Day 31 Kerfe Day

Full of Children

-Kerfe Roig

All Earth’s Children

I have a dream
Of all earth’s children
Cherished and loved
Fed and clothed
Happy and safe
Free to fantasize and play
Allowed to dream
Educated to think for themselves
Regardless of gender, faith or colour
Free to choose whatever their hearts desire

Free to laugh
Free to love
Free to live

-©RedCat

A Rainbow Future After the Storm

Soft dove clouds transform to dolphin dark,
again change, and roaring black wolves
pounce

with a flash, then
the shrouded monochrome world becomes a tapestry,

a multitude of shape, color, hues. Here, a strand of azure,
here, emerald-green, glistening with diamond sparkle, woven
under and over

embroidered with the vibrant wishes of children—blue horses, red deer,
twinkling golden stars, a spotted purple dog, a striped-orange cat—

a collection, a connection of
smiling faces brighter than the sun,
dream of a rainbow future–
after the storm has passed.

-Merril D Smith

Song for the children

They spring from the heart,
those bright smiling faces,
from blood and bone and the watered earth,
and they grow in the grass
and the rain and the sunlight,
hummingbird-winged, colour of dawn.

They spring from the core
of the earth, stone-spun cradle,
nurtured by moonlight and light of the sun.
Let them reach for the stars
in the silence of night time,
for tree branch and moon at the top of the hill,

let them grow like the birds fly,
pups curled in the deep earth,
let their talents unfurl, petals cupping the light,
but poverty pays, and there’s money in wars,
so we weep phoney tears,
let their bright sunlight die.

-Jane Dougherty

On a collage by Kerfe Roig

First of all I see
The faces of children
Most smiling
One serious, one wistful
One a little shy of the camera
One yelling his joy
Children of all colours [‘colour’ seems like
Such a stale, tepid way to express the
Beautiful variations our outer selves
Display, but alright, I’ll stick with ‘colour’
For now]

A simple, appealing set of images with a
Simple appeal: we are all different, all alike
In some way that matters
You can see this. At a glance

I remember when I was 8 or 9 reading about
Children in Palestine and getting my classmates
To sign a letter to the editor
About the children in Palestine
A simple appeal

And then my eyes are drawn to the spaces
Between the faces
There is snowy ground, there is dapple – the artist
Loves dapple
There is green of grass, pink of flower – I find myself
Hoping this is grass that has sprung up somewhere
Away from tidy, greedy lawns, hoping these flowers
Are weeds, I love it when weeds
Are the prettiest flowers

And then there is sky
Blue is so many colours
Clouds are so many colours
And yes, we can talk about colours
And yes we can see between them –
More colours

And then the picture ends

And this month and a day ends, and it is May

There is an apocalypse, unevenly distributed
But deadly. And it hurts too much to even
Think about Palestinian children
I was a child so long ago, you’d think
The world would have changed

Outside my window is dapple
Tree and sky and the ugly
Squat building the ashram next door
Decide to put up a few years ago

But most of all, dapple
Bird song
And the apocalypse that goes on
And an empty schoolroom, a bench
On which someone carved their name
A blackboard waiting, silent
A class photo fading
On a patient wall

And dapple
And sky
So many blues
So many greens
So many pinks
So many smiles

And a month and a day are done
And my race is half-run.
-Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

Kerfe’s missing artwork

An empty wall in the corner of the gallery
displaying Kerfe’s missing artwork.
Simplistic beauty
matched by the complimentary fancied frame.
The absent weight of imaginary artistic extravagance
hanging heavy on ethereal chains of suspense.

Pausing in front of an empty gallery wall
appreciating the undefinable perfection
of Kerfe’s missing artwork.
An unreflective mirror echoing
the vista, observed through the opaque window,
of the viewers soul.

The empty gallery wall holds
Kerfe’s missing artwork tightly, in turn
holding the attention.
Whimsical, composite construction
challenging and questioning
its’ own very existence.

There is a gallery
with empty walls
in each and every one of us.
Kerfe’s missing artwork
displayed as a reminder
of the nature, skill and beauty we show to all.

-Tony Walker

The Children

are blue skies, beach sand, woodland, streets. Released
from plague lockdown they scream and run and play
tig, tap their victim “You’ve got Covid”, teased,
their playmate rushes to pass it away.

This is how to cope with fear of loss, turn
it into a game in which no one dies.
Homework is always a bind, had to learn
how to manage it as an exercise.

Childhood is never innocent, despite
our best efforts to shield, cosset our bairns
they see to the pain as it is in light
Of their eyes a world of sharp pain to learn.

The adventure never ends, age does not
curtail.it, only slows it to a steady trot.

-Paul Brookes

Bios and Links

Kerfe Roig

A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new.  Her poetry and art have been featured online by Right Hand Pointing, Silver Birch Press, Yellow Chair Review, The song is…, Pure Haiku, Visual Verse, The Light Ekphrastic, Scribe Base, The Zen Space, and The Wild Word, and published in Ella@100, Incandescent Mind, Pea River Journal, Fiction International: Fool, Noctua Review, The Raw Art Review, and several Nature Inspired anthologies. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/  (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/, and see more of her work on her website http://kerferoig.com/

-Tim Fellows

 is a poet and writer from Chesterfield whose poetry is heavily influenced by his background in the Derbyshire coalfields – family, mining, politics, and that mix of industry and countryside that so many mining areas had. People can email me at timothyjfellows@gmail.com for a copy of the pamphlet or visit http://timfellows13.blogspot.com for recent poems

-Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

is a writer based in Bangalore, India. His books include the novella Strength Of Water (2019) and the poetry collection Broken Cup (2020). He used to write horror, but now it’s anyone’s guess. 

-Anjum Wasim Dar

Born in Srinagar (Indian Occupied )Kashmir,Migrant Pakistani.Educated at St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi. MA in English MA in History ( Ancient Indo-Pak Elective) CPE Cert.of Proficiency in English Cambridge UK. -Dip.TEFL AIOU Open Uni. Islamabad Pakistan.Writing poems articles and stories since 1980.Published Poet.Awarded Poet of Merit Bronze Medal 2000 USA .Worked as Creative Writer Teacher Trainer. Educational Consultant by Profession.Published http://Poet.Author of 3 Adventure Novels (Series) 7 Times Winner NANOWRIMO 2011- 2019.

-Jane Dougherty

writes novels, short stories and lots of poems. Among her publications is her first chapbook of poetry, thicker than water. She is also a regular contributor to Visual Verse and the Ekphrastic Review. You can find her on twitter @MJDougherty33 and on her blog https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/

-Redcat

RedCat’s love for music and dance sings clearly in The Poet’s Symphony (Raw Earth Ink, 2020). Passion for rhythms and rhymes, syllabic feets and metres. All born out of childhood and adolescence spent reading, singing, dancing and acting.

Her writing spans love, life, mythology, environment, depression and surviving trauma.

Originally from the deep woods, this fiery redhead now makes home in Stockholm, Sweden, where you might normally run into her dancing the night away in one of the city’s techno clubs.

Read more at redcat.wordpress.com

-Merril D Smith

is a historian and poet. She lives in southern New Jersey, where she is inspired by her walks along the Delaware River. She’s the author of several books on history, gender, and sexuality. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies, including Black Bough Poetry, Nightingale and Sparrow, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Fevers of the Mind.

-Tony Walker

By day Tony climbs the greasy pole of clinical hierarchy. Not yet at the top but high enough to feel the pole sway and have his grip challenged by the envious wind of achievement. Looking down on the pates and gazes of his own history, at times he feels dizzy with lonely pride. By night he takes solace, swapping scalpel for scripts and begins his training and climbing again, in the creative world of writing. His writing is an attempt to unify the twenty-four hours. @surgicalscribe seeks to connect the clinical and creative arts of surgery, science and writing. Hoping to do for medicine and surgery through creative writing what Prof Cox has done for physics with television.

So, he practices his art.

-Ankh Spice

 is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa. His work has been widely published internationally, in print and online, and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He’s a co-editor at Ice Floe Press and a poetry contributing editor at Barren Magazine. You’ll find him and a lot of sea photography on Twitter @SeaGoatScreams or on Facebook @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry.

-Simon Williams

lives and works in Edinburgh, where running clears his head and creates space for ideas. He publishes short stories and poems on www.simonsalento.com

Paul Brookes

Paul is a shop assistant, who lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. His first play was performed at The Gulbenkian Theatre, Hull.  His chapbooks include The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). The Headpoke and Firewedding (Alien Buddha Press, 2017), A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Port Of Souls (Alien Buddha Press, 2018), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), Stubborn Sod, with Marcel Herms  (artist) (Alien Buddha Press, 2019), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). Forthcoming Khoshhali with Hiva Moazed (artist), Our Ghost’s Holiday (Final book of threesome “A Pagan’s Year”) . He is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine and Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews. Had work broadcast on BBC Radio 3 The Verb and videos of his Self Isolation sonnet sequence featured by Barnsley Museums and Hear My Voice Barnsley. He also does photography commissions and his family history articles have appeared in The Liverpool Family History magazine.