He stopped the car to check a sat nav malfunction. He heard a pulsating sound. Through the trees he saw a strange, rotating, multi-coloured light. “A UFO!” he exclaimed.

Recalling accounts of radiation burns from such things, he grabbed the aluminium foil from the camping box, and wrapped himself in it. Then, he crept quietly into the woods, with only the occasional metallic rustle.

There, in a clearing, he saw a group of them, standing around the object, which hovered several feet from the ground. They looked at him with their huge eyes. He stopped in front of the UFO in amazement. It dangled from a tree branch, twirling, a bright coloured triangular object, about 18 cm high. Near the base, an inscription: “LED triangle mood light.”

hazy moon
my optician sends
a reminder

Martha Magenta

I hope the Buddhists are right. If I’m lucky, next time, I’ll come back as a wife or a ballerina. After all, there must be a difference between pray and prey, a mantra for stilettos. Reincarnation could be something prophetic: purity—maybe next time. Let’s say that shade of cayenne lipstick pales under the bug light. Let’s say the preacher boasts of his sex life: Come to Jeezs-us—say yay-us.

heels clack down the nave—
just one more Hollywood whore
with a heart of gold.

 

Bob Haynes

High in the mountains, breathing a winter sun . . . the wind is light-footed here like a monk going through the narrow lanes of mundane. Nothing except the prayer flags move as I follow the tabby cat who moonlights as a Zen master on her less busy days.

‘Lots of space, nothing holy,’ she finally breaks the silence ‘that’s what enlightenment is.’

I am a bit baffled with her mongrel diction, but then she does have nine lives over me.

‘Isn’t every vacancy filled in by something else? Create a vacuum and the universe rushes to fill it.’ I say ‘So by extension wouldn’t a renunciation be replenished by the holy?’

‘Too many question. Far too many.’ She chastises snapping at an imaginary sparrow, then adds ‘And that might just be the reason, why you would find enlightenment a bit out of reach. But then probably you are better off. Enlightenment is the ultimate disappointment.’

empty spaces
the wind too
howls in protest

Paresh Tiwari