Comrades on the Road

I believe there is a conspiracy ongoing

involving all of us.

I don’t know when or where it began,

nor who initiated it.

They occult from me their talks

just I approach one of them.

It seems to me a stealthy fellowship,

a strange one,  saints and demons,

angels and warlocks, even goblins.

They congregate to rule all people,

fighting for our souls, one by one.

Someone has been told it is a caste

that rids humanity from wrecking

and leaves it alive on the road,

leavening us before ultimate battle.

Published in the Subterranean Blue, June 2015 issue.

http://www.subterraneanbluepoetry.com

Published in Sirens Call Publications, issue 45, June 2019

http://www.sirenscallpublications.com

Published in Free Lit Magazine, February 2020,  the Fantasy Issue.

http://www.freelitmagazine.com

Translated into French as “Camarades sur la Route”, by the author and Rebbeca Banks, and published in Poesie Bleu Souterrain, in June 2015.

Published in The Chamber Magazine, May 7 2021

http://www.thechambermagazine.com0, 2024

Published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal, March 10, 2024 

http://www.lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com

Published in 7th Circle Pyrite, March 15, 2024

http://www.7thcirclepyrite.com 

Zola’s Mission

Two years ago, my wife brought home a dog.

Her name, Zola, a black female, smart and active.

Then, I scolded and inveighed at her, for I had never liked dogs.

Unwilling by me, she remained in the backyard.

We have three beloved sons, and, last week,

by a big muddle, they fought and thumped each other.

My wife, nervous and strained, abandoned home,

leaving me and going to an apartment we possess.

That night, I phoned her and ask why she had not taken Zola.

It is an apartment, she said, a big one, but

Zola does not fit here.

Take her, I said, it is a matter for you to solve.

Then, at the eleventh hour, she passes by the corridor and says:

I am back home, will remain with you.

I learned, once more, that, in my life,

everything has had a reason to be,

even just an animal.

Zola rescued a thirty-five years’ marriage.

By Edilson Afonso Ferreira.

Published Newsletter TWJ Magazine, October 2014.

http://www.twjmag.com.

Published in The Lake, October 2015 issue.

http://www.thelakepoetry.co.uk

The Christ I love more

We must follow Christ and learn from Him,

unquestionable Master of love and tolerance.

Son of God, yet a brother, He bequeathed us

divine words and deeds that survive forever.

The way He loved us, great and pure,

no one had or has ever equally leveled.

His sacrifice on behalf of humanity,

that of then and of coming times,

unworthy and infidel ones, perhaps,

just by this,

took Him to redeem us from bitter destiny

But, aside from His Divinity,  His Grandeur,

do not forget the passage of Matthew 21-12,

when He entered the temple of His Father.

Then, not by a conversation or dialogue; there,

“He cast out all them that sold and bought”,

“overthrew the tables of the moneychangers”.

I love this Christ,  so human and so brother,

Who did not conceal His anger, as one of us.

By now, in our time, to honor our Lord,

we have failed to call up one Saint Fury,

like that of our Savior.

Published in TWJ Magazine, October 2014 issue.

http://www.twjmag.com.

Published in Dead Snakes, February 07, 2016

http://www.deadsnakes.blogspot.com

Rebirth

I sleep in a dream generated in the nightmares

and eat scraps of hope, milled in the impersonal

and mechanical time’s machine.

Scraps that feed me to be no more than a dry tree,

searching for pulling and unwinding roots

that capture me on the ground.

I prevailed over fate that once deceived me

and now walk and will spread my life around.

I wish distemper, hallucinate and extrapolate,

horrifying who has enchanted and eluded me

in that dark and deaf land, that was not mine.

I will go, doubtlessly renewed man, in search

not of a drop of water but of a rain that rains

thunder and lightning, the same like the flood

that has baptized our era.

I will reap fruits that, blessed by my hands

and hard a toil,

by sure will make me more and more strong.

I will make love to my wife in sheets of soft Chinese silk

and we will be asleep in a bed of fragrant Lebanon woods.

Not that I deserve more than Abraham,

who only had a glimpse of the Promised Land,

but, of this new one, God willing,

I will take secure possession.

Published in the April 2015 issue of The Gambler.

http://www.thegamblermag.com

Published in the February 2016 issue of Indiana Voice Journal.

http://www.indianavoicejournal.com

Published in 7th Circle Pyrite, Nov 18, 2023

http://www.7thcirclepyrite.com

Published in Fevers of the Mind, July 14, 2024

http://www.feversofthemind.com

Published in Voices 2025, May 2025

http://www.coldriverpress.com

A Man’s (respectful) Prayer

My God, why don’t you come?

You, who are the Creator,

and see what your creation became

and see how are your people living?

You know how hard and harsh our toiling

since we were banished from your side.

How much time will we endure alone?

When and where our meeting?

Meeting of reason and faith, and passion.

End of the longing for you and for our past,

for the primeval wellspring that outpoured us,

long, long ago,

for the Being we venerate, and, some, still love.

For one manor house, once inhabited

in the Paradise Land, which was relieved

not by one, but by four rivers.

Where the manor house, where the rivers?

Where you, so far from your creature,

aside from humanity, deaf for our grief?

Give us at least one of your four rivers

to mitigate and quench eternal thirst of fatherhood.

First published in the April 2015 issue of The Gambler.

http://www.thegamblermag.com

Published in Dead Snakes, March 21, 2016.

http://www.deadsnakes.blogspot.com

Published in Feed the Holy, July 24, 2025.

http://www.feedthehol.blogspot.com 

 

Lights of Innocence

On “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, oil-on-canvas painting by John Singer Sargent, 1886″

Two girls lighting Japanese lanterns,

early evening in an England’s garden,

late nineteenth century.

Preventing the dark night, arranging

for so happy a party.

The painter has had no opportunity to speak,

but now we know,

like old Greek priestesses,

in white gowns,

also offering prayers on glowing tapers,

relieving unsure forthcoming days.

The purity they have lightened that night

touch us until our present days and nights.

Published in the spring issue 2015 of The Provo Canyon Review.

http://www.theprovocanyonreview.net.

Published in Synesthesia, Vol.4-1, March 02, 2016.

http://www.synesthesialitjournal.com

Published in The Basil O’Flaherty, July 2016 issue.

http://www.thebasiloflaherty.weebly.com

Published in The Ekphrastic Review, Aug 9, 2020

http://www.ekphrastic.net/

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They must keep far away

For sure, people never at least imagine the way we live.

Here we have remained for so long, hidden and anonymous,

sheltered by these mountains and this incredible sky,

living side by side and close enough one to the other.

I am afraid someone might feel on the air some trace

denouncing somewhere lasts a bit of the Lost Paradise.

May fate be able to keep our country veiled forever,

for the welfare of all of them.

Foreigners’ eyes and hearts do not work like ours.

If they arrive, never would learn to walk our ways

and we would regret seeing them stumble and stumble.

Published in Amomancies, print and online issue April 21, 2015.

http://www.amomancies.com

Blessed by Fire

There are some secrets that belong only to us,

like our love’s beginning – how, when, where.

They must be surely concealed from everyone,

for people never would understand that story.

Flame that rounded us like sacred aureole,

sternly, firmly and mercilessly imprisoning.

Unknown power coming from so long past

that shoved us into passionate inner circle.

No one knows,

at least fancies,

on that first day,

what kind of fire blessed us forever.

Published in Amomancies, print and online issue April 21, 2015.

http://www.amomancies.com

Matter of Faith

We cannot share with companions

that we do not catch a glimpse

of our journey’s end,

what or where we are going to.

Like human primeval hordes

we continue to come and go

on hidden crowd’s desires,

sometimes-guileful ones.

In despite of the feeling

we are pursuing threads

in old Greek a labyrinth,

we believe there is a sense

in such comings and goings.

Since this is matter of faith,

not suitable to science eyes,

it must be kept by few of us.

Published in The Stare’s Nest, February 26, 2015.

http://www.thestaresnest.com

A Matter of Color

I am proud of my generation.

I came from a past that must only be seen

in its black and white.

Current bright colors cannot even approach

the warmth of a singular and peculiar bygone era.

Only we who lived and loved in it are enough

and qualified witnesses to so amazing a past.

Days running smoothly, with fewer choices,

as only black phones and only white fridges.

along dear black and white films and photos.

Moreover, time to encounter lasting friends,

who endure life disillusions, jointly reaching,

so many years ahead,

colorful and unsettled contemporaneous days.

 

Published in Spirit Fire Review, February 2018 issue.

http://www.spiritfirereview.com