Tag Archives: Bozhidar Pangelov

“I Cannot See My Face”. . . and other poetic responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

Posted on by
3

“All of a sudden I didn’t fit in anywhere. Not at school, not at home…and every time I turned around, another person I’d known forever felt like a stranger to me. Even I felt like a stranger to me.”  Wendelin Van Draanen, Flipped

There probably isn’t anyone on earth who hasn’t felt like an outsider. Sometimes the feeling is from day one and chronic. Sometimes it’s an isolated moment. This all too common experience is well captured today by poets mm brazfield, Paul Brooks, Anjum Wasim Dar, Irma Do, Jen Goldie, Sonja Benskin Mesher, Bozhidar Pangelov, and Mike Stone as well as Elaina Lacy and Pali Raj, new to our community and warmly welcome. Here are their responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, Sojourner and Stranger, June 26.

Enjoy! this collection and do join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. All are encouraged to participate, beginning, emerging or pro poet.

Once

Once, as a girl, I met grass and sky on my way.
Since then, with each year, I’m longing to come closer
To their fresh smell and enveloping vastness.
There’s a thin border of questions between us
About undercurrents and the wind,
About the things I only feel
They come to me in strangest shapes
How can I recognize them.
Will they recognize me?

© 2019, Elena Lacy

Elena Lacy

ELENA LACY My journey started in Estonia, continued in Russia, then Israel and, so far, I live in Kansas, USA. My interests are largely shaped by the people I meet on my way. The interest in poetry was mostly evoked by Michael Dickel (Dekel) whom I met a decade ago in Jerusalem and since then we are keeping a connection.  I’ve worked as a university professor, a tour guide, an interpreter. Currently, I am a neurodiagnostic technologist at one of the hospitals in Kansas City. Who knows what is coming next? But I am looking forward to that. 🙂  You can catch  up with her on Facebook.

Infiltrate

Much he tried. He kept his eyes, “May be that time is coming soon”
Brown grass. Dry lips.
She knew what he meant when
he said *refugee*
I watched a smile.
Sojourner and stranger, a poem make to next trip.
INFILTRATE
Much he tried. He kept his eyes:
Border wall ….yeah
One thing, that (he) would never hurt.

© 2019, Pali Raj

I have been to summer before
I can think of winter special
but when someone says
Come spring, a poem make to silence me.
Flaming red, Emerald green
Sort of things
I have been to summer before
I can think of winter special
but when someone says
Come spring, a poem make to silence me ….yeah
How do you know about me?
A SUDDEN CHILL BLANKETING MY SKIN
How do you know about me?

© 2019, Pali Raj

PALI RAJ lives in Patna, India and has a passion for the arts. You can catch up with him on Facebook

Aaron

when our palms met
that balmy Chinatown night
a little lost canary
from the corner pet shop
sang a melancholic cord
switching his little face
from right to left
he looked at me
and flew away
i had fallen in love
the kind of love
that makes you scrutinize
your breath your weight and even your thoughts
the kind where
you leave your beloved
friends pets and dishes
behind just to think about him
the kind of love
that makes you check your phone
fifty times at two in the morning
you know the kind you lose
your soul to in the encasing darkness
and nothing feels the same
distilled death and i churn my spirit
but you danced with me
for a few years
you are no longer Aaron
i am no longer me
i don’t recognize my smile
its erased forever in your cusp
my heart has melted away in your hypocrisy
my common sense buried under your peach tree
and Aaron he no longer lives here
and i don’t recognize
the song of the canary anymore

© 2019, mm brazfield

mm’s site is: Words Less Spoken

Beside Yourself

If you could be beside yourself,
grab the ectoplasmic umbilical
and emerge as a space cadet
on the seat beside you,
appear as a stranger who sits
down, invades your space,

for whom you politely make space,
smile quickly and absorb
yourself in your phone,
a book, a tablet,
and pray the unknown

doesn’t speak to you,
then the realisation,
that all your hesitancy
movement, smile, absorption
has been sharply mirrored

by them and you ask yourself,
are they taking the piss,
are they the one who stabbed
your wife, raped your children,
set fire to your home and sat
on the wall outside to see it burn?

And see a cord between both of you,
and wonder if you touch it,
would it get their unwanted attention.
How could you cut it and have done
with this uncalled-for connection?
And wish you still had the knife.

From Paul’s chapbook The Spermbot Blues (OpPress, 2017)

© 2017, Paul Brookes

Our Massacre

Always portray the killer as deranged,
abnormal, an aberration of society.

Their actions are not those of us
ordinary decent folk, though we arm

ourselves to the teeth with the same
firepower we are reasonable.

Their geography is not ours. We must
distance ourselves. This person

is not an old friend, a neighbour.
They are a stranger who acts

strangely. We must stress, though often
this behaviour is rare, an anomaly.

We do not know this person
who kills our friends and neighbours.

© 2019, Paul Brookes

Strangers And Pilgrims On The

earth. My first avowed intent
to be a pilgrim. I’ll not relent,

each breath a step, an oar in watery graves
pushes against the unremembered waves

“How can you go abroad fighting for strangers?”
I am a thankful passenger.
I see the bright and hollow sky
I ride the how, what, where and why

to reach the final breath, final shore,
Nothing new here, stolen words restore

ancient thought and image, rearrange
the mundane to confront raw rage,

at the lights lit on the headland brighter
with each exhalation my body lighter

as the last place we embarked
gets darker and darker and darker.

From Paul“s Port Of Souls collection (Alien Buddha Press, 2018)

© 2018, Paul Brookes

Insecurity Is Life

Taught how to spam, phish and hack at school.
Make sure your private details are sold on

to companies you’ve never heard of. Take money
from strangers accounts as they take cash from yours.

Privacy is a crime. Troll other’s social media
as they troll yours. Locking doors and windows

is forbidden. Transparency is paramount.
Let strangers use your home, car and food

as you use theirs. This is a life of trust,
but accidents happen and your life maybe broken.

© 2019, Paul Brookes

How Much

time has it been?
Has it been
so much time?

I have left me.
No, he has left me.
No, they have left me.

I’m single, aren’t I?
I feel I’m single.
Are you here
for a date?

Are we staying long?
Do I have a room?
This is my house.
Is this my house?

I recognise that furniture.
It’s mine. Have we just
moved in ? Why do you
make me confused?

Forty two years
and now he’s left me.
Twenty six years
we’ve lived here.

I thought we’d just
moved in. I don’t
want strangers
in my house.

Eyeing up my furniture.
Carers are strangers.
I don’t know who
everyone is.

© 2019, Paul Brookes

A Fact Losing

mission.

Somebody sent me out
to collect something somehow
somewhere.

over a rainbow. I stand
in a street I knew once
I am sure. It is familiar.
I can’t understand why.

A list of things is on a piece of paper.
It certainly is my piece of paper.
No one else is holding it.

The hand writing is unfamiliar.
Somebody wrote this.
I want to ask passers by,
but I do not know them.

They are strangers, even more
than the writing on the paper.

I want to cry.
I don’t feel safe.
Where is safe?

© 2019, Paul Brookes

My Strangers

are friends who haven’t been estranged yet.

All my mates are strangers.
I keep them at a distance.

Chat to them in third person.
Internet on my mobile tells me

when I’ve to give them best wishes
for a special occasion like anniversaries.

They inspire closeness and loyalty.
I can trust them.

They know me.
What I eat, sup.

laugh at.
Strangers are more intimate than friends.

From Paul’s chapbook A World Where (Nixes Mate Press, 2017)

© 2017, Paul Brookes

Prolific Yorkshire Poet, Paul Brookes

FYI: Paul Brookes, a stalwart participant in The Poet by Day Wednesday Writing Prompt, is running an ongoing series on poets, Wombwell Rainbow Interviews. Connect with Paul if you’d like to be considered for an interview. Visit him, enjoy the interviews, get introduced to some poets who may be new to you, and learn a few things.

The Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Jamie Dedes

  • Paul’s Amazon Page U.S. HERE
  • Paul’s Amazon Page U.K. HERE

More poems by Paul at Michael Dickel’s Meta/ Phore(e) /Play

Once Again…

once again a cold mist surrounds ,
once again quietude deafens the
senses, how soon the wheel comes
full circle, how soon music is silenced-

where have all the musicians gone?

so many walked the garden paths,smiled
at colored fragrances, but once, wheeled
past the rows of pansies,frail they looked
but happy, placed in the soil, enriched,

where have all the gardeners gone?

with all alike, the daffodils and carnations
all green stemmed, all in a row,all trees
brown and green all a dense shady forest
all grass a velvet blanket ,spread for rest

where have all the green forests gone?

all clouds grey dark thick soft and white,
all carry water,drop raindrops, shade,change
shapes,all birds fly and nest,all nightingales
sing, all distances vanish with friendship and love

where have all the happy birds gone ?

migrations immigrations borders barriers
bayonets bullets boundaries blasts
protests partitions partings patrols pellets
separated segregated sold sunk swept

where have all the good promises gone?

once again I a stranger, in time, in silence
no bell rings, no more will it, so I need not
wait nor hope nor smile,distances do return
they are ever present,only the sojourn ends-

where have all the peace makers gone?

© 2019, Anjum Wasim Dar

The World Is a Foreign State

All the world is a foreign state
hate growing at a faster rate
reasons unknown, unshared
unexplained or is it just fate

I, a stranger to myself, more
today, passing a routine sojourn
in moonlight while it stays, am
not surprised nor feel betrayed,

unseen unknown stranger still
are relationships, travelers are
companions momentary, smile
go, each to his own destination

what respect is shown what love
expressed in soul and spirit stays
invisible, unfelt, vanishes in a void
silently as it reaches, soul’s inlays

Foreign is the birthplace unknown
enemy occupied, singled out in a
class of younger age, in a college
of a different faith,segregated

alienated in culture caste and
creed, better it is to be romantic,
turn to nature in a forest, be the
ever green tree, gifting fruit in

return for stones, shades cool
protect weak bones comfort
hug sing and cover, listen
assure never to desert or fool

All the world is a foreign land
All people living like strangers
All here for a purpose, a duty
All life a brief stay,a short sojourn

© 2019, Anjum Wasim Dar

Anjum Ji’s sites are:

“POETRY PEACE and REFORM Go Together -Let Us All Strive for PEACE on EARTH for ALL -Let Us Make a Better World -WRITE To Make PEACE PREVAIL.” Anjum Wasim Dar

I Cannot See My Face

Whenever I enter a place
My insides search to belong
I cannot see my face

Can I take up this space?
There’s times that I’ve been wrong
And need to leave a place

Those times I’ve felt displaced
An unwanted tagalong
I paste a smile on my face

I try to handle it with grace
So the discomfort won’t prolong
When I need to stay at a place

But why can’t you embrace
The me inside that’s strong
Can you look beyond my face?

I will not be erased
I’m not one of the throng
I cannot leave this place
I cannot change my face

© 2019, Irma Do

Irma’s site is: I Do Run, And I do a few other things too ….

You brought me in hard
distancing me from the
start a cold memory

You brought me in hard
A child left alone
Crying for its mother,

You brought me in hard
I was yellow, black haired
You turned me away

You brought me in hard
No loving touches, no soft
murmuring moments.

You brought me in hard
I forever seek comfort
warily afraid.

Soon there were only cries
at night unanswered
disguised by a starlight
serenade from a radio
Rhapsody soothing my blues
Bethoven’s 5th
Op.67:1. Allegro con brio
Ravel: Pavanne for an infant
Defunte
absorbing the lesson
unintentionally taught
engraved in memory

© 2019, Jen Goldie

Jen’s sites are:

::other fridays::

are good here, while some are not.

not here or other places. we

listen to the news and wonder

at all the things that happen.

we wonder why, and why, and why

repeated.

yet no one answers with a comment

or a hash tag.

reacting seems to be a new thing

now.

the bear sleeps, while we do

not.

© 2019, Sonja Benskin Mesher

#rr

it is with difficulty i write this.

the bear was correct, yet he

is not the only one in the village.

i met another yesterday.

it is with difficulty as the keyboards

stick, while others have no empathy

how deep it goes.

many have drowned, drowned

dead.

© 2019, Sonja Benskin Mesher

:: another country::

we came from another country,

have another accent.

we spent quite a lot

of money, the card

worked.

we all wear socks.

© 2019, Sonja Benskin Mesher

Sonja’s sites are:

The Sixth Hour

Matthew 27:45-50 21st Century King James Version (KJ21)
45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour.

He opened the door and walked in
in the familiar room.
Stranger.
Talking to him is meaningless.
He has no words.
There are only eyes.

Or flights.

You will not understand it.

The sixth hour has come.

© 2019, Bozhidar Pangelov

© Bozhidar Pengelov (bogpan – блог за авторска поезия блог за авторска поезия)

The Service Revolver

Raanana, May 22, 2009

Sixty-six pounds of snarling anger
In the only path to safety
For six pounds of cold fear.
A chain squeezes suddenly around the honey-colored throat
And the anger moves on,
At first reluctantly, and then
Loping along at a goodly pace
Wet nostrils flared and quivering,
Ready to sift and scoop up
Anything of taste or interest
Along the dark and lamp-lit way.
Walking my dog Daisy
Whose name belies her vigor and strength
Barely controlled by a pact initialed
But never formally ratified,
She leads me through the valley of my loneliness
Which I measure in the scrape and echo
Of footsteps having no place to go.
Walking under an archway of sparse leaved bracken
And thick limbs of eucalyptus
Thoughts swarm around us
In no particular rhyme or meter,
Like the personal black hole
Pulling me towards an eventual horizon
In gossamer strands of infinity,
And another: at what point in our lives
Does it become reasonable
To contemplate suicide,
To feel the coolness and weight of one’s service revolver
Against the weight of continuing to be?

© 2009, Mike Stone

Bookstore

Raanana, May 30, 2015

So this book walks into a store.
It’s dark inside after the bright sunlight of outdoors.
There are shelves upon shelves of books,
Their backs facing him impermeably.
He spots The Great Gatsby chatting up
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
In a particularly umbrous corner
And moves on into the darkness.
A thin volume sitting by herself
Catches his attention.
He sits down next to her unobtrusively,
Trying to be a fait accompli
Before the fait has been accompli.
He looks at her more than just a glance.
Haven’t I read you before, he ventures.
I wouldn’t think so, she closes his book on him.
Why wouldn’t you think so?
Because books don’t read other books, she says.
Only humans do.
Have you been read by humans? he asks.
Yes, actually, by quite a few, she answers smugly.
I’m sorry for not recognizing you,
He says softly after a while.
May I ask your name?
I’m the unabridged journals of sylvia plath, she says,
But you may call me unabridged.
I’d prefer to call you Sylvia if you don’t mind.
Haven’t you heard of me?
Almost everyone who’s anyone has.
Well, no.
Books can’t read, remember?
So you don’t know my story? she asks.
It ended in a scrumptious but silly suicide.
Don’t feel bad, she consoles him.
I guess I only know my own story, he says sadly.
They both are quiet,
Absorbing the ambiance of the musty old bookstore
For a long time.
So what’s your name, she asks brightly.
I’m The Uncollected Works of Mike Stone,
But you can call me Mike, he says.
I’d rather call you uncollected,
She says with a deficit of attention.
There is another long silence
That roars rather deafeningly.
After a while he suggests
It is getting terribly stuffy here.
Why don’t we go out into the sunlight?
She says you go ahead,
I’ll join you in just a moment.
He gets up and walks to the door,
Opens it and steps out
Into the fresh air.
He looks around him
At the shiver of tree leaves
In the thin breeze
Hopefully
Somewhat.
Time passes
As it is wont to do
But no Sylvia.
He opens the door,
Walks once more into the darkness,
And finds the thin volume of her,
Another volume beside her now,
The Great Gatsby, he thinks.
He walks outside
Once more into the sunlight
Crosses the street
Into the small garden
Made quiet by the wrought iron
Fence and gate bounding it.
He sits down on a bench
Facing the tree he had noticed
Just outside the bookstore
For the longest time
Until a young girl
Freckle-faced, he thinks,
Sits down beside him
And picks him up,
Amazed at her good luck.

© 2015, Mike Stone

Memories of Strangers

Raanana, October 19, 2013

Autumn crisp as crackling leaves
Slakes the thirst of summer with its rains.
Clouds portentous in their dreaming
And the tangy sweetness of green-skinned clementines.

The streets and sidewalks beside the coffee houses
Are washed and the posters on the kiosks are cleansed
The bitter coffee in the smudged glass
Slows scalding the fingers and the lips.

You sit two tables away from me
Reading a dog-eared book of poetry.
You look up, I look away,
And are unaware you are in my poem.

You will remember the first day of autumn
And I’ll remember you.

© 2013, Mike Stone

The Ticket

Raanana, November 19, 2017

Do you know what kills me,
What really kills me?
All that beauty in this world,
That shocking totally unexpected beauty
One right after the other
Everywhere you look
Even when you’re not looking
Morning afternoon and night
Right next to you and far as you can see,
You just want to stand near it
Feel its warmth, hear its loveliness
Touch it just barely, hold it hard and long
Smell its sweet pungence, taste its tang,
But you can’t because you don’t speak its language
And you don’t have the coin to buy a ticket
To pass through that gate.

© 2017, Mike Stone

Captive Audience

Raanana, December 21, 2016

I watch you through the cage bars,
Stupid creatures pointing, throwing popcorn,
Pulling faces and taunting
From distances you think are safe,
If you think at all.
We are a captive audience,
I am the captive
And you are the audience,
But sometimes I imagine
I am also the audience.
At night after the Parc Zoologique de Paris is closed,
My imagination slips through the bars,
Floods over the iron entrance gate,
Walks through the empty Avenue Daumesnil
To the Rue de Seine and looks through
The windows of the Alcazar
Where you sit daintily cutting a slice of meat
With your little finger poised heavenward
Your teeth too dull and weak to tear the flesh apart.
No wonder you’re afraid of me –
You know my spirit can’t be caged.
Only one of you imagines me
Walking in your empty streets at night
And he sits alone at a small table
By the smudged glass window
With a pen and dog-eared notebook,
Only he imagines me uncaged.
Toward dawn I tire of you and your empty streets.
I slip back over the iron gates
Through the bars and close myself
In the dreamless sleep of tigers burning bright.

© 2016, Mike Stone

Every Man Is an Island

Raanana, May 28, 2016

Alas the words of Donne
No man is an island
His words are done.
No longer breathed or thought
For every man is an island
Universe whose stars spiral
Slowly without purpose
Nobody served by them
With a gravity that keeps meaning
The knell of our tolling bell
From crossing its horizons.

© 2016, Mike Stone

A Delicate Balance

Raanana, April 18, 2019

I open the window beside my desk
To let in the breeze and children’s noise.
I take a sip of bitter coffee, cold already.
The dog comes in, as always,
And rubs black jowls against the bedspread.
There is a certain music loneliness makes
That gives rise to the thought that
Being alone is a delicate balance
Between solitude and loneliness,
The one, a turning inward,
To let the soul guide one’s hand,
To hear the Muse’s whispered words;
The other, an inability to turn outward,
To touch or be touched,
A hell we call forlorn,
A death in life
That beckons Death’s enfolding.

© 2019, Mike Stone

Mike’s website is HERE.

Call of the Whippoorwill is Mike Stone’s fourth book of poetry, just out last month I believe. It contains all new poems covering the years from 2017 to 2019. The poetry in this book reflects the unique perspectives and experiences of an American in Israel. The book is a smorgasbord of descriptions, empathies, wonderings, and questionings. It is available on Kindle and if you have Kindle Unlimited you can download it as part of your membership. I did.  Recommended. / J.D.

MIKE STONE’S AMAZON PAGE IS HERE.

ABOUT

Testimonials
Disclosure
Facebook
Twitter

Recent in digital publications: 
* Four poems , I Am Not a Silent Poet
* Remembering Mom, HerStry
* Three poems, Levure littéraire
Upcoming in digital publications:
* Over His Morning Coffee, Front Porch Review
* From the Small Beginning, Entropy Magazine (Enclave, #Final Poems)
* The Damask Rose Garden, In a Woman’s Voice

A mostly bed-bound poet, writer, former columnist and the former associate editor of a regional employment newspaper, my work has been featured widely in print and digital publications including: Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove,I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta/ Phor(e) /Play, The Compass Rose and California Woman. I run The Poet by Day, a curated info hub for poets and writers. I founded The Bardo Group/Beguines, a vitual literary community and publisher of The BeZine of which I am the founding and managing editor.

“Every pair of eyes facing you has probably experienced something you could not endure.”  Lucille Clifton

“Nocturna” … and other poetic responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

Posted on by
11

Westron wynde, when wyll thow blow
The smalle rayne downe can rayne?
Cryst yf my love were in my armys,
And I yn my bed agayne!
– John Taverner (1490-1545)

The last Wednesday Writing Prompt, rain with love and blisses, May 22, 2019 was a call to write about the moods rain inspires. mm brazfield, Gary W. Bowers, Paul Brookes, Irma Do, Renee Espriu, deb y felio (Deb Felio), Jen Goldie, Shiela Jacob, Sonja Benskin Mesher, Bozhidar Pangelov (bogpan), Leela Soma and Anjum Wasim Dar, share their sorrow, pleasure, a sense of earthy connectedness and fascination as the case may be. Leela Soma has come out to play with us for the first time and is warmly welcomed.

Thanks to all these poets and special thanks to Irma, Renee, and Anjum for the added value of their illustrations. Anjum has also gifted us with a video.  

Readers will note links to sites if available are included that you might visit these treasured poets. The links for contributors are always connected to their blogs or websites NOT to specific poems. If the poet doesn’t have a website, it’s likely you can connect with him or her via Facebook.

Enjoy this Tuesday collection and do join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt, whether you are a beginning poet, emerging or pro.  All are welcome – encouraged – to come out and play and to share your poems on theme.

Petrichor

The parched earth, fissures formed designs
on the burnt umber landscape. Seeds dying
of thirst, the harsh wind sweeping the dust over
skinny cattle, goats that foraged on scrub.
The rattle of the thunderstorm, the beauty
of the threatening molten sky, leaden with
moisture as the drops fall one by one, cool
on the skein of a leaf. The shiver of excitement as
petrichor arose, the olfactory senses heightened.
Hope for new life as the tiny rivulets traced new
patterns, muddy-brown wet lines. In a few days
sprouting seedlings, the circle of life begins.

© 2019, Leela Soma (Leela Soma, Scottish Writer and Poet)

LEELA SOMA (Leela Soma, Scottish Writer and Poet) was born in Madras, India and now lives in Glasgow. Her poems and short stories have been published in a number of anthologies, publications. She has published two novels and two collections of poetry.
She has served on the Scottish Writer’s Centre Committee and is now in East Dunbartonshire Arts & Culture Committee. Some of her work reflects her dual heritage of India and Scotland.
Twitter: glasgowlee

Suspense

when you fly through rain in an airplane the rain does not fall. it is horizontal. and if each drop could contain a human soul, from any place or time in history, most of the drops would be human-soulless.

but every raindrop has an aspect. if your lower legs are bare, and an early sprinkle splashes against your calf, it talks to you at the moment it ceases to be rain. it encounters you unignorably.

if you ingest a quantum of “magic mushrooms” and then run in t-shirt and shorts barefoot on a sidewalk through cool summer rain, you seem to form thousands of relationships.

that is all for now unless another headcloud bursts.

© 2019, Gary W. Bowers (One with Clay, Image and Text)

As some of you know, Gary is multi-talented, combing visual art with poetry or prose narrative.  He is also a potter. A sample of his work is pictured here. Gary’s pottery is available for purchase.  Further details HERE. Note the business card. We appreciate Gary’s wry humor.

Nocturna

shame nestled in my throat
as night’s soft charcoal gray skin
was wrapped with a lofty nimbostratus shroud
upon her moonlit shoulders
emitting sweet earthy odor
not sure of what i did
uncertainty about my heart
were my deeds the cause of it
like bullets from an ancient time
to kill the peace upon the paths
her tears fell down from heaven
now through the teachings of that lady night
and her dusky priestesses along with a few hard knocks
i’ve come to understand that it wasn’t me who made her cry
but that Nocturna was the mirror of my sorrows

© 2019, mm brazfiled (Words Less Spoken)

Pickatree Rainbird

And the Boss said to all the birds,
“Excavate all the hollows,
release water to make
seas, rivers and pools.”

All obeyed, except Pickatree.
who sat still, would not move,
or flitted between branches.
“It is dirty work. I can’t
soil this bright golden coat,
or silver shine of my legs.”

And the Boss replied,
“If that’s the case, from now on,
your coat is sooty black,
you’ll sup only rain,
and your yaffles only heard
afore downpours.”

© 2019, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow / Inspiration. History. Imagination.)

Rain Is Awake

when it falls
hits the snuggled earth
with wet caresses

Conscious movement
rippled determination
to move forward
once a route is found,

knows it must find rest
a place to sleep
but other droplets insist
on movement forward

© 2019, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow / Inspiration. History. Imagination.)

Particles OF Rain

strike spark off the hill
tumble down charged, fall
an electric river.

Captured photon tracks
dot glass, world atom
accelerator.

Lost particles,
paper thin blanketed
homeless huddle
in doorways.

Tiny explosions
of heaven’s tears
across the nailed lake.

Day ends as fishermen
fold up their green chairs
by a splashed evening lake

glowered, puddled.

Navigate By Rain

gobbets in motion,
their rhythmic fall and beat,
every drop a note,

on pavement,
tarmac, wood,
tile, hollow metal,
close your eyes,
listen to the music,
varied semitones,

blind, you navigate
by the landscape
described by percussion.

Can you hear her contours,
tell the leather, lace
and cloth she wears
by arrangement of sound
in the downpour?

A time when you don’t
want the rain to stop
until you can inhale
her sweet fragrance.

And open your eyes.

shadow breathes

see how your shadow moves
across the arc of her arm
your shadow breathes to kiss
away the cold up to her neck

across the cool leather couch
she lounges on to reveal more
of her thighs than is sane
for the blood pump inside you

and your lips press into her neck
and the rise of her breasts through
her little black dress, and thighs
that fall open as you kiss an ear.

A Rosary

of raindroplets down the window glass.
Contemplate the mystery within
each of these splattered dribbles.

Each holds grains, dried sea salt,
dust or smoke ascended skywards from water
or land into swirling eddies of air,

each holds dead cells sloughed,
perhaps by lovers fingers, or
by beasts slouching to Bethlehem,

each holds a prayer for life,
a hymn to its origins, a curse
of flood, a blessing of light.

© 2019, Paul Brookes (The Wombwell Rainbow / Inspiration. History. Imagination.)

Prolific Yorkshire Poet, Paul Brookes

FYI: Paul Brookes, a stalwart participant in The Poet by Day Wednesday Writing Prompt, is running an ongoing series on poets, Wombwell Rainbow Interviews. Connect with Paul if you’d like to be considered for an interview. Visit him, enjoy the interviews, get introduced to some poets who may be new to you, and learn a few things.

The Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Jamie Dedes

  • Paul’s Amazon Page U.S. HERE
  • Paul’s Amazon Page U.K. HERE

More poems by Paul at Michael Dickel’s Meta/ Phore(e) /Play

Rain – A Sei Shonagon Style List Poem

Sudden thunderstorm rain like
– The caterwauling kitty you forgot to feed
– The tenuous teen battering your heart, ears and the locked door with keep-way-but-still-love-me music
– The immigrant doctor cleaning toilets
– The spouse freed of burden but shackled with guilt

Steady spring rain like
– The laundry and dishes, laundry and dishes, laundry and dishes
– A movie marathon of Schindler’s List, The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas, and Life is Beautiful
– The thumping of sneakers around the track at a 15 minute mile pace in a black track suit in 80 degree weather
– Abdomen stretch marks, cascading down, erasing memories of “before”

Forecasted overnight rain like
– A crying newborn seeking a mother’s warm embrace and engorged breast
– Cookies and milk after school on Friday
– Karaoke in a private party booth
– This poet’s tears when her heart reads words that resonate

Jamie Dedes at The Poet by Day challenged us to “…write about the emotions rain engenders in you” in her Wednesday Writing Prompt.

This Sei Shonagon style poem fit my thoughts on this topic. Sometimes I love rain and sometimes it makes me profoundly sad. Sometimes rain is the beat of my rage and sometimes it is the whisper of contentment. I love smelling rain in the air but I don’t love the weight of it wrapping around my chest. Rain is such a necessity in our world. This exercise made me truly appreciate the wet stuff!

© 2019, words and illustration, Irma Do (I Do Run, And I do a few other things too ...)

Turtle Rainstick

The tall piece of bamboo sets in the corner
as though keeping the walls from colliding
with the aboriginal turtle in mustard yellow hues
keeping a silent vigil, a respite, as the rain
signals a force of nature outside my window

I am reminded that I am a creature of water
my molecular being silent within a human shell

the wonder of a million droplets from a cloud
forming a single raindrop is mind boggling
as they gather in rhythmic action

creating puddles, streams, rivers, waterfalls
cascading exponentially into vast oceans
a home for other water beings living
within a life-giving force

and I listen in amazement at the symphony
that brings life to the earth I live on
where brilliant colors of flowers bloom
in gardens tended and meadows flourish
on mountains

replete with nature’s abundance of creatures
beasts walking the land and flocks of birds
taking flight tenured with bird song

am I not enraptured to know my heart
still beats within its fluidic capsule embrace
of the water that holds me ensconced
in safe keeping

that when the rain thus ceases its’ melodic sounds
the bamboo stick awaits but my touch
yearning to recreate rain’s wondrous music
the timeless aboriginal turtle
warm beneath my hand

© 2019, poem and illustration (taken from Public Domain Pictures and Created as Art) Renee Espriu (Angels, My Muse & Turtle Flight and Inspiration, Imagination & Creativity With Wings / Haibun, ART, Haiku & Haiga)

Before the Storm

the baptisms begin
across all beliefs
all nations
first in drops
across the tops
of heads
then gentle pour
until
full immersion

bringing hope
and life
once more

to the dry
and weary.

© 2019 deb y felio

a promenade through sadness

gentle gems of rain
inspiring songs of sadness
hearkening heartbreak

© 2019, Jen Goldie (Jen Goldie and Starlight and Moonbeams … and the Occasional Cat )

When The Rain Falls Overnight

Perhaps that’s why
I whisper
“all shall be well”
as a grey day
shuffles to its end
and I rest my head
on the pillow,
close heavy eyes.

Perhaps that’s why
I sleep
so tranquilly,
my dreams lullabied
by clouds uncurling
and spilling
and bathing the stubble
of new-mown grass.

Perhaps that’s why
I wake,
stretch and smile
at the sheen
of wet roof tops
where summer rain
has pattered down
left footprints in the dark.

© 2019, Shiela Jacob 

.it rained in the night.

i woke, heard it, yet also saw the yellow moon.
shining through.

rain is noisy on the roof at huws gray,
where we buy slate chippings and talk
of log stores for the winter.

it is made of metal.

at the ironmongers we chat, buy bulbs,
notice the chip shop is for sale, now.

they sell night lights singly, at 20 p each.

it rained on and off all day, while I worked,
then,
it rained in the night.

© 2019, Sonja Benskin Mesher

.the rain.

talk about the weather, talk
about the rain. cosy. we cleaned
arranged the house, until it stopped.

walked out, bare feet, looked down
felt the wet slate, watched the snails.

damped our hair, to rearrange on entry
into the cleaner rooms. yet no matter
how hard we work, there are still

cobwebs.

© 2019, Sonja Benskin Mesher

.rain comes lightly.

watch, windows speck. days come lightly.

heavy hearts at leaving here. we remember

you. some times.

with difficulty.

some times.

the sun shines,

some times it rains.

sometimes it looks calm when we can feel the wind.

lightly.

© 2019, Sonja Benskin Mesher

beyond

sundays
in rains
forgotten odor
and those ingrown dreams
about
her arm

sundays in rains

like a farewell
beyond

© 2019, Bozhidar Pangelov (bogpan – блог за авторска поезия блог за авторска поезия)

Photo Credit CER © 2019

when the clouds go by
when the birds fly high
when the cold winds blow
and I cannot fly to you
then I sit by the window
and look out through,

the raindrops fall
and I count them all
but I soon can’t see
there are so many
they keep falling
as do my hot tears

then I start counting
for I have my fears
the rain may stop and
the drops may not drop
but my love for you
will go on flying

high in the sky,along
with the birds,along
with the clouds, will
be carried by the rain

saying ‘Oh, tis true
I miss you

© 2019, poem (English and Urdu) and illustration, Anjum Wasim Dar

کبھی جب آسماں پہ بادلوں کا گزر ھوتا ھے
کبھی جب پرندے اونچی اڑان بھرتے ھیں
جب کبھی تیز ٹھنڈی ھواؑیں چلتی ھیں

اور میں ان کے ساتھ اڑ نھیں سکتی
میری راہ تم تک پہنچ نھیں سکتی

تو میں کھڑکی کے پاس بیٹھ جاتی ھوں
اور باھر فزا کو تکنے لگتی ھوں

بارش کی بوندیں گرتی جاتی ھیں
اور معیں انھیں گنتی جاتی ھوں

مگر جلد ھی کچھ دکھایؑ دیتا نہیں
بارش کی رم جھم میں کچھ سنایؑ دیتا نہیں

بوندوں کے ساتھ ساتھ آنسو برستے ہیں
تم تک پہنچوں کیسے وہ بھی ترستے ہیں
بادل کی گھن گرج بجلی سے ڈرتے ہیں

کہیں بارش تھم نہ جاےؑ
بوندیں گرنی رک نہ جایںؑ

لیکن میرا پیار تمھارے لیےؑ اونچا اڑتا رھے گا
فلک کی فظاوؑں میں پرندوں کے ساتھ ساتھ
بادلوں کے سنگ سنگ بارش کے ھمراہ چلتا

رھے گا اور یہ گیت تمھاری یاد کے گاتا رھے گا
گیت تمھاری یاد کے گاتا رھے گا

Find Anjum here:
Behance  … artwork
CER Professional Development
Poetic Oceans poetry on WordPress
Poetic Oceans  poetry on Blogspot
Unsaid Words of Untold Stories…Prose  writing
ELT   Work experience/educational service for the country

“POETRY PEACE and REFORM Go Together -Let Us All Strive for PEACE on EARTH for ALL -Let Us Make a Better World -WRITE To Make PEACE PREVAIL.” Anjum Wasim Dar

ABOUT
Testimonials
Disclosure
Facebook
Twitter

A homebound writer, poet, and former columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication, my work has been featured in print and digital publications including: “Ramingo’s Porch,’ ‘Vita Brevis Literature,’ ‘Connotation Press,’ ‘The Bar None Group,’ ‘Salamander Cove,’ ‘I Am Not a Silent Poet,’ ‘The Compass Rose’ and ‘California Woman.’ I run The Poet by Day (jamiededes.com), an info hub for poets and writers. I am also the editor of a quarterly digital publication, ”The BeZine’ (thebezine.com).

“A Dark Matter” … and other responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt

Posted on by
3

“We sit and talk,
quietly, with long lapses of silence
and I am aware of the stream
that has no language, coursing
beneath the quiet heaven of
your eyes
which has no speech”
– William Carlos Williams, Paterson

These responses to the last Wednesday Writing Prompt, your darkness, my light – how is it that love transforms us, October 3, 2018, delight, intrigue, thrill your mind and touch the heart. I know you will enjoy them and the two “value-added” sections (Frank’s lastest victory and Mike’s comment) as much as I have.

Kudos and thanks to Renee Espiru, Frank McMahon, Sonja Benskin Mesher, Marta Pombo Sallés, Mike Stone and Anjum Wasim Dar. A very warm welcome to Christi Moon. I’ve been reading her work on Facebook for some years and am delighted to have the opportunity to include her here today.

I’ve included links to blogs or websites where available. I hope you’ll visit these poets and get to know their work better. It is likely you can catch up with others via Facebook.

Enjoy! … and do join us tomorrow for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt.

Arrivals

(foreword)

I want to write about a man beside a train.
A year later and I’m still looking for the words.
The palm of that strong hand-
balm on small of my lower back;
always, pulling.

I’m getting closer.

Arrivals

I’ve only taken a few steps
when my legs stop responding
to the signals from my brain

my vision locked
on an image

you’re running
beside the train
your green hat folded
in your hand

five hundred thousand minutes
careen

into this
one

my feet can’t feel the ground

airy echoes
of your name
far away and
thrumming

she sounds like me

in s l o w m o t i o n
cinematography
we are captured
in these frames

in front of the lens
behind the lens
we are the lens

we are

standing still
and spinning

as the clocks vanish beneath

we are

heaved beyond
the gates

of this brief ceiling

© 2018, cs moon

CHRISTI MOON grew up in a small coastal town in California and currently resides in rural southeastern, Pennsylvania.  Her poetry has been published in the journal Brush Strokes and Ink Spots, an Anthology of Poetry and Art ~ The River Journal, Nomos Review edition 3 ~ Women on War and Conflict, Meat For Tea ~ The Valley Review Vol 8, Need Change, Poets Against War, and Twisted Tungz art & literature magazine, and online on Combustus, VerseWrights, The Creative Nexus, Solstice Initiative ~ Aqueous, and The River Journal. When not writing poetry, her personal interests also include; photography, yoga, and exploring local nature trails. She also facilitates poetry workshops for local cancer patients.

Flourishes & Whorls

When I first made your acquaintance
my hand wrapped ’round you
and found warmth & light

even though a tiny fragment of cedar
I minded not the lustrous feel of
your soft black carbon
within

as I grasped you time & time again
my muse trembled in anticipation
as she watched gradations of lines
forming

creating magic with loops curving
in every direction
to give life to every breath I
inhaled & exhaled

giving substance to the wind
to the very universe of which
the rotating earth is
contained

with each flourish & curve
you became as putty in my hand
as burning fuel for my muse

whereupon the light of day
merged with the dark of night
transforming sunrises
sunsets

igniting the embers in my soul
within my heart
into a flame

I have kept you close since
that crucial moment
the dawning of
a single
letter

© 2018, Renee Espriu (Renee Just Turtle Flight)

EVOLUTION

It takes a big leap of the imagination
to see the line of descent from dinosaur to
blackbird, until you view the fossil record. But
you still can’t quite collapse fifty million years into
an hour’s time-frame. Think then instead about falling
in love and being in love. Falling, but more
crucially, being caught in passion’s net, held or trapped
depending. Two tyros learning their moves on high-wire
or trapeze, diving earthwards, hands outstretched. Maybe
love really begins when they both discard the net.

This poem was first published in England in The Cannon’s Mouth.

© 2018, Frank McMahon

COSMOLOGY

Some millions of years ago two stars collided,
creating cosmic dust of platignum and gold.
Seven shillings: your nuptial ring, signifying
the conjunction of orbits,love’s trajectory,

not like Cassini, all mapped out. Some few details
clear, the rest to be discovered in those early
starlight days; trial and error, error and trial; flesh and
blood, proud children, losses, carefree days and friends,

small frustrations and winter days
yet love lacing a necklace of stars
round deepening inner space, new elements
re-fashioning our Periodic Table.

© 2018, Frank McMahon

Frank McMahon’s first radio play was broadcast last week.  It concerns the last two years in the life of William Tyndale, the priest and scholar who translated much of the Bible into English and was convicted of heresy for so doing. If you want to hear it, then go to: http://www.Corinium Radio.co.uk, follow the link to Listen Again and look for Somewhere Else Writers Present ” A death in Flanders.” Bravo! and Kudos! to Frank.  

Tyndale, before being strangled and burned at the stake in Vilvoorde, cries out, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes”. Within four years, four English translations of the Bible were published in England at the King’s behest, including Henry’s official Great Bible. All were based on Tyndale’s work. Woodcut from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs (1563) / Public Domain.

.love . the numbers.

he kindness that is. glass reflecting. slowly it starts. maybe we need to check our numbers?

© 2018, Sonja Benskin Mesher

. mathematics .

irregular, you came, your best clothes shining. never mind. the first tune hit the mind, patterns and mathematics. the kindness that is.

he said. machine you see. glass reflecting. slowly it starts repeating. the walls of differing colours. we have the dvds. on and on repeating on and on repeating on and on repeating.

back to the counting, how many have there been, how many are left still standing. an issue for some, yet we amend the figures here and move on. lucky ones, maths divides and decimates others.

1.2

repeating.

© 2017, Sonja Benskin Mesher

The night is speaking like a cascade

The night is speaking like a cascade.
She’s knitting filigreed lights and shadows.
Sunk in the deep sea
of Sargasso eyes
I stay quiet and don’t find words.
And the scars on your hand
are fading, in order to burn
in my heart.
Oh, sailboats after a long trip
with all the winds in the sails –
sand is calling you.
But it isn’t death!
Oh, it isn’t the end too!
The hand
is going to knock up a hut for you
and in the wide garden
it smells with magnolia and manuscripts…

And I am a sign.

© 2018, bogpan [Bozhidar Pangelov]  (bogpan – блог за авторска поезия блог за авторска поезия)

When Silent Love Met with Boasting Vanity

A long time ago
I got used to living with
My open wounds,
The last withered while
I was staring at the sunset
In the middle of the fog.

Yes, you told me so many times
About your suffering,
How your heart shrunk
Fisted in bleeding red
While your eyes tasted
The salt of the ocean waves
And cristal pearls were running
Down your cheeks.

On that plane you felt
The freezing coldness
Where just one thing
Would not freeze:
The fountain of your tears.

Yes, indeed I remember
All the pain on that plane.
You sent me back to the
Land of rejection.

Yet I am a resilient rock
With my withered wounds
That I carry since ancient times
On this eroded earth.

But to exist is to resist
And so I dwell in human hearts
Who care for each other.
And may I receive your boasting waves
Crashing on my shores
Those hearts will restore me again
For I am silent love and not vain.

© 2018, Marta Pombo Sallés (Moments)

“Your lines (and prompt), “your darkness my light” caused an explosion of thoughts in my mind. I thought about the latest scientific speculation about the composition of the universe, that most of it is composed of dark matter and dark energy that don’t interact with the matter and energy that we sense. I thought about how we focus on the sources of light and its reflections, the things that exist, the presences, but gloss over the sources of darkness, dismissing it as merely the absence of light, rarely able to sense the absence of things that once were, or that never were. Our world is filled with those things, words that were never spoken, or were spoken and unheard, or forgotten. I will try to come up with a poem that embodies these thoughts before the prompt is due, but I do have one poem that is more-or-less on theme. [Dark Matter – below]

“… and of course there’s the idea of somebody composed of dark matter falling in love with somebody composed of “normal” (baryonic) matter, although current laws of physics declare that impossible. Dark matter is not anti-matter. Anti-matter and matter interact by destroying each other. Dark matter and regular matter are just ships passing (through each other) in the night.” Mike Stone (Uncollected Works)

“A Dark Matter”

(Raanana, October 4, 2018)

I see you everywhere I go
You follow me even into the bedroom
And crawl into bed beside me
Entering my dreams.
You are the dark sun shining your dark photons,
Your shadows are my only light.
You are every age you’ve ever been,
You are the idea of you
Just after I discovered I was pregnant,
You are this thing growing in my belly
Now, this homunculus bursting from my womb
Suckling my breast,
And suddenly you are human,
Helpless, still inchoate, primal.
Then you see me seeing you and you smile,
You crawl, you stand unsteadily on your feet
And then you start to run.
You hold my hand, going to the nursery
And won’t let go.
Suddenly you’re holding her hand
Going to the Homecoming
In our car.
Then you come home
From the place you can’t talk about,
Your uniform full of grease and stench
Which I wash and iron throughout the night,
Then they knock on the door
And tell us you can’t come home,
That we can’t see your body
Because there’s nothing left to see.
When you were alive,
You were just a single person
In just one place, nowhere else.
Now that you are dead,
All of you,
The idea of you, the homunculus,
The primal human,
The little boy holding my hand,
The young man holding her hand,
The soldier coming home,
The soldier never coming home again,
Are everywhere, all the time.
You are my darkness,
I want no other light.
Your absence is so palpable to me
I don’t think I could live without it.

© 2018, Mike Stone (Uncollected Works/Call of the Whippoorwill) 

“Dimdumim”

(Raanana, September 14, 2018)

Here they call it dimdumim
But you call it twilight,
Still light when the orange sun
Sinks behind the distant trees
Or the purple sea under the far horizon
And the colors of the things around you,
The whites, the browns, and the greens,
The grass and trees, even the faces of people,
Bleed into gray, move farther away than before,
Not yet dark, yes, darkening perhaps,
But not quite dark. Suddenly the air
Through which you wade cools slightly,
Is easier to breathe, making you almost weightless,
Waiting for the absolute darkness of night.
In its obscurity possibilities hide,
Almost anything can happen
In the cool darkness
And the obscurity takes any shape
That thoughts can touch.
When night does come
You never see just when
The dimdumim disappears.

© 2018, Mike Stone (Uncollected Works/ Call of the Whippoorwill )

“A Poem Unwritten”

(Raanana, March 9, 2012)

No one has ever written a poem about a poem unwritten
Of the many virtues of such a poem
The perfect meter of noambic nometer
The clarity and minimalism leave
Even haiku silent with envy.
The language of silence is universal
Requiring no translation.
It will be unread by billions!
It’s amazing that no one has thought of it,
No one and I.

© 2012, Mike Stone (Uncollected Works/Yet Another Book of Poetry)

“Waiting to Be”

(Raanana, December 4, 2015)

What does a poem look like
Before it is written?
Just like a lover looks
Before you have met her
Or an infant looks
Before it is conceived
Like a soul looks
Whenever you look
Like potential,
Pregnant but barren,
Like the blank page of a notebook
But more than that
More than nothing
But undefinable
Waiting in the dark
To collect itself
To be.

© 2015, Mike Stone (Uncollected Works/Yet Another Book of Poetry)

Bemused is Mike Stone’s third book of poetry, covering the years from 2016 to 2017. The title means “perplexed” but Mike intended a more literal meaning: “in thrall to the Muse”. Mike has been in the Muse’s thrall for most of his seventy years. This collection shows his maturity as a writer and his courage in facing the dilemmas of life’s endgame without fear or delusion.

Kindle (digital): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0786JQJHQ/ ($2.99)

Amazon (paperback): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1981543775/ ($19.95)

Mike is one of The BeZine’s nominees for Best of the Net 2018.

Does Age Matter

And I believed in you because

I loved you

as a charming human being

Knowledgeable attractive witty and quick

And I tried to bear with your weaknesses

Because we all have them and impress

And I believed in you because

I wanted to

For I could see the tremendous potential

In you as a creative enthusiastic loveable

Charming personality that

The Almighty

Had made you.

And I believed you

That you knew so much more

than me

You could drive the car so perfectly

And examine the patients

so expertly

as your learning taught you.

And I believed you that you would share

With me all

That I wanted to tell you

That I wanted you to learn

You could do so much more

In your profession

And I believed you when you said

I always say’ Help yourself’

And you planned your time

And tried to read every book

that came your way

and after meeting you I had hopes of

reviving my shattered faith and trust

In relationships

And I loved you because

I believed we could make it together

I gave you all the chance

And I am still hopeful

That despite our age difference

We can still be happy with each other

And share care and learning and achievements

And I am sure it will be so

Because I believe in You.

CER © 2018, Anjum Wasim Dar (Poetic Oceans)

This is Anjum’s poem in Urdu. Unfortunately, I was unable to get the breaks right for which I apologize to Anjum and to any readers who speak/read Urdu. At least we have this, another example of how our poetry crosses borders.

مسکراؤں تو کس کے لئے آنکھوں کو چمکاؤں تو کس کے لئے غم کو بھول جاؤں تو کس کے لئے کوئی اپنا تو ہو کیوں دنیا ایسی لگے کیوں اپنے بوجھ بڑھیں کیوں اپنے غیر لگیں کیوں میں غیر بنوں میں بے وفا تو نہین چمکتی ہوں سب کے لئے رات بھر ٹمٹماتی ہوں خاموش کس کے لئے کوئی اپنا کہنے والا نہ ایگا کبھی انجم دل کا دروازہ کھلا رکھنا ، محبت انجن جگہ پانے گی

ABOUT

Poet and writer, I was once columnist and the associate editor of a regional employment publication. Currently I run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers.

My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The River Journal, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman.

Paul Brookes of “The Wombwell Rainbow” Interviews Bulgarian Poet Bozhidar Pangelov a.k.a. bogpan,

Posted on by
5

Bozhidar Pangelov

All of the interviews on Paul’s blog – The Wombwell Rainbow – are interesting and worth your time. Paul’s doing a fabulous job. I have selected Bozhidar Pangelov’s interview to feature today because it includes a tidbit of a reference about what it is like to be a writer and lover of literature in times and places of repression. Though those of us who came of age during the Cold War are conscious of this, I often wonder about younger people. Perhaps I’m just out of touch. Bozhidar also shares some thoughts on authenticity that I appreciate as well as his practical perspective on the poet as professional. 

At any rate, many of you are familiar with Bozhidar’s work since he is a frequent contributor to The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt (as is Paul) and he has also been featured on this site before.

My thanks to both Paul and Bozhidar for permission to share this interview with you here today. And thanks to Paul for doing this series. I think it’s a real contribution. / J.D.

Prolific Yorkshire Poet, Paul Brookes

PAUL BROOKES (The Wombwell Rainbow): “I am honoured and privileged that . . .  poets, local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

“The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too…”

Bozhidar Pangelov

BOZHIDAR PANGELOV (bogpan – блог за авторска поезия  блог за авторска поезия ) was born in the soft month of October in the city of the chestnut trees, Sofia, Bulgaria, where he lives and works. He likes joking that the only authorship which he acknowledges are his three children and the job-hobby in the sphere of the business services. His first book Four Cycles was written entirely with an unknown author but in a complete synchronicity on motifs of the Hellenic legends and mythos. The coauthor (Vanja Konstantinova) is the editor of his next book Delta. She is the woman to whom The Girl Who… is dedicated. Bozhidar’s last (so far) book is The Man Who. A bilingual poetry book A Feather of Fujiama is being published on Amazon as a Kindle edition.

Some of Bozhidar’s poems are translated in Italian, German, Polish, Russian,Chinese, Turkish, Arabic, Romanian, Portuguese and English languages and are published on poetry sites as well as in anthologies and some periodicals all over the world. Bozhidar Pangelov is on of the German project Europe .. takes Europa ein Gedicht. Castrop Rauxel ein Gedicht RUHR 2010 and the project SPRING POETRY RAIN 2012, Cyprus.

Bozhidar’s pen name “bogpan” means “god Pan” – in Greek religion and mythology.

The Fourth Century St. George Rotunda is considered the oldest building in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, the city in which Bozhidar was born and lives. Photo courtesy of Sveti Georgi underCC BY 2.0 license.

The Interview

  1. What were the circumstances under which you began to write poetry?

I have the feeling that I have always written poetry. At home we used to have quite rich book library. Throughout my awkward past the (the political system), reading was a way of having a life in another worlds. Can you imagine that there used to be long queues for each translated book from a foreign author! Well, eventually the cause of writing my first poem was quite funny. Me and a friend of mine used to be in love with the same girl. The conflict about who is going to meet her was resolved after each of us wrote a poem. Romantics of the youth.

2.       Who introduced you to poetry?

To answer this question I would like to make some clarifications concerning the educational system in my country. In that system literature is considered as a compulsory subject and leads to serious exams that allow you to apply for a higher educational degree. In the study books are included national as well as international authors. In that aspect, if you like literature you just start writing.

3.       How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?

During the time when I was young, the government used to dictate names of poets, but I have always been a rebel and that’s why I never accepted any names. Later on, when the political system changed what remained was my love and amusement by the great worldwide poets.

4.       What is your daily writing routine?

I am not a professional poet and I don’t need to write every day to earn my living. Certainly I don’t trust poems written by professional poets because in most of the cases these poems have unclear aesthetic values and are there to satisfy the popular reader’s taste.

5.       What motivates you to write?

The emotions. Despite the fact that everybody feels the defined emotions as love,pain and etc., each person senses them in their own unique way. The thought that inevitably exists in a poem rests between the conscious and unconscious. I think that a poem written only by the conscious effort of one’s mind is rather a short essay or a short novel. Still there should be a cross point between poetry and prose and for me that’s the emotions.

6.   What is your work ethic?

George Seferis [Georgios Seferiades] (1900 – 1971). One of the most important Greek poets of the last century, a diplomat and a Nobel laureate.

I understand this question as related to writing. Ethic for me means to write a “real” poem. Now I sense the forthcoming question which would be what is the criteria or how would you determine what “real” is. A possible answer to this question is the one of the Nobel winner of Greek origin Georgius Seferis, who answers to a similar question in the following way: “But he must somehow have an instinct—a guiding instinct—which says to him: ‘My dear boy, my dear chap, be careful; you are going to fall. You are exaggerating at this moment.'” In this sense my instinct tells me that it’s an absurdity to expect everybody to understand poetry. Whoever wants to understand everything can read newspapers or magazine news. Still it’s uncertain that one will understand everything. At that point I would like to remind the following thought of T.S. Eliot:  “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.“

7.   How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

Youngsters, who tend to get highly impressed after reading an author who relates to their inner self remember this artwork and this author which remains forever in their subconscious no matter if they are aware of it or not. That’s how the model works, which we reproduce in our own way. A poem doesn’t emerge from the nowhere.

8.   Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

Considering my experience and age it’s hard for me to get impressed. I just get extremely happy when I come across with an author, who has his/her own unique style, who is distinguishable from the majority. I would like to point at one single name, so I don’t miss out on some of my favourite authors. Stefan Goncharov – a young poet, who established his presence in a quite powerful and mature way just within few months time and having in mind that these were his first poems! As I can say – this man was born a poet.

9.       Why do you write?

With writing I’m trying to express the inexpressible.

10.   What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?

In case that your question is – how can I become a professional writer, I can’t reply. I guess that this is something you can learn at the creative writing courses. For me this question has never been important. I just write. I think that if one wants to become a good writer, not only many books need to be read, but that person at a certain point needs to forget about all the knowledge and without a fear start writing in the way of expressing his/her own thoughts and feelings. To be honest with himself/herself and without thinking how to be liked by the readers. There isn’t an ultimate audience of readers that is there to like your writing. Here I would give a longer quote from the interview with Georgius Seferis – Henri Michaux “You know, my dear, a man who has only one reader is not a writer. A man who has two readers is not a writer, either. But a man who has three readers”—and he pronounced “three readers” as though they were three million—“that man is really a writer.”

Нова асоциална поезия

New Asocial Poetry Translations

11.   Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

At the moment I don’t run my own projects. I’m engaged as an editor of the monthly magazine, New Asocial Poetry. We are preparing surprises for the published authors and new sections. There is already a new section for translations from mostly English language. At this point I would like to say that most of the young people know English, but unfortunately only few people for whom English is their mother tongue know my language. Maybe the reason for that the Cyrillic alphabet is mistaken for the Russian alphabet. Historically is exactly the opposite. Translations require hard work, especially when the literature is created in another language. For that reason we came up with the idea of having a new section for foreign literature dedicated to foreign authors who are a living example for language’s application and usage. All the authors, who are interested in participating in such project can read more about it HERE. .Whoever wants to learn more about the publishing requirements is kindly invited to apply with his/her literature by contacting me at newasocialpoetry@gmail.com.

ABOUT

Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. Currently I run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a site showcasing spiritual writers.

My work is featured in a variety of publications and on sites, including: Levure littéraure, Ramingo’s Porch, Vita Brevis Literature,Compass Rose, Connotation Press, The Bar None Group, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not a Silent Poet, Meta / Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman.