Category Archives: POEMS

Dog Nights (Postcard Set #3)

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2018

GUEST POST // Brokenness by Madhuri Katti

Brokenness

Sometimes I wonder,
Is it the brokenness
which holds the world together?
a crack that still holds parts?

Is it the brokenness that
unveils the Whole?
The imagined whole –
That never will be or
Maybe never was…

Even if the cracks give away –
Can broken pieces be
whole parts in themselves?
Or maybe broken parts
Will create a kaleidoscope

Sometimes I wonder
Is it the brokenness
that holds the world together?

What purpose does the Whole serve?
The Whole which excludes,
smugly nestled in itself
Till a crack breaks the egoistic shell
The Whole will never be a whole

Sometimes I wonder,
Is it the brokenness that
holds the world together?

Borders divide land and humans
But yet, when challenged
The humanity that rises,
Is often more than the sum
Of the broken souls

Sometimes I wonder,
Is it the brokenness that
that holds the world together?

by MADHURI KATTI
© All rights reserved 2018

beautiful homunculus

love ripped through your brightened veins
you wondered how much you could possibly take
the blood (a choir) roaring inside you
rushing to shape a song inside you

naught can be done to hasten the healing
but you have to know they’re only scars
and i love you, my homunculus
hurt and all

your voice was sandpaper’s rasp
no one understood, who among them could
blood in a cage, no doors inside you
no release for the song inside you

naught can be done to hasten the healing
but you have to know they’re only scars
and i love you, my homunculus
hurt and all

you’re loved, deplumed, so no more pretense
no longer can you be about mere survival
blooded for life, a kindling inside you
the filaments of song deep inside you

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2018

a quantum of holiness

a little vagrant sleeps under a church ladder
shares his bedding with a lame puppy and deaf adder
he has never tasted sweets or sugar scones
his usual dinner is leavings, skin and bones

one beautiful summer day right after the mass
someone spat a throat lozenge onto the grass
it shined beneath the sun like a real gem
blameless, faceted, wet from mucous phlegm

little vagrant retrieved the lozenge with trembling hand
unbelievably happy as though he’d won a big grant
but he wasn’t the only one who had reached the prize
the puppy was looking at him with pleading eyes

some people aren’t dogmatic, have never attended church
their lives can seem useless, their family’s honour besmirch
but on that day it was the lord’s supper under church ladder
little vagrant shared his first candy with lame puppy and deaf adder

by TETIANA ALEKSINA
© All rights reserved 2018

GUEST POST // 10,000 Pencils by Gregg Savage

Two years and two days and 10,000 pencils,
No tracing or reprints or cheap, plastic stencils.
From a dot to a line from a shape to a figure,
A symbol of thoughts from my brain to my fingers.

A mark on the page meant the white was now tainted,
With another damned hope that this time I’ll make it.
My passions run under my detailed bridge,
With the promise they’ll say, “Let’s stick that on the fridge!”

by GREGG SAVAGE
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License 2018