Poem – Page 52 – Poetry Life and Times

Fox in the Snow. A Poem by Holly Day

July 24, 2015 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Blood red in the snow, a tiny spray of drops

an arc of unjust accusations frozen in time.

This place is more oil than air, echoes

rusted metal teeth snapping taut on a hand full of claw.

This spot, here, where her foot landed, where the trap is sprung.

She is white against the snow, like soft spikes of thin mercury, liquid,

tufts of white fur glowing bright against the brutal iron clasp

her nose quivers black and tiny, sees me, knows who I am.

Short bio: Holly Day has taught writing classes at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis , Minnesota , since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Oyez Review, SLAB, and Gargoyle, while her recently published books include Music Theory for Dummies (3rd edition), Piano All-in-One for Dummies, The Book Of, and Nordeast Minneapolis: A History.

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Poverty of screams. A Poem by Sonnet Mondal

July 24, 2015 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

In the tattered parts of the hand woven fibres
naked poverty of screams
amid roaring drunk waves of wine bottles
whirling in synthesis with partying proverbs
echoes against posthumous walls
to add the colors to a faded terrain
sipping dripping sweats of a dead beat life
which has spent decades to get up from work
to smile at the gone days.

Foliage and twigs rejuvenate themselves
with the waters discarded out of the musical chair game
with splashing music dying out
in swimming strokes of fatigued hands.

Each day swimming fog blurs smiles
Crawling clouds dance with tears
and changing seasons paint poignant outbursts
yet the little life left in some corner
takes a swing in the estate
where a Rolls-Royce warms up each evening
and Rolexes add motion to stillness.

Sonnet Mondal is an Indian poet of the twenty first century generation and has authored eight collections of poetry. He was featured as one of the Famous Five of Bengali youths by India Today magazine in 2010 and has edited & written forewords of several books of Indian poets. His works have appeared in several international literary publications including The Sheepshead Review (University of Wisconsin, Green Bay), The Penguin Review (Youngstown State University), Two Thirds North (Stockholm University), Fox Chase Review, The Stremez (Supported by The Ministry of Culture, Macedonia), California State Poetry Quarterly (California State Poetry Society), Nth Position, Dark Matter Journal(University of Houston-Downtown) and Friction Magazine (New Castle University & New Castle Centre of Literary Arts) to name a few.

He has been Writer of The Month at the Spark Magazine in June 2012, was featured as an achiever in The Herald of India in 2010 & featured in E-view points in Rockfordkingsley ltd. in 2012 and was a featured poet at Tea with George at Desperanto Publication Ltd. (now defunct).

His works have been translated in Macedonian, Italian, Albanian, Urdu, Arabic, Hindi, Telugu and Bengali.

He is the Editor in Chief of The Enchanting Verses Literary Review and Editorial Board member of Multilingual Magazine Levure littéraire based in Paris, France.
Details of his works can be found at www.sonnetmondal.com

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Treading The Fire. A Poem by Dr. Ernest William 111

July 24, 2015 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

maybe beauty will remain an abstract dirge;
a mantra to be ruminated over
like a submerged leek
becoming tender in warm water.
as it seems to me
all as vanished
from our worlds
galaxies
and
cliques.
much poetry has propelled
into the bellowing mushroom cloud
of noxious gas.
Earth has garnished her seedlings
as the trees convulse in 4/5 time
leading scholars to compendious shame;
shaking with violence muttering
intellectual gibberish
to the delight of the spittle
forced out with the saying of it,
but what about me
the reporter,
the documenter of my purview,
what do I make of anything now
I say to myself in this pallid skin,
in these pallid days.
perhaps I should go tell it on the mountain,
given the effulgence of effort
not merely in mind
but of the being
directing my reticent walk
out of a crawling crowd.

___________________________________________________________
Bio: Dr. Ernest Williamson III has published poetry and visual art in over 500 national and international online and print journals. Professor Williamson has published poetry in journals such as The Oklahoma Review, Review Americana: A Creative Writing Journal, and The Copperfield Review. Some of his visual artwork has appeared in journals such as The Columbia Review, The GW Review, and The Tulane Review. Many of his works have been published in journals representing over 50 colleges and universities around the world. Dr. Williamson is an Assistant Professor of English at Allen University and his poetry has been nominated three times for the Best of the Net Anthology.

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In Dreams… A Poem by Sullivan the Poet

February 11, 2019July 17, 2015 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Oh! Soft corruption, sweet decay,
to cloying soil my bones forsake;
Bid time slow eat my flesh away,
its‟ juices flown, cold stone to slake;
When form and figure all are gone…
My heart, set free, in dreams goes on.

Spare me your grief, your laden tears,
not for my soul your gods entreat;
Nor stoop backed burden of more years,
left still to run on crippled feet;
As must soil heaps my head upon…
My heart, set free, in dreams goes on.

Call loud my sins, misdeeds proclaim,
paint black each trespass on my soul;
Each evil done attach my name,
pile high each spot like ebon coal;
Cold, cleansing, flows my Rubicon…
My heart, set free, in dreams goes on.

Taint not my corpse with men of God,
let not stale absolution drip;
Or pious words corrupt the sod,
from bloodless, sanctimonious lip;
Men‟s prayers, like echoes, soon are gone…
My heart, set free, in dreams goes on.

No maudlin hymn above me raise,
chain not that anchor to my shade;
Dare not in my name deaf gods praise,
I worship not what man has made;
When last my bones death‟s shroud must don…
My heart, set free, in dreams goes on.

Speak not o’er me of journey’s end,
nor rest, nor peace, nor setting sun;
Nor soft, to paradise pretend,
but loud of travels just begun;
Till wraiths we each embrace anon…
My heart, set free, in dreams goes on.

Garb not my tomb with polished stone,
pale markers non my grave adorn;
As free man, naked, and alone,
permit me part as I was born;
For in each life it touched upon…
My heart, set free, in dreams goes on…

© Sullivan the Poet 2008

In Dreams…’is an excerpt from:
In A Mirror Darkly..

Published by Sullivan Publishing
ISBN 978-0-9568876-3-4
Copyright: © Sullivan the Poet
Printed in the USA by Lulu.com

BIO:Sullivan The Poet

Born a British subject of an English mother and Irish catholic father in the late January of 53; Sullivan spent his early years with his family in the Far East. Returning with his parents to England in the late fifties where he was subsequently educated.

Thereafter pursuing what could perhaps be best described as a broadly colourful career; with callings as diverse as gun dealer and consultant, freelance journalist, magazine editor, commercial photographer, publican, fleet limousine operator, lecturer and an unpaid ‘Special Needs’ tutor: To name but a few – even a brief spell under the flag enjoying the Queen’s shilling!

Throughout which the only truly common thread has been his writing, an enduring passion never completely abandoned; fuelled by his lifelong fascination with not only the beauty of the English language and its literature in general, but the richness and diversity of its poetry in particular. A fascination well illustrated in the almost perverse multiplicity of styles and subject matter contained within this slim volume and others…

Widely published in mediums as eclectic as his work, from poetry anthologies to text books; wall hangings and mixed media fine art works: Sullivan is seemingly content to share, with anyone and everyone, and in whatever poetic medium takes his fancy; his works, his philosophies, his passions…

Dave ‘Hoppy’ Bennett

http://www.sullivanthepoet.co.uk

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Veronica’s Rosary. A Poem by Marie Marshall

July 17, 2015 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Veronica’s rosary

I followed Veronica to San Stae* where I spied on her,
a stalker me, glimpsing her veil from the back of the church**
as she danced, so I call the genuflections, bows,
forehead-to-navel and clavicle touches, as she sang,
so I call her responses and amens. I moved by twos and threes
until I sat across from her

– she looked once, smiled, and closed her eyes
in what could have been taken for prayer if not
for that ripple at the corner of her mouth –

watching her play the ivory bead game.

Those are illegal, you know, I said to her once,
as a yellow day-egg rose above the rooftops, and she made
that arpeggio with her tongue that indexes merriment for her.
Nevertheless I stole them and, at the depth of my own wallet,
had an old craftsman in apron and shade study them
in a gemster’s glass, and scalpel a replica from cunning plastic.

Veronica, a cycle or so later, placed a finger under my chin
to tilt it.

You think I don’t know? she said. These are so much warmer,
and the prayers are heard when I thumb my way through the calendar,
because a deed of love comes with them.

Despite that – wow! – I’m ashamed.

* She knew;
I’d refused to come to mass, but dogged her from fascination,

obsession,
watching her pivot between shoulder and shoulder,

between hip and hip,
placing one foot after the other
with catwalk deliberation, with the rise and fall pavane
of a woman in a to-the-floor gown, studied to me
but natural

to all the blind men dazzled by her gold.

** A vecchia engaged me there, offered to take me forward to eat the wafer,

and when I declined said if I was not a Christian to look a while

at the Man of Pity on the cross, it would touch my heart, as it did,

one crucifixion among a thousand thousand,
one day among a thousand thousand,
how many slaves had met the same Easter,
I thought but didn’t say.

Bio – Marie Marshall (3rd person)

MM is a middle-aged Anglo-Scottish author, poet, and editor, who says little about herself, preferring to let her writing speak. She has had three novels published, two of which are for the young adult / older children readerships. Both of her collections of poetry are currently in publication. Naked in the Sea (2010) in its 2nd imprint, is available in e-book form direct from publishers P’kaboo and in Kindle version on Amazon; the 1st imprint may still be available in print, if you enquire at Masque Publishing of Littlehampton. I am not a fish, nominated for the 2013 T S Eliot Prize, may be bought direct from publishers Oversteps Books. Marie has had well over two hundred poems published in magazines, anthologies, etc., but has not submitted anything since 2013. The most unusual places in which her poetry has appeared are on the wall of a café in Wales, pinned to trees in Scottish woodland, and etched into an African drum in New Orleans Museum of Art.

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At a Slant. A Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop

October 18, 2015July 16, 2015 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

 


I approach the horizon of my 70th year, at a slant. 
Opposite the bars of the kitchen window
the gable end wall is stuffed with straw, stones, sand, birds
plus weird contortions.

O cellular automata paying lip service to an age of cryptography
decipher me
a digit in time saves nine.

The wall is yellow now, a mingling crumble
            carte blanche in the sun's heat it stands to fall
            a block across which entangled photons might reach
            to inform the space already transfixed in the light

on this plane of observation
which might be the special attraction, the fractal symmetry
of this organism with its bacteria in my nose
together with the properties of impregnated asteroids.

                              *

On the bus. 27/05/14

under the hat, squaring the ridge, on the gravy train

traffic is more representative of our species nowadays
            an extension of our inner space
            put back what you get out of it
like the carnivore industry, from gravy to the grave.

                              *

Airport lounge. 2.30pm 27/5/14

extended into our traffic
but not our cattle, we eat them
whereas our traffic eats us.

                              *

Departure Gates

We're not meat as we're shuffled through Control
milled into queue
loaded into seats to be transported across the skies

our meat machines are the word made flesh from which we grow
to love, not hate!

                              *

Late in the Departure Lounge.

Night drinks a darkening
day in its deceit harvests green
with all its carnage unseen
beneath our conscious sheen
for were the green gone
how could night become
with a hey, a ho, a noddy
noddy hey ho.

                             *

On the floor stands an orange cow beside the snack bar
bedecked in flags of nations with tasty invites.

You can even touch it, it will not bite.

The Delicatessen sports legs of smoked ham, spirits
a cardboard cut out black bull rages in ferocious stance
a headless toreador, richly costumed brings it down
no need for fight or flight
            it's there to tame your hunger.

                              *

Day 3, in the shaving mirror.

She was like a digital doll
young, almost beautiful
compiled to instruct us by ritual mannerism
to go through that door in the wall with a video camera
in every corner watching over us.

Who's going to watch it, I wonder
perhaps Watson, who one day
will be able to react on itself, in AI.

The con of life

the weirdness of its melodramatic sham
how good we are at yesterday, tomorrow
always better than before
like, being had - in the process by it.

                              *

At a slant – the street. 12/06/14

parades predatory robots, rapine vampires
a pageantry of prawns, satellites flying
computer sausage balloons

an android addresses the multitude with the question
            who has not the free will to be immortal.

                              *

Skull Moon
looming in your implacable fashion
are we facing extinction?

You live longer than we do
tuned into the fine tuning of the cosmic sea
where we swim only to drown on the tides
drawn by the skull beneath the waves

                              *

Transubstantiation

we are special because between the bonobo, the baboon
we strike a happy medium, we grow the meat we eat
the world is our property.

                              *

A walk in the cemetery

no shining sarcophagus
no black, silver gleaming obelisks
no painted vases on filmy fields
here the bank's greenery gathers them
tipped, tilted awry, dark stained moss brown
not a tint of blood red.

They're a huddle of mute sameness
a closeness without plasticity
nature harvests no funeral
life simply goes on, appearances are deceptive.

Slant a summer's day
chicks sally forth in summer shorts
sequestering looks, selecting sequestered looks
the world is a mating call.

On the moor, nature unleashed
on this wind where ancient whiffs
of nostalgia blow from land, sea
were my predecessors really so free
or like me, trapped?

Dressed, undressed
      the hairless ape
dressed, undressed
      a dance of rigmarole
until we became a costume part
      a marmot puppet of coloured rags
a roll of flags.

Out of town
shunting from the station
arches overhead, slanting
produces an OCD rush in the brain 

'underneath the arches i dreamed my life away'

Arch trance
- an iteration of ink blots or patches of light, dark.

                               *

Shopping mall

float in a slip stream, an air
conditioned sunlight
euphoria of flowing flesh
epiphany of the age.

Saccades pass through windows
which mirror a time where nothing changes
a reflected object in the existence of distance
(there yet might be no external world)

ephemeral moments intervene 
          describe reality as slices of dream.

                              *

“Derby day”

Amongst those dark satanic mills
where the falcon soars the fell
over milk, honey, dairy swell
a videocam on each farm wall
to toil the land to till, kill.

                              *

Dancing tossed

a measure of uncertainty where the environment begins
(but only seems) in the drift of infinity
where it never finishes in its last ultimate instance
- on the pitiless wave ...
 
Here we are so so - big, so so - tiny small
are we a particle or are we a cell
that damned eternal interval – silencio.

                              *

Day One Return Flight in the Shaving Mirror. (12/9/14)

Dear homo sapiens
it's a pity we can't be more than we are
but it's the same for all of us!

At the heart of all politics is religion
at the heart of all religion is gossipmongering
the birth of a nation state is a limited liability company
                   a moral fiction.

                             *

Click.

In the brain
again the rain
before the click
i can't locate it -
what shall i do
shall i let it stall
or unwind it all?
The click's the call – Click.

A bartered world
shrieks the parrot's song
pieces of memories - go ape.

What is the final emotion
we programme
every physical thing
information into a time machine
on a haunted meme?

                              *

A glint of flint
ground gravel
a spruce of sprig
broken twig
scuttling insect
scuffed toe
sombrero
there's no flow
membranous landscapes
slide show
but it's only the split, we know
time transforms all.

This life that drags
innumerable concerns
hand to mouth - the law!

World without doors
      after the before that
           doors do not speak

doors that let you in
doors that let you out
doors that lock you down

Tunes that determine words
       words that determine tunes

Break in space
      eat in public place

Do not touch
      it must have a name

Like emergence
      hurrah for war

 After the before that
      doors do not speak

World without doors
     weathertime
          patches in between.

The world is our closure
time its property
consciousness
like a pendulum's to, fro
manufactures dream in the instants between

             age is made of memories & forgetting.


                         * * *



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BFF. A Poem by Frederick Pollack.

July 11, 2015 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Bored, with the boredom of eternity,
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade,
and Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch
hang out. They have little in common –
nothing, according to Deleuze –
but shared experience of psych wards
creates a bond. And Sade
is always tickled by the moralism
of his scholarly socialist philosemitic pal.
(“Contracts” for bondage-and-discipline sessions,
the invention of the “safe word”–
parbleu!) Masoch for his part
finds the Frenchman’s wit
instructive, and accepts with grace
his constant teasing; it fulfills a certain need.

Like other dead white Europeans,
they float over to America
(which, they have heard, is diverting and unserious).
Sade preens: “My principles have triumphed!
What other people is as devoted to freedom?”
His companion demurs. “It may seem so,
but note: the whip is unpopular,
hypocrisy remains the spice of shame,
tortures are generally banal, and women –
still bound to the paternalism you despised –
are seldom given equal rights to them.
This is far,” he adds, “from the vision
of your revolutionary pamphlet, Citizens!
Yet One More Effort If You Would Be Truly Republican!”

The mood of the mercurial marquis
turns. “They’re afraid of their masters,”
he sighs. “Whose existence” –
thus Masoch, disapprovingly – “they deny.”
They are not watching in real time,
ever-tedious, but from the long end of a spectrum
where essences appear like subtitles.
There the prevailing mood is an orange haze;
and the steady pop of small arms
a rhythmic growl, like the machinery
the two friends had expected.
Slowly they realize it is a machine,
dispensing souls to each side of the trigger
before they need determine their own nature.

Author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both published by Story Line Press. A collection of shorter poems, A POVERTY OF WORDS, forthcoming in 2015 from Prolific Press. Has appeared in Hudson Review, Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, Die Gazette (Munich), The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Representations, Magma (UK), Iota (UK), Bateau, Fulcrum, etc. Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, Diagram, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire Review, Mudlark, Occupoetry, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, etc. Adjunct professor creative writing George Washington University.

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The Seasonal Change of the Schedule at the Y. A Poem by Danny P. Barbare

July 11, 2015July 11, 2015 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

The Seasonal Change of the Schedule at the Y

The
sign
on
the
glass
door

reflects
the
seasons

like
the
fields
and
trees

so
the
day
is
served
better

by
the
hinges
and
the
tic
of
the
clock.

Cleaning the House Before Company

Straightening
up
there
and
here

oh
my,
so
much
stuff
everywhere

though
at
least
it
looks
like
someone
lives
here

I
pace
myself
before
company
comes

and
have
time
to
comb
my
hair.

The Doctor’s Office

Sitting
in
the
waiting
room

a
patient
who
is
patient

knows

the
world
depends
upon
a
one
simple
smile

that
quickly
spreads
throughout
the
doctor’s
office

as
time
goes
by

and
the
door
opens.

Danny P. Barbare resides in the Upstate of the Carolinas. His poetry has recently appeared in The Santa Clara Review and Huizache and DoveTales. He studied creative writing at Greenville Technical College, where his poetry won The Jim Gitting’s Award.

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