Sandalwood
© Aurora Antonovic


The sweet smell of sandalwood rises
Up from your beard,
More intoxicating than any incense
I’ve ever known,
More enveloping in its subtle, pungent lure,
Calling me to come wrap myself in your arms
And lose myself in your scent.

 

MG
© Aurora Antonovic


I feel like a deceiver when I
dress myself in carefully arranged clothing to 
hide my gauntness, and paint my face with lying
strokes to hide the ravages of illness. I wonder who I am
fooling when I try to laugh and it 
comes out sounding harsh and brittle. I
think you can hear death in my voice.



Tattletale Flowers
© Aurora Antonovic


On Valentine’s Day, 
He sent me
A dozen yellow roses,
My absolutely favourite flower,
With a card that inappropriately was signed
With all his love.
He said it meant nothing
But a thank you for good work on a group  project,
Although no one else in the bunch got so much as a petal.
He laughed nervously as I
Raised my voice to tell him to make them stop
When three more dozen roses – this time red – 
Arrived throughout the day.
Now, 
Three months later,
A slim volume of poetry has arrived
With a bouquet of loveliness,
And he tells me not to read too much into it;
He must think I am pretty stupid
Not to read the silent message a
Winking orchid 
Can give.

 

Paper Prevarications
© Aurora Antonovic


Your lying words
Have revealed you to be nothing more than a
Paper man
Rife with spelling errors
Grammatical faux pas
And imperfect syntax
Written upon with smeared pencil
Most easily erased.

 

What Happened When
© Aurora Antonovic


You said, “What would happen if
For once you stopped being such a 
Workaholic, and a perfectionist, and
Took some time off to relax for a change?”
I put down my paintbrush, opened up some
Linseed oil, and said, “Okay, I
Am yours for the day.” Before you fainted,
You got my jacket,
Ushered me out the door,
And into the sunshine.
I was introduced to an artist I had not heard of ,
Got my almost black hair highlighted with red,
Dared you to shave my initials into yours;
Sang “Life is a Flower” at the top of my lungs in the park,
Learned the words to a new song,
Danced to Barenaked Ladies and Ace of Base,
Had ice cream for lunch,
Thai for dinner,
But declined on the tattoo….

The Loneliest Grave
© Nick Zegarac


Zipped into one weighted slack,
the dried meat casing of a rigor sausage,
dropped from a height, one soul alone,
to slip beneath sea spray and briny foam.
Below the waves, beneath the sea,
alas succumbed to this new journey’s end,
pecked, pureed by salty demons, that pry
to mingle rotting flesh with the green, green algae.

Alas I go, to dream no more,
or lament my baron state room packed, 
widow suitcases await cargo holds below,
a shallower grave than the one I now know.
My heart grown still, my head the tabernacle 
of stolen memories awash in careless tides,
a wife and child abandoned forever, though I fear,
cold comforting hunger shall reach the pier.



Secrets of the Universe
© Nick Zegarac


Hindsight is foresight
in reverse,
the future,
by virtues past,
made perverse.

Confusion is logic
turned on end,
that reason,
escapable, 
cannot befriend.

Chance is calculation,
faithfully acquired.
Though luck minus structure
is to most, uninspired.

And death is but life
without breath
and unending.
Time’s natural order
not withstanding.

 

The Pleasures of Summer
© Nick Zegarac


Overcrowded, under umbrellas
stepped on, or ogled, or worse
completely ignored
self consciously zipped into a one piece,
The most minute imperfection accentuated
Blossoming, as envy 
While the ever-continuous parade 
of anatomically gifted sculptures
celebrate to dusk 

To perspire – nay, sweat,
Staining fresh linens
Matting greasy threads of hair
The tranquility of a bath,
Desired on the hour after next
And daydreams of a snow cone
Lazily tipped down the front
Of one’s sticky trousers,
Are these the pleasures of summer?

To be decorated 
in reddening, poison-hard lumps
Or perchance, the vial stinger of a bee 
burrowed deep
Infected, swollen and tenderly sour
swallowing golden granules  
in every endeavored bite of a warm sandwich
in hair and shorts,
impossibly glued between toes
To peel as the rotting orange,
Or stick, the dried anchovies
in day-old three cheeses, 
Black flies swarming
wreaking of scorched flakes
in cindered shavings
upon one’s pillow

Escape, you say,
into the thundered bellow of surf
Swelling trunks and pockets 
full of distilled sewage and algae
Scraped heels on coral 
Emerging, nay, as Venus
But invigorated by pink eye
The biting kiss of salt sprinkled
over each open wound
Onward and homeward,
Squinting into the last teasing remnants of sunset
To treat the day’s ailments 
in the repose of an air-conditioned oasis 
begging for the rustling cool of embittered frost
You may keep your pleasures of summer!


The Last Elizabethan
© Nick Zegarac


Shakespeare wrote his works of old
whistling ripened follies,
or so it has been told.

Yet, did he really pen such eloquent fluff?
or have prospects, mere folly,
coined a bluff?

For speculations beg the inquiry
be made in short,
to chronicle each sly retort.

History is excused from disproving its past,
Or to offer confirmed resolutions
to curiosity, at long last.

And then, of course, there are,
those scandals discussed as fact,
that Will n’er knew to witness a contract.

As such his reputation is trapped
on etiquette’s sweet persist,
in that capsule where his legacies exist.

Perchance to dream,
to be, or not,
bones of the Bard continue to rot.

And I, for one,
believed this fiction should lay dormant still,
from those failing that Englishman’s quill.

But then, of course, who among us knew,
that the greatest of all literary masters
lived just down the road from you?

Miss Electricity
© Debashish Haar


Science Fiction
A love story between Ms Electricity and Mr Magnetism.

In the strobe she flows,
in the cadence
of incandescence
of her capacious robes.
She is glow worm
of percussion flight---
a poets delight
an artist's muse.

Her strides make
facades of darkness evanescent,
her wink make
needles dance
in ecstasy,
her sassiness
make hercules sweat---
welcome back Miss Electricity.

Her caress make dew blush,
her strides and flux
illuminate sun's silhouette,
her amiable manner
makes even Satan to bow
in her electric capture.

Sheets of taped lies
she uncovered
with change
in magnetic flux,
scums of this Earth unveiled
with their paranormal
existence at stake.

In the gloom
of devilish devour,
in the moon of latent fire,
in the pretense of bitching smirks
she cut through
with her acute lasing cream.

Such is her majestic stride,
even Satan
lost nerves in fear
of her radiative delight,
so to shelter
his heap of lies
he signed a truce
to search his absconding alterego.

Particles of light,
reflections of moonbeams,
dance of death
all granted a lease
of laughter in contrite.

Teeming streets
of pathogenic wierd warlocks
raided her castle,
only to get
maimed in the parison
that they inflamed.

Miss Electricity
leave these loathsome creations
leave the apparitions
and don't you bother
for crocodile cries
in this rotting alcove---
damned in dark demonic strife.

So dear princess,
let's unite
to break this
eons of asymptotic freedom,
break the gauge field constructs
and the abtracts
of radiative fields,
'coz for exposing filth
electricity and magnetism
should unite normal
to unweave light.



Tis Raining
© Debashish Haar


Enamored!!

The solar subsistence,
the aureole moon,
Betra's memoir
in puragatory pool.

Bleached to heart's trappings
and the tappings
belied in obstinate gloom,
meandering in moor.

Solitude posted
tombstone blues.

"Lady I am slithering
in your writhe,
in your woven dream,
in your meanderings.

Your touch subjugated
the arcane territories,
the goaded reliefs
of sifting shadows---
the paws
of persistence
of memory.

The porch that covered
stands perforated,
the stains of blood
peep out with pain.

Is it that the time
has stopped,
or I am drenched
in your drops
of tender desires?
Or is it rain
in the aroma of your skin
and hue of your
spawned pearls?"



Look into my Eyes
© Debashish Haar


Listening to your blue waves.

The aroma of the zephyr,
drifting drones
and shifting shadows
of your tender dreams.
Words of passion,
love pebbles glistening
in day's streak of spark---
yet a shadow under the eyes
spoke of your chuckles---
in the giggles of sky.

Oh my princess,
before you leave
and gallop ahead
in your majestic stead,
have a glance
at the soul in trance---
shattered with thy au revoir---
and your palisade
of eons of love dreams.

Rhyming the surge
with Minerva's demure,
reaching the heights
of venusian Massifs
in the rhythm
of cosmic athlete,
I see you in the
gentle hue of aquamarine
lighting the shadows
of the attic.

The wretched times
that you endeavored
to mend shouldn't go waste,
the meliorate meadows
slithering in writhing pain
would whisper
in the syllables
of your smiles and giggles.

As I struggle
to traverse the cosmos
and the high seas,
the palatial refuge
in ethereal love
of onyx eyes,
my maimed existence
moan for your touch---
for the liberation
you promised!