Tag Archives: Suffering

alcheringa

shadows throw people onto the pavement
to slip away between the cracks & furrows
to an ocean somewhere beneath the city
where sunken bones & dead dreams recriminate

with golden teeth the stonefishes greet them
such disarming smiles before they jab them
& the bubbles of hope swirl to the bottom
to be sucked clean under tectonic & sand

remember me tripping on cobblestone
remember it ripping through skin & bone
falling like alice to the antipodes

to go through that fine gravity filter
one must first relinquish personhood
& reach emersion at the far side of firma
find a meaningful death before one’s birth

in this world the shadows are disappearing
unanchored from the people we have lost
fading away, so happy, oblivious
to all suffering done, never to return

remember me tripping on cobblestone
remember it ripping through skin & bone
falling like alice to the antipodes

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2024

GUEST POST // Do Trees Cry? by yassy

Do trees cry when you chop them?
Do trees cry when you cut them down?
Do they feel the pain when the axe falls?
Do they bleed when you put a blade through their bark?
I wonder what happens to their roots?
I wonder how they feel when uprooted?
Do they weep when they are gutted?
Are their screams and cries for help lost in the burning pain
when fires light up their unheard screams
Like an unseen bloodstain

by YASSY
© All rights reserved 2024

GUEST POST // Islands by Whitecatgrove

I who have known pain: You say, not this pain —
Your pain runs wider and deeper than mine.
Your pain thoroughly over-canyons mine
out-oceans mine, thrusting a fiery head
up from the mountaining deeps, your pain heaps
a new island stone by stone, bare and black,
licked by flame — your pain and mine are not the same —

to which I offer a palm and say: look.
That open sky swallows our smaller lives,
spits them out in some mightier place — or shits
them, it’s good to be humble. Look: a bird
leaf-beaked alights upon that lonely shore.
Not my bird or your bird, but its own bird,
other-bird, leading the way to fresh cliffs.

A bird brings seeds, drops seeds, shits seeds, a bird
drawn there to the heaped ruin you call yourself.
You cannot know this bird, you have always known
this bird, this holy spirit, white as the salt
in your tears. This bird nests in your pain, builds
paradise. Hope floats its coconut in,
unbidden, under that embracing sky.

by WHITECATGROVE
© All rights reserved 2024

threshian harvest

it’s alright, it’s okay
you can lay me down now
in that circle poised for decay
or maybe tomorrow
or maybe back then
hell knows when

it’ll always be too soon
to attend such sadness but
it’s alright & it’s okay anyway

i need only as long as i get
& maybe moments more
for my life to matter
for to fill it with you
& the scenes we’ll ne’er keep
when our play is done

it’ll always be too soon
for such sadness to mend but
it’s alright to live & die anyway

you pay your debts with pain
then seek a new currency
& nurse that barb wire heart
but ask what joy would do
even when i’m gone
see, it’s alright, it’s okay

it’ll always be too soon
to pen such sadness but
it’s alright & got a poem anyway

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2024

brain cancer

i shall not be a burden
i shall not forget to pray
i shall be an inspiration
i shall die in the right way

for those that plead the blood
do nothing but think they’re helping
i metastasise in compliance
in deference to the eyes that will

i shall not be a burden
i shall not say god is cruel
i shall be a demonstration
i shall die in the right way

for those that invoke the name
do nothing but think they’re helping
i catastrophise in silence
in deference to the eyes that won’t

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2023