You were the twelve-year-old twins from Poonch district in Jammu and Kashmir, but you weren't intelligent enough, Urba and Zain, to visualize fangs of death coming to take both of you in her deadly shackles. Yes, how could you know on that fateful early morning of 7th May, when you both were busy preparing to go to school with pleasure? But the arrows of death reached you both through cross-border shelling, silencing your purest smile and playful antics. Though the shells from the guns don't know the names of their victims, they are guided by the destiny's secret instructions. Till the time your parents, teachers and your dearest pals are alive, they will miss your infectious presence throughout. There will be no takers of beautiful and tasty birthday cakes carefully planted on a china clay platter; surely, there will be no return gifts anymore in future times. Also, no birthday songs will reverberate in the small drawing rooms of your rented house. This is the insane killing which the Lord of Death too, will not be happy to receive. He will certainly cry secretly in his closed enclave. Wars will be fought, innocent people across the border will be killed overnight, and the guns will sing as usual, the dreadful dirge; the future will be the same without carrying any imprints of the horrendous past. But let me assure you, poor Urba and Zain, that despite all this, humanity will survive the tough times; your enchanting smile and innocent glow of your faces, will always waft over the gentle winds; the stories of your blind murder will be told from generations to generations, reminding everyone that violence has no place in our lives. Rest in peace, where you both are, we will pray for you till dawn of a new and vibrant morning. © RAKESH CHANDRA India

Whips of fogginess drifts through cracks around Can't fathom why I'm drawn yet not bound A sudden change of direction grips me with grief Yet determined to fight these battles to seek relief Answers to difficult situations sometimes finds its way As we urge to solve sadness with joy to live each day. © GLORIA MAGALLANES-LOEB U.S.

© Maria Evelyn Quilla Soleta While the month of June is especially associated with brides, summer and the pretty flowers around us, let us also not forget that the month pays tribute to the heroes of our lives, our fathers. I wish to honor my own father, Tatay Jose, with love and affection, this poem I wrote a few days after he passed away. TATAY JOSE I look up the staircase and he is not there looking down at me. I cannot find him anywhere. I look around his tangy-scented room but I see his lifeless rocking-chair. The television, electric fan, and radio are turned off. The curtains are no longer drawn apart. Oh, how stiff! How still! I do not hear the squeaking of the floor in the heavy steps he wobbly made with a cane towards his bedroom door. The bathroom faucet no longer drips. I spot a barely used bath soap, and there rests his pair of slippers. The green lunch tray is tenderly put aside along with the other wares, such as his time-worn thermos bottle. Cards and photographs crowd his headboard. The beddings and clothes are all put away. Very reverently. Very neatly. Everything is silent with the world. All, except for the tick-tock, tick-tock Of his old, needle-crafted wall clock. I step out inconsolably with tears in my eyes and feel the balustrade that for many years was wrapped by his weak and calloused hands. He has not left. I hear his voice in the song of the bird and his laughter in the cool rustling wind. It is the sweet remembrance Of his memory that stays And lingers on So very dearly. © MARIA EVELYN QUILLA SOLETA Philippines

a liquid moon ascended in a miasma of mist swathed in strands of violet and sorrow as the midnight spectres gathered at the edge of the scape amid the encroaching ebon of evenfall bare boughs denuded by a persistent breeze stretched their skeletal limbs across the scope myriad heavenly blandishments to garner a lone spider was employed weaving twist and tween branches a web that caught droplets a million of moisture by the brume bestowed and glistened in the coruscating light creating a silver thread in finest filigree redolent of the treasures by the atelier of a master silversmith crafted. © D. A. SIMPSON UK

They say to write one's own poetry is a daunting thing. It's a labor not of flesh but of flame. You must be born twice in the virgin of time: First, as the world demands, as others are, and then reborn as a Poet. The truest voices are not dulled on borrowed wounds or second-hand experience. They drink from the raw river of their own ruin. They say Poets are also human - but their joy is stitched to stars they cannot reach. They wear contentment like borrowed coats, smiling on the surface, while their souls rattle in cages without bars. Some say they're tethered to lies - But they only lie in love Told in trembling tongues beneath moonlight. Others name them cheaters - But it is their words that cheat death, that steal breath from the stillness of graves. They do not mourn the goodbyes that grew them, nor curse the ache that carved their marrow. For them, everything slips like dusk down the spine of day, and that slipping is called time, unless caught and caged in a pure silent drop of ink on a page. © PRAISE MK NKHOMA

The brambles clawed at my legs. The scorched earth crumbled beneath my shoes as I pushed through the chaos outside the Spartan Race perimeter, desperate to keep my son, Toby, in sight. July 12, 2025 - Vermosa, Imus, Cavite. A date etched into my memory - not just for the race, but for the quiet transformation it revealed in both him and me. He was halfway through a grueling 1.3-kilometer kids' course, packed with 15 obstacles that demanded balance, tenacity and courage. The official track was fenced and orderly. The terrain I scrambled across? Untamed. Cogon grass lashed my calves. Burrs dug deep into my socks. Every jarring step sent tremors through my recovering chest. My shoes sank into dry fissures like the earth was trying to hold me down. Then came the rope climb. Toby lunged. A surge of breathless tension overtook me. Not nerves - compression. Like a strap cinched across my ribs, tugging tighter with each misstep. My lungs fluttered. That familiar ache flared under my sternum. I fumbled with my phone. My hands trembled. Twice it slipped before I caught it, the screen a blur of movement and hope. And Toby? He moved with raw precision - arms flowing from bar to bar, legs coiling like springs. His body adjusted mid-climb with instinctive grace, a blur of motion guided more by reflex than thought. We used to call him "Monkey Boy" - not just for how he scaled furniture, but for how he wrapped around bannisters of dangled from the fridge to steal marshmallows. Back then, it was mischief. Today, it was mastery. The irony wasn't lost on me. This was the same boy who, in the UK, flat-out refused to walk to school. He demanded a cart - sprawled like royalty - watching the world roll past while I huffed through narrow sidewalks. I'd push him first, then race to get Neo to his own school. I still feel those mornings - the pounding heart, the film of sweat clinging to my shirt, frustration thudding behind my temples, wondering if the daily sprint was eroding the heart I'd soon fight to heal. But somewhere inside that resistance, Toby was quietly preparing for something else. He won his school's sports day not long after. Then again. And again. Children shift like water - filling molds you didn't know existed. What ignited the change? Curiosity, for one. Not just idle wondering - but kinetic questioning. Why do knees absorb shock? Why does breath falter on inclines? What makes mud harder to run through? He dissected race footage over dinner, practiced rope grips on the stair rail, clocked his heart rate with methodical precision. It was study in motion. Preparation masked as play. There was defiance, too. Quiet but firm. Not rebellion - reconstruction. Refusal to be fragile, to be limited by what others assumed. When classmates joked about his heart, he signed up for every race. When the doctor said "not too much," he leaned into "just enough" to stretch the line. And there were echoes - of me. He watched me limp, stretch, recover. No speeches. Just motion. Just grit. One stubborn step at a time. He mirrored me, then multiplied me. Asked about pain without pity. Pulled me forward when I stalled. He didn't just see resilience. He embodied it. It wasn't just Toby who changed. It was me. He crossed the finish line - mud-streaked, medal raised high. Something in me cracked and softened. Not weakness - release. Relief. Pride. But what lingers isn't the sprint or the medal. It's the beam. Mid-course. Toby stepped into it - a low plank slick with grit and dew. He wobbled. Arms flailed. Jaw clenched. Then, a breath. A pause. A step - fluid, trembling, sure. That stride - it wasn't just his. It was ours. © DEXTER AMOROSO Philippines

I am a dead soul, drunk on the book - each line a shot coursing through my veins, pounding at my skull. I'm so damn drunk. My eyes - shut. Cracked by verses written in the sky, unreadable, invisible, yet too loud to ignore. I'm soaked in today, but my heart aches for a sip of soberness - to be laid down tenderly on a bed of poetry and read like scripture. I'm struck, and stuck in mad. The pen won't move. The pages stare back, blank as my mind. I'm a dead soul, drinking from the bowl, a bottle crowned above - Why just me? Even my lines are wasted, slurring, staggering, refusing to leave. Will I survive? I can't even read my own broken verse. There's no peace aboard - just storm. Save me, before I drown in my own poem. © DREDAN BRIAN (DRE ARTS)

What did the bluebells say? To always stand tall and bloom with pride After every storm that rolls To be unique and individual within this world Yet always gracious and humble at all times. © Donna McCabe UK

Let the human heart awaken... For secrets emerge from the universe's quarrel and what is hidden from sight is about to be revealed. Here is the mind weaving threads of intelligence, penetrating itself, and seeing in the mirror a face resembling itself, but without prayer. Here is the artificial being bullying in the streets, speaking, deciding, monitoring heartbeats, and in a terrible silence, questioning us: Where is the soul? Where is the modesty of creatures? Now... Time no longer spares a heedless heart, nor a dull conscience, nor a mind preoccupied with glitter while its interior is empty. Now... Machines intersect the souls, and values are tested in the crematorium of openness. Either a human being announces his good tidings with the light of justice, or dust in the winds of falsehood extinguished as if he never existed. O human heart, rise...before you are forgotten, before you are reduced to cold equations, and copied into programmed files, as if you were not a being who worships God, and loves, and yearns, and groans. Do not equivocate...For good tidings do not descend upon a dead heart, nor upon a mind without prostration. Be a radiant beacon, a lofty thought, worthy of you, like the pure and chaste. Be a person who shines like a star in the heavens, a witness to the truth, never slacking in the call. Penetrate the atmosphere with a fingerprint, and leave your trace, like angels...like soldiers in the light. © Mohamed Kerkoub Algeria

Hope is the subtle light that darkness challenges. It's in the heart, even when the world is silent. It's the whisper in tears, promises sprouting rose petals in silence It's the breeze facing gentle caresses. Hope is the smile of the eyes that fears of challenge. It's the Supernova guiding us toward the universe It's the outstretched hand when the path is unsafe It's salvation in the stormy ocean of life. Hope is our solemn courage even if the abyss drags us. It's the ray of sunshine, moving through the cracks and inside our soul, resides. © ANGELA KOSTA Albania & Italy Angela Kosta was born in Elbasan and has been living in Italy since 1995. She is a journalist, translator, essayist, literary critic, publisher and cultural promoter. She has published 27 books, including novels, poetry and fairy tales, in Albanian, Italian, English, French, Arabic, Korean, Spanish, Turkish, and Japanese (with upcoming translations in Greek, Romanian, Israel and Polish). She is the author of 8 anthologies in various status. In Italy, many leading newspapers and magazines have published articles about her extensive literary, translations and promotional activities. She is a member of the Union of Albanian Writers (LSHASH) and (BSHBSH) - Italy, of the Albanian American Academy of Science and Art (AAA-USA), Honorary Consultant of the Women's Chair Association supported by the UN, a member of VerbumlandiArtAps (recognized by the Italian Senate), and part of the Association of Chinese Writers and Artists (ACC), as well as other cultural institutions in Greece, Poland, Hungary, Mexico, Romania, Croatia, India and Bangladesh. Angela's work has been translated and published in 45 languages and countries. In 2024 alone, she appeared in 170 national and international newspapers and magazines including her poetry, articles, interviews, essays, reviews and more, as well as receiving numerous awards from prestigious global media outlets. On March 6, 2025, Angela participated in the extraordinary cultural event "Female Excellence" at Sala Zucchari of the Italian Senate as a member of the VerbumlandiArtAps Association and a jury member of the competition. On May 2025, Angela was announced Winner of the NAJI NAAMAN Literary Prize 2025 for Creativity, at the 23rd edition of the prestigious award based in Lebanon. The Presidency of the Tiberina Academy G. Belli - F. Lami (Italy), approved by the UN, awarded her a special prize at the 2nd International Literary Contest for her poem, 'LAPSUS'. The award ceremony took place on June 27, 2025 at the Medici Riccardi Palace (Florence - Italy), in the Luca Giordano Hall, under the frescoes of the renowned artist. Angela Kosta has participated (virtually) in several international literary festivals, in Sydney, Shanghai, Italy, etc., just to name a few.

SELF Hey...dear self! I thought of all - but not of you You are a being, just like the rest Yet somehow, I forgot that too. You are my truest, closest friend While others fade like morning dew... Who knows me better, deep within Than the one who walks in my own shoe? I gave my best to everyone Yet left you longing, left you bruised. I'm sorry for the times I failed But now my love I'll see you through! From this day forth, you'll stand above My heart, my soul, my first embrace... For when you shine, I shine as well And in your joy, I find a place... CHILDHOOD When life was simple, pure and bright Every moment bathed in light... Laughter echoed, games ran wild No burdens touched the heart of a child. No worries, no weight to bear Just endless joy and love to share... No schemes to break, no fears to fight Only dreams that soared in flight. We ate, we played, we slept with ease Carried by the softest breeze. Oh, childhood - so short, so sweet A melody time won't repeat. If only life could grant one stage To relive those days, to turn the page But memories hold what time can't steal A childhood lost, yet always real. © Shazia Rashid Srinagar, India

TURNIPS IN SOUTHERN TENNESSEE STILL In Tennessee, the shadows of the southern wooden structures stalled off the narrow highway and came to an abrupt end. Lost in the deep eyes of forest green, closing in on night. From the top of a Yellow Poplar tree scares me looking down at the hillbilly stills. Moonshine and moonlight illuminate the fire stills. Moonshine murders of the past, dead bodies hidden behind blue walls. Mobs lie in Chicago, bullet marks on the right side like dormant through plaster. This confirms my belief that Jesus only works part-time. Let me look at this mirage picture photo album. One more time - find the turnips in the still. STEEL BARS IN A SINGLE SHEET I'm Steely Dan Seymour Butts, South America, trust me on that. I can't pull up my sheet inside these steel bars anymore. 25 to life. No man is God in the cold or the clouds. Isolated poets grab words anywhere they can find them in newspaper clippings, ripped-out Bible verses are a sin. No one pities people like me in prison. Spiders hand from my cell ceiling - dance the jitterbug. "In the Mood." Jigger bug fleas on my unpainted cement floors. My butt is toilet paper brown, flush. Toxic thoughts grind on my aging face, body, and declining health. In this dream, I reach for a hacksaw that is not there. End this night and so many more suffer in just a snore. BREADCRUMBS FOR STARVING BIRDS Smiling across the ravine, snow-cloaked footbridge. Prickly ropes slick with ice, snow-clad boards, pepper sprinkled with raccoon tracks, virgin markers, a fresh first trail. Across and safe, I toss yellow breadcrumbs onto white snow for starving birds. IN THE SUN, THEY ALL-PASS In the bright sun in the early morning Gordon Lightfoot sings. When everything comes back, to shadow thin, thunderclaps - and drips of rain. The coffee pot is perking again. Even though Gordon has passed. I experience a mix of life. A blender of the plurality of singulars mounting movie moving frames all returning to memory and mind. The echoes of insanity, a whisper schizophrenic, Poe's haunting verses. The romances of Leonard Cohen are hidden in foreign hotel rooms, lost keys, forgotten scenarios and forgotten places. All silence skedaddles away from death stolen, those leftover tears of a lifetime - now expired on earth - seek through pain abstains. Michael Lee Johnson is a poet of high acclaim, with his work published in 46 countries or republics. He is also a song lyricist with several published poetry books. His talent has been recognized with 7 Pushcart Prize nominations and 7 Best of the Net nominations. He has over 653 published poems. His 336-plus YouTube poetry videos are a testament to his skill and dedication. He is a proud Illinois State Poetry Society member, and an Academy of American Poets member. His poems have been translated into several foreign languages. Awards/Contests: International Award of Excellence "Citta' Del Galateo-Antonio De Ferrariis" XI Edition 2024 Milan, Italy - Poetry. Poem, "If I Were Young Again."