A mouth talking - Abby Sze

A mouth talking

I've got a mouth, 
Blablabla.
Talking about how I think 'love & peace' rocks,
Talking about how big my dream is,
Talking about how hard I will work,
How great my plan is.

I've got a pair of hands,
Clapclapclap.
Ten fingers moving on the tiny buttons on the screen,
Typing to invisible viewers what I have done today,
How lovely the dinner is,
Most of the time my fingers scrolls.

I've got a pair of foot,
Tactactac.
I Wear it a beautiful shoes,
Which David Beckham is wearing in a commercial.
I give it a good care,
Landed on the floor at rest.

I've got a pair of hands.
But I didn't touch the mystery of the world.
The ten fingers did not feel the roughness of the society.
Nor does it held up a fist and punch to fight.
The foot on me,
Didn't step on the moist green grass,
Neither scratched by running,
Or kicking to break, anything.

Blablablablablablabla,
Lips touched and released,
Tooth and tongue moving up and down,
Giving the world meaningless message,
Producing noise to fill the silence.
People talking without speaking,
Sooner or later I will die and left nothing.

~Abby Sze

I Keep Her Ghost Near - Leah Ayliffe

I Keep Her Ghost Near

I would lie on the ground in the hallway
Just before my front door, where light could shine through
But it didn’t
Because I would lay on the floor in the silent night
Starring up the great stairs,
the railing wrapping around that area where we used to play.
My mind races back to the beginning, the ghosts are near
And dear.
Sometimes I watch, confused, thinking they are strangers.
Yet the thrill in their laughter brightens the past.
I remember, I remember.
If remembering counts as knowing what was,
What has been, or ever is real.
It is real in this moment, I don’t care what you say.
I say it and so it is.

The ghosts trace my mind,
echoing a heart ache that’s still fine,
His face I see in a flash.
The broken glass so beautiful,
The psychedelic colours move through the light,
The spark of stars, or the sunshine beams of dawn.
I am haunted.
I was always haunted.
Once of what would, could, would not be.
And I grew, maybe like a child, I grew ancient,
Haunted by what was or could have been if only..
And this beautiful ghost who smiles like an angel would,
Is alone in her mind.
I want to let her know, be happy my darling,
Do not wander too deep in that pretty little head.
I want to let her know it’s not so scary,
Death is a blessing and a friend,
A beautiful truth shining in darkness.
Please let yourself fall in love with it.

Lightening strikes, I am on the ground.
I nod farewell.
It’s time to fall asleep with memory,
I don’t mind, I don’t mind.
God can haunt my soul if his face is my face,
His hands my hands that reach for her, unknowing little fool.
Take her on a holiday,
because I cannot bear knowing
she is trapped in that confused state of mind.
And I'm here, free.
I stopped looking for the answers.

~Leah Ayliffe

7 Poets from 7 corners of the world

From top (left) to bottom right) :


Abby Sze (Hong Kong, HK)

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Mallika Menon (Trivandrum, India)

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Daniel J. Brick (Saint Paul, MN, USA)

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 Leah Ayliffe (Toronto, Canada)

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Fabrizio Frosini (Florence, Italy)

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Diane Hine (Perth, Australia)

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Galina Italyanskaya (Saint Petersburg, Russia)

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Introduction

by

Daniel J. Brick

Many years ago, in a poetry class for beginners, I read one of my early efforts which contained the following three lines:

         " A young poet drops his pen, astonished

          by the twenty lines he has just written,

          certain it is the Poem of Total Realization."

The teacher, who was supportive of our weekly efforts, smiled and said, "I remember thinking I had written that poem when I was sixteen." I can now agree wholeheartedly with her: the Poem of Total Realization is an adolescent fantasy. A mature poet recognizes it as a fool's errand, because, first, no single poem can encompass the variety of all human experience. Second, the writing of such a poem would end a poet's career, since all of his future poems would be mysteriously contained in that magnum opus. It would take all the oxygen into itself, and leave all the living poets breathless and gasping.

What we learn from writing poems over a long expanse of time is that each one takes further along the path of our daily life, leading eventually to whatever fulfills our existence. Each poem illuminates for its moment the darkness surrounding us, and in that light we can see the World in its glory or, sadly, in its degradation. Finally, we will carry within, not only the poem as a piece of literature but also the

emotional growth it promotes.

Our poems express our individual selves. It is not just self-expression, although that's the surface impression often conveyed. It's something far more deeply interfused, as Wordsworth memorably put it. We filter our experiences through our poetic selves to make poems which reveal both the Self and the World. When we look back at our poems, a day or a decade later, we are often surprised by the discoveries about life they carry within. Robert Frost put this very succinctly: a poem, he wrote, begins in delight and ends in wisdom. But that wisdom is never A Big Statement; it's not an abstract idea, or a philosophy. It's like a window opened to admit more light. It takes the form of an insight that points to emotional growth, and propels our lives toward ever richer states of being.

And so it fulfills the very nature of poetry that we 7 poets publish our poems in a common anthology and witness how these diverse poems reflect each other, relate to each other, amplify each other. Poetry is the most democratic of all the arts, because its essential material - language - is a given in every person's life.  This makes poetry accessible to every person as a reader and writer.

Walt Whitman celebrated this democratic core of poetry eloquently:

        "The messages of great poems to each man and woman are, Come to us on  equal terms, only then can you understand us. We are no better than you"

        what we enclose you enclose, what you enjoy we enjoy.


(Daniel J. Brick, Saint Paul, MN, USA)