Only to meet Yuyu (A Poem in pandemic for my mentor, Mr. Yuyutsu Sharma) Bhuwan Thapaliya

Mr. Yuyutsu Sharma

 
Only to meet Yuyu
(A Poem in pandemic for my mentor, Mr. Yuyutsu Sharma)
Bhuwan Thapaliya
  
There’s no one to talk to
in the buzzing streets of Kathmandu,
everything has frozen in this town;
no calm even in the mannequin eyes standing
erect in the fancy boutiques along
the termite eaten streets of the city.
 
Swirling dust and choking fumes infuse
with the breath of pallid roadside trees.
The landscape changes as the rain falls
and the leaves smile again.
Isolated raindrops, expelled lovers
 before their first kiss lie
along the twigs of the branches
 — round, sparkling globules
— undulating without descent.
 
And then everything changes again
when the leaves falls, everything changes.
Once they touch the ground
they turn into ciphers
the sublime truths of life
beneath their layers.
  
The barriers people create between nature
and windows, walls, doors,
are not really barriers  in Kathmandu
for you can talk with all.  And you can
never be bored, you just have to sit
and look at the people passing by
and there’s so much  to say.
 
Gazing deep into Buddha’s serpent eyes,
one feels like being in a Time Machine. 
But sometimes, there is silence,
utter silence of a sadhu’s stare
into the infinity in Kathmandu,
silence of old mansions
where only  a caretaker kills time.
And the civilians of the nation disappear
like the water  sprouts  of the valley
choking my soul  to the core .
  
There is not a person that I can talk to
in the rustic streets  of Kathmandu.
I am as forlorn and lonely as a man snoozing
on an unused railway tracks
in some old Indian town.
  
I hardly ever go out now.
I am fed up with the squalor of urban life
where everyone is not what they seem to be.
I should have stayed back
at the banks of the river Sunkoshi
that festoons my village
chewing the pebbles
of my pristine dreams.
  
These days, I leave my home
only to meet Yuyu, chat up nonstop over
endless cups of masala tea
at Shreejana’s  While Lotus Book Shop,
watching the poems turn into
colorful serpents and climb the  murky trees 
enveloped in grey mist.
  
I leave my home only to meet Yuyu
and share a joke or two,
listen to his sharp one liners.
anecdotes of his travels from
the shores of his dreams
and laugh aloud 
celebrating full- blooded flame
lighted in honor of his vagabond Muse.
 
His words little by little entrap you,
 enwrap your soul in their singing silence,
at the end of the day feeding my shriveled soul.
 
And often as we wave goodbye,
he delves deep into a silent 
that soon turns into a river of endless vigor.
  
Poem dangles from
the edge of his serene mouth. 
And a dreamy prose
dances over his misty eyelashes.
 
And the silence
an ode to the Kathmandu Valley.
If one dare to pay heed.
 
Bhuwan Thapaliya & Mr. Yuyutsu Sharma

 
Nepalese poet, Bhuwan Thapaliya works as an economist, and is the author of four poetry collections and currently he is working on his fresh poetry collection, The Marching Millions. Thapaliya’s books include, Safa Tempo: Poems New and Selected (Nirala Publication, New Delhi), Our Nepal, Our Pride , Verses from the Himalayas and Rhythm of the Heart. (Cyberwit.net)Poetry by Thapaliya has been included in The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry, The Strand Book of International Poets 2010, and Tonight: An Anthology of World Love Poetry, as well as in literary journals such as Urhalpool, MahMag, Kritya, FOLLY, The Vallance Review, Nuvein Magazine, Foundling Review, Poetry Life and Times, Poets Against the War, Voices in Wartime, Taj Mahal Review, VOICES (Education Project), Longfellow Literary Project, Countercurrents etc.
 
Author
Safa Tempo: Poems New and Selected
https://www.amazon.com/Safa-Tempo-Poems-New-Selected-Bhuwan-Thapaliya
 
Our Nepal, Our Pride
https://www.amazon.com/Our-Nepal-Pride-Bhuwan-Thapaliya
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
 
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

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OCD Dinner Date & Poems by Stephen J Golds

(i.)
 
Pure
 
Standing under the downpour
of a cold shower trying to scrub away this
dull movement that spreads within me darkly.
Even the water is disgusted by my failures,
abandoning me for the moist escape of the plug hole.
 
 
(ii.)
Dental Care
 
Flossing my teeth, I noticed her toothbrush
still there in the mug on the sink.
I picked it up,
feeling the bristles rough underneath
the flesh of my thumb &
dropped it in the trash
knowing she’d never use it again.
 
 
(iii.)
It’s Time to Go Home
 
There’s a rent dodging fool
called Love in my heart with a
loaded .38 in his fist &
a bullet-riddled target in sight but
the last train is at the final station.
The lights snap off one by one,
I can’t remember where I left my coat.
 
 
(iv.)
OCD Dinner Date
 
I notice the finger smudges on the surface of the table.
Listening to the buzzing fan circulating the dusty air.
A water stain a smirk on a fork.
Someone on a table across the way snorts and sniffs.
I’ve lost my appetite but will grin through dinner
until the check comes, go home and shower.
 
 

 
 
Stephen J. Golds was born in London, U.K, but has lived in Japan for most of his adult life. He enjoys spending time with his daughters, reading books, traveling, boxing and listening to old Soul LPs. His novel Say Goodbye When I’m Gone will be released by Red Dog Press in October 2020 and another novel Glamour Girl Gone will be released by Close to The Bone Press January 2021
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
 
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

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The Color of a Snuffed Flame & Poems by Ryan J. Davidson

 
(i.)
 
Freedom of Fences
 

Dear _____, I lust her—though
she cannot know. It’s a painful thing—
a tightness of the chest. I keep having to stop
myself from ending each email
with “love, R”. But appearances
being what they are—I end with “best”,
but I know what I mean—so there’s that.
 
(ii.)
 
Fountain Statue
 

When it was still years ago—
before I saw that girl
 
with a flower in her ear; before
that flower grew—
I missed a summer day.
My broken English stands better
 
than my unwhistling lips and tonight
I meet a German poet
I’ve never heard. He’s a park
 
statue I can touch and feel the shoulder curve of his
bronze rather than the fountain statues whose jagged edges—
or if they’re soft it’s only the mollification
of time and distance—I can only feel
with my eyes. The ones I walk in circles around
 
wishing to walk on water. I took a photo of the tin-can moon
electrified by lightning
to understand the part of me that’ll go to this meeting
in the name of—it rained in Munich today.
 
(iii.)
 
The Color of a Snuffed Flame
 

Woken by a trumpet sounding.
There are things
we’re meant to make, some
less definite than knots and a box. I watched
 
a Boeing 747—there was a girl
who taught me to do that—and thought
of the 369 lives in it and those
stories. This is too much; people have their minutes
which added together equal a life
and all the plots and coincidences that live therein.
 
The butterfly house in Vienna
was beautiful though hot, small
and expensive. Filled with kids
more interested in the fish,
parents who wished their kids
would look at the butterflies,
and one woman taking pictures
of a dead butterfly. Tomorrow I’m
 
going to a fair to win a stuffed animal.
 
 
 

 
 
Bio: Ryan J. Davidson’s first book, Under What Stars, was published in 2009 by Ampersand Books.​ His second collection, Statues Need Stories, was published in 2019 by CyberWit. He is Assistant Professor of Humanities and Comparative Inquiry at Habib University in Karachi, Pakistan.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
 
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

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