Columbus, Ohio USA
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Pedro The Cat, Poetry Editor
email pedro@shortnorth.com
Return to homepage www.shortnorth.com
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2020
WINTER THANKS
We are thankful today for the light fading in embers
for trees, frost-barren, that will flower forth in spring
for the great black dog who romps friendly in the drifts
for the pale pink sunlight that ends our tranquil day.
And surely we’re thankful for that bliss of the body
quiet at the center, even when illness rails
for tea, milk and sugar, sweet in the frosty morning
for the deep cold afternoon that chills our bones delightful.
We give praise for the white dove on the wire, singing
for the bright snow that falls and kisses the lips
and thanks for the gray clouds that stoke our winter dreams
and the fire in the heart that comforts us endlessly.
We cherish without measure the joy of our companions
the carefree walks, lolling along the frozen river
and thanks for the pain that reminds us of pleasure,
for the shadow of death that defines our fortunate lives.
Thanks for quiet contentment, praise and heroic laughter
for the money that buys us bread at our table
for the chance to offer to the supplicant at our door,
thanks for this brief time we call now and all.
Thanks for love following us, tracking us down, pinning us
for the restful warmth once we’re down for the loving count
for affection sustaining us, bursting out and all over us
for the righteous energy of everything, embracing us right now.
Even a thanks as we say goodbye, the light of the world diminishing
thanks for body, blood, and bone, unquenchable spirit
for this rare and plain opportunity just to be here
in winter’s home that heaven cannot faintly imitate.
© Fred Andrle
Also published on his website www.fredandrle.com
new year’s first sunrise
everything feels brand new –
new year’s first haiku© Rick Klaus Theis
Images of MarsImages of
Mars disturb me –
something about its scars.
A desiccation so unearthly, a
cold and arid emptiness so stark, it
harkens to a dark history. A testament
of tolls, the forsaken roles of Martians,
whose time terminated long ago, eons past,
inhumed in the rusty dust and hardened ash.
Mars glares at me, an uninviting sphere that
dwells in sullen, sterile benedictory. How
silently it demarcates its disconcerting
ruin and insinuates the fate of all the
races, of species small in light of
the Universe’s greatness. Mars,
so haunting in its humility,
a similitude of loss,
of inhumanity.© Sharon Reeb
Silently, the snow falls in the streetlight.
The sky brightens around the old Victorian homes.
Newcomers, old timers, scholars, and children of past residents
Switch their lights on, one by one.
Some must be grumbling about the snow,
Enriched by its beauty nonetheless.
Traffic arrives on the avenue
The muted sound of tires on wet pavement
Soothes my mind.
I leave my window and go to bed, covers high
Counting my blessings.© Myra Bloom
Purpose Winter
Stillness of the woods is comprehensive
river long distracted from her flow
frozen current, time’s abandoned moment
we hear the crackling of her dwindled fire.
Even if we all prefer the spring
winter takes her placid time in leaving
she has her job, to her it’s far from grim:
she’s calming the abundant fields.
Without her, spring’s green feet would overdrive us
exhausted oaks would tumble in profusion
hearts of burrow denizens would falter
great herds would die from overmuch delight.
Winter steals the land back to its bedrock
chills the untamed rambling of our minds
she understands the need of rest and darkness
for deep work we must do to later thrive.© Fred Andrle
Also published on his website www.fredandrle.comAll Yours
I want you,
And you, and you, and you...I want only you, baby...
And you, and you, and you...
And her, too.Then another one catches my eye –
Another worm on another hook –
Another reason to fill a poetry book
As I cry.Woman of the week...
woman of the month...
woman of the minute...
Believe me, baby, I’m your guy:
All yours –
Right now!
© Rick Klaus Theis
The Last Timewe met you wanted to
be hungrily kissed in
the dark with a small moon
for your only pillow
and just stars for your billowing
nightgown. How am I
to go forward with so
much sweet chaos in my
mind? I am wrecked upon
your lips like a delirious
dilapidated
old sailor who embraces
the surrounding
sea like it’s an arrow
through a sad and thirsty heart.© Darryl Price
The Ferocious Silence
Love is a lachrymose thingLove is a lachrymose thing,
Listing through lassitudes of losses,
Crying over cares that will not resolve.
Lovers swim not in a river of forgetfulness,
But seem to drown in a lake of heartache,
Until another lover rescues the victim
To a land as yet untouched by tears.
© Doug Rutledge
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2019
The Cycle of a Voice
The first poem was a rhymer
in second grade,
laid upon my teacher’s desk
to surprise her,
to demonstrate
that I had learned
a different way with words,
that I understood my voice was
more than a string of blurts,
more than a mad array of defensive noises.That day I became a scribe,
a describer,
a different kind of fighter,
filtering my world through
pencil point,
sharpening my new blade as I
aspired to join the ranks
of those who might alleviate
the drumming pain of
oppression and loneliness.Throughout my life I’ve tried
to purify the “hue and cry,”
to lay it out in rhymes,
to lift it up through elevated lines.
My voice is getting smaller
in this din of artificiality
that distracts with its gadgetry
and puts a vacuum to humanity.
I’m tired but, in spite, I
fight on, I
keep my blade honed,
because my next poem
might be the one.© Sharon Reeb
autumn equinox
the sound of a door closing
across the street© Yvonne Hardenbrook
Persimmon, 1997Changing Times
The ever-changing times
Are much too fast for me
Now they’re making metallic minds
And there are people who nobody can see
Supersonic jets
Breaking sound barriers as they go
You ask what’s going on
And I’ll bet you nobody knows
Churches getting bigger
Bringing more money to the till
Got everything down to the tee
And they don’t have to worry about bills
Things will be all right I guess
As the changing times go by
I ain’t gonna ask no questions
And I ain’t gonna wonder why.
© Galin Thomas
technology flies –
wisdom and morality
limp along behind© Rick Klaus Theis
not meek, but crass/coarse
will inherit the earth – look
they already have
© Rick Klaus Theison “now” platform, “past”
and “future” trains pass by in
reverse directions© Rick Klaus Theis
art-loving roach gets
in line at the Guggenheim –
critic’s shoe falls: crunch!© Rick Klaus Theis
dark poet’s reader,
weary of bleak poesy, finds
rest in book’s blank page© Rick Klaus Theis
Discotizing Women
Discotizing women look good the way
they dress
They make the slicks and players
Use all of their finesse
But go on you fine foxes
Dance and do your thing
This is all I’ve got to say
Dance until you get enough
But don’t dance your life away.© Galin Thomas
Rahsaan-3 a.m.-soul
3 a.m., energy waning
magic disc spinning
Rahsaan plays the hits
on his stritch
got to want to
scratch that itch
stay up long
like a hard-on
Rahsaan blows a fold in time
an ancient/future rhyme
dissolving pain, expanding mind
outside the wind blows bold
inside my soul grows cold
this town blows me
old
f*ck it all
let the good times roll
blow man blow
Rahsaan-3 a.m.-soul
© Rick Klaus Theis
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019
Hill Odyssey
“You can’t go back,”
they say; yet here I am
in late afternoon
beside the Alderson bridge.A familiar oak
hangs like a comfort
above sun-silvered water.
One of the two
beneath its branches
might well be me
some years ago.In the oncoming dark
dampness settles,
and I pull my jacket close;
then turn
a silver ring around my finger,
remembering trysts I’ve kept
on this and other bridges.I stay to watch a strange black cloud
creep like an amoeba
devouring the sky.© Laura Hank Hilton
(1912-2003)grandmother's thimble
shaped to fit her finger
fits mine too
gone before my birth
yet I know her hands© Yvonne Hardenbrook
WoodnotesString and Rubber Bands
It was the Depression that started it –
the habit of saving.
Most of us had little money,
or excess of anything,
so we kept sacks for re-use,
bits of string, and rubber bands.In my drawer you can find several
scarves waiting for matching outfits,
and dresses hoping to be stylish
once more.
There are cups without saucers,
mismatched pans and lids,
a clutch of photos
that never made an album.
I have numerous clippings
with the promise to read again,
a packet of poems for revising.But of memories saved
there is no choice –
even the sad ones are a needed
part of remembering,
the present ones become precious,
and the new ones – as dear.© Betsy Kennedy
city deeply sleeps
while just cats and me wander
its desolate streets© Rick Klaus Theis
poet describes the
real – we, out of touch, perceive
an alien world© Rick Klaus Theis
JULY/AUGUST 2019
River of Thoughts
Thoughts are like a river
Running through my mind
Rapid moving currents
Happening all the time
So many things
That has got to be done
My body is still
My mind’s on the run
Just like a river
Thoughts can overflow
The head keeps moving
But the body is slow
River of madness
in my head
Thoughts to be thought
Some not to be said
Thoughts are like a river
Running through my mind
Rapid moving currents
Happening all the time
Shallow in places
I know what’s best
I’ll try not to drown
It’s deep in the rest.© Galin Thomas
like any condemned
man, I await the day of
my executionwhen I see others
are me – good, bad and ugly –
I treat them gentlyocean drowns hot sun
glowering red as it dies,
cool night closes eyesBuddhist temple roach
strolls across altar, calm as
a bodhisattva© Rick Klaus Theis
black cat –
his coat of many colors
rippling in the sun© Yvonne Hardenbrook
MAY/JUNE 2019
Clearing the Pane
Grime of winter has left
a smudged view from my window.
With pail and rag I venture out
for a cleaning chore.I circle the glass, back and forth,
arms moving in steady rhythm.
The calming motion is good.
There is comfort from warm suds,
then pleasure as rinsing
produces clear glass.Of interest, too, is how different
the room appears – from outside,
looking in.
It’s reassuring to see familiar objects
even at a distance.If I only had a way to clear my mind
of needless debris,
where unsuspecting fears lurk,
disturbing me.
No cloth or mop or pail of water
can undo what’s hidden there.© Betsy Kennedy
O'Masterful Muse,
Wash my soul in poetry,
Set my mind to rinse!© Sharon Reeb
Looking through the Window
of Vincent’s Bedroom“This time it’s quite simply my bedroom – here color is everything; objects are given a greater style by simplifying them, thereby giving the impression of peace and general sleep. Simply stated, the picture should stir the head, or more properly the fantasy.” - Vincent Van Gogh
Purple walls. Purple doors. Two purple doors.
What mother in her right mind would approve
of lilac doors? The room is small and only
for sleeping. Vincent painted it that way
just for you. The magic red blanket
invites you to curl atop it, perhaps grab
one of the pale lemon-green pillows, nestle,
and fly, while catching forty winks.
The rails of the yellow wood bed
are strong arms to cradle you tight
so you will not fall out when it loops and flies
upside down. The bristly orange washstand.
Your mother would not like it either.
It does not budge when you lean on it
while you feel the thick blue basin
and run your fingers over softer blues
around the rim of the pitcher. Rough
orange soap stings your nose and brings a tear
to each eye. Behind the bed Vincent
has taken the liberty of hanging
his hat and painter’s smocks on the pegs.
And just for you, he has chosen
some of his paintings to hang on the walls.
Your mother would probably approve
of his Haystack and his Self-Portrait.
She wouldn’t know Vincent kept changing
the pictures of this attic room, high in the sky,
Unseen rafters arch over you
like boughs of a tree. They drip love
like raindrops fall from wet leaves
after the storm has passed away.
The tiny hole in the roof lets you see
the starry sky. Vincent would gladly have slept
downstairs on the floor of the studio
among turpentine and oil smells,
so that you could dream wild dreams,
sleeping on his yellow bed in a room
your mother would not approve of
because of lemon-green sheets
and purple doors.© Rose Ann Spaith
God, Vincent, And The Poet
young bodies forgive,
but don’t forget—as we age
past sins haunt us yet
the power of gods
plus monkey emotions yields
human destruction
if you look in the
mirror you’ll see the only
thing that isn’t you© Rick Klaus Theis
MARCH/APRIL 2019
Pages are for Sages
Pages were made for poets to do their work, not for
reports or cases or data relayed by
information-laden clerks.
Pages are meant for breaking, explaining, saving, for
sages who paint shades ranging from
cascading joy to pervading pain, who
display an array of courage in
cadenced phrases and blazing words.We crave these poems like little life vaccines that
disinfect our cubicles, that
come to us through memes
and silent soul songs from
other human beings.
Poems are magical memos made
of hopes and dreams sent to
remind us of who we were once,
before we were pressed like pages
into a volume of complicated schemes.© Sharon Reeb
all life is the one
God; living’s being part of
God for an instant© Rick Klaus Theis
Wake-Robin-WakeLay me down in the rain,
baptize me,
forget my name.
But first, whisper it to the trilliums.
Wake-Robin-WakeCall her Wake-Robin.
She greets you first in the spring,
under the shade of trees,
living in the damp,
living in the dark.
Don’t pick her petals.
She will die.
Wake-Robin-WakeChew her birthroot to bring new life.
If you are male
do not speak her name.
Wake-Robin-WakeLay me down in the rain,
baptize me,
forget my name.
But first, whisper it to the trilliums,
resurrect me,
re-assemble my atoms,
turn my hands into three petals,
gauzy white.
My lips are sweet berried fruit and
I sing my morning song
to the robins and the rising sun.
Wake-Robin-Wake© Dawn McCombs
Owner of Glean in the Short North
Sleepless
The clock ticks minutes
into hours,
dark wraps around me
like a too-heavy blanket.
Cold penetrates.
Events of the day trouble,
become jumbled,
sleep eludes.In the restless night
I dream winter’s gone.
Color emerges, bright
yellow of forsythia,
and daffodils
golden as sun.
The sweet scent of spring
overwhelms me.Toward dawn—
in limbo between lost sleep
and awakening, I get up,
go to my window,
I am reassured.
In the rise of sun
see green has returned,
although a sliver of moon
still lingers
in the morning sky.© Betsy Kennedy
in the park; swearing,
tuba, jets, fight, siren, screams—
city oasis?© Rick Klaus Theis
This Foreboding
This foreboding, it’s not alone
For the perils that are known
To animals and plants
From the dizzying human dance
And the foppery of the drill.
My mind turns, rather, to man,
To man, you understand,
The thunder and plunder of man,
As he rapes and bulldozes the land
And at last stands alone,
The hunter surveying the kill.
© Tom Thomson
Now and Forever
Bounding through expansive forests,
I ferment earthquakes with each step,
Massive trees left crushed in my wake.
In the jungle far below,
From each of three violet flowers,
A green plant sends out erotic waves.
A miniature grasshopper-tank cruises,
Crossing the path of a truck-ant
With no stoplight to protect against a crash.
Kamikaze leaves pirouette
In pure celebration of the day.
Yet, too often, through the prism
Of my subjective vision,
I perceive only ugliness and pain.
Though the universe is perfection
I am distracted by the fractured,
Flawed reflections
In my broken mirror senses
As interpreted by my impatient brain.
Yet, ugliness is just a different kind of beauty.
Pain is just a different kind of joy.
Atrocities are just vast opportunities,
Challenges that aid us in unfolding our love.
The sun, kissing my back and holding me
In its warm, forgiving arms,
Enables my eyes to discern
The microscopic and telescopic wonders
Of the most mundane forms.
I stand atop Maslow’s pyramid,
Jumping up to snatch pure ecstasy.
I accept the infinite strength that is mine
As a birthright which was meant to be.
I discover that success, fulfillment,
Happiness and health
Are all just natural states of life —
Requiring no tricks and no teachers;
No sacrifices or sacraments;
No pills, no gods, no egos;
No books, no politicians, no manifestos;
No manipulations, no perpetrations, no lies.
For all is love, and I am all.
Every planet spins it.
Every animal sings it.
Every atom swings it.
Every impulse frees it.
Every energy powers it.
Every desire leads to it.
Every bit of matter manifests it—
The same spin, the same sing,
The same swing, the same thing.
All is me and I am all,
All love, now
And forever.
Amen.© Rick Klaus Theis
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019
Conjecture
We sat on the beach, talked of the ocean’s end,
where blue-gray waves meet brighter blue of sky.
We thought we might go out to its farthest point
and find the ocean’s end,
but being reasonable, knew the sea would be
infinitely beyond.For a moment, our conjured dream was like that
of the men adrift with Columbus,
reckoning the sky a scrim for end of the ocean,
where gulls fly in and out, waves drop into
nothingness.© Betsy Kennedy
Yellow Pipe Smoke Spiraling,
Vincent Cuts Open his HeartLook at the white bandage
wrapped under his chin and around his face.
You are supposed to stare.
His piercing blue eyes insist.
Bundled in green coat and azure hat,
pipe clamped tightly between pale lips,
he tricks you into gaping.Some of you, diffident, squeamish,
might want to argue whether Vincent
cut off his right ear, or his left.
The summer before, when he bought the mirror
for the little yellow house in Arles,
he affirmed his task was to lay bare his soul,
not set mirrors at angles
so he could see himself as others saw him.So in this portrait,
with greater precision
than the razor slashing across his ear,
Vincent cuts open his heart
and exposes even more of his anguish.He is shouting at you,
when you forget his bandage,
to remember the spirals of smoke
rising like golden incense from his breast
and consecrating your silent suffering.
© Rose Ann Spaith
God, Vincent, And The Poet
all have tragic ends—
focus on charming story
unfolding instead© Rick Klaus Theis
Aging Cinderella
My prince will come!
I’ve been assured of this,
“You’ll meet your match,” they said.
But, oh so many balls!
So many slippers offered and retrieved.
(And all those mice turned loose upon the town!)Scourged to the cinders, clutching my thin broom
I pouted. A sudden clump soon put me on the track.
(That magic wand gets heavier with each blow.)
And so, the dress, the coach, that silly Cinderella mask!
an owl-eyed one stood eager at the gate.
(Later I heard he’d made Who’s Who.)
Somehow, I could not bring myself to try the shoe.
A mermaid-looking creature made off with him so fast!
He took her at her word, no fitting.
Both just seemed to know.So it goes. The balls are almost done.
Arthritis plagues my Godmother.
(It’s such an effort just to lift that wand!)
I have my books and trinkets
neatly kept. I had a cat which was no comfort,
just sat and smirked–a regular Cheshire cat!
Chastened once, it disappeared.The Senior Centers almost every day send buses out
on garden tours, to shopping outlets, Amish farms,
and old men board them, guarded by widows ten to one.
There could be princes there who’ve made their mark.I’ll try just one last ball without the princess front,
just be there–bold, a gutsy gal in ordinary garb,
no pumpkin coach or masquerading mice,
arrive on foot to face the tune.
Perhaps there’ll come a prince without a shoe,
no crystal measure, just a look, a knowing.
Well, as I’ve said, I’ve tried and tried,
but one more trip is surely worth the going.
© Laura Hank Hilton
(1912-2003)Birthday
I’ve circled the date
on the calendar,
although I need no reminder.
The day isn’t really different,
more an ordinary one
that begins with a slice of toast,
usual cup of tea,
and perhaps mid-way
a cinnamon roll
after a morning walk.Gone – distant memories
of cakes, candles,
surprise packages,
a clamor of voices singing
an off-key – “Happy Birthday.”Old age has its limitations.
As years increase,
less to celebrate.
I have known loss, loneliness.
Even youth slips away,
cannot be retained.Yet this day is not without
comfort.
Remembrances of your love
remain steadfast,
unlike a brief warming day
in winter,
or the return of fickle winds
in spring.
© Betsy Kennedy
life—brief vale of tears
in the midst of an ocean
of blissful spirit© Rick Klaus Theis
Insanity Part 14
Earth unceasingly persists to revolve rotating
through Nietzschean cold, dark space,
such scarce molecular motion,
existentially frozen silent, loveless,
we escape throughout the galaxies—
an infinite populace
of grinding continents adrift
amidst volcanic eruptions,
failing families,
and clans sifting like dust and singularities
and ash and black holes within without eternity.
Quasar radio waves pulsate
galactic broadcasts,
quasar propaganda, perhapsTurn on, tune in, and drop out!
On November 22, 1963,
upon his wise dying countenance,
she saw an immensely blissful,
loving expression as she whispered,Light and free you let go,
darling, forward and up. . .
you are going toward the light . . .as Laura Huxley’s husband
took his final trip. Aldous Huxley
had passed away,
soon after she injected him with LSD—
his last request . . .
to break on through
the Doors of Perception
to the other side;
erosion of the universe
planets and cosmic noise and comets
igneous eroded sediment
formed conglomerates,
rocks between red edges,
galactic sandstone
far away very fine grained;
a pulsar and nebula and neutron star matrix;
cemented opaque distance,
cold fogged, frosted Earth atmosphere,
like an early morning winter windshield
needing scraped
to peer out at space wearing out,
so distant from it here it appears
a plutonic solid granite universe
betweenless solid blackness.
Yet cosmic rays somehow fly about
as particles, like cigarette smoke
intertwined techno, honk-tonk and acid-house
on lady’s night, perfumed pantheon,
in a dimly lit after-hours jazz house
with estrual cosmic radiation resonance
omnifarious emotional stimulants,
intoxicate the men lined up,
smoke and sex in the universe
mysteriously solid space
yellowing unglued adhesiveness
virtuous stars dark dead.
Scotch tape superconductivity
frosted mugged conduction
negatively charged ideals
spaced-out matter mass.
JFK’s tomb torch burns gas
pipelined across, beneath the USA,
LSD and MK-ULTRA and CIA
Lincoln’s bones lie intact in Illinois
stored decayed dark gray dark blue matter,
still societal disease civil war rages.
L.Ron Hubbard and Baba Ram Dass
as William Mellon Hitchcock’s Millbrook estate
where Tim Leary lived, Harvardless,
with long histories of cultural visitors,
besides Aldous Huxley,
such as Time-Life’s Henry Luce,
representing the CIA;
Dr. Humphrey Osmond or Michael Hollingshead
and his mayonnaise jar full with electricity,
Merry Pranksters with Ken Kesey
driven there by Neal Cassady
or William S. Burroughs and Corso, Gregory.
Even prosecutor G. Gordon Liddy,
the law then in Dutchess county,
visited Tim Leary.© Michael L. “Bookie” Buchenroth (1953-2008)
Insanity, An Anthology
each momentary
awareness of existence—
a new dimension?© Rick Klaus Theis
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018
Craving
There is this craving that I have
I’ve had it for some time
To do something very special
For the people who are mine
I crave to show a different light
That’s been there all the time
So that it can be seen and heard
By all who have a mind
This craving that I have
Is more than one can feel
Somewhere in the Bible
Ezekiel saw the wheel
It was in the middle of the sky
Which is where I look each day
And I crave to do a special thing
Which could do more than words can say.© Galin Thomas
I Don’t Know What to Say
But it all works out. Truth is something I’m sure
I’ve never seen, but the more time goes on, the
Less I’m inclined to believe in it. Still I don’t want
To be one of those giving the finger to God
And begging for a showdown
With an army of unfeelingAngels. We were kicked out of heaven for having a
Healthy curiosity about the taste
Of things as they weren’t ever really
Presented to us. I think we made the right choice.
Taste buds demanded their freedom,
And from there it was
Only a matter of time
Before others followed their primeExample. Eyes, ears, lips, fingers,
Hair follicles all wanting to
Know more, more about the
Winds, more about the sunAnd the rain, more about
Themselves among the stars. It’s
Okay to feel things more
Deeply than ever before. We
Choose to break the rules. It wasn’t by accident. WeWanted to know the rough
Unexpected skin of the road
We were on, even if it went unraveling under the
Doorway like a broken dam. We wanted to lift our
Unadorned faces up into the
Sky without flinching from fear.
That’s the key. We don’t
Want to live with nightmares ofBeing thrown into a ditch for being out of line.
I created my own lines here. They may not make
A lot of sense to you right now, but I
Think you’ll enjoy the flowers in the end. If not
There are plenty of other
Gardeners, including you, who areWilling to grow something else
For everyone. Either it’s free
Or it’s not. And that has nothing to do with
The cost. It’s just an attitude, even as you are
Buying or selling the goods. I don’t know what to
Tell you that you haven’t already thought of all byYourselves. We are fallen from
Grace, but we are alwaysHappily weaving our poems any
Way. We are still holding
Onto sweet faces like jugs
Of lifesaving water and drinking
Deeply the impossible beautiful light
From each other’s eyes. That’s
Enough to prove to me this life is long enough.© Darryl Price
The Ferocious Silence
There’s the Truth
There’s the truth.
Poke it with a stick,
then touch it with the tip of your finger.
Tickle it on its underbelly.It’s trapped in the strainer in the sink,
hiding behind the trim,
rolled up in dust bunnies under the couch.
The truth
is everywhere.It’s behind your eyes.
It’s in the roof of your mouth.
When you look at people you wonder
do they see it?
When you speak to people it brushes
against your tongue.
Can they hear it?The children are running and screaming
on the playground and the leaves
are wrapping around their ankles
in swarms.
They are colored gold, orange, yellow.
The leaves are their true colors now
that the sugar has drained
from their veins.Sometimes truth is beautiful like that
and other times it is ugly.
We live uncomfortably between the two,
wanting to see,
then turning our gaze away,
like the sun that still burns brightly in November.
You want to feel it on your skin still.
You want to look at it now that it is
a little further away,
but still you know you shouldn’t.© Dawn McCombs
Owner of Glean in the Short NorthAbout Truth
You can’t knock down the truth
Cause it stands up too tall
It is the longest, the highest
And the thickest of walls
Falsehoods cannot penetrate truth
Any way it stands
Truth flows and flourishes
Throughout each and every land
It takes one lie
To cover up another lie
But it only takes the truth
One time
To clear everything out of the air
And ease your troubled mind
If you let the truth ring from here to there
The truth will be present everywhere.
© Galin Thomas
our life’s compass won’t
work if not oriented
toward true north—love© Rick Klaus Theis
after words
The flashlight in the drawer
has no batteries.
The missing sock is in the
dryer.
The closet is empty.
Someone left the light on.
A note is on the table.© Rick Holmes
FriendsFriends march through my life
As quickly as
Through / a / revolving / door —You’re in and out
Before you even know it.“Don’t stop!
Keep the line moving —
More people want to get in.”“Don’t touch anything!”
“Pay—
On the way out.”
© Rick Klaus Theis
winners aren’t lucky
people, but those who don’t give
up no matter what© Rick Klaus Theis
the universal
essence flows through us—source of
wisdom and power© Rick Klaus Theis
world reflects mind; mind
reflects soul—karma causes
mirror’s distortions© Rick Klaus Theis
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018
Vincent’s Yellow Chair
in the Yellow House in ArlesThe color of a sunny morning,
the seat of canes invites you
to drop by, to sit and chat.
Firmly woven reeds, uneven but comfortable,
hold the warmth and welcome of summer sunrise.Four wood legs, broomstick-thick,
have been planed to the point of smoothness
by some Arlesian carpenter, but not polished.
Capable of supporting the Postman Roulin’s
great height and weight,
the chair draws you at noon
to open the blue door, come in,
and share silence as Angelus bells ring.Broad as a palm’s width, three rungs
between two stout stiles of the chair’s back
are ready to hold your day-weary bones.
The top rung is arched to ease your tired eyes.
The carpenter has carved a flower
between curling leaves under the arch,
perhaps a morning glory.This chair was one of hundreds
around kitchen tables in Arles in 1888.
It was the chair that Vincent bought, sat in,
and painted.He slanted the seat to show you
familiar objects he placed on it, his pipe,
his tobacco, homey symbols of himself.
Occasionally, like most of us,
he used the chair for a table.If you could have observed him,
you would have seen him
swab his brush into black oil,
and, with three quick arcs of his wrist,
daub three knots on the front legs,
and with one more double flick of his fingers
etch tracings deep in the wood of the left back style
that looks like a posy of rosebuds.Vincent has made you see
the knots and the roses in
this rough-hewn everyday peasant chair.© Rose Ann Spaith
God, Vincent, And The Poet
Haikus About Age
and MiscalculationsTime’s pace rakes away
intentions, unused talents,
leaves bare a stunned stone.You, younger by far,
can’t yet calculate how near
like me you will be.Youth’s concern for age:
Acorn unable to gauge
the oak’s endurance.When age makes me frail
may my dignity be spared
cold custodians.© Sharon Reeb
Life
Life ain’t nothing
But a segment of time
There is a beginning
And an end of the line
Some may be short
Some may be long
One may be right
Another may be wrong
But never the less
A life is a life
Live it to the fullest
Do what’s thought right
And in the end
When life is gone
Time will be here
To move on along.© Galin Thomas
life’s a game like chess—
no need to stress; just make a
move, then reassess© Rick Klaus Theis
the present inches
slowly to the future, yet
flies fast to the past© Rick Klaus Theis
Fred Astaire Enjoys an Autumn NightWhen the autumn moon spotlights
Through the trees,
and stars spill a sheaf
of forgotten wishes,
a thin-boned man slips gracefully
from the cocoon of sleep.
He has been a season in the cool vault,
where quiet has spun around him.He hears the leaves whispering
to one another. Like lovers in an embrace,
they flutter across the graves
in a dance of their own.
Then he is dancing with Adele, sometimes
they are children, holding hands, playing
a game – “Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.”Other partners emerge from the darkness.
He no longer recalls their names.
There’s a swirl of chiffon as he reaches
for them. They are only cobwebs
in his arms.
He taps a lonely staccato tune on the stones,
tips his top hat to the moon,
retreats once more to a restful sleep.© Betsy Kennedy
JULY/AUGUST 2018
breeze rearranges,
sun-dappled leaves—a thousand
fine paintings in one© Rick Klaus Theis
their factories and
food make you sick, then they sell
you pills to cure it© Rick Klaus Theis
Buddhist temple roach
strolls across altar, calm as
a bodhisattva© Rick Klaus Theis
Dismantle
Dismantle the natural.
Expand the artificial.
All must be consistent.
All must conform
To the lowest common denominator,
In our image reborn.
Hail the human dominator
Torturing its mother.
Hail the human exterminator
Expunging all others.
The earth must conform,
Or tear it all down.
Dig it up or push it back.
Pave it over and paint it black.
Release the oil. Suck the blood.
Clear-cut the hair. Dam up the floods.
Prevent the tears. Peel off the skin.
Standardize the rivers and
Kill what’s within.
Level the mountains. Drain the seas.
Air-condition the tropics.
Cure its dis-ease.
Puncture the ozone.
Melt the ice caps.
Dehydrate the rain forests
Until everything’s collapsed.
The deserts must bloom.
The earth must come ‘round
And give us more room
To trample her down
Along with her children,
The billions and billions –
Unnecessary creations
We will bring to cessation.
Biological-zoological must give way
To the techno-ontological in this logical day.
We have a plan. We have a system:
A radioactive man in a toxic cistern.
Raise the flatlands. Fill in the wetlands.
Correct all defects. Forget the yin yangs:
The self-cleaning nature of Earth,
The interrelations of all living creatures,
The web of life connecting death and birth.
We will modify these imperfect features.
We will not be deterred until all life is interred.
Dismantle the natural. Expand the artificial.
All must be consistent. All must conform
To the perfect ideas of this human norm.© Rick Klaus Theis
Porch After DarkThe heat of the day lasts
until darkening time.
The porch floor retains warmth,
but soon cools as shadows intrude.
The night air hints of chill.
Suddenly the summer seems brief.We are tentative guardians
of each season.
At the onset, welcome each one,
think the current one best,
and may be resistant to change.Now the night has returned.
It is time to withdraw and go inside.
If there are hidden fears
they may be eased by the myriad stars,
but it is the waning summer moon
I count on the most.© Betsy Kennedy
Blood Cells
Do any of my blood cells feel
They’d be better off on their own?
Do they fight among themselves
For ascendancy to the throne?
Do they yearn for me to cut myself
So they can then escape?
And when they do, do they realize
They’ve made a big mistake?© Rick Klaus Theis
birth is the seed, life
is the plant, death is the bud,
soul is the flower© Rick Klaus Theis
MAY/JUNE 2018
breeze rearranges,
sun-dappled leaves—a thousand
fine paintings in one© Rick Klaus Theis
Lost Shoe
1998
If one shoe exists,
The other must
If only as thought
Without socks
Barefoot intuition
Dichotomous.Discovered in visitor parking compound,
One methyl violet high-heel shoe
Jacqueline Ferral size eight.
Lost or found?Wolfgang Pauli’s soul in need of a mate,
Perhaps too late.
Depends upon point of view:Observer or participant
Matter only approximate
Wave or particle
Complementary opposites
Right left parallel concepts
Paradoxical. . .A feminine transcendence from masculinity
Negative anima lost during bestiality
Ophelia’s phallic heel lying limp on hot pavement
Nighttime Cabalistic Cadillac carnal allurement
With a woman nicknamed Mona Lisa –
Pure lost femininity –
Who oftentimes quotes from Bhagavad-Gita;
Animus assuredly in love of meaningful hosiery.A strongly confined shoe
squeezed on through
Feynman’s double slit.
An experiment where opposite limits exhibit
Wave-patterns; axiom of completeness
A chopine lost by the Copenhagen intrepretationists.
A perplexed pair of shoes parted.Bell’s inequality indeterminate
Anti-parking lot paradox.
Reality reflection thought pair Jungian compliment
One high-energy shoe everywhere at once
Teleported third phase shift.
To Alice, Bob transmits
Embodied Charles Bennett voodoo
(Quantum essence of the particle)
In possession of infinite informational bits
Quantum-mechanically communicated from future
Unknown to the real low-energy doublet
Hawkin’s God resurrected unknown associate
Delayed wave reality inadequate
A fli-flop cast back past classical fuzzy boundary.
Sneaks conscious of quantum cosmologyCoincidentally,
Dimensionlessly vanished in vortex
of superconductivity
Quantum Hall localization transition self duality
In synchronistic arrangement
Matter and psyche
Physics and psychology.Meanwhile, in the interval,
Beneath the bush near the beginning
A softly-small cuddly fuzzy red-backed lemming
Who workers feed chocolate covered cashews
Wonders who lost that mystical
Methyl violet high-heel shoe
Discovered within her territorial space
Now misplaced.© Michael “Bookie” Buchenroth, 1998
(1953-2008)
Weeds of the World, Unite!
We invade the invaders and
they invade us, these little
blooming weeds. They raise five
flowers and let them blow
into the winds like fleets
of stars. All of us
steer by their turning tide.
All of us will eventually
fall by their shining example
into wintry skies, crisp anddispersing everywhere like snow, but
they do not give up
that ghost. Instead they regrow
even the frozen toes of
heaven into an eruption of
abundant walking shoes, the kind
to take you wherever you
are going, and with whom.
This is the miracle of
green life. It exists solelyto exist. It will not
take no for an answer.
It sucks sunshine like it’s
going out of style and
spits it back out in
puffs of pure oxygenated cookies,
baked to perfection and ready
to eat. And once inside
of your guts it works
its ancient magical spell likeclockwork, restoring even the most
cynical nature back to its
original joy in simply breathing
again. And then of course
comes another blast on the
field from all the trumpets
at hand to signal the
war is not yet over.
For some of us, we
must go on to thegates of forever, some alone
and some of us together.
At either end the greening
will take its rightful place
in the conversation about the
meaning of all love within
the meaning of all life.And because of that this
poem finds its way to
you today, making so sure.© Darryl Price
spring pastures—
a taste of wild onion
in the milk© Yvonne Hardenbrook
HaikuHeadlines
nude beach
only his bald spot
covered© Yvonne Hardenbrook
RawNervz 1994
MARCH/APRIL 2018
The Gardener
After winter’s long and terrible blight,
I resign myself to the safety of the fire.
I resist exposing annuals to light
And trimming back the ragged briar.
Like old Grendel, the cold monster winter,
Will only return to the mead hall of spring
And once again, all my good friends murder,
So I sit by the fire, as spring’s joy sings.
But the bright warrior resists my despair
And summons me once again to hoe and rake.
Thus last year’s beauty I again repair,
And past happiness I start to remake.
The gardener bears a mental burden
As the thinker who cannot resist the sun.© Doug Rutledge
after the storm
the black cat emerges
from somewhere© Yvonne Hardenbrook
reincarnation—
motive to better the world
for our future selves© Rick Klaus Theis
Eternal Now
In the eternal now there is nothing to fear:
The past is gone and the future’s not yet here.
So why does my mind dwell in the past?
Why does my mind dwell in the future?
Why does my mind dwell in fantasy –
Anywhere else but in the present reality?
I will never be in the future.
And I was not ever in the past.
I am just in the present moment
Which eternally lasts.
Though there was an “I” in the past,
That “I” wasn’t me.
Though there will be an “I” in the future,
That “I,” I won’t be.
I will try to remember
That I am not there; I am here.
And that I am not then or when; I am now –
At least for a while anyhow.
© Rick Klaus Theis
occasionally
through din emerges welcome
silence oasis© Rick Klaus Theis
techno solutions
to techno-created problems breed
ad infinitum© Rick Klaus Theis
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018
Old Doctor
Your six feet fill the doorway.
Pencil poised
you question, note in file.
Owl eyes check.
The white coat crackles
as you bend to examine.
“Breathe out. Breathe in.”
From bits and pieces
You connect the whole,
arrive at a verdict:
“Take two each day
and call if there are problems.”
You glide to another cubicle
unmindful of the crowd demanding miracles.Nearby, your replacement
wearing a new gold band
orders tests,
shots, prescriptions;
is in and out of the cubicles
faster than a bird can shake a feather,
always ahead of the multitudes
waiting for loaves and fishes.
“Let’s get this show
on the road!” he announces
in the outer office.
The receptionist whispers,
“Thank God it’s my last week here.”Laura Hank Hilton
(1912-2003)
after too long youth,
on cusp of wisdom, I jumped
straight to curmudgeon– Rick Klaus Theis
Zen mind turned inside
out—all I see’s me, nothing
left to be other– Rick Klaus Theis
geez, who would have guessed—
i’m even overthinking
my overthinking– Rick Klaus Theis
my musings painted
on paper with pen—fossils
of me once I’m gone– Rick Klaus Theis
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2017
Wilderness Forgotten
In wilderness the last call
of the owl is heard,
the last trillium blooms,
the last fox comes from her den,
the last waterfall glistens in the sun,
the last child laughs.When did we forget where we were born?
How have we learned, so quickly,
to shut our doors,
close our windows
To what seems so wild, so other?Now, drive down any street
seeing evening houses
Each showing through windows
an eerie blue light
As those inside watch, remote,
distant from the nearby
woods, fields, ponds, hills,
Wilderness specials.© Claire Hagan Bauza
War * Peace * The Earth, 1997
The Poets and Writers Guild
bad cat
i remember mother’s wedding dress in her closet, yellowing.
the sheer plastic brittle, yellowing
father’s eyes, yellowing
the orange cat’s claw! it peeled open the dry clean
the thing forgotten in there when we left for a vacation
shoved against the wall you almost couldn’t see it
but i knew it was there, the cat toothe ruined dress, it carried a certain disbelief.
the tabby tore up the wall trying to get out during that week.
he was a bad cat, father said, always destroyed everything.© anna ondrakova-peluola
?Jim “Happy” Fuller (1949-2017) with Wil Neal (right) at Big Fun Columbus Happy's gone
You may remember Happy –
The Bollinger Tower resident.
The poetry-stunt-double to
Lawrence Ferlinghetti:
An honest hippy remnant
w/the most polite inquiries,
authentic kindness & abnormal
deep blue eyes.Happy was retired; had a lot
of back pain; worked in the theater;
& made the social rounds in the Short North.He worked a couple Gallery Hops for us;
borrowed, & paid back, a few twenties from me;
& brought his adult kids into our shop.A man named Chuck,
Happy's neighbor, told me
he's dead.
"Six weeks ago."
"Where's he buried?"
"I'm not sure, but I'll let you know."So say a prayer for Happy
& for the peripheral folks
in your lives.
The ones who come into the foreground briefly
& fade into the background quickly.
If you haven't seen them for awhile,
you may fill-in-the-gaps of how they are –
gather clues about them.They might be dead,
but their impressional residue continues on.© Jason Williams, Big Fun Columbus
machines extend man’s
strength, reach and speed-–but not his
discernment and heart© Rick Klaus Theis
September/October 2017 Issue
Ode to the Leaves
Leaves flutter down
in conversations of their own,
crinkle underfoot, snap like castanets
keeping time for a Spanish dance.
They swirl
spiral
gambol
echo ghostly as footsteps
on a silent street.When the wind arises
the relinquishing of leaves creates
a lonely sound, like a melody
of futile tears.
Leaves spin
rustle, reel
and twist.They heap
collect
defy rakings
become a prelude of another spring.You were right, Walt Whitman,
when you wrote with an effusion
of words.
Only a symphony can describe
falling leaves.© Betsy Kennedy
You Always Have an Answer
When I say:
I think God visited me in a dream last night
you say: So what was it you ate for dinner?
When I say:
I think that God may have a perfect love for you and me
you say: Wishful thinking.
When I say:
My grandfather spoke to me from heaven
you say: That was your brain chemistry talking.
And when I say:
Maybe, just maybe, we’ll have life eternal
you say: Where’s your evidence?
I’ve heard your answers for so long now
I think they must come from a broken heart
come sit with me for a while
let us put aside all these questions, all these opinions.
Maybe infinite love will touch us
maybe in silence He will cherish us
maybe there will be no more need for
my doubt, your certitude, our terrible loss.© Fred Andrle, The Radio Poet
www.fredandrle.com
I seeI see in his eyes,
I see in her eyes,
I see in my eyes,
I see in your eyes;
sadness,
softened only by the hope
that animals can love.© Rick Klaus Theis
Vincent Paints Me As Nude“Painting is sometimes sowing,
though the painter may not reap.”
- Vincent Van GoghAh, Vincent, your words are blue-black
as the shadow shrouding the Sower.
I weep, but you do not fool me.
You are the stooped fellow
with the square hand.
Your face has no features:
no orange beard, no ears, no eyes
wild from staring into the burning skies.
Your outstretched arm casts grains
of love over violet furrows.The setting sun at your back
balances just above the line
of sanity and holds you from careening
into the depths of madness.You paint me as tree
in thickest blue just like your garb
of death. Like you, I am bent
by the heartaches of life.
I yearn toward you. Though my roots
reach deep into the grave,
today I will not gasp for breath.Through spring and summer,
I have camouflaged crows haunting
my branches with leaves overlapping
like your brushstrokes.And now, Vincent, despite your reputation,
you smooth rough bark
I have wrapped about the winter bareness
of my feelings. With sturdy rings,
you wed my blood sheared branches
into green-yellow sky and pink cloud.
You soothe scars gnarled into my ribs
by those who failed to cut my heart out.
With gentlest strokes you caress
your name across my bosom.Before the sun drops
and you journey to starry skies,
you beget autumn growth within my soul.
Love you have sown rises with you
beyond my broken boughs
to starry skies. New shoots reach out
from my heart to embrace the sun.Vincent, you have exposed
the strength of my nakedness.
I weep because you cannot reap
the harvest of my love.© Rose Ann Spaith
God, Vincent, and the Poet
animals with the
power of gods – recipe
for catastrophe© Rick Klaus Theis
JULY/AUGUST 2017
Now at Twilight
at the corner of Whatever
& High we mumble about
what has been, this restaurant
an insufficient heir to that
café we always loved until
it became the place to be,
and then we turned awayday-trippers twist their ankles
on the unfamiliar sidewalks,
where a hint of risk stabs
the thrill of a pulled hangnail
into Saturday night, its whiff of
knowing cool offering everything
a visitor can imagine and fearthis is the walk we take
through the city that on weekdays
forgets it doesn’t need a theme
song to love itself, a patchwork
of streets where we count
small steps and much of
what we know is wrongthis air sings murals and poems
that expand the landscape,
build new forms of transport
to lift us into the familiar
with eyes that force open
windows onto what we
hoped to flee yesterdaysomething yet unseen is
bending all our bridges into
lines scratched on blueprints
by deft hands that move each
of us across a chessboard
or cast a pair of dice to see
who’ll wear our cloaks home© Steve Abbott
we think the artist
is “far out”—instead he is
really just “far in”© Rick Klaus Theis
No NeedNo need to worry. No need to plan or pine.
No need to look back. Now is the only time.
You are the opening of a flower
And the birth of a nation –
The first step toward
Ultimate creation.
No need for protection;
No need for aggression.
Just open your heart and soul
In every direction.
Then beauty streams in from without
And love streams out from within
As the Great Spirit flows
Through everything.
© Rick Klaus Theis
gathered over years
thinned out now and then – books leafed
through, but never read© Rick Klaus Theis
MAY/JUNE 2017
If we allowed
If we allowed ourselves
To really feel this life
In its enormity:
In absorbing the infinite love,
We would instantly explode;
And simultaneously, we’d be
Strangled and crushed
By the ubiquitous pain—
All of which is us.
So we buy into society
And accept for sanity and security
Roles that allow us
To contain ourselves,
Become mere caricatures,
Modulate and artificialize our souls—
A protective act
That has allowed
Our freakishly big-brained species
To survive lo these many centuries.
But at what cost?
We are left with no chance
To ponder all that we have lost.
Too fast, time escapes and
Being evaporates.
Long before we can fathom it,
The miracle of life is wholly missed—
Once we trade real living
To merely exist.
© Rick Klaus Theis
‘elders know better,’
a young me thought; older now,
it’s clear they do not© Rick Klaus Theis
MARCH/APRIL 2017
Lonely Piano
My empty bench is
a bare plateau
shimmering in the sun.My keys see everything
in black and white, wish
for a single hand’s touch.Strings gather dust.
Songs gather themselves
into a chorus of sighs
no one hears.All these notes
with nowhere to go.© Steve Abbott
Vincent Defies Crows over the Field
of Wheat and Chooses
the Other Side of MadnessThey do not need roads,
those shrill Furies flying toward us.
With consummate artistry
Vincent has twisted his wrist
between the down and the up strokes
as he paints bold black vees.
Beaks of the frenzied beasts are aimed
straight out of the picture at us.The swell of thick gold grains
should have been harvested weeks ago.
Low and near, black thunderheads trouble violet skies.
And, those mysterious roads.With the poet, let us ponder which to follow.
One curves across the bottom
of the canvas. With a cascade of brushstrokes,
it begins left and exits right. We must infer
the muddy brown section off-canvas.There, unseen, the fork begins
and rises through the wheat.
Abruptly it narrows and disappears
beyond a bend. We could join the artist
as he traverses this less traveled grassy path.Strident cries from Furies
born of Vincent’s blood greet us.
The horizon with its burden of clouds
is hoisted toward us. Agitation in the labyrinth
of wheat disturbs our equilibrium.Determined to stay the course,
Vincent becomes lost to us.
We who cannot draw
the two lines of a vee
as a crow gone mad
turn back to the solid safety
of the brown earth road.© Rose Ann Spaith
Beyond the ShadowsRaindrops collect on tree limbs,
create a jeweled necklace
as I might wear.
Birds, undaunted by rain,
sing surprise songs.The cat stares out the window
at birds that flutter by,
then curls up with his own dreams.In the silence of the room
I imitate the cat – find a book
of poems – perhaps Emily Dickinson,
who wrote invitingly of spring,
and begin to read.I am content, until I look up, aware
of the black shadow of a crow,
looming across the glass.
The near-spring day seems less
promising. Fears intrude.I wonder what’s ahead in the shadows.
Soon it will be Easter.
Do the dead, remembering talk
of a resurrection, grow restless
in the dark, frozen ground?© Betsy Kennedy
Beethoven
It’s a solid gray picture on my glass sliding
door today, but I still admire everything about it.
The Sunday branches barely being touched by the cautiously
approaching high winds, just enough to give a sweet
soft motion to the overcast waking skies, if you
stare at it long enough. And the hint of
bubbling just under the surface tiny peeking buds upand down the long slender hairless arms. I’d like
to see that suddenly perfect color up close and
personal. The bees, what’s left of them, are glad
to comply I’ll bet. And the serious houses waiting
to crack a Spring smile on top of each
other, following every street sign to its current concrete
conclusion, like pieces played down on some crazy boardgame. Yesterday I heard my first invisible bird of
the year and it was magnificent, ordinary and more
beautiful than Beethoven in its loud deafness. A living
wind chime. A bell with a heartbeat. A tinkling
foghorn. It lifted me out of myself. I floated
like a leaf. I unfurled like a flag. I
smiled like a poet. Stretched like a cat. Stoodlike a lighthouse. Sat like a sea shore, heart
bobbing like a seahorse (attached by tail to a
strong green strand of Atlantic seaweed), splashing passing whales
with playful waves from both my hands. All because
one lone bird being was feeling the need to
celebrate the moment we shared. The inside barrier was
demolished. Then the bird left, and I wrote you.© Darryl Price
The Ferocious Silence
Earth rotates a bit.
The morning arrives fresh flowered.
Yellow and red daffodils and tulips
dewed shrewd in sunlight.
Bright flight crows cawing somewhere,
starlings crawling,
squirrels bird feeder puzzled;
chipmunks burrowing with fuzzy logic
while above Landsat documents
all the erosion, snap snap;
bird seeds, weeds, and buried nuts
randomly strewn among the tulips
and crocuses and lilacs
and glads ready to green and grow tall
and spread windier color pink
green sunshine waves back action
freely blowing in the treeless meadow
of my soul, such silent sadness
where only old world asphodels grow,
nurtured mostly with passive water
where worms undulate feminine dilemmas.
Worms and bugs and slugs and process
and decay and disease
give green red light goodness
cooked stewed in energized
microwaved nuclear society.
Fate found Mel Fisher on sea horizon,
as he sucked on the Atocha,
it came up the pipe and in,
indirect spiritual revenge,
one more golden son set.
Bardo without, bardo within.
Within without.© Michael “Bookie” Buchenroth, 1974
(1953-2008)
think we’re destroying
the earth? no, we are forcing
it to destroy us© Rick Klaus Theis
On the verge of spring
And rising temperatures;
But winter descends.© Sharon Reeb
more often than not
the unthinkable is caused
by the unthinking© Rick Klaus Theis
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017
Listen To Our Birds
We know a poem isn’t going to stop you
from invading our town. It won’t get you to
listen to our birds any more than to our
sunsets. That’s not why we do it. We knowanother poem isn’t going to break the blade of
your knife like an invisible karate move. It’s not
meant to. What it does is sing, nothing more,
nothing less. It lets loose a certain rhythm, aback beat, that’s all. It provides a place for
a single voice to exist among the annihilation and
carnage of endless war. It carries the words of love
to always new ears. It doesn’t strap on bombsbefore it goes to marketplace. You don’t find it,
it finds you. We know a poem won’t stop
you from rigging the election, from buying the favors of
bad men, from selling out
people for profit.All it does is sing, and sing, and sing
some more. If this irritates you, we’re so sorry
for the rather rude inconvenience of our humming
together for peace. We know a poem is not goingto stare down a tank barrel for too long.
We get it. Sooner or later you’re going to
have to look at your million-dollar watch and
make a million-dollar nasty decision before it getstoo late for any decent dinner-time. There are those who
are with you all the way to the
proverbial bank. They’d like to use all those annoying
poems for some kind of ballistic target practice.We know a poem isn’t your thing. You can’t tell
us apart. You think we all look the same.
Of course this is all part of the ongoing
sadness created when you ignore
the poem’s sound.We know a poem isn’t going to make us
any new friends. We’ve all known a poem that
was burned in your bonfires. But did you know
this one is for you? It’s about feeling something.© Darryl Price
The Ferocious Silence
Goals
my life goal is to reach a state of
‘steady monetary income for minimal amount of work that i don’t
want to do’long term
some of my short term goals include, ‘utilizing all my “free time” to
promote my literary career’ and ‘eating a “giant fucking salad”
sometime soon, because i’m hungry’food is a physiological necessity intrinsic in all animals
and governments, republicans, democrats, meat-eaters, the USDA, and
police are (in)directly making it impossibly hard for certain
demographics of people and other animals to obtain foodi know this because every six seconds a human child under the age of
twelve dies of starvationi also know that seconds are unidirectional and that age is a
preconceived notion based on time (which is unidirectional) -
meaning age does not denote wisdom or seniority, it just denotes
itself, whatever that issome of my other life goals include, ‘feeling like i recently ingested
coffee without having recently ingested coffee’ and ‘making the world
a better place for people who are “born into shit”people who are born do not ask to be born
a person does not ask to pick coffee beans for two cents an hour, to pay
for food, to feed their children and themselves, to maintain internal
body heat, to remain breathingpeople do not ask for this
things just happen this way
other life goals of mine include ‘acceptance’ and ‘the complete
realization of the thought that “things just happen this way”i will treat my body and my brain well, attempting to sensually
experience/ingest only that which will aid me in obtaining my goalsi will use my thoughts to control my emotions and behaviors, because
thoughts control emotions and behaviors and thoughts are
perceptions of everything we experience sensuallyand because i want to feel productive and satisfied, physiologically and
cognitivelyokay
© Jordan Castro
if i really wanted to feel happy i'd feel happy already
(Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2013)
So it is not the end,
but the beginning.
Not poverty,
but wealth,
and the tattered
odds and ends
become new cloth,
the cold leftovers
a warm meal, and
famished, I eat.© Tom Thomson
(1924-2015)
Soul Candy
I bask in fluorescent licorice twists of perception;
Charms laced with dynamite curls, a powder brusque chain and choo choo kick.
I am readymade livid because welts wielded from words: the linkage swirling in and out of view
With the wind,
Pain sieves through my eyes: your voice erodes
Rocks to carry
The dissociative lullabies, the sugar drop tears.© Alfonse Battistelli
boss rushes by so
fast that wind in his wake takes
seconds to arrive© Rick Klaus Theis
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016
Pulling Yourself Up By Yourbootstraps will do nothing
but leave you where you are,knocked on your ass
wondering what to donext: exactly what it did
in the 19th centurywhen it was common
as a figure of speech,a form of hyperbole
describing the impossible.Which explains why
those on top keeptelling everyone else
that’s how they did it.© Steve Abbott
Full MoonFool moon, full of pride,
Beams all night, so sure his light
Has its source inside.© Rick Klaus Theis
Shovelreveals
what’s underneath,
upends the normal
order, dirt over
grass. It covers
and recovers, patient
as mourners leave
gravesides. It moves,
makes a place for
plants, pea gravel,
carries the dead
rat to a dumpster.
In the end, there’s
another hole
opened or
deepened, filled
again and again
as life delivers
in spades.© Steve Abbott
end and beginning –
new life in greener pastures
beyond the river© Yvonne Hardenbrook
Hummingbird?
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2016
Familiar
Goodbye,
my little
sentinel. Your spirit, so
fierce and
beautiful,
taught me not
just how to love but
also how to
conquer
life –
that
is, go
gleefully
on the ride,
relish everything . . . then fly© Sharon Reeb
In memory of my little dachshund, Daisy, who passed away from my life July 25, 2016, and is sorely missed
St. Paul’s CatSt. Paul’s cat traveled
all over Asia Minor with him.
She snuggled inside his cloak
when he walked from Athens to Corinth
and from Corinth to Ephesus.
She purred in his lap
when he wrote letters to Timothy.
Much to his pride
she caught rats on the ship
when he sailed from Caesarea to Rome.When she had a slight case of hairball,
St. Luke cured her
without having to waste a miracle.Much to St. Paul’s embarrassment,
his cat was continually pregnant.
Children of Corinth,
Ephesus, Antioch, Damascus
– all over Anatolia –
argued over her kittens.
Once the great saint
had to resort to passing the kitties
of other mother cats
as those of his cat
to pacify the parents
of the children who wanted
one of his cat’s kittens.Cats are God’s way
of making fools of us all.© Rose Ann Spaith
JULY/AUGUST 2016
Vincent’s Cat Draws his Picture of The Artist
Faithful as any dog I was to him.
And I ask you, How many times
did he paint me? Once.
Once he sketched me –
sitting next to a flower garden in Arles,
almost as if he didn’t realize I was posing.
Blink and you’ll miss me.When he came home late and ate half-baked,
half-burnt beans out of the kettle,
I licked the spoon with him.Still, I have to give him credit. He always
brought me fresh fish heads from the restaurant.
A shame Theo didn’t send him a check every day!Nights he prowled over to the brothel,
I climbed the fence to serenade
the local Arlesian pusses. Damn fine feline fatales.
Claimed themselves descended
from Greek goddesses.When kids heckled my master’s red hair,
they made fun of my rumpled orange too.
But I could hold my own with any Arlesian Tom.
My ear was cut off before Vincent’s
– and not by my own paw.My coat and whiskers grew a bit worse for the wear
of life with Vincent. And flecked
with yellow and red and green dots.
When Vincent turned a bit loony,
flicking brushes clean,
the old furrerino took the rattatatat.So you could say, Vincent painted me
in pointillist style.But he did not paint my portrait.
He did not confer on me the fame
of Monsieur and Madame Roulin, their children
and the other Provençal folks he painted.I was Vincent’s loyal cat
and no one has heard of me.
Perhaps I should remember fish heads
and forgive him. After all,
he didn’t paint Theo’s portrait either.
© Rose Ann Spaith
God, Vincent, and The Poet: A First Collection of Poems Written in Response to the Life and Labor of Vincent Van Gogh, 2011
Are you calloused,
are you cruel?
Like a hunter
out of season
you winged this bird.
I flutter in dread,
unable to fly
and you,
you walk away,
not looking back.
© Tom Thomson
(1924-2015)
My Conscience is a CatMy conscience is a cat
Unknown to me, that
Stalks in the very core
Of the unexplored night,
Then claws at the door
Begging to share my light.
Once in, complacent, fat,
He snoozes by the fire.
My slave? Or my sire?© Tom Thomson
(1924-2015)
SweetenersThey drop themselves right
into the mix like
parachuting seeds, only
these pods theyspring from are the
everyday open
doors we all pass through on
our way to andfrom breaths. Ah, why call it
anything else
but ordinary, this miracle
life?
© Darryl Price
The Ferocious Silence, 2016
Elephant with a little Poet on top of its Head“Every word was once an animal.” - Emerson
This circle has been
Broken. The mother has
Disappeared inside the wounds
Of gunfire like an
Eye drop. Who knows if
Any of them limped, crunched,
Down, whole again into the graveyard’s
Sacred cusp after that forcedCrawl? If teeth were
Yanked out while they
Were still crying for
Mercy from the poachers?
What makes for a bit
Of elephant luck in the
World today? A mud bath
Or a hard swing ofTrunk into the face
Of a dental hunter?
They are related to
Us through stardust and
Just plain dust. Their children’s
Eyes want the same answers
Our own ask. Are we
Loved and can we love?Or is that too
Much? A passionate life
Filled with passionate kisses,
And hugs from friends?
Without her they must learn
To reinvent the world once
More. There is no time.
The circle’s wobbly at best.It will take years
To find the wisdom
To understand their heart’s
Secret language again. She
Used to sing it to them.
It sounded so right. Now
Something’s breaking down for both
Of us, Dear Ones.(Show me the way
you Angels of words
please I pray to
speak and be heard.)© Darryl Price
The Ferocious Silence, 2016
Wince World, creating magic in the 'hood since '88 « © Photo Fred Scruton Lunar Love
“Shine on, O moon of summer...” – Carl Sandburg
Summer nights the mellow moon
hangs lonesome,
its light shines across my porch,
mingles with shadows.“Let’s play,” the moon says,
as it slips from the sky.
I toss you back and forth,
a soft yellow ball,
from one hand to the other.Some nights the moon invents
its own game – hide and seek –
as dark clouds pass over,
obscures the light,
then reveals it again.I want to reach up, moon,
fasten you around my neck
like a golden locket.
I’ll hide my love’s picture
inside,
the name – a whispered
secret.Ah, summer moon,
you are a mood maker
that inspires lingering
“blues” on an Orleans street.
You are rhythmic as jazz
pieces echoing
from Ellington tunes
played on pianos in secluded
cafes.© Betsy Kennedy
haiku, gentle bud
opens to curious sun:
illumination© Rick Klaus Theis
MAY/JUNE 2016
An Esteemed Citizen of Arles
Becomes an Art Critic
at the Café TerraceThere’s that lunatic painter again
with a circle of candles around his hat.
He looks at us, dabs madly at the palette,
then smears paint all over the canvas.No need to rush, plenty of empty tables.
Don’t take one too close to him.
When he’s around, I can almost
hear the mistral thrashing inside his head.Those gas lights. How wonderful they are,
prolonging daytime
these darkening autumn nights.
Soon there will be no need for moon and stars.Blue. Orange. Yellow. Red. Green.
What does that crazy fellow
need all those colors for
if he’s doing night? Isn’t it black?I wonder if he’s painting us into his picture.
I’m not going to look, so I’ll never know.
What does it matter? He’s no Rembrandt.
No one will ever remember him.Let’s move to a back table.
I can smell his candles way over here.
The fool. One of these days
he’s going to burn himself up.
© Rose Ann Spaith
God, Vincent, and The Poet: A First Collection of Poems Written in Response to the Life and Labor of Vincent Van Gogh, 2011
While Walking
With my Grandfather, talking,
Startled, he stopped to point and say,
As many times as I’ve been this way,
I’ve never seen that TV tower,
Over there, above those flowers.© Michael Bookie Buchenroth, 1974
(1953-2008)
Monday Evening
Strolling merrily down the street
Hand in hand pointing out buildings
That inspire and cause stirrings
Of wonderment, we feel complete
Walking in this city replete
With distinct districts and sightings
Of public art, the city sings!
A rising song, to the river's beat.
As we come on the Scioto
We spot on the far river bank
A man under a plain white spread.
We then notice the news cameras
On either side of the crowd's flank.
A man was found, in the river – dead.© Justin David Koehn, 2016
somber walk along
cemetery pond, then <<splash>> –
very alive frog!© Rick Klaus Theis
MARCH/APRIL 2016
An Author's LifeShaky with apprehensions,
poorer this year than the last,
existing in the place between
what will be and what has passedit’s an author’s life for me
I have given the benefit of every doubt,
and during fevers of eloquence,
found myself electrified absolutely
by the lightning bolt of musethis current flowing through me,
greater than any currency
it has given me friends that span oceans wide
there are no borders here, no blind pridewe are bound
by our love of words,
and have found
an all embracing tenderness
that shows us
there should be no other way.© Eric Vance Walton
Follow his unfolding story on Facebook at www.facebook.com/EricVanceWaltonAuthor
myths that demonize
losers, justify crimes of
winners: history© Rick Klaus Theis
The Poet: On First Seeing Vincent’s Field of Poppies
For a moment, acres
of red silk petals balance
in a jubilee of May gaiety.
Almost all the sky
dances in light blue merriment.
No black crows cast shadows
over the extravagant field
of brightest poppies.
No three roads leading nowhere
oppress the eye with impossible choices.
There are hints of what will happen
when red petals drop
and fly away on the winds,
when wheat ripens to gold.
Back and high, in deep azure,
black streaks like thunderclouds menace.
Under them, blacker in its foreboding,
despair lies in wait
among a few distant hills.
A few gloomy trees
burden the left edge
of the horizon line
of spring golden trees.
Hints that foreshadow doom
in the corner of a scene
remain hints,
unworthy of more than a glance,
while the promenade of poppies
close to the eye
inspires others to celebrate red flowers
that they never observed before,
to write poems of expectancy.© Rose Ann Spaith
God, Vincent, and The Poet: A First Collection of Poems Written in Response to the Life and Labor of Vincent Van Gogh, 2011
BetrayedThe day she was eighty the mirror
reflected dark-circled eyes
that seemed to belong to someone else.
She could still recall how swiftly
her young body had moved,
the memory of penny dreams
clutched tightly in her hand
as she ran to the corner candy store.Years of laughter, play, love
were stacked neatly in her mind
like blankets awaiting winter use.
The candle glow of “Happy Birthdays”
had given her a lifetime of warmth.Yet amid April’s resurrection
she felt a betrayal in her bones,
wished once more for porcelain skin,
shedding old for new,
that desire might return
silky as petals of spring flowers.© Betsy Kennedy
Lawn MowingThe green steel bladed
red and gasoline grass colored
dead brown oiled grass textured
Briggs and Stratton, trimming,
soothing resonance humming
a tall lawn, low-toned,
widening
path through early to seed brome,
meadow foxtail and intermixed blue devil,
yellow mustard and stinging nettle
with wild oats and dead Bermuda baritone
and plain grass
and brown and yellow spotted
carpet from autumn past.Catching its wind,
there where the lawn drains well
and the green thins,
its RPMs increasing fully
now singing full-throttled
it throws quite a distance
wispy green resonance
one stripe each sweep high-toned
cyclic chorus,
swirling, like peppermint
neatly chewing,
Pennycress and Rhode Island bent
nimble Will medleythrough the irregular new season,
cleaning the yellow spotted carpet,
Stanley Steemer-like blow’n chromium
green steam
carpet clean’n like furiously angered TV beating
that surrounds the
American past time’s objective
Like television beating.Flying chipmunks break jungle vines
into stingy bark scraps
frugal and fluttering in the breeze.
Scraps battling elephants triumphantly
screaming lightening like screams.Above, a black and blue jaybird twirps,
change the channel please,
perched upon 250,000 volts
energizing TVs,
whining electric lawn mowers,
much further up the line.
Black in graves
along the paved highway,
the crow—
searching for corn amidst neat rows—
will fly away if the mower mows too close.
Change the channel please.
Get off that God Damn antenna!
Bird.
You! with the yellow orange beak,
singing that propaganda:The nut is the egg that
Tells a story about who sat
Upon the stool in the park
Around the tree in which the lark
Sings a song just right to hear
If eating a pear
Upon the bench
Swinging a wrench.The sparkplug must need gapped,
the antenna turned,
channel changed,
an Equinox.© Michael “Bookie” Buchenroth, 1975
(1953-2008)
The Sweet GumsEach year my father marked spring
by the first sweet gum buds.
Spotting the first green-yellow nubs,
shoulders squared, he’d say,
“I guess we’ll make it now, the gums are out.”
They gave him strength, a brand new start;
respite from shoveling coal, and other winter chores—
from chronic asthma cough.As a child I sat cross-legged
and pinned their leaves with slender sticks,
created baskets, hats,
in fall gathered the prickly brown seed balls.Now I sit hunched and old,
clasping bony knees with thin-boned hands.
I peer through crooked boughs, and strain
bifocaled eyes
for signs of resurrection.A bulldozer rests near my fence line
poised for action.
Our trees will be upturned, tossed aside,
their tough gnarled roots upraised in protest.The wrecking ball of progress knocks hard
against my door
and I sit here hugging arthritic knees
searching for the final nubs
on my sweet gum trees.© Laura Hank Hilton
(1912-2003)
life’s a series of
lessons—learn the small ones now,
or they come back big© Rick Klaus Theis
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016
birdfeeder
its tall cap of snow
a little cocked© Yvonne Hardenbrook
Cicada
Morning Song
It is five o’clock in the morning.
I see nothing wrong walking alone
This old Appalachian road – tucked
In by hills – listening to birdsong.The entire ensemble is playing:
Timpani by ruffed grouse and a chat,
Thrushes’ silver notes accompanying
The vireo string section in E-flat.A Carolina wren, cheerful bard,
Yodels from a wooded rill,
Accenting tanager, oriole, bunting,
And a prairie warbler’s rising trill.Other than myself, the only listeners
Are a flying squirrel in his loge,
And a trio of deer gowned in beige,
Volunteer ushers, I suppose.The genius composer though unknown,
Hints in dark ways I am unaware
Of ice ages, corridors of time flown,
Of secrets unsuspect in music so rare.© Tom Thomson
July 10, 1984
Human EnergyHuman energy knows
No dimension:
Neither space,
Nor limit,
Nor time –
A power yet unmapped
And untapped,A power wasted
Like our resources,
Blown up
Like our atom bombs,
Ignored
Like our homeless.Our souls hunger,
Like our starving billions,
To harness this
Inexhaustible powerCalled love.
© Rick Klaus Theis
placid stream
shadows of bare sycamores
crossing over
© Yvonne Hardenbrook
Geppo, 1997
Last words are painful,
drawn out,
like on the phone,
until there is no more to say.
But, now, that has changed.
I say to you
there are no last words,
only new beginnings.© Tom Thomson
what’s that I see?what’s that I see? it’s...
(fill in the image you see in your mind here)
it makes me feel so...
(fill in the feeling you feel here)
it makes me dream of...
(fill in the dream you have here)
I am a beautiful part of the dream and my beauty is...
(fill in expressions of your beauty here)
my beauty compliments the beauty of the earth...
(fill in expressions of the earth’s beauty here)
and our beauty compliments the entire universe...
(fill in expressions of the universe’s beauty here)
including all life bound together on this small planet...
(fill in expressions of that beauty here)
all of these wonderful images make me want to...
(fill in an image of you doing that here)
I’m going to do that right now.
(do it...do it...do it...)
© Rick Klaus Theis
equanimity –
survival strategy
for harsh reality© Rick Klaus Theis
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2015
not boomer, gen x
or millennial—I am
a perennial© Rick Klaus Theis
god is a many
tentacled beast—every
creature, you and me© Rick Klaus Theis
I must travel far
to fully understand,
but clouds are lifting,
I pull myself up
from the cliff’s edge.
Above me in sunshine
I see dazzling peaks,
and brilliant birds
spiraling upward
into the air.
© Tom Thomson, 1979
traffic WALK sign
a pigeon up ahead
steps off the curb© Yvonne Hardenbrook
Haiku Headlines
JULY/AUGUST 2015
Oscar The GrowlerShe walked out of a garbage dumpster
with a slight limp
black,
black like a dirty kitten.She never washed up snowy white
like foundling cats in humorous poems.
One time she became white
after she sneaked
onto the kitchen counter,
swatted a half-full bag of flour
to the floor,
and pounced on its contents.She continued to enjoy garbage
with the same gusto
as furry-faced Oscar,
the Sesame Street character
for whom she was named.
She wasn’t a Grouch but a Growler.She growled for “Breakfast”
(the first and only word she learned).
She growled while she ate breakfast.
She growled at my two old cats
and tried to steal their food.She growled at my old cats too
as she slapped and spit them
out of their favorite perches and chairs
and settled herself in.She even growled while she purred.
She growled at the vet.
He verified her sex
(she was a girl),
felt a pin in her back right leg
that once must have been broken.
He gave her the required shots
and guessed her to be eight months old.Growling, she scratched me more
in one week
than my other two cats together
had
in five years.
Then she kissed me.Growling and black she came.
Black, she remained.© Rose Ann Spaith
A Poem for Rose
In a blue painted room
with cats curled up like commas,
and books inviting as warm glances
from young girls,
we have revealed our words
for others.
Carefully
as we would handle fragile ornaments,
the unsaid words,
words, long nurtured are freed,
spilled out
in the room’s kind candlelight.
Cats uncurl,
punctuate the waiting silence
with their meows
when the poets meet at Rose’s house.© Betsy Kennedy
Lucky Pierre
The ad urged
I come to Huntsman Springs
there I could learn
why a rare white buffalo
is called 'Lucky Pierre'
Despite the ad's entreaty
my pockets were empty and needy
But I had to wonder--
Did Pierre get all six numbers
in the Powerball?
Or maybe he was lucky in love,
adored by a sweet heifer
despite his poor grazing habits
Perhaps he is lucky not to be born
in the nineteenth century when
surely a wag in the railway crew
about to feast on his carcass
would say, "I only like the white meat"
A certain European would say
"He eez luckee becauz he eez French"
Or maybe he's lucky he doesn't dwell
on the past
The past is all chewed grass
The future may hold fresh pastures
where good rumination may come.
He is lucky because he is about the now
and in the now
he's as famous as a buffalo can be
And that's something to ruminate on.© John Vazquez
solstice afternoon
the ice cube in my tea
turns over© Yvonne Hardenbrook
Palomar
compiling haiku –
legacy thought, then pangs of
existential dread© Rick Klaus Theis
beams of light and heat
from outer space strike my face –
head tilted toward sun© Rick Klaus Theis
time for breakfast
the cat in its usual place
between my feet
© Yvonne Hardenbrook
Geppo, 1997
even with the key
to all happiness and peace
our lives still will cease© Rick Klaus Theis
MAY/JUNE 2015
BAR HARBOR
Summers we played among the pilings,
ignored old men who sat mending their nets
as if they had always been a part of the rocks.
We had tired of their stories of hard work,
treacherous storms. Each boasted larger catches.
Instead we climbed the glacier rocks,
absorbed sun on the beach,
listened to wind roar in Thunder Hole,
and said, “The fog’s romantic.”Artists, too, came in summer,
captured the old men on canvas in gray clumps
of paint, with their wide-brimmed sea hats
pulled over lonely faces.
They painted traps, the colorful harbor,
spider nets woven in and out
the men’s rough hands.Long after we leave the fishermen still sit,
huddled in their slickers,
dark pouched clouds on the landscape.
They mend their nets. Strong cords remind them
of the tug of the sea.
Old men, who no longer dwell on youth,
or mermaids,
dream of lobster, and their daily fill of clams.© Betsy Kennedy
after the storm
the black cat emerges
from somewhere© Yvonne Hardenbrook
RawNervz 1994
closer to shore
each blur becomes a person
place or thing© Yvonne Hardenbrook
GEPPO
MARCH/APRIL 2015
AVIAN HAIKU
Flashes of yellow
Appearing at the feeder
Goldfinches bring springSinging so sweetly
Precious little chickadee
In your tuxedo
Hummingbird so still
Perched gently on the tree branch
Blink and you are gone
Early morn late night
Cardinal melodies trill
Burst of red in flightThe nuthatch’s plan
Snatch one seed from the feeder
Tuck it in the barkAll the singing ceased
The red tailed hawk has arrived
Dare not make a moveThe yard comes to life
Warmer climes are calling all
Fly south my sweet friends© Cindy Downs Hartsook
Waiting for Spring
My friend writes from Paris.
Spring there is farther along.
Already lilacs have bloomed
and faded.
I hope some sweet scent remains
for lovers strolling along the Seine.An ocean away I await faltering
spring that is one day chill, the next warm.
Brave tulips withstand sudden snow,
daffodils are flattened against the cold.Elsewhere there’s too much rain
and flooding,
or not enough rain that brings drought,
and always the threat of tornados.Each season will have its way.
Yet I must observe the returning
spring with haste,
for the flowering moments are brief.
Just yesterday the forsythia was a burst
of gold,
now gone.© Betsy Kennedy
erratic weather
reminds: no seasonal mold,
each day is unique© Rick Klaus Theis
warm morning
the strum of a 12-string
somewhere close by© Yvonne Hardenbrook
Woodnotes
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
DeeperThat Fall, before the snows came
the bees buzzed in spite of us
and nature still danced its magicsomething in us knew
that life would never be the same
we closed our eyes and soaked
up the rays of the sun
as though we wanted
to hoard them in a cupboard
to feast upon in the midnight hour
our superpower against
the gathering darknessI snickered at the thought
but the only choice was to endure
what was to come
and let it change us
to learn, to grow
and develop a deeper appreciation for the warmth of the sun.© Eric Vance Walton
https://ericvancewalton.wordpress.com
SMS/SOSYes, check it again:
the phone for that icon
the red one that says
you remember me,
miss me, and so on.I only told you explicitly
Do not text me
taunt me, or
otherwise haunt me.So what's taking so long?
© James Payne
cell phone rings between
show’s songs – pianist mimics
ringtone to big laughs© Rick Klaus Theis
winter dusk –
from somewhere the snoring
of a black cat© Yvonne Hardenbrook
New Zealand, ‘92
NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2014
shopping rush
a Santa cuts me off
in traffic© Yvonne Hardenbrook, Geppo
one more ride
with the top down—
winter stars
© Yvonne Hardenbrook, Woodnotes, 1992
when life was less than
half lived, I saw a half-full
glass – wish I still did© Rick Klaus Theis
we’re to meet at a
place the map says no longer
exists – troubling dream.© Rick Klaus Theis
like a lumberjack,
she chips away at my love
for her—then... “timber!”© Rick Klaus Theis
OCTOBER 2014
Just Like Life
Telephone bill came due,
Just as electricity seems
more costly than heat waves,
sweating bodies.Rent lurks just ahead too.
The ride broke down; besides
license tags need renewed.
Baby sitter, furniture rental, cable TVAnd gas payment to the utility,
school clothes, accessories,
even pencils never endingly
seem fewer and fewer.Pancakes, oat meal and
that generic syrup grow bland.
Even greens, ribs, steaks, or brisket,
although seeming like an annual picnicIn this part of town, contraband
smuggled, cabbaged from Krogers
by a neighborhood booster—
not a supporter of the school band—Eventually grow distant too.
But, just like life; sunshine,
big paychecks, smiles, kisses,
security, love, music, and …© Michael L. Buchenroth, 1988
(1953-2008)
E Pluribus Unum
Life is holy.
We create it together
(As each moment unfolds),
Cooperatively, the parts
Of one cell – our Earth—
Within that immense body
We call God: universe,
Which is all – everything,
Everywhere, everlasting
In the vast eternal now.© Rick Klaus Theis
savoring the book
how slowly you turn
the last few pages© Yvonne Hardenbrook
Frogpond
A Season’s End
I don’t know how to say goodbye,
still nurture last flowers,
pinch off dried roses,
gather fallen petals,
the few marigolds that bloom
like bits of spilled sun.This change from one season
to another happens, regardless
of my desires.Soon crumpled leaves heaped
on the summer garden
will become a shroud against
the coming cold.The geese circle.
I hear the winter warning
in their cries
as they search for warmer places,
hidden hope beneath
their wings.© Betsy Kennedy
alarm
<<squawk... squawk... squawk>>
a rude awakening,
an unwelcome prowler
breaking and entering
my unguarded psyche,
taking me hostage,
pulling me through
its mad labyrinth
of grotesque twists
and excessive turns,
away from spaceless time
and timeless space
and into some kind of
straight-jacket, mind-set,
template overlay
until, like steam
disappearing into air,
my other choices for being
have boiled away.©- Rick Klaus Theis
how well will we deal
with machine neurosis once
they have consciousness?© Rick Klaus Theis
JULY/AUGUST 2014
Lament For Anne Sexton
At seventeen I scribbled poems
on backs of homework papers
in hot study halls, hid the poems –
little sweet-scented sachets
in some forgotten drawer.Love meant sitting on the porch
on warm summer nights,
wishing on the first star,
dreaming the boy next door
might be Robert Taylor.You grabbed the stars,
slid your poems like sideways moons
under doors of literary agents,
and married at nineteen.We share the same birth year.
Now you are gone,
while I search among fragments
of words for new beginnings.© Betsy Kennedy
Weeds Wind
Weedwhackers whack butterfly rest stops
Anywhere — nowhere — pop . . .
Life seems forever nowhere weed,
weed everywhere
An empty parade,
Weeds waving in breeze emptily.Meaning flirts; butterfly skirts,
Weedwhackers plastic whack jugular veins;
Plants unable to cope—
Weeds!Life seems weedlike
Ready for whacking
Sucked dry.
And for what?Fleeting butterfly beauty?
Weedwhacker death within emotion?
Motion?
Still weeds wave with wind
Breezing plastic emotion—
Artificialness?Meaning defined
Meaning uanswered—
Answered dreams - hope - life.
Confusion.It seems simple and pure enough
But,
Meaning seems always away,
Away endlessly flirting,
Butterfly rest stops,
Weeds.
Weeds in the wind.
Weedwhacker whack me please,
Please don’t whack me.© Michael "Bookie" Buchenroth (1987)
(1953-2008)
Porcelain Figurines
There are a lot of cigarettes happening.
If not actually
if not currently
always evinced:
in wallpaper, on ceilings
settled in carpet remnants
within the wood paneling
coating the laminate flooring
the porcelain, the hobo figurines
everything isstained by rumors
of the next pack
the “next” serving as
a yellow tinge on all proceedings:
rose-colored glasses fit
for the Vinny Testaverde set,
sported as inevitably as death
and incurring debt.Whether a Marlboro Reds 100,
Kools, Pall Mall, or Camel filtered,
it’s accompanied by Diet Coke
twelve twelve packs packed in the corner
WWII bombers run sweeps on the mantel
hewn from that same aluminum;
“OKE” spans their wings
Caffeine-Free’s used for shading.
Cigarettes and Diet Cokes and ice,
refrigerator-door ice,
alternately cubed and crushed
depending on the two people;
one with her hip replaced
and her left knee
and her right knee
and part of her jaw
and the part of her face
not wearing the lenses
tinted pecan sandies, or
the part asking,“Who’s up for fruit brandy?”
The other has or is a bookie,
eats Capuzzelle di Agnello,
sheep brains, saying while reading USA Today:“We have extra canisters of butane.”
And:
“How’d the Brownies do on Sunday?”
© James Payne
MAY/JUNE 2014
The ApologyIn that warped fragment of time it took to flash myself back
From the 1920s to the present tense, I remembered not only
That my sister had been talking to her husband on the phone
In the parked car in front of the house that our mother used to live in
When she was younger and lighter at heart—a house as white,
When you come right down to it, as the president’s home
In Washington—but that we’d been talking before that,
From the rolled-down windows of her shiny new car
In view of the house’s plywood door, bed-sheet curtains,
Dented vinyl clapboarding, and barren front yard,
To the current residents of 1496 Minnesota Avenue,
The soft-looking but sad-seeming black woman of 50
And her apparently disabled son of 25 or 30,
Autistic, deaf and dumb, or drugged-down schizophrenic,
Who were coming down the steps when we arrived;That we’d been too shy, or too embarrassed by the obvious
Discrepancies of race and class, to ask if they could show us
The interior of the house, or even just the small back yard
Where our mother posed for a photograph under a loaded trellis
Of roses one day, with her sister and her ailing mother
Who, in a dark summer dress, with a look of sad defiance on her face,
Forty years before the neighborhood turned in the early 1960s,
Was just about to call it quits and perish from cancer of the breast;That all we’d managed to do, before they got into their own
Dented green four-door Chrysler sedan, and took off to meet
The son’s appointment, maybe, with a doctor or a social worker,
Or to get to the supermarket and back before the re-runs
Of Sanford and Sons, The Cosby Show, or The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
Had begun, was explain that we’d stopped in front of the house
To think about our late mother coming of age here
In the 20s and 30s, when their own families were probably still
Sharecropping the cotton fields or living in the squalid
Black-ghetto bottoms of the Mississippi’s tributaries;And that, in offering that information unsolicited to blank stares,
In this formerly white working-class neighborhood of Linden,
An early streetcar suburb on the northeast side of Columbus
Between North High and the airport that, like many such neighborhoods
After the migration of African Americans from the South,
From Mississippi and Alabama, the Carolinas and Georgia,
Tennessee and Louisiana, in the 1940s and 50s,
Had long since become the kind of disenfranchised district
That our overprotective mother, bless her troubled heart,
Always warned us against, observing, whenever vaguely relevant,
That it had gone “completely downhill” since she’d lived there—
That in doing that I was ignoring her own family’s history
And the hope that things for future generations might improve
At a faster rate than they had in the intervening years.But as the frightened, indifferent, or disdainful lady
Turned on the ignition, pressed the button to roll up the windows
And turn on the air-conditioning, and reached for the seat belt
Over her left shoulder while glancing back to see if I was still there,
I, in a desperate effort to apologize for my nosiness,
Practically lurched toward the car to impede its forward motion,
And almost added, by way of geographic education,
Even as her car left the curb for the street, that we knew
This was now a slum beset by all the sordid problems
Of endemic urban poverty, with a black market thriving
On stolen guns, addictive drugs, and exploited women,
Check-cashing agencies, Pentecostal storefront churches,
Boarded-up markets, and locked-down liquor stores banking
Both sides of the main drag, and that we were sorry—
We were truly sorry, even as she put her foot to the pedal
And dragged our attention off—that the whole place had been neglected
For more than four decades now, for nearly half a century,
By the white-flight suburban mainstream society
That to this day drives to every glittering downtown
Cluster of skyscrapers on its way to work, on highways that guard
The prosperous white blocks from the bombed-out brown.© Scott Ruescher
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Full CircleThey took away a childhood summer,
my aunts and grandmother with whispered voices
in the other room.
They waited for my mother’s time,
sat around the table, or rocked
on the porch, circling their prey.
they watched me run, said not to swing
so high as to let my skirt blow
over my knees, said
“That’s not the way a lady acts”
when I climbed the tree.
Fireflies were just that—
not diamonds pinned in hair,
or glistening rings on fingers.
Grandmother’s glasses slipped down
her nose as she surveyed my figure,
questioned again my age.
They laughed as I hid my face
in Mother’s swollen lap,
thought I didn’t know what caused
the swelling.
Knowledge they shared they held
in communal trust,
failed to understand me, still a riddle.
They never knew I dreamed of make-believe
lovers, sought some looked for beauty
in the mirror.I remember my mother’s smile overriding
the hurts, her arms comforting me, her
saying that someday I would learn the secrets.
I wanted to believe that would happen.
Yet, severed from her, my own umbilical cord
tangled,
became frayed with truths and half-truths
told my children.© Betsy Kennedy
A Prayer for the Shower
I look at the hair caught in the drain and
silently pray that this time it came
from my shoulders or from
that small patch of rough
directly above my
ass - but please
not from the
head - god
please no
more off
the
t
o
p© Adam Gellings
nude beach
only his bald spot
covered© Yvonne Hardenbrook
RawNervz 1994
Modern MarthaHer living room was green and gold and gray,
and everything was in an ordered sphere–
the emerald Cogswell chair; across the way,
a sleek gold couch with lamp and table near.
Above the sofa, flanked by twin stands small,
quaint flower prints in gilt frames nicely marched
on gray mats, three abreast. At the south wall,
around the glistening panes, precisely starched
white curtains ruffle-edged a sunny scene.
No stray book, dust, nor crumpled magazine
broke the spell of perfected housekeeping.
It seemed a shame—the dusting and the sweeping
were steady tasks, and Martha could not find
the time to brush the ravelings from her mind.© Laura Hank Hilton (1912-2003)
Tarzan Came to Town
Tarzan came to town
he got his old lady down'
she gave him a frown
didn't want him around
too much monkey business
in the treeYou big, dumb ape
He lost a good companion
a friends and a mate
She didn't like the monkey crap
and showed him to the gateYou big, dumb ape
He couldn't find a Rita
Amber, Ginny or Anita
just wound up playing
cards with his CheetahYou big, dumb ape
The old lady's not around
so he made his loud, loud
animal sound
hoping the babes would aboundThey came a-chargin' in
gorillas from the highlands
gorillas from the lowlands
Elands and elephants
Okapis and gnus
lions and tigers
and a koala, too
It was the whole freakin' zooThey crowded into his flat
and asked what is all that?
you're not enslaved
or in a cage
no white hunters to get our licks
whatever is amiss
you had to call us like this?The jungle man was most abashed
and looked like he'd been thrashed
The jungle man looked down a way
and said, "Tarzan very lonely."You big, dumb ape
You might be king of the jungle
but love dare not you bungle
Not many women would live in a tree
appliance and electric free
Not many would swim a jungle stream
and come out looking like a dream
not many women want to see your face
in her placeYou big, dumb ape
© John Vazquez
so amusing, this
human blend of god and beast—
tragicomedy© Rick Klaus Theis
harvested, bagged, chewed
then brushed from teeth – the hardy
seed sprouts from sink drain© Rick Klaus Theis
when I bite your foot
to get your shoe off my neck
I’m called ‘terrorist’© Rick Klaus Theis
MARCH/APRIL 2014
Past A Thought
The urbanites flock
to the outdoor markets,
eager to shop
the pop-up stands,
where vendors offer
produce from their backyard plots,
sweet gems they’ve coaxed
from acreage they have given back,
where crafters’ busy hands
have taken the time to
fashion something
that could last,
or at least,
linger past
a thought.The urbanites
are eager to buy.
They are tired
of the urban life.
So they bring their bags
and make a symbolic choice
and try to take back
the power they have lost.© Sharon Reeb
Breath
Breath,
the soft suicide
that stinks of
death,
of which its end
is either end
or test of that in us
which never rests,
the extraterrestrial
released from Earth
and reaching forth,
reborn,
creative and
gasping for
the unknown.© Sharon Reeb
big city, modern
world, rat race—must i wait till
death to catch my breath?© Rick Klaus Theis
a man without pants
argues with a parking lot
attendant—New York© Rick Klaus Theis
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014
poetry, speeches,
seductions, sales pitches – all
just artful burping© Rick Klaus Theis
ChainsChains, unconsciousness, arrows
and lightning
Flashing throughout my thoughts—
Eidetic images before thought—
My guts ache.
Pain.
Pleasure in wine—
The drink of histories;
Destinies;
Time.I bathe my psyche and soul
in the sweetness—blankness.
Let evolutions go by.
Why should I bother
to understand?
Differences should make
no matter to me—
the wine, the rhyme.
Come to me and envelope
my existence
my distance
my time.© Michael Bookie Buchenroth
(1953-2008)
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013
Remembering Pearl, An Old Timer
Standing at the barred entrance of her last resort,
a worn packet of misdemeanors,
she peers inside,
sees her support group huddled safe against street
temptations.
Clawing at the locks
she hunkers against the closed gate in her tatters of pride,
closes her eyes,
remembers her last lock-up.Lying curled, fetal-shaped on the bare metal,
(mattress removed for fear of fire)
railing against society and all its pits
she demands to be released; yet grasps hard the cold metal,
curses her jailer, too drunk to care.Later, one link in a blue chambray chain of old sidekicks,
she meekly edges forward for her plate of thick gruel.
Warmed by the thumping steam radiators,
clensed by strong unbrand soap,
Pearl re-enters her cocoon; and metamorphosis begins.Keepers in white coats move, keys jangle,
flashlights send bright swords between dark parallels
at intervals through the still night.
she turns from the light, knots herself tightly,
safe in the jail woman’s spa.Now there is no room at the inn.
Pearl is not tuned to work release,
to waxing front desks at City Hall,
toting bedpans at the county hospital –
rehabilitation in the public eye.She expects to wallow in misery in her usual gray space
until alcohol loses its grip;
then polish brass door knobs in the shadows of rear corridors,
crochet foolish edgings on linen handkerchiefs,
smooth matrons’ white uniforms to an ironed polish,
andwhen the work is done,
share stolen cigarettes over old romance novels
in the fifth floor court
turned mauve by the afternoon sun.The jailer appears,
“Just put her in the hallway overnight.
Tomorrow, she can join in trash patrol.”© Laura Hank Hilton
(1912-2003)
Requiescat in pace
“Hey, man,” he says,’ “in summer
it’s not too bad.”
“A piece of cardboard, or a tarp
keeps you dry.”
He dreads changing seasons.Some nights he imagines himself young.
He sits on the steps at his house,
watches fireflies, captures their light
in an empty Mason jar.
He runs in the dark across the lawn.
“Look, Ma, here’s diamonds for you.”The extra layers of worn clothing
he wears become his shroud.
He says that he’s tired of searching
for a room to sleep in.
All the places he’s been – flophouses,
church basements, mission halls,
the soup kitchens blur deliriously
in his mind as he dreams snatches
of blue sky.
Last sloshes of wine slip inside him
warm as a forgotten hug.No one claims him at the morgue.
© Betsy Kennedy
Subway TunnelIn the dead of night
I walk alone
Down a long subway tunnel
Flooded by fluorescent light.
My gaze becomes locked on my feet:
Left, right…
Left, right…
Left, right…
My trance is enhanced
By their rhythmic beat:
Left, right…
Left, right…
Left, right…
I watch them forever
Rise and fall…
Rise and fall…
Rise and fall—
Suddenly a wall.© Rick Klaus Theis
even the least of
us has accomplished the feat
of being alive© Rick Klaus Theis
city’s pulsing, brash,
frantic swarms spawn urban din--
much ado about ________© Rick Klaus Theis
And I’m not sure why
this train hasn’t jumped its tracks
or why hobos smile.© A. Young
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013
Loss
Summer ends.
I fold it away like a frayed towel,
useful for everyday,
not for guests.When summer returns
it will be a fresh season,
with warm taste of rain and sun
replacing perfume
of lilacs, sudden
surprise of snowdrops
in spring.It is the other seasons the heart fears –
slow-dying autumn,
bleak winter
where sorrow lurks heavy as stones,
unlike those easily skipped
across water.Sorrows hide in the dark, obscure
any meager winter beauty,
create a loss of comfort
that’s not alleviated
by light of stars,
or an uncertain moon.© Betsy Kennedy
dark comes early
all the mothers calling
their children home© Yvonne Hardenbrook
New Zealand, 1995
Summer House
The sea wall – a barrier against crash
of waves –
leaves a few gaps where I can slip through
when the tide washes out
and walk to the water’s edge.Summer – that warm, idle time – soon ends.
Like a postscript added to a letter,
the house will close.
I’ll miss windows without curtains,
the sea breeze, cool wood floors,
gritty with trackied-in sand.My summer house is a protective shell,
similar to ones I carry from the beach.
Some give a glimpse of deep color inside,
others curl tightly as a labyrinth,
keep whatever’s inside a hidden mystery.I regret the season’s end,
aware of Circe’s wild and lonely call
that persists with an urgency
as strong as the sea.© Betsy Kennedy
These Are The Rules
These are the rules
no snuffling, no shuffling
no whining and bemoaning
no groaning, no crying
no lying and denying
don't sniffle, don't snuffle
don't rattle in the battle
don't design, don't resign
just live and live and live
hum and sing
love you will bring
put the fife in life
the joy in joi de vivre
These are the rulesno willy, no nilly
no mamby, no pamby
you do it or you don't it
you will it or you won't it
these are the rules.
Stop and smell the roses
or I'll punch you in the nosesno obeisance to obsolescence
you sing it, you sing it
you live it, you love it
not so-so like a yo-yo
bring it, sing it, wing it
just live your life
like you love it
no wiffling, no waffling
you're in or you're out
free or foul
here and howl
These are the rules.© John Vazquez
i’d prefer she keep
being the person she pretended
to be when we met© Rick Klaus Theis
sleep cursing: “f***ing
knees hurt, too much
kneeling’; wake:
knees fine, off to work© Rick Klaus Theis
JULY/AUGUST 2013
Me and Albert Einstein
Me and Albert Einstein
we got the same crazy hair
it would be a treat
if we could meet the jokes we'd share
about our hair
our crazy, crazy hairCrazy hair, witch hair
just got out of bed hair
crazy hair, hat hair
just stuck my finger in a socket hair
crazy hair, wild man hair
just took a shower and ran hairHe'd call me son
I'd call him Dad
Hey, Dad, you got a brush?
A brush, what's the rush?
It's so very relative.
Hey, son, you got some gel?
I'd say what the hell–
I'm busy writing for a spellDad, you got a comb?
No, i just have e=mc2
That will have to do.
Son, you got a comb?
No, but I got this poem
about my hair
my crazy, crazy hairAlbert Einstein and me
we share the hair
Albert Einstein and me
not a care about our hair
my Dad and me with
our I-don't-give-a-damn hairAlbert Einstein and me
our hair flying free
Albert Einstein and me
free as we can be
Albert Einstein and me
without a care
and our crazy, crazy hair© John Vazquez
Wild Mornings
Lounge under an old oak
leaning in the wind, storms due,
soak in a bubble bath
sipping dandelion wine,
skip around the yard in rain
to Baez’s Diamonds and Rust,
towel-dry while the dog
licks rain-drops off my ageless legs,
collars me for the work
licks my crumbs.© Anna Soter
The Bomb
She's already shown us that picture of her unluckier mother,
Who died when she hit forty, standing under a trellis
Of vivid white roses, or filling it really, by the shingled white house
On the quiet north side of pre-war Columbus, filling it like
She would her casket, before the summer was over, that is,
In her listless dark dress too weak to strike the livelier poses,
About to call it quits and perish from cancer of the breast.She's shown us the one of her father, too, who died when she was six,
Shot in a downtown studio the year the goiter drove him,
At thirty, back to the country in a hearse to his grave, the sharp nose,
The pointed chin, the defiant gaze he gave the brazen camera
For staring at him, and the starched collar fastened
By a slender silver pin at the throat the goiter would climb,
Thinking it was King Kong and he the Empire State Building.Our mother's even shown us the one of herself, the year before
We entered the war, beaming from the seat of a bare iron tractor,
In shiny black pumps, white summer dress, and thick black hair
More or less oblivious to the grimace of her grandfather,
The steep shadow cast by his big straw hat, the bib overalls
He barely filled, behind her on the hitch of the mowing machine,
And the hay bales throwing rectangular shadows on the harvested field.We leaf through the photographs she has spilled across the couch
In drifts from a grocery sack she stores in a box in a closet, most
In black and white from the 30s and 40s—from trips with friends
To New York and Boston, weekends at Buckeye Lake, reunions
On the family farms—then others in color starting sometime
In the 1950s, coinciding with the birth of her children, as if a life
Could become more vivid with each lived decade.And then, as if to illustrate that point more colorfully, we come across
Pictures of my sister and me playing in the fallen leaves
Of the ash tree that shades the entire front yard, one sunny day
Of a beautiful Ohio autumn—gold, copper, and bronze,
Serrated and oval—in the same yard that would drift just as deeply
Come winter with snow, blown by the wind in waves on the yard,
That we would roll into snowmen that she also shows us pictures of.Putting them back in the grocery sack, we find it difficult
To keep our mother’s life straight—to keep it going back inside
In reverse—so we mix the pictures up on purpose, hoping not
To confuse her much; but the surfaces of the photographs
Are even more slippery than the recollection of particular events—
Wedding receptions, Christmases, Easters, vacations, and aftermaths
Of storms that no one could recall ever having seen the likes of.
Here's the one of our father, bare-chested at boot camp in the Dakotas
In the 40s, wielding a long knife in the dust outside the barracks,
Crouched to kill some Japs and Krauts and sporting a cocky grin;
One of my sister, in long hair and navy blue pantsuit, standing
With her boyfriend in our square front yard beside his red Corvette
The day of the prom; and one of me, too, at five or six at most,
With a football in the back yard, knitting my brow, cocking
My arm, and leaning back to throw the long pass they called The Bomb.© Scott Ruescher
Cambridge, Massachusetts
July Days
Come, bring back July days when boys and girls
raced after the ice cream wagon in a flurry of fear
that the driver wouldn’t wait for them
to find their pennies. The ice cream slid easily downthroats, melting soft as silken scarves
older sisters wrapped around thin shoulders
as they practiced Hedy Lamarr looks
in twilight upstairs rooms.And the front porch - where the scent of honeysuckle
lingered,
and morning glories spilled black seeds
like broken beads on the steps.I recall how my aunts, posed in the swing,
fresh-painted nails bright as red flags, exchanged
latest Photoplay gossip.
Fireflies vanished in the dark, elusive as aborted
dreams.Neighbors called to one another then. Laughter
splintered across yards, brittle as broken glass.
At times, firecracker arguments sparked
the evening, sputtered to stillness.
Late home stragglers from the corner bar
exhaled whiskey-warm breath into humid airwhile in the kitchen my father sliced lemons.
We children traded turns, stirred the lemonade
in the old stone jar.
© Betsy Kennedy
The Wise Ones
Children may explain tears
saying, “Look, the sky cries,”
when they see rain glide down
window glass.I might think of tears
as small waterfalls,
or a bit of river that swirls
into shiny puddles.A child’s tears are free flowing
hot splashes of sorrow
that gives release
from pent-up storms.It is we who impose restrictions,
bury our tears deep,
leave them hidden,
feel their moans like sad meows
of the soul.© Betsy Kennedy
office flower in
styrofoam cup is owned by
man in cubicle© Rick Klaus Theis
office worker falls
on “slippery floor” – nothing to
do with spike-heel shoes© Rick Klaus Theis
summer—the season
i most wait for each year and
then savor each day© Rick Klaus Theis
MAY/JUNE 2013
The green canoe,
ash gunnels down,
lays over old saw horses.
her ribs, dried, worn, by a lifetime
gliding the surface of the lake,
now ache with age
wanting only
to feel weight on her cage,
the sensual slip of the water
over her once sleek body;
the touch of the paddle on her side.© David Hetzler
spring skies
the slow blossoming
of a jet trail© Yvonne Hardenbrook
November 1990
so amusing, this
human blend of god and beast –
tragicomedy© Rick Klaus Theis
Piano Man
Lively tunes, pied piper notes
lure those passing into the honky-tonk cafe
where Fred “Fingers” Malloy
shirtsleeves fastened with fancy garters
he promised a blonde from Topeka
he’d wear forever
swivels
on an orange piano stool
clamps a cigar in his mouth
pushes back his rolled-brimmed hat
thumps out the abrasive “Rag.”Rowdies in the saloon
slosh their beer
tap feet to rhythmic music
noisy as Bourbon Street, rolling
as the Mississippi, and jangling as a calliope.Toward dawn, “Fingers”
mixes in a smattering of “Blues.”
The smoldering sound
drifts like dusky smoke rings
enveloping as fog
into the quiet street.© Betsy Kennedy
MARCH/APRIL 2013
Hallucination at Hoover Reservoir
With all my pedantic ranting and raving beneath the moon that night,
I must have seemed like a jerk to my friends on the shore
Of the reservoir near Hoover Dam—like an egotistical nut
With delusions of grandeur, I mean, and a nasty Napoleon complex,
A pompous psychedelic preacher of bogus Eastern philosophy,
A Ram Dass groupie—prophet of phony higher consciousness,
An Alan Watts wannabe Zen-master from the West Coast,
Or one of those Harvardian Timothy Leary “cosmic goofs”
Who lacked the connections and the bohemian authenticity
Of the Kesey—Ginsberg cult, gone off the deep end
From two years of doing drugs. I don’t mean the Hoover Dam
That was built in the 30s on the Colorado River, though,
And named for Herbert, the ineffectual, anti-intellectual, thirty-first president
Of the United States of America who was partly responsible
For the Great Depression, but the one in Ohio on Big Walnut Creek
That was built in the 50s and named for Clarence and Charles,
The chief engineers of the firm’s downtown-Columbus office.2
As my confidence increased, I couldn’t help but stroll before them,
A self-appointed prophet of the newly stoned alternative nation
That never would replace, no matter how hard
Its constituents tried, the gray-flannel Puritan establishment
Of suits and narrow ties, strait jackets and nooses
In a very thin disguise. It was just too easy to speak as if to disciples
With my crooked staff of soggy wood, flotsam of willow
Or sycamore, lecturing my friends where they sat on a log
In the hard caked mud, as high as I from chugging
Electric kool-aid from a gallon jug, on the topics of the times—
The psychopathology of conspicuous consumption,
The alienation not only from the means of production
But from knowledge of the origins of our identical possessions,
And the corresponding need to maintain historical connection
In all of its forms, from the geological to the merely ancestral,
From the history of the creek they’d dammed, flooding the farms
Of my mother’s people, to the history of Vietnam’s vulnerability
To colonial power that accounted for the war
That was ending just in time for us to avoid the draft
And land lucky numbers in the newly installed lottery.Maintain connection, I stressed, clenching my fists
And gritting my teeth, and learn about the cause
Of every public act and object, every common assumption,
Received idea, inane prejudice, or consensual opinion,
Or lose your independence to the insidious forces
Of commercial totalitarianism that had ruined our parents—
Those furnace dealers, accountants, bureaucrats, and bank tellers;
Construction workers, insurance men, and sheet-metal fabricators;
Housewives, butchers, and real estate women
Whose last names, with the exception of Rosati, came straight
From an Anglo-Saxon telephone book: Sutton, Graff, Custer,
And Slay; Ohly, Earle, Ankrom, and Coleman;
Porter, Simms, and Ruescher—Nordic, British, German;
Barbaric Christian and Pagan Crusader Europeans.3
During that last month of high school, traditionally a time
Of carefree celebration, I must have been a fool
To harangue them like that, presuming with condescension
That they had never thought about those things,
That they were in danger of selling out to the system, becoming
Mindless commuters in jobs that supported capitalism—
And I might never have won their attention back, I realize now
(If in fact I ever had it, and only they can say for sure),
And they might never have forgiven me for taking my show east,
Had they not started shaking their heads and telling me
To just sit down, Ruescher, and shut the fuck up,
And had I not, in my blue jeans, t-shirt, and clodhoppers, turned
In the warm spring air from my trippy stroll of the muddy shore
And looked up to illustrate one final point, the supremacy of nature
To a new car, say, or a color TV, with an exultant invocation
To a full moon so vivid you could practically see,
In the lunar dust from the summer before, the footprints
Of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin—only to find, in a mass of cumulus
Heading toward the moon, the face of the eighth president
Of the United States of America, Martin Van Buren.4
In that big black sky that the enormous white clouds crossed
On their way to downtown Columbus, I recognized him immediately
From a painting reproduced in an American history textbook,
A picture if not a president known to all high school students
For its mutton chop splendor and its relaxed stateliness,
Now portrayed perfectly in the billowing heap
Of that cumulus cloud—Old Kinderhook himself,
A New York Democrat from a rural Upstate town who served,
If I’m not mistaken, between Andrew Jackson
And William Henry Harrison, from 1837
To 1841, not just the first president
Born an American citizen, but the first one not
Of British descent, the only one ever to serve both
As Secretary of State and Vice-President too, and the first
Whose first language—the Dutch of Peter Stuyvesant
And Rip van Winkle—was not even English, the only
Who’d run again later, but unsuccessfully, on the Free Soil ticket,
And the only one, I freely admit, looking back at myself in shame
While my friends shake their heads and groan at me pointing
At my own hallucination (for some reason I’m sure
That they can see him too—if only they would drop
Their preconceived images of Washington and Lincoln,
Roosevelt and Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon)—the only one able
Till now, I say—until the election and inauguration
Of Barack Hussein Obama—to put an end to one of my rants
Just by looking down at me from a cloud that now covered
The pock-marked face of that newly trodden moon.© Scott Ruescher
Cambridge, Massachusetts
12 Haikus of Fate
I.
Under a yellow moon
a wild despairing sorrow
opened my heartII.
Each of us gifted
but everyone wounded.
This is the start.III.
The great black goddess
runs like a rip tide under
these swollen watersIV.
No anger, unborn.
Without suffering, no depth.
No soul's direction, no purpose.V.
Two types of women
in this world -- those I don’t want
those who don’t want me.VI.
No elders live here.
No mentors for the young.
Community? Gone.VII.
Walking the canyon
thick with snakes -- a dream-warning
from my unborn son.VIII.
In my secret box
I hid my winged lion.
Childhood was over.IX.
Like a mad dog,
the past snapped at his heels,
drawing the blood of remorse.X.
Dust-smeared nomad
blown like a thistle
chased by barking dogsXI
Biking the wetlands --
Look! Two blue herons diving
into gray water.XII.
That summer we rode
the coasters at Cedar Point,
father and son in free-fall© Jory Farr
Black Tea
The first thing I did
in my new place
was make black tea.It reminded of you,
who we’d be:
a couple at night,
making tea,
writing poetry.My new roomie
said to me,“The Wi-Fi is off,
the bill – I don’t know.
Player’s needle jumps,
burners, I guess you realize,
boil so-so.”It reminded of you,
what we’d actually be:
detached, silent,
cold tea;
bad poetry.© James Payne
ROY G BIV gallery director
Passion Seems a Curse
Passion seems a curse,
when loss scars souls with grief both hard
and deep,
when molten yearning from a cannon heart
courses through the veins with searing heat.All whom in thought’s quantum stream exist
ride starbits, shrapnel of the Universe,
destined to spread out to Infinite,
the very progeny of Passion’s source.© Sharon Reeb
I Drink Pepsi
Collapsed postulations of Copenhagen-like interpretations
Suggest consciousness’ essentiality
To quantum measurement completion
Is in direction violation
Of the linear Schroedinger equation.Of course.
Virtual zero-point fluctuations,
A consequence of translational asymmetry,
Future final boundary condition to total absorption
Depending upon retarded casualty,
A condition to totality
And standard Big Bang solvency,
Is certainly a change to General Relativity.Though,
TV tells me,
Mostly,
To drink Pepsi.© Michael Bookie Buchenroth, 1998
(1953-2008)
we are all no one,
from the same place—-nowhere, and
all going back there© Rick Klaus Theis
Grief, the sheer plummet
From wholeness to hard loss can
Only be survived.© Sharon Reeb
My woman left me.
I think I’ll have a good cry
and another beer.© Mark Stoll
why grasp when we can
take nothing with us – life and
we are emptiness© Rick Klaus Theis
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013
Really?
Why must we mention whatever it is we must mention
to our spouse, mother, child, whomever?
Why must the phone be answered when
all you’ll say is “Sorry, can’t talk long, gotta run….”
Why does everything have to be finished?
Why does every book have to be completed?
Why does every story have to have an ending?
Every TV drama watched to its depressing conclusion?
Every party attended?
Why must there be a must?© Anna Soter
Not the Moon
She looms large in my lucid night,
A portent moon
Trailing stars,
Imposing boundaries,
Inducing burdens,
Smothering spaces,
Blocking escape,
Like a pernicious bully.Rolling and full,
My ominous muse
Strums her dark music,
Wreaks havoc
On my passions,
Both nurse and nemesis,
Frustrating my intentions,
Squeezing this poetry out of me,
Like a painful remedy.© Sharon Reeb
Environmentalists
I do not want,
I need.So when I say
“I want you”
the subtext you should read
like air,
like earth,
like sea,you are an environment:
I you me.And in I breathe.
© James Payne
ROY G BIV gallery director
Old Boy
The bed knows how to swallow me
Let me hide, in its sheets
It’s been ripped on its
cover, it’s been walked on
with ease
It’s been prayed on
and screwed on
It swallows me deep,It’s seen the child grow
hair on his
knuckles
and feet
It let’s me go,Out to work
and to feed,But when I see grey
out my window
it says to me
“Boy,
back in ya go.”© Adam Gellings
March 1, 2011
the dying wind
still that strange noise
in the eaves© Yvonne Hardenbrook
Woodnotes #17
Bang
Consciousness exists as a point of view taken;
an abstraction used;
to use a PC monitor analogy –
a gamma corrected,
refreshed rate,
accelerated SVGA portal
providing form within to form without;
dance electrons,
dance chance,
the trance.
The observer is the observed!
The thinker is the thought!
Explicate enfolds implicate.
Fourier transforms reality
maya, maya.
Niels Bohr-like quantum physicists,
wave or particle specialists,
the Copenhagen interpretationists,
maintain you exist only when you look at you.
“Not before, not after,” they insist.
Mirrors mirror what! then?
Nonlocal interconnectedness?
Fourier interference?
The implicate unfolded explicate?
Dichotomous bullshit?© Michael Bookie Buchenroth, 1997
Insanity: An Anthology
(1953-2008)
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2012
Four Beats Diverge In Ginsberg’s Woods
Four Beats diverged in Ginsberg’s woods –
took the lesser traveled path back to Cherry Valley
after Ray Bremser’s memorial service.
And, with a sigh, I’m telling you, – I
along with ‘em, instead of right, went left
where that old caterpillar sat ambiguous,
and deep back into the short cut, that path led . . .So much of the whole context seems hidden,
never known like particles embracing
principles of uncertainty,
we can know the times or the places,
just not both, so to share parts, not widely known
certainly not chronicled in any annals of history,
not by me at least,
the next time you Beats meet there in Cherry Valley
or wherever, ask
Joe St. George, Mikhail Horowitz, Al Duffy,
or Michael “Bookie” Buchenroth
about their trip back to Cherry Valley
after Ray Bremser’s memorial service.Ride’n smooth there in Captain Joe’s long stationwagon
we took a short cut as Al suggests,
encouraged us.
Indeed, ole Al convinced us
to turn left there just past
where that ole yellow cat sat
there at the first T in that dirt path
after leaving Ginsberg’s Committee.
Shortly, Joe’s big Buick commenced to jerk and lurch –
with four burnt out beatnik hippies
in a beat blue Buick lurch’n down this eternal short cut,
that I suppose Charlie might have had in mind
when he wrote the line
“statues on the totem slope of time”
when the sun eclipsed Baltimore and Poe arose ungraved –
that Ray had walked from Ginsberg’s Committee to paved
road and then town numerous times
before according to Al who’d walked it with him
there at the Beatnik Committee long ago,
talking worn William Carlos Williams memories
and something about winter pipes freezing –
deep short cuts in the path to town,
New Jersey-sized ruts eroded deeply
cut into the context there by all that history
with old electric fence insulators laid out –
attached still to posts lying back flat in leaves
like fingers wrapped around iron bars, ironically –
orange-browned leaf’d picturesque bottom’d-out
Buick ride’n real low with Captain Joe
take’n it real easy.
He had to go slow,
even back up a time or two.
Beatnik hippies cruise’n back to the Plymell pad,
smoke’n a doob and listen’n to
the blue black Buick belly grinding bottm’n out
crunch’n ‘n grind’n explorations-beat-path blues
of yet that alternative path probably best left,
after all, to those ole cats yelllow and worn
from all that clear’n the way, regardless,
this path emptied onto the pavement
that went to Cherry Valley November 14th, 1998.That shortcut indeed led to Pam and Charlie’s
though not as fast as Al’s memories,
since we arrived back not first, in fact last,
but along that trip most certainly,
some squirrel watched us crazy cats, probably
reminding it of the cool Ray Bremser November breeze
in the air that day
and the autumnal need
to store more nuts
as it looked out its bare-bark’d Beech treed perch,
upon those beats in a beat blue Buick –
Captain Joe and Mikhail and Al Duffy and Bookie.© Michael Bookie Buchenroth, 1998
(1953-2008)
Death
Life’s last autumn
Thickens the morning dew
Upon the Maple trees’ leaves,
Drifting,
Too heavy to shade loved ones.But memories will soon
Bud new leaves
On the black branches.© Michael Bookie Buchenroth, 1973
Insanity: An Anthology
(1953-2008)
My Girlfriend
I’ve got a
girlfriendBut she doesn’t
like
‘girlfriend’So I call her
My FriendAnd show her
off like a
girlfriendAnd buy her
socks like a
girlfriendAnd take long
walks like a
girlfriendBut told her
Dad that we’re
‘Just friends’© Adam Gellings
Drinking From Friend’s Wisdom
Called a friend the other day
Surrounded by words needed to say
May Day
Phone call to friend the other night
Surrounded by shadows, needed light
To heal this source of wounding, needed a plan
After my confession
Friend seemed to understand© Rick Blackburn
Old TimesThey used to serve pastries and coffee
When you voted at the Methodist Church.
Today: ice water and doughnut holes
(The pastries used to be home-baked!)
Maybe too much loitering went on
In the halls of the Methodist Church.
Or Methodists now have no time for baking.
Time moves on. Slice the bread.People used to burn their leaves and trash
My father smashed and buried cans.
Bet you could get rid of lots of evidence
Now they sniff you out when you light that match.
Neighbors come running holding hot buttered rums
Hot dogs and marshmallows on a stick
We needed them at the Methodist Church!
Time moves on. Slice the bread.Halloween and voting come right together
Does this say something about fall and the fallen?
Autumn and tummies full of ought-tos,
Autos wanting snow tires, everyone so tired,
The phone rings and robots give advice.
The costumes of sparkle, dread, and plenty
Light up chilly leaf-strewn nights. Morning comes.
Time moves on. Slice the bread.© Christine Hayes
Major
Major Ammo went off to war
Like he will again
Like he has before
Bombing others for liberty
For the flag
To keep us free
And the band played on
The same ol’ song
wrapped in justice
And truth
And democracy
Red still is red
And black is black
We wait our turn
Dead still is dead
Lie to our faces
And give us bread
And the drones filled the air
So why should we care
Major Ammo is off again
Where will he land
Where will it end
And the tanks rolled in
On the T.V. in the den
Major
Why are you going in foreign places
To see the look in the eye
The countenance of fallen faces
While I see the man in the tie
In the papers
I sigh
of promises wasted
Can we get back there again
Where I played with my friends
In childhood traces© Rick Blackburn
having deja vu
about having deja vu
makes a nice haiku© Rick Klaus Theis
Taciturn
Taciturn
“He was a bit taciturn”
“She was taciturn.”
Taciturn
Good word
I never raised my hand much in school
I was wrong a lot
No connection to
Taciturn
“Maybe I was a bit taciturn.”
I thinkit’s pouring outside
© Adam Gellings
LIMERICKSThere once was a man from Columbus.
He was the moron among us.
I don’t mean to dwell,
but he’s dumber than hell.
His brain is some kind of a fungus.There once was a man from Milwaukee.
Obnoxious and stupid and cocky.
After drinking one night,
he ran a red light,
and totaled a new Kawasaki.There once was a poor boy from Nerk.
The neighbors all called him a jerk.
The world’s biggest slob,
he won’t get a job.
I bet he’s allergic to work.There once was a lady from Heath
who dated a fellow named Keith.
His clothes are a mess.
He’s homeless, I guess,
and missing half of his teeth.There once was a man from the east.
I figured that he was The Beast.
The number he picks
is six sixty six.
He’s wicked, to say the least.There once was a man from the valley.
He murdered a woman named Sally.
He blew out her brains,
and burned the remains,
so never trust him in an alley.© Mark Stoll
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2012
The Ends of the Earth
I thought to be delicate
Then thought better
Tired of being misrepresented
I took a full hard stand
Like a cool refreshing swim
From the shore of blazing sand
From the ends of the earth© Rick Blackburn
Brief Charade
Props are waiting: wide-brimmed hat,
muff, bright colored silks, fish-net stockings.
I peel away inhibitions, become
Bernhardt, Minnelli, or Crawford.
A leading man is always there
with his props: top hat, white spats,
prince-nez on thin black ribbon.
We perform together, create magic
from a kaleidoscope of song
dance, and drama.After the brief charade of tears,
laughter, after applause,
props packed in trunks,
I stand alone on the stage,
stare into the darkened theater,
reluctant to leave a make-believe
world.© Betsy Kennedy
Word of PlayOh, how
I want to write,
with vision endowed
to peel back the night,
a fine, fecund fowl,
fiercesome in flight,
who swoops in
and strikes
with metaphors bright.© Sharon Reeb
JULY/AUGUST 2012
The Wormwood
“I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.” - Joyce KilmerI like to watch my neighbor’s oak.
Leaves bestow a handsome cloak
And radiate rare shades of green
As emeralds crown this noble queen.
She reigns atop a glacial ridge
Close by an old stone bridge.
Lovely arms reach gently down
To rich inviting fertile ground.
I only see her western face
As twilight lends its golden grace.One summer eve I went round to see
The shadow side of my perfect tree.
I leaned in close, what would I find?
Her sylvan spirit must be kind.
Why did I look so deeply there?
Too close a view is never fair.
This tree was not by heaven blessed.
With worms and wasps she is possessed.
Stingers dripping venom wet
Flew at my eyes like searing sweat.
Such ghastly sins a tree must hide
To fiercely guard her fetid side.
I hope no one comes round to see
The darker shadow side of me.© Bill Keating
On Dreams
A place
with black roads and black skies,
where streetlights shone…
their lights lit-up nothing:
a bench and a man,
and I: walking by.
“Tread softly,” he said. “Tread softly
because you tread on my dreams.”
I scowled as I stomped hard,
marching in place
before him.
I stopped after a moment,
still scowling, and stood stock still,
my arms: crossed.
“Where do you suppose it is
you tread?” A hand over my heart.
“Do you think I don’t dream?
Must we all tread soft
to avoid stepping on anybody’s dreams?”
He smiled. “Do you dance?”
“Dance?” My eyebrows drooped
in confusion.
“Dance.” He nodded.
“No.” I shook my head.
“No, never.”
“Do you know
what dancing is?”
I had never thought of this
before. I shook my head. My face:
a frown.
My arms went limp
so they dangled at my sides.
“Dance is moving,”
he told me,
“Through a series of poses
at an intended rate
to a rhythm or beat.
Do you
dance in dreams?
Do you
dream of dance?”
“I do.”
“But you don’t
do it. Why not?”
“I’m afraid to
dance alone,
I’d feel like a fool.”
He said, “Dance
with company.”
“I’d look like a fool.”
“Do you feel like a fool
in your dreams?”
“No.
But I know I will.”
“You dance
in your dreams.
Dance upon mine.”
I danced.
The man and bench moved
away down the road
as I danced in the light
my shadow, the lead.© Allex Spires
Orange-Winged Blackbird
If you spot
an orange winged blackbird
perched upon a wood fence post
beside the road
while driving by,
he will not fly.But if you stop intermittent,
walk up to him,
he’ll fly a bit, indifferent,
to a tree to see
not caring to be so close
to you walking near his fence post.Strange as an unseen quark,
fluttering leaves
upon trees,
branches rough by bark,
are all you’ll see
if looking less than cautiously.© Michael Bookie Buchenroth, 1976
Insanity: An Anthology
(1953-2008)
ancient peoples are
thus: just us – with different
clothing and haircuts© Rick Klaus Theis
water lilies
no snake in sight
till the print develops© Yvonne Hardenbrook, HWUP! #1
This is a haiku.
It has three lines, but no rhyme.
Simple word pattern.
© Mark Stoll
we are all bits of
god separated by our
ego delusions© Rick Klaus Theis
closer to shore
each blur becomes a person
place or thing© Yvonne Hardenbrook, Geppo
MAY/JUNE 2012
Lion's Blood
In Kenya,
the lions
are dying. The
survivors
spend the day
panting in
the stifling shade
of scrubby outcroppings
as flies survey
their emaciated
hides
like early
bargain shoppers.The lions,
dreaming of
slow-footed
antelope and
the scent of
blood,
save their
strength for the
dubious hunt.The flies
are rising
in numbers.
It makes one
wonder.
Perhaps
lion’s blood is
fortifying.© Sharon Reeb
i hold each new spring
more dear than the last – because
that’s what it may be© Rick Klaus Theis
spring’s breath of new life
held in nature’s loving hands
brings hope to us all© Cindy Downs Hartsook
CINQUAIN POEMS
I’m mad.
I’m gonna scream.
My neighbor took my girl.
I’m gonna go and kick his butt.
So, there.Hello.
I know your name.
I think we’ve met before.
We ought to go and have a beer.
Come on.I’m pleased.
It’s nice outside.
I’m sitting in the park.
We do a writing exercise.
It’s fun.You jerk!
You get me mad!
You don’t know how to drive!
You pulled right out in front of me!
You’re dumb!Thank God.
I’m in good health.
Some people got it bad.
I feel like I’m the lucky one.
Thank God.
© Mark Stoll
The Sun Set
The sun set in Langston Hughes
When “to be or not to bop” was the only question
Posed by Hip Lord Buck over blues.
Then a flyin’ Bird blew by, Dizzy,
Without a Kerouac in the world.
And, wearing Jean Shepherd full of Patchens,
Ginsberg digs, actually a girl
Burroughs, into a nutty riff.
And, of Corso, Ferlinghetti, holding,
City Lights a wigged-out spliff.
Then hip gave rise to hippies,
And beat beat hippies to the punk,
And punk was launched into cyberspace,
Leaving the world with just one question:
When, oh when, will the Sun Ra rise
On this crazy dump.© Rick Klaus Theis
Men With Guns
The anger, fear and hate that permeate
World politics, religions, prejudice,
Relationships and feuds perpetuate
The myth we’re safe behind an edifice
Of men with guns. “You can’t trust anyone”
We’re taught from early age
(and, yes, there’s cause!)
Don’t “Others” lust to conquer all we’ve won?
Both church and state enflame our fears because
We’ll shed our liberty if they’ll “protect”
Our homeland, schools, our streets, eternal life.
It’s never failed; each time protectors wrecked,
Oppressed, the lives of those they “saved” from strife.
The Galilean’s Way has always freed,
But most are scared of “love is all you need.”
© John W. Hoberg
Claim to Flame
Global warming or
Solar flares,
Who cares
Which is the
Harming cause.Whether we
Change
Or blame the
Solar weather,
Prepare to meet the
Devil’s flames,
The world is
Heating up!© Sharon Reeb
MAR/APRIL 2012
Ordering
Briefly,
you smile at me,
size me up,
dismiss me,
on the other
side of the glass,
pressed for
time,
ordering,
oblivious to
my pain
and the chain
that connects us.You see,
without me
to acquiesce,
abide by this
boundary
you’ve set
for those who
serve up, you
pretend you
don’t need
a measure
of trust
that I,
when you
turn away to
look ahead,
won’t spit
in your cup.© Sharon Reeb
Observation of
Children’s antics. That’s all the
Fun we are allowed.© Sharon Reeb
Anticipation
Sunlight filters
through the window
creates broken patterns
across the floor –
a brief warmth
the cat finds
and curls there.Outside – a bleak scene,
tree branches
stretch empty arms,
wait leafing.Almost hidden,
a clump of snowdrops
ring bell-like flowers
in cool wind,
alleluias
to a coming season.
© Betsy Kennedy
“get up. you can’t lie
on the floor,” says clerk at the
anarchist bookstore© Rick Klaus Theis
JAN/FEB 2012
I'm
I’m falling and dreaming of ways to break free.
I’m railing against how things have to be.
I’m worried that this is all vanity, so
I’m carrying my soul, my poetry,
and daring to affirm that
there’s more to me.– Sharon Reeb
Help
“Help! Help! Help!”
A hefty word,
without a doubt.
“Extend yourself!”
its potent sound
commands when shouted out.“Help! Help!”
when twice implored,
makes all aware
some dire need
cannot be
ignored
by those who care.“Help!”
when heard
just once is sure
to be
an honest plea
from one too tried, too hurt,
to cry repeatedly.But
a silent “Help!”
from painfilled eyes,
though unpronounced,
still plainly pleads
the most emphatic cries,
the greatest urgency.– Sharon Reeb © 2011
poetic injustice
struggling with pain,
followed by wrestling
with the impossibility
of trying to explain.© Rick Klaus Theis
HAIKU
kitchen cricket
the cat freezes
mid stretch© Yvonne Hardenbrook, GEPPO
all of us are saints
sidetracked by pleasure - sadly
world remains unsaved© Rick Klaus Theis
absurd impatience -
time's not moving fast enough,
then we mourn its loss© Rick Klaus Theis
man was surrounded
by nature once - now nature's
surrounded by man© Rick Klaus Theis
DECEMBER 2011
I Hear Them WalkingThe west wind huffs
winter’s first breath
through the old yellow maple
in the corner of the yard
behind the white lake house.Leaves
like a swarm of dancing canaries
cross the sky
crackling
scraping
over the roof shingles.Then
in stillness
I hear them walking
through the yard
until they tire
lay still
ending summer.© David C. Hetzler
In PassingThin ashtrays
rise -
spew smoke
like
city geysers
asWorkers
huddle together
like
penguinspassing
on a
concrete
glacier© Adam Gellings
Deeprooted Prejudice
Deep rooted prejudice
A social virus;
An evolution bacillus;
Carnivorous evolution effectuate;
McAfferty doesn't find this;
Hidden in code;
Assemble this it indicates
Lurking until its execution date
It intends–
Probably will–
To delete the hard drive FAT;
Corrupt RAM
And according to plan,
Expand
Itself to jam all
Bandwidth–
A continual UAEOnly this metaphor,
This PC viral reality or analogy,
Merely purports its threats,
Doom,
Whereas deep rooted prejudice . . .Kurrups
Kontinuous
Kontinuallly
Always and always and always . . .
Michael Bookie Buchenroth © 1997
Insanity: An Anthology
(1953-2008)
some Haiku–
I move through this maze
of cubicle prisons like
the ghost I’ve become© Rick Klaus Theis
in train window reflection
i become an Asian woman -
spiritual truth or optical illusion?© Rick Klaus Theis
cuddling, her sweater
button imprints my stomach
skin – second naval© Rick Klaus Theis
NOVEMBER 2011
Blendon Woods
The summer light lessens.
We receive last benedictions
of the sun.
Canadian geese return, claim
the pond. They bring a warning,
threat of winter heavy
in their wings.The geese move in procession along the edge of the pond
like nuns going to chapel
for prayers.Soon they will journey on,
leave us savoring brief autumn
days, that console like a rosary
against approaching winter.© Betsy Kennedy
The Second Table
Our places at a smaller table,
adjoining room, never bothered
the younger children who rushed
through the Thanksgiving meal
in favor of outdoor games,
or if weather were disagreeable,
found a corner inside
for clamorous play.No longer child, not quite adult,
I listened to my elders’ voices,
caught wisps of conversation fluttering from the dining room.
I became intrigued by sudden
bursts of laughter,
the quick hush, as if spoken
words should not be overheard.Next year, older, I took my place
at the family table,
learned secrets, assumed the burden
of inconsequential knowledge
that had been withheld.© Betsy Kennedy
short north
i see they took care
of the homeless problem
the valets are the ones
collecting small change nowcommunity hops
festivals and galleries
wine splashes on the floors
of the new upscale bistrosthe building codes
shine through the renovation
and i want to visit again
but the homeless made me feel at homecommunity hops
festivals and galleries
wine splashes on the floors
of the new upscale bistrosa drunk man singing
to a boutique mannequincommunity hops
festivals and galleries
wine splashes on the floors© Michelle Gorsich
HAIKU
life – brief vale of tears
in the midst of an ocean
of blissful spirit© Rick Klaus Theis
i play with my cat
most nights though I’ve not fed her
in years – pleasant dreams© Rick Klaus Theis
single beam of light
thinking it’s the sun – that’s you,
me, everyone© Rick Klaus Theis
2...4...6...8 kids;
took Torah literally –
went forth, multiplied!© Rick Klaus Theis
OCTOBER 2011
Laughing Mild
Rose passed on coffee,
and kept flipping her thumb
through the pages of a Dean Koontz paperback.She talked about her two daughters
and how she went to see them
every other weekend in Wapakoneta.Rose said she made two-grand a year
for publishing erotic articles,
and had no time for fun as an inventory specialist.She also told me that she was tired
of drinking whole bottles of tequila,
and that her water bed wasn’t really a water bed.© James Lindenberger
The Blond in the Booth
Sometimes, when I’m alone, at dinner, in
A bar, and have a couple drinks, the words
Just seem to come and fall as poetry,
And speak to me of life. Sometimes they don’t.The blond who’s in the booth that’s next to mine
Is giving me the eye, and I am thrilled,
Somewhat, while winking back. She’s four, I think,
And has such life to live! Well, so do I,
‘Though shorter, and less new.Her little sister only wants to cry.
But No! It seems she really wants to paint
Her face with mashed potatoes. Now she smiles
A gooey, gravy brown. There is no bliss
To ever know like bathing face in brown potato goo!Their parents seem so tired! This isn’t what
They sought while joining loins. They still have on
That look of double cross - of children jolted into parenthood.
A couple decades more and then they’ll know
That this is what our lives are all about –
A gravy-coated face.© John W. Hoberg
father was the salt
of the earth - but, sadly, I
was an open wound© Rick Klaus Theis
poet describes the
real - we, out of touch, perceive
an alien world© Rick Klaus Theis
there’s no escaping –
wherever you decide to
go, death will follow© Rick Klaus Theis
SEPTEMBER 2011
I picked up Franz Wright at the airport.
He smoked and said, “I’d forgotten how
Ohio smelled.”We ate stacked pastrami sandwiches
At Katzinger’s. He talked sadder than his poems.When he read at the Settlement House
Most people didn’t smile.“I hurt a lot of people,” he told me.
Then I took him back to the airport.I don’t think he’ll come back to Ohio soon,
Even though he liked the smell.I believed what he wrote and said.
© David Hetzler
autumn equinox
the sound of a door closing
across the street© Yvonne Hardenbrook
Persimmon, 1997
autumn equinox
the empty teeter-totter
perfectly balanced© Yvonne Hardenbrook
GEPPO, 1998
AUGUST 2011
Strange Birds
You silly mocking bird – too many songs!
What good is that, to always change your way?
Such constant mimicry as yours belongs
In politics, where demagogues hold sway.
So, too, the cuckoo, calling day and night
The same, and pigeons’ constant warning
“The sky is falling, now!” The swan’s alright,
Disdaining chorus and depressing dove.
Frenetic coots careen between the banks
Without commitment as to which is best.
Complaints are squawked and quacked without
much thanks
As tiny sparrows twitter with the rest.
Is there a Golden Call that sings a path
To help us human birds transcend our wrath?
© John W. Hoberg
Written at Stratford-Upon-Avon, April 2007
listening instead
of talking; just being not
judging – nirvana
© Rick Klaus Theis
nightmare unfolding –
life gets weirder and weirder
as I get older
© Rick Klaus Theis
Beat the Heat
A gap in the noisy double hung
Welcomes cool early morning breezes
Slaking summer heat as well as water
Preserving a seasonal comfort
Almost unknown to a tightly fit age
© Mike Sharkey
there’s no escaping –
wherever you decide to
go, death will follow
© Rick Klaus Theis
Labor Day weekend
the unfinished sandcastle
taken by the tide
© Yvonne Hardenbrook
Haiku Headlines
JULY 2011
Under the Ohio Sun…
A friendship blossomed
With the sharing of a vegan brownie
Upon her bed
While we discussed
(Both seriously and laughingly)
The possibility
Of changing last names for a man.
“I most certainly would not,”
I said.
And I most certainly did.
She did not
Has not yet
And may or may not
Sometime soon.
We journeyed apart
And yet together
To the state of Ohio
From the Eastern Coast we loved.
She found her way to Cincinnati
And has stayed there ever since.
She fell in love
Then out
And gracefully
Found her way back in.
Worked hard
And hardly worked.
Decided she wanted to teach
Yoga
And does
Now for a living.
Always bubbling with life
Positively looking
Up
Yet knowing firsthand
The trials
Of being human
She has lent her ear to me
And her heart.
Next month
She is moving back East
To Boston
While I stay here
Right where I am
Planting the tree of my life
With courage
Under the Ohio sun.
© Alana Generson
Delayed Reaction
One splendid summer for ten-year-olds
I wandered off alone into the Florida pines,
a barefoot wildling,
daring, striding down the sandy,
sticker-strewn path as striped racers
darted into the underbrush
ahead of me.
My heart was pure and my mind fearless,
more curious than bothered
by the wild boar’s head
that lay near the path to
the fresh and lush beyond,
dumb and tragic,
with cloying odor,
and maggots for eyelashes.
Pressing on, I greeted the woods.
I stroked the leaves and
broke the twigs
as I brushed past,
traced the movement of insects
and busy birds whose
rhythms were at odds
with the rise and fall
of locust song.
Then taking a rest
in the hot shade at the edge
of a clay-pitted clearing,
I noticed the silence,
a stillness so eerie
that the Sun itself seemed to stop
and look down.
My eyes scanned the hazy camouflage
of trees and palmetto fronds
for some awful danger,
a hunter of some kind.
Stopping my breath, I crouched,
poised for panicked flight,
‘til the woods became inviting again
but not the same, different because,
for the first time, I understood
I, too, could be stilled.
© Sharon Reeb
Corporate Governance
What must we do to stop the corp’rate reign
That each day drives us farther tow’rd the past
Of emp’rors’ rule, imposing massive pain
Through systems set to bloat their fortunes vast?
Today these corp’rate tribunes have no law
To regulate their global dominance.
Increasingly they make God’s people claw,
Throughout the Earth, to take the fewest pence
For making stuff, and hopefully survive
Another night. No Godly image rests
Upon their Board Rooms, nor did God alive
Decree their greed as good, nor power blest.
Unless we fight again for liberty
Our Godly rights will fail to keep us free.
© John W. Hoberg
7/7/07
Kerbside
I smoked a cigarette close
Between my two fingers
With an old friend
from an
old school, in cowboy boots
and we huddled tight
with his lady friend
the cigarette burned to the filter
and I heard the band play
I asked, “D’ya know them?” A bit
blurredly
and he said “Yea something something.”
Never heard of ‘em
Rain drizzled down
High Street
lights of a city,
kerbside gutters flow
with active water into a
swallowing sewer
Glancing at the marquee,
I wonder
At the wrong bar, shit.
No.
© Adam Gellings
patio at dusk
imagining this shadow
is you ...
wrapped in silence
I nudge the windchimes
© Yvonne Hardenbrook
LYNX
Tulips
I went outside
To the backyard
No one knew
who I was
just a smile
And some tulips,
clouds hovered,
above
© Adam Gellings
Crack-the-Whip
Remember the game we played
in early years.
We clutched hands, confident
no one would let go.
Suddenly the circle changed
into a single line.
Our hands strained, our bodies
defied the force.
Crack-the-Whip ended in a tangle,
a paradox of laughter and tears.
Now, older, we still seek
comfort from close friends,
family.
We form such a tight circle
around loved ones that any loss
leaves us reeling, bereft.
© Betsy Kennedy
MAY 2011
Red Buds
I feel a thrill each time I see a red
Bud tree in bloom. And snowy cherry, pear
And apple blossoms prophecy lush fruit
To thrill autumnal tastes. Magnolia and
Tall tulip trees stand clothed in petals bright.
Azaleas and forsythia explode
In brilliant hues, as lilac fragrance soothes
Our springtime air. Pure dogwoods’ inner light
And peace glow through. Spring’s gorgeous colors aren’t
Put on for fun; the blooms compete for love
From bees’ caress to spread sweet pollen so
Their children’s seed may carry on their line.
All life depends upon small acts of love,
For life itself springs from Creator’s love.
© John W. Hoberg
Memorial Day at Green Lawn
Each year the same ritual. We wait for a warm day
when May splits open from its cocoon into butterflies
and blossoms.
My father brings empty cans, Hi-C labels half-peeled
away and the jug of water.
“We can’t count on the pump to work,” he says.
I bring shears for trimming, wires to hold cans.
We have clipped lilacs, peonies, bridal wreath,
and lemon-scented lilies from our gardens.
“Your grandma gave me a start of lilies,”
he tells me, “when your mother and I were married.”
Sun warms his stooped shoulders.
At the graves of Lil, Uncle Harvey, and Meg,
stillness is soft as flower petals.
We search among the solemn stones for grandmother’s
grave.
I have seen her picture, Kate Roadman, stiff in brocade,
classic brooch pinned at her collar.
He talks of a hard-working farm woman, sees her posed
on the porch, with her long white apron on.
His stories drone like bees buzzing around flowers.
I hope death, as the sun, will be kind to him.
Which is why I grieve when I see the peonies
fall red as blood against the stones,
and regret he is old.
© Betsy Kennedy
Pushing For Texas
Before the actual birth, I tried to convince myself
there could be no room for fear. That in fact, the
only way I was going to get through this and come
out smelling like a rose was to keep my wits about
me, focus on my breathing and counting, and to
push when I felt the need to push.
When the labor pains worsened I forgot all prior
convincing, edged out of that window to stand on
the ledge of fear – trying to push this baby through
the birth canal was like trying to push a blimp
through the Washburn Tunnel. All the preparatory
lessons flew off that ledge like birds to the wind.
As the sun rose over Houston, the rays of dawn
crept through the hospital blinds, bringing with
them the first cry of my nine pound, four ounce
son, affirming that old adage that everything is
bigger in Texas; and as my eyes lit on the dozen
yellow roses you had sent me, the thought that
if I was going to come out of this smelling like a
rose, the yellow rose of Texas was the one I’d
want to be.
© Betty Bleen Previously published at www.toocutetoboop.com
born with a rope ‘round
my neck, waiting for trap door
to drop with each step
© Rick Klaus Theis
condemned man is moved
to execution chamber –
subway ride to work
© Rick Klaus Theis
APRIL 2011
one day soon each of
us will look in the mirror
and see nothing there
© Rick Klaus Theis
white plastic shop bags
hang from moonlit trees – ghosts of
over-consumption
© Rick Klaus Theis
Thirty-Nine
Thirty-nine really isn't so old, you know,
Short of forty by 365 days or so;
But, still frightening, when doubled,
you state;
Twice thirty-nine is seventy-eight.
Counted by tens, it's just a sortie,
ten, twenty, thirty, forty;
Minus one, of course, a year of grace,
One remaining, one for the race.
© Tom Thomson
two (crazy) poets
reunited by pure fate –
twelve years; not too late
© Rick Klaus Theis
father died today
I look at my weathered hands
I'm the old man now
© Rick Klaus Theis
FEBRUARY 2011
Polemics
The filth of the city
and the warm smoothness of a
blonde's inner thigh.
Silence like the silence
after too much
noise.
A paint peeling bodega,
full of last years supplies.
The bricks of various colors
making a mural of post modern earth hues.
The cigarette butts floating in the dirty puddles,
being whisked away by gutters runoff.
Couples cheating on each other throughout the night.
Church bells silent, their owners asleep,
Their towering homes puncturing the skyline.
Cars ever present, their headlights small declarations of life.
She moans and rolls over, pressing her naked body into mine.
Her hair caught in my stubble, my hand on her hip.
The window and the rain dance together, the streetlight outside their audience.
I can smell the sweet vinegar stench of my own sweat
I can feel the night turning to day under me
I can taste my own life in the air
The dog howling 'alone alone alone'
The wine bottle rolls slightly to the right
of its own accord.
The book on the wooden floor is open.
Its spine slowly being warped.
My phone blinks
'When will you answer me?'
The dog stops howling
A gnat flies in circles around the room,
lost, killing time.
My fingertips lightly drawing
A spiral going around her hip,
going down her hip.
Where is this place I have made of myself?
© John Katsura
One Foot in Front of the Other
One foot in front of the other
One day at a time
Takes me a little further from you
A little closer to me
One foot in front of the other
One day at a time
Reminds me
Of where I have been
With you
That first New Hampshire winter
Sharing a tiny room
A single bed
Our new little life just beginning
New York spring
Near the Hudson
Growing closer
Talking
Of
Marriage
then
New York summer
Wedding came and went
We were in love
Vermont honeymoon in fall
Lake Champlain
Bikes
And
Chocolates
But soon
Ohio Winter
was
Hard
And
Bitter
Spring
And
Summer
Were a passing of time
Nothing softened
Nothing sweetened
Conflict ensued
You went in the fall
I went in the winter
And now we are gone
One foot in front of the other
One day at a time
you become
but a piece
of my
past.
© Alana Generson
White Sands, New Mexico
Sky shimmered, a blue bowl above us.
Acres of white sand billowed
like a bride’s long veil.
Rules were a game then.
Laughing, playing as children
we rolled down the dunes,
tasted with kisses grit of sand
in our mouths.
You said we’d part,
walking until we could no longer
see each other.
I remember the sudden fright
in the empty world
when you weren’t there.
Even now, fears of loneliness, silences,
would drift between us
if love were not in the way.
© Betsy Kennedy
On Leaving Idlewild
(At 8:15 p.m., July 4, 1962 aboard a jet airliner)
We literally chased the sun
westward;
Elusive, the orb would hide
behind the towering cumulous
Only to burst forth again,
a burning beacon,
Edging the horizon’s clouds
with fiery lace.
And, for a while, a short while,
We seemed to be winning
the race, so it appeared,
Or, at least, forcing a draw,
compromising time,
Making of that sun
a burning bubble on an earthly level.
But, suddenly it was gone,
there was only the remembered glow,
And I knew we had lost
this one game.
The power pods changed their tune
and imperceptibly
we dropped
Down in the night,
good losers.
© Tom Thomson
catastrophe can
happen at any moment –
enjoy the calm now
© Rick Klaus Theis
Saturday morning
7:15 wake up call –
moron's car alarm
© Rick Klaus Theis
JANUARY 2011
Rock Cycle
I erupted into life,
a molten fury of
purpose
that all too quickly
cooled and hardened.
Bit by bit
my passion eroded
and I became
sedimentary,
cemented in my ways
pressed down by age
and other people’s judgments
But deep down
there is still a need
to learn and merge,
to play with the overall scheme,
to dream.
So, I am destined to be
metamorphic.
© Sharon Reeb
life – likely as not
just some alien kid's school
science-fair project
© Rick Klaus Theis
?
(After seeing ? and the Mysterians)
He takes the stage
– Seriously:
The Power of Simplicity
behind the shades
while
the Mysterians deliver
in spades
my girlfriend sees ‘what is’ better’n me.... :
the black wig!
nonetheless
Guinness
should consider for World Record:
a Prop
and a
Hit Pop
kept in perfect duplication
for
revisitation
&
recreation
forty-plus years
STRAIGHT!
© Silas Buckley
I’ve Moved!
How wonderful to be once again living
in such a dear home.
It just feels good.
It just feels comfortable.
They all have.
All those dear old homes I have lived in
over the years.
Each one so different.
Each one – I couldn’t wait to make my home.
They have all had their own stories to tell.
Who sat in the kitchen with a cup
of hot coffee?
Who slept in the bedrooms?
Who cried behind closed doors,
and who laughed at the gatherings
held in the backyard?
Each family contributing to the history.
Each family making the changes
they needed to make it their home.
I love bookshelves.
I love fabric at the windows.
I love comfy chairs with private places
to put them.
I love pretty napkins by the coffee pot
and delicious jam in the refrigerator.
Home.
What a grand word.
I love making those dear houses my home.
It’s so stressful to move.
It’s such hard work, and I’m so tired.
I don’t think I will do it again.
But, maybe.
© Sharon Weiss
Owner of Sharon Weiss Gallery
DECEMBER 2010
Hobo Song
I went hoboing when the money ran out and I had
no fear of poverty or death. I was free and I walked
in circles with the gusts of autumn, free to sit days
under pleasing trees, free to eat when I was hungry,
free to starve when I wasn’t. I waved hello
and smiled when asked of destinations,
hoboing because it suited me and I was good
at walking without aim and god, it was easy and satisfying
to walk without aim. I camped with hobo Mary
and hobo William in a wood with berries
and then I hiked backwards
in the rain for two days, south to warmer and drier beds
under stars. I sang all the songs in my head
and then sang them again in the accent
of the land and then took to singing them straight
through towns and villages as if everyone was singing along,
I, hobo Phillip, penniless and happy, sang a hobo song
of Mary’s about shoes and stews, about love and freedom
and the road and rain. I went hoboing like I told you
with a crow for a landlord and a whim for a compass,
I lunched on crayfish and wild greens, on potatoes and field corn.
I went hoboing to see the country and to find out why
people went easy for profit and hard for compassion.
I hoboed my worries a step at a time through swales and orchards
and bean fields and ravines, over brooks and ditches,
around briars and swamps until my restlessness was gone,
and then I hoboed on a little longer. I went hoboing because
there was no god in the city and I was afraid of greed,
hoboing because hobos are beautiful as they wander to the tune
of the earth, with a whim for compass, a crow for a landlord,
without aim, without gain, without need.
© Phil Minor
alarm
<<squawk... squawk... squawk>>
a rude awakening,
an unwelcome prowler
breaking and entering
my unguarded psyche,
taking me hostage,
pulling me through
its mad labyrinth
of grotesque twists
and excessive turns,
away from spaceless time
and timeless space
and into some kind of
straight-jacket, mind-set,
template overlay
until, like steam
disappearing into air,
my other choices for being
have boiled away
© Rick Klaus Theis
Christmas Reunion
On this seasonal day we cling
to remembrances of those gone,
of youth, although the faces
around us reflect passing years.
Piecemeal we began, fragments
from a father, mother, the shawl
of babyhood releasing us too soon.
We stretch, grow, and build a life
of expectations,
yet remain a paradox. Rooted
in our whims, we change,
resist change.
I wonder, when did it happen –
the leap of years?
Unfathomable to realize
that just yesterday
we were young.
© Betsy Kennedy
life's a comedy
interspersed with drama that
ends in tragedy
© Rick Klaus Theis
NOVEMBER 2010
Red Leaf Red Cloud
The red leaf fell from the red tree under the red cloud.
The red cloud hung from the red sky ...
The time was fall.
The time was day, not yet night.
Under the sky, the little tree has grown ...
It had a green top in spring and summer
and now has turned red.
Fall has come. Night will come.
Like a tear from a child,
The red leaf fell.
It fell to the ground ...
And lays there still.
It will stay
Until the winds come
And blow, blow, blow it away.
© Alana M. Generson
Autumn Muse
In the hills of hocking county
Stands a tree with limbs
That resemble a human hand
With fingers extended towards the sky
A tree not so distinct than the multitude
Of others that surround it
In miles of forest
That many would briefly notice and
Then move on
It is there in that forest
Within those rolling hills
Beneath a warm autumn sun
That you shared with me
What I now regard
One of the best days of my life
And until my last breath is drawn
I will fondly recall this
Holding onto those moments
Of bliss that were ours
While keenly observing
A tree that resembles a human hand
With fingers extended towards the sky
© John L. Trommer
It Doesn’t Make Any Sense
Because You Are Smiling
You “flick off”
the camera in
multiple profile photos
in such a way that
the knuckles
of your index and ring fingers
are at different heights
and the index
is notably higher.
Ineffable
feelings of
confusion & concern.
I really think I need
to be there
for you..
© James Payne
Mending the Rift
Leftover sun warms me,
eases tensions as I walk in the woods.
The wind stirs a clutch of leaves
that skitter/scatter across my path.
All around leaves flutter
in a rain shower like wingless yellow
birds.
The red underbelly of a finch
blends with the yellow.
The false warmth of the day, a limbo
time, hints of coming winter...
nature’s part in seasonal change.
As in aging, I rebel against it.
I can no longer mend the distance
between warm days of youth
and the cold-bone reality of age.
© Betsy Kennedy
Haiku
a plant grows, flowers,
then dies – we must each accept
same fate for ourselves
© Rick Klaus Theis
says there’s no danger –
then steps behind a lead wall
to x-ray my teeth
© Rick Klaus Theis
OCTOBER 2010
Small Reminder
Is Santa rock-star famous
He asked
With seven-year-old eyes and infinite curiosity
Seriously seeking an answer
While cutting out paper hearts for Valentine’s Day
Oh, he’s more than rock-star famous
I said
In response
This came after a questioning about gangs
Where they lived
What they wore
And the reassurance that “they” were not present
In his rural Ohio hometown
Where the population is mainly Amish
He had been bored
Wanted
No, needed, attention
When he came into the room
Where I had snuck away to practice yoga
I gave him my attention
I answered his questions
He reminded me...
That I have something to give
That I can provide comfort
With my knowledge
With my love
With my time.
© Alana M. Generson
Spell-Check
My body is no longer the flawless manuscript
most men would take time out of their busy day
to read; no longer as exciting as the latest novel,
nor as interesting as the daily news.
There was a time when everything was capitalized
at all the right places, the I’s were dotted and
there were no uncrossed T’s.
Everything was worded right.
Sentences had the appropriate emphasis and titles
fit me perfectly.
Now, I am more like the comics, and even some
of them aren’t funny, but rather tragic.
I was beginning to think I was no more of use
than a rolled up newspaper used to swat flies.
But then you found me.
You read the manuscript, overlooking the flaws.
There is no need for spell-check, you accept me
as I am.
My words come off your lips in the form of
poetry, and in your eyes I am the sonnet,
I had always hoped to be.
© Betty Bleen
Your Turn To Cry
Your beauty will fade,
then what are you left with,
Some sad stories,
and the dress you slept in
You say no one loves you,
but you've never given me the chance,
Sleep with whomever gives you
a passing glance
Being lonesome isn't an excuse,
Used us all anyway,
so what’s the use
You said you tried but failed,
your boat is sinking
and you tossed your pail
Why didn't I learn?
For years I've been burned,
So let the tears come,
Now it's your turn
© Jacob Ryan
SEPTEMBER 2010
Recollections
of How I Smelled on I-90
I smelled like the last loaf
Of Wonder Bread,
The waft up and stay till stale.
I smelled like an empty factory
And the shifty remainders of
A pre-service industry.
Like I smelled like the painted billboards
That wither and weather away,
Like 1960s/1970s.
And, like, kept like
A spectacle,
Like a kid passed out in the middle
of the party.
I smelled like the exculpations of
The weight of the world,
The palimpsest
Of justification
And whateverness.
© James Payne
Vincent Van Gogh’s Moment of Calm
in “Harvest at La Crau with The Blue Cart”
Demons in the mistral hover over wheat,
tormenting gold ripe grains into roiling
like the Mediterranean in storm.
Vincent is resolved to paint
the length and the breadth of harvest
without disturbance. To stop motion,
he sets the camera in his eye
to one two-thousandth of a second.
Smooth brushstrokes of yellow and
green fields,
and a smoother ribbon of satin sky,
suggest the tranquility of a Dutch countryside.
An empty blue cart reposes in the center
of the picture.
Quick sketches of farm folk working
hint at soothing sounds of their rhythms.
The reaper cuts wheat with neat strokes.
Hired hands bring it in in a cart
to the clipity clop of a high-stepping horse.
The woman pitches straw
high into the barn loft.
Some other day, using swirls of thick paint
and adjusting the lens of his eye
to one second, Vincent will enlarge
the furies in the wind.
© Rose Ann Spaith
Best of 1997: Ohio Poetry Day
i worry when life
keeps getting better: this can’t
go on forever
© Rick Klaus Theis
6am, cadence
of <<bark...bark...bark...>> next door--
canine alarm clock
© Rick Klaus Theis
AUGUST 2010
Summer Heat 1
Thick Humidity
Sun-bleached blacktop, dusty streets
And the sewage smells
Summer Heat 2
Cool Olentangy
River breeze through shady limbs
And the sewage smells
State Fair Game
An Elephant Ear
Spicy Bahama Mama
Hot Dog on a stick
© Damion Armentrout
Unlocking the Clues
My mother works at the sink board,
her dress stained with summer-bruised
peaches and berries.
She fills rows of empty jars.
Other times I hear the sound
of peas spill into a wooden bowl.
Her chiffon dreams are lost
in the day’s labor.
At night she searches for first stars.
My father sits on the porch,
leans against the rail.
His straw hat tilts skyward.
A blaze of fireflies softens
the ache of harsh words.
© Betsy Kennedy
Tree-tossed
This morning I watched it
rain under the trees,
stirred from
myriad leaves
by a gentle wind
and earlier shower.
The trees wept while
sunlit spots danced
along their trunks.
Apparently,
everywhere,
the price of
Light
is
Tears.
© Sharon Reeb
JUNE 2010
beer bottles, plastic
bags lie under tree in park -
animal droppings
© Rick Klaus Theis
Nonsense and Dissonanace
a symphony in shock major
Cymbals crash timpani rumbles.
Symbols clash a nation stumbles.
Counter point and counter punch.
Media brass, a thoughtless bunch,
Drive rude discussion
With deafening percussion.
As strings stand guard
And winds blow hard
On screen a one-man band
Can’t seem to find his civil gland.
Fire the conductor he’s no treasure,
Composer too for good measure.
From dark of night to glare of noon,
Out of sync, out of tune,
Mock and shock, nothing to lose,
A tormented symphony of cable news.
© Bill Keating
MORNING
Awakened by an angel – no, a small bird
Whose silhouette with wings outstretched
Looks like an angel, making many trips
To the outside wall – must be a nest there.
Remembering the dream of bright art cars,
Lined up in a row, and me in a studio,
Looking over fanciful-pictured books.
Ah, the best of both worlds.
Art and Books,
Books and Art,
And angels.
Looking out on a perfectly-fashioned May day,
The consciousness slips back into body,
Everything’s okay today: plants, breakfast,
Transportation – must be some mistake.
When all goes right, it seems so odd,
Fruits of work, positive thoughts,
Eating well not too much,
And providing for others.
Ah, the best of family.
Adults and Children,
Children and Adults,
And angels.
Getting away with something, like we did,
The swimming pool had a jukebox.
We swam and sang then, even in the rain,
But not with lightning – out of pool if lightning.
This life is full, crowded with incidents,
Falling in like petals forming a nest
Of memories, and trusting continuity will hold
Til death parts mind and body.
Ah, the best til lightning.
Water and Music,
Music and Water,
And angels.
It’s not so much successful as blessful.
© Christine Hayes
just one animal
will cheat his own brother or
kill for pleasure - man
© Rick Klaus Theis
MAY 2010
i feel as though i'm
exactly halfway through life –
half fool, half empty
© Rick Klaus Theis
From a Deep Slumber (I awoke)
I awoke from a deep and troubled slumber, only to find a
blazing sunlight pouring in through my windowpane.
And as far as the eye could see in every direction,
Fields and fields and fields of daisies...
The promise of you my love.
© John Trommer
if this world is my
imagination, i'm an
accomplished dreamer
© Rick Klaus Theis
APRIL 2010
Morning Song
It is five o’clock in the morning.
I see nothing wrong walking alone
This old Appalachian road – tucked
In by hills – listening to birdsong.
The entire ensemble is playing:
Timpani by ruffed grouse and a chat,
Thrushes’ silver notes accompanying
The vireo string section in E-flat.
A Carolina wren, cheerful bard,
Yodels from a wooded rill,
Accenting tanager, oriole, bunting,
And a prairie warbler’s rising trill.
Other than myself, the only listeners
Are a flying squirrel in his loge,
And a trio of deer gowned in beige,
Volunteer ushers, I suppose.
The genius composer though unknown,
Hints in dark ways I am unaware
Of ice ages, corridors of time flown,
Of secrets unsuspect in music so rare.
© Tom Thomson
July 10, 1984
haiku, gentle bud
opens to curious sun:
illumination
© Rick Klaus Theis
Finding Home
I drive through the night.
Lights blink, secret signals
from distant houses.
The small towns become a blur.
Unfolded maps on the car seat
show crisscrossed lines,
connecting dots.
I circle one that leads to home,
open the door on familiar
scents.
The search for my casa,
a protective place never ends.
It’s like coming home on a rainy
spring night,
the rain misty in my face,
shoes wet from splashes.
I close the door, safe from damp
air.
The cat purrs, wraps warmth
around me.
© Betsy Kennedy
Radiant Sun
Inside the house
By the washer and dryer
On the walls
By her cat’s litterbox
Hung
A small collection
Of handmade suns
Suns with eyes and noses and mouths
Suns that said, “See me. I am here.”
~
She must have found comfort in the light
The light of hope
The light of peaceful sharing
The light of love.
~
Her life was like that of the sun.
Her warm, full heart
At the center
Her arms
Reaching out
Reaching
Reaching out
With so much love,
With so much love.
© Alana Generson
The Estranged Equestrian
She stood in the middle of the empty field.
As she turned, she crunched hard clods under her boots.
She imagined the popping charge of hooves,
The muscles moving under flesh,
The steam exhale above large teeth.
She felt she smelled moist spring air in the sharp wind,
Although she could almost see the recent desolate snow
Standing in the landscape.
She remembered galloping through farmyards and streambeds,
But also the precision of the dance,
The scent of the sawdust in the ring.
She slapped her thigh to the imaginary horse lingering
At that certain place by the fence.
© Christine Hayes
Pedaling down Third
Where it is like a freeway
Fast as cars downhill
© Damion Armentrout
MARCH 2010
THE END OF AN ERA
Good-Bye to Cousin Laura
They called last night from Dewitt Rehab to say you had expired.
The caller spoke broken English
So I had her repeat the news I dreaded to hear.
She said you died peacefully.
That you even had broth for dinner.
THE END OF AN ERA.
I called the Hotel Beacon (your home for so many years) to share the news.
Denissa, who answered, said you ”would never be forgotten at the Beacon.”
John, from the hotel, called to say he was sorry to hear of your passing
and that “you were loved at the Beacon.”
THE END OF AN ERA.
Sarah, your social worker, just called to say she was sorry for our loss.
She too said your passing was peaceful.
THE END OF AN ERA.
And, I just spoke to John at the Krtil Funeral Home.
Your burial will be tomorrow at Forest Green Memorial Park.
You will be in New Jersey then, not New York.
In the Jewish section he told me.
THE END OF AN ERA.
I’m afraid of the end of an era.
What do you do when a generation belonging to you expires?
Now I will say, “I used to have a cousin Laura who lived in a hotel all of her life in New York City.”
Dr. Tupper at Dewitt called you “ferociously independent.”
A lovely way for you, Cousin Laura, to be remembered at ninety-one years old.
Good-bye dear Laura Bythiner.
You will be missed.
THE END OF AN ERA.
© Sharon Weiss
Sharon Weiss is a Short North gallery owner. Her first poem about Cousin Laura,
“Don’t Apologize,” appeared in our September 2009 issue.
Penance
January came, and the second anniversary of his death,
His memory shrouding her in the brown and white
Herringbone woven coat she had worn since then.
Stepping inside the house she shrugged off the coat,
Placing it ever so gently on the kitchen table. Tonight,
On the way home, the thought had popped into her head,
It was time to let it go. Her husband would be ecstatic
With her decision, time and again he had hinted,
Seeing the poking threads, and again at each lost button,
That maybe it was time she thought about buying a
New coat. Yet, she had continued to wear it. Why?
She really didn’t know. It wasn’t like her dad had ever
Shown any interest in her life. They had expressed few
Words to each other when in a room together, she
Uncomfortable to the point that she would try to plan
Her visits to her mom at times when she thought he
Wouldn’t be at home. She had never been able to relate
To him anymore than he could to her. Still, she had
Picked the coat out of his belongings after his death,
Had worn it that whole first winter. But then came this
January, and with it a shifting somewhere in the passages
Of her heart. Why had she worn it so long? Was it
Because it was a way of wrapping his love around her,
A love he was never able to express in real life? Did she
Wear it because she liked the style, how it reminded her
Of an episode of That Girl, a show she used to watch
As a teen? She chuckled at this, knowing it was a girl’s
Coat, that her dad, who loved to frequent thrift shops,
Had bought it not knowing the difference. Or did she
Wear it as some form of penance because somehow
Deep inside herself, she thought that if only she had
Put forth more effort, things could have been different.
Taking a pair of scissors from her desk she clipped
Off the remaining buttons, putting them in a small tin
In her sewing box. With a permanent marker she
Wrote on the lid, “Buttons from Dad’s coat.” She didn’t
Know it then, but for years to come she would open
That tin, take the buttons out and roll them like worry
Stones in her hands. Buttons…the only piece of him
She had left to hold onto, tangible evidence of a father
She so wished she could have learned how to love.
© Betty Bleen
NOVEMBER 2009
Incursion
My poetry has left my head,
given up its sprawling nest.
Smothered by the books I’ve read,
it’s flown back to my heart instead.
There it sits and cheerlessly chirps
a song oddly bereft of words,
so mute that it cannot be heard,
except by other lonely birds
© Sharon Reeb
OCTOBER 2009
John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
Ohio needs the Fall
and I wake up
suddenly the siamese mao of
it all
the black cat
doorstep
reminding me to pump
3 bucks
worth of nickels
into the flat tire
of a grand prix -
pack a smokes
under the tulip tree
reminding me
that the United States
needs
- poetry
I'm the President
of Poverty
under the shade
of this here
tulip tree
© Adam Gellings
Season of Lament
Autumn returns, with morning air
sharp as the taste of a tart plum.
Starched leaves, raked in heaps,
look like colored clothing sorted
for washday.
Against the porch wall folded lawn
chairs lean in prayer/pose,
yearn for summer sun.
Soon snow will cover the ground
like a shroud. Winter, an unbidden
guest, will feast on my thin bones.
© Betsy Kennedy
wind is silent, yet
i hear the leaves laugh as the
breeze tickles the trees
© Rick Klaus Theis
Buddhist book’s best proof
comes as, mindfully, i touch
its rough-hewn cover
© Rick Klaus Theis
Three Tenors
If I start humming
The fridge, the AC, and I
Make a nice trio
© Damion Armentrout
Flying
Looking out of my office window
the sky is an endless shield of gray.
The flowers along the path shiver in
their dusting of frost.
It is a blustery Pooh kind of day,
the trees raining leaves upon the lawn
in an endless ballet.
Winter is fast approaching and I am
filled with melancholy, longing for
a kite to fly, a tree hole to explore.
Yet I cannot be sad.
Honey comes in many forms.
I have tasted honey sweeter than
that made by any bee.
When I look upon your face and you
smile, the gray clouds dissipate.
I step out of my worries as surely as
a woman sheds her party dress,
anticipation overriding the disheveled
heap on the floor.
Winter holds no power over me.
It is enough to bask in the warmth of
your loving arms, my soul soaring
as high as a new kite in spring.
I am gliding on the wings of your love.
See how I fly!
© Betty Bleen
Baptist Zen Manifesto (Ice Box)
translucent ghost manipulate eat language
delicious those
like some nefarious velvet corduroy character
asking needing
long open women pedagogue pictures
deft temerity
worshiping secretly above that only roil than storm
broken
said blush men shake voices laughing droll
they of one will
soar like the next two-two torpid power zeal
bleeding feet
vast fresh chocolate caramel road lust
exploring lake hits
night club will ameliorate all essential want
above then
secrete individual lather smell make squirm
eternity men
missive mellifluous fecund obdurate light
soon make growl tell
impecunious not for porcelain clean father
may word beauty
see how the garden goddess dances to the day whisper fiddle
understand the influence of the hard circle sea
luscious peach mother
when said veil embrace vapid space
some rhythm obtuse
here need sit gorgeous ike deep water
must void yesterday
perhaps hence breeze have drunk time heart
sister daughter
like bring never eat girl usurp abscond god
this die green
© Rick Blackburn
Short North Resident Mailman
SEPTEMBER 2009
Don't Apologize
Don’t apologize for growing old
I think it makes you sad
The photo of you when you were thirty isn’t important to me
Who you are now is important
You looked so pretty in the lobby of the Hotel Beacon
Your black and white checked coat accented your wavy white hair
You were proud of your white clutch handbag
It was lovely
Didn’t we have fun at lunch
You said your rare hamburger and sliced potatoes were “delicious”
You were hungry
It did my heart good to see you eat so well, Cousin Laura
You sipped your black coffee and said it was delicious
My hot tea was good too
When our lunch came to an end, I watched you gracefully apply
your true red Loreal #350 lipstick, without even a mirror
I imagine you applied it exactly the same way when you were a mere thirty years old
Don’t apologize for growing old
Who you are now is important to me
© Sharon Weiss
Not Forgotten
A thing of beauty is a joy forever...
- John Keats
Victorian homes like once proud ladies
hide their frayed edges of wear
behind wisteria vines, or fragrant honeysuckle
that clings to a paint-peeled trellis.
Wicker chairs on porches, imposing turrets,
lace curtained windows indicate a different era
of horse-drawn milk wagons,
children rolling hoops down cobblestone streets.
I want to peer inside, see the curved staircase,
an Axminster rug that cushions sound,
the writing desk. (Someone sat here, shared
recipes and latest news with sisters,
perhaps a poem or two.)
Light sifts into the room, its warmth a silent
embrace.
Old homes, a reminder of solidness,
a gracious way of life still exists.
Some restored in bright colors, called
“Painted Ladies,” are again desired.
I wish I could age as gracefully.
© Betsy Kennedy
HAIKU
things change; present good
will go bad – knowing this, I’m
nostalgic for now
© Rick Klaus Theis
AUGUST 2009
Too Busy
She seemed reserved, even shy.
Remarkable that anyone in law school
would be reserved, let alone shy.
We found her notebook and saw
that she had written, "Hurt and Bitterness,
Hurt and Bitterness," over and over,
line after line, page after page, "in passably
good handwriting, too," one of us observed.
Much too busy with matters much too important
to spend time on our discovery, we just laughed.
But it wasn't our usual laugh.
© Bill Keating
HAIKU
each day I accept
myriad things I believe
unacceptable
© Rick Klaus Theis
Napoleon
Napoleon, I'm broke
I see you on the other side
of the street,
I cash in.
Napoleon I'm alone, so alone
yet you blunder to glory,
I enter the code on the side
of the macaroni box,
loathe the lottery.
Napoleon, Napoleon
I see you in the supermarket
like Ginsberg sees
Whitman -
I sleep in the same bed of
green grass I was
raised on; I see the same sky
- different clouds
© Adam Gellings
JULY 2009
The heart door
Last night the wind visited
your house and blew on
the door but the door
was not opened. There was
nobody home. Today I visited
there too knocking at your door.
The door is always
closed. How can I meet
the occupant? Perhaps I will
come back again
tomorrow early in the morning.
I hope you'll open the
door for me!
© Meiquing
JUNE 2009
Please don’t panic. It’s not a piggy pandemic. It’s just a cold – and a poem by Bill Keating.
Just a Cold
It’s just a cold,
But I cough and drip
And feel so old.
My head throbs,
My ears ring.
And when I sneeze
My nose will sting.
Everything is such a bore
When my head is full
And my throat is sore.
I cough and drip
And feel so old,
But I tell myself,
“It’s just a cold.”
HAIKU
distinctive face haunts
me – where did I first see it
and why do I care?
© Rick Klaus Theis
City Pastorale
Bare feet curled around the legs
of a cane-seat chair
I sit at my mother’s oak table, now mine.
My friend Yetta, her old slippered feet primly together,
smiles across.
We dip into bowls of strawberries
drowned in Cool Whip
and glance through lace curtains
to where a huge maple crowds the window.
“Look!” I cry as a cardinal
pins itself like a Christmas bow
to the lush, green leaves.
Yetta slowly turns
and we stare at the crimson bird,
then quickly relish the red berries in our bowls.
Moving through the doorway
past the first snow of white clematis
old bare feet and slow-slippered ones
trace the perimeter of the flower garden.
I pick a few bright forget-me-nots
and, half-joking, threaten to send bouquets
to relatives we seldom see.
There is only the spirited conversation
of birds rustling in the grapevine,
and the murmur of a mower far away.
Resting on our canes we smile knowingly
at each other, a pair of aged shepherdesses
quietly guarding a new flock of summer bloom.
© Laura Hank Hilton
(1912-2003)
MAY 2009
Rainy Spring
Nature’s dress is in a mess,
A hillside full of squish,
The rain begets small rivulets,
I look out from tea and dish.
Honeysuckle shouts out, “Green, green green!”
Hyacinth murmurs pink and grape,
Daffodil utters butter, long stems careen
From moist heads in downward drape.
Nature’s cape falls from her nape,
Old leaves compress into the loam,
Warm and wet we don’t regret,
For mushrooms make loam their home.
Morels we scramble with the eggs,
The onions, succulent, home-grown chives,
We drink spring’s flavors to the dregs,
The air, the soil, the skies.
© Christine Hayes
Fragments For Spring
The last snow falls from eaves
of houses.
Winter loosens its hold
as an infant might kick aside
a warm shawl in a carriage.
The thin green bones
of daffodils push up
from thawing ground.
Blossoms explode.
Swatches of silk kites
create a carousel of color
against the sky.
Sudden flash of a blue jay
completes the poem.
© Betsy Kennedy
Perfect
Other moms
look so cool
in their clean white blouses
bra straps firmly in place
belted khaki shorts
not giving anything away
Other moms
drive museum minivans
their sliding doors can open
without fear
that someone will see in
Other moms
buy perfect teacher gifts
wrapped neatly
so thoughtful
and germ-free
Do they get
all-over body hugs and
poems from their daughters
(she loves me more than ice cream!)
When I sigh heavily about my disheveled appearance
or my less-than perfect thighs
my warrior son leaps to my defense
you are a strong mommy, he says,
and he seems to have no doubt
When we walk together
we leave a shimmery wake
of sparkling love motes
and footsteps made of hearts
© Julie DuSablon
The News
After you leave it won’t stop raining.
A beautiful butterfly has stopped
very graciously in front of my
window. What a pleasant surprise. I
think she is telling me you’re safe.
© Meiquing
Universal Garden
Under sky, under sun,
Near to the heart –
Illuminate.
Vibrations hum, and
Ever gladly the garden grows,
Reaping the bounty of love
Sown with every seed.
Alive, most joyously alive, we dance to bring the
Light.
Grandfather’s gnarled great
Arms lift our spirits and our song.
Rain falls, a gift from the sky.
Drink and breathe deep while
Evening’s colors bring the magic of the
Night.
© Julie DuSablon
JANUARY 2009
Sing
What you're hearing is a
matching Lark singing from the
bottom of my heart. Wait
and listen through closed eyelids
and smile slightly. So warm.
© Meiquig
Birches
Black marks on white bark
of birches
look like an artist
daubs paint
along the trunk.
Trees cast
a length of shadows
across snow.
Birches stand like cutouts,
silhouettes against
a winter sky.
Snow swirls
in secret laughter,
breaks the stillness
of a bleak day.
A cardinal bursts
into the scene,
and like a bright drop
of blood
disturbs the white.
© Betsy Kennedy
time's eternity
overwhelms - everything
reduced to nothing
*
Too much of watching
the tube, not enough living -
so no new haiku
HAIKU
erratic weather
reminds: no seasonal mold,
each day is unique
© Rick Klaus Theis
DECEMBER 2008
a little bit of christmas every day
when i used to see the future
it would scare the shit out of me
i’d see twenty years at a time, twenty years away
i would see very specific things,
it would terrify me, now it is fun
it’s a little bit of christmas every day
all the territory in my mind
that is to say all the territory in the world
is not familiar, therefore savage
© Joshua White
Soul Love
I awoke in a park
In the middle of winter
At the start of the dark,
After all the trees
Had been uprooted,
And turned upside down –
Their branches and leaves
Buried in the ground;
Their naked roots inverted,
Pointing toward the clouds.
And around these upturned trees
Dogs chased dogs,
Allowing me to see
That errant electrons
Swirling around
The nuclei of atoms
(The substance of
Both them and me)
Were just different dogs
Chasing other dogs
Around other upended trees
In other desolate parks
During other winters
Of eternal soul love.
© Rick Klaus Theis
HAIKU
UPS man spans
world with gifts; each day, Christmas –
modern, brown Santa
•
fall morning, spring day,
summer evening, winter
night – odd paradise
•
met two old men – one
swinging glad, one raging mad –
which will I make me?
© Rick Klaus Theis
NOVEMBER 2008
I Get High In The Highest Part of Ohio
I get high in the highest part of Ohio,
I overlook the hills and watch the waving wheat.
The vast sky invites pouf clouds darting over,
Streams and barns pop up and faithfully repeat.
Lanterns glow made of jars of fireflies dancing,
Red-roofed barns dot terra firma underfeet.
Rural life favors those unsavory trailers,
Log cabins run away in history’s retreat.
© Christine Hayes
AUGUST 2008
EMU
Oceans of regret and nervous laughter can’t drown
the disasters of yesterday. She’s already long gone
as is the air in your lungs, her picture in your pocket,
the hope you never trusted anyway.
The strange voice on the machine that night
was lecherous and slurred
like rusty barbed wire ripped through your eardrums.
It was your fault really, for listening to the messages first.
Luck be a dying bluebird in your caged head tonight.
Sleep is a myth for the dumb.
Her lies blur faster than a poisoned hummingbird’s wings at dawn.
Dreams, like hungry cavities packed with sugary confessions,
induce madness in the dark.
The clock strikes, the phone rings,
the black thorns of betrayal dig ever deeper
into an already perforated heart.
© A. Young
The Power of Memory
A teacup in time
swirling with the milky past.
Love’s decadence the sweet honey
Taking up too much room on the palette
unless the bitterness is also savored
Then all that is remembered is a
placebo of replacement and
Eternity seeps out and all that is
recalled is
Empty of life.
© Rachelle
Saltwater Days
Remember the machine at ocean side,
or at county fairs that spun batter
from shiny pans into taffy.
I used to watch the metal arm pull
the confection up and down,
then sideways, stretching it
like a skein of yarn a woman might
hold between her hands.
The motion, as well as the results,
satisfied me...pastel-colored candy
to suck on and melt in my mouth.
Such simple days with elemental
pleasures have disappeared.
Now I flounder in an upside down
world.
I am pulled in many directions,
fragmented, bitter without you.
© Betsy Kennedy
JULY 2008
Breakfast is Served
Toasted English muffins spread with peanut butter and grape jelly.
A simple meal, it is all I have to offer.
I pour you the last few ounces of orange juice, knowing as I do
that you prefer to drink your fruit while I relish the taste and texture
of a ripened orange.
The coffee is served black; I haven’t made it to the store for cream.
You smile nonetheless, the lines crinkling around your eyes,
and you tell me the meal is deliziosi!
I know you would have preferred better, but you are so sweet,
the idea of complaining would never cross your mind.
The day promises to be pleasant, the sun a shimmering sphere
climbing leisurely over the horizon.
There is no need for words, only the need to touch, our bodies
positioned on chairs but a hairsbreadth apart.
We sit in comfortable silence, this breezeway our personal bistro;
birds the orchestra, serenading us from backyard trees.
A blue jay flies across the yard to perch on a nearby branch.
You say it is as blue as an azure sea.
No, I tell you, it is as blue as your sparkling sapphire eyes.
You chuckle then flatter me; saying, Mi Cherrie, they are just eyes,
created solely for the purpose of drinking in your beauty.
Now it is my turn to laugh.
You are no more French than I am from Mars.
Still, I feel a blush wash over my cheeks.
Almost a year together, you still move me with your infatuation.
Our eyes lock and I perceive the hunger rising in yours.
You take my hands, fingers caressing the palms.
Pleasure beckons inside the door.
I feel the need to hurry, yet… there is time to be patient,
the day after all just beginning, the night so far far away…
© Betty Bleen
The Flood
A river winds slowly through my mind
Its movement barely noticeable –
an erosion not worth the worry;
a delicate degradation
It upsets nothing –
not the laundry list of chores
nor the nagging voice of doubt
And yet,
it makes its way
Winding through mountains of memories
and
valleys of thought
Slow and persistent
your waters creep
to the bow of my mind
And there they stop –
pooling, dilating;
drowning the day
until,
I open my mouth and the waters rush out –
flooding the pages, soaking my skin
© Kelli Drummer-Avendaño
JUNE 2008
Guardian
The heart lies hidden,
pulsating with life.
No evidence shows where hurts
are sheltered,
fears stay,
within which chamber love is confined.
A paradox,
for scars are sometimes found.
Guard carefully, heart, the fragile
life you hold.
© Betsy Kennedy
No in a Moment
In a moment used to mean endless time waiting for
my request to be answered.
Today it meant the sweetest unfolding of my life in
the hands of the ever present.
No used to be bitter and rigid, frustrating and
disappointing my expectations.
Today the gentle no became the withholding of events
I’m not yet prepared for or fluid enough to
receive.
Today no in a moment became yes forever.
© Rachelle
APRIL 2008
Play Back Tape
Mid-April freeze,
January brother reluctant to leave.
Last night’s ‘Featured Reading’ flat,
grand impact of cucumber sandwich.
Wife left. Stare at stained glass birds,
bunches of rosemary upside down, half-
closed dresser drawer, nursing bra.
Kid lost job. Pick up insurance; dog
to vet; car repair; tuition due –
heartburn...apparent ulcer.
The cat died. Two days thought
a while since it moved, crusted food,
water floating calico hair.
Weak batteries – replace.
I can get some poems out of these.
© Robert Pringle
She Seemed Familiar
i couldn’t tell if she was a girl or a woman
she had traveled to Europe by herself
and most recently Poland
i couldn’t reckon her age
she seemed in some ways like a child
she talked about her church group
and her volunteer service
with the plump spirit of a youngster
but she also seemed older
wiser, having experience she wasn’t
letting on to
– maybe good parents?
then i looked at her hands
hands aren’t ambiguous
they were child’s hands
bare, unlined, steady
and open
© Joshua Isaac White
MARCH 2008
of all who have died,
good and bad, not one’s returned –
must be better there
© Rick Klaus Theis
Musings of a Renoir Cat
My moment of fame – to be chosen
for Renoir’s painting, Julia Manet with Cat.
That’s me – just “Cat” – no name recorded.
What pleasure it gave me,
sitting for Renoir.
I had to be still while he worked,
sketching my body in quick strokes,
later painted to resemble me.
I don’t recall any compensation,
but I’m certain other cats were envious.
If you think my fur soft, you should have felt
Julia’s gown – silky-soft – like the secret places
behind my ears that I liked stroked.
Julia’s lap was comfortable as she held me.
I snuggled into an easy pose.
“Charming,” I often heard after the painting
was finished.
At first I thought the compliment was for me,
but Julia did have a winsome smile.
© Betsy Kennedy
Signafusion
Over a store’s large window,
GRAND OPENING!
On the front door entrance,
SORRY WE’RE CLOSED.
In a corner of a window near the door,
PARDON OUR STILL REMODELING DUST.
Are we to celebrate?
Wonder how long to wait?
Or quickly buzz three B’s to ventilate?
© Don Jaccaud
The Lady Vanishes
In Hitchcock’s thriller,
The Lady Vanishes in 1938,
the title role is played by a Dame,
an oatmeal-tweed connoisseur
of music, tea, and conversation.
The last trace is her name
written in steam fogging
a dining car window – no silk scarf,
no gold cigarette case, no kid glove
found on the platform of adjoining cars.
Her film rescue reveals
she went from retiring governess
to British spy – overpowered, drugged,
consigned for “questioning” elsewhere.
She traveled as well from a film
history of Oh, Genteel Lady, A Lady
By Choice into the modern movie idiom
of The Lady Takes a Chance.
What a thrill for Hitchcock
to drop the white glove of “Lady”
for the bare knuckles of “Woman.”
© Robert Pringle
FEBRUARY 2008
Mr. Blue Collar
In the alley shadows fall as
broken beer bottle teeth bite through overworked boots
on the long walk home from unloading trucks.
Of course there was last minute overtime, production quotas
being what they are and corporate is crazy as ever ...
Mr. Blue collar greets me more often than not as I pass
by this backyard. He bows regally into the last of the day’s
sunrays, his tomcat stretch cut short by a shard of green
glass beneath his paw. He wears a collar of blue, hence the
name, but more importantly he is a workingman’s cat.
His people understand all too well those oppressive, trapped
feelings of no options, no way out, no hope of anything better ...
I mean, they always make sure to keep a window cracked
for Mr. Blue Collar. A way out, an escape. The dignity to
move around as he pleases, the decency of keeping his hours
his own. This suits Mr. Blue Collar just fine.
© A. Young
work week prison – with
evenings and weekends as
the exercise yard
© Rick Klaus Theis
Skin Red From the Hot Water
the first time i saw a naked woman
i was thirteen and i opened the door on
my mother’s best friend’s 17-year-old daughter
just getting out of the shower and reaching for a towel
i remember her being blonde and athletic and statuesque
and the towel was white and the room was yellow
and one foot was in the shower and the other on the bathrug
and her skin was red from the hot water
i was very embarrassed and i slammed the door shut
i hoped that she hadn’t noticed or that if she had she didn’t know
who had invaded her privacy like that
she came out later and whined to her mother
“mom, one of the boys opened the door on me
when i was taking a shower”
after i heard her say it in front of me
i became indignant
she hadn’t noticed that it was me
or she had and
she didn’t know my name
or she did and i was so far below her
she didn’t care
i was just a twerpy brat in too much
of a hurry to get into the bathroom
© Joshua Isaac White
To Judy
Rules that I can’t live up to,
The same battleground we’ve been through.
Things that you put me through,
To prove what I am not sure.
I need room to breathe or just to exhale.
The work you gave me to do
I did, but not anymore.
© Wayne Murphy
Answering Machine
I let the machine get the phone
It’s usually just a bill collector
Or a telemarketer
Sometimes my brother calls
To make sure I haven’t
Really gone and killed myself
That’s mostly it
Once I picked up
Hoping it was you
But some Indian woman
Wanted to approve me
For a new Master Card
I just let the machine fill up
With all the detritus
The daily sorrows
And I sit around in my underwear
And type it all out
On another machine
Transcribing really
I erased your last message
By mistake
That was back in August
And now it’s
Already December
© Michael S. Walker
Old Doctor
Your six feet fill the doorway.
Pencil poised
you question, note in file.
Owl eyes check.
The white coat crackles
as you bend to examine.
“Breathe out. Breathe in.”
From bits and pieces
You connect the whole,
arrive at a verdict:
“Take two each day
and call if there are problems.”
You glide to another cubicle
unmindful of the crowd demanding miracles.
Nearby, your replacement
wearing a new gold band
orders tests,
shots, prescriptions;
is in and out of the cubicles
faster than a bird can shake a feather,
always ahead of the multitudes
waiting for loaves and fishes.
“Let’s get this show
on the road!” he announces
in the outer office.
The receptionist whispers,
“Thank God it’s my last week here.”
© Laura Hank Hilton
(1912-2003)
Waiting the Mile
On the first day she
ate biscuits for breakfast,
On the second day she
had designs upon the moon –
On the third day she
invented cake;
And on the fourth day she
took a bite out of the wind –
By the fifth day she
knew her lover wavered
And she was willing
to wait a mile for him –
A mile in silver slippers,
holding a silver rose –
No reason to be out of fashion
even while holding the bag.
Knocking on wood is lucky.
Life is just a bunch of bargains.
She added the rose to a lovely garden
of dried longings.
© Ramona Moon/Christine Hayes
with help from Laurel Doerfler and Jeanni Ray
The Painter
She wanted to paint the sky
Red
So she bought a skyscraper
To get rid of all the blue
And she stole
Jacob’s ladder
Because
A stairway to heaven
Cost too much
And she climbed
Every step
To get to the top
Where she scraped away
Until the sky was grey
And after she ran out
Of oil
And acrylic
She cut
Four fingers
And thumb
And she painted the sky
And knew that it was good
As she fainted
And fell
Onto a bed
Of white roses
That she stained
Red
Ending
her
body
Of art
The days went by
And no one noticed the sky
Until
They were bleeding
© Alfaro
Previously published in real.m
(Silenced Press, 2007)
www.silencedpress.com
DECEMBER 2007
Winton’s Trumpet
In the lonely
dark
privacy
of winter.
A Buckeye leaf fell.
A crocus bulb
thrives
under the rotting warmth.
Spring,
like Winton’s trumpet,
will dream sweet music.
© David Hetzler
That kid showed up at the back door again this morning,
crying because her boots got stuck in the mud over there ... again.
I have told her at least a hundred times to not go over to that playground
while it is still so muddy under the swings.
I tell her, "Don't go over there any more.
Your boots get stuck every time and you'll just be
running back here in muddy socks, crying at me again.
"It is simply the nature of things at that playground,
and you ought to know by now that it is not going to change."
... What a stupid kid! My words keep her safe, inside, for a little while –
until she looks out the window;
then she wants to play and the playground beckons ... again.
And she starts thinking this time she's going to be smarter than to let that happen ... again.
And then she goes out and gets stuck ... again!
Eye am just going to have to keep a closer watch on her –
I will try to not let her get out ... again.
Eye really know now that I just can't take my eyes off her for a whole second.
I'm so glad that 1/4 second rule pretty much works –
when I can remember to use it –
because I'm really sick of fetching her boots and cleaning her back up for the next new day ... again.
© Loran Elizabeth Conley
Little Hocking, Ohio
Well Before Monkeys Were
being hurled into space and caged in
test laboratories, they were confined
but thriving in the monkey house at
Wheeling Park, West Virginia. I know,
because every year in the 1950s while
at our annual St. Catherine’s grade
school picnic we would go inside to
see them. It isn’t hotdogs, pretzel sticks
slathered with yellow mustard, snow
cones, nor fun house mirrors that I
most remember. Not playground rides
or swimming in the pool. Forget about
grade school singsongs on the bus,
songs like Twenty Five Bottles of Beer
on the Wall and Found a Peanut. No,
these memories pale next to those of
the monkey house which is what held
the most allure. So dark inside you had
to wait for your eyes to adjust, it was
monkeys here, monkeys there, monkeys
monkeys everywhere, and boy oh boy,
did they ever smell! They were furry
chattering acrobatic maniacs swinging
from limb to limb by their prehensile
tails, their beady eyes following your
every move. Grinning, grooming,
boisterous monkeys, with bared lips
showing yellowed teeth. Loud, messy,
and aggressive they had no shame.
With their sexual anatomy on such
raucous display it’s no wonder slightly
embarrassed sisters always tried to
hurry us through while behind their
backs we girls giggled and the boys
hooted and howled, pointing out every
set of rump pads, every wrinkled pair
of blue balls. It was quite tantalizing,
slightly risqué, enough to put a blush
on any proper Catholic girl’s face.
© Betty Bleen
city streets show it:
give a monkey a horn, he
can’t help but blow it.
© Rick Klaus Theis
Monkey Business
As we walked up to the door to knock, the
house seemed the same as others on the block.
At my six years of age I was timid and shy,
so I stayed close to daddy, a six foot four guy.
As dad knocked on the door, a scream from inside
made me want to run back down the street to hide.
We entered the house, I holding back, it
scared me to enter .... what was the racket?
Then, there it was, on the swinging door,
a cage with one monkey, it sounded like more.
It chattered, and shrieked, and jumped up and down.
Did he just want attention as he acted the clown?
The door swung back and forth, and it shook.
It scared me so badly I hardly could look.
I held my breath .... then gasped for air.
The stench he emitted was beyond compare!
I don’t remember how long we were there.
I mostly remember the scariest scare.
We never went back. That made me quite happy.
Instead I went swimming next time with my pappy!
© Joan Moos
Role Reversal
“Monkey see, monkey do,
monkey does the same as you”
chant girls at school recess
in sing-song voices
as they jump rope to rhyme.
Boys daring and adventurous,
clamor over monkey bars,
becoming bolder each time.
At the zoo behind a glass
enclosure,
monkeys swing from branches,
dangle on ropes, tumble about,
amuse us in their play.
See, children lean on glass,
press palms & noses against
the pane.
They point and gape,
feign fright when monkeys
linger near.
Who is trapped or free,
those watching, or the monkeys
swinging high in trees?
© Betsy Kennedy
RECLASSIFICIATION
(Scientists: Apes and Humans have 99.6% the same DNA...suggest re-classification of Apes)
Reclassification
WHAT! ... 99.6 the same???
Well, OUR .4 is purer!
To open old Darwinian wounds
Will surely cause a furor.
I’d like to make a valid case
To reclassify mankind.
I think for all his ‘grab and growl’
His species should be canine.
Territorial, with war he gives
The ‘one-legged salute’
With acid-rain and torn up earth
There’s nothing he won’t pollute.
What he says his God made perfect,
He destroys to redesign.
How can he, with the way he acts,
Claim origin so divine?
I think that man should ape the chimps
(Of course, no pun intended.)
To classify them both the same,
Why, the apes would be offended!
© Gay Dell-Howard ©2004
Monkey Sales
At my local grocery store the produce department’s
been overrun by a gang of furry monkeys. As you
enter this section you are greeted by jungle music,
plastic palm trees, exotic plants, and green vines
which dangle from overhead. Scattered here and
there are the monkeys, each assigned his own
aisle of produce and manning his own toy vehicle
filled with vegetables or fruit. Each wears an
appropriate hat – a captain’s hat for a cruiseliner
of coconuts, a pirate’s hat for a pirate ship filled
with lemons and limes, a ball cap for a tractor
trailer of Idaho potatoes – you get the picture.
The first monkey to greet me is Banana Sam
who sits behind the wheel of an old pickup
truck its bed piled high with bananas, his name
embossed in bold red letters on the band of his
big straw hat. He can hardly contain himself
having a big toothed grin, as if driving a truck
full of bananas was the best thing ever happened
to him. As I walk through the aisles I’m
wondering what bozo thought up this tactic.
I mean why do we have to have a gimmick?
When did we stop letting fruit sell itself?
Seeing the old truck I am reminded of when I was
a child and the produce man came by once a week
rain or shine. The truck had a bell which would
tinkle as its driver grinded to a stop in front of our
house. My grandma would don her shawl, grab
her pocketbook and head out the door, usually
with me in tow. The bed of the truck would be
laden with boxes of fruit and vegetables and she
would let me help her pick out any variety of fresh
produce. Oh, the bliss of biting into a sweet purple
plum or luscious peach, a plump red tomato, its
delectable juice dribbling down my chin! To this
day this is one of my fondest childhood memories.
Produce was the real deal then not this polished
version we are offered today, shiny and all spiffed
up like a new pair of leather shoes. Back then just
looking at it would start your mouth to watering
and you didn’t need a bunch of furry funky
monkeys to hock it either!
© Betty Bleen
Monkeys
They say we came from monkeys. I wish I was still a monkey.
Monkeys don’t have to pay taxes.
Monkeys don’t have to pay the rent on time.
Monkeys don’t get speeding tickets.
Monkeys don’t have inlaws.
Monkeys don’t end up in divorce court.
Monkeys don’t have to buy anyone a birthday present.
Monkeys never say, “It costed me the shirt off my back.”
Monkeys don’t have to take a bath.
Monkeys don’t have to use a fork, knife, and spoon.
Monkeys don’t have to say grace at the dinner table.
Monkeys don’t have to go to church on Sundays.
Monkeys don’t have to go to school.
Monkeys don’t have to watch their tone of voice.
Monkeys don’t have to pay union dues.
Monkeys don’t have to dress up for a job interview.
Monkeys don’t have to register their hunting rifle.
Monkeys don’t have to register for the draft.
Monkeys don’t have to wear glasses.
Monkeys don’t have to say “Sir.”
Monkeys don’t have to pay alimony or child support.
Monkeys don’t have to stand in line at the grocery store.
Monkeys don’t get caught in traffic jams.
Monkeys don’t need a haircut.
Monkeys don’t need to shave.
Monkeys have more hair on their chest than I do.
Monkeys don’t have to pay for a wedding.
Monkeys don’t have to punch a time clock.
Monkeys don’t have to get up at six o’clock in the morning.
Monkeys never need a lawyer.
Monkeys can’t be fired.
Monkeys never get reprimand.
Monkeys don’t get written up by OSHA.
Monkeys don’t have to answer the door.
Monkeys don’t have to answer the phone.
I wish I was still a monkey. Don’t you?
© Mark Stoll
NOVEMBER 2007
A Season's Truth
From the edge of the cornfield
where pumpkins lay tangled in their vines,
you chose one bright as a harvest moon.
I watch you, aware of your strength,
carry the fattest one you could reach
around.
My knife was ready, my grandson.
I transpose your pleased grin into a pumpkin
smile.
We cut the top, scoop life onto yesterday’s
newspaper.
November days end. The pumpkin shrivels.
Its mouth curls in a lopsided shape
like toothless gums of an old man.
You look sharply at me, acquainted in a brief
instant with age,
and, I afraid, glimpse the shrunken man
I might become.
© Betsy Kennedy
city sounds claw to
the top – the winner i hear
through plugs in my ears
© Rick Klaus Theis
Ruminations
Along a blue highway
cottonwood leaves
flash and bell
in the wind.
Some pock
and mat
the grass, refuse
last rites.
Others snap and twist
at the sanctity
of rakes, pop
and crawl from bags,
taunt the tires
of trucks,
sky in the rush
of diesel incense.
A few escape
to village streets,
but most to farm
fields, recall
the cows that eat them,
again and again.
© Robert Pringle
Divine Voices
Time flies faster than we can fathom
yet there are still so many questions
left to answer
but in our race to solve each mystery
and reduce our world to singularity
let us not be too hasty
and forget to take the time to listen
for Divine voices in the wind’s whisper
and enjoy the simple pleasures
tucked away into the folds of life
the warmth and crackle of a fire,
a deep breath of crisp fresh air,
a pause in simple silence,
the honor of innocence
these will be the memories
that we will grow to covet
in the Autumn of our days.
© Eric V. Walton
OCTOBER 2007
Listen Canary
His little birch cage
teeters on twine
from the parlor ceiling.
The listen canary lets a trill
escape his beak and the echo
flicks the marble floor
with a soft ping.
His yellow feathers peel back
when caught in the wind,
when the old woman, delicate,
leaves the glass window
open like a jewelry box.
The golden wings pin back
and he stretches his crispy beak
against cold air.
He listens to the gust, supple,
an antique breeze,
as it creaks the trinkets
in its path, twinkling them.
Sometimes he hears a wind chime
or an old, plinky swing set,
or only his sunset feathers
rustling.
© Regina DiPerna
Prison Visiting Room
Through the doorway an orange tree flames
against the backdrop of a blue mountain.
Red-gold leaves rain upon the copper grass.
In the green shadows of the cool room
women knot themselves into families,
pressing a year’s endearments into one
brief brush with the free world behind – ahead.
Facing inward, some ignore the maple,
the burning arrow exclaiming the answer
beyond the far hill. Behind self-closed doors
they search each other, and try well-worn keys
to the tight pattern of the legal locks.
Atlas-like they shift their problem world
and question those nearby for a pat word.
Yet there are the wise ones who lift their eyes
and see the blue beyond the mountain peak.
© Laura Hank Hilton
(1912-2003)
SEPTEMBER 2007
Gone
The house is empty now of his energy
though manifestations of its presence
thankfully remain.
In a dorm on some campus
he rediscovers passion –
he had it when very young –
in the rows and rows of model cars
he’d line up on steps of our rented double;
in the leggo-roller coasters he’d build
wherever space invited – roller coasters we’d
step over, hesitantly, for weeks, vacuum around.
He had it in flashes in 7th and 8th grade
despite our well-intentioned suppressions –
we had good intentions – to keep him from harm.
Now, away from our watchfulness,
perhaps he’ll flash
out permanently, our smothering concern
a thing of the past
as he learns what we should have allowed him –
to fail, to fall, to bear disappointment;
to laugh loudly, fully, to risk,
to surge with life.
Perhaps, despite and because,
he will forgive us after all.
© Anna Soter
Genesis Retold
Immortal angels, bored with perfectness,
wandered from the Firmament unduly.
Rejecting God, they donned garments of flesh
and strayed onto the Earth, verdant and fruity.
God scorned, and of His angels thus bereft,
bade them, “Go and live. It is your duty.
Go love and hate and weep about your death,
so, you may come to comprehend your beauty.”
© Sharon Reeb
Wander Lost
When the routines of life
shroud my peace
and cause me to wander lost
I long to be a small fish in a big pond,
to lose myself in the bright spot
of the next road's vanishing
and to be born again in foreign eyes
I then awaken in remembrance
that happiness isn't meant to be rationed
out like thin grey gruel
each day's dawn is a sweet symphony
and as long as I hear the music
my dreams will have to die another day.
© Eric V. Walton
What a Surprise
to see you
as I was getting
off work
You stopped by
you said
for a cup of coffee
I smiled
as the words
escaped your lips
both of us
laughing
at this
Both knowing
it for the ruse
it was
When you followed
me home
so I could change
did you happen to see
my smile
in the side mirror
I was hard-pressed
to keep it
on my face
It lit up my car
like a tiny sun
bounced round
and round
from ceiling
to floor
Tried to
unlock the door
and the windows
Said it wanted to
ride in your car
© Betty Bleen
I’ll Never Forget
that time the old couple sang to us in the backyard
they sat on chairs, the man with a banjo missing a string
and the woman with a guitar
the rest of us shared blankets in the grass
and cried as the sun went down
and they played old songs
written in the mountains
he would forget which song to play next
and she would prompt him with the title
and then he’d ask her how it went
but she didn’t know she was very modest
and then he’d climb into it
they lived next door
they owned the house my friends were living in
they hadn’t raised the rent in years and years
we were all happy for a moment
for a moment we had captured the secret to life
we couldn’t believe it.
© Joshua Isaac White
Filler
Sometimes I feel like I’m
Just filling space
Like a poem
In someone’s newspaper
Glanced over with
Morning coffee
And a piece of toast
Hoping and praying
That somehow I don’t
Wind up, crumpled and stained
On the bottom of
Some cat’s litter box.
© Laurence Overmire
JULY 2007
Peaceful Patterns
Peaceful patterns playing in my mind,
Warring words quit warring for a time,
Wandering brain cells hoping for to find,
Peaceful patterns playing in my mind.
Yesterday, when I spoke to my friend,
All my words seemed to twist and rend,
Yesterday, all my integrity had to bend,
But today, I’m not thinking of my friend.
Peaceful patterns playing in my mind,
Warring words quit warring for a time,
Wandering brain cells hoping for to find,
Peaceful patterns playing in my mind.
There are places in the soul,
That peace seldom knows,
Still there are patterns
where the silent wind blows,
Peaceful patterns where the quiet grows.
Peaceful patterns playing in my mind,
Warring words, quit warring for a time,
Wandering brain cells hoping for to find,
Peaceful patterns playing in my mind.
Peaceful patterns of yellow and blue,
Patterns where the gentle swans flew,
Patterns from a slow dance I knew,
Peaceful patterns like the morning dew.
Peaceful patterns playing in my mind,
Warring words quit warring for a time,
Wandering brain cells hoping for to find,
Peaceful patterns playing in my mind.
© Doug Rutledge
WE ARE ALL CRAZY AND LIFE IS GOOD
there are those who for the sake of inner peace
choose to no longer leave the privacy of their room
there are all those who just need to flee the city the state the country
there are those who worship the sixties by the light of their plasma televisions
and there are those wearing bikinis walking blissful
and barefoot over the broken glass in the street
can of beer in one hand, cell phone in the other
© Joshua Isaac White
The Second Cup of Coffee
The second cup of coffee comes later in the day’s routine.
It just doesn’t have the pop of the first. It usually comes because there is some left in the pot.
Would it be a waste to dump it?
Let me be like the first cup of coffee.
The second one really isn’t needed.
So drink up and enjoy me.
Don’t drink me because I am there and there’s nothing better to do.
I like being first and needed.
© Wayne Murphy
eternal
there is no need
to gobble your pleasures,
for love is infinite and
you are eternal.
© Rick Klaus Theis
JUNE 2007
The Doe
There is a doe grazing on the lawn of the building just below my home.
A young girl walks by on her way home from school, glances at the wild thing,
never slowing her pace.
Across the street a dozen people are playing or watching tennis, the balls
bouncing over the nets as always.
This morning’s paper, page 5, left side, below the fold, a story said that one hundred
American troops died during April in Iraq.
The doe, lifting its head, nostrils scanning the lawn for danger, finding none,
bowed its soft brown neck to the grass and ate.
© David Hetzler
Decorum and dreams dance among
the painted faces of the night
the fast and new have
washed over me in wonderful ways
only to leave me yearning to know
the true wisdom of easy and slow
I have journeyed long through
the fallacies and naiveté,
still believing when
hope was a fool’s game
enduring the storm until
the truth was so salient that it
cleansed my soul like fire
the world looks a bit different
on this side of life
priorities have shifted, idealism is sifted
until there’s still some black and white
but many more shades of grey
urgency there is no more
yet I see how deft a thief time is
as it whisks these words away
before they are even frozen in form
the minutes can free or enslave us
but now I’m beginning to relish
each second’s worth
and the true value of things
especially comfortable shoes
© Eric V. Walton
Six String Savior
Listen to a mean guitar.
Listen while you drive your car.
Listen while you shop the mall.
Listen while you’re playing ball.
Six string saviors make my day.
Six string saviors really play.
Six string saviors play it all.
Six string saviors have a ball.
Carlos plays a Paul Reed Smith.
You know who he’s playing with.
Well, Santana, as they’re known.
California, that’s their home.
Perry plays a six string lead.
Fingers move at lightning speed.
They are known as Aerosmith.
Count the women they’ve been with.
Crosby, Stills and Nash and Young.
Every song that they have sung
They have done acoustic style.
Sit and listen for a while.
Springsteen had his Glory Days.
Hendrix had his Purple Haze.
Hank has lots of rowdy friends.
Hope the party never ends.
Nugent has a Stranglehold.
Heavy metal rock and roll.
Working hard and playing hard.
Heavy metal superstars.
Six string savior in my face.
Six string saviors don’t play bass.
Six string savior, mighty loud.
Six string savior, mighty proud.
© Mark Stoll
MAY 2007
Am/big/u/ous
(A homophonic double entendre)
Knot so big,
she harbors a tied
quite through and threw
from crown to tow,
as grate as it is fast.
Whet and hardly warn,
She brooks unseamly past
a wayward lune,
who treads a wile,
allows the pretty foul
to waiver and pitch,
her slight outline
following its coarses,
until accession of cast off breaches
wakes up her mite-y rues,
tries the bounds
of her titanic forces.
With roil flare,
she heaves her size
upon this awed buoy.
So deep, the seas…
Why, she’s
in deed
a swell swallow!
© Sharon Reeb
APRIL 2007
Touched
The masseuse’s hands knead
muscled knots,
lavender scent
awakens senses thought extinct.
I drift
from pressuring tasks,
the debris of the week.
wonder how it would be if we
massaged our children,
our animals from the moment they rise;
if we massaged each other
from the moment we rise.
© Anna Soter
So tilted is the Earth
A silver knife stabs a silent sky,
As a stream of bright stars
Bleed from its wounds.
So tilted is the earth
That even the sky must shed blood.
Who will salve the suffering stars?
Who will climb the rugged mountain
To nurse the night sky?
© Doug Rutledge
The Philosopher
Big bird
Balanced on blighted branches,
Noble in its indifference,
Savage in its flight.
Carrion carrier does not care who
Passes before its immutable eyes
Until motion moves
The stoic philosopher to kill.
© Doug Rutledge
Beyond the Shadows
Raindrops collect on tree limbs,
create a jeweled necklace
as I might wear.
Birds, undaunted by rain,
sing surprise songs.
The cat stares out the window
at birds that flutter by,
then curls up with his own dreams.
In the silence of the room
I imitate the cat – find a book
of poems – perhaps Emily Dickinson,
who wrote invitingly of spring,
and begin to read.
I am content, until I look up, aware
of the black shadow of a crow,
looming across the glass.
The near-spring day seems less
promising. Fears intrude.
I wonder what’s ahead in the shadows.
Soon it will be Easter.
Do the dead, remembering talk
of a resurrection, grow restless
in the dark, frozen ground?
© Betsy Kennedy
The Crow
A crow landed on the porch
roof by the north end
window, the sky sickle grey,
shuddered to a stop.
I nodded good morning
to its gaze.
She flapped one wing,
the other down, neat,
tucked as if to roost,
and flat-footed across the roof,
and flew to perch on a maple
in the yard next door.
Her mustard eye never
left mine.
© Anna Soter
MARCH 2007
Tanpopo
One sip
of genmai
life becomes
a beautiful sigh
nothing now exists
but a steaming bowl
of soba
spicy tuna rolls
and a kind
of kindred peace
that makes tolerable
the troubles of the day.
© Eric Vance Walton
Your Pleasures
Your pleasures
Have never been my pleasures,
Although I appreciate
Your beauty and potential.
As far back as I can recall
I have engaged in
Your forms of fun
With an open mind –
And been disappointed
By the shallowness,
The puerile nature
Of your games.
There are no resonances
With my intelligence;
Even less so with my soul.
I feel I am taking part
In the cryptic ceremonies of
Some alien race
For the purposes only
Of cultural exchange –
A glimpse into
The superstitious liturgies,
Rote reptilian rituals,
Of some backward,
Hermetic sect.
Your pleasures
Have never been my pleasures.
They are the mutually reinforced,
Grotesquely repetitious rites
Of some OCD society –
A colossal dysfunction
Meant to distract
From the complex concepts
Of being and nothingness,
And coping with same,
With one purpose:
To coddle the brain.
Causing it to remain
A rudimentary organ,
Never to flower
Into a true equal
Of the universe it mirrors
And which mirrors it in return,
Bursting forth in magnificence
On so many levels –
Microscopic, optic, and telescopic –
And in so many dimensions –
No point and a single point;
Height and width; depth and time;
Objective subjectivity and
Subjective objectivity;
Spirituality; emotional reality;
And myriad other defining attributes
Operating across multiple geographies,
Independently and in unison.
Your pleasures
Have never been my pleasures,
Except the very basic one
Of enjoying the attention
And the physical sensation
Of a “love at first site” rush,
A love that now lies time-worn
In the many aborted attempts
At deeper mutual connection,
As much my blame
In failing to conform,
Or fate’s blame
In allowing this mutation
Of my consciousness/brain,
As it is yours
In accepting and promoting
Pleasures so mundane.
© Rick Klaus Theis
FEBRUARY 2007
Option For a Broken Tomorrow
Future
In need of repair
Smile - scream
Mundane things
We moan, fear, don’t share
I wanna sail on the opaque lake
Stare to a new morning
Tear down nefarious schemes
© Rick Blackburn
Short North resident mailman
entertainment junkie
a brazen silence fills the air
and was repelled by meek
and hollowed minds
astonished not, I was to this
for minds asleep
tend not to reason
imagination’s atrophied
they chase excitement
again to feed
behold the silence when it comes
silence rarely lasts
too long
© Eric Vance Walton
CLOWNS
I don’t like CLOWNS
Their big crimson frowns
Fluorescent orange hair
Bloodshot eyes that stare
Faces chalked white
Gives me a fright
Stupendous red noses
Bouquets of fake roses
Shoes with broken soles
Clothes full of holes
Cymbals and kazoos
They all make me blue
Big floppy hats
Plastic baseball bats
Fake pots of glue
Big hammers and screws
Painted polka dots
All their goofy props
Don’t know how to speak
Greet you with a shriek
Mimicking and mimes
Talking rhymes
If they come to town
You won’t find me around
They only bring me down
‘Cause I don’t like CLOWNS!
© Betty Bleen
JANUARY 2007
Before the Poem
Far away
Someone is stitching together
Their strange resume
Their dive into the stars
On a certain otherwise
Unmemorable
Day
Far away
Someone is remembering the names
Of all the gods
Those strong dwellers of Olympus
Radiant
Resplendent
All crowned with halos
Of human foibles
Far away
Someone is watching the sparrows jab
for crusts
And feeling in their pockets
That really
There is nothing more
To give to the world
Far way
The leaves curl up into their tombs
And there is to be no denial
No matter how far
Someone goes
Far away
Someone is stitching together
All these images
And ersatz trivia
While the hand doles out change
And the body stands in line
This is happening
© Michael S. Walker
Subway chaos swirls
Around bamboo flute's soft sound--
Eye of hurricane.
© Photo/Haiku by Rick Klaus Theis, NYC
My Poetry Wallows in Colors
My poetry wallows in colors.
'Takes a dip, now and then, in frothy moods of midnight ink.
Pearly pink, it splashes around in sable sounds,
sulphurous rounds and livid rhythms smoldering.
Sometimes it plays in a dappled pool
with a sunny muse,
green and dull,
a flowery mute
that thrashes in a brassy moat
and strokes its silent notes,
but my poetry longs to swim.
My poetry wallows in colors.
'Wades in the shallows of fathomless oceans in ponderous fashion,
pitching in surges of florid emotion and thunderous passion.
It doesn’t want to dabble in red tides of gospel
where the rhetoric is hollow and can poison with one swallow.
It longs to dive under that shadowy Wonder,
to hold its breath, explore its depth,
return to the surface with a vivid yellow fish.
For now, it casts a primitive net,
but my poetry longs to swim.
My poetry wallows in colors.
'Lolls in suffused lagoons, or combs the gray dunes for driftwords,
a landlocked maroon, stumbling on the shore, looking seaward
at the mermaids laughing, silvery sirens twisting in the tangerine light.
'Yearns to splash among the Titans who wield an emerald fire.
Instead, it ponders in puddles muddied with riddles,
longing to be skillful, limber, and nimble,
dreaming of symbols, crystal clear,
so anyone who listens can hear
poetry swimming in colors.
© Sharon Reeb, 2006
NOVEMBER 2006
Mums
Why do mums remind me of funerals?
Do I stem from a stock that always perished in the fall?
Did every living member of my line
Expire at the thought of winter,
Like Baby’s Breath,
Too fragile to survive until the daffodils rise?
Perhaps I am simply too stingy with my blossoms,
Unwilling to give up any but the tardy to the dead,
Tulips for birth, roses for love and mums for expiration.
Though when honesty sets shimmering fall leaves,
I realize that mums are a gift from a future lover,
Sent to celebrate our imminent embrace.
Mums remind me that many blossoms have faded
Since last I saw the glacier lily
Push her gentle fingers through the insensitive snow
To greet the smiling sun of spring.
When spring fails to inspire my soul
To do the hard work of greeting life,
Reaching through winter’s morbid covering
Toward the ever warming light,
Then mums will remain in the memory
Of a mind too tired to wait for daffodils.
© Doug Rutledge
Modern Martha
Her living room was green and gold and gray,
and everything was in an ordered sphere –
the emerald Cogswell chair; across the way
a sleek gold couch with lamp and table near.
Above the sofa, flanked by twin stands small,
quaint flower prints in gilt frames nicely matched
on gray mats, three abreast. At the south wall,
around the glistening panes, precisely starched
white curtains ruffle-edged a sunny scene.
No stray book, dust, nor crumpled magazine
broke the spell of perfected housekeeping.
It seemed a shame – the dusting and the sweeping
were steady tasks, and Martha could not find
the time to brush the ravelings from her mind.
© Laura Hank Hilton
(1912-2003)
Lines below my eyes
Are like old friends,
Added by time and trials.
Good and bad memories,
But all mine.
© Wayne Murphy
OCTOBER 2006
To All The Nights of Silent Sleep
To all the nights of silent sleep
When in my dreams a river flows
And falling leaves are mine to keep
The gentle wind through windows seep
The hazy moon through curtain glows
To all the nights of silent sleep
There is a land beyond the deep
Where it is only the Zephyr knows
And falling leaves are mine to keep
Swirling mists of light do creep
Through fields where the reaper sows
To all the nights of silent sleep
River valley, mountain stream, where all alone the sowers reap
Where water falls suspended where they froze
And falling leaves are mine to keep
Waves of air, waves of mist, waves of twirling heat
Is this the dream I would have chose
To all the nights of silent sleep
And falling leaves are mine to keep
© Timothy Middleditch
AUGUST 2006
San Francisco Water
Today three men escaped from Alcatraz
No one knows if they lived or died
They died
In San Francisco
with people eagerly waiting
on shores next door; working
to chauffeur three men back home
And my dad tells me
last weekend, he lived in San Francisco
in 1967 on a military base
with rolled military cigarettes and military watch dogs
And he rode the trolley; young boy
in the city; (“Thays sump-tin een dat watey”)
and somebody’s pink son, shuffled;
side-walking; with parking meter; draped
acrost shore board breast; (adjacent to trolley)
hair loving breast
He put a quarter in his mother meter
and laid down south to take a rest
© Adam Gellings
optimism
tear down the dam
within you
demolish it
brick by brick
until it no longer
stands
until it is no longer capable
of holding back
the great river within
let its cleansing waters
flow freely
through your very being
let it drown negativity
let it be the hand that pulls you
into the eye of the storm
© Eric V. Walton
JULY 2006
a cup of water
a cup of water
two confused people
spill the water
and it
flows
where it
will
© Rick Klaus Theis
E-Mail From Some Russian Girl
Today
A letter
In the Internet personals
From Irinochka
25
No picture
But a profile of
The English-Russian dictionary
In all its nuanced glory.
She writes:
“I think that you are clever men
And I’ll have duty
To communicate with you.”
She writes that
She is not a rich man
But she resides
In a united and
Non-mercenary
Family.
She writes
That she works
On the post office in her city
That she is a postman
That she is full of
Dreams and fascinations:
Music, reading, movies
Nice communication
Sports
And other things which make our lives
Different and happy.
She writes
That she likes
Beautiful things and clothes
But it is not main for her
She writes that
She is an economist
But in Russia it is a difficult situation
And she cannot find work in her specialty.
She writes that
She anxiously waits for answer
That I may be the man of her dreaming.
How many letters today
Struggling over the words, Irina
Looking for the America
That I so casually
Throw away?
© Michael S. Walker
kind of blue
orange insect wings
floating on a riff
under a pastel canopy –
kind of blue.
warm yellow eye,
cool north breath.
a tight gray skirt
sprouting green,
survival inspiration.
red floral explosion,
young and old renewed.
black furry innocence... pouncing,
ants excited, too
If it could remain so... in Summer...
In death... in Fall... in love...
For a while... in Winter... forever...
© Rick Klaus Theis
Box Doll
Amanda found the worn toy chest
in her childhood home.
Attic dust almost obscured
an Art Nouveau Pandora on the lid.
She raised the cover,
and in a cobwebbed crevice of the box
the doll stood stiff,
black-eyed, ever smiling
beneath a green babushka.
The red jacket, pink and yellow laced,
vied with the electric blue-striped shirt
which hugged the pudgy wood figure.
She unscrewed
the head of the enameled toy,
removed a smaller replica.
Its vivid features
repeated every aspect of the first doll.
She twirled the second head,
and a third doll with fixed expression
showed itself. Other figures emerged
smaller, and smaller, and smaller
until five heads with
curved lips and painted dot for eyes
sat in a row beside
identical rounded bodies
whose hands forever clasped
across their zigzag lacings.
The sixth one, tiny as a thimble,
stood firm. Its head would not be moved.
Amanda held the stubborn one eye to eye
and copied the cold and unrevealing look.
“Do as you’re told, child!
Never meddle, and always wear a smile!”
Her stepmother’s voice pierced the years.
Amanda’s smile had grown on her.
Dark eyes still beckoned
to no particular person,
and no one in particular was aroused.
She became like the smallest doll –
a frozen nautilus, no chamber left
in which to hide, and nothing left inside.
In the dim upstairs
Amanda closed the door on Hope.
She grew small, thin,
crept among the old rooms,
crawled inside the big gas oven.
At the funeral, neighbors said
“She lived so quietly –
never bothered a soul,
always smiled.”
© Laura Hank Hilton
(1912-2003)
Sylvia Sebastian
Mexican doll in a dollhouse,
named by three-year-old Mistress Isabel,
a Mistress who liked to play with matches.
The doll’s dark-brown hair caught on fire
after Isabel lighted the two-inch high oven
in the kitchen of the two-foot tall mansion.
The five-millimeter-wide medical report read
“Sylvia Sebastian: Hair Scorched, Eyelashes Singed,”
the same eyelashes that once aroused Chinese doll Dex
by curling above the bridge of Sylvia’s plastic nose.
© James Lindenberger
June 2006
The Human Kind
In the morning, in the fragile, quiet hour
Before you let the dog out, before you take a shower
You’re wondering, hoping too
You’re wondering anew, today.
Life and death, dark and light, such is the play
Past regrets, some triumph along the way
I know it’s not in vain
Although there’s so, much pain
I stumble and I falter, sometimes I have my doubts
But I know somebody who’s got it figured out
I tred a lonesome path, I’ve left part of Me behind
I’m a real person, I am the human kind
Best laid plans, oh how they seem to break
Give to the cause, the more you give, the more it takes
That’s just the way it goes
The more you learn, the less you know
Age and wisdom, overtakes you in your chair
Youth and innocence, somehow got left out there
The winter’s cold and grey
The rose will bloom again, in Spring
Past and future, one is yellow, one is blue
In the present, the scarlet-crimson hue
On the side, hands, head and feet
In the center, where, they meet
I stumble and I falter, sometimes I have my doubts
But I know somebody who’s got it figured out
I’ve tred a lonesome path, I’ll leave all of Me behind
I was a real person, I was the human kind.
© Rick Blackburn
Short North resident mailman
Unsettling
Oak hand crafted
desk maker my own
father was a carpenter
Jesus’ father was
a carpenter; now
I am 22
and I’ve got a desk
made of wood
to lay my things
across;
spread about
junk
© Adam Gellings
Trip Down the Greenbrier River
with a Ten Year Old Nephew
Come on, Aunt Laura!
He swings the heavy vine back to me.
Here goes forty years, I cry
then jump and swing across, a heavy pendulum.
Barely gaining a foothold, I crash
beside the crude plank raft
tied Boy Scout fashion
with my new clothesline
to its inner tube foundation.
As we ease into the muddy stream
I remember the giant snapping turtles
said to lurk below the surface,
so I seat myself in the middle
a mere six inches from the water,
hold my knees in place
and we are off –
my partner in his white sailor hat
guiding the raft with a long pole,
me sitting primly, breathing softly,
protected by the shadows of the Alleghenies.
We pole our way,
pioneers of the sea,
until we reach the safety
of the Alderson Bridge,
which I first crossed
forty years ago.
© Laura Hank Hilton
(1912-2003)
Rahsaan-3 a.m.-soul
3 a.m., energy waning
magic disc spinning
Rahsaan plays the hits
on his stritch
got to want to
scratch that itch
stay up long
like a hard-on
Rahsaan blows a fold in time
an ancient/future rhyme
dissolving pain, expanding mind
outside the wind blows bold
inside my soul grows cold
this town blows me
old
fuck it all
let the good times roll
blow man blow
Rahsaan-3 a.m.-soul
© Rick Klaus Theis
May 2006
Halliteration
The hazy half moon hangs
Hallowed in the heavens,
Hearkening the hardened heart
To the Harmony of the Wholly.
© Loran Elizabeth Conley
After the Hurricane
All that's left
Of life in a double-wide
A computer monitor
Resting its
Cracked skull
Against a downed palm
A waterlogged copy of
Basic Writings of Nietzsche
The Greater Tampa phonebook
Here’s the cat leash
But I
Still haven’t found the cat
I wander from
Heap to heap
Calling out “Gus...Gus”
In a voice just as waterlogged
All my clothes
Are blowing toward Texas
That is, except the pants I’m wearing
And the purple T- shirt
With its ridiculous legend
“Life is full of
Important choices”
Yes it is
I shouldn’t have moved here
I should have heeded the warnings
I should have married
Susan Walker
When I had the chance
I should have stayed landlocked
I shouldn’t have been born
That was what I was thinking
Picking at a buried
Coffee machine
When the blue heron
Landed in the ruins of the backyard
Demanding his usual afternoon
Turkey hot dogs
© Michael S. Walker
The Rain
I did not know the universe
had so much rain.
The daffodils you planted
Died long ago.
Even the dog drowned.
They should have warned us.
The children are ill now
From building the bulwarks.
Their noses run,
And their minds are clogged.
I should never have let you go.
I remember your face streaked,
Your hat dripping, unobtrusively,
As if all the tears of the universe
Were asking you to give voice
To their silent sorrow.
I’ll never find you now,
Swimming alone
In the lachrymose rivers of the world.
I can only wait here,
Wait with the children and my bucket,
Wait to be drowned
In the sadness of the world.
© Doug Rutledge
What Truth is
Innis Avenue Poem #8
On the other side of the rubble
sober as Ohio
Morning shadows splay
across an empty house
like dead swallow’s wings.
Shards of blackened light
edge the rotting plywood
whispering words of
frailty, disappointment, truth
softly
so
softly,
The ears of fattened rats are
listening.
© David Hetzler
in reality
in reality
everything
is nothing.
except that
to which
we give
meaning.
© Rick Klaus Theis
April 2006
Coffee Shoppe
Coffee with sympathy
Coffee with self-pity
I still remember when
I saw her way back then
Pretty as a porcelain doll
Somewhere in a dream
I saw her through the window
Working at the coffee shoppe
Over on the corner
Where I would park the truck
Fire underneath the ice
So I rolled the dice
Brilliant flowers
Remind me of Tiffany
Life is so fun
Life can be so funny
She’s better than the flowers
That come every Spring
February
Four years come and four years gone
Now it’s over
She said for me to just move on
She’s going to Arizona
Out there in the sun
Sittin’ in this coffee shoppe
Everything’s come up to how
Couldn’t think of a way
Of a way to make her stay
Out amongst the flowers
She left her garden gloves
© Rick Blackburn
Short North Resident Mailman
Leaving
I see you leaving,
Taking your things,
And I am powerless
To stop this pain –
Pain I might have understood
At the beginning,
But for
My foolishness.
I see you leaving,
Getting out
While you can.
And I’m glad
I can’t stop you.
Hold you in my jar
And watch you die
An insect’s death.
You are leaving
In the sun-drenched Spring,
Free
To flower
Into something
Beautiful,
As you find
Your own way
And strength.
I see you leaving...
Leaving me
To wander
The suddenly expansive rooms
(Still in the grip of Winter’s chill),
Haunted by the echoes
Of your gentle laugh
And the fading specter
Of your soft, sweet smile.
© Rick Klaus Theis
http://members.aol.com/mwpress/frames.html
Love is a lachrymose thing
Love is a lachrymose thing,
Listing through lassitudes of losses,
Crying over cares that will not resolve.
Lovers swim not in a river of forgetfulness,
But seem to drown in a lake of heartache,
Until another lover rescues the victim
To a land as yet untouched by tears.
© Doug Rutledge
Academics
Craig and I now resting with
Our flannels done gone and ripped
themselves
to
be careful
‘round them old machineries
Said papa old tuna
Fish papa
With albacore included in the
base of the jar
Faced papa loses his
Bait he say he
Does say he say say. Say
there old poppy what did you done
Catch with them imitation
Frog like
Sinkers
(done gone and lost my bait I did I did)
© Adam Gellings
March 2006
Tuesday After All
Drinking cheap wine on a Saturday night
With half a mind to carry it on through Monday
A home-cooked meal under my belt
And a howlin’ wolf song in my head
Three weeks from now I’ll be in a rut again
But for tonight I’m Kerouac in Times Square
I wear a new suit but inside I’m beat as hell
The sun will rise again all too soon
But for now the moon is full of wonder
The night won’t take no for an answer
And the wine is nodding yes
And the stars are winking could be
And it might be Tuesday after all.
© A. Young
Wednesday
I’ve gone to
the art museum
to walk
around and look
for a bit
The sauerkraut
you left was
a treat and
I’ve marked
today’s psalm
in the good
book by
the chair
Take care
of papa and
keep the
windows down
on Wednesday
it rains.
© Adam Gellings
A Walk in Beechwold
Lune Variations
On the old zoo trail
I smell the lion
padding the creek.
Red door on black
trim nestled
among sugar maples.
A squirrel leaps a wire –
I mark
its passage.
Geese cluster by the river –
take one last dive
before heading north.
Dogs bark the mailman’s
passage from door to door,
herald news.
Houses tell of lineage,
love of wood,
another era.
© Anna Soter
german village
you’re a world within
yourself
take me in
ceaseless past
for it’s your antiquity
that we crave
as I walk your streets
and absorb your allure
contemporary urgency
is ignored
something long lost
is rediscovered
I am home
© Eric Vance Walton
Dragon
I aim for control,
tame
my unruly tail,
position an eye
close to wings,
tighten my grip
for balance –
I dare not unbend.
I forget
how to fly.
© Catherine A. Callaghan
Other Worlds
February 2006
Owed to Oil
She's too incensed to wax poetic'ly.
Her sentiments are soaked with gasoline,
so saturated that, were match in hand,
would catch, and then ignite a mammoth scream.
ThuS, hell-enGulfed Medea would proceed,
Exxonerated from her ghastly deed.
Medusa's cap would wink a blackened eye,
Harkened to such pow'r to petrify.
Her spewing verse would loose Pandora's curse
which, once dispersed, could never be undone,
were Mercury, god of commerce, to exert,
on winged heels, a gallant Marathon.
Refinement BlasPhemes, bores a biting wound
and scrapes the stone in which she is entombed.
who dares to drive her to such riving terms
contrives to override the work of worms.
© Sharon Reeb, 2006
January 2006
Silently, the snow falls in the streetlight.
The sky brightens around the old Victorian homes.
Newcomers, old timers, scholars, and children of past residents
Switch their lights on, one by one.
Some must be grumbling about the snow,
Enriched by its beauty nonetheless.
Traffic arrives on the avenue
The muted sound of tires on wet pavement
Soothes my mind.
I leave my window and go to bed, covers high
Counting my blessings.
© Myra Bloom
December 2005
Words
these are words
simple words
that like slow Spring rain,
fall softly
to silence
a bridge between minds
yours and mine
are these words
that reach out
through time
to hold a few precious
moments of your life
these words.
© Eric Vance Walton
Park Bench
What to make
of a woman's black glove
next to
a man's top hat
on a park bench
early evening
– mid-November
© Adam Gellings
Appalachian Trilogy
#1
As an Appalachian son
You and I are one
the offspring of Mother coal –
with money our only goal,
which we hand dug by the ton
in the carbon lighted sun
We could not be whole
burrowed as a mole
down in that sooty hole.
#2
Down in Fourmile holler
coal dust upon the collar
and Papaw down in the mine
Grandmaw canned the greens
tomatoes, and the beans,
while the revenuers chased the ‘shine;
Good old gospel radio
on station WHKO
the Louvin Brother’s harmonies
along with the locusts in the trees
were there to say to Me
this is your heritage and destiny....
#3
The Cumberland River
thick and muddy brown
Pineville Kentucky
Bell County’s jewel and crown,
Abigail Goodin
in her gingham gown
how I long to walk
with her through downtown.
© Ken Elam II
December Sun
Jack was a friend of mine
We sailed to Panama a few times
Up to Boston and Caroline
Hearts young, bodies too
Part of the same crew
Jack is gone but I’m still here
Jack he came from Baltimore
I met him on Virginia’s shore
I hope that I see Jack again
Jack he was an engineer
I the quartermaster
So many days we sailed the sea
Now Jack is just a memory
I guess Jack he got knocked off course
It could happen to anyone
It broke my heart to hear he died
Goodbye December Sun.
© Rick Blackburn
(Short North resident mailman)
Fear
anxiety will be
a coward’s
end
forever they
conform and
blend
trying to fit the mold
of what a person
“should” be
instead of being
the person they
could be
© Eric Vance Walton
November 2005
Hill Odyssey
“You can’t go back,”
they say; yet here I am
in late afternoon
beside the Alderson bridge.
A familiar oak
hangs like a comfort
above sun-silvered water.
One of the two
beneath its branches
might well be me
some years ago.
In the oncoming dark
dampness settles,
and I pull my jacket close;
then turn
a silver ring around my finger,
remembering trysts I’ve kept
on this and other bridges.
I stay to watch a strange black cloud
creep like an amoeba
devouring the sky.
© Laura Hank Hilton
(1912-2003)
the egg lady and I
(for Dorothy Gatterdam)
no ordinary seller of eggs she,
an antidote ...
for a time less civil, less human.
a kind soul,
warm hands reaching out.
they touch everyone.
not a nostalgic icon from another time.
a simple expression of what
a person can be any time.
if i see, look around;
our town has other Dorothys.
practitioners of human kindness.
her eggs, finest jumbos,
no less plain and clear
as Dorothy herself.
i will not miss her.
i will remember she was human.
human to me.
© David C. Hetzler
*Roman at 85
I
Sitting on the steps of his studio;
brushes, tubes of paint, stiff
like his long, thin, delicate
fingers drooped over
bony knees.
“61 years is a long time
to love a woman,”
remembering in warm
september sun pouring across
his black face, wide smile,
impish eyes.
“I hope she’s waiting for me,
I want to go along now!”
II
Canvasses, old wood frames,
cracked faces, veined hands
gather dust among the ghosts
of Burkhart, Bellows,
a loved woman.
Drawing no more.
Painting no more.
Satisfied to wait. To lie down,
warm his body, once again,
next to Iona.
© David C. Hetzler
*Roman Johnson (1917 - 2005)
October 2005
Blue
Her upstairs bedroom seems papered
with curled leaves. Maybe
the paint is coming off or maybe the walls have
developed petals, an excess of her love.
Flashback:
my sister and I are
sorting through Mom's things.
Ida loved blue:
gray-blue tweed suits
chalk blue sweaters
everything blue:
the blue chenille
on her bed and the dead plastic
telephone beside it.
Her silk neck scarves?
Each dotted with cigarette burns.
And when I was a continent away
and unable to sleep I knew
Mom
was nodding off with a cigarette
in her hand, and sometimes when the sky
is wild with blue scarves
I dream of chicory
and bed jackets
crocheted afghans - even the satin
linings of her blue trenchcoats
have been pockmarked
by lit Salems
when she reads late at night - and yes
I bear the same vivid flesh burns
as my mother.
© Elizabeth Ann James
Plaid
Today I am plaid,
hemmed tight and
too short
for the body's fitting
I don't blare charm,
or stocking yellow,
my color; an
eyesore
in the walk of
busy street glory
I am worn in,
factory tailored
and armied
second hand,
just short of
cigarette burn and
rodent matter,
I harbor dirt
deep within
hard pressed yarn
and
cotton stain dye
But I am still showcased,
still upright in my day
Still sat upon
and gay; in all that is,
the pattern style
of ageless
garment.
© Adam Gellings
Class Reunion
Coffee turns lukewarm. We each glide
bakc on thin ice memory. Thoughts,
plumaged birds flushed from a winter
thicket, surprise us with clarity.
Remembered hurts return: missing last
point of a game, never asked to dance,
loss of a friend.
Foolish, how secret hurts long buried
still have aching powers.
Failure to meet perfection shadows
our lives like shards of ice
that crack beyond belief from a dark
opening in the pond.
© Betsy Kennedy
Untitled #VII
To be true to one's self
and atone for one's sins
to forgive and forget
that's when it begins;
seeing life, through a new lens.
© Ken Elam II
Cities of Significance
I enjoy the insanity of solitude,
revel in the liberty of insignificance,
so why must I see mansions of meaning
reflected in the retina
of your quiet eyes?
The skyline in your eyes
invites the outsider
to dwell in the suburbs
of your urbanity,
made significant by your smile.
Succumbing to the dark
is as easy as dying
but rest is impossible
while I live in the city lights
of your almond eyes.
© Doug Rutledge
Red Dye #9
Her name was none of my business, or so she said.
Her eyes were insane asylum grey and crazy as hell.
Her hair was dyed red, rusty well water red, the
color of half dried blood.
I’m usually king of the staredown, but damnit if she didn’t
force me to check the time on a watch I didn’t own.
I swear she smiled or snarled. She was no stranger to
tension. Looking into her eyes was like staring down a
double barreled shotgun. To hell with it anyway, pull
the trigger. She winked one then her other anodized iris
at me.
The rain began and she didn’t even flinch when a large
drop exploded on her forehead like a gunshot, direct hit.
Blessed be she was a treat, and pass the anmmunition I was
a mess. Nothing new really.
Now her face was tilted skyward. She fumbles at her collar
for her headphones. The opening drums of “Sympathy For
The Devil” fill the bus stop where we wait with broken
hearts and bated breath for the number nine bus into
downtown. The rain felt charged, almost baptismal. We both
got soaked, went crazy, waiting to be saved.
© A. Young
I See
I see in his eyes,
I see in her eyes,
I see in my eyes
I see in your eyes:
sadness,
softened only by the hope
that animals can love.
© Rick Klaus Theis
September 2005
September in Ohio
Crossing Champaign County on highway 256,
manure, evidence of the Amish who
flourish by the rural berm,
trying not to be noticed.
Soybean leaves have turned butter yellow green.
Fields swollen like the breasts
of a lovely young mother.
Corn grew past the eye of an elephant weeks ago.
Stalks heavy with seed, feed, and bread,
are now bending with age
and are tired of being green.
A yellow tail hawk perches on a rolled bale of hay
staring into the mowed acres, hungering to dig its talons
deep into the back of a small brown mouse
whose purpose is to move life forward.
Soon the reapers, cutters, balers and gatherers
will finish their job. Steel will again slice
black Ohio dirt, rows narrowing into another spring.
© David Hetzler
To be like Keats
Oh to create something free
Whose presence would live and would outlast me
That would state to the world, “I’ve been there”
That would mix with ideas, and spawn something new
Out of my control, but beautiful too.
© Jacob Markey
Getting Ready for the Purple
I am eighty-five and my neighbor, Charlie,
has snapped my picture
standing in a bed of cosmos in the side yard.
Sturdy jeans hide knobby knees.
A new candy-striped Dockers shirt hides bony arms
and blends with the pink and white blooms.
Laurie June at the Better Image Beauty Bar
has teased and sprayed my thin hair to a fare-you-well.
New Reeboks complete the scene.
Standing tall against the tall fragile fronds
I am Grant Wood strong.
When I am old, really old
I will mail this image to Willard Scott
and he will say,
“Look at this beautiful little lady - one hundred and one!
Note the sharp vintage outfit and the 1997 hairdo.
Lives it up at the B Alive Senior Casa in Miami.
They say she still works in the gardens there.”
And I will move my wheelchair close to the TV,
wrap my lavender and lace shawl close.
© Laura Hank Hilton
(1912-2003)
When I Am Old
When I am old my teeth will sleep
in a jar of water beside my bed
I'll wear plastic curlers, polyester scarves
Outline my lips in the brightest red
I'll check to be sure I've locked the door
Then check again ten times or more
I'll lose my glasses and my shoes
then forget what it is I'm looking for
My cupboard will be over-stocked
with packets of creamer, pepper and salt
I'll hoard tiny butters, jellies and jams
though I'll tell myself I won't
When I am old I'll talk to myself
Ask you over and over what you said
Sit and stare from my rocking chair
while amusing myself with tunes in my head
I'll slobber, burp; I might pass gas
That I'll be a "hoot" there is no doubt
On second thought...on getting old
You can just count me out!
© Betty Bleen
August 2005
Yellow House
I must bid adieu to this cheap bungalow
where women, more than just a few, used to come and go
if walls could speak and slanted floors squeak anew
I think at last that they would remember You
and how in your ecstatic orgasm would genuinely cry
I know I shan’t forget, how could I? how could I?
As My Daughter referred to as “Daddy’s little yellow house”
ever replete with darting errant mouse
an ideal haven for a poet, a drunken Irish souse
where else could I walk off the porch and piss –
and my gibberish there to expouse?
I would be most remiss, but so much more than this
upon this weary shack we’ve left our knack
bent over sink, on the floor, in the sack
so then Luv, give us one more kiss
basking in morning afterglow, so apropos.
© KWE II
to dellzell
Line of Fire
And I was rolling violently
And I was rocking frightfully
I took part in his bed
In preference to going home.
I was not to be trusted
I was rocking good news
I was flesh and bone
Ubiquitous
Splashing happy
Sparkled liquidness
Entertaining hopes
And language
Of a consolatory nature.
Surprise and pleasure
Diabolical villainy
Do you read me
Grace and freedom
Peppermint and not alone.
© Laurie Colson
Back from tennis
Back from tennis all sweaty
we fell into bed naked
humid envelope of summer surrounding
intent to linger on the coolness
of the sheets.
Idle touches fell as public radio
massaged our minds.
Gathering up limbs
caresses grew to strokes grew.
Smashed against each other
every muscle contracted
yet more relaxed than ever,
Clapton’s 461 Ocean Boulevard
the perfect backdrop against
which we threw our passion.
That day we grabbed a piece
of heaven and held it
for the best minutes.
© Graham Danner
Spring lips
the same Spring lips
which kissed me,
later told me
Winter lies.
© Rick Klaus Theis
I Will Be Remembering You
I will be remembering you when
woods are cool and weeds
are hidden
When last year’s leaves are still
damp beneath this year’s green
When trees tower expectantly in April,
reluctance in their bursting buds
When there is need for touch and
warmth and love’s caress
When bodies lace space and
muscles push waves into
burnished skin or transparent skin
When birds careen and dip, divide
the sky
Whenever a man and a woman
reach toward one another,
press tongue against tongue,
thigh against thigh
Whenever a moment is becoming
Before daystroke -
sunrising
and sunsetting –
forever.
© Dotte Turner
Tracks
This is how I see us:
railway sleepers that bore
the rattling trains, splintered
friction-sparked in speed,
weathered grains from rain,
round-worn edging
from years of wear;
this is how I see us:
tracks no longer used,
summer heat swelled out
what juice remained;
we’re lying bolted still,
we’ve never moved,
we’ve never really touched,
though lord knows others think
we climbed the tracks at night
regained our bolted beds by day;
but we just lay there side by side
strips of track.
© Anna Soter
Match made in heaven;
Each sec together sublime –
Heaven fails sometimes.
© Rick Klaus Theis
June 2005
Bumper to Bumper
Bumper to bumper, butt to butt,
get off my tail, you crazy nut.
Don’t be antsy; don’t be rude.
Don’t you be a useless dude.
Back off, Nancy. Back off, Jake.
If you don’t, I’ll hit the brake.
Don’t you ever tailgate me.
I’ll get even; wait and see.
If you want to be a jerk;
I will make you late for work.
Think I’m gonna slow way down.
Take all day to cross this town.
Then you’re gonna see my tail.
Hit my car and go to jail.
If you want, I’ll show you how.
How you gonna like me now?
Get some sense and get some brains.
This is not a railroad train.
Leave some space between the cars.
The way you drive is just bizarre.
A moron taught you how to drive.
I can’t believe you’re still alive.
You can’t drive that car too well.
You’re a dim-brain; I can tell.
Where’d you get your license, Mac?
From a box of Cracker Jacks?
No, you’re not that smart, I bet.
You don’t have a license yet.
© Mark Stoll
Time is a Terrible Place to Be
Time is a terrible place to be,
Littered with lost promises
And the shards of broken dreams,
A terrain to be traveled
With a roadmap of remorse,
On visits to dissatisfied friends.
One would surely have a better time in space,
But it contains the landscape of loneliness,
Hours of emptiness,
Where no one exists to pass the time.
© Doug Rutledge
When I live in outer space,
I will hold up the moon,
Walk barefoot through moonbeams,
Step toe on a five-pointed star,
Swim naked in the Milky Way,
Warp-run through sunspokes –
Then leap into the velvet void
To spread stardust and moonbeams
From my hands to Earthfolks
Down below, over there, out there,
Everywhere!
And always
To hold peace in my human heart
For all.
© Dotte L. Turner
second chance
wash over me like
a warm rain
that comes in waves
to sweeten a bitter soul
awake me
like an ocean breeze
that breathes the
warm breath of hope
into my heart
enliven me with your light
so that I may once more
feel what it’s like
to live again.
© Eric Walton
Full Moon
Fool moon, full of pride,
Beams all night, so sure his light
Has its source inside.
© Rick Klaus Theis
May 2005
The Gardener
After winter’s long and terrible blight,
I resign myself to the safety of the fire.
I resist exposing annuals to light
And trimming back the ragged briar.
Like old Grendel, the cold monster winter,
Will only return to the mead hall of spring
And once again, all my good friends murder,
So I sit by the fire, as spring’s joy sings.
But the bright warrior resists my despair
And summons me once again to hoe and rake.
Thus last year’s beauty I again repair,
And past happiness I start to remake.
The gardener bears a mental burden
As the thinker who can not resist the sun.
© Doug Rutledge
One
we undulate like roiling
waters cascading ever down
and then spilling ourselves
waqntonly, wickedly
wondrous and holy
on the banks of our dharma
two rivers as one, becoming ocean.
© Ken Elam (to dellzell)
Untitled #II
To Transcend My own Desire
Ego, Lust, this belly fire
To Sing Bass in the Holy Choir
Speaking Tongues unknown to liars
To such do I Aspire
Such Joy to acquire.
© Ken Elam
In the Photo
In the photo my mother is
Beautiful. Though in black
And white I picture her cheeks
Rosy, as pink Chablis. Her hair
Cascades thick and wavy, to meet
The soft slant of her shoulders
Covered demurely in a dark dress
I imagine, a shade of red. She is
Smiling coyly for the camera,
As if she is the holder of some
Secret or about to spring a surprise.
The couch she sits on has a dark
Background smattered with clusters
Of tiny white blossoms. Behind her
The wallpaper is enmeshed in huge
Leaves pointing skyward. Poised
Between each two leaves is a single
Flower. The linoleum is a typical 50's
Pattern of multicolored and sized
Diagonal stripes. In the photo my
Mother is a constant in surroundings
I can only describe as busy, and
So she has been all of her life.
The photo was taken after my older
Sister's and my birth but before
Those of our siblings. Long before
School days, dating, marriages,
Grandchildren, divorces and all forms
Of crisis imagined or real, which have
Turned her once vibrant brown hair
To gray strand by strand. Long before
Wrinkles claimed her face, arthritis
Wreaked havoc on her joints, osteoporosis
Settled in her bones …
In the photo my mother is
Beautiful. She is poor but happy,
Innocent and trusting, hinging on a
Promise, glimmering with
Love.
© Betty Bleen
Portrait
I see the tall, fresh zinnias
on their stiff, green stems
with starchy, ruffled petals
painted in full color range.
There like a speckled one herself,
stands my Aunt Nora –
her blue flowered percale
melding with the crisp zinnias,
black hair pulled tightly in a knot,
dark eyes laughing from a worn face.
A gnarled hand clutches a few bright stalks
picked for the company table.
Her breast pin sparkling in the sun
pins the whole Renoir scene.
She moves away with effort.
Now she is gone, but when my zinnias flower
I remember the brief cameo –
Aunt Nora, zinnia in her time.
© Laura Hank Hilton
(1912-2003)
Caught in the act
Caught in the act of living,
His seemingly eternal motion
Is temporarily frozen
By a photograph.
In that view
He truly looks immortal.
But that was then and this is now,
Now for me, but not for him,
For he is frozen in time again.
This time not by film, but by death –
Not for a time, but for all time.
This time he is frozen in all aspects,
A leaf torn from the plant of life.
We, too, are leaves waiting to die.
We are the eggs of ghosts
Waiting to hatch.
© Rick Klaus Theis
The Picture
This is how I looked in 1948
With white nurses’ shoes
And a tie curled up around my bosom
But now I’m dead and the picture does not care.
The tie offered masculine authority
After the war.
It eased the curve
Of my bosom,
As it tucked into my
Girl’s waist
But now I’m dead and the picture does not care.
© Doug Rutledge
April 2005
Lost
Lost in place.
Lost in space.
A loss of face.
Face the loss.
Replace the place.
Fill the space.
No big disgrace.
End of chase.
© Wayne Murphy
Lost
The Thoughts,
The words,
There –
Then Gone.
© Rick Klaus Theis
March 2005
wooded path
Life is rather dull today
there's nothing much to hold me still
my attention's roaming here and there
boredom is a bitter pill
A walk along this wooded path
will surely cure this bout
Imagination can overtake
this servile beast without a doubt
As I set out on this wooded path
I arrive in no time at all
beneath this great canopy of leaves
my existence seems quite small
as chipmunks forage for their feast
through wide-open space
self-absorption is abandoned
and is gone without a trace.
The birds grace me with their songs
the landscape comes alive
my sullen disposition is
transformed before my eyes
when the doldrums come to visit
and just won't seem to pass
spark Imagination's sunshine
find yourself a wooded path…
© Eric Vance Walton
www.EricVanceWalton.com
Bird Feeder Blues
I bought a bird feeder and put it in a tree
So lots of pretty birds I’d hopefully see
Really enjoying their coming around
In all colors, sizes, sweet chirping sound
Until one day appeared ... a chattering clown
He didn’t like millet, corn or grain
Only the sunflower seeds would he claim
And day after day, this bandit, he came
Leaping, sliding, twisting in mid-air
To get at the sunflower seeds that were there
Doing it so gracefully, without fear
No matter what barrier I’d place in his way
It did not deter him nor cause him to sway
Growing weary of trying to outsmart him
In this game of wit we seemed to be locked in
I went to the store, and this time I bought
Only sunflower seeds, filling them to the top
And I sit and laugh, for now I find
He’s graciously allowing the birds to dine
In his “squirrel” feeder, isn’t he kind?
© Betty Bleen
FEBRUARY 2005
bureaucrat
it’s just too bad you’re at the wheel
malignant corruption
breeds a FRUSTRATED ANGER!
shining charisma and glistening virtues
show themselves ever
Two, Four and Six.
outright lies do soothe the masses,
contorted smiles behind dark glasses,
It’s so so sad you’re at the wheel.
© Eric Vance Walton
www.EricVanceWalton.com
If I am to be a poet:
I must like coffee-houses
and jazz music
Smoke clove cigarettes
learn to blow smoke rings
Contemplate the rain
wearing black boots
Write with fountain pens
swearing off cell phones
Dress myself in thrift store
avoiding name brands
Never speak in clichés
or quote “Friends”
Sleep till at least noon
and own cats
Otherwise I’m just a girl with a note-
book
who likes Dickinson.
© Kelli Drummer
JUNE 2004
Forecast Later
For Dave Auch who died January 2004
Who can say why blackened, bruised blue-chewed clouds
Which docked my dreams suddenly blew me south
'Round to a neighbor's white flake-stacked street,
He, I'd messaged in voice, in vain to meet.
As no come back came, no button box rang;
Why not let corded reverie refrain.
Awake! I leapt the snow road in real skin,
Cracked his ice-pinched kitchen door and punched in
There, he: pink pump chilled, gone anthracite jewel,
Cloud spirit scuttled, I breathed, oh, who'll
Say why the soul's lightning strikes no warning
And what fabulous things are clouds moving.
© Peggy Campbell
MARCH 2003
In the memory of your smile, I could
write a page or more,
In the memory of your touch I could
write two or three or four;
In the memory of your friendship, I could
write a gentle sonnet,
In the memory of your laughter I could
write a thesis on it.
In the memory of our treasured time
I write these silly lines,
And hope that what we had was love,
and all that it defines.
© Laura McConnell
APRIL 2002
Voice of Heaven
O Angel fair, please bring us word,
From this God we have not heard;
Tell His news to those who grieve,
Enlighten those who disbelieve.
Be not elusive, show your face,
Be sublime and full of grace.
Tell us how we came to be,
Show us things we cannot see,
Explain to us this master plan,
What God intends to do with man;
If you can, please clue us in
On how to turn away from sin;
Tell us, in a minstrel's song
All the ways that we've gone wrong,
Then show us how to make it right,
And guide us into heaven's light.
O voice of heaven, Angel fair,
Take us to the heavens there.
© Laura McConnell
Baghdad Is Burning I. Bombs blast at palaces – Bombs laser-laced and Bombs scarring ancient Bombs barking their Bombs beyond our human Bombs to burn a bad, bad, Bombs for you and bombs for me. 2. Oh ancient city ‘tween the Oh ancient city of Oh ancient city of Of architectural wonders, Of Astarte Queen of the Stars Of ancient home of Abraham Bombs like raucous rhetoric 3. Oh say can you see by the By the rocket’s red glare – And the bursting bombs Drawing out the curse Oh rock me now in the bosom Oh say can you see, or are you Or the sudden soldier facing death BUT – |
Standing in Line to Sigh Standing in line to sigh, © Douglas Rutledge
You look in the mirror but don’t want to believe So numb from the dumbing down In the mirror there’s a face, it’s not starving but just the same Working hard for our SUV’s, suburban homes, plasma TVs Nero is fiddling, believe me, new Rome is burning and its people are yearning So irate is our state of affairs, we feel hollow inside Day after day after day after day Will it be North Korea or Iraq we attack? © Eric Vance Walton
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