Submit your poems with comment here, or via the Poetic Philosophy Contact Us page! You can also send an email to harmonia-philosophica@hotmail.com.
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LITTLE WAVES
Small waves sing their song to the night.
They enchant the black sky and the silence beguile.
They tell another story of other shores,
of other martyrs, of lives too short.
Of prayers sailing to the wind,
of mothers who their chorus sing
for sons who will not return
for those who will leave no more.
Listen to them with your eyes closed
and perhaps they will tell on what shore
the light of wisdom runs aground.
Only a few know if not none:
The sea tells it to the wind,
the wind tells it to the man
who still knows how to stand
at the wave’s deep adagio.
~ Stefania Contardi
Ozymandias
I met a traveller from a distant land Who said: a tower of steel and glass once stood Amid the dust, and cast their shadow far Across the sand. A shattered frame of rust Lies half-buried beside it, broken, cast, A head with rigid smile and sneer of cold Command still speaks of one whose restless wars Fed long on praise, and power gripped in gold. And on the base, these words remain inscribed: ‘My name is Trump, a ruler none surpass Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’ Yet nothing stands – no crowd, no gleaming mass Only the wind across that empty span Repeats the fragile empire built by man.
~ Tim Boardman
Churchyard
There’s a ramekin, on the bench in the churchyard pink blossom from the tree above scattered around it like confetti. It catches the light, casts a shadow across the bench and it is full of cigarette butts. A small devotion to tidiness as the petals fall. The pink blossom drifts to the edges of the stone path. The daffodils are fading now, their heads bowed to their imaginary reflection And the bench – early morning is usually taken by a solitary man with a can of beer and a careful thirst. He lifts the can like a quiet hymn The blossom falls. The light moves on. The bowl fills slowly No sermon, no hand on the shoulder just the day beginning again for the solitary man.
~ Tim Boardman
Near a Spring
I’ve lost my hair. I’ve lost my lust. All my shining dreams have turned to dust. My friends are going or becoming lost. They’re waiting for me in the hot sands near a spring, where they crossed.
I said to Simon, How lonely does it get? I still haven’t heard – yet but I hear him laughing, questioning in the temple of love high above.
I walk with a stick – not for support, but for the look of it, second hand bought. I was made like this. I had no choice. The need to express. The need to create. To prove I exist.
I sit in the house where the light is strong. Outside, the signs of spring are waiting, in the garden where they belong.
My friends are going or becoming lost. They’re waiting for me in the hot sands near a spring, where they crossed.
The river isn’t flowing as fast. The earth begins to dry. I stare outside, waiting for you to arrive.
My friends are going or becoming lost. They’re waiting for me in the hot sands near a spring, where they crossed.
~ Tim Boardman
As If You Were a Stranger
I will always gaze at you as if you were a stranger — not because I failed to recognize your eyes. On the contrary… I recognize those eyes so deeply, they sink me, drop by drop, into the abyss of my solitude. I will always gaze at you as if you were a stranger, for shadows still dance within the room, the folded sheet teeters on the edge of the bed, the scarf sways, trembling with the heavy breath of my silence. That frame still leans against the pillow, conjuring despair and a presence that lingers, carrying the memory of touch. I will always gaze at you as if you were a stranger, for your smile resembles the executioner of my soul, etching it indelibly across the horizon of my being. Like the moon refusing the sun, weighing the tide in its palms, as ships loosen their ropes, leaving behind the wake of homecoming to pound, to recycle, to revive the derailed hopes of seagulls— like a lighthouse collapsing under a shipwrecked “I love you,” crashing with windborne pleas upon your shore. I will always gaze at you as if you were a stranger, because my wounds bloom into spring, and sleepless winters burn in the lava of your eyes. Because my hands anoint awkward wishes that surrendered to the marshlands of fear. I will gaze at you as if you were a stranger, while I weave Clotho’s ashes along your footprints—and you bolt the dreams to the reefs of estrangement, scattering love’s ashes like golden dust, tracing the absence you see… within my gaze.
~ Giorgos Grigoropoulos
Untitled
And what if
We are…
All of us – just Healthy –
Whatever the conditions might be…
And what if
We are always getting
The best of the moment –
In brief …
And what if
We skip the duality –
The good and the bad,
The high and the low…
And what if
We meet the reality
With calming, loving, gentle song…
And what if
We forget about judgement
And lose intentions to compete…
And what if
We still have the wisdom
To hear and to see…
And what if
We still have the courage
To make this world
Complete…
And what if words and sounds don’t matter…
And silent is the world ?
What color would be better
The black, the White, the Blue?
And what if
you and I are symbols
Of something never born
Does it really matter
What would be the score?
And what if
We are nothing…
Just wondering
What if???
A motion in the universe
…a between tone…
April 2026 Stob, Bulgaria
~ Andriana Andreeva
Languages
Between times, spaces are changing. The sound creates formations. Wings of waves in the back of words. Inter nos loquimur. The day shapes the colour. A rainbow saturates the movement. Paths of recognition are born.
~ Athiná Stylianí Michou
My universe
So torn so ready to break So ready to slip in So far the kiss of light The ache holds my breathing Am I breath ?
My universe It was veils Hanging on a hope It was a story I forgot to tell It was a song I forgot to sing
It was a love I spilt dripping into emptiness drops in a waiting shell Washed against the shore
I cannot hold The nameless, cannot be the nothing cannot touch this moment Of eternity
How to be birth How to be death How to let them free
Do you follow me Floating in the pools of your eyes Weaving light tapestry Binding cells in Chemistry Do you know How beautiful you are ? How beautiful you are
It is only matter fading Pigments dissolving Okra, chlorophyll, emerald blue.
I will paint a dream, with your memory I will remember you
You dance Without and within me The thought is the star Shining On the shuddering sea Sink in. Let it be
Submit your poems with comment here, or via the Poetic Philosophy Contact Us page! You can also send an email to harmonia-philosophica@hotmail.com.
Submissions
Untitled
Branches shift the night. A hug of leaves seas the day. Someone, alone, between doors opens the time. His time clocks between his footsteps. Steps in the space between. Along he walks. Between earths he rides. Arisen are the arrows. Death upon the sorrow. Death upon the cry. What is it left? Time in one only point.
~ Athina Styliani Michou
Midway
The object on the stairs had been there forever no one moved it it had become part of the furniture part of the stairs
I picked it up a dust ring had gathered around where it sat and the carpeted stairs looked lighter where the object had been
it was warm from sunlight holding onto heat like old things do silent and steady as we walked by
we never spoke of it this object though we stepped past it daily it had presence an invisible presence midway on the stairs
I turned it in my hand something once useful now orphaned by context and yet still claiming space
it smelled faintly of time and old conversations
I didn’t know what to do now that it was gone from its spot I held its weight
and for a moment the stairs felt too open too empty too bare
I placed it back exactly where it had been let the dust ring resume like nothing had changed
~ Tim Boardman
Cento For Coming Before Me
My name is Nobody.
I am indebted to my father for living, but—
I can’t imagine my heart breathing in light without you,
Mosella.
God has no religion,
A world of dew, but even so
Our life is what our thoughts make it.
In Luke 23:28, Jesus says “Do not weep for me.”
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere,
Fortune favors the bold.
If
Dreams,
In and out of one another streets of life,
Howl
On this land
My last goodbye,
Do not stand at my grave and weep
The chaos.
When we two parted
Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc’d by fate
To be in love,
Because I could not stop for death.
Still I rise,
Too aware of the lives that make me whole—my inner world,
I carry your heart with me:
Unending love,
Song of myself,
The more loving one.
At the rainbow’s end even the caterpillar gets its wings
When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes!
~ Ernesto P. Santiago
Note: The poem credits: 1. Odysseus in Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey. 2. Alexander the Great. 3. Ernesto P. Santiago. 4. Decimus Magnus Ausonius. 5. Mahatma Gandhi. 6. Kobayashi Issa. 7. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 8. Jesus Christ 9. Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi. 10. Publius Vergilius Maro. 11. Rudyard Kipling. 12. Langston Hughes. 13. Ernesto P. Santiago. 14. Allen Ginsberg. 15. Mahmoud Darwish. 16. Gat Jose P. Rizal. 17. Mary Elizabeth Frye. 18. Gerard Nolst Trenité.19. Lord Byron. 20. Virgil’s Aeneid. 21. Gwendolyn Brooks. 22. Emily Dickinson. 23. Maya Angelou. 24. Ernesto P. Santiago. 25. E.E. Cummings. 26. Rabindranath Tagore. 27. Walt Whitman. 28. W.H. Auden. 29. Ernesto P. Santiago. 30. William Shakespeare.
Untitled
The golden wings Of thought Cross being Like roses Of thorns In the morning
(Original:
Le ali dorate Del pensiero Attraversano L’ essere Come rose Di spine Al mattino)
~ Mauritius de Shardan
Farewell Letter
These past few days, winter felt like a farewell letter, like a parting embrace, like a final “farewell” kiss pressed upon the newly blossomed hyacinths.
A letter written in green ink – the green of leaves just barely opened, beguiled by the deceptive April sun.
The sky — a blank sheet against which wild geese stretched their wings;
a page stained by clouds, hesitant about which color they should wear.
These days, winter took its leave, a “goodbye” that felt almost like an “adieu,” a regret such as I have rarely felt — perhaps kin only to my own regrets, almost resigned, almost leafing into a man.
This winter passed so heavily that it felt like a certainty, so familiar and so sad that one would have said humanity was tailored to its measure.
These past few days, winter abandoned me, leaving behind only a letter written with the last flakes of celestial dignity, a letter at the end of which it told me:
“I have left; do not look for me.”
~ Gheorghiţă Bînă
Dove Tutto Rallenta
On certain evenings, I allow myself to have been too hurried to catch the scent of apple blossoms newly blooming on the alleys of life. I allow myself to have been so late to this feast called life, from which some apparently bite great chunks, and from whose crumbs I felt I had always fed. I allow myself to have been too afraid, too timid, or too doubtful, admiring life like a beautiful woman passing before me, before my gaze, petrified by such grace— a presence of life such as one only sees in the eyes of newborns. On certain evenings, I allow myself to no longer be. I settle into non-being for the span of a few emotions and simply admire the piercing colors of the sunset, so that the shadow may so discreetly cover my past, and suddenly, that whole blood-stained battlefield is no longer red. On certain evenings, I allow myself to have been something or someone else, but only because I tried to resurrect an imaginary body that was not mine, on that same battlefield, darkened now, where I desperately try to awaken my corpse, which was living until just recently. The eternal return to the initial form of life, impassive to our stubborn refusal to die. On certain evenings, I allow myself not to have been.
~ Gheorghiţă Bînă
The identity of mind and soul
Identity of the soul, written with odes of pain and joy, cracked the mirror that is clouded by the breath of lies. Identity of the mind, etched by drips of silence, drips truths in cracks that no one sees. And yet, these two identities, hidden in the luggage of life’s journey, are not declared anywhere. They have no number or stamps, nor a photograph to betray them. They are not imprinted on any paper, on any precious document of everyday life. They do not fit in cases, nor in passing glances. And yet we carry them – all the unspeakable things of the mind and soul, at every step of the way, burden and redemption together, revealing our naked truth.
~ Bania Sofia
ALWAYS ON CROSSROADS
I found myself on crossroads once again, Slipping through the fingers of the fate… The air I breathe is thick or thin, depends, That’s how I know which way to go when one road ends…
One road is ending, another one begins, On the new path I take I have no sins, I leave them all behind and go ahead, Going along with thoughts inside my head.
The winds of change are running through my hair, And in my house of fun I have no chair, No bed to rest my bones or lay in pain, No feelings to be wasted or in vain…
My limbs are getting stronger with the dance, My voice is singing loud, asking for change… My heart will pump just love while I’m alive, I am the only one creator of my life!!!
~ Marta Onila
Untitled
This is a perfect day for silence so I scroled down all past days in my world of 17 square metres I saw those asymptomatic trees as if they were in my room If I stretched out my hand I could feel them grow this is how I became a modern Sisyphus I went on reading although I knew it would make me lose my eyesight Then I wrote a book although I knew nobody cared Actually I wrote just one poem in a thousand and one variations
~ Ionuț Calotă
Forgiveness
Forgiveness, a bird Either caught or having fled Bears the thorn in it
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