liquid, it floods him like fire and ice,
Finally, some peace, his soul‟s delight.
He slips into stupor, so far, far away,
Encompassing darkness shows him the way.
Christina Wilson
To Be Me
What does it mean?
A question so complex.
There are five me‟s, all relevant. The
soul, the All Knowing,
Dhivya Barathan
NATURE BLOOMED WITHIN ME
When my child was born,
A new morning opened in my life;
And when she smiled at me,
The whole world seemed to bloom.
Dr. A. Arun Daves
LIKE SUNRAYS IN THE EVENING
I loved you with an unguarded heart,
and friendship became a quiet belief.
I trusted the light within your words,
like sunrays in the evening.
Dr. A. Arun Daves
BETWEEN ENOUGH AND EMPTY
I am not happy, though I have no reason to complain.
Life has given enough for me to keep moving.
There is food, there is shelter, there are familiar faces.
Dr. A. Arun Daves
The Banyan’s Advice
“Do not worry about every voice,”
the old banyan whispered to me.
“They praise my shade when they need it,
then blame my roots for spreading free.
Dr. A. Arun Daves
THE DAY TRUST LEARNED MY NAME
I loved you before I knew love’s cost,
and friendship became the home of my faith.
I gave you what I hid from others,
believing you would guard what I entrusted.
We stood beneath trees that knew our silence,
while the wind carried our words away.
Dr. S. Sujitha
SERENITY IN SILENCE
She shared her pain with the silent sky above,
The sky turned red, then black, as if it knew her heart.
She remembered the chaos of her life,
And the sky grew heavy with her sorrow.
EVA Petropoulou Lianou
My dream of togetherness
The sun has fallen
Behind the mountain s face
Looking at the horizon
I see your shape
EVA Petropoulou Lianou
A precious man
The nights and the days come and go without a smile
The days are so big without a smile
The nights are a waiting for a call or a message
It is so expensive this time away from your eyes.
You
My poem
You,
That the face I did not see for years
You
U are the most amazing being
But cannot touch
Good night poem
What a caterpillar maybe call the end
A butterfly call it the beginning of a beautiful journey…
The stars are so far but we can see the lights
And feel their heat
As i am thinking of you
Days and nights are together
Love poem
Your smile…
I dream a future with you
I dream a blue sky
Sunset to a an island
Forgiveness
A word that is coming out from the brave heart
I am not asking to forgive as a Human
I am asking to forgive as a GOD
As HE has the kindness and the generosity to see the human ‘s mistake.
Hug
I miss the hug
A hug that they give you and you forget the weaknesses of your existence.
I miss a kiss
The kiss that someone give you and your stomach make those noise like is full of butterflies
Nothing belongs to us
We are free
We are the captain of our soul..
Nobody can say this or that and you must execute.
Send my poem
_Golden bridges_
I find you
Because you were hurted
I cherish you
As i felt your pain
Dr. S.Florence
Mother Nature
Mother nature, independent of everyone
Provides everything to her children
Showers unconditional love,
Supports life, maintains ecological balance.
Her creations, plants and animals,
Thrives under her motherly care.
G. Suswara Deepika
ENDurance
A Beautiful, Kind Woman in Green and Brown
Stood in vain feeling Blue.
The Brown Skin Humans casually throw
Colourless plastic into her to poison, pollute.
Dr. Sivashankari
Nature: The Source of Joy
Mother gave us life to spread joy,
Nature gives us strength to live in joy.
Father gave us life to thrive and grow,
Nature gives us colours that beautifully glow.
J. Semmalar
ETERNAL MOTHER
O Nature, you surround us everywhere,
With oceans, mountains, earth and light.
Your flowers and countless gifts
Make our lives beautiful and bright.
Lincoln Jaques
Language Barrier
When you can’t speak the language
you hide out a lot in cafés
in countries where everyone still lights up cigarettes
you fear someone asking
for a match or if the empty seat
at your table is free
or for extra sugar sachets or
whether you think the dessert
is worth having or if the waitress
has gone nuts.
When Cities Die
Each day a city dies;
yet another one deceased
today as the birds flew
over and took up residence
in the Pohutukawa.
Those We Leave Behind
We used to call him
the millionaire vagrant
due to him once living
a grand lifestyle in a Chatswood
2-storey house with a fountain
in the back garden.
Lopamudra Mishra
Today’s Rain
The unconventional rain dashed my cockpit
The wavering silence stirred
The sequential raindrops
Suddenly brought relief from yesterday’s suffering
When I look at You
When I look at you
When I look at you and then me
I find the void
A mystic attraction
Special Likeness
Special likeness
You come as my special likeness
And occupied a corner rapturously
With your presence I smile
With your humidity my heart yells
When your thoughts glimmer
Dr. B. Mercy Gnanabai
Nature Howls
When I am going into the Earth
I heard a screaming voice
My ears burst
Water, Ozone layer, Air, soil, land, and so on.
Those who are screaming face pain,
Olga Borisova
Bird dreams
And the birds dream of the sky.
Blindly responding to an unclear call,
flying into the bottomlessness of the heights,
elevating himself above everything,
and they drink freedom,
like fish in the sea water.
Evening
Blues of the passing day
Flashes in the sunset sky.
Amber paint beckons,
The street is calling me
So that I can scoop up the gold.
Girl and pigeons
Tiny snow falls from the sky,
Like a message from distant worlds.
The pigeons ask not for snow, but for bread,
Flocking in flocks from surrounding yards.
On Bridge
I climbed onto the bridge. Leaning on the railing,
I look into the distance at the brisk running of the wave.
What force moves the mass of waters,
What power comes from the depths?!
Photini Karamouzis chalkias
IF I COULD BE THERE….
The world has changed…………………..
Present decays on a keyboard
Enigmatic glossy smiles in quick pursuit
dazzled of your dangerous charm
My eyes see differently now,
hopes that could be true
Raisa Melnikova
A sensitive imperative
The wind scatters blurred thoughts
across the windowpane,
confirming the rising rating
of the daily substitution of meanings.
Subhransu Maitra
KINNARI VEENA
Now an old, stringed instrument.
An item in the gallery of antique
musical instruments in the local museum.
SUPPLICANT
Twenty-three centuries ago
Devadatta inscribed his longing
for the temple dancer Sutanika
in three lines of verse
Sudha V
I AM RAIN
I rise from the clouds above,
A quiet gift from the sky.
No one knows when I will come,
Yet the earth waits for me.
Taghrid Bou Merhi
EXISTENCE ECHO
I ask the stone beneath my wandering feet,
what it remembers of being still.
And it answers with silence,
older than language.
I ask the wind:
why does it refuse to remain?
It laughs,
and becomes another direction.
I ask the sea:
why does it never learn the shore?
It writes its question again,
in erased foam.
Viji S
I AM MOTHER NATUR
I am Mother Nature—boundless, sovereign, and free,
In every pulse of existence, you will encounter me.
I travel through rivers that twist through the land,
And dance with the breeze as it sweeps through the sand.
Wolfgang B. Sperlich
SHANGHAI
Last week in Shanghai
We came back from the future
To stone-age Auckland
And the end of history
We surfed a gleaming surface
Highrise capitalism
Dr. H.C. Natalie Bisso
Taciturnity
How little we have to say! How simple our language has become! Very rarely do we say more than
one word. And how many accompanying words parasites, making speech monotonous. Typical
topics for the conversation. So typical that their absence would not lead to any damage. After all, all
the information can be taken from the Internet and without speech, just writing a word in a line… of
Course, the twenty-first century is the age of the word… One word.
Dr. S. Florence
Confluence of Nature and Man
Once in a rural village lived a old couple in a small hut near the forest. Many animals have their
dwelling place there. They enjoyed life. They have five boy children.
The seven lead a happy joyful life, as they are in harmony with nature. They had hot times, chill
times, but everything was optimum, for the place is full of trees. They grow vegetables for their
own, drank the water from the spring, have fruits from the forest. They cooked food in mud pots,
collected wood from the nearby places for cooking.
Viji S.
WHAT WE CHOOSE TO KEEP
The notice appeared on a Tuesday morning.
At first, hardly anyone paid attention to it.
It was pinned to the notice board outside the administrative office, between a circular about internal
marks and a notice about a missing identity card. Students walked past it on their way to class.
Someone stood in front of it for a few seconds, read it, and moved on.
By ten o’clock, half the college knew.
Olga Borisova
The role
She was known as a talented actress, a well-off woman who had married a famous director
advantageously, and she lived out other people’s lives without ever reflecting on the fates of the
heroines she portrayed. The roles she was given varied greatly: dreamy young women searching for
happiness, vengeful women willing to do anything to punish an offender, naïve fools, and cunning
mistresses.
Yuri Moskalenko
Apple tree, apple, and Lenochka
A woman’s fate is always winding. Like narrow paths leading to the foot of Mount Elbrus. A
woman’s disposition resembles a mountain stream, its waters crystal clear, allowing you to see
every grain of sand at the bottom without a telescope. It sounds like a bowstring, drowning out the
songs of birds and the chirping of cicadas, as it slowly erodes the sharp rocks of the rapids,
enveloping them in its pristine purity.
Dr. A. Arun Daves
THE TREE THAT KEPT GROWING
An old tree stood beside a broken compound wall at the end of our street. Nobody knew who had
planted it, and I had never seen anyone water it. Perhaps a bird had carried the seed, or perhaps the
wind had brought it from somewhere beyond the houses. Somehow, it had found a little space
between the stones and taken root. Its trunk was uneven, some branches had been damaged over the
years, and its roots had begun to lift parts of the pavement. Yet it had survived many summers and
monsoons. During the hottest afternoons, people stood beneath its shade, children played around its
roots, and birds found shelter among its branches. The tree gave what it had without asking who
deserved it.
Dr. Jernail S. Anand
FIGHTING MORAL INERTIA
How do we describe the young men and women of today? In the studies they pursue and the careers
they chase, there is a near absence of moral orientation. Can we call them amoral? They have little
idea that there has been a long tradition of moral thought which has meandered alongside the
political transformations of society.
Raisa Melnikova
Movement in Time
“Time is the distance of movement.”
Zeno of Citium
What does time mean to us?
Zeno of Citium (Zeno of Citium, 334/333 BC – 262/261 BC), an ancient Greek philosopher
and founder of the Stoic school, asserted that “Time is the distance of movement.” The next
question immediately arises: the distance of movement from which point to which? In the
calculation of time, everything is clear from the microsecond to infinity. But what about human life,
from birth to death?
Musharraf Ali
Why are sexual crimes not stopping?
Introduction: The Illusion of Strict LawsEver since the gang rape of a medical student in Delhi on December 16, 2012, sexual crimes have
continuously remained a subject of discussion in the country to this day. It is a result of public
pressure—built after the media prominently featured such news—that forced the government to
enact strict laws against rape. As much as this incident shook the people, and as much
condemnation and hatred toward sexual offenders came from the public, it felt as though fear would
be instilled in them and that this heinous crime would decrease.
Nebojsa Babic
Beyond Borders: Why the World Continues to Pay Attention to Maja Herman
Sekulić
While sections of the Serbian media have often overlooked her achievements, the international
literary community has continued to follow the career of Maja Herman Sekulić with sustained
interest. For readers and critics far beyond the Balkans, her work has long belonged to a broader
cultural conversation that transcends national boundaries.
Timothee Bordenave
The Solidified Plastic Component.
In the daily use of items made of metal—and often, around me, of that rust-proof metal that allows for longer service life and offers the properties associated with metals and alloys (specifically resistance to pressure or torsion—or, to put it another way, solidity, at least as far as I can observe)—a very simple thought occurred to me (which you might deem naive): many of these metal alloys, or metals rendered rust-proof through chemistry, could easily be replaced by other materials for the same purposes and with virtually the same utility—often, I believe, with even greater practical utility—and, from what I gather, at a much lower cost! Specifically, they could be replaced by some of the plastic materials that modern chemistry enables us to create!
Robert Madox Harle
POETS AS VISIONARIES
Abstract:
This paper discusses the recent find of Shelley‘s (presumed lost) poem written 200 years ago entitled: A Political Essay on The Existing State of Things. A comparison is then made of the subject matter of this poem with that of my own, and my great grandmother‘s poetry which shows that this\ work of Shelley‘s is as relevant today as it was in the early 1800s. The suggestion is made that the best poets are visionaries and I use the above examples to illustrate this claim.
Robert Madox Harle
The Poetry of Gopal Lahiri: A Weaver of Magic and Mystery
Abstract: This paper critically discusses the poetry of Mumbai based, Indian poet Gopal Lahiri. It focuses on his three published volumes of poetry – Silent Steps (Cyberwit): Living Inside (Authorspress); and Tidal Interlude (Shambhabi). I argue that Lahiri is like an ethereal gypsy of the night, his poems weaving magic spells which delight the soul and stir the heart. His poems cover a broad range of themes but always nature in her beauty and mystery is close at hand. Lahiri is a professional earth scientist and I believe his close contact with the world of nature has expanded his appreciation and understanding of the subtleties and moods of the earth. His personal love poems are gentle and poignant, quite often bittersweet, and reflect upon the love we may desire but cannot always have. His mystical poems evoke the moon, the heavens and all the mysteries of our inner worlds, I personally like these poems the most as we get a sense of something we cannot completely grasp but know is just beyond the veil of illusion. Lahiri‟s activist poems are confronting and seek to bring about change for the downtrodden of the world, these poems are visionary in intent and are particularly relevant in contemporary Indian society where the disparity between the “haves” and the “have-nots” is perhaps more obvious than in most other countries, in fact, existing side-by-side on a daily basis.
Keywords: Gopal Lahiri, poetry, Living Inside, Silent Steps, Tidal Interlude, the moon, weaving magic.
Robert Maddox-Harle
The Poetry of Sunil Sharma: An Expression of Love and Liberal Humanism
Some poets are concerned with their own personal relationships – their poetry speaks of loves, fears,Robert Maddox-Harle
Reconnecting with the Sublime:The Poetry of Vijay Kumar Roy
This paper is a critical discussion of the poetry of Vijay Kumar Roy, particularly that which is
presented in his recent book, Realm of Beauty and Truth: A Collection of Poems (2016).These
poems are like a cry from the wilderness, or perhaps the Wasteland, that is, the decadent, secular,
consumerist orientated global village we live in at the start of the 21st century. One main feature of
Roy’s poetry is that he does not just complain about or describe how bad and unhappy the
contemporary world is, in a rather gentle way he juxtaposes opposites. For example, he may alert us
to an aspect of environmental destruction but in the same poem celebrates the beauty and delicate
balance of nature as it once was. The first poem in this book is a good example:
Biswanath Kundu
An introspective look into Rajiv Khandelwal’s Crystalline Tidings
Abstract:
“CrystallineTidings” a collection of sixty five poems penned by Rajiv Khandelwal, one of the globally known Indo-Anglian poets of honour and accomplishment of contemporary period and published by Ukiyoto Publishing, India, is like a torch to lead us all along the track of sensitive poetry or the poetry that aims at seeking the meaning of life with stresses on socio-cultural dynamics and existential dilemmas of modern times. He has excelled in the task of regenerating sense and conscience of what is beautiful as well as dutiful about the world in all these poems that are marked with symbols, similes and mellifluous metaphors.
Key words: Childhood Memories, Love, Religion, Humanism, Covid Time, Social crimes, Death and Emptiness
Gerrard Chaiken
Comings and Goings
Comings and Goings
( Sonnet from “Butterfliy Dreaming”)
Tiger time would seize
Each molecular moment
Underlying the undulating
Fierce fiery fluctuations-
Freak frequencies
Of energy’s continuations:
Song and dance of time, continues..
In our souls things meld and mesh,
Though gravity sucks away our flesh,
And in time’s expansion-contraction,
Restless minds, swayed by distraction,
Lose hold of true beautiful identity,
And the hurdygurdy dance of density
Whirls us away from the immensity
Of who and what and why we are:
Sonnet to Seeds in time… (from “Butterfly Dreaming…”)
The hoary moonlitfrost of age,
Reflecting (on) youth’s golden face,
As one with the other (self) does engage:
With snowhite seeds, expectant, sage,
That wait to write upon the empty page
Of fleeting time, and its fluctuating pace-
Whilst the forgiving mirror,