“your hand
touching mine.
this is how
galaxies
collide.”
― Sanober Khan

“In this story
I am the poet
You're the poetry.”
― Arzum Uzun

“Tell me every terrible thing you ever did, and let me love you anyway.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, Collected Poems

“Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.”
― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“Like a child who saves their favourite food on the plate for last, I try to save all thoughts of you for the end of the day so I can dream with the taste of you on my tongue.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“she was completely whole
and yet never fully complete”
― Maquita Donyel Irvin, Stories of a Polished Pistil: Lace and Ruffles

“I will speak of love
until you go mad
and join me
in my mad worship
of love.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“I was so blessed.
The first person
I gave my heart to
was an angel
who plucked the feathers
off his wings
and built a nest for it.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“I do not write about love
as if I have invented it.
I write about love
because thoughts of you
inspire self-forgetfulness.
And because writing about you
gives birth to a star.
These stars sit inside me
where there was once
darkness.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“Only inside can you do something about it, but outside, it’s impossible.”
― Raz Mihal, Just Love Her

“My love,
you are driving the entire world mad.
The nightingales are committing suicide
one by one out of jealousy of your voice.
The roses took one glance at your beauty
and folded themselves from shame.
The trees now only whisper your name
and the sky hasn’t stopped crying since you looked up.
Have pity on us, my love.
We have already broken all the mirrors and glass
out of fear that you will forget us
and fall in love with yourself
once you see what we all
cannot stop seeing.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“I did best when I had least truth for my subjects.”
― John Donne, The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose

“The skies bend, the time stops, the lanes move and the fires dance,
It can mean only one thing that I am with you.
You are enigmatic yet so beautiful that I have lost my sense,
You are as immaculate as the unadulterated morning dew
And your beauty leaves me in a mystified trance.
I do not foresee what you and I will be
But I promise to be with you till the rocks keep meeting the sea.”
― Faraaz Kazi

“روز اول، كه دل من به تمنای تو پر زد
چون كبوتر، لب بام تو نشستم
تو به من سنگ زدی، من نه رميدم، نه گسستم

باز گفتم كه : ” تو صيادی و من آهوی دشتم
تا به دام تو درافتم همه جا گشتم و گشتم
حذر از عشق ندانم، نتوانم

کوچه، پرواز با خورشید*”
― فریدون مشیری, پرواز با خورشید

“Nothing belongs to itself anymore.
These trees are yours because you once looked at them.
These streets are yours because you once traversed them.
These coffee shops and bookshops, these cafés and bars, their sole owner is you.
They gave themselves so willingly, surrendering to your perfume.
You sang with the birds and they stopped to listen to you.
You smiled at the sheepish stars and they fell into your hair.
The sun and moon, the sea and mountain, they have all left from heartbreak.
Nothing belongs to itself anymore.
You once spoke to Him, and then God became yours.
He sits with us in darkness now
to plot how to make you ours.” K.K.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“Your house sounds like a train at midday,
the wasps buzz, the saucepans sing,
the waterfall enumerates the deeds of the dew . . .”
― Pablo Neruda

“I only wrote prose before I met you.
My musings were superfluous and serious as well.
But now the words dance with me.
I sing with them
and we create poetry.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“What a terrifyingly beautiful thought that you are the beginning of forever.
I love you, and life for me has just begun.”
― Kamand Kojouri

“I fell for you
at the time when
the leaves were hiding their souls
deep within the earth.”
― Monica Laura Rapeanu, The Void That Reflects Your Beauty

“I wanted to write some words you'd remember.

Words so alert they'd leap from the paper,
crawl up your shoulder, lie by your ears,
and purr themselves to you like baby kittens,
but it was rainy, so I laid there and daydreamed about you.”
― C.L. Foster, Best Thing I Never Had

“I like being with you all night with closed eyes.
What luck--here you are
coming
along the stars!
I did a road trip
all over my mind and heart
and
there you were
kneeling by the roadside
with your little toolkit
fixing something.”
― Anne Carson

“She

You are "she"
She who clothes herself
In light
And wears it
As if it's élan vital

You are "she"
She who wakes the Angels
'Causing them to spread their wings
So they'll rise up from the radiant abyss
In order to touch the vaulted firmament

You are "she"
She whose heart in me
Causes me
To believe what I feel
But, cannot see

You are "she"
She, the myth alive
The she who
Feels me with love
And fills me with love

Excerpt from:
Jacob's Ascent, New Collected Poems by Mekael
© Mekael Shane 2024”
― Mekael Shane

“How to Prove my love”

In the shadows of night, my heart does confide,
Tell me, oh tell me, how to prove my love's guide.

In this world of doubts, how do I find my way?
Show me a path, where my love can truly sway.

The stars above witness my love's pure decree,
But how do I prove it, if no one believes me?

Guide me, oh guide me, in this love's lonely chase,
How do I prove my love in this endless race?

My heart's true desire, a love that won't cease,
But how do I prove it, and find my heart's peace?

So tell me, dear soul, the way to love's release,
How do I prove my love, and let my heart find peace?”
― Janid Kashmiri

“But I don't forget, and I don't forgive,
Never.
When you said goodbye for the first time, I was gone Forever!”
― Ritu Negi, Ethereal

“Then you enter at exact 12:45,
Who are you and what's with this vibe?

I stuck stood for a moment in infinity
Amid a sudden stroke of serendipity.”
― Ritu Negi, Ethereal

“Sure I can have you
right now and right here,
But at the expense of losing
what I had for years...”
― Ritu Negi, Ethereal

“The Mad People

In the electronic age every nutcase
with a laptop is writing a masterpiece.
They spend their nights locked up in chat rooms
and emerge with red eyes and love poems.”
― Immanuel Mifsud, Confidential Reports

“For you, I’d stay awake just to watch you breathe because I know there was a time when you did not want to. Death let me have you for a while longer and nothing could have ever meant more to me than that.”
― Emilia Thornrose, There's This Girl

“Busy in the business of day—
my storming blood
has just met
a pair of eyes
rainswept sand….

That face, again, that face like sunken sand—
the sand, sunken, of a face that ancient….

More worn than my face unborn—
contours I have known
in the bones of her cheeks
a recognition—
a pair of orphans
unmasked at morn….

Because only, only a girl borne of remembering
could wear that countenance of mourning….

Across the wash pale soft of dawn
float close weighty blossoms

on thresholds unknown—

for the fragile, delicate tenderness
of her composure
just-holding, achingly,
on the edge of things….

A world of raindrops floating in her eyes—
in her eyes sand grains softly settle….

Although to one another we are
only a presence in the room

and all's silence between us—

still, hers is a presence I’ve known:
of age more somehow
than the day I was born
a relation there remains
nose kissed to nose….


Slaving in the sweat of the sun
I’m back at it in the beds—

as, over all the grounds,

waxing with the sun
personalities of sheds,
tines, the animals,
define themselves….

Heading now to the meal hall
to eat and talk, after digging—

when my momentum stalled:
by hedges of the wall's
the visage of her
in the sunny landscape
a teardrop of midnight….

Tearing's the flesh of my heart
on my cheeks in tears—

for her fragile chin
and the wrinkles of
her eyes when she smiles
so glassy I could cry….

Commotion of knives and forks—
today the commons are aloud

with cups and conversation:

a wisp here, a leap
of voices there
the day’s news bounces
its way through the crowd….

Splashing up a laughter of glasses
the guys devour their stories

about girls at the party—

and when we eat our fill
glad in our stomachs
there’s lots of chin in it
we raise each other’s grins

sitting in satisfaction
and stimulating to the sun….

Tense in the laughter
of friends and companions—

lines of my age un-wrinkle:

by portals of the door
her expression there's
more sober than smiling:
for guile am I un-abled….

Not the friction of sticks, no, nor
some feverish itch that must

until exhaustion consume—

but a long blue flame, slow
and fluidly moving
will our relation be:
a translucent vein

loose in the midnight river….

Now— into the doings of day:
but to approach her

my eyes can't meet
my walkingʻs fallen
dead at the knees
and thoughts of my head

now drown in blood—
blackness and oblivion...”
― Mark Kaplon, Song of Rainswept Sand

“How effortless it is to open
In the arms of somebody real.”
― Emma vanGrieken, Seasons of Life