(Editor’s Note: NonDoc provides Sundaze as a weekly space for poetry, short prose, visual art and other ideas pitched by creatives in Oklahoma and around the world. All submissions are encouraged, and new creatives are sought. Submit your work for publication by contacting Editorial@NonDoc.com.)
Comic First
Poems Second
A War Broke Out
by Bipin Khatiwada
I closed my eyes
When a dove flew away
Somehow terrified.
Soon a war broke out.
The blood of her sons
Bathed the earth.
Deadly blasts sounded
As thunder roared
Across the sky into
My heart beyond control.
Sisters in the street
Appealed for peace
Until a minute of silence.
I opened my eyes,
Saw red stained bodies.
The war had ended
Leaving a multitude of bodies
With arms around each other
Wrapped as graves
Waiting for mother earth.
Doves filled the sky,
Landing on graves
To leave a promise for life
In a field turned to gold
Marked by dawn.
Finally, a gentle rain
Soaked the earth
Renewing life.
A better future
by James Coburn
Children born to this world
to this world.
To this humanism we have created,
Children are born.
Children learn our actions,
purchase mechanisms for violence.
Tomorrow’s children will perish
under the trigger gauged by fear,
a fear we exposed, a fear we lent.
Those who have died already,
Those who didn’t live to know
their potential, have shaped our emptiness,
have shaped our resolve to rise,
have shaped our need for each other.
Children will live remembering
who of us offered them a hand.
They will fill the void of indifference
as some succumb to an illusion of fear.
Children will know the sky.
More Sundaze
Trumpdaze: An ‘Unstoppable force’
Saving daylight: ‘We do not listen’
‘Our city on the hill embraces the landfill’
Earthquakes and sins: ‘The freedom to breathe’
‘Excuses for slavery prick my hand’
Happy Valentine’s Day: Every comic begins with ‘C’
Flat Earthism: ‘Today will not be normal’
‘Our love died right on the table’
Deflated footballs and a requiem for Beirut
Sundaze: Darth Vader, David Bowie & Emily Dickinson
‘Did you wash your mouth with acid?’
