Robin Ouzman Hislop end of day
waves caressing shore
master artist painting sky
~ ocean sunset song
nightfall
birds retire wings
fall asleep with setting sun
~ shadows disappear
child of autumn
an imaginer
contemplating vivid dreams
~turning painted leaves
until the sunset
i am but a shadow
dancing briefly
across the meadow
until the sunset
takes my hand
Copyright Joseph Randell Sherman 2013
Perhaps grief is a home
with a haughty ceiling and a bolted door
where you feel so comfortable, sometimes,
that you do not hear the steel s edge
slashing the tapestries,
suspended on the scented air:
it is heliotrope blended with brimstone,
seeking to settle in the corners;
only the window stands
between the limit and you.
Arduous walk, in silence you listen to the ancient voices,
firewood for this grief
always starved of you,
as demanding as a newborn child
whom you already love.
The door opens ajar and you close it:
There is nothing to be afraid of.
***
***
Amparo Arrospide (Argentina) is a Spanish poet and translator. She has published four poetry collections, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar and Presencia en el Misterio as well as poems, short stories and articles on literary and film criticism in anthologies and both national and foreign magazines. She has received numerous awards. Together with Robin Ouzman Hislop, she worked as co-editor of Poetry Life and Times, an E-zine.
In another life I was mute,
written words were my voice.
So I lay awake
sculpting them
into a script
that could stain your mind.
I inked my history across my body
presenting myself as artefact
and all the stares, scorn
and petty human hatred
did not feel like trauma any more,
they felt like value.
******
http://errantwords.bigcartel.com/
http://www.facebook.com/UroborusJournal
http://errantwords.blogspot.co.uk/
When we brought your ashes to the beach
at the end of Pilgrim Road, I poured them out
as fast as I could, standing knee-deep
in the seaweedy shallows, because it had started
to rain, and I didn’t want you to get wet.
What was I thinking? You were returning
to our first mother, the sea. But all I wanted
to do was gather up every gritty particle,
every chip of bone, then mix them with my bare
hands, using sand and mud, saliva and tears,
and bring you back, my own personal golem.
How could I have let you sift out of my fingers,
grain by grain? The heavier bits sank, mixed
with the broken shells; the lighter ones blew
in the wind, stuck to the patches of foam.
How can you be gone?
first appeared in South Carolina Review, 2011, to appear in the forthcoming book Gold. Barbara Crooker (2013 or 2014) in the Poeima Poetry Series of Cascade Books, a division of Wipf & Stock. www.barbaracrooker.com
Why do Americans detest the French?
The answer is patently simple and plain:
but it gives U.S. national pride a wrench.
The French find senseless warfare inane,
teach their kids to think for themselves,
to study — and never to drop out of school.
Faced with a problem, the Frenchman delves
to the bottom, isn’t shown as a fool
by taking religious inanities to heart.
The Frenchman knows there’s a world out there,
and never puts the horse before Descartes.
He’s wily, tenacious, tough and aware.
Famed as a lover, he’ll fight if he must,
but invades no one if his cause is not just.
***
Jim Dunlap’s poetry has been published extensively in print and online in the United States, England, France, India, Australia, Switzerland and New Zealand. His work has appeared in over 90 publications, including Potpourri, Candelabrum, Mobius, Poems Niedernasse, and the Paris/Atlantic. He was the co-editor of Sonnetto Poesia and is currently a Content Admin for Poetry Life & Times. www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes He is also the chief proofreader for the On Viewless Wings Anthologies, published out of Queensland, Australia. In the past, he was a resident poet on Poetry Life & Times and the newsletter editor for seven years with the Des Moines Area Writers’ Network.
You may find him here:
http://www.thehypertexts.com/
Here: http://www.whoislog.info/
Homepage: http://
Here: http://www.pw.org/content/
Here: http://www.artvilla.com/plt/
Here: http://allpoetry.com/contest/
Here: http://classicalpoets.org/
Here: http://classicalpoets.org/
Here: http://www.smashwords.com/
***
editor@artvilla.com
robin@artvilla.com
www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
www.facebook.com/Artvilla.com
Glassy blue eyes
Fingertips brown
Black greasy hair
Forehead high
Child killer
Sick bastard
I Remember me
Scuttling like a rat
Running from a cat
Scattering across the tile
Like a roach on fire
When the lights came on
Better scatter, Daddy’s home!
I Remember (séances)
Straddling his head
The Shoulders so high
Calling up the dead
Peering in the sky
Let the dead arise
It’ll stop Daddy’s cries
I Remember Abuse
Dancing to the belt
That beat me blue
Decorated with welts
Daddy
I Remember You
© Janet P. Caldwell 2003 -2013
I.
This rose of spiritual gratitude placed at the feet
of a Rasta Warrior Woman showers the earth
with sweetfire and hosannas and early morning glory.
II.
Beneath an African moon shining silver poems
and a river of orchards singing purple praises a black rose
bows her head like a black swan humbled by her crown of jade.
III.
Birdsongs weave grace in southern midnight like wine-drunk
fireflies. Inside this music of earthly spheres
a bronze rose pulses unspeakable peace.
IV.
For the sake of a mountain where heaven smiles at heaven,
for the sake of streams rushing sonatas toward the future:
a dew-covered delight shakes crystal secrets from her red velvet bosom.
V.
Crawling sleepily out of dreams tendered
upon pink petals of quiet ecstasy everlasting and everlasting
an island-flavored perfume echoes the scent of a rose.
VI.
Roots of a new beginning spread piously forward
into vines of passion and leaves of revelation,
healing petals from the thorny joy of an angel called Jah Gabriel.
VII.
A blossom like the naked mystical eye of truth.
Leaves like hands praying down thunder and burning and rain.
Stem like the backbone of a good strong heart.
VIII.
What is more powerful than the killing crucifixion
of desert heat commanded by a sun with no mercy?
The perfect shade of a flawless rose afloat above the earth.
IX.
With its leaves so rich and heavy with elation
and its crimson face made brighter with visions of divinity
the shadow of a certain rose looks just like an angel eating light.
X.
The thorn is a bridge spanning the muddy depths
of agony and sorrow so that one may on the other side
dance to the drums of the rose of joy.
XI.
This rose of pearl-coated infinity transforms
the diseased slums of a broken heart
into a palace made of psalms and gold.
XII.
And this one is of eternity. It never stops opening.
The beauty it shines is the same as the path it travels in and out
of paradise, every second, of every hour, of every day that comes and goes.
–by Aberjhani (from Visions of a Skylark Dressed in Black)
Publishing/Editorial Consultant
author of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance
and The River of Winged Dreams
Fear, a throbbing fear, as fiercely white
as the forest snow I roam while all sleep,
And over my tracking boots there was moonlight
Over my drunken steps, only her orbit
As white as anguished snow and the forked path
to the castle where my fate had been decreed:
“You will bring me her heart”
And looked at the moving distaff turn
–her face I couldn’t see, perhaps abominable–
And over my tracking boots there was moonlight
Over my drunken steps, only her orbit
How pale the child was, her heart in throbbing fear
As Snow melted away for wolves and dens,
The forest snow I roam while all sleep,
And over my defeat now only moonlight
And over my drunken steps, only her orbit
***
***
Amparo Arrospide (Argentina) is a Spanish poet and translator. She has published four poetry collections, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar and Presencia en el Misterio as well as poems, short stories and articles on literary and film criticism in anthologies and both national and foreign magazines. She has received numerous awards. Together with Robin Ouzman Hislop, she worked as co-editor of Poetry Life and Times, an E-zine.