“Reflectorama by Stewart Stafford City buildings screaming down, Memories staggering anywhere, My childhood self calls out, But I must not go back there. Conjoined twins amputated, The pathway home lies cracked, Tsunamis smashed our thin bridge, Egregious horse, blindly backed. Forced into immovable objections, Monoliths in mutual self-defeat, Torched your bed, now burn in it, As I hotfoot it down the street. © 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.” PoetryGriefIdentityMental HealthTraumaModernismEscapismSurrealismFragmentationUrban Poetry Author:Stewart Stafford
“The City That Holds Me The sidewalks I stumble on more than once Make me feel like I am walking home. The place cold enough to die for, Yet I walk towards the next day without freezing. The river that drowns my words, As I wander its same stretch, up and down. My chapels know my favourite corners, Where I light my candles each good Sunday.” PoetryNostalgiaRomanticismDark AcademiaContemporary PoetryLiterary PoetryMelancholic PoetryEthereal SolitudePoetic ImageryUrban Poetry Book:The Willow Song Source: The Willow Song
“A Laptop in One Room The corners I turned became a city, While remembering the sidewalks. Each street I crossed turned into art, For poets past than turned lines upside down. Horizons in blue and grey Became a shallow water's sight.” PoetryNostalgiaRomanticismDark AcademiaContemporary PoetryLiterary PoetryMelancholic PoetryEthereal SolitudePoetic ImageryUrban Poetry Book:The Willow Song Source: The Willow Song
“I Am the City The spaces between streets, The lights that bloom on corners, The lines that hold us together. I may be a name, I may be a crossroad, I may be a saint. I am a city. I am a name. I am.” PoetryRomanticismDark AcademiaContemporary PoetryLiterary PoetryPhilosophical PoetryExistential PoetryEthereal SolitudeUrban PoetryIdentity And Place Book:The Willow Song Source: The Willow Song
“Three-Ring Circus by Stewart Stafford First love's doubtless light, Blinded with scorching might, What little a cloudy eye allows, Passion's seal on supple brows. Resplendent in our united phase. Love's incandesence in full blaze, No one else existed, gazes locked, Past emptiness, amnesia-blocked. Now we pass on a muted, wintry street, Joyless crime, sounds of splashing feet, Pained awareness, eyes to the ground, Mourners part bereft of sorrow's sound. © 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.” LoveRelationshipsFirst LoveBreaking UpBreak UpsSplitting UpUrban PoetryDark RomanticismMetaphysical PoetryModern Noir Author:Stewart Stafford
“The Last Street of Tehean Facing the airport, all that's now left in my grasp is a crumpled land that fits in the palm of my hand. Facing wavering sunbeams— a sun that is angry and mute. All the way from the salt sands of Dasht-e Lut, it came, the dream that forced my fingers' shift, that set my teeth on edge. A muted breeze, whirlwind spun from sand dunes all the way, even through the back alley. Are you pasting together the cut-up fragments of my face to make me laugh? No longer than the palm of the hand, a short leap, exactly the length you had predicted. A huge grave in which to lay the longest night of the year to sleep. Sleep has quit our eyelids for other pastures, has dropped its anchor at the shores of garden ponds, has lost the chapped flaking of its lips, poor thing! Are you pasting together the cut-up fragments of my face to make me laugh? With scissors - snip, snip - they are severing something. The alphabet shavings strewn on the ground, are they the letters that spell our family name? With every zig-zag, you cage my mother's breath, her footprints fading in the shifting sands. Are you pasting together the cut-up fragments of my face to make me laugh? No. A strange land-shape form. I will not return. I left behind a shoe, one of a pair, for you to put on and follow after me. Translated from Persian to English by Franklin Lewis” PoetryPoemsPersian PoetryUrban PoetryIranian PoetsCity Poems Book:Selected Poems of Rosa Jamali Source: Selected Poems of Rosa Jamali