Suggestions

Literature - Page 3

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Tactile 

“The longing to touch…I feel gratitude when I touch someone  — as well as affection etc. The person has allowed me proof  that I have a body — and that there are bodies in the world.  — Susan Sontag,  from As
April 25, 2023
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From An Old Book

It must have washed up on the shore from the river that dead body. Someone had arranged death  for him. The dead man is walking from the shore towards me. It may take three more minutes  for him to reach me.
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Ultimatum

I think after a time you stop ageing and time itself enters a zone that is timeless Memories freeze somewhere in the thin air and thoughts are scrambled, losing logic There you move on a path between dying and death Uncertainty
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Frozen Harlequins

Crouching on the silent snow Touching the concealed grass below With fingers numbed and stiffened from Encounters with the frosty death,  The women lift their vacant eyes To a mountain eagle in lonely skies,  Each a frozen mannequin  Sculpted form of
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In The Name Of Blasphemy

It was her first day in the new office after being appointed as Deputy Commissioner. A critical district was assigned to her, with all new people well-articulated rather over-articulated both politically and religiously. It was the first time that a
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Thoughts of Color

The audacity of red Spluttering thoughts Like furious seeds of mustard Anxiously tread. A riot of knots  Lurching in my head. Overriding the boundless blue skies Valor, pride and celebrations Colour red emphasize. Beyond these cultural connotations  Red also implies Pain
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One Magical Night

One Magical Night Down in the meadows: On the lustrous green, Sprawled beneath: In the shade of the old oak tree, Surrendered in my thoughts….. My eyes glimpsed: The sweet lilies bloom, Beside the gushing stream: Breathing the scented spray, Profound! As
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Leaf Whispers

I find him barefoot moon-silvered face tilted to forest canopy scrabbles luminous eyes in my torch beam. Now the lightning eastern sky stirs currawong chords breeze prickles bare skin. I shiver. the slap of his unclenched fist still stings,
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The Life Game

Where is my verse? In the atmosphere…? Hiding in snowy mountains? Or, blooming in an oasis? Maybe travelling in An unknown path… Where was my verse? Searched and found The words… Collected them in my Precious heart Along with blooming
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Death

I was at my funeral. My body was wrapped in a white sheet, some of my friends and relatives were standing there and silently looking at my face, of course, they had tied my mouth around my head with a piece of
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Catalina

While contemplating suicide, as he was frequently wont to do, Ceylon Nathan happened to look closely at the plateglass window and noticed a snail crawling slowly across it. He went towards it and… luckily, it was on the other side of the
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What Was

In the kitchen I stand Tracksuit-clad and blinking As the click of the front door shuts The sounds of the day away.   I snuff the gas And the subterranean gurgling fades to naught As, like a latter-day suburban witch
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Sea Eagle

On the banks of the Manning a sea eagle high in the conifer balances on a bare branch shreds and devours its writhing catch. Scales, bones, entrails. My hands deep in my pockets, not like early days of love when you
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Redemption

REDEMPTION 1 Depression shrouded her as it swallowed her into a realm of obscurity. Its murky belly hid her from the light, and she found refuge in its sludge. Its venomous words were so warm, so comforting. It hissed into her
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Comfortable?

O! My boy, my son, Cradle in my arms. Eyes misty as the winter sky…. Silver tears wet my forehead, why? Bury my face in your precious arms; Mum, I don’t understand. Why, is Dad in the box over there? One we
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Between Steps

Ancestral fire, flames licking the dreams, Of a knee, low in raised silence, A sunny bud, brooding on black soils, Am the kite, whose string is loosed from the root, Flying, prying, praying, I step between steps like a dancer, But far
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Izumi’s Scent

“How many times a day?” asked Kobayashi. All the six gathered at the short Japanese table, laughed. The newly married Kashima, hesitated for a moment whether to answer or not. Noticing that everyone was looking at him, in a
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No Closure

Thou shall not kill Divine command it Is Yet uniformed Armed land forces Will not budge Drunken by smoking Iron in hand Ants more valuable Thou shall not kill We learnt as young As five Yet, land forces fed Off our sweats
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Daughter

Dear Daughter, In our society, women love those group of men who do not take rejection seriously. There is a set of rules and regulations in the society, If a man wants to silence a woman, The respected gentleman rapes her, Not
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Eyes That I love

Your crystalline eyes, Deepest than the seven seas Change colour From brown to blue to green From green to turquoise to grey And then to see through glass like They are deep They speak They smile They go sad… They
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The Road To Zvegona

Is fading the memory of its son, Who for words must ride the night Fleeing ears that hear thunder on a baby’s purity guggle, Zvegona, my homestead, Ancestors are watching Elders on a scheming mission Trading lies with more lies The
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Stripped

Stripped of your beauty, Stripped of your name. Stripped of everything that you thought you would have, Stripped of your freedom to go back to your place of origin. Stripped of the friendship you have with your people, Stripped of
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Anagram

My parents refuse to let me tell them about how the world is ending: the high end stores in NYC are boarded up, and people are lying on the bitumen-laid bridge in Portland in peaceful protest, and people in police uniform
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I Lived Another Day

In those pathless roads In those shoreless seas In the air so mutilated In the sadness of me I lived another day In this world of asininity In this nature of tranquillity In the existence of fatality Off, the humanity
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Gimara

She was seated on the low bench with a warm cup of kahata the cupped between her palms. She watched the ocean becoming calm with dainty white ripples gushing and disappearing on the sandy beach. The bright orange ball was gradually
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Street Games

  Thud I throw two red balls at the brick wall of our house. Thud Charlie Chaplin went to France. To show the ladies how to dance First you do the rhumba Then you do the kicks Then you do the
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The Maze

On a day like this dawn hauls herself upright pink fingers curling above the rim   on a day like this queuing for basics among empty shelves spilt frozen peas scrunch underfoot   on a day like this navigating the
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Beloved Hallucination

I settle into captivity  with a beloved  hallucination. Bearing a face of lulling  lucid dreams. Our indiscernible torsos collide  in this sanctuary of candlelight  and vapour abiding. Uninterrupted. And I’m falling into this misled  by the desires  of this heart unsettled,
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Kiewa Creek

Sunday, 1 February The day dawns. Sulphur-crested cockatoos shriek as they rise from the trees. Startled kookaburras call out in raucous laughter and baby magpies squawk. By mid-morning, heat and humidity drive the locals to the spring-fed creek that bubbles
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The Protector

He always worried about his kids’ safety. It propelled him to make sure someone accompanied them wherever they went, be it school or recreation.  Recently, he had installed cameras in their rooms that were connected to devices so he and his
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Crayons

In trees, in crayon leaves, a box of autumn with a sharpener of birds. How my eyes flew to them. How flocks of big-horned clouds were un-shepherded like hope and went everywhere they shouldn’t be able to: my hands, my
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The End Of The Affair

So the cat untwists in midair beneath the apple tree, a blackbird fluttering backwards from her paws as she lands eyes vivid with desire, crouches, wriggles, deliberates, blinks. So, too, an apple springs unbitten from your hand to its twig, unripens
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Pieta C.1989

Warm, soft, brown soil of mine No shipped cold hard white marble Parched, tired fingers – also mine Michelangelo’s discarded chisel Does not suffice Beautified, refined you need not be In death, in memory, in life You were sun scorched black-brown Tired, forgotten,
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Ariel’s Song

Tent flaps flutter in the breeze. Dust stirs and lingers in the air, in the mouth. Another day—and I’m still here. The queue grows longer every morning. By the time our water container is filled, I’ve at least sweated away half that
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Cherry Blossom

春の風桜の花を連れていく… Cold winter had long passed. The snow had begun to slowly melt away, also taking the sorrows of the villagers along with it, giving way to the fragrant spring odours, and new hopes that kindled in the women’s hearts. The
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Whispers

Don’t go to the river mother whispers last days of harvest under the molten sun air is still, breathless waves of heat distort the view beneath boundary trees this drowsy afternoon my toes cooling in the trickle don’t go
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Aiyo  

This word comes as the voice of the well;   A thousand children— A hundred artists, drunk, lost their way— those who fell  while crossing over the woven coconut fence, clandestinely, in the ecstasy of desire— I know the chapter of
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In the Tibetan Autonomous Region

མིའི་རིགས་ཀྱི་མུན་ནག་དེ་  རང་ཁྱིམ་གྱི་མུན་ནག་ཏུ་གྱུར  The darkness of humanity  has become the darkness of my home.  —Kyabchen Deydrol སྐྱབས་ཆེན་བདེ་གྲོལ, translation by Lowell Cook and the author    A Tibetan professor sneaks us home   to share a meal with his family.   He does
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Gangaramaya 2019

Highly embellished, in the heart of the capital, crammed within its walls, Gangaramaya Temple is infested with exhibits – chandeliers, Buddha statues, sculptures, coins, carvings, collectibles… High-end, ostentatious Buddhist culture from around the world. It looks grand, yet cosy
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Apology

I left  Thinking the sun was safely  wrapped up  in a bundle of clothes  at the bottom of my bag but leaving in such a hurry I didn’t realize I left  the sun  in your chest your palms pressed against the
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Rebels

Lawanya Wijesekara  A flower’s life on earth is shortened, as it’s plucked from the ground it’s born Yet its death is celebrated in a glass coffin of a vase… Death becomes melodramatic A sight, news, a story to tell A movie
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Skin

I’ve got skin, miles and miles of skin. covered and adorned with colours, be it of cotton, silk or others. It’s perfect in concealing my cells and the scars I possess But your eyes would lurk somewhere that has deeper
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From An Australian

I’m not a displaced person living in uncertainty marginalised and not heard. I have the right to vote freedom of speech hard-earned by my migrant ancestors. My children have married into other cultures chosen other religions blessing our family with
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Stamping

In a corner of my mother’s kitchen cupboard, there was a brown glass and a plate, slightly cracked, “Reserve them for the Help”, she’d snap “Don’t drink from them, keep them at the back.” There was separate access from the back
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