Drei durch Drei

Jonathan Beale ~ Subhankar Das ~ Bill Wolak

 

 

Jonathan Beale

The Black Rose

 

After Zbigniew Herbert

 

This blind eye

From the womb

Here!

You are totally unaware

 

The ink spot spat out

From above – from somewhere

Dying this once, while

This velvet leaf

 

Emerges -

From birth to elsewhere

Destined planetary

Input from the peat

 

All the colours

Grow lost in the shadows

And in the velvet leaves

A forest of velvet leaves. 

 

 

We waited for the rain

 

Evening or late afternoon

After the working day has been

Laid to rest.

The deer in the park, those regal

Lines, checking their shared

Values whilst eating the gratis grass

The wind blew telling us “to wait.”

We waited for the rain

After these sun drenched days.

Still we waited,

The light fell away

Down toward:

The    equator

The    equator

Your  equator

My     equator

Our    equator

Still the day is dry

Still…

We waited and waited

Until – that first drop

Fell on us   

On our heads

Washing away

The sins of yesterday

As we sat again

And waited for tomorrow.

 

 

The cutting of grass

 

The smell was indefinable

The dogs and cats knew

To brace the new

For that first cut of the season

 

The lolloping grass

Has wintered out

Pregnant with first dew

Awaits the first cut

 

The cobwebbed cutter

Revealed - splutters to life

Leaving the wet green

Shards glistening under the sun

 

The smell of rebirth

Tingles in the nostrils

From this newly formed

Nation a verdaocracy

 

Revealing a new page

For another years poem to be written

The plethora of sharp ends

A final symphony of hope

 

 

 

Jonathan Beale’s work has appeared regularly in DM, Decanto, Penwood Review,  The Screech Owl, DM du Jour, Poetic Diversity, and also; Voices of Israel in English, MiracleEzine,  Voices of Hellenism Literary Journal, The Journal, Ink Sweat & Tears, Down in the Dirt, & (Drowning: Down in the Dirt July 13) The English Chicago Review, Mad Swirl, Poetry Cornwall, Leaves of Ink, Ariadne’s Thread, Bijou Poetry Review, Calvary Cross, Deadsnakes Review, The Bitchin Kitsch, The Dawntreader, I am not a Silent Poet, Pyrokinection, Festival of Language, ‘Don’t Be Afraid: An Anthology to Seamus Heaney’ and Ygdrasil.  He was commended in Decanto’s and Café writers Poetry Competitions 2012.  He is currently at work on a collection for Hammer & Anvil Books.  Jon studied philosophy at Birkbeck College London and lives in Surrey England.

 

 

 

Subhankar Das

The Writer

 

His friends left him

His wife and daughter

could not take it anymore.

They ran away to the real world

to the air conditioned malls to save their asses

from the mess

from the stench of the pee

the dust and the ruin

of the unreal weird dreams

he loved so dearly.

 

Now his friends are the wild pigeons

who lives with him and shits everywhere

except on his books lying on the shelf

under layers of dust.

 

He sits on his thrown looking at them

making  love

kissing

chasing each other.

 

 

pan fried aubergine

 

Believe me, brother man Malay

 in those days long time ago,

 whether Sita was using a tampon

 or a  torn piece of a sari for that matter,

I am not at all bothered.

Even if she was the consort of God Ram

or just a character from the film of Ghatak.

 

Wasn't dildos been into people's wardrobe those days?

Or was it that she was using an aubergine -in for that?

And then she would be pan frying it

and giving it to eat.

Frankly that too is not my concern right now.

The way our young maid used to do with us day after day, every day.

 

And you know what, the friend who used to stay with me

stopped eating aubergine the rest of his life after knowing the secret recipe

in agony, trauma, hating those memories of her aubergine sitophilia.

But I always loved having aubergine  fries unperturbed.

Let other people say what they want about me,

‘Doesn't he have any sense of purgatory hygiene, eating from anyone's hole?’

 

If you haven't tasted a hot aubergine–fry

in a plate full of a hard night's water-soaked rice,

what good have you eaten in your life.

It does not matter whether it comes

with or without the secret recipe.

 

 

Booty Dance

 

‘I am still alive, you mother fuckers’—

he shouted at the top of his voice

as he threw down the empty beer bottle

from his 4th floor balcony

and it crashed down on the pavement below.

But not a single window opened out of curiosity.

The street dogs are also quiet tonight,

only she snapped –‘You just cannot do that.

It’s not done.’

-‘I am a genius’.

-‘But are you not trying to prove you are

a genuine ass?’

 

The poet tried to grab her sexy wobbly ass

but missed and fell.

It would have been romantic

if he crashed beside his beer bottle

but instead flopped only on the floor of the balcony

and stared like a fool with a half smile at the sway of her ass

as she went back to the kitchen quaking.

 

 

 

Subhankar Das is a writer/publisher living in Kolkata, India, who was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2013. Has three new chapbooks of poems — Thieves of the Wind, jointly with Catfish McDaris (Writing Knights, 2014); 66 Lines On your Soul, jointly with Catfish McDaris and Kevin Ridgeway (Graffiti Kolkata, 2014); and Bukowski Smoked Bidis (Grandma Moses Press, 2015).

 

 

 

Bill Wolak

Shadowless As Fog

Shadowless as fog,
you must become
light dreaming,
like hands that meet
under a pillow.


Become Indomitable

Become indomitable
as the smile in fire,
inaccessible as
an anchor’s solitude,
relentless as a cloudburst.


Turn Each Scar into a Mirror

Turn each scar into a mirror
deeper than daylight,
undetected as a song
passing through perfume
or a tear beckoning the sea.

 

 

Bill Wolak has just published his twelfth book of poetry entitled Love Opens the Hands with Nirala Press. Recently, he was a featured poet at The Hyderabad Literary Festival. Mr. Wolak teaches Creative Writing at William Paterson University in New Jersey.