Nightmare My scribbles are ruled by dread of a treeFear of blooms only dawn can stem – Blue the daisies glimmer on moonlit nightsAnd make us forget the day’s soft beauties:These flowers, standing in the fieldSo demurely in the sun’s rays,Swear at its moon-mirror to yieldLeaves and petals stolen by…

Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense The barks of seagulls and dogs egged us on as we stood beside the passerelle named for Senghor, two desis connected by an almost-common origin gulping French fries out of the same cone in an unspoken competition verging on the grim. We had met perhaps twice in our one…

Distrust The Heated Frazzle Of Time Tapping fingers transform shore-lapping wavesInto a flat Times o-c-e-a-nOf unmurmuring colouring-book blue How do you write thinning voices that shoveLifetimes of labour into shrugs, hurried,Resigned; then hasten to give thanks again? How do you transcribe…

Keep On Trying Holding my brain like a fishnetI march into morning,Resolving in its mesh to getThe Truth, and life’s Purpose The frying-spoon of the sky poursCloud-whites on the sun’s yolks.Set to catch Beauty, my luresHook me a shame-laced joy I out-glare the crisping sun's frills,Scourge my mind…

Flying Home From A Monolingual Land In this city never seen, yet flown through five timesOur tin crate has landed; we are stranded once moreWith a glum sweaty hour to while away, frettingFiddling with a playlist, lolling, whittling lame rhymesBefore this dang plane takes off again for LahoreFor my…

Essay Skeletons Still they haunt us, the fluffy uninked ghostsOf ideas that fall by the waysideWhen we whittle down their fluttering hostsTo huileux essay skeletons that glide  On while they are torn Apart by your pen. Essay skeletonsAre fatal scythes for the forlorn fleetingWhirligig rays of…

Yeşil atlar Horses are not green. You don't exist. There are no such things as green horses. But I see you standing there, my green, green, green, green horses, with just a touch of brown where your hooves meet the gravel. At first I told everyone about you, strangers and unstrangers alike. But…

Yesternight Looming, crackling, creaking monstrous secrets,My berry-holder, washed by dark green wavesOnly wheeled things could traverse, stood half drownedIn the clouds. To battle all the birds’ threatsTo my fruit I would have leapt, but the lawsOf wobbly legs held me down. Efforts crownedIn…

Mourn Us Moths Bio, lit, ink, we moths are all in the endDriven to flames by unwithstood forces;Bio-moths, like sunflowers, know naught; intendTo draw life from the purest of sources:  They burn to a crisp in their quest. Lit-moths are zealots, burning with reasonWedged in the steel-tip of a…

Yalan Yalan Yalan When your knife carved out a sliceFrom the butter, when your handTore the rose from its thorn-landI heard them each whisper thrice     I forgive you for dying     Forgive me for living on.

Pearls Of Wisdom From The Ancestors ​‘One race alone matters, this you must win:It’s about the money you can bring in.  Win, and it does not matterHow or why or what you wonNor what you lost in its stead  You won.’ ‘Yes, but you don't -’ ‘Just so. Therefore, I know  Winners bask in the sun the…

🌟Le Temps du FLE vol.6🌟 Bonjour ! 😃 Voici la 6ᵉ édition de notre magazine, Le Temps du FLE ! Flipbook : archive.org/details/le-t... Short : youtu.be/RIGMvt-qGLo?... Bonne lecture ! #apfp #letempsdufle

Under Pressure The little poem-seeds float in like driftwood, knocking upon my brain’s grey doors, and find them shut by a self-induced frenzy. Shakespeare wrote King Lear, Newton the Principia, and I’m bingeing on chips and fantasy series, or cleaning, or washing things, or pulling another…

Quasimodo’s Last Walk So think, as you now look up through the old dry  Branches of winter, of the cryHe gave for the sky’s blue suffused with yellow  That never turned green for him, thoughEnvy’s colours blotched the world below at will,  Pacing and drumming his finger,    Watched by his dove…

Jaggednesses I spin around it once, and it is a world of joyI spin around it twice, and it begins to annoyI spin around it thrice, and loathe a snaky tree-branch I am filled with a darkling rage no birdsong can blanchI spin around it quatrice, cinquice, it is pure hell -Then a feather quivers on…

Zoom In-Out-In and Cry Earth o’ mine green red brown and blue,They ask me which colour you areAnd laugh when I cannot answer. Could I lie you were one all through?But from your green sparkles the rose,That coy inveterate dancer; And the blue cusp of the sky, trueTo its word, thaws to white, then…

Copyright Claim Why is a human accounted sole authorOf these words? Where is the name of the treeThat your axes came to steal and slaughter? Reader, hear ye the second pen insideThis tale? Wielded by a quick sylvan handThrough the line-spacings it will glide and slideInto open hearts the lore of…

Neither To Nor Of Me ‘In your future, I see death,’ said the meme,Neither to nor of me. I pseudo-shruggedAt the little gold box whose sturdy gleamServed as pea-plant support for my fingers I answered, with consciously feeble wit‘Yes, and so? Every future holds death, no?’And every present too that…

Breadwinner They cast him out, the superfluous one, the un-needed one, the one whose crime it was to be one-too-many. He spent the days sighing under swishing trees, mourning his way along the length of rivers and lakes, reading taunts into the cackling of the geese. His were all the words and the…

Quench Thus Your Grief Enter her old kitchen where laughter grewFrom milk-moustaches, long after childhoodHad gone west with its toy-plane dogfights, trueTo the tick-tocking of the now-still clocks  When you hear the news. Even moonlight cannot turn the rust whiteThat comes from a decade's…

A Wraith Named Happiness Said Over porch-steps, door-mats, window-sashes  I slide; a waif with tangled hair,Slipping through translucented blind-slashes  With the doomed ardour of despair. Your forebears quested lifetimes for my grace,  Now I haunt you who should hunt me;Under the wrinkling white…

Six Translations Of A Painting Seen From A Train ONEFive smiling children sitting in a rowOne fidgets and stubs his big toeBut dares not stop smiling. The squeezed endsOf his eyes like dried rivers flowFrom nothing to nothing. TWOFour smiles will the pencil to move fasterOne wills it not to stop,…

Chew Toffees We areChew toffees inside packets of éclairsSea-salt in firni, honey on fried eggs,Always and forever out of place. If all this were smoothed away, forgottenOur hearts would find new dreams to break overTrapped in untrusted new joys verbotenBy fear of being caught in imposture. We…

The Recipe for Spreading Happiness 1. Collect clouds. The clouds that are now never were before and never will be again, never quite, never just so; draw their ghosts, flood them with colour, fill them up with tick-mark birds, and let them grin triumphantly in limbo at not being caught after all.…

Elegy For Colour Pencils Reduced To Stubs You who gave us sunset-clouds so orange  The world shuddered, you with your skiesOf piercing white-slashed blue on nail-thrones strangeBut quite ungrotesque in their beaming pride:  We have shorn you to nail-tip stumps,  And boxed you all up to cast you…

Rogue Stories If the moon is a torch cutting the palmOf the night, and the stars scream light to calmDespairs we learnt rather to shun than ease;Will you then pluck an ink-ray from the swarm To build me a cosmos of fresh glories,Of poems about bitter giving-trees?Tell this tale too: add bricks of…

Malware I want to slyly install my sadnessInto your brain, like malware. Load it  And explode it. How many words do I need to tell you,How many I’m fines of gladness,  That I am through? When you winced away from the sliced eggIts stodgy whites and crumbling yolks,  Diced up cloaks For the first…

Dream-Flour Loss is what dreams are made of.  Could be made of.  Would be made of.  Should be made of.Sleep sends us dragons instead.   We curse those who slaughterLove. Fling trembling children under duress  Into the cold water  And call it eustress.

Quail Before Me “Quail before me! O mighty warriors, quail before me! Quail before –”“There is no need to shout,” said a gravelly voice from just above the bench. I turned around to find myself being looked up and down by a portly brown bird with a beetling yellow mono-brow. “Your mighty warriors…

Hide Me, Sandcastle, From This Wave   I am in every future of this sphereTwo, ten, a thousand years from now.Though I know it cannot be, this realm whereThrough earthquake and heartbreak I vow    As I climb each hill   To endure, it is all I can conjureWhen you speak to me of Earth’s end.The…

This House Believes … In true v truthy, this house knows which one  It would fain doubt;But 'twas the truthy, truthier, truthiest  Who kept truthiness out. This house believes in honouring the past  And marching on;In bidding our children too not restore  What's left when we are gone. This house…

Respair  Moonlight translated nights for me,  And sunlight the day;  But I could not stayCould not learn to listen. The tree Held for me just timber and fruit.  Never flowers, nor  Little nub-eyes forThe spring. I learnt to salute,   To covet only power. But in each shower,Filled with regrets, I…

The Destiny Tree   The destiny tree,Dark gnarled and secretly wick,  Claws at you and me   Across eye spacesTwisting phoenix-glass specks prance  Bloated toad-faces   Yearning for their ilk,Bucking the frothing cream foam,  Words spurt like hot milk

I Know Why As in my warmly blanketed comfort IDevour reams of torment and miseryWith lusting, shuddering glee, I know why.I know the hushed why of all history. I who wince and cradle a stubbed toeRead of the sleep-robbed, the starved, the scourgedAnd with absolute certainty I knowThat’s not me. I…

Cherries The cherries. Ah yes. Someone must guard the King's cherries, to make sure no poisoner may reach them. But the guard, naturally, deserves some recompense ... He popped the first cherry into his mouth, squinting out of the narrow gap between window and shutter at all the rich idiots…

Trampoline #30.12 is excited to have poems by @hibahshabkhez.bsky.social, @blackcattales.bsky.social, and Ron Riekki. www.trampolinepoetry.com Take care.

Thou Shalt Tell The Truthy If you would have me hear your truth, my friendFirst listen to mine. And then we shall standBefore mirrors that reply without endTo ‘Who is the truthiest in the land?’  You. You. You. ‘Thou shalt speak’ we tell each child. ‘in wordsandOf not-lies, beach-grains that…

Bones of Coral I hear the scraping sounds you used to impaleLife. Like wind-driven linen forced to grow staleOn frost-stripped branches, you captured from the stormSounds on the flimsiest hand-rake wood can form:A pencil. I hear your trees say “We inhale The spring more slowly than the rest. We…

Pencil-Drawn Boundaries Stumbling on the ridges in wry-mouthed mirth  My cold square fingers trace out loud  The grey sliver severing sky and earth,  The pure child-stern lines of each cloud Pressing inward through the nib-enfrailed page  To a side bereft of colour,Where the black-gowned lives…

Name Place Animal Thing The first volleys are gifs, cannon thunderFor our e-march towards shared moments. Next,We shall tussle with the borrowed grimacesAnd quirky grins of random emojis. Now we wait to see who shall first blunderInto words, yield to the desire to textInstead of waging war with…

To-Do List Snooze your phone once with bewilderment, then with anger, and finally with groaning resignation. Stumble out bleary-eyed and catch the bus, gulping down the chocolate-coated energy bar you made a New Year’s resolution to give up. As you glare in undisguised envy at people with seats,…

Headcanons The first story is the last. It bleeds trueThough it is made up of stolen sliversAll hacked out haphazardly from diversPlaces: A high-mountain farm housing blueBlood. A horse set on by wolves in the snowA dark hooded stranger to the rescue. The first story, long forsaken, lives onCast…

Come, Roam This Greyerosity With Me This thing pumping blood in my chest     Loves clichés,Those socially accepted ways to rest The blame on the world, and save – not the soul,But its own dregs, worn and unwhole,     And gaze At all things in a bleak monochromy     Made fairBy skins shaded, set…

X.A- X.E- or X.I- ? A sock wriggling just out of reachUnder the bed, it burns my lipsIt burns my stretching finger-tips,The word for this, the other wordCrannied off after being heardOr read somewhere. I wring out each Crease, dust and destroy. If I canNot find one word, what right have ITo…

Rent In Twain The eagle within me dreams of soaringAbove aught that in earth-tied eyes may gleam:Plucking the richest prey out of the plainTo the echo of wails and vain roaring;Brooding over the talon-scarred bones,Adding daily more tokens of the slain,Vaunting each triumph with a savage…

Look Look. ‘Look’ said each wondrous comical hodgepodge of illustrations. Just one word, the perfect invitation to draw in a child. I spent hours staring at each page, whispering the word like an incantation as I mined it for stories, or put in the ones I’d read and heard, from Goldilocks and Red…

Hoarders A squirrel stole a cheese slice from my plate  And began to dust off one edgeI would have chased it screaming to the gate  But that it sang to me of me. ‘Half of this cheese I must give to the rats  Who taught me theft. A fourth must goTo the forces that guard us from the cats,

Darning She is always darning the frayed fabricOf things. Socks or sentences, she contrivesTo darn them, with the needle and the word. Like the pruning spade, she heeds the warningClink of steel against roots. Though something loth,She locks word threads and sound cloth in a truce. Where a simple…

🌟Le Temps du FLE vol.5🌟 Bonjour ! 😃 Voici la 5ᵉ édition de notre magazine, Le Temps du FLE ! Flipbook : archive.org/details/le-t... Short : youtu.be/BjuEMCvFR6A?... Bonne lecture ! #apfp #letempsdufle

Glue Stick Born of melted bone-stew, my first forbearsWere conjured to bind and to sustain. PouredInto the cracks and creases of your wares,They sealed flaws forever. Then you soured  On such strength, and so   We started to growWeaker. Latest of the line, a stick-shapedBlob in a tube, I do but…