Poem

Piranha. Poem by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

by

 
 
 
The circus poster featured two beautiful girls
in a tank filled with ravenous piranha
This image appealed to the Sicilian soul
But the woman I was with
who had been on the lam
since the seventies for
being a domestic terrorist
having bombed a police station
told me that the circus manager cooled the water to nearly
freezing to keep the piranha inactive
Still, the women
who were not nearly as beautiful
as the women on the poster
looked terrified
maybe not of the toothy fish
but of the icy exposure
It was winter, which made it worse
They could not step from the tank
into Sicilian heat
 
 
They’d been waiting in a battered trailer
locked in a lesbian embrace
trying to build up some body heat
a futile act
considering how fast it would dissipate
in the icy water
 
 
Maybe the tropical piranha were just as terrified
Each ice bath threatened death
 
 
The circus owners were also scared
because piranha were expensive
They had considered replacing them with
other, less dangerous fish
and calling them piranha
but didn’t think they could get away with it
They would be discovered and ruined
 
 
So the women gingerly descended the
two metal steps from the trailer
 
These women were Rumanian sex slaves
who had to do what they were told
 
I was eating blue cotton candy when my lover
the domestic terrorist
explained all this
 
I could never fully accept that she had
bombed a police station
I couldn’t see her doing it
She was so soft in bed
 
I had met her at a gelato stand
in Agrigento
on Sicily’s rugged south coast
and we talked about flavors while the counter girl
scooped our cones
 
As the women submerged themselves in the
piranha tank
a cold wind whipped down from Mt. Etna
scouring us with pumice
and heavy volcanic dust
ruining my cotton candy
I threw it off the bleachers
then followed—
jumped off
the fifth row plank
I felt something give in my left knee
 
 
I picked up a fist sized rock
like the one the hobo heaved in Ironwood, the novel
by William Kennedy
I wound up
like a big league pitcher
and let fly
shattered the tank
 
All the piranha and the two Rumanian sex slaves
came out in a flood onto the rocky soil
 
The piranha flopped and the women gasped
They bled from minor glass cuts
 
The domestic terrorist and I each grabbed
a sex slave by the hand
and ran

 
 
Mitchell Poet
 
 
Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois’ poems and fictions have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He is a regular contributor to The Prague Revue, and has been thrice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for 99 cents from Kindle and Nook or as a Print Edition
 
 

robin@artvilla.com

www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes

 

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Where I Live. Sonnet. Poem by RC de Winter

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Alone is not a state, it is a place
With walls unseen and locks on every door,
A barren land devoid of any grace
Where nothing seems to matter anymore.
No music plays, the silence shouts aloud,
The only voice that answers in the void,
A shrill reminder of the cursèd shroud
That wraps you in its sorrow unalloyed.
And knowing there is beauty to be found
If only one could somehow make escape
Makes all the worse the desolate surround
That try as might one never can reshape.
Condemned, but why? I know not for what sin,
I’m always on the outside looking in.
 
 
© 2014 RC deWinter ~ All Rights Reserved
1A SPRING EASTER TWIT AVI
 
 

RC deWinter is a photographer, digital artist, poet, essayist and singer-songwriter currently living and working in Haddam, Connecticut. She has been shooting photos for over 25 years, using both traditional and digital SLR equipment. Her digital work is created using a variety of software and includes oil paintings, watercolor sketches and drawings.
 
Her poetry has appeared in print, notably in the New York Times, chosen for publication in the New York City in 17 Syllables haiku competition, Uno: A Poetry Anthology, Pink Panther Magazine, Arts Creation Magazine, The Sun Magazine, 2River View, Poetry Nook, Garden Tripod and The American Muse as well as in many online publications.
 
In addition to her personal online portfolios, Ms. deWinter’s art is exhibited on of several internet-based showcases, including Saatchi Online, ARTbracket, The Art for Cancer Gallery, Copperflame Gallery, b-uncut and Artists, Writers and Photographers in the Raw. ABC has licensed several of her paintings to be used as set decor on the television series Desperate Housewives.
 
Ms. deWinter is honored to be the first digital artist invited to exhibit her work at an October 2011 solo show the Arts of Tolland Gallery in Tolland, Connecticut.
 
 

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Scirocco (Tears of Carthage) Poem By Joseph Armstead

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Among the stony ruins, the shadows haunting Carthage yet abide…
 
An unforgiving heat, strangling Life
from the very air through which it pulses,
radiates from an ocean of sand, charring
the steel of Heaven’s Gate —
 
there is no romance in this tale,
that would be a fool’s conceit
 
… and this disenchanted heart bleeds for you…
 
this is the bleakness of a dying god,
my lazy, uninspired deity,
slumbering
under baked, dessicated soil
as a nomadic army of ghosts
marches through the long centuries,
the flesh burns, scalded
by the brilliant light
of a star suffering storms…
 
Burning memory onto the retina of the mind’s bleary eye.
 
Something touches my hair. Wind?
Perhaps a Specter, lost, and wandering
the labyrinthine corridors of Time.
 
No greater fool than this, I peer into history’s chaos;
 
Bonifacius fell before the fury of the Vandals,
the Vandal heretic Gaeseric, in turn, fell
and the paretporian prefecture
of the Darkest Continent sundered
the Mediterranean shackles of Empire
until the Muslim Caliphs wrested control
of the warm waters of the vast harbor
 
… and still my misshapen life weeps through this wound I bear…
 
‘Lo, hear the music of regret, my scars are singing.
 
It’s the heat. Always and always, the furious heat.
Blistering. Stifling. A ragged silken gag stretching parched lips.
 
The breezes stir from off the bay
and streak over the rolling waters,
gathering into a rushing, stormy
fireball
 
… searing the wound shut, closing it against the leakage of yet more blood…
 
I see the excavated dinosaur’s remains of this place,
a warped mirrored reflection
laying bare my inner desolation.
Naked, in a shallow puddle
of dried and flaking scarlet
yesterdays.
 

 

BIO

Joseph Armstead is a suspense-thriller and horror author living in the United States’ San Francisco Bay Area. Author of a dozen short stories and ten novels, his poetry has been published in a wide range of online journals, webzines and print magazines. A mathematician, Futurist and computer technologist, Mr. Armstead’s poetry often defies easy description, but frequently includes neo-classical imagery, surrealist viewpoints and post-modern themes.
 
http://redroom.com/member/joseph-armstead

http://www.amazon.com/Condemned-Of-Heaven-Joseph-Armstead/dp/0578013665

 
Uroborus Mike Collins
 

robin@artvilla.com

www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes

 

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Orange. A Poem by Belinda Rimmer

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An orange
sits on top of a tossing sea of apples –
 
outcast.
 
She’s a grumpy grandmother,
aproned in dimpled buckskin.
 
A depressed old lady.
 
Her navel
is a brittle button
in a sagging buttonhole.
 
She waits to be lifted
in hammock hands
and placed like a queen
on a spotless plate.
 
Then an elegant set of fingers
could peel her,
dissect her,
enter the jagged segments
of her heart.
 

belindarimmer(1)

 

I was born in Wiltshire in 1959. My father was a builder and my mother a housewife. I attended one of the first comprehensive schools and loved school life. However, my ambition to be a journalist was viewed by the school as not being a suitable occupation for a woman! It took me a while to decide upon psychiatric nursing as an alternative career. I worked for many years in mental health, mostly with adolescents and their families.
 
After having my children, I enrolled at the local university. As I’d always danced and written poetry, I became increasingly interested in performance arts as a subject which allowed me to use both disciplines. After completing an MA in Fine and Media arts, I worked in a variety of creative roles: lecturer, dance development officer, and dance and drama practitioner for schools.
 
I’ve had poems published in a number of journals (I’m hampered by a tendency to keep my work hidden inside a box).
 
Over the last few years, I have been writing stories for children. This gives me hours of pleasure, but not a wage.
 

robin@artvilla.com

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The Golden Lion. Mycenaean Haiku by Richard Vallance.

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haikpotniatherolioninthesundeath
 
Press to Enlarge. Editor
 
The Golden Lion linearbknossosmycenae.wordpress.com/2014/06/26/a-blazing-hot-summer-haiku-in-linear-b-the-golden-lion-potnia-mistress-of-the-wild-and/
 
Editor’s Note: it is also advised by the author to visit the site for commentaries on the translation & text.

Richard Vallanc Santorini Greece May 2012

 
Richard Vallance, meta-linguist, ancient Greek & Mycenaean Linear B, home page: Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae, http://linearbknossosmycenae.wordpress.com/
 
PINTEREST Boards: Mycenaean Linear B: Progressive Grammar & Vocabulary, http://pinterest.com/vallance22/mycenaean-linear-b-progressive-grammar-and-vocabul/ and, Knossos & Mycenae, sister civilizations, http://pinterest.com/vallance22/knossos-mycenae-sister-civilizations/ Also poetry publisher, The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: Anthology of sonnets of the early third millennium = Le Phénix renaissant de ses cendres : Anthologie de sonnets au début du troisième millénaire. Friesen Press, Victoria, B.C., Canada. © August 2013. 35 illustrations in B&W. Author & Title Indexes. 257 pp. 315 sonnets & ghazals in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese & Persian. http://vallance22.hpage.com/
 

robin@artvilla.com

www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
 

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Any Available Exit. Poem by Ian Irvine (Hobson)

by 


I

In the quiet street an
       unacknowledged jettatore fixes upon
           a passing feline.

II

As the modern cars move
   parallel to grey pedestrians.
I take a strong dislike 
   to a malefic debauchee—he’s
   too shoulder-close at the newspaper stand.

III

Out and about after the airline trip
   I radiate ojas—apparently the women
of the city like treacle 
   (thankfully I do not smell 
    like the corpse of hatred).

IV

Though I have not met 
    the approaching academics, their
undulatory waves press me
    breathless against a concrete wall—
I almost drop the morning paper.

V

In the hotel lobby, whilst savouring 
    breakfast odours, a passing porter 
attempts to mesmerise me with potent od—
    I dodge the fluid emotion
make for the lift 
    and a workaday shower.

VI

Those aesthetic goldfish, multicoloured
    creatures of coral, frenzy up
as I pass—I experiment: my hands
    comfort or incite
at random, at toss of a dollar coin.

Seems 
    I am naturally beneficent—
    they will not need the fish-food
for six times seven days.

VII

Though diseased guests are
    locked in luxury suites
I am forced to brave the un-medicinal air
    of their corridor jaunts—right here:
the excrescent energy of a lover
    stifling to his beloved.
I’m exhausted as I reach the door
    of my own room.

VIII

Having showered I sleep
     to alleviate the tiredness, notice
     in the sprawling that
this hand 
     soothes the solar plexus
this other 
     draws living juice
from the liberated heart—the transfer 
           is intense
 a three hour dialysis.

IX

Over-looking
     dim-lit rectangles
solid with brick and concrete, 
     cold steel and mathematical, I feel 
a rush of love—this I direct,
     squeeze gently from the tea-bag
     (comes rich aroma)—then collapse
among conference paraphernalia, all
     strewn upon the double bed—
and know for the first time, with relief, 
    that your tumor will be benign
    (will heal itself).

X

It is the same day
     in a different city, and
the evening undresses, 
     opens the temporal gate
          wide enough ajar, that I
can place my foot in the door.

As I do, I clasp the relic
      you gave me—makes vivid
our charmed purpose.

You know that stone?
      I remember it
about your neck. 

As I imagine
     it positively glows
and I know 
     that you like me to think 
     about you, even
from a great distance.
 
 
Ian Irvine Photo


Ian Irvine is an Australian-based poet/lyricist, fiction writer and non-fiction writer:
 
His work has featured in many Australian and international publications, including Fire (UK) ‘Anthology of 20th Century and Contemporary Poets,’ (2008) which contained the work of poets from over 60 nations. His work has also appeared in a number of Australian national poetry anthologies, and he is the author of three books and co-editor of many more (including Scintillae 2012, an anthology of work by over 50 Victorian and international writers and poets). He currently teaches writing and literature at Bendigo TAFE and Victoria University (Melbourne) and lives with fellow writer Sue King-Smith and their children on a 5 acre block near Bendigo, Australia.

Links related to his work are as follows:

 
http://authorsden.com/ianirvine

http://www.scribd.com/IanHobson

 
 

robin@artvilla.com
www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes

 

 



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Moving On. Haiku.Theme Loss & Grief. Nancy May
		

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winter sunset

taking your last breath

I am with you

 

winter drizzle

our time has come

for us to part

 

winter night

I come back home

to an empty house

 

winter dawn

I am waking up early

since you left

 

spring dawn

the absence of your voice

I start to notice

 

spring rain

I understand now

we walk on new paths

 

spring sunset

in the passing of time

my heart opens

 

 



nancy may

Nancy May has haiku published in Haiku Journal, Three Line Poetry, Poetry Quarterly, Inclement Poetry, Twisted Dreams Magazine, Vox Poetica, Eskimo Pie, Icebox, Dark Pens, Daily Love, Leaves of Ink, The Blue Hour Magazine, Kernels, Mused – The BellaOnline Literary Review, Dead Snakes, Danse Macabre – An online literary magazine, High Coupe, A Handful of Stones, Lyrical Passion Poetry E-Zine, UFO Gigolo, 50 Haikus, The Germ, Boston Literary Review, Be happy Zone, Every Day Poets, Cattails, Ppigpenn and Creatrix Journal. Haiku will soon appear in M58.

 

She is a monthly contributor at The Camel Saloon and Poems and Poetry. She has reached The Heron’s Nest consideration stage twice and the Chrysanthemum consideration stage once. She is working on her first haiku collection.

 

 

robin@artvilla.com 

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Smolder. A Poem by E. Darcy Trie
		

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i


found you


under a buttercup


this sun baby


that spoke in a lemonade language


about how our palms


line up like the


north star

 

*

 

we


slid like butter


against an iron night


flaked and crumbled


a swath of saffron


leaping in leprechaun steps


toward a brimstone morning

 

*

 

you


paused


like a catch


a hiccup


your indian summer voice


confessed


thread is too thin


breakable


and gently explained


that’s not ocher


see?


it’s just


yellow

 

*

 

here


it was agreed to leave


patches of sunlight


cut into sulfur strips


by your turning shadow


those golden bars

 

o

 

 

how they still

 

 

 

smolder

 

 

 

E. Darcy Trie, Nevada, United States of America

 

Darcy Trie-1


Darcy was born in Taipei, Taiwan in 1975, E. Darcy Trie is a Scorpio, Rabbit and matriculated in Little Rock, Arkansas at the age of two. She graduated at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville with a B.A. in Psychology along with Minors in Drama and Asian Studies. Sensing that achieving her Masters would drive her to drink, she wisely opted to tour Asia in her early twenties (thanks to a grant provided by Bank Of Daddy), and in the year 2000, found herself in the heart of Beijing, China where she began writing due to the fact that crocheting was far too complicated and because the voices in her head would not shut up.


By 2004, she had completed two romances, one historical and one modern, and after viewing all nine seasons of the X-Files and three seasons of C.S.I, finished the first two series of the Snow novels and is currently writing the third installment. During this time, she has also had several pieces of her poetry published in various online poetry magazines.


Her passions and hobbies includes writing, reading (anything put out by Neil Gaiman), Disney movies, all divination tools such as Tarot, I-Ching, Runes and is an enthusiastic, although albeit amateur, astrologist/paranormal investigator. She is 5’10, weighs whatever she wrote on her driver’s license, owns a lot of black hoodies and is addicted to It’s A Grind’s Passion Fruit tea.


She is fluent in English, Mandarin Chinese, some French and once took a Zero Hour in Greek in high school. She hates mornings, coconuts, wire bras, and sincerely hopes that this is bio is long enough to fill up an entire page (doubled-space of course).


Ms. Trie currently lives in Las Vegas, NV because she adores $2.99 buffets, Paigow Poker, and that lovely 116 degree August weather. She dreams of writing best-selling novels that will delight and thrill her future fans and because she is tired of being a productive citizen and wants to go back to being a mooching hermit.

 

 

robin@artvilla.com 

www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes




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