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Shining the spotlight, today, on accomplished fiction writer and IT specialist, Dr. Deepak Dev. Please enjoy his poems "Ode to the Code and the Chaos" and "Ode to the Dream Factory." Dr. Dev, thanks for being a part of SHINE! Ode to the Code and the Chaos ‘For the IT mind, the poet’s soul, the rebel heart’ Keys clatter, sparks ignite, firewalls guard the silent night. Errors blink, yet hands don’t shake, you weave the code, you bend, you break. Beyond the wires, past the screens, a poet lingers in machine dreams. Logic hums, but verses rise, where algorithms kiss the skies. Numbers bow to whispered lore, a rebel’s mind, an artist’s core. Fixing worlds no one sees, lost in ones, lost in threes. Yet poetry slips through the cracks, where tech and soul never clash. Between the circuits, fate unwinds, a warrior heart, a coder’s mind. Lines of code, like rhymes untold, shaping worlds both bright and bold. Every crash, a chance to mold, a masterpiece in data scrolled. Not just a builder, not just a guide, but the keeper of sparks that won’t subside. Through tangled wires, a world is made, by restless hands that won’t degrade. Some build walls, some write tales, but you do both where logic sails. A poet of light, a keeper of night, crafting meaning in pixels bright. Ode to the Dream Factory ‘Where cinema meets the man who writes his fate’ Roll the reel, let silence play, where dreams don’t ask, they steal away. Scripts are torn, but fate is penned, by hands that twist, by hearts that bend. Every hero learns to break, villains cry, and lovers ache. Yet lights still flicker, stories run, where midnight fades into the sun. No cue to cut, no line too steep, some roles we lose, some wounds run deep. Yet through each scene, through every take, you carve the path, you learn to make. Not just the watcher, nor the lead, but the hand that writes, the soul that bleeds. For life is more than dust and time, it is the tale, the fall, the climb. A frame may crack, a shot may blur, yet meaning lingers in what occurs. No scene is wasted, no word in vain, all moments stitch into the frame. The curtains drop, the credits scroll, but echoes last beyond control. For stories told in light and pain, outlive the dust, outshine the rain. So take the script, reshape the scene, let life be vast, let fate be keen. A dream factory where time won’t stay, but stories live beyond decay.  Dr. Deepak Dev is an IT Advisor , holding a Doctorate and Master’s degree in Information Technology alongside multiple professional certifications. His professional journey has long revolved around precision, systems, and logic. Writing, however, emerged as an unplanned sanctuary. Guided by lived experiences rather than literary tradition, his voice weaves rebellion, loss and resilience into raw, reflective verse. His debut poetry collection, Symphony of the Erased: Verses Resurged & Reclaimed, explores resilience, memory and quiet defiance. It launched globally on March 7, 2025. In parallel, Dr.Dev is also the author of The Algorithm Saga, a speculative fiction series delving into memory, identity and rewritten histories. Book I: The Algorithm of Forgotten Verses is currently in production, with the series of novels already underway.
This week SHINE welcomes Canadian poet Steven Fortune with "Volley," "Backslash," and "A Love Letter from a Failed Generator." Thank you, Steven, for thinking of SHINE international poetry series as a home for your creative work! Volley Best not to nominate the rumored crumbs of my inverted feast for esoteric soup kitchen adulation. If security is hallowed closure, and enclosed in a tower, then I’m fated to a misaligned posture of identity with no pretense of verbal hopscotch at my interpretive disposal. I’ll volley back and forth between cerebral hemispheres for the entertainment of bemused senses, when the occupation of an impressionable mass stutters on anachronism’s dragon teeth, like a tank confusing virtuous direction with robotic obstinance. ~ (Dragon Teeth: square pyramidal fortifications first used during WWII to slow down and channel tanks into killing zones. BackslashWould you be one with archetypal time-bomb seductions underneath the apple tree with anyone else but me? I’m encumbered with impressions of a light year; an existence sealed in a quantity, inaccessible for its suppressed math to most. Coming to your senses after the fact. Subtle as a flock of ravens speckled on a snowbank, pressure-point intentions protrude from the pallor of your discontent; strength in numbers still count, even tethered to the inner voice. Woebegone, but resolute, I do my part to whimsically eviscerate the conquest narrative on verbal supplements alone, wondering if it’s addiction to a masochistic cause, or resilience in an elegant and wasted crusade. You were subject to umbrella condemnation for so long; now my turn is here, to endure a living and a language in quotation marks. Guilt by association; the most transcendent sentence ever spoke. A Love Letter from a Failed Generator 1. Inside a crushed orange meltdown of aggrieved metaphors: that was where we met and made the best of icy memories. You were the butane blue mattress upon which my bewildered wick of world weariness unfurled for protection, from tomorrow‘s infinite typhoons of toxicity, corroding artificial lights I wafted to, moth-like, in search of happiness. 2. Sickened by the cynicism I could never conquer without prodding, the primal wheeze in my lungs stabbed the air of my resigned ignition, like an acid-rain-rusted fork. Grey flames of erosion incinerated the dimensions of my Great Pretender mask: I was open to the prospect of a meltdown. 3. Alas, all-consuming is the compound of the grey debt, it would appear, yet the parasol of your embrace stifled my deficiency of closure like race-horse blinders. Simply through your place in my obstructed vision's show, I’m made aware of light, even as I realize I'm out of candles, and the metaphors incline me to reach around until I clutch your heated cage of night-vision.  Steven Fortune is a poet, playwright, and collage artist from Sydney, Nova Scotia (Canada) and a graduate of Acadia University. He has released five poetry collections to date, edited several works for others, and has also appeared on CBC Radio, while his work has been featured and read on several online programs.
This week I'm pleased to welcome the accomplished Kerry Rawlinson to SHINE, with three poems: Heart-to-Heart With My Younger Self; Stealing Apples; and Punch & Judy. Thank you, Kerry, for being a part of SHINE international poetry series! Heart-to-Heart With My Younger Self shine, child, sing! everything rings new & glorious, crowned with sunshine; wildly glittering-- defy the calcifying frown, the sagging paunch; the thin gruel of happiness now watered down. not yet the drool of forgetfulness, the realization of youth’s cruel sloughing & the incapacity to care or cry. fly, child, run! play & laugh & climb, conquering nothing greater than the bunny-slopes to selfish Fun-- shun the skin crêpeing, the chronic aches, a ghastly withering, the creep of cataracts; dithering & shakes; feeble regret, the haunted past locked down; memory at last meandering as helplessly as pee. flee, child, scatter! grasp whatever clever cliche forms the latest handles to grasp the day’s noisy clatter-- shatter the future-vision you abhor, hunt for antidotes to love’s atrophying muscle. you: the future star no more, but the tail- light of a speeding car, a stained photo; or simply the diminishing chink of a closing door. more, child, there’s more – don’t blink! all this is certain, not far. Fate’s plucked your fiddle-- diminishment is the tune you can’t ignore. Stealing Apples  Punch & Judythe grandkids & I make puppets: playdough faces from imaginations unfettered; beaks & shnozzes; hands & paws & claws; bodies of burlap & beads, velvet, feathers, tuille & rainbow-painted toilet paper glue-gunned leaves & seeds. we put on a production for their mum & dad, then I do one for them, not sparing any metaphors—Big Lessons, tricks & traps that lurk like trolls below black bridges to ambush innocent foundlings unawares. then the kids put on their own show for the grownups & it’s a marvel of mayhem, as real to them as anything lived. their whack & wail, tenderness & dizzy, overwrought hilarity pitches me into my default pit. is it insight, allegory, or just my usual jinx that forces me to view the bruise behind the smile? I want them to clue in to life’s mundane clichés without being broken, without killing the baby. and I pray for resilience as they wriggle on the twisted cords of Overlords who smirk up their toiletroll sleeves while making us their puppet-things; one hand fingered up our pants to make us act while another hacks our strings.  Kerry Rawlinson is a mental nomad & bloody-minded optimist who gravitated from sunny Zambian skies to solid Canadian soil. She’s the 2024 recipient of the New Millennium Writings and Princemere Poetry Prizes and has also won awards for flash fiction (Edinburgh Flash Award); art and photo-art (CAGO Online Gallery); and placed in other contests, e.g. Bridport; Room; Foster; Palette; Fish Poetry; National Poetry Society. She’s been internationally published in over 100 literary journals and webzines, eg. The Ex-Puritan; Grain; Pinhole; IceFloe Press Geographies; Filling Station; Rochford St. Review. Kerry's enthralled with the gore, music, brutality & beauty of the world, exploring its edges in her work. She wanders barefoot through dislocation & belonging—and still drinks too much (tea). kerryrawlinson.com
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SHINE - International Poetry Series
From the international poetry community, we have a "luxury of stars," as Sylvia Plath might say, and it is my honor to provide a home for their words through SHINE Poetry Series.
NOW IN PRINT!
Stars Over the Dordogne
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