Alexa Poem 2050

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Let it Be the Flowers Poem

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poem
Flowers by david michael jackson

 

We scroll beside the river into the future

which becomes the past right away

The flowers are real.

The flowers are real dammit!

If anything is real let it be the flowers

and the girl

I gave them to.

…….david michael jackson

Remembering Robin Ouzman Hislop: Poet, Translator, and Beloved Editor of Poetry Life and Times

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It is with profound sadness and heavy hearts that we announce the passing of our dear friend, colleague, and long-time Poetry Editor, Robin Ouzman Hislop.
As the visionary force behind Poetry Life and Times (PLT) and a core co-editor of the Artvilla arts portal, Robin dedicated decades of his life to cultivating an international sanctuary for writers, artists, and musicians. His departure leaves an irreplaceable void in our global creative community, but his immense literary legacy will endure.
Robin Ouzman Hislop: A lifetime dedicated to the literary arts.

A Life Steeped in Verse and Vision

Robin first took the helm of the online monthly journal Poetry Life and Times in 2005. Following a brief hiatus, he partnered with Artvilla publisher Dave Jackson in 2013 to integrate PLT directly into the Artvilla network. Together, they transformed the platform into a thriving, open-access international space. Robin approached editing not as a gatekeeper, but as a mentor, treating every submission with deep respect and intellectual curiosity.
Beyond his editorial brilliance, Robin was a highly accomplished British poet, translator, and songwriter. Known for his concise, evocative imagery, he frequently experimented with audio-textual formats, pushing the boundaries of how poetry could be experienced online.

Explore His Literary Works

Robin’s prolific creative voice is preserved through his numerous poetry volumes, translation projects, and deep philosophical discussions. We invite our readers to revisit and explore his lifelong archive:
Poetry Collections: Read his landmark collections including Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Rhythms of Existence, and Next Arrivals.
Celebrated Translations: Dive into his masterful English translations of Spanish poetry, including Guadalupe Grande’s Key of Mist (La llave de niebla) and Carmen Crespo’s award-winning Tesserae (Teselas).
Archived Interviews: Revisit his personal reflections on his craft and career path by reading his classic profiles on AuthorsDen (Robin at AuthorsDen) and his early conversations featured in the Poetry Life & Times August 2001 Interview.
“Robin was a brilliant writer and philosopher as well as a recognized poet. He didn’t just edit poetry; he lived it.”— The Artvilla Family

Rest in Peace, Dear Friend

To the writers who trusted him with their raw verses, Robin was a gentle, encouraging guide. To those of us at Artvilla, he was a pillar of cooperative strength, immense intellect, and dry wit.
We extend our deepest condolences to his family, friends, and the countless poets worldwide whose lives he touched. Though our masthead is forever changed, Robin’s words will continue to echo through the digital souks and quiet corners of the world he loved so much.
Rest in peace, Robin. Your light remains on these pages.

Robin also published
208 posts at Artvilla.com

Robin
Edited by Robin Ouzman Hislop< ./.a>

Far-From-Equilibrium-Poem-by-Robin-Ouzman-Hislop

Quick Poem by David Michael Jackson

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Quickly
by David Michael Jackson

Write fast
don”t stop
let me hear those keys click
don”t you dare look up
you might miss this moment
out there
some where.
my soul on the paper
life ticks and tocks
the time away
slowly
one long endless moment
at a
time
waiting
waiting
for
something.
Don”t look up
you might
miss it.
This moment
p a s s e s
now this other moment
r e p l a c e s it
Each long
moment laughs at the setting sun
and
life passes
so
quickly.

***

Originally published on: Jan 31, 2005
Read by Susan Mandel. From Dreams of David Michael Jackson:

THE WALLEYED PIKE | THE SCRIPT | BUILDING THE PLANE AS WE FLY IT | Poems by Edward Johnson

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THE-WALLEYED-PIKE-THE-SCRIPT-BUILDING-THE-PLANE-Poems-by-Ed-Johnson

THE WALLEYED PIKE

Memory is what memory is,
a dream-snatch, an etch-a-sketch,
a gate through the English heather,
a stone path to the front door,
the way the leaves smell when wet.
Some report being lulled up the stairs
by a low progression of chords
or a lilting call to prayer.
Some say harmonium. Some say whorehouse.
Many reference storage and retrieval,
a lure, a walleyed pike
reeled to the surface in Minnesota sun.
Many report an amnesia.
Tune in. Turn on. Drop out.
Many describe a connubial submersion,
a concatenation of juices.
Some go into the bedroom.
Many report a shifting floorplan,
a dislocation of hallways and doors.
Some say entry. Some say escape.
And then there are the tenants.
Reports are wildly varied here.
Suffice it to say there are occupants
holding possession by force
ignoring the pay or quit notices.
The floorboards creak. The faucets drip.
Many report feeling like trespassers,
Tiny voices, the building blocks of music.
Many look through the back windows.
Some say teeter-totter, some say see saw.
Some say pump organ, some say mouth harp,
a poker and tongs, an urn full of ashes,
the sound a clock makes when it’s coming unwound,
the place a sock spoons in the dryer,
the sound a lock makes when it bites down.
Giant oaks octopus in the wind.
Over time many report a dwindling recall,
an empty goblet on the hearthstone,
dampered breathing through the flue.
Some ask what it means to reside?
Some bellow breath into the fire.

THE SCRIPT

I don’t feel insane. But that’s hardly the test.
Worst case scenario: things are precisely how they seem.
Cracks appear, large enough to doggy-paddle in:
Rhodesia and lesions on the brain.
Rain spirits down like glitter.
Disbelief is a species of belief.
The script runs beneath our feet.
Even those who cannot see it are guided.
What can be done meets what will be done
and then the wolves come.
Even the elders have never seen this.
The script screams across our foreheads.
A figure of Jesus of Rio is thrown.
It hits the wall in shattered animation.
Oh look! I’m totally telling this story
of my Grandpa after the funeral.
The kid in the drive-thru bottle shop
asks him how his day is going
and he says, “I buried my wife today.”
This sequence is not arbitrary.
These words were always there
awaiting their moment in the air.
The drive-thru kid has the decency
not to say, “I hope she was dead.”
The said and the unsaid are fraternal twins
bivalved to the same half shell,
two old plough hands with rumpled hats
sharing a hipflask of hootch,
as the sun squats over its latrine.
The script howls through our dreams,
a monsoon of ancient dialogue,
a smorgasbord of swirling words,
a roadmap for when the shit comes down.

BUILDING THE PLANE AS WE FLY IT

Light glistens the skin,
a luminosity.
Listen. The price of silence
has plummeted.
Language is the new crypto.
Is it artificial? Yes.
Is it intelligent? Not very.
But it is fast and dirty
like creek run during snowmelt.
4.7 billion cubic meters
of unused hand sanitizer
exist on earth – roughly
the land mass of West Africa.
Okay, I made that up.
But you see my point.
Anything can be typed,
digested and digitized,
spat back at us as fact.
Raptors soar in perfect arcs
that prophesize the rapture.
I’m about to be activated.
“Sir, this is a Denny’s.”

 

 

Edward Johnson is a civil rights attorney who has spent the past 30 years representing people living on and over the edge of homelessness. He has poetry recently out or forthcoming from Eclectica Magazine, Indefinite Space, Ginosko Literary Journal, Packingtown Review, Evergreen Review, Whisk(e)y Tit Journal and Abraxas Review.

Your Prom Date | The Mice | What’s Wrong Exactly | Poems by John Grey

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Your Prom Date | The Mice | What's Wrong Exactly | Poems by John Grey

YOUR PROM DATE

Everyone’s a winner.
How I hate that.
Everything is rotten in the world.
Now that makes sense.
This rented suit doesn’t fit
and the new shoes are torture
on my feet.
I’m a bundle of guilt
from previous poor decisions.
Did I mention how sweaty my palms are?
I fear one wrong word from me
and the entire evening is undone.
I do come bearing flowers.
And I drove here in my dad’s car.
Luckily, I didn’t hit anything.
Besides, I’m sure that four years from now
I’ll look back at this moment
and laugh my stupid head off.
People will ask, “Are you okay?”
Well, Samantha, what do you think.
Am I?

THE MICE

I don’t see the mice
in the leafage under the backyard trees.
Many generations of the creatures have lived there
but they have learned the art of the invisible,
know my habits, react to the absence of them.

With our difference in customs, our amenable schedules,
we do not cross paths.
They’re in a different time-zone
under the nose of my clock.
We have that special rapport, the mutual understanding,
of those who have nothing to do with one another.

It’s worlds within worlds,
just like neighborhoods within cities,
and cities within states, and so on, and so on.
Someone says I should get a cat.
But why give the country ideas?

WHAT’S WRONG EXACTLY

The whispering
of the doctors
nurses
and finally the
caregivers

grows louder
and louder
day by day

until ultimately
it’s one great
pulverizing sound

that can be heard
throughout the hospital
the long term care facility,

even by the corpse
in the funeral home.

If you ask the body,
he will tell you.

“The news is not good.”

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, River And South and The Alembic. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Paterson Literary Review, White Wall Review and Flights.

Nostalgic Songs | We’ll Go Back To High School

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Are we still on for tonight
Will it be all wrong or right.
Will we see the break of day and the early light

Are we still going steady
Can I pick you up at seven
Is it too old fashion now to want to hold your hand

We’ll finish the dishes and put the kids to bed
and we’ll go back to high school
I’ll meet you under the bleachers
after biology class
and tell you if I love you
I’ll meet you under the bleachers
after biology class
and tell you if I love you

We could go to the roller rink
Do a dance at the kitchen sink
Maybe we’ll get a kiss good night
Will it all be wrong or right.

I met you at the football game
Picked you out of the crowd that came
You were wearing a dress of blue
There was nothing that I could do.

We’ll finish the dishes and put the kids to bed
and we’ll go back to high school
I’ll meet you under the bleachers
after biology class
and tell you if I love you
I’ll meet you under the bleachers
after biology class
and tell you if I love you
and tell you if I love you
and tell you that I love you

 

From the album:

“We’ll Go Back to High School” is an original Americana love song by David Michael Jackson — songwriter, poet, and visual artist. Known for blending heartfelt lyrics with vivid storytelling, Jackson captures both the nostalgia of young love and the warmth of everyday family life in this song.

David Michael Jackson is the publisher of Artvilla.com, a long-running online arts magazine and record label distributed through The Orchard. His work as a songwriter and poet has reached audiences across the world, with songs available on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon, and all major streaming stores. As a painter and multimedia artist as well, his creative projects span music, poetry, and visual art — always rooted in the belief that art should be shared.

This release, published through Artvilla Records in The Orchard, continues his mission to bring authentic Americana, folk, and storytelling music to listeners everywhere.

The Old Men Walking Poem

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Writing poems about
writing poems about
writing poems.
The air was hot but the shade was cool
and I walk over the roots on the moss
step step step
The old men sometimes walk
as if it’s their last walk
and the air, the air was hot but the shade was cool
beside the green river
making noise with the trees
The bicycles ride by
and the headphone people in sunglasses
look the other way as if to say
nothing at all
nothing at all.
The don’t talk to strangers people
go by
without
saying hello
to the trees and the old men walking.

—————-by David Michael Jackson

American Writers Review | 2025 issue, with the theme “Buyers’ Remorse.” | Call for Submissions

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buyers remorse

American Writers Review (AWR), a publication of San Fedele Press, is pleased to announce its 2025 issue, with the theme “Buyers’ Remorse.”

For our new issue, we are seeking written work and imagery that springs from the moment when the best-laid schemes have turned to dust. It seemed like such a good idea…. But now? The crash can be obvious, subtle, even not yet realized. The piece’s point of view could be disappointed or triumphant or oblivious. The moment of remorse could be immediate, in the future, or long in the past. Please read the submission guidelines carefully before submitting.
Further submission information is available on our website. This issue will be available in late 2025 on Amazon and other sites.
Prior issues of our multi-genre anthology include work by established poets, including Rilke Award winning Robin Metz, as well as emerging poets.  Prose authors include Gary Fincke, Colin Pink, Patricia A. Florio, and many others. In addition, images by artists and photographers grace our pages.
All issues of AWR are available from Amazon and from our website:  www.americanwritersreview.com.  In addition, the editorial staff would be happy to discuss readings, volume discounts and any questions you may have.  Our email is info@sanfedelepress.com.

You can follow San Fidele Press on Facebook

Here is “Buyer’s Remorse” by Daniel Caesar to inspire you.

My Fathers Funeral Poem

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1960
My mother wailing over a casket,
uncontrolled arms flailing
as my eleven year old child eyes
recorded the event through tears
tears surrounded by the South
of Jesus on a fan on a hot day.
Old men wiping sweat from the brow
with a handkerchief
creating commotion at the door.
My father’s black friends wanted to pay their respect.
The crowd said no
These old, then young eyes
saw my five foot one hundred pound mother
tear through that crowd of George Wallace old men
like an unrelenting knife of grief itself
that would not be denied
on this day.
on this day.
On this day her wailing grief
suspended Jim Crow
and for a moment
there was an eleven year old boy
who knew what it meant
when his daddy said to shine.
——————————————————-

By David Michael Jackson

Selling Up | The Pack | Carnival | Poems by John Grey

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john-grey-selling-up-the-pack-carninal

SELLING UP

Never thought your last hours
in this house would be as
keeper of the basement,
with the old furnace
and boxes of musty papers,
your father’s tools,
the webs with their dark,
secret spiders.

You never imagined you could
ever bear to sell this house
but now you find it’s
like those blouses, dresses,
two sizes too small
and out of style anyhow.

Finally, you couldn’t wait
to get rid of it,
a house, too cumbersome,
too demanding, to store memories in.
With the worry of it off your mind,
it can be the lives lived in it
once more.

A little sun pokes through
the clouded windows,
fractured rays of light
to match your scattered insights.
A touch of love here,
a comforting hand there.
A good meal,
a warm fire.
A cozy bed,
the echo of old laughter.

Above, you can hear
the murmur of the real estate agent
telling potential buyers
everything this house is not.
And there you are,
down below, immersed
in its selling points.

THE PACK

Her life is solitaire,
a hundred or more games a day.
Mostly she loses.
And even when she cheats,
the cards still refuse to fall her way.

The suits are worn with age,
sticky from spilled coffee.
But she’s not ready to replace them.
They’re her companions.
And, unlike their flesh and blood equivalents,
they do not die on her.

Sure, they show up as a jack
when an ace would have done
so much better,
or they’re black when red is needed,
or they willfully hide, upside down,
at the bottom of a pile.

But there’s always the next hand,
always more cards to be dealt.
There’s something about
plastic-coated paper.
With the mere touch of it,
she’s one of the pack.

CARNIVAL

I love rinky-dink carnivals
with Ferris wheels of six gondolas
and three-horse carousels.

Imagine a love like that,
in the candy-cane glisten of summer,
where you stop at the top
and the moon’s only
half your height nearer,
or you spin round and round
in an arc so downsized,
you never quite leave where you are.

Imagine a love that wins you
a fist full of cheap trinkets,
and a button-eyed bear
with his stuffing burst loose.
And just for knocking down
some tin cans with a baseball.

The prizes are worth less
than the cost of participating.
Imagine a love like that.
I could name you at least three.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, City Brink and Tenth Muse. Latest books, “Subject Matters”,” Between Two Fires” and “Covert” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Paterson Literary Review, Amazing Stories and Cantos.

In memoriam Jim Dunlap American Poet 1945-2024 presented by Richard Vallance

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A fond farewell to Jim Dunlap (1945-2024)
and celebration of his life, his memorable poetry and sonnets
by Richard Vallance

Jim Dunlap (Jan. 9, 1945 – Dec. 5, 2024), a graduate of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, had his first work published in 1970. Since then his work has appeared in over 90 publications, including allpoetry.com (frequently), The Paris/Atlantic, Potpourri, Candelabrum, Möbius, Poetry Life & Times (UK) and Sonnetto Poesia. He was also the chief proofreader for the On Viewless Wings Anthology, published out of Queensland, Australia. Jim recently published The Spirit of Christmas in Poetry (© 2011 ISBN 9-781-4659-8261-2), available on Kindle. I first encountered Jim Dunlap, when I came across his homepage, Mindful of Poetry, https://mindfulofpoetry.homestead.com, where he frequently raised environmental and human rights concerns. Several of his own sonnets and poems appear on pp. 1-6. 1. Although I have never met Jim face to face, over the years 2004-2024, we cultivated our friendship and our literary experiences through the Internet, primarily via e-mail, while we also often spoke on the phone. Sadly, Jim simply dropped out of sight once and for all time in December 2024. He is sorely missed by his friends and fellow poets alike.

1.Jim Dunlap’s sonnets and poems published in Sonnetto Poesia, ISSN 1705-4524

Fiery Maid of Orleans

She burned … with holy fire,
And gave her all … for God.
Her soul a fiery rod
Divining faith … that higher
Soared, to a sainted realm
To some fair, better place.
In mail and burnished helm,
She ran a deadly race –
And vowed, with shaking breath,
No pain would drag her down.
She died a martyr’s death
To search a golden crown.
Though stake might be her byre,
She burned … with holy fire.

Sonnetto Poesia, Vol. 4, no. 5, summer 2005, pg. 30

Symbols in Flight, 1941

I’d have liked to see the bluebirds fly
Above the white, chalk cliffs of Dover;
And while blithely soaring over,
Immersed in thought I’d lie
In calm repose upon that beach,
Admiring those swooping forms,
In evanescent, fleeting storms,
Like ballet … far beyond my reach.
Frisking, fragile, carefree birds,
Symbolic in intrinsic meaning –
Like liberty and freedom’s words
In English springs, forever greening:
As England fought a bitter fight
To hold at bay the ‘fall of night.’

Sonnetto Poesia, Vol. 4, no. 5, summer 2005, pg. 31
also in
Sonnetto Poesia, Vol. 8, no. 4, autumn 2009, pg. 16
where Jim Dunlap sets the historical background to this sonnet:
Setting, approximately June 1941, Dover Beach, immediately following the Battle of Britain. We are taken to a specific place as well as a specific time, when the world was at war and the fate of all mankind hung in the balance. It is relevant because we are fast approaching another such time. Bluebirds are not found in the British Isles, but I wrote the poem before I became aware of the act. The curator at the Dover Museum said I should just leave it that way, as bluebirds, since the song, The White Cliffs of Dover, specifically named bluebirds.

The sonnet, quasi-Petrarchan, is archived with other writings about Dover and the Second World War by the Dover Museum, in Dover, England.

A Call from the Clouds

A missed phone call, can it redefine life?
It was mid morningish, that fateful day
And I was tired, sleepy, missing my wife.
What a price I’d eventually pay.
The phone rang and rang, I covered my head.
Voice messaging would soon answer the call.
I could barely arise from the clutch of the bed.
And fumbled my way to the john down the hall.
Then I punched the code, put phone to ear,
And almost collapsed from the shock.
Mary’s voice fairly shrieked, full of fear,
As I glanced at the time on the clock.
Goodbye, my darling, we’ll meet in Heaven.
She died 2001,9/11.

Sonnetto Poesia, Vol. 4, no. 4, autumn 2005, pg. 27

Pluck by Lust

Jupiter’s encircling moons,
named for the paramounts of Zeus,
wander in a cosmic dance –
like a beaded hangman’s noose.

The Kingly God of legend
was a lecher, brash and bold –
his affections scattered fiercely,
with each catch forcefully shoaled.

Europa’s name was given
to a continent as well –
while poor unlucky Io
only got a taste of Hell.

But prudes rewrite mythology,
and Ganymede, a shepherd boy,
is ignored, although his visage
rivalled that fair maid of Troy.

Yet the moon that bears his name
may be terraformed someday –
and immortalized, he’ll be, at last,
remembered fondly, young and gay.

He frolicked in Elysian fields,
rolled naked on the sod –
and learned that one should never
tempt the fancy of a God.

Sonnetto Poesia, Vol. 5, no. 4, autumn 2005, pg. 25

A Call to Arms

The die was cast with Earth’s first dawn –
Defend the right in spite of circumstance:
Long ages since, the battle lines were drawn.

In struggle, good and evil meet head-on –
With luck and skill, our ideals will advance.
Long ages since, the battle lines were drawn.

Each battle fought, engaged with brain … or brawn ..
Strength of character and honor will enhance.
Long ages since, the battle lines were drawn.

Each one of us, a player, King … or pawn –
Be alert, don’t sleepwalk in a trance.
The die was cast with Earth’s first dawn.

The board the world … at most a hanger-on –
While some, Evil’s minions will entrance.
Long ages since, the battle lines were drawn.

Weight each choice with care, both pro and con.
The world is fraught with misstep and mischance.
The die was cast with Earth’s first dawn.
Long ages since, the battle lines were drawn.

Sonnetto Poesia, Vol. 6, no. 1, winter 2006, pg. 34

Ariadnes … or Adonis?

A ‘face that launched a thousand ships …’
Such beauty might eclipse the sun.
What God created such a one?
All men would die to kiss those lips.
Of her beauty, wondrous and fair,
For centuries the minstrels sang …
Her fame resounded till it rang
Like an invocation … or a prayer.
What cost does beauty reimburse?
Her radiance all should propound.
Though one searched the Universe,
It seems no fairer could be found:
Not Zeus himself could make more joy
In a goddess … or a shepherd boy.

Dream Flight

I envy wild hawks as they soar
In freedom up the swelling sky –
Music intertwines and swells
And forms a wreath on Heaven’s door.
Cherubs weave unearthly spells
To illuminate the bye and bye.
Like a symphony’s exalted score,
Each rising note takes wing – to fly
While … as the pounding echoes die,
The music of englobing spheres
Limns raindrops, while the Angels cry
Through veils of evanescent tears.
Like eagles, down the fleeting years,
Dreams mount those far, celestial stairs
To cull away life’s doubts and fears.
While aeries serve as darksome lairs
For unsavory truths … disguised
As demons … to be exorcised.

Sonnetto Poesia, Vol. 6, no. 3, winter 2006, pp. 26 & 27

On the edge of the Sundering Sea

Elf towers silhouette a cobalt sky
in the Northern Marshes of the Shire;
and past them, one will find the sea,
and foaming breakers in the lea –
while music echoing from flute and lyre
calls up sharp images … your laugh or cry
and sigh … and homeward turn, as if to flee
a place too bright … and pure … desire
calls softly, and the urge to rest
overpowers all else in hobbit breast,
in awe of Eldamor’s undying West.

Beware, beware, the seagulls call,
unwary Elves may linger there,
and find their very souls in thrall;
so Elvenkind, beware … beware.

Sonnetto Poesia, Vol. 7, no. 2, spring 2008, pg. 34

Millay’s Mystique

She tied her auburn hair in buns …
and wove love stories in her mind.
The world her oyster, she would find
solace in rhythm, rhyme and puns.
Her love affairs … some of them legion,
some said promiscuous, as cupid’s dart
seemed constantly to pierce her heart,
or possibly some nether region.

Yet, living, hewed to her own terms,
while partners multiplied across the years.
She’d never bow to rules … or fears,
as stories tell … history confirms.
To the end, defying death’s cruel knell,
she wove, in words, a magic spell.

Sonnetto Poesia, Vol. 8, no. 3, spring 2008, pg. 30

Embyronic Forebodings

With hair like corn-silk and lazuline eyes,
you lit up my dreams with a radiant smile,
part angel, part demon, part errant surprise,
a bundle of impish seduction and guile –

I still feel your warmth. I clasped in my arms
such joy, evanescent, but glowingly real –
I could feel stirring echoes, latent alarms
of innocence crumbling, a façade puerile –
yet a prescient stirring aroused in my breast
echoes of pain, susurrations in streams
which were instantly trapped and suppressed.
Incipient loss buoyed depressing extremes,
while a surfeit of love was enough
to avert your leaving. Oh God, it was rough.

pg. 86 in: The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: Anthology of Sonnets of the Eearly Third Millennium = Le Phénix renaissant de ses cendres : Anthologie de sonnets du début du troisième millénaire 2 Victoria, British Columbia, Canada: Friesen Press, © 2013
ISBN 1-4602-1701-6
The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes = Le Phenix Renaissant de Ses Cendres – Anthology of Sonnets of the Early Third Millennium = Anthologie de Sonnets a: Vallance, Editor-In-Chief Richard: 9781460217016: Books – Amazon.ca

Bear Facts – Unplugged

Conventional wisdom aside,
Black bears don’t really hibernate
All winter long – they alternate
Wakefulness and sleep … and bid
Their time till spring at last returns.
But they seldom venture from their dens
(Though it’s instinct alone that pens
Them for these seasonal sojourns.)
Spring finds them truly mean as hell:
They eat roots and pine needles to plug
Their intestinal tracts, so snug
There’s practically no need to tell
The poor things suffer to the last
Second when the plug is passed.

The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry = Le Florilège de la nouvelle Pléaide
& Plainsongs, spring, 1996

Decoding Reality

Sometimes I want to turn life upside down,
rip it along the perforations until it fragments
on the vivid razor edge of now …
scream defiance in the ghoulish face of death …
and scrawl graffiti in luminescent hieroglyphics
across the very foundation of Eternity.

Sometimes I want to dig through them
and unearth the building blocks of time and space.

Sometimes I just want to laugh, and sing, and cry …
and remember that I’m human.

Sometimes I don’t.

The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry = Le Florilège de la nouvelle Pléaide

Dream Reminiscences

I’ve marveled much throughout the years
At how our past … relived in dreams …
Recalls old heartaches, steeped in tears,
And happiness of childhood schemes.
How as I toss in restless sleep,
I dream of love … and star-crossed lovers;
And precious moments that I keep;
Things no live being discovers ..
Enshrined within my heart and soul;
I find that friends I’d long forsaken
Come each to play a crucial role,
And reenact the way I’ve taken.
I note that lovers, friends, and kind,
Though to each other, most were strangers,
Throughout my dreams are sprinkled in
And share in ecstasies and dangers.
Yet though they’re gone when I awake,
My heart has calmed and ceased to ache.

The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry = Le Florilège de la nouvelle Pléaide
Dream International Quarterly, 1992

Drinking form the Poet Laureate’s cup *

Gathering together the loose ends of our lives,
We open doors long sealed inside our hearts,
Dodging fate’s sharp arrow and fierce darts …
Like surgeons honing glinting scalpel knives.

Slicing through the tangled veil of years,
We delve for truth – and sometimes find it –
Though base emotions might still gag and blind it.
Promise beckons beyond doubts and fears.

What does the poet owe to the reader
Which might pay for the death of a tree?
Could beauty alone spark a jubilee
For a towering pine or magnificent cedar?

Whether primly polite, or rude and uncouth,
Verse validation comes mainly through truth.

* Inspired by Phil Wey’s comment at the Des Moines National Poetry Festival when he picked up Robert Pinsky’s cup and took a drink, saying, “What if I drink from the Poet Laureate’s cup”?

Envoi: Adieu. Farewell

And then adieu, – farewell! – the dream is done
(Edna Saint-Vincent Millay)

Hey, are you there? I called you twice today…
and yesterday … I divine you’re not in.
I’m worried sick. I pray, are you O.K?
Your diabetes wears your spirit thin.

Life, why so damn jealous of our last breath?
Your life’s snuffed out? No. What a shouting shame!
Why must I dwell so zealously on death?
I fear life’s a mere flickering flame.

Why must the muses take such a grim toll
on us, unveiling our intensest fears?
Are sonnets second nature to your soul
slicing through the threadbare veils of your tears?

Your sonnets serenade us in your spell, *
annulling death’s knell. Adieu. Farewell.

* adapted from: Millay’s Mystique, by Jim Dunlap
To the end, defying death’s cruel knell,
she wove, in words, a magic spell.

Richard Vallance 2025

References & Notes:

1. The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: Anthology of Sonnets of the Eearly Third Millennium = Le Phénix renaissant de ses cendres : Anthologie de sonnets du début du troisième millénaire. pg. 228

2. The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: Anthology of Sonnets of the Eearly Third Millennium = Le Phénix renaissant de ses cendres : Anthologie de sonnets du début du troisième millénaire 2 Victoria, British Columbia, Canada: Friesen Press, © 2013
ISBN 1-4602-1701-6
The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes = Le Phenix Renaissant de Ses Cendres – Anthology of Sonnets of the Early Third Millennium = Anthologie de Sonnets a: Vallance, Editor-In-Chief Richard: 9781460217016: Books – Amazon.ca
3. The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry = Le Florilège de la nouvelle Pléaide


© by Richard Vallance 2025

E.M. Schorb reads from 1st poetry collection, “The Poor Boy”

by

Biography

 

E. M. Schorb attended New York University, where he fell in with a group of actors and became a professional actor. During this time, he attended several top-ranking drama schools, which led to industrial films and eventually into sales and business. He has remained in business on and off ever since, but started writing poetry when he was a teenager and has never stopped. His collection, Time and Fevers, was a 2007 recipient of an Eric Hoffer Award for Excellence in Independent Publishing and also won the “Writer’s Digest” Award for Self-Published Books in Poetry. An earlier collection, Murderer’s Day, was awarded the Verna Emery Poetry Prize and published by Purdue University Press. Other collections include Reflections in a Doubtful I, The Ideologues, The Journey, Manhattan Spleen: Prose Poems, 50 Poems, and The Poor Boy and Other Poems.

Schorb’s work has appeared widely in such journals as The Yale Review, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Chicago Review, The Sewanee Review, The American Scholar, and The Hudson Review.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2000, his novel, <em>Paradise Square</em>, was the winner of the Grand Prize for fiction from the International eBook Award Foundation, and later,<em> A Portable Chaos</em> won the Eric Hoffer Award for Fiction in 2004.

Schorb has received fellowships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the North Carolina Arts Council; grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, the Carnegie Fund, Robert Rauschenberg &amp; Change, Inc. (for drawings), and The Dramatists Guild, among others. He is a member of the Academy of American Poets, and the Poetry Society of America.

PRIZE-WINNING BOOKS
BY E.M. SCHORB
Books available at Amazon.com

Dates and Dreams, Writer’s Digest International Self-
Published Book Award for Poetry, First Prize

Paradise Square, International eBook Award
Foundation, Grand Prize, Fiction, Frankfurt Book Fair

A Portable Chaos, The Eric Hoffer Award for Fiction,
First Prize

Murderer’s Day, Verna Emery Poetry Prize, Purdue
University Press

Time and Fevers, The Eric Hoffer Award for Poetry
and Writer’s Digest International Self-Published Book
Award for Poetry, each First Prize

visit http://www.emschorb.com.

 

 

Strangers and Trees | Poem by David Michael Jackson

by

The Old Men Walk
and want to run again
To run again.
I walk my three miles
because I’m glad I can walk
There are others like me.
I pass them.
One walks briskly and says little.
He doesn’t have to.
I see him walking his walk so resolute
as if he sees his last walk
or that wheelchair
and he’s gonna walk,
by God!
I wonder if he knows the Doctor,
ear, nose and throat who walks every day,
the two miles and back
to a restaurant.
He has a new white beard
and wishes to go to Florida.
These are my heroes
these days of hoping
for pleasant conversations.
as I talk to strangers
and trees.
I spoke to a big hickory today
and spread some nuts for my
wisest friend.
The young people go by,
jogging
usually without the need
for pleasant conversations.
I have a hard time forgiving them.
We should have never taught them
to not talk to strangers.
Oh leaola
oh leaola
You must talk to strangers
and trees

Barbara Crooker: poems from Slow Wreckage

by

THEN

The past is never dead. 
It’s not even past. 
William Faulkner

Oak leaves stamped against a chicory sky
swirled with clouds, like a marble I once had
and lost.  It’s probably still there, caught in a dry
puddle, a tree root, or one of those cracked

pavements of childhood that we walked
on going to school.  We roamed the neighborhood
in feral packs, marked up the curb with chalk:
hopscotch, marbles, kickball, only going in for food

or band-aids.  No sunscreen, helmets, fancy bikes.
Once, we rode to the creek to swim, dead deer
resting in the shallows.  We didn’t think alike:
was it safe to swim, or not?  I can still hear

my mother calling my name as darkness fell
and fireflies sent messages that only they could spell.

WEIGHT TRAINING

and how can you train the body 
to be the body? 
Carrie Addington, “Waist Training”

How can I train this body,
with its baggage, the freight
load of dinners in France, plates
gleaming with sauce and cream,
sauté pans sizzling, a glass of rosé
at the start of the meal that’s raised
to the setting sun? Breakfast: an array
of croissants in a basket, display
of confitures, especially les fraises
des bois, wild strawberries. Cushioned
in a chair, I’m sedentary: at my keyboard
writing essays or reading a roman à clef.
The days when I ran before dawn, gone.
Praise be to my left knee; the right one says
mercy going down stairs. The pain in places
I never knew existed. Ahead, there’s a station,
and I’m slowly chugging towards it.
No weight training at the gym
or miles on the exercycle can stay this decline.
In the passenger car, a conductor sways,
pushing his clicker, punching tickets: sprays
of confetti, little o’s litter the aisles, ricochet.

HAPPINESS

           Whoever can see through all fear
            Will always be safe
                 Lao Tsu, The Tao Te Ching

It’s a day of brilliant blue, lightly smudged
with chalky clouds. In the larger world, there’s
fracking, climate change, industrial sludge.
But here, none of this can reach us. Who cares

about the news? I’m in this lawn chair,
secure in its embrace. In the distance,

the surf of traffic, the hum of bees. Chances
are, none of us gets to live forever.
The shadow of the vulture on the lawn
cannot dispel this blue euphoria.

Barbara Crooker is author of twelve chapbooks and ten full-length books of poetry, including  Some Glad Morning, Pitt Poetry Series, University of Pittsburgh Poetry Press, longlisted for the Julie Suk award from Jacar Press, The Book of Kells, which won the Best Poetry Book of 2019 Award from Poetry by the Sea, and Slow Wreckage, forthcoming from Grayson Books. Her other awards include: Grammy Spoken Word Finalist, the WB Yeats Society of New York Award, the Thomas Merton Poetry of the Sacred Award, and three Pennsylvania Council fellowships in literature.  Her work appears in literary journals and anthologies, including The Bedford Introduction to Literature.

Two of Barbara’s books can be purchased on the links below, including Slow Wreckage, from which these poems were selected.

https://graysonbooks.com/products/slow-wreckage-by-barbara-crooker

Preacherman Don’t Care About My Soul No More | Song by David Michael Jackson

by

Preacherman don’t care about my soul no more.
He’s not knocking at my door
He’s too busy getting out the vote
to care about my soul anymore.
to care about my soul anymore

He used to send the kids around
with a pamplet and a smile
Now they’re not here, they’re downtown.
My soul’s been lonely for awhile
My soul’s been lonely for awhile

He used to sing Just As I Am
after every sermon he preached
He’d tell my soul to come on down.
Now it’s Onward Christian soldiers he sings
it’s Onward Christian soldiers he sings

Preacherman used to go out of his way
He said his good news was mine
but now my soul is a waiting in
the self salvation line
the self salvation line

Oh tell the devil to hold the door
for a soul the preacherman he said he cared for.
Running my country is more important you see
than my soul and little ol’ me
my soul and little ol’ me

Preacherman don’t care about my soul no more.
He’s not knocking at my door
He’s too busy getting out the vote
to care about my soul anymore
to care about my soul anymore

Song by David Michael Jackson

Detours Poem by Ralph Monday

by

Detours

Rounding the curve, halted by the SUV’s
emergency blinkers winking like some
Dis tower, I fell obediently in line as a
first grader in the cafeteria.

Head on collision, the officer said,
before directing me to the detour
ahead. Passing the crumpled car,
front shoved in like a monkey playing
accordion, I noticed the blanket covered
form loaded like a cord of wood
into an ambulance.

This one on a final detour from Sunday
morning church. But aren’t we all on
deviations, diversions?

Through the rain, the mist, the mountain
road, around one bend & an Amish
horse & buggy clattered on asphalt.
What detours awaited that black capsule?

Who could know. Detours.
Bypasses in time like a train switching
tracks.

If I had detoured from the first love,
where would the train have taken me?
Not that moment, so not this minute.
Daughters instead of sons.
Dogs instead of cats.

Detours.

What about your sidetrack?
you would have married
another & never went with
your wife to find her brother
three weeks dead sprawled in the
doorway halfway between the
bathroom & bedroom. You never
forgot the smell.

Or your sister who lost her rosary &
became a whore not a nun &
never met the suicide she would
have saved.

Detours.

Like the Amish above who swerved
away from the 21st century, zigged instead
of zagged, found themselves in a 19th
century wormhole so that I would spy
them on this Sunday detour on a road with
many curves.

Ralph Monday is Professor of English at RSCC in Harriman, TN. Hundreds of poems published. Books: All American Girl and Other Poems, 2014. Empty Houses and American Renditions, 2015. Narcissus the Sorcerer, 2015. Bergman’s Island & Other Poems, 2021, The Book of Appalachia 2023, and a humanities text, 2018. Member Lincoln Memorial University Literary Hall of Fame. Twitter @RalphMonday Poets&Writers https://www.pw.org/directory/writers/ralph_monday

Hollywood Woman A Poem by Sara L Russell 18th March 2023

by

She has had an illustrious lifestyle
and many well-earned accolades;
donates to some causes quite worthwhile
she has gongs and awards now, in spades.

Her mansion’s been featured in Tatler
in Mode Avantgarde and OK;
She’s been called a trooper and a battler
and she always has plenty to say.

But her face is a bone of contention
it is fixed in a permanent grin
from a facelift hauled too tight to mention
and too much Botox in her skin,

And her lips, in an unnatural rictus,
have a top lip that sticks out too far,
Yet she boasts how her surgeon could fix us
if we weren’t as poor as we are.

She goes to cafés with her ladies
all from the same era as she;
and their pooches are treated like babies
and given fresh truffles for tea;

And when she is smiling or laughing
The waiters recoil in sheer fright
For her terrible grin leaves them gasping
She’s like a cobra poised to bite;

and some of her friends look like harpies
and some of them look like vampires
and their eyeliner’s drawn on with sharpies
and they drink to lost loves and desires;

But they carry on laughing regardless
For they clothes-shop at Rodeo Drive;
They are diamonds of high grade and hardness,
though they look to be barely alive.

 

Sara L Russell aka pinkyandrexa

Sara Louise Russell, aka PinkyAndrexa, is a UK poet and poetry ezine editor, specialising particularly in sonnets, lyric-style poetry and occasionally writing in more modern styles. She founded Poetry Life & Times and edited it from 1998 to 2006, when she handed it over to Robin Ouzman Hislop and Amparo Arrospide; Robin now runs it as Editor from Poetry Life & Times at this site.  Her poems and sonnets have been published in many paper and online publications including Sonnetto Poesia, Mindful of Poetry and Autumn Leaves a monthly Poetry ezine from the late Sondra Ball. Her sonnets also currently appear in the recently published anthology of sonnets Phoenix Rising from the Ashes. She is also one of the first poets ever to be published on multimedia CD ROMs, published by Kedco Studios Inc.; the first one being “Pinky’s Little Book of Shadows”, which was featured by the UK’s national newspaper The Mirror, in October 1999. (Picture link for Mirror article) Angel Fire. And the 2024 AI version of The Perils of Norris cartoon, by Sara L Russell using Canva Pro AI, Episode 1. The Perils of Norris featured from this site Poetry Life and Times

When the Messiah Comes poems from Aieka by Daniela Ema Aguinsky Translated from Spanish by Amparo Arróspide & Robin Ouzman Hislop

by 

i.

La foto de mi abuela el día de su casamiento

Sé que no lo deseabas
pero lo hiciste.
El buen chico judío asignado
no resultó
tan buen chico.

Pasé tu edad
no me casé con el mío.
Lo deje ir lejos
una noche de luna
en la terraza
tomó mi mano y dijo

no me gustan las chicas
con las uñas pintadas.

Las mías
eran rojas
y dejaban marcas
en las paredes de su intestino.

A veces recuerdo al goy
de la fábrica de máquinas de coser
gritaba tu nombre
en la cueva privada de su boca.

Alegre
soprano de interiores
fósforo
en una caja húmeda
durante un corte de luz

vos empezás a irte
yo recién estoy llegando. 

i.

The photo of my grandmother on her wedding day

I know you didn't want to
but you still did.
The assigned good Jewish boy
did not turn out to be
such a good boy.

I am past your age
I didn't marry mine.
I let him get away
a moonlit night
on the terrace
he took my hand and said

I don't like girls
with painted nails.

Mine
were red
and left marks
on the walls of his intestine.

Sometimes I remember the goi*
from the sewing machine factory
he screamed your name
in the private cave of his mouth.

Cheerful
indoor soprano
a match
in a wet match box
when there is a fuse

you begin to depart
I'm just arriving.


* Goi (non Jewish boy)

ii.

Palimpsesto

Me tiré ácido
me raspé la piel
y me escribí encima.

Abajo quedaron huellas
los textos que no llegaron
al canon de mi existencia.

Que vengan los cabalistas
los estudiantes de Talmud
voy a desplegarme sobre la mesa,
una escritura sagrada.

Desnúdenme con cuidado
rastreen los indicios
discutan el estado original
de esta mujer borrada.

ii.

Palimpsest

I threw acid on myself
scraped my skin
and wrote on it.

Traces were left below
the texts that did not make it
to the canon of my existence.

Let the Cabalists come
students of the Talmud
I'm going to spread myself on a table,
a sacred script

Undress me with care
track the signs
discuss the original state
of this erased woman.

iii.

Las copas están hechas para romperse

Lo sé
desde que mi abuela guardaba la vajilla
de su abuela, en un aparador especial
que nunca se abría
por lo delicadas que eran
esas copitas verdes de tallos finos como lirios
capacidad mínima, brillantes.

Nada ameritaba
perturbarlas
de su estado decorativo
los nietos no le habíamos dado
una jupá, un compromiso, un nacimiento.
No le habíamos dado nada.

Pero mi abuela sabía mejor que nadie
que las copas
están hechas
para romperse:

van a quebrarse
mientras lavás los platos
o estallar contra el piso cuando levantás la mesa
un día que estás sobrepasada
o se le van a caer a tu nieta, dentro de veinte años,
cuando se mude sola a su primer departamento.

Van a resistir
como las personas viejas resisten
hasta quebrarse
un día cualquiera de sol.

iii.

GLASSWARE  ARE  MADE TO BE BROKEN

I know
since my grandmother put away the crockery
of her grandmother, in a special sideboard
she never opened
because of how delicate they were
those little green glasses with thin stems like lilies
bright in miniature capacity 

Nothing was worth
disturbing them
from their ornamental state     
grandchildren hadn´t give her
a chuppah*, an engagement, a birth. 
We hadn't given her anything.

But my grandmother knew better than anyone
that glassware
are made to be broken

they are going to break
while you wash the dishes
or explode on the floor when you ´re clearing the table
stressed out
or your granddaughter will drop them in twenty years´ time
when she moves into her first apartment alone.

They will resist
as old people resist
until breaking
any sunny day.

* chuppah: a Jewish wedding

iv.

                Cuando venga el Mesías van a curarse todos los enfermos
                     pero el tonto va a seguir siendo tonto.
                      Refrán Idish

Cuando venga el Mesías

y reconstruyan el Tercer Templo
no quiero estar arriba
mirando a los hombres rezar
en círculos que cantan y bailan
mientras mujeres charlan
y chicos gritan.

Cuando venga el Mesías
no quiero estar arriba
con el humo de los sacrificios
abajo los sacerdotes entran
y salen como amantes
pronunciando
el nombre sagrado.

Cuando venga el Mesías
y todos retornemos a la tierra
quiero estar en la tierra de este mundo.

iv.

                   When the Messiah comes, all the sick will be cured.
                        but the fool will remain a fool.
                         Yiddish saying

When the Messiah comes

and they rebuild the Third Temple
I don't want to be above
watching men pray
in circles singing and dancing
while women chat
and children shout

When the Messiah comes
I don't want to be above
with the smoke of sacrifices
the priests entering below
and exiting like lovers
pronouncing
the sacred name.

When the Messiah comes
and we all return to earth
I want to be on the earth of this world.

v.

Teléfono fijo

Mis papás me dieron un teléfono fijo
la línea está incluída dijeron
tenelo por las dudas
y quedó en el piso

cuando suena, rara vez
sé que son ellos
(nadie más tiene el número)
me siento en el sillón
espero tres tonos y atiendo

a veces una noticia terrible otras
una invitación para almorzar
lo único fijo este teléfono.

v.

Landline

My parents gave me a landline
the line is paid for they said
keep it just in case
and it stayed on  the floor

when it rings, rarely
I know it's them
(no one else has its number)
I sit on the couch
I wait three rings and answer

sometimes terrible news other times
an invitation for lunch

The only fixed thing this phone.

Daniela Ema Aguinsky (Buenos Aires, 1993) is a writer and filmmaker based in Argentina. She Directed the shorts Virtual Guard, Hurricane Berta, 7 Tinder Dates, and several others. She published Amante japonés, Aieka (2023) and Terapia con animales (2022) in Argentina, Mexico and Spain, book that won The National Poetry Prize Storni in 2021. She is also the spanish translator to the California based poet Ellen Bass; Todos los platos del menú (Gog & Magog, 2021). Twitter: laglu Instagram: laglus

 
 
Amparo Arróspide (born in Buenos Aires) is an M.Phil. by the University of Salford. As well as poems, short stories and articles on literature and films in anthologies and international magazines, she has published five poetry collections: Presencia en el Misterio, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar and En el oído del viento. The latter is part of a trilogy together with Jacuzzi and Hormigas en diaspora, which are in the course of being published. In 2010 she acted as a co-editor of webzine Poetry Life Times, where many of her translations of Spanish poems have appeared, she has translated authors such as Margaret Atwood, Stevie Smith and James Stephens into Spanish, and others such as Guadalupe Grande, Ángel Minaya, Francisca Aguirre, Carmen Crespo, Javier Díaz Gil into English. She takes part in poetry festivals, recently Centro de Poesía José Hierro (Getafe).
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; at Artvilla.com
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

I Hate Authority and Other Poems by Peter Mladinic

by
i-hate-authority-poem

Becoming Invisible

They moved from city to suburbs. They were
lost, gobbled up, in some dark downstairs
apartment, all you could see were walls.
It was like they’d stopped living, so much

a part of the city they were, and where they
moved wasn’t desolate, a little city, but not
theirs of five-story brick walls, cobbled hills.
I see his long coat and fedora, her pillbox

hat with the little veil. You opened a window
looked out at other windows, fire escapes,
brick walls across the street. All that
was gone when they made the move, his

suspenders, the scar from her operation.
This new place it was like they weren’t there.
 
Ed’s Manor Tavern

He’d been drinking at Ed’s and left alone.
His Pontiac failed to make the long turn,
toppled into a culvert, no seatbelts back
then, his leg smashed, half between Ed’s
and home, a Lorillard exec, heavyset, iron
gray hair, plaster cast, bulbous pitted nose.

On his breezeway soda bottles in wooden
crates, he couldn’t lift one then. I liked
the colors: lime orange strawberry black
brown red yellow, a rainbow of bottled sugar
in drab but sturdy crates delivered weekly
to his door. One color clear, like water.
 
Cape Man

Sal Agron was the Cape Man,
only he wasn’t a man. Sixteen,
he stabbed two teenagers

in ‘59, his story
in news pages spread on a stone floor.
Fish guts soaked the paper.

Robin’s gran cleaned trout.
On a breezeway
light shone through jalousies. Sal’s

dark pompadour crested his pale brow.
His long, straight nose led him astray.
Her hand turned the blade.

From the Old Country,
she came to the States
with her husband, lived with her

daughter, son-in-law,
two grandkids. I wonder if Sal,
in jail, left a daughter.

Under an oak Robin’s gran
taught me not to walk on my toes.
The brown bun threaded with gray

at the top of her head resembled a pin
cushion. Stout, she wore specs.
Her hands held long needles,

crocheting wool.
She sliced down skin, opening trout.
Their insides soaked Sal’s cape.
 
I Hate Authority

Parents teachers cops judges—
don’t like anyone telling me what to do.

Okay, moron. Consider,
no authority, no order. There’d be chaos.
Some desperate soul slits your throat
as you sleep,
steals the Timex
off your wrist as your blood runs
in the gutter.
Authority’s a good thing,
so long as its hand doesn’t reach so far
as to tell you
how to button your shirt or blouse
and what to read and eat.
You’re an idiot with your hatred
of authority. Then, some think
they can make you see and act differently.
They can’t. I’m sorry a parent
or just something in your DNA made
your bad attitude. Music,
drugs, bullying, neglect, poverty?
Your poverty of spirit I lack.
I’m superior. I’m an asshole.
I just don’t want someone barging in
and taking everything
and my life.

They say He was a carpenter | Carpenter Poem

by

They say He was a carpenter.
I can only say,
I have known carpenters.
They don’t seemed to have been trained.
They seem to have always known boards
and decks
and floors
and walls
and square, always square
like a flag their square
like Plato’s perfect order,
Shakespeare’s law,
their square.
I wonder if He was on a roof
hoisting rafters without a shirt
driving ancient nails into ancient boards,
glistening in the summer sun,
smiling at the ladies
with the work of His hands.
My friend the carpenter has given me a deck,
a porch
to watch His birds
take joy in building nests.

by David Jackson
David is the Publisher of Artvilla.com.
For decks and carpentry in Murfreesboro, Tn it’s ZZConstruction

Singularity Poem by David Jackson

by

Trillions of galaxies and
each one unique,
all filled with solar systems and
each one unique.
Every single person is different,
unique,
every rock, every bird,
every one of us
everything in the
universe
is a singularity.
There will never
be
another
you.
That is a
singularity
too.
Good luck
Be safe
Be kind
Be you

To kill or not to kill Bill. A Poetry Text by Robin Ouzman Hislop. Excerpt from Cartoon Molecules

by 
To kill or not to kill Bill*										

i

Weary   if it weren’t a country from whose border
the slings and arrows of ardent hope for   die

us   to put up with those of them
put up with those of them   to die

you that   actually   Bill's last bullet to get to this point

the question for him was obscured by reflecting on it
end that we would all or not
unexplored natural miseries    human beings as simple as that
and the consideration that creates the that we don’t know about!

and i the movie advertisements refer to

so an unbearable situation   or to an authority
and the advantage that must make us pause
that must make us pause

 i can tell now   can tell now   the only one left   only one left

that’s us   that follows that first impulse of troubles that afflict one
the great and important plans life    because   who would tolerate
to suffer   we might have been the best   with a naked blade?
oneself with a naked blade?

(woman)

who would continue to exist
and end the dread of the love
the calamity of such a long problem
because in the end our life is a hurry for others
who are diluted to the point of sleep

perhaps thinking about a sleep of death
this mortal body has to endure
is in us all

i went on what hell of a lot of people i wasn't

the whips and scorns
the pain of rejected time
the tyranny against this load   sweating and grunting
the prospect    sweating and grunting the prospect
that confounds us and makes a traveller
return    ay   that’s the thing       ,

looked dead   didn't i?     dead   didn't  i?    well        .,

ii

As to that and the consideration
of impulses of troubles afflicting   grunting
the prospect that confounds rejected time
the tyranny that creates the that we miserable human beings
as simple mortal body have to endure
that would continue to exist and a long problem
because its an unbearable situation

the one I'm driving to right   a coma

or to tolerate   to suffer us to end the dread
of the that we don’t know about
so we wouldn't be in a hurry for others
from whose borders of authority 									
and the advantage plans of life - because
who put up with those of hope for us to die
all or not?

 a roaring rampage of revenge    rampage of revenge  

unexplored natural might have been the best for us
that follows from the first of them
the question for him of love   the calamity of such   the end of our life
with a naked blade obscured by reflecting on a sleep of death
the slings and arrows of ardent whips and scorns
the pain diluted to the point of weary
if it weren’t a country that must make us pause
against this sweating load and the one great important thinking about      ,

the last when I arrive at my destination

iii

Or to tolerate   to suffer us
has been the best for us   that follows us
to pause against this sweating load
and that would continue to exist
even if it weren’t a country   that must make that -

the one i'm driving to     i'm driving to

that confounds rejected time   the tyranny of a sleep of death
the slings of life   because who puts up with arrows of ardent whips
and the scorns in a hurry for others whose such ends our life with?

a hell of a lot of people now    can tell now    i can tell satisfaction    i've killed you that

as to that   and the consideration of end   the dread
of the that we as a simple mortal body have to endure
from the first of them   the question of a naked blade
obscured by reflecting on impulses of troubles
afflicting   grunting the prospect
all or not

actually   Bill's last bullet the movie advertisements refer to as an in for i got bloody last

unexplored natural might have been for him of love
the calamity of long problem   because of its unbearable situation

only one left    only one left

the borders of authority and the advantage plans
pain diluted to the point of  weariness
if we don’t know about it    so we wouldn't be it!

the one i'm driving to    i'm driving to

or not to be   creates the that for us to die   to die

when I only woke up    i went on one left    only one left    i wasn't    people i wasn't    
but put me in a coma – destination    it wasn't from one    wasn't from one more    
only one more    to get to this point   but right a coma     ,



*
To kill or not to kill Bill   text derived extracts from Hamlet’s 
‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy Hamlet Act3 Scene1 taken from the No Sweat Shakespeare Hamlet ebook 
& Uma Thuman’s car scene in Kill Bill 2.

 
 
 
Amazon.com/Cartoon Molecules-Robin Ouzman Hislop Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; at Artvilla.com
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author.
 
 
See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Africa North. An Excerpt from All the Babble of the Souk by Robin Ouzman Hislop

by 
Africa North


Solstice winds, rain return in spells
a moon waxes full, dogs howl as well.

All the babble of the Souk
men over there, over there women.  

All the life of the planet
so little part of it that I breathe.

Weather beaten highlands, once passed through.

The river bed, no more like a parched bone
its late autumnal river meanders as a vein
past four reservoirs
a quest that will end in winter´s flood.

Between them are momentary mists
where brightly clad figures of the north, suddenly dim.

On the frontier’s beach taxis come, go
only the stranded remain, together with the seagulls
four men huddled, drenched in pouring rain
dead once more, again, all pathways home
washed away, again.  A broken song

remember me, sung in a doorway
brings the world at large together
as suddenly as it narrows.

Water runs on marble
nakedness revealed, nakedness concealed
form water words, water memories, mists, fates.

Veins wrestle the marble into mangled knots
blemished pearls on an implacable skin
shards leaving fragmentary traces
empty spaces awaiting faces.

Lights dance in the night, picturesque
“casas blancas del pueblo”
appear through the darkness

as the brush strokes of my mind steal the action of the shadow.

Mists cordon the mountain tops
guerdoned crowns  like wreathes.

Ancient fields' still colours surrounded
by burgeoning new lead to the valley below.

Old women , old as aglow, so slow they go
poised aloof in an untouchable world, trapped.

High in kiln firelight they cowl night’s shade
to oversee goats on the hill beneath.

Daughters of necessity naked in the rock
unleashed in white trefoil in the marsh
swamp of night rain, stark where epochs
sleep in their shadows

replication of memories, where the old
becomes the new, a world splits in two
with Morpheus in the breach.  

Beyond control, beyond reach the erratic butterfly
flits bloom to bloom, the intrepid stalker with net
both captured in the mimic mould.

A  knot is tied, a knot that wrestles
embraces, that ravels birth
unravels death & binds its existence.

Her face is as if a moon glazed over
with a less serene ceramic dust that in the end
after its perplexity contains its surety.

She draws her forefinger laterally across
under her eye lid in a smear

nor can you change the image of what you are
in the pupil of her eye.

Babble bodies blur
voices with their echoes down the street
sky high, prices fly

a bird song breaks, a splash charade
Faces in the rain thin
weakness of watery years.

A winnowing canvass tosses corn
as fireflies in the blazing day.

The hag in her rags begs her bag
holding all shadows to account.

You sit in the solitary corner
at the empty dice board
to throw, as the music swells, as strings play.

On the washing line clothes of all shapes
sizes are waiting to be filled
suspended between earth, sky, where white sheets blow.

A twinge of nostalgia flashes
a link between a fluttering curtain
an open window frame, a sun shadow game
a flickering apparition pattern leaving only - strands.

A breeze flutters an open foolscap on the table
as though a phantom reader
should flick with regard through a score of notes
then stops at the first blank white sheets
stays, the moving hand that wrote, wrote no more.

On record, old honky-tonk goes on
amidst the heaps of consumer city sneakers
in the same dust where faces
turn from their spring red lustre to a sun soiled wear

through a beehive of allies
names, aye to fetch them home again
as if where the countless dead resided, you’d said
in a market of women shrouded in shawls.

Berlin falls, Baghdad falls
all the years turn to further tears
further fears to merge with your voyage
the shape of dreams to come
to be only endearments of what has gone before.

A flower opens after a thousand years in a shell of tears
indifferent to its beholders’ sight
who paint it with the colours from the waters of their night
on an unknown shore, to whose sight it opened once before.

Children’s faces like radiant imps
play carefree in the streets below
overhead on red tiles, fat pigeons bicker, coo.

In an internet cafe, an Arab girl discrete in headdress
plays with cartoon molecules of Micky Mouse
Kola bear

nubile women’s faces dream of nudity in their shrouds.

Wonky pinz nez specs, jumble sale clothes
bad teeth, unshaven grin
looking a faded duplicate of a down
out James Joyce with the come on
are you Irish, he asks
perhaps he was once upon a time.

They came through the cleft of the mountain
 - where the river ran
to swim as a blur in the naked purple of the eye

on the mountain face there is a scar
once a sacred place, now extinct, as they are.

Yet wild still she runs, amidst the sheep, goats
toils at the hearth, dutifully bears children
yesterday she knows but not tomorrow
where she hides her sorrow

even as he ploughs the hillside
a photo will steal his soul, but his beasts will do.

Twilight’s girls, girls, girls
throng the bustling street corners eating caracoles.

By day the olive tree green in the blue sky of the window
seems almost immortal enriched with the blood
it’s enriched, now at its roots.
Costa de la playa, white beehives in the sun, all money, no honey.

In the broken lights of the bazaar
the dusky eyes of the beggar sunk in their sockets
maze in crooked cul de sacs embargo amidst
the furls of silk that foil the flickering lantern niche.
In the gloaming a solitary reaper reaps its shadow.
Streets packs ravage carcasses
at dawn, the city wakes to the city’s obedience
to obey its disappearing shadows.

A ghost city of watchers
watched as shadows by a memory that has outlived them
now fragments in an admixture of old, new
- amidst a junk yard of rubble

watcher shadows phased captive to their fading stories.

The street’s mechanics of the day
obey their limits, patterns of parts
where we end only to start in a series of nows

post mortem of the world at large
an autopsy of ghosts on the slab.

Born to see, in the boutiques people seem
like their own mannequins
existence is a mystery with no purpose

only we endow it with a destiny, it does not seek from us.

All the Babble of the Souk.amazon.com

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; at Artvilla.com
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author.

See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

The Price Of Fame | Poem by Ray Miller

by

The Price Of Fame

I like to peruse the charity shops

at least once a week.

I once bought a book by Roger McGough

for only 40p.

Today I happened to find myself

inside Cats Protection;

there, between Drama and Mental Health

I spied a collection

of poetry written by local bards

and the CD we recorded,

plus Ian McMillan, John Cooper Clarke.

But, could I afford it?

It sold for ten pounds when first published;

poets got one free.

My ex has thrown mine in the rubbish –

jealous, obviously.

I was just about to check out the cost

then thought, should I leave it?

If I take this volume from the shop

no-one else will read it.

I said to the girl at the counter, Look,

as I fished for money,

I’ve a couple of poems in this book

and one’s very funny.

Are you famous then? Show me which are yours.

I turned to the page;

there were complicit smiles, a few guffaws –

you should be on the stage!

I could tell her about the pressure

performing Spoken Word.

A recitation might impress her,

but I’ve lost my nerve.

I say, I ought to get this book for free

seeing as I’m in it.

She finds the price, it’s just 30p:

thus am I diminished.

Melcome | Poem by Jessica Skyfield

by

Melcome

to my echo chamber.

I’m having fun, (right now).

And that’s what it’s all about, right?

Now.

Behold the meaningless rantings of a mad(whoa)man.

Sliding slipping sagging

as time warps and wears

picking up speed on the downhill slide.

Infinite neural networks

these/those/them/there/their/they’re sliding glass doors shut

but I can still see back through;

LET ME IN!

It’s cold outside.

Scaramouche is fandangoing

and nothing truly

really

matters

at all.*

*Actually, everything matters/everything’s matter and this is just a coping

mechanism for reality because everything is so big and I am so little and

the forces that exist are so great and I don’t feel strong enough…said hurriedly with flushed cheeks and zero free oxygen anywhere.

But I’m trying.

In Ordinum ist Progress.

(What esoteric concepts!–whose order and progress towards what?!)

Literally all our plundering is in the name of progress, so…

& of course I moved to the state whose motto is Ad astra per aspera.

ad nauseam per Astrae, 

blundering through inumerable difficulties

tale as old as Time.

Hit me where the wind blows

& know that endless questioning is nothing but to beg for sorrow.

Adapted ahead of print from JP Skyfield’s Condensed Chronology.

About That First Love and other Poems by John Grey

by

ABOUT THAT FIRST LOVE

It did not feel like they had told me.

Less emotional, more like somebody

gifting me a brand new red sports car.

Hormones, I barely understood.

But horsepower was a cinch.

I didn’t lose my heart.

It was more a great flap in my head.

And it wasn’t war of course.

Not unless I wanted the other side to win.

It did strange things to conversation.

When I spoke to the girl,

it was like offering her a bite

of my candy bar.

Words had to taste delicious.

Or she had to be prepared to make a sacrifice,

devour them spit and all.

It was dividing myself in two.

One half still threw footballs.

The other was careful none landed

unsuspectingly near her.

And she wasn’t even the real thing.

First love was just rehearsal for second love.

And all I knew of second love was

that one of them was me.

GWEN CONFESSES

He rode in on a
glorious steed of Rilke,
alighted like pick-pocketing
Wordsworth from
a crowded shelf of prose.
He was dressed in a fancy, glittering suit
of Flaubert and Fitzgerald,
though his weapons were Russian novels,
“War and Peace,” “Crime And Punishment”.
he sure had me covered.
When the villains arrived…
Grisham, Clancy and
some Harlequin hired hands,
he was waiting for them
with Racine, Pushkin and Cervantes.
It was all over before you could say,
“For Whom The Bell Tolls.”
No, he didn’t take me in his arms,
but he did recommend I read
Durrel’s “Alexandria Quartet.”
We would have rode off into the sunset
together but, luckily, there was
a Starbucks next door.

THE RITE OF COUPLING

It’s Saturday night, a glitzy nightclub,

and I’m feeling useless and lonely

until I spy an attractive woman

sitting all alone at a nearby table.

I’m thinking to myself,

this is the angel who will restore me

to the very pinnacle of manhood.

She has long blonde hair

and I appreciate the way she tosses it.

And her eyes are surely blue

though the cross-breed lights,

the boogieing shadows, won’t yet concur.

I stand and stare in one motion.

A few confident steps,

some of my best one-liners,

and before you know it we’re dancing…

we’re a couple even.

If only it were that easy.

If the angel, precious as she may be,

weren’t just some replica of myself –

embarrassed by the past,

concerned for the future.,

and stuck here in some kind of perverse present

of money worries, family issues

and relationship anxiety.

My nerves fail me.

I return to my forlorn drink and chair.

The dance-floor is a throbbing, buzzing hive

of men and women.

Those guys andme-1can’t get over how alike we are.

And the women —no different from her, surely.

Before the approach,

I wonder how secure they were in the knowledge.

Did they imagine perfectly matched twosomes,

here, there, in all directions?

Are we meant to be together, that’s what I want to know.

The song that’s playing keeps implying yes.

And yet it’s not one I know.

She’s not singing along.

I’m not either.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Rathalla Review. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and Open Ceilings.

The New World Order | Poem by Ray Miller

by

The holiday romance is wintering

in the blankets of her bestest buddy.

There’s an empty ring in the silver tin,

and candles light the depths of her study,

where she’s practising pole dancing and  TEFL;  

she’ll throw a dart in a part of the globe

and chase the arrow for some precious metal

while her lips and her legs remain in vogue.

It’s closing time in the gardens of the West,

we can’t afford the servants any longer.

She’s in a tipsy state and a flimsy dress,

bent over at the wrong end of a conga.

Foreign eyes are leering at your daughter

in the queue for the new world order.

“Ray Miller is a Socialist, Aston Villa supporter, and faithful husband. Life’s been a disappointment”

Fifties Feature | Poem by Linda Straub

by

“50’s Feature”

by Linda Straub

Mother wore an off the shoulder dress

that swirled ’round her slender waist

and kissed a starched crinoline.

Father’s hair was ebony black,

a series of soft waves rolling down

his scalp, breaking on a rocky spine.

I sat in the back of their ’57 Chevrolet

eating popcorn and watching

James Dean on the Drive-in screen.

A squadron of speakers hung

from car windows where crackling

voices of movie stars faded in and out.

Sleep snuck up from behind

and stretched my weary body

across the wide back seat,

where my last sight

on that Summer’s night

was my Father’s wavy hair

dressing my mother’s bare shoulders.

Notecards | Donald Goines | High Dive Board | Poems by Peter Mladinic

by

Notecards

“Boobs in a church.” The frat boy

“Boobs in a church.” What did you say?

in the front row looked at me, I at him.

out nouns in magic marker: umbrella/

Monday night, Freshman Comp. I’d passed

courthouse; rabbit’s foot/ tunnel; wallet/

gym. Boots/ church, her prompts.

From the back, her high-pitched voice,

boots sounded different. A slim neck,

hair pulled up, dark eyes, flawless skin,

petite, shapely, she had to be there

as did I, if I wanted a paycheck. Spring,

April. Fountain pen/ swimming pool.

A stolen pen, the pool members only.

Tennis racquet/ nightclub; penguin/ ring.

There were animal cards. In an open door,

Saturday morning, mortgage-free, two

baths newly remodeled, I wonder where

she is. Outside our room, Discover

the Last Frontier, an astronaut tiny in

a galaxy poster on a board. The astronaut

helmet comes back silver. How did I get here?

How does anyone, where they are?

Toothbrush/ stadium. Wilbur brushes his

teeth in the bleachers. Fourth quarter

fervor. He clutches the wrong end.

In his hand, soggy bristles. A buzzer

sounds. A ball bounces off a rim. Crest

clouds the water in his red cup. His

Nighthawks walk off the court, their third

consecutive loss. Two other cards,

mirror/ cemetery, belong to a Suns fan.

Donald Goines

He had a really lucid essay on injustice,

about Black people getting screwed over

by the bail system. It wasn’t a rant, clear,

ordered, it made me think, he’s dead right.

He was always dead right, a prophet really

for troubled times in cities, car jacking,

mugging, armed robbery, much of it done

by people strung out. He knew that life.

He could have inherited his father’s dry

cleaning business. But he went in the army

and in Japan got stung out. Anyone wants

to preach the nightmare of strung out

should read one of his novels, Black Girl

Lost the one title comes to mind.

But he had many, and that his murder til

this day is unsolved, is tragic. He died,

literally, at the typewriter, someone broke in

to his apartment and shot him,

some paid assassin. He’d made enemies.

Try as he did, he couldn’t shake the life.

A croaker before that word was popular,

in prison he read Iceberg Slim and wrote.

He could have gone to a good college.

Self taught he lived what he wrote and he

wrote well. Dopefiend has a passage:

a young woman hangs herself on a shower

rack in a motel bathroom. It’s riveting.

The ugly truth of what drugs did to her.

(stanza break)

What drugs did. He had a choice,

more so than the woman whose life ended

in a restroom. He and his father died

only a month apart. Only his father,

of natural causes. Pimp, junkie, storyteller,

Black man, he wrought true fiction,

a world happening far from the tidy house

set back from the white picket fence.

High Dive Board

I’ve got to go to the tip and spring a little

and not look down, and feel the spring

go from toes to chin, then not just jump

but dive and maybe not bellyflop but do

a dive that wouldn’t win the grace-agility

award but at least pass so I’m no longer

a high dive virgin. I’ve got to dive. After

I’ve done it I can know, in my body, grace

or my imperfect grace, that differs from

placing the palm of my hand on a spike

of a gate that marks off the living from

the dead, at Gates of Heaven where you lay

six feet under, who once walked to the tip

of the board and bounced a little before

diving beneath the blue water’s surface,

emerging with a gasp before swimming

to the pool’s ledge, climbing out shaking

water drops on stone, you and your shadow

in afternoon climbed the ladder’s rungs

to dive again; and now your remains lay

near a sign: rest in peace. I’ve got to make

the dive at least passable so when I’m out

of the pool I can say I did something

you once did, again and again and do

no more, never to look up at white clouds

in blue sky before toes make that spring,

all of you shutting out what’s below:

girls in their fallen straps on blankets

in green grass, and toddlers holding hands

of their mothers in the pool’s shallow end.

Only you and the sky at the board’s tip,

you making it spring, then diving, no more

dives for you. It’s my shadow on cement,

moves with me, Jan, as yours moved

past the girls on blankets, the guards

in chairs, the swimmers and sun tanners

past all of it to the ladder, your wet feet

on the rungs, hands on aluminum rails,

you climbed to where it was you and sky.

Peter Mladinic’s fourth book of poems, Knives on a Table is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications.

An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico, USA.

If I Stand Beside a Door Poem by Hardley R Eady

by
If I stand beside a doorway

If I Stand Beside a Door Poem

If I stand beside a door

It’s the door she adores

If I stand beside a tree

She’s a tree hugger,

you see.

There is nothing

she sees

in

me.

It is natures way

for the male to display

and whether he stays

or flies away

is her’s to say.

Sleep | Poem by Alisha Fitzjarrald

by

I want to slip into the darkness

and wear it like a coat,

say goodbye

and drop into the abyss

and become unknown.

Let the darkness cradle me

and the silence sing to me

with the sound

of my own heartbeat.

You don’t fall,

you just float in the breeze

like the leaves off of the trees

while you drift

off to sleep..

Sleep

Art for Sale Poem | A Summer Day | Modern Music Nashville

by
art for sale poem

art for sale poem

Art for Sale

They sat beside their tables
as the people walked by.
“What is this one about?”
It’s my soul in
color and form
which I call art,
for sale in a universe
of color and form,
art for sale
with a frame
from another
soul,
left at Goodwill

They sat beside their tables
as the people walked into the
ten by ten pop up canopies
and looked at the flowers
and landscapes and
souls in
color and form
called art
for sale in a universe
of color and form

The wind comes up and
blows leaves down the concrete path
and the sun pokes through the clouds
and leaves shadows in the grass.
The people weave among the
ten by ten pop up canopies
and smile and talk like birds
singing
on a summer day.
The artists sit on folding chairs
noticing the people pausing
and smiling at a color or
a memory.

For art for sale in Murfreesboro, Tn try Sale for Art
Our fav website is Sale For Art
We especially like their Gallery Wrapped Canvas

Only Graffiti Rides That Train | Modern Music Nashville

by

oh write for me a sonnet
oh write for me a book
oh slip the bonds of caring
into the cranny nook
oh let me be the one
the one who does not weave
the thread of discontent
with the words I leave
Oh there ain’t no more boxcars
for Willie and Woody to ride
No hobos in containers
as the freight train rolls by
Oh what’s a hobo to do
what’s a hobo to do
stand on the street and sing the blues
thumb don’t work and the cop says move
This modern world don’t feel no pain
and only graffiti rides that train
They could ship themselves from China
but they wouldn’t get much air,
take the last train to Clarksville
but they couldn’t get out of there
Oh they don’t have to hire no railroad dick
you can’t catch the train it goes by too quick.

I’ve got my American Dream in a plastic bag because I cant afford the rent they had

Oh what’s a hobo to do
what’s a hobo to do
stand on the street and sing the blues
thumb don’t work and the cop says move
This modern world don’t feel no pain
and only graffiti rides that train

Billy the Kid and the Pokemons by David Jackson | Song

by

Billy the Kid was a friend of mine
and Bart Simpson lived nearby
and the pokemons they rented a room
in my garage.

Pat Garret he dropped by
was looking for Pikachu
Down in Silver City
Billy and Charizard
bought a horse named blue

I used to sing this song
Down at the ok Corral
I’d sing it sing it all day long
with my Pokemon pals
And Bart Simpson said I don’t believe
Billy is your friend
Eevie told me Jigglypuff said
he’s with Heatran

Wyatt Earp showed up with guns said
have you seen
them Clantons ride by on a horse a horse a horse of green
Jesse James and Charmander rode up with Pikachu
said they’ve been looking for a horse
a horse named blue

I used to sing this song
Down at the ok Corral
I’d sing it sing it all day long
with my Pokemon pals
And Bart Simpson said I don’t believe
Billy is your friend
Eevie told me Jigglypuff said
he’s with Heatran

David at Spotify

Modern Music Nashville

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Allegiance Poem by Wayne Jackson

by

An Allegiance We Could Make
By Wayne Jackson 1950-1989

An allegiance we could make
slow walkers, people
who look up to see what time it is, those
of us who hold hands
at the movies, hummers, yard
rakers, a slow wonderful
war fought in silence without
them ever knowing

Mondays we”ll sleep late, we”ll
make a stand, giving the histories that happen
away to passing jets, to
rotating signs, and our heroes have walnut stained hands, have
buckeyes in their pockets, pocket watches
They will be whittlers of wood, of ivory soap
The orders come from inside the head
whispered remembered again and
again, refusing what happens elsewhere, grinning
at the dwarf spinning in the street
We”ll make our slow stand
on our front porch swings

Copyright © 1997 by Donald Wayne Jackson, All rights reserved

***