Top Tips to Keep ‘Writing’ When You’re Not Writing — Natalie Ann Holborow

In my last post, I talked about the importance of stepping back and being kind to yourself if you’re finding it hard to write during these difficult times. Staring at the same four walls, not interacting with new people, and not embracing new experiences as you normally would will doubtless take a hit on your […]

via Top Tips to Keep ‘Writing’ When You’re Not Writing — Natalie Ann Holborow

Qaurantined Vignettes A Photo Story #1 — Whilst Sipping Chai

Being bound by the four walls of this house has revealed beauty in what seems mundane and ordinary. What I find increasingly amusing these days are the little moments that usually would pass us by, like the flames dancing on my gas stove during an electrical outage as twilight descends into the night . As […]

via Qaurantined Vignettes A Photo Story #1 — Whilst Sipping Chai

Simplicity and Alien — One Writer’s Words

As I continue along on this journey of Throwback Thursday Poetry Edition, I cannot believe how horrible I was to my own writing. I have notes, stickies, comments, and scrawled messages about how much I hate the piece and that I’ll be back to fix it. While the work is clearly not the greatest, it’s […]

via Simplicity and Alien — One Writer’s Words

The Productivity of Silence — Friendly Writing

I attend several online writing groups now that do nothing but reserve space for writing. One is called Zoom Cafe. Shut Up and Write is a nationwide Meetup organization. Several regional NaNoWriMo groups also offer these types of meetings year round. The first one I attended felt kind of weird. After a few minutes of […]

via The Productivity of Silence — Friendly Writing

Old Love, New Love, by Ekawu Ukpo

Love letters i hold close to heart
Papers tainted with signature scents of you and I
Time and distance, counted as days to miss one and no other
Goodbye hugs tighter and reconcilation hugs deeper
Skin and sheets made the lovers sweeter
Happiness is kind and love is a keeper
and you say it means keep her
Keep her love, read her smiles and make beauty stay forever
Kisses meant, its you
Flowers say always.
Words held truth
Actions bore honor.
Truly blessed as true believers

My old soul travelled so far in time
Millenials believe love is telepathic
Fairytales lie, and they vibe
Absorb my love, It surrounds me but its not in me
Worship do not adore, they crave obsession
Hold my hair up while i throw up
Sick signs of true love.
Lets share bad habits, and say loving has evolved.

The very core of love they corrupt
They can’t even comprise on something so simple as color
They call hiding freedom of expression
Expressing love weakness of the subconscious
They propose with flare and disbelief
Romance is denied or dead
I tell them romance is not sex.
They say stay single then, one night stands is a trend.
The circle is vicious,but people like us don’t bend
No matter what lives,they have been given.
We know, knowing the universe
Designate souls meets wherever they may be
In their mordern world what’s meant to be will be.

Masking Selish-nesses…?, by David Keen

-How should we feel about face masks, as it is not essential, like spacesuits…?
-But, re: numbers, for those in the N.H.S., on mere citizens, do they seem cute…?
-These people might well need them, having the COVID, or just being older, & vulnerable…
-But the fact they may shock, or endanger, us others, might make us then view them as trouble…

-If one needs them, you should get, & things will be good,
-That they’re available to you, as protection…
-But I wonder about before, & each office ‘uniform’,
Does it more shows some users should be ‘sectioned’…? (!).

An Intense Love for Literature, by M.S. Muhammad Nawfal

She is my beloved,
Whom I love indeed.
The sacred ideals have been buried,
That I wish men dig hurried.

she has drowned her texts,
in evil-free oceans.
The scholar bathes in stream of texts,
That flow through education.

He kisses the aesthetic ideals,
That came from the great mind.
She knows no death,
And no wars could steal her wrath.

The art sows saplings of humanity,
That bloom in heart of men without vanity.
And I smile with similes and play with personification,
I dine with diction and cry with characterization.

I melt with motif,
And I nurture my soul with narrative.
I have sucked the pill of madness ,
On literature in kindness.

And it is the bad subject of my relations,
Upon whose tongue it lays waste.
For it, I apologize you my dear,
Now let those sicked ears hear.
The lines of your art are the well-cooked biriyani,
That melt deep in the whispering stomach.
Your body has flowered the bunch of righteous,
That mentor the humanity in priceless.

Your pride has unscalable path,
As the great wall of China hath.
Some taste the fruit of it,
Some waste it on innocence as unfit.

The elixir of ideas it gives men,
That travel on minds amid demon.
Drug dealers are the deepest thoughts of it,
That faint me and feed me merit.

The art that has killed social evils,
Race, class and other unequals.
The sailors on it,
Has looked the wind of humanity.

If not, they are pseudo sailors,
On whom she never unveils her.
Some false followers among the greats lay,
Who make her preaching disobey.

And shall the crown of good sit on her head,
And shall rule the mind of good and bad.
Dear God, bless me to clutch her hand,
That shall give society the cherished changes with writing wand.
-M.S. Muhammad Nowfal

MORSE CODE, by Carla Botha

——— • • • ———

I leave you
dits and dahs.
A brief sequence but you do not respond
like I do not respond to Mondays.
I try and decode my days for the sake of dealing
with time and dispensing of you. I am authorized
to dispense of things. I haven’t decided
the category you fall under — office hours,
overtime. The week is short.
I am working, planning to buy
a home for myself and my chickens.
The budget predicts I need to rid myself
of dots and dashes, I decipher
dreams. Everything seems like reality
except you — not included,
an untranslatable character.
#
#
#
The duration of a dash —
three times the duration
of a dot •
I memorize this distress signal —
three dashes
three dots
three dashes.
But I won’t send it.
I hear Morse code
is seldom used nowadays.