FIVE POEMS BY SONALI MAJUMDAR - WITH A BEAUTIFUL ONE ON AUTISM, "HAPPY EYES."

Sonali Majumdar, an IT Management professional and occasional poet, currently lives in Dallas, Texas, U.S.A. A keen observer of life, she loves to pen down moments, memories, dreams, desires, illusions and reality as perceived by her in the journey of her life. Her poems have been published in online literary groups and resources such as Spillwods.com, Aatish 2 as an winning entry from "On Fire Cultural Movement",  e-zines such as "Learning & Creativity-Silhouette Literature & Cinema", "Diff Truths", various prestigious literary groups such as "Kaafiya", "The Significant League", "Kubili Cafe - The home of poetic beans", and so on. With her golden dust of imagination, she desires to paint a picture that will reach the hearts of humanity, through her wildly woven, magically mysterious touch. 

1.
Happy Eyes

When I look at those twinkling eyes
I just know where happiness lies
It’s not what you see or run for
It lies within you, the elixir of life

Achievements and University degrees
Corporate ladders and celebrities
Competition and rat races
Fashionistas caked up with makeup on faces
Games of jealousy
Money and winning spree
Oh yeah! It’s all for only one thing
Pursuits of Happiness
Is what brings us all in

But can you hold on to it?
Can you store it?
And never let it slip?

Material gains, brilliant brains
No one knows what lies ahead
In a fraction of a second
Do you know what can change?

Wealth goes down the drain
Hard times take away the fame
Only one thing remains

Happiness,
A different kind perhaps
Even in sadness, a certain happiness can prevail
Happiness
That is independent of this game
Happiness
That comes from inner peace and reigns
Happiness
Wrapped in love, full of bliss
Happiness
That isn’t artificially flavored and cheap

Some strive for it
Years of patience and meditation
Some gain it with seasons
Wisdom and reasons

But blessed are those eyes
They are just childlike
They are just born different
But then, rare gems are always different
They sparkle happiness
From every angle!

© Sonali Majumdar

* Author's Notes:  This poem is dedicated to the happily blessed people, the saintly ones, and wise ones and then those that are born different, especially, those children in the Autism spectrum, who are away from everything materialistic in nature - money, power, name, and fame and yet so happy that it’s just amazing!

2. 

Motherhood

Who would I be
If not a mother?
Even if I hadn’t given birth
I would still be a mother.
Every girl is a mother,
When she cares for her father,
Every girl is a mother,
When she wipes tears off her mother,
Every girl is a mother,
When she saves her brother from trouble,
Every girl is a mother,
When she nurtures her younger sister.

She is a mother when she serves others.
Her motherhood sparks in her childhood,
When she tends her dolls in their dollhouse.
Her husband sees a mother in her,
Long before their unborn children come to life.
The way she waters the plants,
The way she cooks the food,
The way she cares for her employees,
When she is the boss,
The way she inspires motherhood,
Even in a father,
The way she brings out the best in everyone,
Not just her own creation,
A mother will always be a mother.

From the day her motherhood is awakened
(What event triggers that,
Might vary from person to person)
To the day she closes her eyes,
Her motherhood never dies.
It’s the most primordial instinct
Every species sees it,
It cannot be extinct.
The Universe bows before her,
She understands her unrest.
The eternal Mother Herself,
Her love manifests
Motherhood at its best!

© Sonali Majumdar.

3.

Forgiveness

Forgetting is hard
Hence forgiveness becomes harder
And we enter a vicious cycle of
Hurting one another
With our thoughts mainly
Since now there are no longer words

My master made me realize
We are but the same soul
The telepathic connection between us
Is extremely old
So when I curse you
It recoils back on me

When I accept you
With your differences
(Which might seem frailties to me),
I stay pacified just the way
I have accepted myself
In my entirety

I have thus learned to
Try not to forget you,
Try not to, try to forgive you
But accept you with your differences
And forgive my self for my limitations
As I do not always understand you.

  © Sonali Majumdar  

4.

Missing

When missing someone
becomes the new norm
It’s a mode of acceptance
That plays along
And what can we do
When that is what we must
Places and people
Laughter and favorite songs
Memories are treasures
Fitting into our rights and wrongs
What is meant to be, will be
What we give up, was supposed to be
If we cross paths again, we call it destiny
If not, let that be a cherished memory.

© Sonali Majumdar


5.

Waiting

In the dire restlessness of awaiting, a hollow bitterness
In every streak of lightning, a threatened existence
In every shrillness of speechlessness, a forced acceptance
In exasperation, in anger, in wistful strains
In cycles of deprivation of every sort
In whirlwinds of temptations around the fort

We wait
We wait for something
We wait for someone
We wait

In the mornings of summer, for promises of long afternoons
In the eyes of a lover, to witness, blossoms of passion bloom
In the wee hours of tired drudgery, for a sip of sweetness
In the death of a beloved, for otherworldly messages
In the stillness of the water, to feel, a ripple of hope
In the calmness of a hymn, a prayer reinforced.

  © Sonali Majumdar 

FIVE POEMS BY SERKAN ENGIN - A LAZ POET FROM TURKEY

SERKAN ENGIN

Socialist Laz-Turk poet and author Serkan Engin was born in 1975 in Izmit, Turkey.

His poems and articles on poetry theory have appeared in more than fifty literary journals in Turkey. In 2004, he published a poem manifesto, entitled Imagist Socialist Poetry. He has been trying to launch a new movement in Turkish poetry and to this end has published numerous articles about literary theory.

His poems and articles on poetry theory have been published in English in many international literary journals and art/poetry web sites all over the world like The Tower Journal, Poetry'z Own, Belleville Park Pages, The Wagon Magazine, Far Enough East, Split Infinitive Lit Magazine, Empty Mirror, The Writer’s Drawer, Poetry Super Highway, Margutte, Miracle E-zine, Industry Night Lit Magazine, Open Road Review, Shot Glass Journal, The Criterion, Mediterranean Poetry, etc. Some of his poems appeared in Japanese in the leading Japanese philosophy and poetry journal Shi to Shisou. Also his poems and articles on poetry's theory has been translated into Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Persian, Bengali, Kurdish, Zazaki, Romaic and Lazish.

Some of his poems in English have been accepted to international thematic poetry anthologies.

He is the first Turkish poet in history who has written a poem on Armenian Genocide. His poem named "Barbarian and Ms Daisy" which has been dedicated to the victims of the Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides has been accepted to the Armenian Poetry Project in 2015.

His political articles on Islam and also Armenian, Assyrian, Greek genocides have been published in many countries in many languages including Sweden, USA, Greece, India, France, Argentina, Netherland, Armenia, Indonesia and Finland.

http://paperboatsofpoetry.blogspot.com.tr/

ALL RIGHTS FOR THESE POEMS BELONG SOLELY TO THE POET

ABUSED LETTERS OF HOPE

I was born to loop my balmy

dreams to your bleeding verses

born to shout your childhood fads

lost in a mute hell in front of everybody

I am the delicious revenge of all molested children

spilling their pain into the purple shores of Orphanage

I am the handsome anger of all neglected buds

blooming on the lapel of Oppression

-Which holiness protected your most child-like letters

written on the skies of Hope!

Where was Jesus, where was Allah, where were Brahma and all others!

Tiny gardens of your short-length lives

occupied by the rivers of Fear round the clock

Your purity was hunted mercilessly

by the neighbour ravens of your helpless meadows

-Which holiness protected your most child-like letters

written on the skies of Hope!

Where was Jesus, where was Allah, where were Brahma and all others!

I am the delicious revenge of all molested children

spilling their pain into the purple shores of Orphanage

I am the handsome anger of all neglected buds

blooming on the lapel of Oppression

MY FAMILY(!) and DIALECTICMy father is what I reduce from as I run to myself
While dressing up from head to foot with sunflowers
Football and beer are making a free oscillation
In his brain having no curl
He has equivalent fear from the police and God
Never knew that he grew himself to nihility

- Hey buddy, where is here, Nazareth or Izmit?
My father and pragmatism crucified my youth
My mother was a purple thorn pricking, in my life
Property-greed and anger
Without compass lie on her heart
She has more faith in money than God
Never knew that she grew herself to nihility

- Hey buddy, where is here, Nazareth or Izmit?
My mother and capitalism crucified my youth

BROTHEL TRAUMA

In the rooms full of

decayed-dream scent

the oldness of the doors

opens to a wet disappointment

Fake orgasm symphonies permeated into the walls

Arabesque slogans are spelled on the mirrors.

The woman is the rebel acrobat

of pain on the barbed wires

strained between life and death

She stitches up the torn desires at her pubes

passes through the nitric, acidic nights

as laying her head on the shoulder of hope

dirty banknotes occupy

the rough geography of lust.

Broken Apprentice

I have made my heart a hammer

but could not repair the structure of my being.

My master spews forth his feelings lowly to me,

he expends my youth as oakum.

My desires could not be welded again,

I’ve been broken from yesterday to tomorrow.

They say: “Your offender is the government

and your procreation a generous family.”

-Truly, how can I go to the government, my lady?

They continuously beat the marble blue of my dreams,

my innocence has been sickened by abuse and tobacco.

Even though they did not buy overalls for me,

it is the childhood of my big brother that I wear.

The exhaust smoke stains the freshness of my hopes

while the dust of chalk whitens my mind.

The steel prickles of pain prick my heart,

my palms are a field of calluses.

-Tell me truthfully, my lady, is it suitable for me

to wear the blue of the school uniform and the red backpack?

GHAZAL TO PERA BELLE

Love is now a torn paper sea, its blue missing

I never ask from where a pair of hazel eyes you fail to efface catches fire

The sky topples down on our lives, smearing thin letters on our flesh

Lame birds keep bleeding onto the  G clef of loneliness

Now my body is a ruined wall I scratch with razors on my dreams

Who silences such disappointment, I know not

Only vague poems I stitch to my mute life can redeem me

No matter how many times I turn around myself, my jumbled days go on stammering

Now my skin is an unrhymed verse without your hands

I never ask from where a pair of hazel eyes you fail to efface catches fire

FIVE POEMS BY NISHI PULUGURTHA INCLUDING ONE ON DEMENTIA ON THIS 11.12.2019

Dr. Nishi Pulugurtha is Associate Professor in the department of English, Brahmananda Keshab Chandra College and has taught postgraduate courses at West Bengal State University, Rabindra Bharati University and the University of Calcutta. She is the Secretary of the Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library, Kolkata (IPPL). Her research areas are British Romantic literature, Postcolonial literature, Indian writing in English, the literature of the diaspora, film and Shakespeare adaptation in film. Dr. Pulugurtha has presented papers at national and international conferences in India and abroad and has published in refereed international and national journals. She is a creative writer and writes on travel, film, short stories, poetry and Alzheimer’s Disease. Her work has been published in The Statesman, Kolkata, in the anthology Tranquil Muse and online - Café Dissensus, Coldnoon, Queen Mob’s Tea House and Setu. She guest-edited the June 2018 Issue of Café Dissensus on Travel. She has a monograph on  Derozio (2010) and a collection of essays on travel, Out in the Open (2019).

ALL RIGHTS FOR THESE POEMS BELONG TO THE AUTHOR.

     Hidden Beneath

Bonds broken

Trust betrayed

Hypocrisy all around

A materialistic world where things are more important

Where relationships do not matter –

Where ego reigns supreme

Where lies cover up

Camouflages all around

Layer on layer

All covered up

In smooth talk and smiles

It does drop off

The veneer, that is

In due course

To reveal the ugliness

The truth

It always does, but then the pain remains.

2.     It does find a way

Beside a wall that separates

The small plant seeps through

Breaking through a gap

Creating a crevice

Wild and green

It stands up steady

Breaking through the masonry

It does find a way somewhere, somehow

In a few days, the first violet bloom

Bright and cheerful

Smiling in the September sun

A few raindrops clinging onto

The leaves and flowers

Glistening,

The light reflecting through

It always does so.

3.     Looking at, Looking through

Huge leaves, gentling shaking

The plant, wild

Large holes in them

Nature at work

Holes that form patterns

No worms eating in

No disease or pestilence

Looking at them

Looking through them

There is so much the eye cannot see

Hidden behind

Here and there

The gaping holes reveal

They conceal

There is no design in all this

In nature

In the leaves that look up

And bend down.

4.     Mela

Vivid colours that meet the eye

Kettles brightly coloured

Ladles too, steel plates, glasses

On paper fortified with cloth

Each one tells a story

She sings the story

Woven with myths and folk tales.

Unrolling the canvas as she goes on.

Her parents did this too

Her grandparents too

She has come from afar

Her little son, sitting in front of her

A brush in his hand

Colours around him

He is looking for a ball

To play with

The colours do not interest him

He is going to be with her

Till the mela is on

Away from school

Away from studies

She says her wares do not bring her much

Difficult times stare at her

Her song goes on.

5.     Home 2

It was in a village there

Now, what was its name

I knew it, it was a big village

Beside my house was a big pond

Horen da caught fish in the pond

There were a few big trees too

What trees were they?

Green things hung, sour things

Later the green ones turned yellow

My brothers climbed up those trees.

I stood below, waiting for them.

Mango trees – one, two, three

Ma stood in the compound looking at us.

Now, that was home.

Not this building.

(A person who has dementia will often be at home and want to go home. What he/she means by home is difficult to comprehend, is it an older home, is it a childhood one? This poem is inspired by someone I knew who had dementia and who told stories of her childhood home)

THE STARTLING, VERY FINE WORK OF THE BEAUTIFUL ANTONIA ALEXANDRA KLIMENKO - FIVE POEMS AS LOVELY AS HER

Antonia Alexandra Klimenko was first introduced on the BBC and to the literary world by the legendary James Meary Tambimuttu of Poetry London–-publisher of T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Henry Miller and Bob Dylan, to name a few.  After his death, it was his friend, the late great Kathleen Raine, who took an interest in her and encouraged her to write. A former San Francisco Poetry Slam Champion, she is widely published. Her work has appeared in (among others) XXI Century World Literature (in which she represents France) and Maintenant : Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art archived at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. She is the recipient of two grants: one from Poets in Need, of which Michael (100 Thousand Poets for Change) Rothenberg is a co-founder; the second—the 2018 Generosity Award bestowed on her by Kathleen Spivack and Joseph Murray for her outstanding service to international writers through SpokenWord Paris where she is Writer/ Poet in Residence. Her collected poems, On the Way to Invisible is forthcoming in Spring of next year.

All rights reserved solely by the author.

The Merry-Go-Round

So here we go again   you and I

picking up speed   on our magic steed

gliding   up and down  

whirling   round and round

with no ending or beginning

Everything happens like this

Everything passes through us--

a breath   a memory   a vision  

some inexplicable Miracle

that has happened before

that is happening right now

all   at   the   same   time

One moment…

you’re a child of six  

riding into the sunset   on a wooden horse

Next moment…

You’re a child of six-ty  

stepping  back into yourself  

like your favorite rerun

Tonight

your dreams have packed their bags

and are leaving for Paris without you

your night-lite is flirting with that first star on the right

all the lovers in the world are coming together 

in spontaneous combustion

In this very moment…

a stellar explosion 

thousands of light-years away 

is spinning through space  

is becoming   that radiant smile  

on your down-turned face

Past future and present

are converging in harmonic synchronistic rhythm

The sun and moon are aligning

with Venus Jupiter and Mars

Energy synergy electricity    deaf lightning 

is coursing through your varicose veins

Every broken atom   every imagined pain

every cell is being reborn     

Words that have flown south  

missing in action   or in revision

are coming alive   are exploding into light  

are taking back the night                                                                  

The unspoken and unsaid   are at this very instant  

orbiting your head   

Soon…                                                                                                 

dust particles are colliding coalescing

merging converging    to form a new planet 

The music of the spheres is unrehearsed

Black cosmic rays are holding the magnetic field--

a convex mirror in reverse                                                                   

My tears   a cinematic film  

are rolling back into my eyes

Regret that once escaped my lips  

is falling to its knees

is begging me to PLEASE not wear it  

like a saddle ‘round my hips

is begging for forgiveness

So here were are again   you and I

on a carousel in the dark

We fall off our horse    and dust ourselves off

and fall in love   again   of course     

before it grows cold and stark

One day we’ll get it right   you know

The moon is out tonight   you know

Nothing is by chance

The music is playing   

Remember our first kiss?

Please save me    this one last dance

Feather Pillows 

                            How unbearably white
                                 The blind on the white window.

                                                    --Anna Akhmatova

That Winter 

my grandmother reached into the sky 

for dreams bluer than blue
to slip inside our heads

while we lay sleeping

Every morning  

flowers sang   from outside her window
In the pleats of her skirt---choruses of Irving Berlin
Every day 

summersaults of grass  

                                    sprang from under her feet
and every tree on every corner  

                                                whose every leaf was a poem
invited her to dance on air
 

That Winter   in San Francisco  

she was looking for Summer  

when all   the sweet humming in her veins 

spilled into the street   like a Gershwin Rhapsody
 

How she slipped into that pillow— so unbearably white-- 

awakens to this moment    as I breathe in the air 

Is it your sky   Grandmother? that reaches into me?
I reach into myself     to find my own leaves of summer 

like all dreams eternal     slipping into light 

Our Lady

 Flames scorch your walls   your wood-beamed ceilings

Gargoyles lick the smoke-filled air

Your ancient timbers once echoed in forests

Now turn to ash    but you’re still there

Centuries have not obscured your face

Nor revolutions your holy brow

How you’ve looked at the world through rose-colored glass

How saints pass through you even now

How many have entered your sacred space

Like the mirrored moon from behind her veil

Bright flickering stars crown your thorny head

They would raise your roof but to no avail

As April springs into fragrant flower

Memory stands transfixed   transformed

We are all but hunchbacks in the Belltower

We were all meant to be reborn

Surreal Architect of Untold Meaning

Unfolding petals   on the tremulous Seine

How you inspire   mute words on fire

The passion of love   the burst of flame

Living Canvas   City of Light

Your candles lit from within our souls

The intimate silence of your unspoken prayer

It is for us    for whom the bell tolls

I hear them now

at my tear-stained window

Ave Maria Ave Maria

Just beyond the River’s bend

Hymns in the night

Angels of Light

Glimpses of iconic vision

Our heart is melting

The world is turning

Paris is burning

Twilight

His love of open space

left blanks between his words
gaps   between his teeth
silences within
All intervals in time--
the measure of   height and width
the depth in which all things exist

and move    moved in him--
a boundless three dimensional
journeying between the planets and the stars
the flat surfaces of  his mind

How he distanced himself
from things and people
invading his terrain--
floor space   parking space
objects and events which occurred 

in the space which occupied him--the Absolute Space--
was beyond even him

Often he would go to great lengths
extending himself
the rings around his eyes--
sunken in their dark orbits
spinning
in some alternate Universe

Space
is relative to position and direction
he said
but only in the physical realm
The celestial beauty of inner space

is infinite  
There is no separation   between
sunrise and sunset
shadow and light
the dead and the living
Life belongs to both worlds
and to neither--
rests in the breath
inhabits the mystery
of here

and oh so there

He said   he said                                                                

taking one last drag
on his burnt-out cigarette
before he shut the door

behind him

Blew his brains out
in the hallway     he did

Now, go to Hell !
he said

 Song of the Dying

                                                    Hello darkness my old friend

                                               Sounds of Silence—Simon and Garfunkel

           

O   Dark Sphere–

face revolving with the earth

changing shape and color–

will I never see the whole picture?

I am falling within

the flickering shadows

of my eyes   They are the fields

of childhood

patterned with liquid dream

disappearing into their horizons

I am closing within

the closing eye of the needle

that threads light

through the visible veil

of God’s invisible world

I know all your human songs from memory

The unpopular   the unsung

remain on my lips–-

my mouth opening like a grave

Who   with her long black gloves

holds a hand darker than night

and places it over each living eye

so we cannot look into the Light–

the beautiful Light that remembers?

Tell me   Old Friend 

is it your bow

that draws so sweetly

across the universe of my heart–

a single violin?