Being and Nothingness by Gary Beck

Max Klinger
From the Cycle "A life": Back into Nothingness
(Opus VIII, Plate 15/15)

The sins I have committed
hopefully will die with me,
yet if there is an afterlife
where sins are burnt and purged away
I must endure cleansing,
perhaps not as long as others
for I wasn’t the worst,
non-comforting knowledge
that must be reconciled.

I can’t imagine heaven,
Elysian Fields, Edenic dreams,
and if they were real,
they wouldn’t be for me.
If there’s only nothingness
I surely can’t conceive
of the absence of something.
So my remaining option
is to enjoy as much as I can
before the final conclusion.

*****

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director. He has 14 published chapbooks. Feast or Famine and other one act-plays will be published by Wordcatcher Publishing. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of magazines. He lives in New York City.

My dreamy manifesto under the starry sky – comet-ward by Pawel Markiewicz

Attention: This manifesto has in itself a magic power and it can finally refute the communist manifesto (1847/48) and its successors in the form of communist states.

It burns a peaceful campfire!

I am part of the pink eternity.
I enchant the poetic stars.
I dream with ghosts of melancholy.
I am a magician of dawn.
My wing is called Apollo.
I'm so enchanted so dreamy.
I am a sky dreamer.
I am shrouded  in the most beautiful enthusiasm.
My dream enchants the beautiful world.
There is a magic dream in my wings.
My wings can do magic.
I like my dreams.
My dream is hotter than feeling.
Philosophical thoughts are waiting for me.
Philosophical sparks shimmer at me.
My philosophy is infinity.
I am in love with the infinity of politics.
I like a druidic fire.
I want to become a druid priest.
Modern druids beautify my existence.
An eternal spark rests in my poetries.
I am spiritualized thanks to poetry.
In politics you can be poetic.
I never quarrel with muses.
I fly in pairs like muses.
My wing would need starry rays.
With beautiful sounds fulfilled my dream of melancholy.
Poetic moment enriches my soul.
There is an Osiris' chalice in my soul.
My friend Loreley is a philosopher like me.
In tender tears my magic life takes place.
I sometimes quarrel with tears of finiteness.
I would build a school for Druids.
The imagination unfolds in the moon.
I adore  Osiris forever.
My friend Osiris likes the original beauty.
In my chalice there is  Osiris´ soul.
I fly to the land of Osiris.
I write a legend to the Osiris.
I drink a dew of eternity.
In the dew, I can refresh my soul like muses.
I warm myself in a gentle dew.
I cool my wings in the magic dew.
In the dew fell my little shooting star.
Ambrosia is eternal for my sake.
In Ambrosia I feel infinitely beautiful magic.
I love to perpetuate this ambrosia.
An idea about the ambrosia is waiting for me.
My tender thought must be enchanted by Ambrosia.
I, sitting, wait for spiritualized moments.
I sit there as if I were a musical angel.
I philosphere as if an angelic muse had touched me.
In the wind, my moment becomes like star-shaped existence.
This touch reflects my eternity.
The tender poetry become  my temple.
In the most beautiful stamp of feeling I belong to you.
I can love all the fantasies of the dawn.
I'll show you my freedom of mindlessness.
I like to collect colored shooting stars of the angels.

*****

Pawel Markiewicz was born 1983 in Poland (Siemiatycze) . He published his English haikus as well as short poems in the best literary magazines of world such as: Ginyu (Tokio) , Atlas Poetica (USA) or The Cherita (UK) . Recently he has published some poem in Tajmahal Review (India) and Better Than Starbucks (USA) . He published furthermore his poems and prosa in Internet: Blog Nostics - to wit his mystical flash- the Druid...about fungi... 

Expectations by Lynn White

Sand Castles by Jerry

I had never been to the seaside.
I knew what to expect, though.
I had a book about it.
There were lots of pictures of rock pools
and the strange creatures living there.
My favourites were the hermit crabs.
I was looking forward to those the most.
I had a little bucket to collect them in.

But there were no rock pools,
at this seaside.
Just flat sand with a thin distant line
of cold grey sea.
Why?
No one said.

I found some shells
to put in my bucket.
I liked the tiny pink ones best.
But most were broken
and not worth collecting.
Why?
No one said.

No shells, no hermit crabs, but
they showed me how to put damp sand
into my miniature bucket.
with my miniature spade
and how to pat it down
and tip it out to make ‘sand pies’.
I was supposed to like doing this.
Why?
No one said.

They gave me some paper flags
on thin wooden sticks.
I could stick them in
the top of my sand pies.
I was supposed to like doing this.
Why?
No one said.

I thought I’d save up my flags
until I’d climbed the mountain
at my auntie’s.
When I got to the top
I’d arrange them into my initials
so everyone would know I’d been there.
I started to practice this.
But they said the mountain
was a slag heap, not a mountain
and therefore out of bounds.
Why?
No one said.

We stayed on the beach a long time.
Then we went to a toy shop.
My father bought me a doll
with real hair, they said.
But it was made of nylon.
I called her Gloria.
That was the best bit.
but nothing was
as it had been
inside my head.


First published in Silver Birch Press, Beach and Pool Series, 2016

*****

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud 'War Poetry for Today' competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Rhysling Award. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/