The California Poppy Times
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Spring 2023 Volume 9
By Ranjit Roi
Love , maybe a dream
In which !'m fallen in
Swift and slow floating
Like a paper boat
Whispering secret thoughts
By Rangit Roy
Dreaming , thinking and inking
Inking , thinking and dreaming
Till the Heart's beating
Lungs breathing and eyes blinking
This soul is a poetry
By Rangit Roy
A polished man of words
These scrap papers and sticky notes
Decent heartfelt thoughts
Words , letters and envelopes kept
Inside the box , some scattered in brain
Some are lost but with every page
Feels like better than ever READ MORE
By Hanh Chau
Enjoy your day as it comes
with joy and appreciation
from sunlight to dawn
each minute to an hour
embrace as it is your last
with no regrets for better or worst
By Hanh Chau
A Life Learning Lesson
when I look into a human’s eyes
To gure out what is right and wrong
From one own conscious mind
Through the moral guidelines
To determine what to lead
By Hanh Chau
There I stand
Embracing the image
Of her vividly
That becomes speechless
Her essence of beauty
descends from heaven
By Hanh Chau
The Beautiful Gaze
The beautiful gaze
exude from the early
bright sunrise in the color
of golden vibrant display
By Abubakar Auwal
After reading —Bring our casket home— by S. Vershima Agema
We offer fore note
in the homecoming of our casket.
father voice me— thus;
mites waves are myth—
in the cadence of thoughts...
we journeyed to after words,
By Ahmad Al-Shahawy
Translated By Dr. Salwa Gouda
It is true that my name is Ahmad
And my letters are the most lenient
But sometimes it becomes heavier than a mountain
The pilgrims blamed for their sins. READ MORE
By Ahmad Al-Sahway
Translated by Dr. Salwa Gouda
No dog here barking
No cats in the streets
I only hear the police and ambulance
People are naked from their hearts
Even clothes do not cover up nudity. READ MORE
By Ahmad Al-Shahway
Translated By Dr. Salwa Gouda
In my head
Fire ants walk.
I do not know their type or name.
They colonized me
As if I were Solomon
Or as if I were his vast land
Or as if he wanted to be
Next to Jinn in me
By Sonali Chanda
For man's unfulfilled wishes that lies everywhere, that rifle-sight they design, that in quiet sector to drain their promises- tears fall and flow from each eyes.
By Salizan Takisvilainan
Translator: C. J. Andrson-Wu
Discharging
the knife worn on waist
holding a mauser in hand
Dressing in
an army green uniform
equipped with an advanced T-65K2 Rifle
By Eadbhard McGowan
Rolled like a liquorice wheel
are the arrondissements,
like a round dance
a fairground carrousel,
a cable reel,
one eight seven
By Eduard Schmidt-Zorner
The swishing sound of metro doors,
the final closing sound,
the mix of odours:
Perfume, sweat and dust,
phones which did not cease to ring. READ MORE
By Eduard Schmidt-Zorner
Petit-Montrouge Underground Quarries
supplied 2000 years the stones for Paris
night and day, gypsum, and clay, READ MORE
By Binod Dawadi
If a robot can make,
God how much nice it will be,
We can see God face to face,
We can tell our problems,
To the God,
By Binod Dawadi
Christ where are you ?
We are searching for you,
We don't know where are you ?
In the world there is a war,
Diseases and natural calamities,
By Kushal Poddar
One, two, three leaves sink in the sun.
The bituminous pitch turns liquid.
The path undone runs towards the school
I hear the Miss Teacher translating
English to Northern East, to the city
seeking a leeway in the narrow shadow
beneath the parking cars and licks
its rear before stretching and curling up.
By Kushal Poddar
We did not name these colours.
They exist between the shades
When my uncle don madness
he can scoop those in his fist
and cast on the face of this race of the names.
By Kushal Poddar
I tell my cousin brother profaning,
"Defile anything; not a gentleman,
I am a poet. I can call my mother a whore
and still give her respect. READ MORE
By Kushal Poddar
Two men at work talks about iron
with gust and credulity unknown
to me. Last night's rain rusts away.
The flowers of summer leave a trail
to the stream, to the West of the city.
The residue of the clouds pass by
the delta of the labour hard hands. READ MORE
By Emmanuel Umeji
Let our shivers drought its water
Today, the name coronavirus
Walking above hills and plains
Uncovered the face of our serenity
The serenity of our homeland
And exposed our faces to the
By LaVern Spencer McCarthy
Although these winter days have now decreed
the death of many things that I adore,
a hundred pretty words are all I need
to make a garden for the world, and more.
A mighty brace of nouns will help construe
a scenic river running wild and free.
By LaVern McCarthy Spencer
That vixen, Spring, is on her way.
She sent a note of daffodils,
a paragraph of birds that say:
That vixen, Spring, is on her way!
By LaVern McCarthy Spencer
Upon a rose a song began,
then drifted toward a tree,
became entangled with the buzz
of a bumblebee,
was extricated by the wind
to help a robin sing
his very best, and then I heard
the melody of spring
By Ronja Vieth
On nights
like these, your ghost
does linger. In every
corner the wind blows
in to sweep you out
By Ronja Vieth
The wrought iron’s
faded glory
of paint though black
and lusterless has faded
even more. Long
gone and long ago cracks
By Ronja Vieth
A chicken
in a mangrove tree
perches on a root in Talpa.
The burro by the barn
wall knows I am missing my shirt
from Vallarta, as cacti pray
by Shafkat Aziz Hajam
If you long to have a blissful life,
Don’t shed blood, end every sort of strife.
Send the word of love and peace to your foes ,
Stand by them , in their joys and sorrows .
By HONG NGOC CHAU (NGUYEN CHINH)
Peace is like the bright sunshine
As the source of peaceful beings in life
Like virtue, everybody is desiring
To perform the truth of believing READ MORE
By HONG NGOC CHAU
By nature, roses are bestowed
Let life admire its figure's proud
Flowers' scent spreads on Earth and Heaven
Together with time with earnest love given READ MORE
By TAK Erzinger
Often when I awake, surrounded by purrs and fur,
their bodies wrapped around my torso,
their eyes as green as mine – I believe I am one of them
By TAK Erzinger
Less here
we frame ourselves
snapshots void of breath
connected by invisible waves
suspended in ether.
By TAK Erzinger
Because the sky can open
its bluest eye, its pupil the highest sun
shining across the land
sometimes clouded heavy with rain
washing us in tears.
By Johannes Beilharz
Last night I dreamt
Last night I dreamt
that somebody loved me
– The Smiths
It was an intense black-and-white READ MORE
By Scott Thomas Outlar
Lightning strikes
sirens roar
dogs howl
cats screech
children sleep soundly
and it is beautiful
By Scott Thomas Outlar
I wounded all my alibis
before fully forming
now the theory is dizzy
crash point of fever
By Scott Thomas Outlar
Poetry followed by philosophy
read on the back porch
as the birds squawk
and the hawks attack
just as it has always been READ MORE
By Ann Privateer
Where you come from
Where you’ve been
A tiny scooter made you
Mobile, the home
By Ann Privateer
Silently bent
Surprises sent
By airmail won’t help
Transgressions
Delirium concludes
By Adamu Yahuza
For [insert name]
For once, I wonder if it is every mighty story that begins with romance—Adam and Eve, day and night, the cloud and raindrops, you and me getting lost inside each other like a Sufi who longs for his Lord. Just like my shadow, I still wear that momentwhen the noon crawls you—a manna, into my DM.
By Tim Goldstone
Summer in a small Welsh market town
and the dog was moulting
and Lily would tuck some of his hair
between the pages of her library books
before she took them back.
By Thomas M. Dade
For the Woman Who Went Into Labor
At An Emmylou Harris Concert
The old guy gives away
His poem pamphlets
And he’ll swear the best
Targets are those
Paid to be kind
Nurses and doctors READ MORE
By Thomas M. McDade
Flip-Flop
Montaigne asks, “Is the game
worth the candle?”
Rip-Rap is truly a road.
A teen clerk at a tourist trap
is stymied by a postcard request. READ MORE
By Thomas M.Dade
Garnishes
I recall my AA meetings
approaching The Women’s
Temperance Headquarters,
that’s next to an Elks Hall
where an unlucky looking READ MORE
By Glen Armstrong
You summarized it in just one word:
“Clear," and we raised
our children amid the whales
while their friends were praising God
by coloring His robe light blue.
By Glen Armstrong
The grass imagines violent revenge
in the name of the physical universe.
In turn, it rises up and bunkers down.
As with the grass, I was once green READ MORE
By Glen Armstrong
Humans bruise. They take their lumps.
Their wells are
dry,
and their pumps decorative.
Every trend is short-
lived READ MORE
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