Serene are the stars
that lights the past
Timeless, a love
held close to the heart

Tether me with flowers
bring me sunshine everyday !
Do not ruffle up my feathers
when I'm doing it my way !
Fasten smiles upon me say,      
"Go ahead, do it your way !"

I behold,
lonely as an unfilled page
in a tome written by a sad sage,
some soundless symphony in your visage—
lost to time,
yet trilling and riffling through revery
in a rippling pool of pellucid memory.

My favorite phantom—
your face,
buoying above oblivion,
beaming among the crystalline sparks
of myriad memories,
seeks that page
no pen has dared to touch.

Such sparks,
squirrel about you to fill an abyss in me
with nutshell memories of glee—
I who am now host to a lost galaxy;
and you who are host to its mystery.

A galactic symphony
silently susurrates the vestiges of thee
scintillating in me the still celestial sea
with the story of your
HUMAN glory.      

In dazzled deference,
     my letters wade in remembrance,
          babble in conference,
     ruffle in reverence,
riddle in reference,
     ripple lost appearance
          within the circumstance
     of an old radiant romance.
        
They brag about
the two crystalline pools once I saw;
     kissed by the morning in dewy green,
     now how they preen with the stars that teem
     in their gleaming green, guileless and serene
     time trammeled within their theme—
     stardust and green from the days of a dream.

I hear the wind,
the breath of panting dreams,
     ruffle nature’s mane to rustle your name
     through the golden stalks of grain.
     Yes! —the summer tresses of Sif
     sifting wave upon wave
     hailing a
     HUMAN name, aflame.

I kneel
before the late day’s fiery bud
as her petals unfurl,
bestowing flame and lust
upon heavenly hollow a bust.

    Alas, Atlas is quick
    to turn the late day over her head—
    to drain the fiery tale of red
    back to a tale of dead lead.
  
    So, within an eye’s bat,
    that heavenly bust,
    preening in her fiery hat
    is draped with a star stippled mat,
    and sub rosa wilts this
    HUMAN floret.

Yet—
I salute the stars,
shooting secretly through the years
stealing hues from my eyes.
Do they just titter about time’s grim authorship?
Or glitter in stellar friendship
earned through finest
HUMAN craftsmanship.

So—
I’ll to the stars take with me
the only thing I owned about thee—
     thy bud-borne name
     swaddled in floral lullabies.
     to watch it grow on stardust where a nebula sighs
     till it blooms into a galaxy of
     HUMAN paradise.

                
          Can’t beat Time, as I of flesh made be.
               When eventually of bark be free,
                          then to the stars
               shall I take the vestiges of thee.


Repost
© Hirondelle, June 28, 2025
    Arif Hifzioglu

The morning after
we told my mother
she would become
a first-time grandmother,

she sat alone in the garden
relaxing in the early morning sun,
craned her neck up at the huge tree
and spied a feisty pair of magpies

flitting about in a figure 8 — they squawked
out their monastic chants with abandon,
guarded their muddied little nest
tucked away in the groove

of a high branch. She froze,
eyes wide in a bewildered trance
as she suddenly recalled her own
mother so long ago, behind her

braiding my mother's thick hair,
her gentle voice murmuring about
the songs of magpies symbolizing
good news when you need it the most

My mother's smile was tremulous as she sat
in her garden, shrouded by the sweet incense
of memory, palms pressed together to ponder
all the ways we press on towards the light

The poor can bleed while the rich do feed, upon the wars and that they hang around there necks. skulks of the fallen collected never buried but trophy’s of the greed that fed the blood soaked bills that passed from hand to hand. Like bullets passing through flesh, only the poor die, while the rich say more to fed the machine of greed that is never fulfilled until the last drop is cleaved with a bomb or bullet. And the poor due alone and hungry not able to buy a bullet to end there suffering, but enough to end another in a war that all had forgotten.

Like a work horse,
My body feels worn.
I can’t turn the soil
Of life everyday..

I think I need to be euthanised..
Or at least hibernate
for the weekend.

Painkillers eaten like skittles..

Four varieties of woes..
My body the water,
The pills skimming
Across my Pain threshold..

Hidden disabilities,
a hide an seek of explanations.
You ill today.. sighs..
I’m Forever Sighing,
At the ignorance of others

family loves you most
family cares for you most
family knows about you most
family feels for you most
family annoys you most