MUSEImage: © Lenka Sevcikova, Pixabay, source.
Author: Lyra Willows
The fireworks gracefully fall in the shape
Of golden weeping willow trees.
Funny, I thought
For I have a willow weeping in my heart
Like the young girl in the myth my grandmother once told me long ago.
Image: © Engin Akyurt, Pixabay, source.
Author: Lyra Willows
In twelve weeks, please take a piece of me in your pocket
And carry me around wherever you go.
I want to be a part of every new experience and sensation.
I want to see all the new places you will see
I want to meet all the new people you will meet
I want to smell all the new smells you will encounter.
Take a piece of me with you before you go,
And let the rest remaining behind perish for a year
A whole year, before you come back and revive it.
Let that piece breathe the air you will breathe
And let it hear every sound and silence you will stumble upon.
Oh please, I beg of you, take a piece of me with you.
Take it and keep it close to your heart.
To keep you company if you ever get lonely.
Take a piece of me to make you feel safe whenever you are anxious.
Take a piece of me, to melt in your chest and always keep you warm.
Take a piece of me to remind you of how much I love you, and therefore,
How much of a wonderful human being you are.
Take a piece of me, to feel every laughter of yours explode inside my chest back home.
Take a piece of me to feel every tear run down your cheek,
For me to know when to contact you to check if you’re okay.
Take a piece of me, and hold it tight in your hand
As if you were afraid to let it go.
Take a piece of me, and when you come back in a year,
Give it back to me
And enrich me with all your new and mesmerizing memories.
Take a piece of me
And fill it up with all the love and care you can every time you think of me
And give it back to me
Give it back
To restore
Happiness and peace
Within me.
Author: Manuel Ferrazzo
i overdosed on 21st century
[Content Warning: Substance use, brutality, vulgarity, and sexual violence]
i snorted a skyscraper today.
i let its inhabitants flow in my civilised-white-ash nostrils and
i felt the rush of productivity,
the euphoria of paid slavery,
the lights of steel cogs and fire.
i remembered the first minutes of this millennium,
when the savages attacked other savages,
(which is which?)
and all their lands of god responded by violence.
astral bodies became our new gods,
pushing their product to gather new herds
all around the world.
i remember when they wanted to
crucify christ on live tv,
thinking people would pay to see it.
they would. of course they fucking would.
we raped our planet
and blamed her
because she just couldn’t shut her legs.
i mean, mother nature is a whore.
hunger? what for, hunger doesn’t exist.
i remembered when we handed our power
to hatred, or cowardice,
self-righteousness on all ends,
venomous rats fighting over details,
blindly fighting the other
because they’re other,
because they’re stupid,
because they’re savages,
because they’re black, white, believers, apostates,
etc.
the announcers feeding on fear on one end,
and on the other,
the tin-foiled hats started to talk.
governments are nothing. they mean nothing, in our western world,
they have no power without corporations.
government and corporation:
the king and queen
of our game of chess.
i remembered how we liked to push the weak around,
just for the fuck of it.
is idiocy malignancy? can they live without one another?
who knows? maybe the little birds
singing and screaming
through the cage of light
can explain it to us.
when does stupidity become consciousness
“i’ve never been more awake”
said the dreamer to imaginary nightmares.
truth is relative, baby.
“i’m an ally, he said. just let me fuck you.”
i remembered the neons, on the district,
where red meat finds the mouths of carnivorous rats.
they wear suits and talk about family
and cry for forgiveness when they’re not careful enough.
their victims are called Aileen,
they’re the fairer sex so you think they can’t kill you.
but they don’t eat and they don’t sleep
and they let trauma consume them.
americans love rorschach.
the black and the white are all that they see,
and all blackness is evil, and all whiteness is pure.
they hate when their propaganda use rainbows
to feast on the oppressed,
because they’d rather be brainwashed all alone
rather than sharing their lobotomy.
kill the gays, they cried to god.
kill the muslims,
kill the pigs,
kill them all.
we build the west on the back of the poor,
and otherness is feared as much as familiarity.
look at our shiny towers!
look at our watches, our art, our language!
so perfect.
let us debate all these things in the most secluded place in the world,
with complicated words and caviar
and useless books nobody gives a fuck about,
or let the artists who don’t know
shit about what they’re talking about (like me)
tell you you’re evil and you deserve to die.
like library rats,
they yell about ethics and literature,
fascinated by a useless field
that grows something mostly tasteless,
except when the rain falls on the right leaf,
wherever this leaf came from.
they think themselves as the new thinkers of our world
when their destiny is either to rise amongst the elite
and get infected by their greed,
or die forgotten amongst the useless poor.
you all deserve to die in these gutters.
because misanthropy is cool,
look at me,
i’m not like other boys.
i breathe genocide
and smell of supremacy,
but i don’t even realise it.
nietzsche has never been more popular
amongst self-made men,
even though we all know that,
like the rest of us,
they can’t understand jack shit
of what that nietzsche has written.
who knows who we are.
i mean,
identity…
right?
we become another person
every
minute.
so,
[insert reference to the ship of Theseus]
And yet,
while the noise blinds us,
we’re still here.
In the ruins of skyscrapers,
We remain.
Image: © Manuel Ferrazzo
haiku for a nuclear winter
the white ash cracking
all the dead skeleton trees
sing doom with the wind
Image: © Manuel Ferrazzo
The Eye That Escapes (Consume Me)
[Content Warning: Profanity]
This eye won’t see you,
when you look at it.
It will look the other way,
to the sky, to its God,
and towards indifference.
The white blinds you,
and the fine dark lines around them
drive you off the edge of the world.
The irises, kaleidoscopical,
Sing in mine.
The red appeals to taste,
reminds me of innocence lost
and whoring-Mary, mother of Christ.
You would devour the apple,
if there was no God.
The soft silk hides,
leather binds,
you and my eyes.
Flowers pierced with swords,
and toys with holy crosses.
Image: © Manuel Ferrazzo
this world is gone, yet there’s still beauty
This world is gone.
But in its ruins, we find our souls.
When all breaks, we become one again.
Yet with all souls comes the impending doom,
the element of fear that keeps us awake
every single night.
Fear of losing everything,
when we know we have already lost it.
Fear of smiling,
when there’s nothing to smile about anymore.
This fear guides us back to the light,
back to the hope and the happiness we once had,
it nurses us back to health,
keeps us safe from despair,
from the perspective of our nothingness.
Because, even in a broken world,
there is beauty.
Death is just the Hierophant of Life.
And even if Life won’t have us,
it will endure,
it will prevail, without us.
Image: © Manuel Ferrazzo
Yggdrasil
yearning for the roots,
growing out of the heads of children,
grains of milk-sand
drag the leaves across the night sky.
reaching for the beyond,
abandoning the oneness of all gods,
searching through star-filled nightmares,
i
lead the lost to find the crescent moon they dream of.
Image: © Manuel Ferrazzo
Image: © by Andres Stadelmann
Author: Andres Stadelmann
VI.
It was late August when I realized my Nonno was going to die
He had relapsed heavily
Never left unattended
And although we had not seen him for weeks
It was there, at the beach, that I crawled into my parents’ bed and cried with them
I was 11.
A week later we were back home with him
He barely inched out of his room
Limping towards the bathroom
And I, stuck, watching from the hallway
An image framed from a movie
(I’m still stuck there to this day)
The day he felt better we were told it was time to say goodbye
And we did
But the next day
Standing up on the toilet bowl
(My father had lifted me up
To hug me while he cried)
I started to imagine something special had happened during that last farewell
A final stroke on the cheek
A soft smile
It was only years later
When I saw him holding his own father’s hand
while we each took our turns in that room
He looked at me knowingly while I sobbed
And held the old man while he died
(He didn’t cry at the funeral)
It was there that I realized that it wasn’t a physical sign,
something we could hold on to
But that the dead always call out for us before they’ve died
They know nothing will fill that void
So they just tell us
Gently
Lovingly
Goodbye
XVI.
Every day that passes I look more like my father
This thing, I have struggled against it a lot
I’ve wanted to tear it away from me
Yet it’s always there
It comes out in spurts
Fierce and without warning
And then it stays
It marks me forever
And this thing consumes me
It erases years
Or rather it adds them
I think of that middle-aged man
Of all that he lived through
Of the sweat he shed
The blood
The semen
But for what?
And for whom?
I feel like I’ve already lived enough to be able to understand it
But not even cigarettes
Or fucking beer
Don’t change the facts
We have the same body
Made to renounce everything
To vent without regard
An anger that makes you sweat
Curse
Hate
Kill
And that child
Collateral
I erased his name
But it’s always children who know how to speak the truth
Like those clouds suspended in bursts in the blue sky
While the lightning behind thunders in silence
Author: Andres Stadelmann
There are many bridges in Paris
Rive gauche
Rive droite
But once you’re on them
On which side do you fall?
Towards the muck and towards the grass
Where they write out your name
Or perhaps to the decks
Where they punch the ground below
And to all those sleepers
Without pillows
Without dreams
Did you spill your old bottle caps
Did you use them as your dirt?
On the river two boats joust
While in the capital their anthem is screamed
And we looked as they streamed
Sometimes blue
Only green
But the little girl watched
As I took down their flag
And her uncles waddled away with their teeth all in flaps
Those old men know not to trust shady cameras
Yet for fame
Yet for glory
We could not keep our coats
But for love
The bridges in Paris cradle cars and lights
From the cold
From the rain
And in a small pint bar
We sit and rehearse
How to stumble and be still
But never to cry
I’m sad again
But that’s ok
Author: RKC
Tomorrow I will write the lines
Write the lines that are perfect like a bullet in the afternoon
Lines to feed the air and keep me sane
To burn like a cigarette at the end of the day
Old lines have lost their taste
Been lost in my longings along with my memories
It’s only normal then,
That I should save myself
and pour me whole,
In empty scotch bottles and blank sheets of paper
Read my soul in these old lines
As I find my enemies
In these old bones
Author: RKC
The legs of a woman shouldn’t be pretty
How could they?
With all the burden of immoral and evil acts they have encountered and suffered?
With what they’ve seen and lived?
They shouldn’t have to carry all the weight they do
Their smiles shouldn’t still burn white
They have seen the worst of us and still take us to their heavens
They still believe in us
They shouldn’t make us better
They shouldn’t have to
They shouldn’t
And yet they do,
Effortlessly
Image: ©️ beauty_of_nature – Image modified by Roxane Kokka – Pixabay License. Source.
Author: Roxane Kokka
Amores
An eruptive feeling invades my chest
As my head grows feverish
And my cheeks warmer than the sun’s kiss.
My pale skin turns into a scarlet shade
And I can feel the blood pumping twice as fast into my veins
All the way to my fingertips.
My jaws are sore from laughing
And my cheeks from smiling
My eyes are on the brink of tears
And each breath struggles to escape my lips.
How funny this feeling is,
This strange feeling of falling in love.
Woodpecker kisses
It all still feels surreal to me, like a dream
With your face bathing in the dim light’s gleam
And your eyes shimmering between your curls
While all of my senses rejoiced in twirls.
My entire body reminisces
All your electric woodpecker kisses,
While the lasting fragrance of your perfume
Makes my chest and memory feel in bloom.
And I can still taste your lips on my own,
As I can still hear the sound of your moan.
My skin keeps record of every inch
Your fingertips touched; not once did I flinch
For your presence restored much peace in me,
Erased feelings of fear from my memory,
And brought back to me a sense of harmony.
Kiss me
Kiss me ’til I can feel my lips no longer
Kiss me like you’ve kissed none other
Kiss me ’til my whole body is shaking
Kiss me ’til my lips are aching
Kiss me ’til the sun rises
Kiss me in all your disguises
Kiss me as though it were the last time you could
Kiss me the way you would in the deepest, darkest wood
Kiss me ’til my mouth bruises
Kiss me as though you were pulling ruses
Kiss me ’til my southern lips are wet
Kiss me ’til our souls have met.
Image: © Eloïse Wenger
Author: Eloïse Wenger
I.
It’s on the bench seat of a coach that I emerge
Panting and looking around a green and red train
When suddenly I hear the grim sound of a dirge.
I raise my eyes and meet the shape of Kurt Cobain
He turns his head and from my mouth escapes a scream
For a huge hole over his ear displays his brain.
Shocked, he stares at me with his eyes blue as a stream.
Then jokingly he shrugs saying: ʻCome as you are!ʼ
Horror! It can’t be true! It can’t be but a dream!
ʻWell look at you!ʼ He tells me, taking his guitar.
At this moment, I witness the blood on my chest,
That vanishes ‘til there remains only a scar.
At this sight I cannot help but to feel oppressed.
I try to ask my fellow what all this meant,
But he doesn’t answer, seemingly not impressed.
On this pause the train leaves and we start our descent.
II.
It’s difficult to say how long we’ve been travelling.
The sky’s neither any colour nor truly dark
And he refuses to say where we are going.
But before losing any hope for a landmark,
The quiet wagon slows down and halts at a station
On a sign is written Crystal Palace Park.
Through my window I spot with mortification
On the platform half lying down on the cold ground
An old woman in a state of desperation.
She doesn’t move for it looks like her legs are bound
And as she keeps weeping like a beast you slaughter,
I see iron devouring her legs like a hound.
But now I recognize the face of the monster.
At least my father used to call this witch like this.
Next to me Kurt shouts with a smile: ʻHi, Mrs. Thatcher!ʼ
The train starts up, leaving her shade to the abyss.
III.
ʻIt’s strange to see we can pity someone like herʼ
I stay silent but he keeps talking to me:
ʻAre you afraid of the meaning of “forever”?ʼ
Existential questions are not my cup of tea.
But I can’t think about it for too long
As we stop again at a station called Horley.
After a while, I hear the echo of a song
I turn my head and notice on a bench a dude,
Whose success was a long time ago seen as strong.
But who has now for only listener solitude.
From his mouth I hear: ʻImagine there’s no heaven..ʼ
He is whispering it with such an attitude.
This man who was the voice of peace is now broken.
With his tired hands he cries covering his head
And from his nose his pair of glasses have fallen.
Why is this man there? This question fills me with dread.
I want to ask him so many things. I speak: ʻHey, sir..ʼ
But I feel the wheels beneath me moving ahead.
My wound starts bleeding again as my senses blur.
IV.
When I wake up again, my eyes are still bright red.
My fellow musician is looking for my gaze.
However, I prefer to ignore him instead.
The tears inside my mad being continue to raise
When suddenly I notice we have stopped again
Like petrified, I can’t pronounce a single phrase.
I choose to look after having counted to ten.
Haywards Heath… I think I know where we are going.
My thoughts are broken by the vision of two men.
One is holding a skull to which he is talking.
The other one, louder, is praying for mercy
His eyes are filled with terror as he is crying.
He yells: ʻMy God, my God, look not so fierce on me!ʼ
But it’s only when he shouts ʻCome not, Lucifer!ʼ
That the entire atmosphere becomes gloomy.
A second, maybe a year, then a great clamour.
V.
The noise is followed by the grinding of some gears.
Too late to fly, the train turns into a rocket.
Landscapes are running, whistles are drilling my ears.
If it goes on like that, I will need a bucket
Though my companion is not suffering like me,
Dreaming at the window, one hand in his pocket.
But the train eventually stops, setting me free.
The doors open and I violently rush outside
Where I now contemplate the beauty of a sea.
Appeased by the slow movement of the rising tide,
Small tears of joy drop and turn my vision to a blur.
After a while I notice Kurt has reached my side.
We stay still until I’ve wiped away the last tear.
ʻAre you happy with our final destination?ʼ
I nod seeing standing before us my dear Pier.
ʻBrighton..ʼ this word flies from my mouth like salvation.
ʻThe place I was born inʼ, ʻAnd where peace will find you.ʼ
His sentence is followed by new agitation.
ʻThere is so much my friend you still need to go throughʼ
Whistles fill my head again; the ground starts shaking.
ʻSee you Daniel!ʼ… ʻDaniel! Doctor! He made it through!ʼ
I feel the hand of my mum and hear her crying.
Tribute to Daniel McLean
Author: M.W.
please hold me,
i feel like moonlight, streaming through the gaps in your fingers,
light and glorious and not there at all.
like a figment of a stranger’s imagination,
i cannot grasp at myself.
She is lost
Out there in the fields
That go on forever never yielding
To the forests that used to cover everything.
She starts, she stops,
She walks without knowing
Why her eyes fill with tears
When she hears the larks sing.
About her pretty hair,
About her pretty eyes,
Crowned with thistles
She sings too
Sometimes.
Author: Anonymous
Piccadilly Pink
Let’s seek joy in the greyness
The pink flowers in the city
The touch of life in melancholy
Let’s change history
White men and their smugness
Their busts and what they express
Let’s find fiction
About balloons and butterflies
To alleviate our lives
Let’s dream till sunrise
Lulled by love and wine addiction
Forget about the restriction
Jail Tower
Jail Tower
Deep blue sky walls
But I can’t see the sky
Neither a single flower
Welcome to one of London’s students’ halls
Don’t be shy, come by!
Explore this amazing place
Which is my space
Meet the grey squirrels and black cats
Which wander around the flats
And dive into the bins
Roaming little dark djinns
Let’s go now to my cell
Where floats a musty smell
I open the window to get fresh air
A scent of smoke or weed climbs to me
Thanks to the lower smoker or junky
Alone in my costly 11 square metres
Trying to find light in this darkness
To push those frail heaters
To overcome my loneliness
I hear noises at night
Phone calls, hair dryer, but no one in sight
I feel like I live with ghosts
Dirty and noisy hosts
Don’t know what “to clean” means
Those porcine teens
When I can I escape
Go to nicer landscapes
Take the old Tube lines
Far away from these swines
I flee to the city
Where I enjoy university
Museums, restaurants and shows
And inside my heart, joy flows
But at night I need to come back
To my dear bivouac
In the last minutes of the Tube I get ready
Warm my ankles up
Hide my bosom under my shawl
Hope to not see a soul
And I get up
Breathe deep and exit through the night
Since then, I always made it without a fight
I’ll soon be home
In my beautiful Swiss dome
I’ll miss the musicals, cream teas, salsa, and my girls,
I really found some pearls
But I’ll smile at the airport
Cause I’ll be out of S****** Court!
Image: © “File:Chest.png” by No machine-readable author provided. Chikumaya assumed (based on copyright claims). is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, Source
Author: Sabine Weyermann
Autumn is installed,
I feel it in my lungs,
burning bronchi.
You don’t talk.
I’m heavily “dysregulated”, as they say,
stomach in knots, no more of this sweet,
fuzzy sensation of
honeyed warm milk I have
fostered in my belly, precious secret.
Your name, two comforting syllables,
or three, or four,
that I’ve known all my life,
slapping in the wind like
a mighty Greek standard, in several languages.
I repeat it like I could summon you,
and then whisper “Fuck you!”, of course meaning
something else, as if you were the culprit,
and not the innocent target of a disaster
that is mine, and mine only,
bursting, all guns blazing,
from my Amygdala.
Or is it?
Am I a burden?
sheltering your feelings, trying
to beat mine back into myself,
so tired of being the freakin’
cool girl, faking it.
As if I wasn’t fucking triggered.
When in fact I’m here, and all over your silence,
wide open to you, but biting my lips,
because your words
could rip my body apart,
not knowing if I have to let you go,
for my bloody own sake,
or to wait, wait, ignoring the urgency
to deliver that,
“I have so much of you in my heart”.
Image: © Annegret Kammer, “Misty mornings at the lake”, Unsplash Licence, Source
Author: H.S
the town
the year Camille died
had the worst flood of the decade for the third year in a row
there was a black out for three days
I was in Uni at the time
and saw my childhood parks drown away
on the internet.
she was the same age as me
we used to tell each-other our dreams
one day she told me:
“The Lake,
I went thinking I saw someone drown,
but at the bottom I was knocked prone
and crushed by pressure.”
the day she died
she bolted upright in her bed
looked at the lake through the window
wide-eyed
“I swam out”
she said
and died.
Author: Anonymous
Everything’s dying
And seems to mingle with the melancholy of my sweet soul.
In the depth of despair,
That the scenery captures –
I feel comforted by the found friend.
I am a character
In the Autumn performance.
Image: © tedeytan, “Gender Neutral Bathroom Sign Baby Wale Restaurant DC”, CC BY-SA 2.0, source.
Author: Anonymous
Having a vulva is no easy thing.
Your urethra is close,
No direction to bring,
Too skinny are the clothes,
It’s not easy to wing.
*For the purpose of this poem, this term describes people with a vulva. The author sends love and appreciation to all people with a vulva who aren’t girls and all people who are girls and don’t have a vulva. The author hopes to see more gender-neutral bathrooms in the future.