Passing
Copyright© Rethabile Masilo

There isn’t any beating of the drums
After the long subsiding ray
When like a cruel master darkness comes.

Let the town-criers hasten to convey
Outright this message to kingdoms.
Invite well-wishing folks to go away.

Let the menace rise as the heart succumbs
Deeper still, and let silence slay
You with meaning beyond the sound of psalms.

But if no-one will listen or obey,
Wind the clocks, swing the pendulums,
And let that message seal the stillborn day.

A Scratch of Paper
Submitted by Gregory W. Golden

A scratch of paper is what I need
Pen and paper performs the deed
Imagine these words to bring us hope
A scratch of paper on a slippery slope
A stroke of genius and the moment caught
A scratch of paper to share my thought

Submitted by Victoria Garcia:

Since the day I met Tess
My entire world crumbled.
With hair as black as night,
Swaying like the raging seas.
Her eyes like a pair of roasting
Chestnuts on an open flame

People took a gaze
And immediately said we were twins
I could not see the similarities,
When that person is a
Back stabbing friend

Your fake smiles and cheerful ways
Fooled the crowd
But your sly and mischievous ways
Didn’t trick me

I heard the silent rumors
That slipped from your mouth
About your most caring friends

You’re under cover flirtation
That stole the hearts of your friend
Boyfriends

You lie in the face of everyone
Not caring who you hurt in the end,

But the perfect Teen Queen
Was soon going to be exposed
Of the type of person she really is

Who spilled the truth and told
Everyone what she was doing?
Why it was me of course her
Best friend, but no can stay friends
Forever when you have a
Friend like Tessa

The following poems were to submitted by my friend Frits who told me they are from

‘De liefste; onsterfelijke
liefdesverzen’ (The sweetest; immortal love poems) by Paul Claes, publisher: Meulenhoff Amsterdam (1990). It contains love poems from many different languages.

Below are the English transalations:

My God, what a night
and how soft the bed
on which we melted down

and our strayed souls
poured between our lips:
at last no more humans.

Petronius

Again casts Eroos
under his blueish lashes
melting glances at me

and drifts me
with temptations of many kinds
in the ununraveble nets of Love.

I, I shiver with his arrival
as a trotter that old and jaded
has to enter the arena again.

Ibycus

Happy as the gods seems
me the man who just
before you sits and listens
to your beautiful voice

and lovely laugh so that sudden
my heart pounds in my chest
as soon as I watch you
chokes my voice

my tongue is broken
a light fire runs through
my skin I see no more
my ears sizzle

sweat pours down from me
a trembling seizes me
I am yellower then grass
it seems like I am dying

but everything is bearable
if …

Sappho

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