“These verses believe; they love; they hope; that is all.” Arthur Rimbaud, Complete Works
The house that does not exist
(Ah, Shiraz, the Nightingales sing
at night)
nothing but the whole
hope exists
(do not sell carpets with
patterns, Fatima).
There the river flows into
River. As a dream in
dreams
(he speaks nothing of sorrow
already, you with a veil ).
They quietly sing,
sing without being heard,
without having them.
Quietly, they quietly squeeze
the fingers of my hands
The poem above was Bozhidar Pangelov’s (a.k.a. bopan) response to my short story, The Damask Rose Garden, a fairytale meant to bring attention to the lives of refugees escaping areas of violent conflict.
I’m always held breathless by the lyric beauty of Bozhidar’s poems. English is not his first language, so he’s the more impressive for that.
According to one reviewer, he “has been present among contemporary Bulgarian poets for some time, a long time. He is a poet who manages to disorder the order of the usual in order to breach a material world for a more human world of ideas and feelings. Using dramatic tensions within the poetic and semantic, Pangelov’s spare yet verdant imagery evokes the sound of bamboo sticks and Zen Buddhist monks, poem after poem.”
Writer and poet Palmi Ranchev says, ‘Pangelov will enrich the palette of world poetry with new colors and nuances.’
Of what I’ve read to date of Bozhidar’s work I’d have to agree with these analyses. However spare his poems are, they are never stark. They are never rigid. There’s movement, color, feeling. The sharp edges of pain are all the more striking juxtaposed against the subtleties of his style. Lovely!
“There the river flows into
River. As a dream in
dreams”
Visit Bozhidar’s blog. He often shares poems there that he has written in English and – sometimes – we are fortunate to have Bozhidar participate in Wednesday Writing Prompt.
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.
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
“I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn’t expect to arrive.” Jorge Luis Borges in Boast of quietness
I am pleased and honored to introduce DEBASIS MUKHOPADHYAY (between ink and inkblot) here today, though I suspect there are many who already know his work.
Debasis isthe author of the chapbook “kyrie eleison or all robins taken out of context” (Finishing Line Press, 2017). His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in journals & anthologies, including Posit, Words Dance, The Curly Mind (UK), Erbacce (UK), Strange Poetry (UK), Yellow Chair Review, I Am Not A Silent Poet (UK), The New Verse News, Rat’s Ass Review :Love & Ensuing Madness, Writers Against Prejudice (UK), Manneqüin.Haüs, Algebra of Owls (UK), The Skinny Poetry Journal, Of/With : Journal of Immanent Renditions, Anapest Journal, Communicators League (Nigeria), No Tribal Dance (UK), Quatrain.Fish, Duane’s Poe Tree, Walking Is Still Honest, Leaving My Shadow : A Tribute to Anna Akhmatova, Thirteen Myna Birds, Whale Road Review, The Apache Poetry Blog (Sweden), Scarlet Leaf Review, Silver Birch Press, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Foliate Oak, Eunoia Review, Revolution John, Fragments of Chiaroscuro, Down in the Dirt, With Painted Words (UK), The Wagon Magazine, Snapping Twig, Words Surfacing, Praxis, Apple Fruits of an Old Oak,and Voice of Monarch Butterflies. His work has been nominated for the Best of the Net.
He was born in India & spent many years of his life in Kolkata (Calcutta), where he began writing poems. A fair number of poems in pora gach o megh oré, his debut collection of poetry in Bengali (Art Publishing, 2005), date back to this time of his life in India. Debasis holds a PhD in literary studies from Université Laval, Québec, Canada. His doctoral thesis constitutes an instance of multidisciplinary approach, exploring the linkage between two broad themes of social epistemology : travel and spatiality. The work is focused on the analysis of the Occidental subjectivity’s search for self and its perception of spatiality through Third World travel. The thesis can be found here :
Debases now lives in Montreal with his wife and his son. When his hand turns poetry, he just walks up to Monnet’s poppy field against the wall & bends down to swaying flowers thinking of the words gone in blood. When he is not writing, his best inspiration turns out to be what Xu Schen wrote (58 CE ̶ ca. 147 CE) : “Ink, whose semantic component is ‘earth‘, is black.”
Connect with Debasis at debmukhop@yahoo.ca or @dbasis_m on Twitter.
India journal
New Delhi : to get more than the dawn
a red tulle body flaring up.
the mosquito net
white & whooshing at times
& this foundry of wings of mosquitoes
now ready for the spilled over blood.
here sun.
somewhere birds crack the sky
dawn what I fear has never been so late
kid’s head buried in my chest.
do I know
what’s to cry like a bleating sheep
broken lines unfurls K’s poems in my thoughts
obliterating the bleeding sun dissolving into now a distant hum
very soon a cacophonous mix
what’s K to make of it in his poems
I think of the young poet of Kolkata.
somewhere the oblique overpasses ask for boundless love
slogging through memories
snuffing out the first azan of the day & the litanies of the stray dogs
kid’s skull rolls on my chest
his eyes waking to dawn
what’s that poet to make of it
kid’s eyes etched on his notebook page
which is perhaps whiter than the mosquito net now emptied like times
when I used to live in this land
& never had to step inside.
tomorrow I would be again in Kolkata
brushing dust from a palimpsest
today I would just pass the day
Kipling Sahib gazing hatefully on New Delhi
the breeze stirring a tattered liana of madhabilata
high up among the colonial columns
dust on dust
to creep through
Kolkata : the waterboarding
K’s poems are now bowing lower than this plane
bleeding off its speed
the cinnamon colored brick kilns look plastered by a green
that feels so unwanted in a blood brick telecast on BBC
years of rising smoke have gnawed the moulded bricks but the green
green green so green that I turn to Lorca’s ballad
& cry like a fool unheeded
for the girl of bitterness
until the touchdown when I hear K whispering
I leave you alone for the eve
now you would be too blind to trust my poems
begin me only when you end your quick days & nights in Kolkata
when you are left again to think that
you are still stuck like an albino bone in its craw made of loose scoria
these long years
these long years
were not so imminent in my mother’s dream of me becoming a Caliph one fine day
seven thousand miles away.
these long years were not a life book that rustles inside memories dying in the throat.
for a crown of light
she has been counting a thousand & one nights.
every morning
kneeling to the earth she tries to find me again amongst the sprouts.
ha the world has to pass
mutters my father
sparrows cluster in the back of his throat.
& here we are home, kid
hello hello
I say opening the gates of shadows of the crows
aloft & aground.
the long-spiked coconut tree leaves dance across K’s sun-blazed notebook page
capturing kid’s fingers making a ghost with a lump of earth
mine tearing the sword-shaped leaves only to reminisce all afternoon
upon a palm frond hat from my schooldays
maybe everything might have been…
everything like your face in my hands
dark eyes glistening in the folds
like malaria now & then
those love vomit & rum stained clothes moving under the coal iron in the neighborhood
coming back laundered the following afternoon
only to redeem truth
& to rehearse a hundred summers of solitude…
to think I’m going to see you again tonight
a conjurer had his time
on earth this is the place
where I can sing I am your man
a place that has no place in time
or maybe it’s always just half passed
like this late afternoon sun on water in K’s notebook page
like this fish put out to crawl through a hologram
never failing kid
fish eyes always give him thrills
processions pass
the foreheads of the deceased pressed against the cobwebbed evening
feel the reference point that had rattled so hard in life
now the queue in the burning ghats
souls reassured once oxidized flake after flake
& then beguiled by the creeping waters.
placid slumbers the Ganges like the night at the bottom of the root
this is the country
where cicadas chase every evening the crackling stars of each cast & class.
my friend sings taking my breath away
the dead to become boats floating downward the rim of the dark skies
drifting anew in the city alleys
in search of hearts that had no refuge from any versions of hearts.
processions pass
shouts drawling a tribute to dawn
poppy red flags
a street full of scars
you ask me how I feel now with my eyes peeled
K’s poems stopped to bleed into the evening
so wet & claiming
now again mouth into mouth
we keep frisking & gamboling round the night
we come & coming on
like a hemorrhage
like Fidel Castro floating belly up dying of his own death
O Sultan mine, I just read your poem Notice to recast where looking on your flowerpot sky you feel the smudge of my absence on your skin. You hear the train behind the fence, you hear the rain in the kitchen and you are reminded of the necessity of touch. Several lines down you say, “I heard it and I heard it again. A song that stayed unopened in my throat.” Honestly, I am never very sure how your poetry works on me. You could hear everything : the rainstorms behind the kites, the pantomime in the trammels, the trampoline behind the rampages, the songbirds in the pantechnicons… everything across your roughcast of solitude. And everything reminds you of everything, from windpipe sonata to wingspan of a pansy. I wish I could understand how you napalm me while I sleep. As if just like my body my mind also can’t shake you and always awaiting you in bed unopened. True that poetry never sucks and the blancmange sloughing in the overdone ruts between my thighs. Sultan dear one, my husband, my boyfriend, my needleman of tournament, my winger right to left, my slaloming tramline behind my fertility, my panegyric of fucking superintendent, why can’t I understand your poems? Or why can’t I just write a poem that is what when my handgun trades the simile of blankness? But that won’t make it all right. No point in blitzkrieging to unbalance the brain. Let’s think about honeyed baklavas and listen to balalaikas. If you are my bloody bastard, I remain your bloodied bitch.
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.
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
Featured this week: Paul Brookes, Irma, Sonja Benskin Mesher, and Carol Mikoda,
I hope you’ll visit participating poets and get to know them. It’s important for us to support and encourage one another in our art and in our solidarity around concerns for the social and ethical issues we care about, even if we disagree. Respectful discussion is a healthy thing. I’ve linked in blogs for each poet and for your convenience. If the poet doesn’t have a blog, it’s likely you can catch up with her/him on Facebook.
Paul Brookes
FYI: Paul Brookes, a stalwart participant in Wednesday Writing Prompt, is running a series on poets, Wombwell Rainbow Interviews. Five in the series are already completed and posted. Worth your time. I believe Paul has ten planned altogether and I’m honored to be among those that are upcoming. So visit him, enjoy the interviews, get introduced to some poets who may be new to you, and learn a few things.
Join with us for the next Wednesday Writing Prompt. All are welcome – encouraged – to join in: novice, emerging or pro. It’s about exercising our imagination and our writing muscle, showcasing our efforts and getting to know other poets. This is a safe discerning place to share.
An Open
hand this petal an invite
to the best party
where laughter is plenty
walk through this wood,
let your cityself take same walk, see
buildings as lone trees,
homeless hostel
is an oak, butchers
a willow that bends
down over the stream
where jammed traffic swims.
A dead bird breathes
animated by flies
is a man in the corner who sings
the blues to passers.
Sonja Benskin Mesher, RCA paintings (This is her Facebook page, so you can connect with her there as well as view photographs of her colorful paintings.)
profoundly subtle cricket silence
that is not really
silence might not even
be only crickets but
powerful trigger of nightmares
deeply delicate evolution of leaves
first red maples edging
marshes eventually stunning yellow
of tall singular poplars
keenly subdued morning light
reaching resistantly sleepy eyes
intensely indistinct chill spice
of damp morning air
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.
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
“Nature never did betray The heart that loved her.” William Wordsworth
Steal what you will, my friends,
of small things. Dē minimīs nōn cūrat lēx.
The law takes no account of trifles,
though the recommended thefts
are not trifles to me.
In the heat of summer, I have stollen
the scent of roses for my skin
and the tantalizing aroma of
night-blooming jasmine.
It wafts through the house,
settling gently in my lungs.
In winter snowflakes appeal.
Steal dozens to line the drawers of
your memories, to keep them fresh.
Lazy motes of yellow moon-dust
are recommended. Let them
color your dreams with light,
your awakening with hope.
In stealth gather butterflies and bees into
rhapsodies. Loot the world’s dragonflies to
stitch beauty and cadence into your poetry.
Steal from your children too. Their hugs
are nontoxic, tonic for heart health.
The theft of your mother’s laugh
will sooth you mind, rest assured.
In flight, pluck away the cloud fluff
that hangs above the mountains below.
Cloud fluff is best for nightgowns, sexy
and sheer and lined with spun silver. Yes! Have at it, my friends …
Steal what you will
of small things. Dē minimīs nōn cūrat lēx.
The law takes no account of trifles,
though the recommended thefts
are not trifles to me
What among natures gifts do you cherish, the free gifts of life that marketers don’t sully and that are ours for the taking. Tells us what, why, how and when in your own poem/s.
Share your poem/s on theme or a link to it/them in the comments section below.
All poems on theme will be published next Tuesday. Please do NOT email your poem to me or leave it on Facebook. If you do it’s likely I’ll miss it or not see it in time.
IF this is your first time joining us for The Poet by Day, Wednesday Writing Prompt, please send a brief bio and photo to me at thepoetbyday@gmail.com to introduce yourself to the community … and to me :-). These will be partnered with your poem/s on first publication.
PLEASE send the bio ONLY if you are with us on this for the first time AND only if you have posted a poem (or a link to one of yours) on theme in the comments section below.
Deadline: Monday, September 3 by midnight Pacific time.
Anyone may take part Wednesday Writing Prompt, no matter the status of your career: novice, emerging or pro. It’s about exercising the poetic muscle, showcasing your work, and getting to know other poets who might be new to you. This is a discerning nonjudgemental place to connect.
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.
Thank you for sharing your love of words. Comments will appear after moderation.
The poem above was Bozhidar Pangelov’s (a.k.a. bopan) response to my short story, The Damask Rose Garden, a fairytale meant to bring attention to the lives of refugees escaping areas of violent conflict.
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 