SAMANTHA TERRELL - POET / EIC, SHINE Poetry Series
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May 13~ DR. DEEPAK DEV

5/13/2025

 
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.

Picture
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.

May 12~ STEVEN FORTUNE

5/12/2025

 
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.

Backslash

Would 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.
Picture
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.


May 5~ KERRY RAWLINSON

5/5/2025

 
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

Picture

Punch & Judy

the 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.
Picture
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

<<Previous

    SHINE - International Poetry Series

    Picture
    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.
    Picture
    NOW IN PRINT!

    Stars Over the Dordogne
    BY SYLVIA PLATH
    Stars are dropping thick as stones into the twiggy
    Picket of trees whose silhouette is darker
    Than the dark of the sky because it is quite starless.
    The woods are a well. The stars drop silently.
    They seem large, yet they drop, and no gap is visible.
    Nor do they send up fires where they fall
    Or any signal of distress or anxiousness.
    They are eaten immediately by the pines.

    Where I am at home, only the sparsest stars
    Arrive at twilight, and then after some effort.
    And they are wan, dulled by much travelling.
    The smaller and more timid never arrive at all
    But stay, sitting far out, in their own dust.
    They are orphans. I cannot see them. They are lost.
    But tonight they have discovered this river with no trouble,
    They are scrubbed and self-assured as the great planets.

    The Big Dipper is my only familiar.
    I miss Orion and Cassiopeia's Chair. Maybe they are
    Hanging shyly under the studded horizon
    Like a child's too-simple mathematical problem.
    Infinite number seems to be the issue up there.
    Or else they are present, and their disguise so bright
    I am overlooking them by looking too hard.
    Perhaps it is the season that is not right.

    And what if the sky here is no different,
    And it is my eyes that have been sharpening themselves?
    Such a luxury of stars would embarrass me.
    The few I am used to are plain and durable;
    I think they would not wish for this dressy backcloth
    Or much company, or the mildness of the south.
    They are too puritan and solitary for that--
    When one of them falls it leaves a space,

    A sense of absence in its old shining place.
    And where I lie now, back to my own dark star,
    I see those constellations in my head,
    Unwarmed by the sweet air of this peach orchard.
    There is too much ease here; these stars treat me too well.
    On this hill, with its view of lit castles, each swung bell
    Is accounting for its cow. I shut my eyes
    And drink the small night chill like news of home.

    ~~~

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  • ABOUT
  • PUBLICATIONS
  • SHINE Poetry Series
    • SUBMISSIONS
  • PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
    • CONNECT
  • SHOP
  • POETIC TRINITAS