I fold like a flower when the wind blows
blood across a tired sky. My arms curl
in semblance of an infant, almost without
bones. My back bows in archaic pose,
not quite rose, yet so much more than weed.
This crumpling is automatic, permanent
imprints in my skin seem
to follow the pull of a moon yet to appear.
I breathe out a husky blue,
watch it circle, settle, dissolve beneath forbidden
waves as my eyes wait for ethereal tape
to force them to sleep.
A.J. Huffman has published fourteen full-length poetry collections, fifteen solo poetry chapbooks and one joint poetry chapbook through various small presses. Her most recent releases, The Pyre On Which Tomorrow Burns (Scars Publications), Degeneration (Pink Girl Ink), A Bizarre Burning of Bees (Transcendent Zero Press), and Familiar Illusions (Flutter Press) are now available from their respective publishers. She is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a two-time Best of Net nominee, and has published over 2600 poems in various national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, The Bookends Review, Bone Orchard, Corvus Review, EgoPHobia, and Kritya. She is the founding editor of Kind of a Hurricane Press. You can find more of her personal work here:
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)
poet
KEEP DA FAITH PENELOPE. A Poem by Joe Balaz in Hawai’i Creole English
Ovahnight success?!
In many cases wen you investigate
dats really not how it is.
Sometimes people
go on wun long Odyssey
just to get to wheah
dey eventually get to.
If your life isn’t short
it’s going to be filled
wit intensity and struggles
dat you could nevah have imagined
or even foreseen.
Flamethrowers will try to burn you
and bullets will try to pierce you
as exploding shrapnel
violently flies above your foxhole.
As foa me
I’m fixing my bayonet to my rifle
and getting ready
to advance my continuous charge.
It’s my “Battle of the Bulge”
but unlike da Germans
I’m going to break through.
It’s good to have
dat ancient warrior spirit
dat seeks to prevail
just like Odysseus traveling back home.
I’m about to cast off my hood
and beggar’s rags
to bend and string da bow
and send wun arrow
streaking through holes in upright axes.
Results and actions
will take care of my critics
and naysayers.
Keep da faith Penelope
cause any determined dynamo
certainly will.
Joe Balaz writes in Hawaiian Islands Pidgin (Hawai’i Creole English) and American English. He is the author of Pidgin Eye, a book of poetry.The book was featured in 2019 by NBC News for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, as one of the best new books to be written by a Pacific Islander.
In July, 2020, he was given the Elliot Cades Award for Literature as an Established Writer. It is the most prestigious literary award given in Hawai’i.
Balaz presently lives in Cleveland, Ohio.
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)
Uptown & After the Funeral. 2 Poems by Holly Day
(i.)
Uptown
The newspaper makes me angry and I prepare myself
for a day of punching Nazis. I read about the local museum
being infiltrated by white supremacists and so I plan my day
around a visit uptown. My daughter asks me where we’re going and I tell her
we’re going to fuck some shit up.
I keep my eyes peeled for guys with shaved heads and swastika pins
combat boots and iron crosses but I don’t see any. Someone says
something kind of racist on the bus next to me and I look at them
but then they shut up as if they know what’s in my head.
(ii.)
After the Funeral
it’s become a contest of who knew first
who first found out how and when he or she died
who was closest, who has the best story. we get ugly
in our nostalgia, tread a difficult balance between
preserving the subject’s sudden sainthood
while expunging our most pointed, painful, awful memories
find some way to say we should have seen it coming
express surprise that it took so long.
afterwards, we each retreat to our private musings
on how if things had been different
it could have been any one of us
it should have been someone else. there’s a dark, uncertain target
over everyone we know now, ready to move on
who will be next.
Short bio: Holly Day (hollylday.blogspot.com) has been a writing instructor at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and Harvard Review, and her newest poetry collections are Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary Press), and Book of Beasts (Weasel Press).
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)
Cameo In Deed – A Metric Poem by Sochukwu Ivye
Poet: Sochukwu Ivye
Bio: Sochukwu Ivye is a linguistic stylistician, a rhythmist and a distinctive metrist. A final-year student of English Language and Literature, he is particularly interested in English Language (as opposed to English Literature) topics. His work, The Great Cold, an epic poem, is the longest metrical poem by an African. Sochukwu hails from Isseke, an ancient Igbo town in Eastern Nigeria.
Editor’s remark: this work makes for a very long read, strictly for the connoisseurs.
Books in deed define your pet name for you
I well brook them for their station quite true
Do you make one thing of such depictions?
I see but made-up scenes lived like fictions
A well penned note, a far-famed actor’s role
or a gemstone, books outline, not your soul
My soul shall not rest boneless for its child,
your pet name, led and captured in the wild
Even if moments with you calmed me more
they left me, each time, with a heart of sore
Now, I should not learn why on our first day
my poor spirit caught cold under your sway
I could have seen what was in store for me,
but blindfolded, my eyes were not thus free
My mind is fraught with memories unclean,
like a frenzied boy’s eyes caught at a scene
I write to sweep my breast of your pictures,
and breathe thus freshly, eluding strictures
I should let all these saunter past my grasp
but they would dwell in me till my last gasp
As one of those all-youthful twilights came,
with mates, I sat and eased on all the same
The abrupt wind which threw in your figure
might have not longed to assess my vigour
I had found most of the street’s best ladies
I knew most but could win none or maybes
A call came; my heart and eyes led my legs,
and I went for you, although to some dregs
It did seem that I had made one cute move,
but if hours, days and years, after did prove
I heard none else, but listened for your ‘yes’
I was the leopard; you seemed as harmless
I led the thought that I had seen some gold
and beat the past, but there was the untold
There were times my feet even cried in pain
They had to take me to you, though, in vain
The first years nursed me like a newly born
Who would evoke the tales of the lovelorn?
Nothing felt frightful about how hearts halt
But, O heartache! Into wounds, you rub salt
Signs cried out to me; my senses sat numb
Omens played in my eyes; I just grew dumb
What would destroy my soul arose on time
You took no time to divulge this love-crime
How to meet your heart turned to my worry
If some thoughts met my mind, I was sorry
My warmth with you was a style of worship
To lure mates, the female display courtship
Everybody will say, “Some date themselves”
Well, who spare any hearts on any shelves?
My poise was fate-doomed: I left other girls
but because you dressed like a lot of pearls
I saw you when, at some girls else, I looked
in that all my care and lust you had hooked
My long search for the one came to an end,
but would fetch a verse I had never penned
A certain affaire caught our breaths to fare,
but no man who saw tomorrow would dare
I had to walk through some muddy love life
believing that such would win one the wife
You toyed with my rest and sullied my face,
thus that I could not lead myself with grace
Civil linguists say: no schwa, no triphthong
To merit a four-faced, what was my wrong?
My mates kept us and adorned your image,
because they were hopeful of our marriage
Friends at work, school and on the internet
did honour my Miss World and her vignette
All who wished me ill did not want you well
They won, to have met my right woman fell
You did cradle their traps to bring me down
How would I see but roam, about, a clown?
Whose only lover stabs them from behind?
Indulge me, how do they like the cut, blind?
One overreached oneself if one’s ship sank
as did mine, a short distance past the bank
I had once more begun to thrive, it seemed:
all my vows to you I could score redeemed
You well noticed how and lauded my nerve
but the base of your mind laid your reserve
To tag me new, my past knew less passion
but this foul-souled lust lent a new fashion
Your plots I did foil with some selfless acts
May I applaud your grins that read impacts
If you confessed your doubts about dating
you found me hungry for your love, waiting
I served kind judgement in will and in deed,
but saw not when I would bewail my breed
You did have my skin to breed some itches
and my waking brow to wear more stitches
I hoped that my silence smelt of most men
To your requests, my deeds echoed: Amen
You were well at it while you called me dad,
your longing and rightfully yours. How sad!
My groping heart did head for your kindred
Could it meet them in one year or hundred?
My nightmares unmasked overhanging ills,
but you dismissed them as offensive chills
To your dream men I took you, like a bridge
Who misreads you cannot repulse a midge
Except behind closed eyes, I was not yours
Until you felt hurt, past me shut your doors
You felt faceless to show me to your peers;
quick eyes saw: I was the prey all the years
I came out thus strongly despite your plots
to confess the fact: we must brave our lots
Do I miss your hugs I once scored faithful?
Or, your burning brow I did weigh graceful?
Now, for my blindness that still beheld love,
I must watch to tell the hawk from the dove
Now that yours of all lives is led four-faced,
who would still run into your likes in haste?
The eyes that see you have known a Judas
and must give heed to a snake in the grass
Knowledge is might but I loathe this lesson
Yet through you, my inner might did lessen
How you could sift nothing but rip my trust,
and ask to have it again, struck me trussed
I did pledge my trust, and met all my words;
your still small voice did fly away with birds
You had not come to plant or mend fences,
but to steal my heart and numb my senses
That ours was unknown to your confidants
blew me as my encounters with your aunts
We had struck as one, but you posed alone
scratching for wooers, moving on your own
We named our unborn, having built a home
An abode solely of steel, glass and chrome
Who builds a home and for a lifetime plans,
with a woman who does refuse her hands?
Fate struck me moneyless to clear my eyes
I saw one yet nailed downwardly crosswise
I was the one. Who could have believed all?
You did not stand me but fashioned my fall
To have dug my pit and feigned innocence,
you did shear me in deed of my sixth sense
I sought your face while I missed my wallet
If you feigned love, amounts left my pocket
Think that my ageing parent laid her health,
so that you would be with me, all by stealth
She peddled things to get me some money
You kept all and more. Were taps so runny?
If mom’s and my head abandoned your heft
you well did in deed not deem them so deft
My good mother, the marrow for my bones;
she dared all, just to build up my hormones
My eyes and mind were tried by some devil
I could not strive through but, weakly, revel
In your chasteness, the acts you titled fuss
you observed with your boys but denied us
You relished to hear but truths but well lied
You extolled me as meek but fed your pride
Your yes was but yes and your no sheer no
because your heart was a rock in the snow
I did most days bear guilts, could you ever?
All bent knees were mine, as you felt clever
The venom you fed me became some soup
Breaking out of us could not feign a swoop
I incurred more ache when you feigned pity
and shook at your plots sticking thus gritty
When I had smelt myself trapped in a maze
time past time failed me to defeat my craze
You were almost done with your fell intents
when you could pay no heed to my laments
I saw no hope as your heart failed to shake
I held my heart soft and faint for more ache
I watched us turn to walkway souls, quickly
All my labour forthwith crushed, thus sickly
I had marked the last of my love times past
but had yet to vanquish the spells you cast
Of the most foul-souled, the most silent are
If I was ruined, who would breed a memoir?
You chose Janus’ month to cast me to rout
but my God of doorways could lead me out
Could ceasing one’s life taste like a refuge?
The practice yet finds me as then and huge
I should gulp some drinks and submit inert
but something struck my dying deeply hurt
I saw my mother’s book of days half closed
In front of my heart, her face in tears posed
The dead parts of me made out of my form;
they stuck in wait for my breath to conform
Nothing else held the rest of me but mom’s
Her rheum of distress fell like barrel bombs
Had my landlord’s daughter not run to help,
who anywhere would take heed of my yelp?
Chika had but sought to succour my plight;
the whole of me, her nearness would ignite
I did predict that she would seize your seat;
having smelt your place, she called it a feat
Once again, my soul did meet one so loose
but she found me in your filth thus profuse
She would fall for a soul with no such work
and not when she had known many a quirk
She thought that I should not let you away;
I knew that she would see better, someday
She copied your looks and copied your gait
Not for her use; she is mirthful, but straight
How much more anguish did I have to feel?
Which suicide chart had I more to conceal?
For your foulness, what other grants had I?
Was there something else I did have to try?
Except you feigned them expecting returns
you had no care, but cast my balm to burns
I thought to myself that I had less strength,
if I could keep a sweetheart at arm’s length
I wondered what could render me thus foul
and shorn of wits, but now at myself scowl
I considered how tides would flow and ebb
Drowned in ill hopes, I was caught in a web
How you robbed me of my faith and reason
but filled your boys’ would rout any treason
It shook me while your voice within lay stiff
You must have killed her to enjoy your skiff
If I outlive these days, meet some soul else,
but like her less, shall we say our farewells?
While I pray that the well esteemed forgives
I fear that my scared soul beyond now lives
The leopard now mourns his meeting a linx
I could not see myself pull through this jinx
May all who follow closely mark your mode
and how you wrecked my spirits and abode
All that learn from the price that I have paid
shall meet the oncoming days, better made
I have loved. All who come after may watch
He that may wear love, my case is a swatch
Should I grow feeble and slump at this crux
all must deny more blood such state of flux
If anything slits my soul, some shame does
And through the space, I see but a dim fuzz
I howl in deed to think on these things ours
but placate my spent spirit, bearing flowers
How you could hurt and soothe like Cassio,
Shakespeare knew not the name as Cameo
Of your foul likes, our era should be cleared
to keep many from the collapse well feared
Your followers would with you be punished,
if they kept not from your path all-banished
Reap your will, get fat and gain all the world
From vivid eyes, bear your intent well furled
Win your admired and let his heart no crack
but then, may our days at no time turn back
May your breed never again know my heart,
whilst I bunch up my fragments flung apart.
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)
Horizontal Vision & Poems by Christopher Barnes
(i.) Horizontal Vision …barrows to-and-froed. Hagglers impressed, lurking. I corner nosegay oils, you earmark… * …tilt steamer on disengaged hob 10-15 minutes. Baste… * …check-up. Paramedic eurekas - something woefully awry – deduces tip-off… * …metro expired at Wallsend, bus green-lighted an hour to cloud-gather, you’d never essentially… (ii.) Earth …peachy-keen upbeat guitar seesawed your hips. Taffrail clover, dribble… * …rattle all footloose. Chip walnuts. Grease loaf tin… * …ventured into Bronx Flea Market, bisected dummy cornered into a pin-stripe… * …lick-and-promise miasma Overhauled drained instincts. Only traffic faded… (iii.) Fixations …in rag-order knee-highs yodelled, single-filing my alley. No cur whined… * …kibble, tooling rutty blade of mincer. Dissolve ½ oz… * …Pegasus’ foals vamoosed, so the knight… * …we quick-timed hours. An invisible… (iv.) Not Quite June …gabby-guts rooks air-cleared your nickname. Evening shade diffracted urgency… * …groundwork panade. Turn out as for béchamel, stargaze an hour… * …wolfed my quill.” “What shall I do?” “Take advantage of a crayon…” * …rule-breaking headaches spared, though we blethered all…
In 1998 I won a Northern Arts writers award. In July 200 I read at Waterstones bookshop to promote the anthology ‘Titles Are Bitches’. Christmas 2001 I debuted at Newcastle’s famous Morden Tower doing a reading of my poems. Each year I read for Proudwords lesbian and gay writing festival and I partook in workshops. 2005 saw the publication of my collection LOVEBITES published by Chanticleer Press, 6/1 Jamaica Mews, Edinburgh.
On Saturday 16Th August 2003 I read at the Edinburgh Festival as a Per Verse poet at LGBT Centre, Broughton St.
Christmas 2001 The Northern Cultural Skills Partnership sponsored me to be mentored by Andy Croft in conjunction with New Writing North. I made a radio programme for Web FM community radio about my writing group. October-November 2005, I entered a poem/visual image into the art exhibition The Art Cafe Project, his piece Post-Mark was shown in Betty’s Newcastle. This event was sponsored by Pride On The Tyne. I made a digital film with artists Kate Sweeney and Julie Ballands at a film making workshop called Out Of The Picture which was shown at the festival party for Proudwords, it contains my poem The Old Heave-Ho. I worked on a collaborative art and literature project called How Gay Are Your Genes, facilitated by Lisa Mathews (poet) which exhibited at The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University, including a film piece by the artist Predrag Pajdic in which I read my poem On Brenkley St. The event was funded by The Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Institute, Bio-science Centre at Newcastle’s Centre for Life. I was involved in the Five Arts Cities poetry postcard event which exhibited at The Seven Stories children’s literature building.
REVIEWS: I have written poetry reviews for Poetry Scotland and Jacket Magazine and in August 2007 I made a film called ‘A Blank Screen, 60 seconds, 1 shot’ for Queerbeats Festival at The Star & Shadow Cinema Newcastle, reviewing a poem… On September 4 2010, I read at the Callander Poetry Weekend hosted by Poetry Scotland. I have also written Art Criticism for Peel and Combustus Magazines. I was involved in The Creative Engagement In Research Programme Research Constellation exhibitions of writing and photography which showed in London (march 13 2012) and Edinburgh (July 4 2013)
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)
Learning Curve. 3 Poems by Gary Beck
‘Learning Curve’ is an unpublished collection concerned with the decline of Western civilization: Gary Beck
(i.) Urban Reaches Alone in a great city strangers pass, intent on jobs, crime, shopping, terror. I know not what. They all look remote, don’t say ‘good morning’, don’t meet my gaze, except the hostiles, when I quickly look away. I cannot tell who is good, kind, normal, smart enough to build a future. Temporarily marooned in a vast enclosure I do not know what to do to establish an identity. (ii.) Homeless VIII They robbed my cans for the second time in a week. I hustled my ass off getting those cans and got nothing for it. At least they didn’t beat me. Maybe I’ll get me a knife and cut them good if they try to rob me again. (iii.) Conflict Armies march in many lands. Rebels attack in many lands. Conflicts simmer across the globe, boil over, erupt in deadly violence, destroying lives, property, eradicating aspirations for stability, disallowing normal pursuits, education, home building, raising children, hoping tomorrow will be better than the savagery today.
Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn’t earn a living in the theater. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and his published books include 26 poetry collections, 10 novels, 3 short story collections, 1 collection of essays and 1 collection of one-act plays. Published poetry books include: Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, Displays, Perceptions, Fault Lines, Tremors, Perturbations, Rude Awakenings, The Remission of Order, Contusions and Desperate Seeker (Winter Goose Publishing. Forthcoming: Learning Curve and Ignition Point). Earth Links, Too Harsh For Pastels, Severance, Redemption Value and Fractional Disorder (Cyberwit Publishing). His novels include a series ‘Stand to Arms, Marines’: Call to Valor, Crumbling Ramparts and Raise High the Walls (Gnome on Pig Productions) and Extreme Change (Winter Goose Publishing). Wavelength (Cyberwit Publishing). His short story collections include: A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). Now I Accuse and other stories (Winter Goose Publishing) and Dogs Don’t Send Flowers and other stories (Wordcatcher Publishing). The Republic of Dreams and other essays (Gnome on Pig Productions). The Big Match and other one act plays (Wordcatcher Publishing). Collected Plays of Gary Beck Volume 1 (Cyberwit Publishing. Forthcoming: Plays of Aristophanes translated, then directed by Gary Beck). Gary lives in New York City. https://www.facebook.com/AuthorGaryBeck
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)
NOTHING REMAINS (AS IT’S SEEN) Haibun by Richard Lloyd Cederberg
HAIBUN is a prosimetric literary form originating in Japan. Haibun is a terse, relatively short prose poem in the Haikai style, usually including both lightly humorous and more serious elements. A Haibun can be the narrative of an epiphany, and usually ends with a Haiku or Haikus. richard lloyd cederberg
NOTHING REMAINS (AS IT’S SEEN)
.
See the moons reflection on the pond, in the bucket of water, in the droplet that has grown heavy at the leaf tip. The reflection does not get wet, nor is the surface of the water broken. The mind reflects on this reflection as the moon follows its nightly arc. The reflection changes, the process ends, and then begins anew.
.
As all mortal eyes
Capture only what’s fleeting,
So words do as well,
In ways inexplicable
Nothing remains (as it’s seen)
.
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle. They pass like a shadow at evening. A vigorous western wind blows dead leaves east where they gather against walls, stairs, and prickly pear cactus. A brisk eastern wind blows dead leaves west where they gather against chain link fences, trees, and along the shoreline. Life’s panoply of arrival and decay.
.
only my dreams can
wander these arid deserts
where no thoughts exist
.
For we are only
of yesterday, and know naught,
because these days on
Earth are only a shadow,
an unyielding paradox
.
As all mortal eyes
capture only what’s fleeting,
so words do as well,
in ways inexplicable
nothing remains (as it’s seen)
richard lloyd cederberg
6/2020
Author Biography
RICHARD was born in Chicago Illinois. He is the progeny of Swedish and Norwegian immigrants. Richard began his journey into the arts at age six. For twelve years he played classical trumpet. Then… the wonderful incursion of British music influenced him to put down the trumpet and take-up acoustic and electric guitar. Richard began writing songs and lyrics and poetic construct. He performed in 17 professional bands. He played clubs, halls, cabarets, and concerts in Europe, Canada, across the USA, Alaska, and even Whitehorse in the Yukon Territories. Richard’s band SECRETS was one of the top four Pop-Jazz bands in San Diego for 5 years. In 1995 Richard was privileged to design and build his own Midi-centered Recording Studio ~ TAYLOR & GRACE ~ where he worked until 2002. During that time, he composed, and multi-track recorded, over 500 compositions. Only two CD’s were compiled: WHAT LOVE HAS DONE and THE PATH. Richard retired from music in 2003…. RICHARD’S POETRY uses various inspirations: nature, history, relationships (past and present), parlance, alliteration, metaphor, characterization, spirituality, faith, eschatology, and art. He relishes the challenge of poetic stylization: Rhythmical, Poetic/Prose, Triolets, Syllable formats, Story-Poems, Freeform, Haiku, Tanka, Haibun, and Acrostic. Richard has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize.
.
PUBLISHED BOOKS: The MONUMENTAL JOURNEY SERIES integrates adventure, mystery, and historical fiction. Journey on the schooner Heimdall with Dr. Gabriel Proudmore, John, Helga, Betsy, Garrett, Captain Olaf Amundsen, Rorek Amundsen, Anders (the Norse) Vildarsen, and Rolf the Wolfhound…
1. A MONUMENTAL JOURNEY…
2. IN SEARCH OF THE FIRST TRIBE…
3. THE UNDERGROUND RIVER…
4. BEYOND UNDERSTANDING…
5. BETWEEN THE CRACKS… a spinoff from the MJ Series…
.
NEW BOOKS being written or compiled:
A NEW RACE OF HuMAN’S… an eschatological drama. Follow the lives of Grant Callarman (the Christian), Peter Pegarian (the plagiarist/conman), Haddon Hathaway (the Humanist), and Professor Wilmington Jonah (the doubting intellect) as they experience the traumatizing global translation of the saints, Daniels 70th Week, and the Millennium, where they all are destined to meet once again.
UNDER SILENT BRIDGES… a diversified collection of Richard’s poetic invention, short-stories, essays, and MEC’s photography.
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)
Only to meet Yuyu (A Poem in pandemic for my mentor, Mr. Yuyutsu Sharma) Bhuwan Thapaliya
Mr. Yuyutsu Sharma
Only to meet Yuyu
(A Poem in pandemic for my mentor, Mr. Yuyutsu Sharma)
Bhuwan Thapaliya
There’s no one to talk to
in the buzzing streets of Kathmandu,
everything has frozen in this town;
no calm even in the mannequin eyes standing
erect in the fancy boutiques along
the termite eaten streets of the city.
Swirling dust and choking fumes infuse
with the breath of pallid roadside trees.
The landscape changes as the rain falls
and the leaves smile again.
Isolated raindrops, expelled lovers
before their first kiss lie
along the twigs of the branches
— round, sparkling globules
— undulating without descent.
And then everything changes again
when the leaves falls, everything changes.
Once they touch the ground
they turn into ciphers
the sublime truths of life
beneath their layers.
The barriers people create between nature
and windows, walls, doors,
are not really barriers in Kathmandu
for you can talk with all. And you can
never be bored, you just have to sit
and look at the people passing by
and there’s so much to say.
Gazing deep into Buddha’s serpent eyes,
one feels like being in a Time Machine.
But sometimes, there is silence,
utter silence of a sadhu’s stare
into the infinity in Kathmandu,
silence of old mansions
where only a caretaker kills time.
And the civilians of the nation disappear
like the water sprouts of the valley
choking my soul to the core .
There is not a person that I can talk to
in the rustic streets of Kathmandu.
I am as forlorn and lonely as a man snoozing
on an unused railway tracks
in some old Indian town.
I hardly ever go out now.
I am fed up with the squalor of urban life
where everyone is not what they seem to be.
I should have stayed back
at the banks of the river Sunkoshi
that festoons my village
chewing the pebbles
of my pristine dreams.
These days, I leave my home
only to meet Yuyu, chat up nonstop over
endless cups of masala tea
at Shreejana’s While Lotus Book Shop,
watching the poems turn into
colorful serpents and climb the murky trees
enveloped in grey mist.
I leave my home only to meet Yuyu
and share a joke or two,
listen to his sharp one liners.
anecdotes of his travels from
the shores of his dreams
and laugh aloud
celebrating full- blooded flame
lighted in honor of his vagabond Muse.
His words little by little entrap you,
enwrap your soul in their singing silence,
at the end of the day feeding my shriveled soul.
And often as we wave goodbye,
he delves deep into a silent
that soon turns into a river of endless vigor.
Poem dangles from
the edge of his serene mouth.
And a dreamy prose
dances over his misty eyelashes.
And the silence
an ode to the Kathmandu Valley.
If one dare to pay heed.
Bhuwan Thapaliya & Mr. Yuyutsu Sharma
Nepalese poet, Bhuwan Thapaliya works as an economist, and is the author of four poetry collections and currently he is working on his fresh poetry collection, The Marching Millions. Thapaliya’s books include, Safa Tempo: Poems New and Selected (Nirala Publication, New Delhi), Our Nepal, Our Pride , Verses from the Himalayas and Rhythm of the Heart. (Cyberwit.net)Poetry by Thapaliya has been included in The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry, The Strand Book of International Poets 2010, and Tonight: An Anthology of World Love Poetry, as well as in literary journals such as Urhalpool, MahMag, Kritya, FOLLY, The Vallance Review, Nuvein Magazine, Foundling Review, Poetry Life and Times, Poets Against the War, Voices in Wartime, Taj Mahal Review, VOICES (Education Project), Longfellow Literary Project, Countercurrents etc.
Author
Safa Tempo: Poems New and Selected
https://www.amazon.com/Safa-Tempo-Poems-New-Selected-Bhuwan-Thapaliya
Our Nepal, Our Pride
https://www.amazon.com/Our-Nepal-Pride-Bhuwan-Thapaliya
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)