Categories
2022 - Spring

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.

Categories
2022 - Spring

Ode to an 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.

Categories
2022 - Spring

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.

Categories
2022 - Spring

The Limb of Life

Image: ©️ Frederica Petriglieri & Kiljan Paris

Authors: Frederica Petriglieri & Kiljan Paris

Nothingness was eternal. Without pain or pleasure neither anger nor calm. It was the lack of everything, the erring of lost consciousness of those who weren’t aware of their existence.
Floating in infinity among stardust and lights. Carrying the emptiness of the universe.
All souls were one and one soul was all.

How am I supposed to remember our matterless past?
While I’m floating tenderly in Charon’s boat.
Why does my memory of the universe fade away?
For the first time of my ethereal wonderings
I’m forgetting everything.

The darkness starts to weigh over me.
The Acheron! Am I drowning?
Wasn’t I destined to cross it?
Sudden fears grow in my being.

As I’m sinking deeper in unknown matter
Away for my lost embarkation
The fluid is tickling my lips
An instinctive sensation.

The pressure grows and grows
My entire being is surrendered by warmth
The feeling of weight accentuates
Where am I?
I did not cross the stream where everything ends
So has it just started?

All of a sudden my hands grab a soft rope.
I let them go freely along it
But they’re ending touching a moving wall
Is it possible? In all the darkness around, am I in a defined space?
For all I know now I’m trapped and alone.

My consciousness is trembling
The surrounding moves again and again
The wall is forever dancing
I’m trying everything to reassure myself,
When, out of my touch
Something comes directly through my head.
Wonderful hot air, smelly yet irresistible.
The Acheron smells nice!

-No wait!
I’m not in the river anymore
So where does this come from?
Isn’t hell supposed to be filled by flame and toxic gas
And that all the unliving are suffocating for eternity?
So why does all I breathe taste unrealistically familiar?

All flavors flourish within me.
The more I feel, the more I forget.
Senses of deeper knowledge
Are drifting me away from all that I know.

I start to hear my own symphony.
My heartbeat settle the rhythm
While the pond over me is shaking
I thought the underworld bears two rivers
But my ears hears billions
From the depth of darkness
The songs of their endless streams
It is drifting me back to a sense of unity
For all the rivers are joining in one.

The tune is connecting me to everything
To all that is over me. I can feel it.
So why does my rhythm sound different
From all the rivers symphony?
-Am I not alone?

Far distant sounds make the wall trembling
Soft and insistent
Decided yet subtle
As pretty whining in the darkness
-Maybe it’s not that hard in the underworld
It must be the voices from those who successfully passed away.

But I’m still running in circles.
And my cell is getting smaller.
-Has my judgment arrived yet?
Am I a damned soul trapped in itself
Destined to question for eternity?

-LET ME OUT!!
I push the wall and pull the rope with all strength.
The voices answer me back:
“AHHHHHH”
“AMORE CALMATI”

I’ve no clue of what that means but surprised as I am
All the muscles within me freeze.
“HAHAH, GRAZIE”
Who the hell is talking?

To satisfy my curiosity
And also because it was itching me
I open one eye to glimpse beyond the fence.
Soft lights spread in my small nest.
But enough to see the whole of me
My arms, hands, feet and toes.

From darkness comes shadow.
On top of that I’m hearing voices.
I’m starting to be crazy for sure.
I need to act, to move and get out.

I’m taking again the rope with both hands
My feet are pushing in every corner of my prison
I hear the same voice shouting but now I’m not stopping
Voices become louder and louder.
But I continue to push.
I’m banging my head through the wall.

I’m sure it’s moving and I can pass through.
-That’s it! I found a fissure where the light breaks.
Even if I suddenly doubt about following the light at the end of the tunnel.
I know it’s the only way.

It’s as if the wall wanted me out.
Every now and then the tunnel squeezes me and pushes me forward.
“LET’S GO PUSH”
Well I can’t do better and my head is stuck.
“HAHAHA”

I look up again and the light blinds me.
I’m tired, my body aching everywhere and my muscles start to fail on me
“GO GO COME ON”
As I’m fainting, the ground under me collapses.
My lungs are exploding as I’m trying to breathe.

But it hurts, I’m suffocating
Yet the boundaries around me are gone…

I’m floating amongst the giant hands of the underworld
So I did cross the Styx and Acheron after all!
For I’m selfless, defenseless and vulnerable.
In the arms of two titans who sing lullabies.

I know nothing anymore.

Categories
2022 - Spring

Reasons to Postpone Suicide

Author: D. K.

The smell of grass
The smell of gasoline
The smell of garlic cooking with just a touch of olive oil and herbs 

Tuna sandwiches
The change of seasons in every breath I take
Smoking cigarettes in winter while your whole body freezes in pain and coldness
Smoking cigarettes in the warm and sunny beach after a long swim in the ocean
Smoking cigarettes anytime 

The ocean
Its salty taste, the aggressiveness that gets in your eyes, your nose, your skin 

Rainbows
Trees
Birds, how they walk
It’ll always make me smile
But also dogs, yes
Dogs

Driving in the city, at night
Thunder when in bed
Sex
Radiohead songs
How they understand me
The fact that it could always be worse

My sick father
My dead mom
Movies
Terrence Malick’s existential dread that is present in each of his works

Paris
Oh, and Spain
Yes
Gregorian Chants
Flamenco
The hope that I will once understand the lack of meaning and fulfillment in my existence
Tolstoy and Dostoevsky books
Poetry, any kind, any form but poetry 

Van Gogh, O’Keefe and Hooper paintings
The hope that one day I will taste the lips of that blonde girl on the 9h37 metro 
Mozart’s Requiem In D Minor K.626
Italian girls
The fact that I will end up dying anyway 

It’s too expensive
Too messy
Too lame
Too frightening

I still haven’t brushed my teeth 

Yes
Those are fine reasons
Today?
No, not today
Tomorrow?
Tomorrow is another day
And I, and the morning light, we will change

Categories
2022 - Spring

Spells

Image: ©️ Andres Stadelmann

Author: Andres Stadelmann

Spells
Toppled by storms
And strands
Born to brush a little with your feet
Sometimes with your hands
But never with your eyes

Sheets, smells
You kick with your feet
And you reach for those hands
But the touch is too far to keep away from those 


Those voices I hear
They can breathe
And sometimes think
And often drift
Into that land of dreams

But when my hands rejoin
To something offscreen
And try and stay awake
By that touch of fatigue
And I try and stay awake
Thinking of those brave, brave men
And the spikes in the bush
And the fire of that dream
Thinking clean
Thinking clean
A touch of a spleen

And those souls lost in paradise
How shall I think of thee
And that touch oh so dry
And that mouth oh so still
Only dreaming
Only dreaming
To that still of a hill

But when I try, when I try
When I try
To dream far
Just a foot
Just a touch
Of that fiery hill

Please
Please
Take me

Categories
2022 - Spring

Sonnets to my Rodina

Image: ‘Protests in Belarus’ © Ang Bob.

Author: Nadia K. Bauer

I.
Когда увижу я —
The silver portal that you lock every night
With the same rusty nail
Olga laughing and you rolling your eyes
Когда почувствую я —
The humid moist the tall pinewoods
CAST alongside their shadows — on the little dachas
The smell of yellowed newspapers burning in the pechka
Will I ever UNsee —
The marks of JAIL on his smudged face
Her mother’s disappearance
The firebombs they threw just across the street,
Will I ever — on the earth of my liberated Rodina —
STAND again.

II.
Hold me —
Rodina moya
Give me SILU to watch you derive from under my feet.
Do not let go of your endless plains and of your
clear birch groves — of your teethless babushkas
who will keep — selling the same juicy blueberries
by the roadside — until I can embrace you again.
Let the shadows of the gaol bars slowly wash off his face.
Give her the strength to walk on our lines without me
— give her the strength to walk. Дай им more years —
rock them until I can take them in my arms from you.
To me, give надежду to believe
That I will feel my bare feet on your
WET and FREE earth again.

Categories
2022 - Spring

Landscapes – Guillaume’s poems

Image: ©️ Guillaume Amstutz

Author: Guillaume Amstutz

Rosy Dawn

A blinding light floods the sky
Stretches from the soil to mountain high
Dyes the land in the sweetest tones
Nourishes the leaves, brightens the stones
The droplets that hung in the air
Now shine bright, pink and fair
The world is a prism bathed in light
Reflecting life, banishing night.

The World in Winter

The mountains are like the earth’s teeth
hungering for a dawn after a long, long night
and the frost takes hold in this barren heath
a potter’s field covered in white

The falling flakes are the cold ashes
of a fire that bright burns no more
on the meadow the snow crashes
burying deep the earth’s ardor

Under the rooftops covered in white
a quiet maze of vacant halls
bathed dimly in faint daylight
when in slumber the pale sun falls
and as the wind howls over the world
whittling the trees with its whistling
carving the rocks with runes all twirled
crushing the hopes and their kindling
a bitter cold devours the groves
turning the wood into splinters
while a waning moon rises up above
silent witness of the winter

The Shattered City

An organism of steel and concrete
spreads like a disease, far out into darkness
with skeletons adorning the streets
waiting for light to shine on the nameless

The dying stars flicker only dimly
as the towers are circled by haze
the ghosts are roaming limply
in this collapsed and dusty maze

Under the ground, hopes are buried
old love letters in the streets scattered
and hate letters in the chimneys burned
down to ashes, by winds carried

Broken wings caught in cobwebs
clipped apart by vicious hands
far below, the water ebbs
and crashes on the cliffs and sands

But far above, a faint glimmer
beyond the forest and the hills
a distant hope that still lingers
before diving in the landfills

Nightfall

It expands to the furthest corners
All the sorrows, the joy, the songs it covers
The darkness progresses, and soils, and gathers
But through the tears in its skin, the light shimmers

Categories
2021 - Winter

At Doorstep

Image: ©️ Gislain

Author: Gislain

Standing eyes to eyes

Hooked fingers

Tension that rises

Hugging strangers

With heart that cries

Brain off – just lovers

Arms hang on thee

Keeping tight the other

Close to the body

Closer than ever

Closer they could be

Harder they have ever

Heart pulsing the pressure

Beating out the time

For a song or a measure

For a poem or a rhyme

To get a last taste of pleasure

Of an instant so sublime

Don’t know what to feel

Apart the heartache 

Not made out of steel

And can easily break

Not afraid to leave for real

Just afraid to stay for fake

Categories
2021 - Winter

A Madwoman’s Saudade

Image: © Andreia Abreu Remigio

Author: Andreia Abreu Remigio

To Robim, the dog

I.

“Sum total we were seven kids with me,

One brother vanished, one’s son turned the gun.

My sisters? Jealous of what I could be,

How close I would be flying to the sun.

I took my talent to the capital,

Whence I could almost get to the New World.

The lessons I learned were all tangible.

“Can you please tell me what are my words worth?”

I asked them, worried, waiting for my call,

I had the life that I’d dreamed of at last.

Above the landmarks I could smell the salt,

And honestly, I thought the worst was past.

My waves met his coastline by accident –

He got my missing piece of innocence.

II.

My hand he asked the man who put me here.

Our love was like two burning flames combined.

My freezing hands could hold his pain, my dear.

So magical like folklore was his mind.

When he would let his heavy eyelids close,

I’d polish plates as hard as a devout.

And he would not let anyone oppose…

His lips would make any seeds and sweet peas sprout.

Believed in him like in my childhood’s dream.

I’d swing and sway softly in my chest.

Remember times when he would glow and gleam,

There was no reason to go and get dressed.

We tried to overlook the tears, truth was

The stasis amplified each of our flaws.

III.

And he went looking for another one,

As if I were somehow wasting honour.

Eventually I guess he found some

Fragment in bottles. My once bright colours

Are now eclipsed… I’d keep doing the laundry

Like Groundhog Day, and everything was gauche

In my life as he was out the country.

Through my curses and cries unharmed he goes

And goes. I had the shiniest voice, now

It’s rusting. Our coming of age has come

And burned out. You know the love story died out –

So what is this poem for anyway, um?”

Absentminded I hear “Happy birthday

By the way! You should call more!” I hang up.

Categories
2021 - Winter

lonely siren’s song

Image: “Cliff of Moher en profundidad” ©️ gpoo. SourceCC License.

Author: Mel A. Riverwood

Oh dear when I say that I’m ready to grow older
And when I trace kisses on the back of your shoulder,
Know that in my tongue it means ‘love, love, love’

To build a home from a word, one pain,
And so have a roof to keep out the rain
And stand in its ruins when the wrath of our joy will come from above.

			(If one day I could find that your hand fits in mine,
			On the isle of wonder, washed up by the tide,
			Then no deed nor sin shall have a meaning I know
			And there’s no way in hell that I will let you go.)

But still to this day I find my hands empty,
No crown on my head, and no “my fair lady”
My memories are one lonely memorabilia;
			(but no love comes from a pen,)

Oh I’m broken in lacheism,
Waiting in ellipsism,
I’m as mad as Ophelia.
			(so drown me then.)

The wind and the ocean speak in my tongue
And Death tries to lure me, to love her with song;
On this cliff I scream and if still no one comes I’m afraid I will fall.
			(and if we are to be phantoms, let our shrouds be paper-thin;)

And if no heart can find in mine a twin,
Let frost cover all of my loveless skin.
It seems that my fate was to be the loneliest monster of all.
			(but promise me one thing, dear.)

Let me haunt nightly shores
Where the dark water roars,
And may mariners cover their ears,
Let them grip their boat’s railing in fear

And whisper “don’t heed the call!
Let her cry in the squall,
She’s the loneliest siren of all.”
			
			(please tell me you 
						are the one 
								who shall 
										kill me.)
Categories
2021 - Winter

Starry Love

Image: © Muhammed Salah 

Author: Nadia Aden

Black and white drawing of a couple holding each other

I wish I could embrace the universe,

I wish I could feel his cold warmth,

I wish I could know all of his secrets,

But even if I can see him every night,

He’s always moving away from me every morning,

I think about him all the time,

His stunning eyes,

Sparkling like a billion of stars,

His smile, as colorful as nebulas,

His majestic body, as colossal as galaxies,

I wish we could just be together,

Our attraction is powerful as gravity,

But our love is constantly in expansion,

So we will never reach each other.

Categories
2021 - Winter

4:15

Image: © Alicia Metcalf

Author: Alicia Metcalf

My Mum
used to cut apples in quarters
after school
when we were kids.
- it was the ground rule in order to eat chocolate biscuits.

My Mum had many ground rules
such as
-always telling the truth
(except when it is about hitchhiking during summer)
-always sing Abba songs out of tune
-never disturbing a mother who is reading

Now that I am older
I often think about these apple quarters
cut and shared with love

and I do myself cut them that way now
and I do hitchhike with strangers and lie to you about it
but I also give you books
and I write you poems

Categories
2021 - Winter

Sylvie Di Vito’s poems

Images: © Sylvie Di Vito

Author: Sylvie Di Vito

 
That Other Place


How strange it is…
I don't recall 
Which was the path
To this strange place
I look around 
What could it be
A piece of hell? 
A piece of grace?

In here the sun 
Reflects the moons
And kites fly high 
Though there's no wind
Through gates once locked 
Now gaping doors
I watch the sages
become fools!

I have met people 
in this place
That I was most 
happy to see
For I'd have sworn
Hand on my heart
Long time ago
Had ceased to be 

Here Love and Fear 
Are King and Queen
And all their children 
All night long
Enjoy the game 
Of harlequin

How odd to lie
Where deceit rules
Where even killed 
I never die!

But O you dreamer 
Don't you see
How this mirror
-Secretly-
Distorted 
Every bit 
Of your 
Rea-
-li-
-ty?
Nature's Song

… And every day, we see her walk these ways;
A ghostly shade, despite the wind or rain…
She talks, she screams, she weeps and then she prays;
We, silent, hear her endless same refrain.
We do our best to calm her dreadful fears…
-Though, sadly, helpless feel- and this is why,
With tender leaves I catch her bitter tears
And with our heart we sing a lullaby.
As she, against me, leans through her despair,
The river swells her voice in gentle shush
The wind and I intone a joyful air:
Her pain by rustling branches try to hush
… And every day a smile we hope to see
Her sorrow yet too heavy seems to be…
Categories
2021 - Winter

Andres’ Poems

Image: ©️ Andres Stadelmann

Author: Andres Stadelmann

Shampoo

I spent several hours looking at that door
In silence
My mind racing in every direction, but my body still.
Waiting, hoping
It cried out to the silence, begging it to respond
Instead it lingered, there, by the door
An old memory of a long-forgotten friend
The door responded in its stead
Alive—it shook and cracked and gaped its wide and loud mouth
Whispering, slow at first, then whistling ever louder until its scream, cut
   by the sudden grasp of the
handle, rang my eardrums.
The intruder, not yet half a man, wore that kind of awkward expression
   meant to display a weak show of
embarrassment all while betraying the narcissistic pride lying
   underneath
The decisive ones were the ones who played with the silence
Those that opened and closed the door
Those who let it rattle unabated, begging for attention
Without knowing, me, sitting alone in that silence was the biggest
   offering I could have made
The silence meant everything all of a sudden.
And I, as a part of it, took greater meaning as well
There was no greater way of loving her, than sitting alone in that
   silence
And so it would take off,
whispering tentatively to the floorboards,
swaying gently in the rafters,
leaning by the entrance,
and I with it, transfixed, and yet in constant motion
There are those who go to the batting cage and crack their bats until
   the silence overtakes them all, and
there are those who cower in fear in the company of endless and
   mindless chatter
But the silence persists nonetheless, molded by your heart in its barely
   motionless chambers
It’s so loud you can hear it, pounding in your ears and extending to they
   very end of all your extremities
It’s so soft that to hear it you have to listen very carefully
To truly hear it
In that silence I cried.
Silent teardrops filled with noise
That rolled off my face into the awaited abyss.
And as my still body began to move
It called out my name

Tío

Oh Dani did I cry for you
Such eyes I had not seen

Memory does strange things to time
Of that blurred still when you attempted to cross the world in an instant
   on your broom (you must miss
hurting your knees now)
Sportive drive pick-ups
A crack in exchange for a smile
The virgin hairs on your cheekbones
But your final words
Impressed
Seem a lifetime away
I look at my garden
Grown over with weeds
And I’m aching with that loss
To put dirt on my hands
Of toiling to cultivate, bleeding and sore
With a seed of trust
Some good to invest
And you’re still running on that beach

If only I could fill pages
As quickly as I spilt tears

C’è

Anna you were beautiful
Like everything on that day
And you made that greeting, to me
And that smile
And your profile picture
That day I realized that you don’t go to a wedding alone as a bride,
   for the groom
But as a friend, daughter, sister, sister-in-law, aunt, niece, child, woman
And all this was true
For that secure hand
For those enchanted voices
And for the gaze of the one who stood beside you
It would be trite to call it love
Almost reductive
But for a glance
That outside in that stable someone cultivated for the first time
Yesterday you witnessed
And today
I expect nothing else

Lucie

Remember when I said I was alone?
That happened again today
And when I was sitting there,
Just looking at my screen
I thought

When I consider that
A million miles away
Someone visiting a foreign country
Reminiscing about long lost friends
I find myself on a train
Looking out the window

A memory of some time
Passed with people
Whose names and faces I recollect
But who was I?
And why should I recall?

When not thinking
But only feeling
That one beat
Calls my name

I wait

And close my eyes
Or perhaps I close my eyes and wait

But regardless


I go back to sleep