Patience

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”.

The Town And The Lake Prologue

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.

Autumn

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.

Ode to Peeing Girls*

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.

from The Truth

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

Worms

Rainy Road

Image: © “Rainy Road” by Aelle (CC BY-NC 2.0.)

Author: Katharina Schwarck

“Worms” is a response to Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie’s ecopoetry that I wrote for a class on ecopoetics in Spring 2020. It is mostly inspired by her poem “The Spider” which struck me because it renders its true value to a spider, a generally strongly disliked being. It addresses the spider’s importance in the animal kingdom and humans’ unjust aversion against the arachnid (Jamie, 175). “Worms” follows the same dynamic of calling out wrongful antipathy and disgust. The piece deals with a young girl who, as opposed to her peers, is not repulsed by the worms but rather considers them her friends, more so than her fellow humans. I chose to play with pronouns; I employ several occurrences of “they” and “she”. On one hand, this opposes the young girl and her peers, from whom she feels distant. On the other hand, “they” is used for both worms and humans, eliminating their difference and bringing them onto the same level. The girl picks up the worms and tries to protect them, while the other children cry of disgust. She is angry. They step on the worms for the sole reason of being greater in size. She calls them out. The fifth stanza of the first visual shape is a reference to WB Yeats’ Chambermaid songs, the first one of which compares a human being to a worm

God’s love has hidden him
Out of all harm,
Pleasure has made him
Weak as a worm. (Yeats, 307)

I have reversed the simile in the last line and made mankind itself the vehicle of the trope. Humans do not become as weak as worms: for their contempt, they become as weak as themselves. The sixth stanza alludes to Goethe’s “Heidenröslein”, a metaphor for rejected love. A young boy espies a red rose on a heath and finds her so beautiful as to break her. The rose stings him in return, in vain, because she remains, however, broken (Goethe, 307). I find this image oh so representative of many plant and animal deaths, be it roses or bees or ants. The defence mechanism does not suffice against humans who are much more sizable than their fellow species. Consequently, humans need to take even more precautions to recognise and sustain other beings. I have juxtaposed the worms and the heathrose by making my poem “shud” the flower’s pain, giving the worms strength and protecting them from heathrose’s fate. The second visual worm takes the poem back from Goethe’s time to modern day. The worms still come out in rain, expecting no harm. In this stanza, a car kills the annelids, which echoes with Jamie’s “Frogs” (Jamie, 133). I have inserted internal rhymes in these lines; “flood”, “up”, “guts”. They contain plosive sounds which highlight the violence of the content dealt with in the stanza. This intention of drawing in one’s mind mirrors human blindness towards ecological or ethical issues. They are unmistakable, and yet, humanity often fails to pay attention to them. In the last stanza of the poem, the young girl is grown up. To mark this change, I have changed the preposition preceding the pronoun “as she” into “when she”. She still sees the worms, her old friends, and when her eyes meet their suffering, she still cries out.


Works cited:
– Goethe, Johann W. v. “Heidenröslein”. Goethe’s Schriften: Achter Band, Georg Johann Göschen, 1789, pp.105-106
– Jamie, Kathleen. Selected Poems, Picador, 2018
– Yeats, William B. “The Chambermaid’s First Song”. The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition, Simon and Schuster, 1997, p.307

Star-crossed Flowers

daffodil muse

Image: © ELLE

Author: ELLE

Oh, to be born a daffodil,
An emerging seed of sundust
Waking from a numbing sleep
Reaching, slowly, the promises of the surface
Gently crackling the thin iced reminiscence of a silent winter.

The silky honey-coloured petals
Gracefully introducing the son of Céphise
To the distant sound of foreseen decay
For Narcissus’ reflection can only last for so long
Under the sky of spring.

*

Oh, to grow under the name of a rose,
Cursed symbol of serendipity;
Bound to hear the countless selfish soliloquies
Premises to dissatisfied infatuation.
Forced to see the solitude glowing in eyes that once knew love.

Does dusk know that dawn exists?
For the rose surely is unaware of the adversity of winter
And the daffodil is ignorant of the pain of thorns
And yet, –

Instructions on how to forget me

Author: Mel A. Riverwood

Some people never hear the silence talk.

But to me, it screams, with every tick of the clock,

It says I will die, though I already know,

And tells me someday I won’t feel anymore;

What could that feel like, to not feel?

Do the dead still live?

I know I am young, I should not have such thoughts,

‘Forget, forget,’ they say, ‘forget time and laugh!’

But I feel death, and her hands are so cold;

They freeze all my dreams and everything I long for

And hold in their palms all the fear that I hold.

I wish to see spring and hear birdsong forevermore;

But the taste of the end is ever so near,

So I beg of you, blue and green mother, don’t let me disappear.

How I wish the whole world sang my humble refrain;

I knew not that hope came with such shattering pain.

I would give it all, but my words, just for a little more

Time and to live and live and live and live,

And encore;

Forevermore.

I am selfish and lonely, I am childish and afraid;

I would watch the world fade if it meant that I stayed.

Please, someone tell me, just tell me, where do we go?

Where do we go?

Where do we go?

WHERE DO WE GO?

Where do we go once we feel no more?

What are we then? How do we exist?

Please, someone tell me we have much more than this.

I will always know this fear that steals my thin breath,

But begging time for mercy will not work on death.

So please, remember me, for as long as you can,

But if the world is to forget, then let me fade as I am:

When my ink-stained fingers will be writing no more,

Bury me in a forest and bury me on the shore;

For I cannot die where I cannot hear the sea,

And I cannot live where the blackbirds don’t sing.

But when you inearth me, please keep my hair

And burn it, then scatter it in the air.

So with my body to soil and water, and my locks through fire to wind,

I may finally be everything.

‘What of thy mind?’ you may ask;

‘For her,’ say I, ‘you have no task.

Wake up with the sun and listen to the birds,

Sing with the rivers and read all my words.

Then you will know her, remember her,

And that is all that I long for.’

I still wish I could stay just a little bit longer.

But I feel that my death has started to saunter;

She will take her time, as I will take mine,

As two sides of a coin that will be paid to time.

And when we will meet, I know my fear won’t have faded,

But I’ll kiss my death with all the love I’ll have created.

This is my wish. Farewell, my friend;

I may be years in advance, or this may be the end.

And when you, too, will be stepping in the darkest light,

Come find me “where the dreamers dream and the others go to die.” 1


from the song Bye Bye by Low Roar, which has helped a lot in the writing of this poem.

anchored heart

Two people kissing

Image: © Andreia Abreu Remigio

Author: Andreia Abreu Remígio

I was healing my drought the night your glance got me drunk.

My sky had been a hue of black like a departing storm,

Months of digested desensibilization had me numb and sunk.

But you anchored my heart – and got me dry and warm.

Through sleep’s heavy throb… we now sculpt each other’s effigy

Beneath the gothic peachy light, to swallow me whole is your quest;

As for my hell-worthy purpose and heavenly urgency

Is to brace your beautiful body’s weight on my chest.

The stars I longed for when I was lost at sea, I now see

Glowing in your eyes. Mourning, I tremble and shiver

But not of icy cold weather – for I am carefree!

While certain that I will be holding you as rushes in the river.

Suddenly, my soft tugged sobs that rock our playground

Drown us of worries. Still, you anchor my heart,

And word by word the sorrows go down the drain.

The poets’ invisible string yet holds us bound –

Be assured – whatever the distance forcing us apart.

We’ll kiss the crashing waves away when we meet again.

Blackbird

Author: Rodrigo Koller

there’s a blackbird at my window

that wants to get in

but the glass is too thick for him.

there’s a blackbird at my window

that wants to get in,

spreading its wings and screaming my name,

demanding I let him in

but the monsters inside are too cruel for him.

I tell him

Stay out,

don’t you wanna live

and die at war under the sun?

there’s a blackbird at my window

that keeps crashing its beak against my heart

hoping to crack it one day

but I’m too tough for him.

I tell him

Do you wanna tear me up?

tear my insides out for the world to see?

I won’t let you get in

I will just stay at your form until you die

and leave your body there

so no bird comes to scar me again.

but at night sometimes

when he can’t no more

he sings a little,

and it’s enough to pierce the glass

and make me sob a little.

and I forget the walls I’ve made

so women don’t see my heart,

and there I am again

my insides torn apart,

my soul singing and bleeding.

Marina’s poems

Image: ‘Champagne’ © Sam Howitz. – CC BY 2.0 licence

Author: Marina Silietti

Peace

I was spattered with your lies echoing in my dreams
I felt hopeless, wrecked by the winds that took all of my tears
My bones cracked wondrously on your deceiving skin
My fears were painted in hell and I never saw it coming

My mind shattered slowly as you stood there
Sinking my thoughts and I deemed rugged revenge
I waded out brutally into your brokenness
And your ocean blue eyes bathed in knowingness

You put in the bag the last piece of me
Sidestepping my dismantled wounds
Wandering with your desolate dishonesty
While I was still in the woods

I laid there on the cold reddened ground
Claiming the mercy of the full moon
Asking for the mortality of our bound
While she lighted the inky room

And in the death of my soul, I found peace

Champagne Taste

I swallow your glance like pouring water
And you wreck my fears like golden cure
It’s delicate how you’re spinning in my brain
It’s untamed how you’re shining despite the pain

The champagne drops falling onto our faces is the only remedy
The brightest nights sparkling between the dark is our lightened legacy
So, I’d dare to hold your hand in the crowded room
Are they noticing how I pray for your body to bloom

This song isn’t made for the mighty stars
I’ll ask you to put its melody over a memory you miss
And I hope you’ll choose the day you kissed my lips
Do you remember how you squeezed my necklace around your sliver scars

There are bubbles stuck on your skin, darling
Even the champers samples like your eyes
I’d kill to taste your heart just for once
And I’ll claim my feelings for your mind

Until the end of the night

To A Lost Love

Image: Grimshaw Atkinson, A Moonlit Evening, 1880 ©️ Coleccion Carmen Thyssen

Author: Roxane Kokka

Listen to the dark, fallen leaves as they whisper
In a tremulous chant that I have lost a love
Of which I could not place another soul above.
As in the hollow streets of sorrow I linger,
In the burning ashes of regret I wonder
Of the alternative actions I avoided
And of enigmatic passions I distorted,
Out of fear, out of anguish, out of bitter
Dread of something new. As the thoughts of solitude
Sting my knowledge of that which I could not cherish,
And all my senses, one by one, slowly perish,
I drift in the perpetual silence ensued.

My Grandma’s Garden

Image: ©️ Patrick Didisheim

Author: Leah Didisheim

The Nature in my grandma’s Garden always amazed me
There is this sense of Family
That you find in the grass, and in the flowers
And in the trees and in the hours

You arrive at the Gate
You hear the rocks crack under the wheels
The trees are still there
The walnuts are still left lifeless on the ground

In the summertime, you do not take the main door
You turn around the House
And smile at the pool on your right

You look at the hole that the tree left
He seems to say « I was the King here once »
And you turn again, and walk up the stairs.

Ode to an Oak

The Oak

Image: © Eloïse Wenger

Author: Eloïse Wenger

1.
When the shadows of Evening will descend
The Sky and its colours will fade and turn
Revealing a painting of a new blend
In which the pink and red will start to burn.

2.
Then I will leave my house and close my door.
Passing the gate and the luminous church
I will go to the Forest and explore
the woods of fir, maple, willow and birch.

3.
I will see you waving your leaves at me,
Your trunk rending the Sky and newborn Stars.
“Hello my dearest friend.. Mon cher ami!”
For your vision makes me forget my scars.

4.
You must have been the witness of so much:
The seasons passing, your branches growing
All your memories flow in me at your touch
And your embrace makes me think I am flying

5.
Then I follow the path until I see
The Woods glooming at the top of the Hill,
Lythe Lane stopping in sight of the first tree,
A place where all the people remain still.

6.
There I sit on the Bench[1]. It is written:
“Lest we forget.” Words of a mum. Jenny..
Your son is gone with the flags of Britain.
Where is he now? Here? Or in that country?

7.
There must be the very same Bench out there,
With the words of another mum on it.
The language is difficult to compare,
Not the Loss that they will never admit.

8.
Watching humans condemned to endless grief
I feel my hopes are coming to an end
And at the sight of a first falling leaf
The fear of losing you my dearest friend..


[1] This Bench up Lythe Lane is dedicated to the memory of Richard, the son of Jenny, one of my neighbours, who lost his life in 2010 during his service in the Marines in Afghanistan.

Andrea’s poems

Author: Andrea Karlmann

Open in silence 

When it came to me,
Bit by bit,
It was a piece.
A fragmented piece.

A series of sounds,
Fragrant and raspy.

Just a mutter
At first.

Then a touch
Of motherly warmth.

Walking into a room

A leaf had landed on the windowsill,
So, I tossed it out.
A strange intrusion.
Just a leaf.
No one was to blame.
Just the wind.

Moved 

Enthused, unready for sense,
Or the redolence of
Affection,
Infused with motion,
Passions set the pendulum in swing,
Turns and turns,
Ambrosia’s ash,
Ebbing, bending and broken.

Away anathema.