SWIMMING TO THE MOON. A Poem by Steve De France

Tonight my fingers stiffly stumble across
my keyboard as my mind is repulsed,
as I am frightened of this task, as I am afraid
of the pain of thought., as my spirit fills & trembles
with the mystery in words.
Words that once flashed
in the eyes of the dying,
words that fade into a wet cough,
words brushing past the living
with silken lips as cold as marble,
their frightened gasps merge into darkness.
Ancient images tumble into my mind, I pass the
rough tips of my short fingers across my
damp forehead—very carefully as I
rehearse for my passage to the moon,
knowing all of us will have to make this swim
through skin and blood and memories.

 
 

steve-defrance
 
 
Steve DeFrance is a widely published poet, playwright and essayist both in America and in Great Britain. His work has appeared in literary publications in America, England, Canada, France, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, India, Australia, and New Zealand. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry in both 2002 and 2003. Recent publications include The Wallace Stevens Journal, The Mid-American Poetry Review, Ambit, Atlantic, Clean Sheets, Poetrybay, Yellow Mama and The Sun. In England he won a Reader’s Award in Orbis Magazine for his poem “Hawks.” In the United States he won the Josh Samuels’ Annual Poetry Competition (2003) for his poem: “The Man Who Loved Mermaids.” His play THE KILLER had it’s world premier at the GARAGE THEATRE in Long Beach, California (Sept-October 2006). He has received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Chapman University for his writing. Most recently his poem “Gregor’s Wings” has been nominated for The Best of The Net by Poetic Diversity. for further poems by Steve De France see www.artvilla.com & www.motherbird.com
 
 
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Let me go. A Poem by Robin Wyatt Dunn

 

Let me go;
I am drawn.

 
Hereout the maids hinder my suffering;
The maids are buildings, and faces.
The asphalt itself. They seem to care for me;
to prevent my exit from the city’s gravity.

 
All my wishes are spent on the mornings here;
And even the nights tell me I am growing.

 
I want to shrink, under the sun,
Away from all this history.
 
 
mugshot
Bio:
 
Robin Wyatt Dunn lives in Los Angeles.
 


“Agitate. Agitate. Agitate.”
— Frederick Douglass
 
http://www.robindunn.com
 
http://www.democracyforpeople.net
 

 
 
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Out of Time. A Poem by Soodabeh Saeidnia

 

Years have passed and that slim cider plant

is now a strong tree

The mesmerizing highway’s been constructed

across the mysterious sea

Wars started and presumed

to be ended soon

My senses have deadened, whereas my body

promoted to defend
 

I wonder why in this time

I’m not feeling good, I’m not fine
 

Days have come and nights have gone

without a sign of evolution in our genes

Climate smirks at our greenhouse dreams

Through once in a while, monsoons of disease

cyclones of death

Men are digging the earth at a furious pace

but I’ve always known that there are planets, in which

rains are diamond, snows emerald
 

Along this ephemeral wasting of time

I’m not feeling good, I’m not fine
 

The spider web’s connected all the people

Some are trapped like butterflies,

Some are tearing off the net, though cannot fly away

I heard their wings have hurt

and needed a century of rest

Galaxies have been expanding through the Dark Energy

I know that the chance of dropping in a Black Hole

is less than becoming human for some men

We are now safe living in the Milky Way!
 

But I’m running out of time

I’m not good, I’m not fine
 
 
Untitled
 
 
Biography:
Soodabeh Saeidnia lives in NYC but originally is Persian. She got her Pharm D and Ph.D. of Pharmacognosy and has worked as a researcher, assistant and associate professor in the Kyoto University (Japan), TUMS (Iran) and University of Saskatchewan (Canada). She is interested in English literature and poetry, and has published a collection of her poems, Words for myself, in Farsi. Her poems have been published (or a head of publishing) in the American magazines and literary journals including Squawk Back, Sisyphus Quarterly, Paradox, TimBookTu, Bobbling of the Irrational, SPINE, American Writers Journal, Tuck Magazine, La Libertad, Tiny Poetry, Indiana Voice Journal, The Pen, 352 degrees and the Great Weather for Media. A number of her poems have been printed in the books Where the Mind Dwells and American Poet by Eber & Wein Publishing as well as Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze by Johnson Publications and Artistic. Her newest book, Street of the Ginkgo Trees is now available online on Amazon.

 
 
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Oslo. A Poem by Christie-Luke Jones

A solitary orange for breakfast; she delivers it with her unmistakably virginal smile,

kneels by my bed in thanks.

My body fizzes with polarising urges strong enough to kill us both.

Her apartment is beyond all comprehension; I feel undeserving of its pine-scented

air, the only discordant note in an otherwise harmonious melody.

She dresses in furs and heavy knits.

Her glowing skin and lithe body are untouched by the sweating guilt of midnight

trysts.

A nervous laugh rocks the vast drifts as our paths tentatively entwine across the

blank expanse of canvas.

Our eyes devour in absence of trembling lips.

The inevitability is palpable.

A joyful expression of unspoken lust; her hands scream to be touched.

I debate the drop, survey the cliff edge with a melting restraint.

Hurtling forth; I find myself discussing pickled herring in her father’s slippers.

God-fearing Christians, no doubt afraid of this wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Such a charming sheep, though. I bleat and graze with impeccable timing, convince

even myself.

Neither of us find sleep that night.

Impatience drives me to my annex room, whilst her mind is a dance of plush hearts

and handwritten love letters.

Another 12 hours to keep my mask from slipping.
 
 
Bio Photo
 
 
Christie-Luke Jones is a poet, fiction writer and actor from Oxfordshire, England. Christie-Luke’s writing is strongly influenced by the Gallic blood that courses through his veins, as well as his interest in the more macabre aspects of the human condition. To see more of his work, visit www.christielukejones.com.
 
 
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We Darkened Few Laugh With Needle-Sharp Joy. A poem by Joseph Armstead

 

Laughing
with delight,
we thought we saw
a vision of blood
Turn to wine…
 
It’s a story told
in silence and pictures,
where everything we say
sounds like the spatter
of falling rain,
the sound of weariness
beating a drumbeat
on old concrete,
And its brittle beauty
makes the cracked
photographs
in our album of memories
dance
while we feel like children
at a tea party
with ghosts, pouring our hearts,
a piece at a time,
into empty porcelain cups.
 
Our timid smiles
are splintered
breaks
in the face
of a laughing clock.
“See how sharp,”
the timepiece said,
ticking.
 
A vision of light
at the tunnel’s end
fails to lead us
from the dark,
Saviors and Angel Wars,
Burning bushes
calling out numbers
at an endless game
of celestial Bingo,
And God’s reflection
looks out
from the fruit punch,
laughing from inside
the crystal serving bowl,
We can’t believe in such things,
because we feel like children
at a tea party
with ghosts, pouring our hearts,
a piece at a time,
into empty porcelain
demitasses.
 
“See how sharp,”
the timepiece said,
ticking.
 
And we darkened few
laugh with needle-sharp joy.

 
 
 
1196372998383oj4
 
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.
 
 
 
 
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America: The Rave. A Poem by Adam Levon Brown

Poetry Life and Times

 

America
 
Of the store-bought
pizza dinners
 
Land of the flies
who scrape the paint
off of barnyard doors
with fingernails of lace
 
America
 
Camel cigarette
butts lining the crevices,
reminding us to
take pride in our
death
 
Land of the trees,
the oceans, and the
snow; covering us like
a whale song sung from
the bleachers of Wrigley field
in ’89
 
America
 
Scarface gangsterish
slang aimed at our throats
while revolutionaries paint
their stories on box trains
destined for the great beyond
 
Land of the stolen coffee bean
with all of its richness fueling
our neurotic skull contents in
the bleak December rains
 
America
 
Social injustice in the form
of Television, telling us a tale
as old as time; oppression
as an old, raggedy flag drenched
in the blood of sacrificial lambs
who never got to see the pasture
 
Land of the bombs, the guns,
and the assault rifle speeches
of sputtering, malignant hatred
 
America
 
Chain gang alamode
served with a slice
of adversity in the morning
 
Land of the Cinematic
bloodbath and violent
pornography with Twilight zone
on repeat
 
America
 
Crooked-nosed piety seekers
in rags on the streets who sleep
right outside the doors of the disillusioned youth
who partake in Molly until their ears
scream and their voices listen
 
Land of the freezing
Home of the Rave.
 
Adam Levon Brown
Adam Levon Brown (ii)

Adam Levon Brown is a poet and author residing in Eugene, Oregon. He has one published poetry book out, Musings of a Madman, which is a collection of poems made to enlighten and inspire the reader. Adam attributes his love of poetry to the many great poets he discovered in the school library during his formative years. He enjoys listening to political hip hop music and is a political activist himself.
 


Adam Levon Brown, Featured Writer Editor
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Crocuta crocuta. A Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop

 

The Spotted Hyena, aka the Laughing Hyena, both male and female genitals are strikingly similar.
 
Natural History, Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79) ab uno animali sepulchra erui inquisitione corporum.
 
It was more Jackals that were prone to digging bodies out of shallow graves and eating them. Robert Graves.White Goddess. The Jackals, sacred to Anubis, Guardian of the Dead, because they fed on corpse like flesh and had mysterious nocturnal habits.
 
The Hyena is of feline descent.
 
Hyenas were hermaphrodites, bearing both male and female organs, Aristotle declared in the Historia animalium: “this is untrue.”
 
Medieval bestiaries drew a moral lesson from the depravity of beasts, excluded from Noah’s ark in 1614, God had only saved the purely bred, Hyenas were reconstituted after the flood through the unnatural union of a dog and cat.
 
Female hyenas virtually indistinguishable from males, their clitoris enlarged and extended to form an organ of the same size, shape, and position as the male penis, can also be erected.
 
High foetal androgen levels responsible for male sexual facies in adult female Spotted Hyenas.
 
An unfair stereotype of Hyenas, in reality fascinating, intelligent even beautiful creatures.
 
Disney animators sketches for The Lion King, the trio of Hyenas in the Movie reinforce the common stereotype of Hyenas as cowardly, skulking low-lifes.
 
Ernest Hemingway, Fisi, the Hyena, hermaphroditic self-eating devourer of the dead, trailer of calving cows, ham-stringer, potential biter-off of your face at night while you slept, sad yowler, camp-follower, stinking, foul, with jaws that crack the bones the lion leaves, belly dragging, loping away on the brown plain.
 
“Hyenas” Movie, an urban legend account of human encounters and attacks by a sub-culture of predatory Cryptohuman Hyenas. Shape-shifting human-like creatures prowl the rural back roads and forests of North America, thought to exist by Cryptozoologists.
 
Folklore and sightings persist even as mainstream science denies their existence.
 
Rudyard Kipling, The wise Hyenas come out at eve to take account of our dead,… they know the dead are safer meat than the weakest thing alive… and tug the corpse to light, the pitiful face is shown again, an instant ere they close in.
 
UK Teaching. Resources TES. Edwin Morgan enters the mind of the Hyena. English National 5 Poetry. He describes its patient, menacing personality: Morgan adopts the persona of a Hyena, I sing and am the slave of darkness, my place is to pick you clean and leave your bones to the wind.
 
A hunters’ poem from Lesotho, description shifts to the first person singular to give the Hyena’s own words, I growl being a poor body, I am small, I am hunched up like the elephant… Hyena of the Mmankala of Kone-land, a group whose symbol is the Hyena, when it says ngou! it devours even man.
 
A Yoruba hunting poem the Hyena is regarded as the ultimate scavenger, there being nothing it won’t eat: oral poetry from Africa, Hyena, who is there when the mourner buries the corpse eats fat and bone, scabbard and hide.
 
Spotted Hyena, strongest jaws in proportion to body size across the entire mammal kingdom, cunning hunting tactics, nocturnal nature, nefarious reputations, frontal cortex of their brains, thought to regulate social intelligence.
 
The largest of the other three species: Brown, Striped and Aardwolf, Spotted Hyenas are among Africa’s most vocal animals.

 
Robin Portrait July Sotillo 2016 by Amparo
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop, born UK, a reader in philosophy & religions, has travelled extensively throughout his lifetime but now lives in semi- retirement as a TEFL teacher and translator in Spain & the UK.
 
Robin was editor of the 12 year running on-line monthly poetry journal Poetry Life and Times. In 2013 he joined with Dave Jackson as co-editor at Artvilla.com, where he presently edits Poetry Life & Times, Artvilla.com, Motherbird.com.
 
He’s been previously published in a variety of international magazines, later publications including Voices without Borders Volume 1 (USA), Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N. Carolina), The Poetic Bond Volumes (thepoeticbond.com) and Phoenix Rising from the Ashes (a recently published international Anthology of Sonnets). His last publication is a volume of collected poems All the Babble of the Souk available at all main online tributaries

 

 
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Shine. A Poem by Irsa Ruçi Translated by Silva Daci

 

I.
Hear to the cicada’s song, my dear, hear it
Some words they mutter to spring
And feel their whisper to the leafs
To the mornings’ dew
So tell me:
Was this world made to be savage?
 

II.
Oh, what sins did we give to this earth
So that our own tear weighs in powerless
At traces that froze in oblivion
The lost sinner
We…
Guardians of Hope
 

III.
One day we will get away
In a path there’s no coming back
For sure I’ll carry behind only regret,
Why we weren’t enough in this greedy world?
And the forgiveness
We were eager to get it
When one day even our soul we’ll see it
Stripped from our bodies.
 

IV.
O tell me that nothing is true
That the poet’s words are thatch stalks
That would be fired by one single match
And I, my last line I’ll give to the Human;
For he prays in the sin’s mercy
And in his life never lied to himself
 
My last line I’ll save it for the Human…

 
My photo 2

 
Irsa Ruçi is an Albanian Writer, Speechwriter and Lecturer. She was born in Tirana (Albania), in 1990. Her books of poetry include Trokas mbi ajër (poems and essays), 2008 and Pështjellim (poetry), 2010.
She has been published in anthologies: Antologji, 2007; I kërkoj agimit vesën, 2008; Antologji poetike “Kushtuar dashurisë”, 2014; Antologji poetike “Udha”, 2014; Antologji poetike, 2014; “Malli dhe brenga nga distancat”, 2014; Antologji poetike “Qyteti”, 2014; Poeteca, 2015; and her works has appeared in a number of print and online national and international magazines, including Sling Magazine, Issue 5; Ann Arbor Review, Issue 15; Poeteca Magazine, Issue 35; Aquillrelle Anthology, 2015; Aquillrelle Anthology, 2016; Metaphor Magazine Issue 5; The Commonline Journal, Issue 4/22; A New Ulster poetry Anthology, April 2016; Best Poems Encyclopedia; Issuu April 2016; In Between Hangovers, May 2016; BLUEPEPPER, May 2016; Duane’s PoeTree, May 2016; CREATIVE TALENTS UNLEASHED, 8 May 2016, Tuck Magazine, 12 May 2016; Whispers… 2016; Dead Snakes Magazine; – RANDOM POEM TREE, 13 May 2016; RANDOM POEM TREE, 16 May 2016; In Between Hangovers, 14 May 2016; In Between Hangovers, 24 May 2016; SCARLET LEAF REVIEW, May Issue; Ashvamegh Magazine (Ashvamegh Indian Journal of English Literature), The Beatnik Cowboy, 19 May; Dissident Voice, 22 May; Joomag, May 2016; Bear Creek Haiku, May Issue; Dissident Voice, 29 May  etc.
Among many awards, she has received the first prize in poetry, in competition “Anthology 2007”, as the best poet in Albania.

 

Silva Daci foto

 
Bio:
Silva Daci was born in Tirana (Albania), in 1996. She is student of English Major, at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, in the University of Tirana. She is an activist in some social cooperatives and she likes to be part of social and cultural activities.
 

 
 
 
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