The world has turned into a global village
No one can deny on that...

But..remember the phone we had placed on that beautiful table mat?
Yes...it was a matter of pride to have one..

The only fastest medium of communication we had at that time
It too had models...the rotary phone, the keypad and many fancy ones

We talked, laughed and sobbed sitting at one place as we were tied with the corded set with everyone.

It was safe.....no fear of radiation or loss of eye sight .

Though it was much too costlier than what it is today....people still communicated and talked their heart out

Now...every hand has a cell phone which comes with many features overcoming the limitation of the old one
People can connect anywhere in no time
Then why...?
We are so disconnected.....!

May be we mastered the art of telepathy?...or we are blessed with a magical wand...?

We talk no more
We only make groups
We love forwarding messages

We have become mute.....

So can we again move to landline?
Come out of the virtual world by talking to our dear ones at this time?
Can we try and understand what they are hiding behind their smiling whatsapp profiles?

Let's do things one at a time...rather than multitasking with phone on one hand and laptop on the other...
Let's give them the love and respect when one needs from your side.
So ..... sit back and dial a number of your loved one...and help the world again to become one if not through landline but may be your heartline!!

Bina Mukherjee

Nuclear Winter: Solo Restart
by Michael R. Burch

Out of the ashes
a flower emerges
and trembling bright sunshine
bathes its scorched stem,
but how will this flower
endure for an hour
the rigors of winter
eternal and grim
without men?

Keywords/Tags: nuclear, winter, radiation, ashes, life, reemerges, without, men, Armageddon, Apocalypse, extinction, event

Milestones Toward Oblivion
by Michael R. Burch

A milestone here leans heavily
against a gaunt, golemic tree.
These words are chiseled thereupon:
"One mile and then Oblivion."

Swift larks that once swooped down to feed
on groping slugs, such insects breed
within their radiant flesh and bones ...
they did not heed the milestones.

Another marker lies ahead,
the only tombstone to the dead
whose eyeless sockets read thereon:
"Alas, behold Oblivion."

Once here the sun shone fierce and fair;
now night eternal shrouds the air
while winter, never-ending, moans
and drifts among the milestones.

This road is neither long nor wide . . .
men gleam in death on either side.
Not long ago, they pondered on
milestones toward Oblivion.

Keywords/Tags: oblivion, milestones, markers, tombstones, radiation, fallout, nukes, winter, path, destruction, Armageddon, Apocalypse, nuclear, a-bomb, atomic bomb, hydrogen bomb, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Bikini Atoll, Manhattan Project, Trump, planet, earth, war, violence, America, environment, holocaust

The hospital gown they gave me
is the same one with clouds
my mother and friend once wore,
a hand me down filled
with the aura of grief and hope,
of time and death.

My name and date of birth
are the only thing the nurses ask
as I am led to the mold
in a treatment room
filled with a halogen haze
and an all encompassing white-
almost a verisimilitude of heaven-
pulled and pushed to the mean
that is marked in black on my body,
strapped in and slid to the center.

The  mechanical eye
revolves around me three times,
a trinity of hope, despair, life,
as I listen to bagpipes humming around,
the brightness forcing my eyes closed,
the wave tingling as it passes underneath.

I am connected to the past
by the fear of death,
separated through
the hope of cure,
knowing that I won’t
die in the gown of my mother
or with a four inch hole on my back
like my friend.

The eye whirls slowly around
one more time, then stops,
barely ten minutes passing
in an eternity of thoughts.

The nurses offer me curved arms
that lift me up, allow me
to swing my legs over
and touch the floor,
my backside exposed,
as I raise myself up
and walk away, death dates
of loved ones haunting my brain,
seeing only the ashes of clouds
of myself and others around me.

I am a Vitruvian Man
marked out like an anatomy lesson
in black and green dye,
something to align against the mean,
a mold made of sheets and plastic
to aim the mechanical eye
to revolve its rays around.

I can’t move because the machine
requires mathematical silence
to perform its cure, so the nurse
must tug me into place.

I get lost in the hum of the circle,
lonely bagpipes playing a dirge,
maybe Amazing Grace,
maybe Scotland the Brave,
maybe the last graceful notes
of my own dying world,
maybe it’s just noise.

Somewhere there
is a small echo of God
that almost gets lost in the creation
of algorithm and code,
smothered in my general deafness,
the unbelief that He would touch me
at my weakest point
like a biblical character.

The scan stops.
The mold is done.
The nurse lifts me gently up
making sure my feet touch the floor
before letting go.
She smiles and reminds me
that the end is just 25 treatments away.

ashes covered them all
the petals of the rose fall off rather quickly
when poison sickens all
leaving the people and the animals in
a corner, crumpled and smiling weakly.

the State seemed to have lost its mind
no one knew of what was to come
they were forever left behind
they tried to hold in the child’s laugh
the mother’s joy
the father’s grin
the baby’s squeal
they tried to encase it all in a metal dome

it may keep the poison out
but what about those who stood there before?
what about those who’s cells faced drought
who’s lovers were left behind
who’s children were left to die
what about the poison that has sunk into the pores
of generations and many more to come

the disease is long-standing;
thirty years is simply a blink of an eye
for the monster lurking nearby
slowly drowning
slowly suffocating
into the ground, where it will begin to **** more

and still, the city is coated in thin ash
as the sky dies
and the buildings rot
and the occasional visitor cries not for the destruction
but for her sister
who contracted the Poison not too long before the dome
she was paler when she came home
her smile faded as she came home


the city was paler when i came home

just a few years after.

Sparks of light
Emerge from the void
And encircle themselves
Around a phosphorescent nucleus.

Colors, green and purple,
Shine through the hues of watery darkness
As the traces and trails
Glow vibrantly in the black of it all.

Organisms and antimatter
Flow around each other
Indiscriminately,
Suggesting a relationship of unity.

O to touch such forbidden beauty!
To hold it in my pale hands-
It's enough to make one cry
Tears of radiation
In a sea full of death's water.