Archive 14
August, 2014
Tibetan Monks Inspire Rowan Taw's Newest Poem Rowan Taw
Self-immolation Smoke wafts to your nostrils’ reincarnating olfactory cells. You don’t need time to analyze-recognize; there’s instant reaction - incensed aversion, the air shouts an aroma of ‘wrong’. Then you see the flames: darting, flicking, licking their devils’ tongues. They engulf, engorge, envelop. Monk’s robes disintegrate, as the chard blossom of the lotus- sitter distorts his features. The air becomes blackened by the cracked skin bubbling sacred, scarlet rivers - his whole body weeping disrobed tears of maroon blood. You ask: is this an act of love, or of protest, or desperation? You ask: where others would strike and hurt another, is this the only act remaining to a peaceful people? With heartbreaking futility - You ask…. Read the poetry of Rowan Taw Read a profile of Rowan Taw We Welcome Poet Charlie Brice To The Pages Of VerseWrights Charlie Brice
Elvis Presley Patch Let’s face it, there is no hair left on top of my head. Even if I bought a designer mop, or had a hair transplant and looked like I’d head-butted a porcupine whose quills injected fake hair follicles into my scalp, the hair that my mother and father put on my head is gone forever. It’s taken thirty years for me to lose my hair. When Ariel was little its gradual loss alarmed him. He’d grab a maculate clump close to my forehead-- my Elvis Presley patch, he called it-- and tug. Why couldn’t it spread to the bald spots, he wanted to know. You can have some of my hair, Daddy, he offered, not yet bound to ratiocination. I’d thank him, then tickle and hold him down until he said, Forgiveness Holy Father Papal Emissary, a fallen Catholic’s rendition of Say Uncle. I write this to my friend Sharon whose hair has just fallen out in the shower—all at once. She thought, maybe, it wouldn’t happen to her, but it did. As usual she’s positive: It means I’ve got powerful drugs fighting the cancer, she tells me. I bet you look like a cute little Buddha nun, I write, and fail to mention the flood of fate that shines like a nimbus in both our eyes. Read the poetry of Charlie Brice Read a profile of Charlie Brice "Death Rains," A New Poem From Shloka Shankar Shloka Shankar
Death Rains The city looks sullen and crimson bathing in the moonlight with paws stretching out in the form of sky-scrapers flashes of lightning threaten the homeless and the harlots into vacant plots, or worse still, oblivion the moon looks red this night, and as if calling out to me, she whispers, “I’m bleeding” shafts of light shoot through the sky like meteors and I realize mankind is soon going to pay for his onslaught on Nature. We are no Wordsworth: we wait calmly and patiently in the false security of our homes, cringing from devastation a lone tree gazes back at me as I stare out the window and it seems frail, ready to be brutally felled I smirk, wince, and go back to sleep. Read the poetry of Shloka Shankar Read a profile of Shloka Shankar Poet Richard Levine Brings His Poems To VerseWrights Richard Levine
Atonement In my struggle to learn a Minuet in G, I wonder about its Benedictine monk-composer, who meditated and played lute by the hour, in a 17th-century monastery. He may have been a man of faith or a gifted child, sent forth to soothe a streak of wild. As my fingers clumsily pronounce sacred moments he composed, do I seem closer to god, more angelic, less likely to do, again, the harms I have done? As atonement for misplaying a tone meant as a grace note, I stop to understand how I have corrupted my time. The metronome’s slow trimeter reconciles my hands to breath, so the notes cease to be a series of hopes, and instead sing free and loud as banjoes and ducks; and it undoes me long enough to forget what’s still left undone. Read the poetry of Richard Levine Read a profile of Richard Levine Puzzles Are The Subject Of This Poem From Michele Shaw Michele Shaw
Puzzles it’s sounds not understood, wobbly to the ear slowly piecing, unraveling, touching corners until they ....align we work, slave to make just one click, grabbing in glee ....when it locks with ease it’s smiles requiring no explanation love emanating from creased eyes filled with laughter speaking in beats to a united rhythm it’s bits of aha and scraps of confusion yet we try and try and try pressing each groove into its home it’s the snap of that fit when sometimes syllables align followed by the ghost of a gentle caress it’s magnets, collecting presents and trailing seas of hope they will bind us even if the rest remains unspoken Read the poetry of Michele Shaw Read a profile of Michele Shaw Coincidence, Fate, And Seagulls: Cheryl Snell's Latest Poem Cheryl Snell
A Small Perturbation in the Stands Shock rocked the stadium the day the pitcher struck out the ....seagull. Someone flipped a fair coin into thin air. Its glint bribed the sky with false promises. When the bird dropped from a flock overhead wings fanned the coin ambiguously. Heads or tails? No one could have predicted such perfect syzygy of bird ball and bat! The pitcher’s true arm waylaid tried instincts with a powerhouse thwack . A flutter of feathers sprayed the uppermost sky as if a pillow had been shot. Mathematicians & gambling men know: the rarer the ....event the larger the deviation. From the norm? From what’s true? The long hard jock begs the question from the back of his stretch limousine. Sometimes the sky holds up an unlikely blue moon. Sometimes coincidence slides into home plate of the miraculous. Read the poetry of Cheryl Snell Read a profile of Cheryl Snell Ten New Haiku from Poet Rita Odeh Rita Odeh
A Selection distant gunfire- ivy leaves creep along the old ruins ❧ the parallel lines of the railroad tracks- missing you ❧ peace talk— the third crow of a rooster ❧ the parallel lines of the railroad tracks- missing you Read the poetry of Rita Odeh Read a profile of Rita Odeh Kathleen Everett Gives Us Her New Poem, "Daylilies" Kathleen Everett
Daylilies petals shatter one day daylily a single day an ephemeral beauty a beautiful, ephemeral life I am weary of death his low whistle in a minor key has been heard too often at my door I am ready to be relieved of his visits I am so tired of tears and the beautiful arrangements of roses and all the beautiful beautiful lilies an ephemeral beauty a beautiful life life Read the poetry of Kathleen Everett Read a profile of Kathleen Everett We Welcome Poet Neil Fulwood To VerseWrights' Pages Neil Fulwood
The Expletive Deleted of the Average Briton "The average Briton swears fourteen times a day." --The Metro The first as your fist deals with the alarm - make that two if you wake with a hangover. The stubbed toe or the elbow impacting on the dado rail's chamfered corner - that'll be the second or third, depending. Spilled coffee? Minor oath. Dropped toast executing that mid-air flip to ensure its buttery side smears the kitchen floor? Oath in a major key. The gridlock and frayed nerves of the drive to work? Horn Concerto in F. The office threatens a grand symphony, a Mahlerian parade of missed promotions and belligerent bosses, rendered in the arpeggios of Anglo-Saxon, four letters to the word as surely as beats to the bar; but you hold back. You’re in the arena of best behaviour, the all-hearing ear of the conference call attuned to even the softest imprecation. Thought-profanity replaces the verbal, Orwell in Dilbert’s cubicle. Does it count as one of your fourteen if it’s imagined – a word bubbling into being in the mind’s alphabet soup, the four syllables of what you think of your boss achieving their Oedipal rendezvous? Read the poetry of Neil Fulwood Read a profile of Neil Fulwood A River Haunting In Tasmania From Poet Simon Kindt Simon Kindt
In which the Derwent River turns out to be haunted When looking for traces of yourself in landscape, go to where the water comes in diesel slick and meets the city, linger at the dock under a grey sky, watch the morning cruise boats loading their cargoes of champagne, oysters and the middle class, see the pewter clouds above, rolling off the shoulder of Mt Wellington, shrugged off like some trivial thought, and the child sunk somewhere high in the boughs of your family tree will come to mind, a ghost conjured by your own, as a bundle of still grief wrapped in linen, cast in a shroud weighted with shot, and buried at sea, imagine a mother’s loss as a suddenly softened belly, the promise of a new life distant yet in lands still warred for, and of another child born from the same womb on the.same voyage who would live, blood still running a loose thread in your.veins, wonder what songs were sung as the bundle was cast to water, how quickly a body sinks, how eulogies are just long iterations of one question and how quickly a story can bleed out white, decide then to remember more clearly and start writing a poem, under light breaking at last across the Derwent, the gulls above wheeling and knifing finally east, the tour boats backing off the dock, the slow shapes in the water moving out at last. Read the poetry of Simon Kindt Read a profile of Simon Kindt |
Two New Poems From Poet Kim Talon Kim Talon
Scarlet Faces It rained scarlet that day trees unabashed and brazen as leaves flew helter-skelter same bold shade as the old five and dime lipstick we used to dress up winter pale faces in Junior High tucking plastic tubes into our knee-high socks to hide it from adult eyes even as our lips gave our secret away Spectre You stand at the top of the steps on the threshold of the shadow room holding out an imploring hand begging me to come up …don't look down… or back never look back I see nothing but a murky silhouette guarding the shadow room where broken dreams crumble and die shattered illusions littering the damp floor Read the poetry of Kim Talon Read a profile of Kim Talon Two Short Lyrical Poems From Poet Edjo Frank Edjo Frank
When our eyes met
yesterday when our eyes met we remembered things happening long ago that shaped our lives and we knew we share stories from the beginning of times when seeds were planted to become who we are and dream of what may be Farewell the imprint of your face etched in a pebble of my mind and the last light left the blue of your eyes in my empty hands at the end of summer Read the poetry of Frank Edjo Read a profile of Frank Edjo Eleanor Swanson's Elegiac Poem For Nanda Devi Eleanor Swanson
Last Light on the West Face of Nanda Devi Before the second summit party began the ascent of the princess of mountains, an ominous black cloud settled slowly around the summit block, persuading us to take a rest day, but morale was good. The next day at seven in the evening, my daughter Devi was on her last pitch, and it took her until midnight to haul up over the final lip. A long day. Two days later, a blizzard kept us in our tents, but The next morning, Devi was stricken, saying calmly, “She is calling me. I am going to die,” before she fell into unconsciousness. We tried to revive her, mouth-to-mouth, but I felt her lips grow cold against mine. We had lost her. My daughter was gone, and I and the other climbers wept. Her fiancé Andy and I bundled her in her sleeping bag and slipped her off the precipice of the North- East face. Later I said we had committed her to the deep. She had been the driving force behind this expedition, as she was inexorably drawn to her namesake. The Bliss-Giving Goddess had claimed her own. An excerpt from her last diary is inscribed on a stone placed in a high altitude meadow of Patai: “I stand on a windswept ridge at night with the stars bright above and I am no longer alone but I waver and merge with all the shadows that surround me. I am part of the whole and I am content.” Read the poetry of Eleanor Swanson Read a profile of Eleanor Swanson Two Short Poems From Poet Michael Allyn Wells Michael Allyn Wells
We Missed An ivory cup, with remnants of black coffee and a rich brown ring, sat alone, stone cold, to say you came, stayed, then left. I'm sorry. Sis she is my sister though I seldom speak of her we grew up apart in the same household she did things I never could ate beetles like crunchy granola trained brown recluse spiders to be more sociable shot the dark sides of everything in photographs drove a locomotive off an acrylic painting when she swore in German dogs followed at her heels Read the poetry of Michael Allyn Wells Read a profile of Michael Allyn Wells A New Poem From Mary Anne Rojas (with video) October ☊
we believe we become empty of ourselves, but that is not true. we become full, crowed like a bowl of rice. we become unconcerned with movement, moon over who we could be and do nothing about it. the mattress begins to obsess over your body. you let her. fascinated with how someone can seduce the stillness out of you. the fridge is empty and you are convinced you ate everything. in the mean of night, you roam the studio apartment like un espiritu left behind. you prefer not to bother the light with your inconvenience. instead, you contemplate your study desk like a surgeon ready to give bad news. the pages of poetry are just used instrument now, idle in a desert of pencils. Tim Gardiner Laments The Passage Of A Tradition Tim Gardiner
Cricket by the Castle A snatched peak at the castle between waving willow and alder, shows the imposing backdrop for duelling batsman and bowler. Bowling the gentlest off spin on a sun-soaked summer strip, rewinds the reel eighty years to those halcyon pre-war days. When students and Sir made hay on pitch and field, today privileged college lads hare around a lush outfield. In the searing afternoon sun so many shades of green, the twenty-two yard canvas for a fading pastoral scene. After tea, a stroll beside the mere where mint and yellow iris glisten, and lazy cattle soon disappear in the shimmering sedge fen. Ascending clover-clad slopes, a restricted view of the game gained beneath tall turrets, trees masking a bowler’s hopes. Loafing lovers carelessly laugh at the foot of the angular towers, overlooking faraway Gothic spires and the first eleven’s funnelling fires. Distant cheers signal a crucial wicket, a miniature matchstick batsman trudges slowly back to the pavilion bearing the ashes of village cricket. Read the poetry of Tim Gardiner Read a profile of Tim Gardiner Poet Marianne Paul Is "Watching Her" Marianne Paul
Watching Her Another day, another world, another time, she is dark-skinned and olive, Mediterranean. Now, she is bland, a yellow-paste, like the back side of wallpaper. She blends into her landscape, the topography of the bed sheets, part of a different terrain now. I feel far off, as if the span between where I am and where she is, between life and this other region, grows larger. She is becoming a distant horizon, and I am afraid she will disappear. ∞ She pulls away from the present, moves into the future, picks up speed exponentially. Nears the event horizon of the black hole, the point where there is no return, no turning back. One of us is a stranger in a strange land. At first I think it is she, but now I’m not so sure. I am the foreigner here, the displaced, the rootless. Read the poetry of Marianne Paul Read a profile of Marianne Paul Poet Gary Metras Gives Us A Celebration Of Spring Gary Metras
Bird Eggs, Yes The sparrow eggs have hatched, the sparrows who stole the blue bird box. Yes, the tree swallow eggs have hatched by the ....neighbor's house; the parents swooping again and again over the hay field. Yes, the mocking bird eggs in the thick spruce hatched and the parents can’t stop bragging about it long into the long evening atop the roof, the tree, the ....fence post, shortening the dark with those melodies. Yes-yes, the gold finch eggs have hatched, these birds as beautiful as flowers when they alight on iris stems, on liatris stalks to trap bugs to feed their ....young, for the young they brighten the air. And yes-yes-yes the blue bird eggs in the other box have hatched! I counted five eggs as blue as the sky in August, as blue as a child’s best dreams; and I touched all five of the bare-blind chicks, a baptism of sorts, felt their hearts pulsing with such hope, these small singers-to-be. Read the poetry of Gary Metras Read a profile of Gary Metras A New Poem From Poet Jillian Parker Jillian Parker
She Runs Past the Pain She's got one left knee painted with iodine, the girl on a cot with huge question eyes. "What the crap?" (That's all she wants to know.) She is more her grandmother, more her father, more of anyone else but me. Those blue gloves draw out fluid from her flesh, drawn from my flesh and I don't know anything, except what I've given her, and what I've lost, and what she takes or leaves, twitching that sheaf of blonde hair. And I have no answer but a curtain of silence over her future. When she kicks that soccer ball, she's breaking out; she's this brightness, slashing every barrier. And I will her to emerge, while I run past my pain. Read the poetry of Jillian Parker Read a profile of Jillian Parker Foster Cameron Hunter's "Force of Habit" Foster Cameron Hunter
Force of Habit Swatches of moments, facets of youth now remain as snap shots, an anthology of innocent emotion. On the cusp, untouched fruit about to ripen, he raced verse by verse, page by page, toward the chapter on accountability. He forced himself to watch what curiosity called for, trained his eyes to ogle what he wasn’t ready to see. Against the baby flesh of his conscience, hormones pressed the needle of their presence, until —POP-- went baby boy’s bubble, paradise lost. Now Pandora’s box was open and all he was, was wasted undercover on slick glossy sheets. He’d discovered the shortcut to shallow release-- slipped on a chain and manacle. Read the poetry of Foster Cameron Hunter Read a profile of Foster Cameron Hunter Katherine Gallagher's New Poem: "Passengers..." Katherine Gallagher
Passengers to the City This morning she is travelling eyes steeled on her knitting, while the man next to her from time to time turns his head, glances briefly at the fiery wool then looks away. He is silent as a guard, and she never speaks. Are they together, some pair perfectly joined by silence? Or are they today's complete strangers? I'll never know, left simply to knit them together – characters in a story, a middle-aged couple on a train waiting for love's fable to happen to them, for their old lives to be swept aside, changed, changed – as she keeps knitting, bumping him occasionally, at which he shrugs, turns his head quickly not like a lover, but content. Read the poetry of Katherine Gallagher Read a profile of Katherine Gallagher |
A Pair Of New Poems From Leslie Philibert Leslie Philibert
A Murdered Girl Sleeps Next to the Motorway Eyes shadowed from stars The not-quite silence rests On your bleached cheek; Trees adorn your faint skin. The sun does what a sun does And melts water on your face A passing fox kisses your hand; The moon lights or not; All this as the busy race by Under orphaned bridges, tearless, You are lost for all the wrong reasons But safe under loam Sleeping in the ground like a blues. Paradise Let me be an old man in Anatolia Resting on a white plastic chair, Saintly in a starched white shirt Drinking tea from a glass that has Curves like a woman,watching Children and traffic, nodding at Shadows, a friend of dust and thin Cats, weightless like a moth on Running water, silent with the Grace of ages, half asleep and wise. Read the poetry of Leslie Philibert Read a profile of Leslie Philibert The Micropoetry And Photo Art Of Caroline Skanne
 Caroline Skanne
eggshell shard of pale blue heaven how i hope for new wings in a robin nest  Photo art by Caroline Skanne
The Latest Poem From Christina Strigas: "Faith" Christina Strigas
Faith You can say what you want on this and that about the one and done philosophy I can do it all and still survive the day the words never stop I have to push them aside add butter or pepper while you feed the geese on park benches contemplating loneliness ping pong love affairs satisfaction never guaranteed long lovely ladies await you I will watch you from the best seat in Central Park with lost hope and empty cigarette packs it all means nothing in the end darkness calls my nickname pulls out dust from my pockets sails across St. Lawrence river excites me with dirty words and secret promises of unknown reasons we still have faith in silence and poetry. Faith In nothing but loneliness a place only writers visit and succumb to their Voices. You kept me company I thank you for that and so much more I could never tell you as I close my eyes to dream of you. Read the poetry of Christina Strigas Read a profile of Christina Strigas A Poem For Poets, From The Pen Of Samantha Reynolds Samantha Reynolds
The feast The poem sits inside you like a hunter waiting for a weak moment of indecision or the lull of your commute and that’s when it pounces clawing its words into the hem of your lips for birth is no place for grace and your friends think it’s serene this poetry but they don’t see its teeth that if you don’t give it paper to feast on your friends will call for you and find only a stack of bones. Read the poetry of Samantha Reynolds Read a profile of Samantha Reynolds Paul Sands' Latest Offering: "Painted into a Corner" (with audio) Paul Sands
Painted into a Corner ☊ I paint myself inspired, intense, dismayed but remain just a fat old man who can’t get laid such a contrary slut bathing myself in the corporate filth served in Styrofoam cups the master of diversion ooh look the circus is in town maybe now is my chance to pull up and over and run away with a tired old sawdust queen sold as seen amidst this arid contemplation of sequins and tights I move aside for the mirrored blue lights that attend the latest mess of bent manufacture and twisted necks I re-tune the radio and make the best Two New Poems From Kendra Ballesteros Kendra Ballesteros
Fields of Lavender Lay me down in Lavender Thrill my skin Find my Spring song Tickle The hem Of my dress Make me a mess Kiss me Put me Back together again Winding Path The path is rocky snaking and twisting Follow me and you'll surely lose your way Trees open up teasing opening up In all directions I Myself Cannot say I'm lost I'm simply stepping around shadows Read the poetry of Kendra Ballesteros Read a profile of Kendra Ballesteros "be-all," A New Poem From Poet Luke Prater (with audio) ☊ Luke Prater
be-all to kiss as if there was another word tongues searching for that other word words, ways to describe this - tongues, far from foreign foraging for exquisite illustration illustrious forays to kiss such that outside eyes are out of operation for longer than it takes to have a deep bath or lunch with a friend third eyes press like the pad of sated panthers, moving this way and that at the sway of soft brows to kiss not foreplay the be-all meeting of mouths, of faces, of hidden eyes admission to hidden selves selves we surrender only when communion is brought in acts of consummation yet with lips, only lips end-all lips We Welcome Poet Brandy Clark To The Pages Of VerseWrights Brandy Clark
Scattered I wanted to keep her rose-colored urn, sit it on the coffee table in the midst of my old newspapers, dirty dishes, and outdated magazines with smiling celebrities on the glossy covers. I wanted to sit, have a cup of coffee, and converse with her ashes, perhaps take a spoonful and mix them into the scalding liquid so I might taste her, the earthy dust to which she’d been reduced. I wanted to scoop my hands into her expanse, sift her through my fingers, pour her out onto the wood and trace doodles till the tips of my fingers turned gray and my palms became coated with pulverized bones. I wanted to sprinkle her on the grass, food and fertilizer to aid in the photosynthesis of her cherished rosebushes and purple irises planted around the perimeter of her chain-link fence. I buried her in White Chapel Memorial Gardens on a February morning, the frozen air chilling the marbled urn, while the priest said his obligatory prayers. I prayed her ashes wouldn’t solidify. Read the poetry of Brandy Clark Read a profile of Brandy Clark Poet Robert King's Newest: "Saying the Word" Robert King
Saying the Word The mountains become water carrying themselves away. To rise implies to fall down. Still, one climbs the mountains. Even sitting, doing nothing, one climbs the mountains. Not one millimeter of “David” is the same first smooth of surface. This is what I mean. I looked at my father’s skull while he lay inside a machine. This is what I mean. And while streams begin descent the mountains pretend to keep the shape we call ageless. We say that, over and over. And then we stop saying that and someone else begins. Read the poetry of Robert King Read a profile of Robert King For Dennis McHale, "It is the Season" Dennis McHale
It is the Season "God talks in the trees." -- Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas It is the season of sleeping late while dreaming of red-orange trees shuddering in the evening breeze. These are the short days, the breathless days, when the thirst for warmth suborns desire and Eros kisses summer love goodnight. It is the season of crimson sunsets pouring slowly, like thick molasses over church steeples and frozen riverbeds. When snow-pregnant clouds float lazily across flower-less, frost kissed meadows as lovers seek shelter beneath heavy quilts. It is the season of naked trees, with branches like fingers extending toward the setting sun, tracing delicate arches across the rose autumn sky. Those days when the blackbird flies southward into the night beneath crystal constellations. It is the season of surrender - when burdens, like yellowing leaves, fall silently to the frozen earth and tired bones warm themselves before tended fires. It is the season of dying in the palm of God’s ....hand, warned by the certain knowledge of spring’s resurrection. Read the poetry of Dennis McHale Read a profile of Dennis McHale |