Robin Ouzman Hislop

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

March 15, 2025 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

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

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

September 6, 2024September 6, 2024 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

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 & 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.

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

February 5, 2024 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

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

December 30, 2023 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

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)

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

August 23, 2023 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

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)