I just wanted to thank you for creating such a meaningful space for poets.
Your platform has helped me grow and reach readers in ways I never imagined.

As I begin shaping my next poetry collection, I’d be deeply honored to receive a title suggestion from you.
I can’t think of a more meaningful way to name it than with your insight, since you’ve been such a part of my journey.

With gratitude,
Zahra

madness masquerades
as mornings that come
and go

and dancing madly backwards
Pan plays his lute
down desolate streets
disappearing into the raging sun
of all possibilities.

the sad mornings that come and go, and

all possibilities considered

far from the haunted clocks
and cracking glass
margins shout
where walls never meet

in forgotten stillness.
so dance on silent ledges,

walk the high wire,
jump into the fire,

welcome madness passionately.

do something completely unexpected.

enjoy the imperfections,
kiss a stranger,
laugh when you should be crying,

madness is magic,
so strip down
naked as the wolf in the forest,
logic be ******,
howl along with the howling wind.

I sat on the edge of the bed.
You smiled.
I am your daughter,
But words mean to you
Something else.

I took your hand,
Telling you I haven’t slept for a year.
I write reflections,
Tame the voices behind my left ear,
Assemble thoughts about the darkness.

I pour a warm, salty liquid
That burns the skin – it doesn’t moisturize.
It helps me,
This pseudo-therapy.
I hide behind my nickname,
So that no one holds me accountable
For what I’m supposed to be.

You also sat up at night,
You read books.
You carried hidden sadness,
I stick a smile on my lips.

I hug people who carry Egregores.
You and I,
we are not afraid of the night.
Your hand is cold.
You smile,
You put together syllables into strange words.

You know that I matter to you.
I pretend to understand
What you wanted to say.

In a moment, it will get hard.
You’ll start screaming like a little boy,
Or again you’ll wait
Until this state of life passes you.

Life?
It’s a kind of space
Where people, because of fear
Bite and scratch
Like frightened, rabid dogs –
And then soothe it
With controlled tenderness.

I sit with you on the edge of the couch
And I think:
We write with the left hand.
We are beings of the night.
Our path was shared –
In fear, to protect a small piece of “I”.

I fear I’ll lose language.
I desperately defend myself against silence.
I dream of non-human languages.
I write words as if I wanted
To cast spells on reality –
Still, it’s not enough.
The anesthesia stopped working.

One day, this will be the end,
Yet as long as I live,
I’ll be the naive one.
That’s what I want.

I choose sweet, sugar-coated hope,
With pink sprinkles,
Telling myself that he, she
Didn’t mean to trample –
Only life pushed them
Into that dark corridor.

My hope
Is not a soft blanket,
This is a heavy, tight helmet.

Forest in moonlight
Indigo spills into night
Teal the moss aglow

I found her in the vapor of a summer dream
She was standing in the door to Paradise
When I asked if I could see her in the sunlight
Her laughter matched the sparkle in her eyes.

Her smile was like a sunlit pond at twilight.
Her eyes resembled sapphires at high noon.
Her hair was like a swirling touch of midnight.
Her voice as sweet as birdsong heard in June.

Her appearance gave me cause to stop and wonder
If who I saw was really standing there
Or was it just my wild imagination
Creating loveliness from smokey Summer air.

I crept a careful step or two towards her
My pulse was pounding madly in my throat
She frowned at me then edged a little backwards-
And suddenly between us was a moat.

There was no bridge or any walkway over.
She was securely on the other side.
It seemed as though she couldn't let me join her
She made that clear no matter what I tried.

I wrote a note of love on parchment paper
And sailed it to her in a little boat
She reached down to fetch it from the water
And read while lumps were forming in my throat

She tucked the folded note into her *****
And wiped a forming teardrop from her eye
She smiled and then she sadly whispered to me
The only word I feared - it was Goodbye.

The moat became a little stream of water
The doorway, two tall Jacaranda trees
The paradise that somehow she had come from
Transformed to smoke, soon taken by the breeze.

And I was left alone to stand and wonder
If everything I’d seen was truly there
Or was this just a middle-aged delusion
Providing me a thrilling tale to share.
ljm

The dampness
of the rainy season
        is soaking into
My bones
And
Into my being

Our mutual friend
had told you
how I used to be Queen of a very small tribe.

"It seems almost..." I said, hesitating.
"Like it really happened?" he asked.

"It did happen. But now
things are so different that it seems
ridiculous."

I sat there,
shot full of arrows like Saint Sebastian--
like him, not dying
but split and empty like a dead pew.

There are more gospels than they let on, you know.
This man loaned me two records--
Joni Mitchell
and It's a Beautiful Day.

Like poetry, it was love for life for me--
Hot Summer Day and Sweet Fire.

I left Illinois not long after
to Gypsy it in a small car with two teachers
off for the summer.

We read Richard Brautigan,
and wandered the bars in New Orleans, then Galveston
where I left both my crown and my grave in a coin laundry
on a Sunday morning.