New Poetry

The VGP Literate No. 14

/ Michael Aaron Casares / 1 Comment

Cropped

Incessant noises, beating
down my glow – airplanes and dogs
voicing their aggressive anxiety. Too much
space to fill with disembodied eyelids – except to say,
I am better off knowing what to hide and with whom.
Everyone I talk to insulates me, be it in vast or narrow
confines. I don’t need to suffer or hunger for what is not mine
or for an intimacy more accurately labelled illusion.
Animals walk by me and I am drawn into their interiors.
I am drawn to look through the physicist’s window and laugh
at certain logic used to dismiss the ranks of God
and creatures that gallop, burn-up in back alleyways, escaping definition.
I don’t know if sand is like stars, but it is a fragrant research to find out,
fumbling with layers, branching out on tiptoe.
It is a pistil attracting pollen, a prescription to illuminate grief and cherishing.
Just as when faced with illness, the superfluous gets skimmed,
it is essential to honour the need for certainty in all forms of love,
it is essential to see that which struggles always ends up shivering in its bonds,
eventually learns that letting go is a prerequisite before achieving threshold, before
the welling up, the grand unshackling groan
of a peace-inducing
implosion.

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Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. She has over 500 poems published in international journals and anthologies. She has eleven published books of poetry and five collections, as well as six chapbooks and one e-chapbook. She lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay; http://www.allisongrayhurst.com   

The VGP Literate No. 13

/ Michael Aaron Casares

A Terrorist’s Confession

He is fighting for a cause and vanity
To introduce crime against the whole of humanity
He does not have any goal actually
Something to target is his goal only
Do you dare take it for some religion or ideology?
Consciously he kills, and he does not owe an apology
He does not like peace, and he abhors silence
Violence he prefers and it is evident in his senses
All he wants is to make the green world fade
For that he kills and paints things red
He condemns you if you call him Jihadi or rebel
He is a fighter and does not want any such label
His cause is the only reason for survival
His soul is dead already, and his body is his apparel

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Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi is university faculty and assistant professor of linguistics at Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University, India; and author of two books on lesser known Indian languages: A Grammar of Hadoti and A Grammar of Bhadarwahi. He has published around fifty poems in different anthologies, journals, and magazines worldwide. Until recently, his poem “Mother” was included as a prologue to Motherhood and War: International Perspectives (Eds.), Palgrave Macmillan Press. 2014.

The VGP Literate No. 12

/ Michael Aaron Casares

Candy in Right Places

Hospitals are boring places
where people come to buy
a few more years for themselves.
And sometimes they even succeed.

I would not be surprised
if this doctor whom my girl finds sexy
who is supposed to operate on my kidney
asks my girl friend out for a cup of coffee,
as my body fights to regain consciousness
in the hospital bed after this critical operation.

Everyone needs to relax after all.
Love is beautiful if you can get
the candy in right places.

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Writer, Producer, Publisher of Bangla experimental stuff, Subhankar Das has produced 6 short films with more than 16 international film festival fame and appreciation. He has 16 published books of Bangla poetry, and is a translator of Allen Ginsberg’s poems in Bangla.  http: //graffiti-kolkata.blogspot.com