Before the Sun by Peter Rimmer, New Zealand

 AURORA

One step 

Two steps

Giant strides

One step to the moon

Two steps Mars

One great leap

To ride the stars.

It's cold out here

Amongst the stars

A silver sickle moon

Hooked on you

I'll reel in the night

Savor the stars another day.

Diamonds smoked glass lightless skies

One step 

Two steps

See's me beside you

Aurora you are a witchlight sky

An ocean drowns me

In your eyes.

(c) Copyright Peter Rimmer 2023.

***

BEFORE THE SUN GOES DOWN

I dreamed these dreams

When I was young

Of forever love

Relationships that grow in strength

And never fail

I believed in fairy tales

Life's just not like that

I know.

Oh yes I believe in love

I believe it still

It's complicated a tricky show

It comes and goes

Nothing is forever

Nothing ever was or is

I know.

When I was young

This complex world

Seemed so simple

One day I'd fall in love

Raise some kids

And yes I did

Though that wasn't as I expected it to be

This I know now

I wish I knew it then.

I dreamed these dreams

When I was young

The summers seemed to never end

Yet winter came and stole the show

Nothing lasts

Is what I've learned

Still these dreams haunt me

They haunt me still.

I'm running out of time

This time around

Will there be another

Who can know

But maybe there's still a little loving

To be found

Before the sun goes down

I don't know

Is what I know.

(c) Copyright Peter Rimmer 2023

Poem by Yusuf Daniel Olamilekan, Nigeria

 AMAZING GRACE 

Amazing grace 

The Lord of nations 

Jesus Christ bought with a price 

We have escaped great damnations.

We were once sick,

He became a great physician 

We died in trespasses and sins 

He quickened and call us Son.

Amazing grace 

He has forgiven 

He has died and once and for all 

This is the great joy He has given 

He has cleansed and made us whole.

©®Yusuf Daniel Olamilekan.

Nigeria 🇳🇬

Mohamed Merzoug, Algeria

 ton écharpe

ton écharpe est bleue

comme le bleu du ciel

comme le fond de tes yeux

comme le souffle de la mer

ton écharpe s'est envolée

avec tes cheveux blonds

avec les hirondelles

partis dans le vent

quelque chose dans mon coeur

répète les mots d'hier

chapeaux melons le soir

vêtus de manteaux noirs

mais je n'ai invité personne

que des murs qui résonnent

qu'un poème ou une prose

ton écharpe est rose

est rose comme une rose

comme une rose du désert

comme une longue prière

comme le temps en pause.

Au delà du désert © Mohamed Merzoug 2023

The Love, by Dessy Tsvetkova, Bulgaria

 The meeting was like the sparkle of a diamond,

like two comets colliding,

after a superburst of immensity.

I tried to avoid it,

changed my orbit

I turned ...

But figs bloomed like the first plant in the galaxies,

the light of a thousand suns

shines...

And then love was born

to fill all the Cosmic voids...

Dessy Tsvetkova,

Brussels,

18-09/22

Aaron Blackie, Nigeria, short story

 BUMPS

          ON HER STREET SKINS

I walked into her by way life sometimes allowed, after times gone-by and the chronicles of regret spread out.

     It's pages in the freeway library...

The once radiant queen of the street life.

      Now the backside shadow of her glorified past!

   Like leviathan, the gliding serpent,

She meandered through the high places

   Of the streets, before the flirtatious eyes of the street,

hunters, unleashing their arrows at her Alluring presence....

          The epitome of supple

     Softness, zenith of teenage beauty!

         Stallion untamed of the wild...

       The delight of streets hunters,

Who hunt for pleasure not for treasure!

  Left behind, scattered seeds, settled

            On her wobbling lap;

  Love's own rhythms ripped off their

               Neglected souls...

   Merciless street gladiators, ruthless

Law-breakers, bereft of humanness

Unkind even to the womb that birthed

      Their untoward presence!

 The queen of the street life reclined, 

  The grinding teeth of time inclined,

   Courting loneliness and aloneness

     At the hidden corner of once her

Striving kingdom, wincing as life goes

                  By on her!

The moon of the nightlife surrounded

         By constellations of stars,

Now lay smouldered like charcoal into

      Ashes, ashes into emptiness...

  Head bended low, hand on cheeks

           A statue only fit for

        Time's corrosive clays!

She fetched the waters of her present

     Philosophy, out of the oasis of

The silent bitterness of her desert soul

   Of which her seeds have drank to the

     Bream, the gale of future societal

                    Monsters...

But we must enlarge the banks of our

               Hearts for the

Rivers of love to flow, to embrace, to

            Pour out and fill

  The emptiness of those abandoned

Souls, predestined as God's Children

       Before time... Though now

Offsprings of the wild cats of the street

     That their wildest impulses,

  Maybe streamlined into streams of

           Beautiful souls

Bearing light out of the darkness

           Birthed before us

  The guaranteed shields of our

Peaceable habitation in the streets

          Of our tomorrow...

Isilda Nunes, Portugal

 And us?

In the nonchalance of the diffuse dawn,

Poseidon foams.

Humanity sinks.

From oceanic madness

irrationality emerges

in ethyl odours.

Inebriation.

Incoherence.

Alienation.

Disformed waves

obscure the would-be dawn.

And us?

In paper boats we try to survive.

***

I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO SAY 

I don't know what to say  

when my gaze rests on your lap

and crosses, impudently, 

the autumn borders,

like the last ray of summer. 

I dare to turn, silently, the key 

and transpose the translucent mornings 

of my feverish body,

to mitigate the thirst, 

In the vintage I dream.

And in this healthy madness, 

I touch the stars to offer them to you,

one by one, 

protractedly, 

in soft caresses, 

at the dawn's threshold.