Trust me
It’s for your own good
You’ll thank me later
You need only turn to face yourself
Wealth speaks to poverty
Centurions to slaves
Lords to peasants
Bourgeoisie to the Proletariat
No healthcare costs
No harassment issues
No sick time
No vacation required
No request for family leave
No retirement plan
No bereavement leave
No union fights
No confusion
No complaints
No liability
No people
Just machines
Quantifiable
Reliable
Inorganic
Cost effective
Profitable
Without complaint
Personality without soul
Intellect without compassion
All needs fulfilled
All care eliminated
Life without humanity
Trust me
It’s for your own good
©2015 – Ron Olsen/all rights reserved
Ron Olsen is a Peabody and Emmy award winning journalist based in Southern California. He is recently retired from the Tribune Company, where he was stationed at the Los Angeles Times, working with the newspaper’s writers and editors to adapt newspaper stories for KTLA-TV. He is the author of more than one-thousand essays and an occasional poem. His essays have been published by several local papers in the Los Angeles area. He began writing poetry just recently. He says he loves the craft of saying more with fewer words, with each word playing a significant role in the piece. “I am sometimes struck by my poetry”
he says.”I’ll look at what I’ve written and wonder where it came from-some wellspring that’s beyond my understanding. What a strange and wonderful process.”
A more complete bio can be found here –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Olsen
http://workingreporter.com/wordpress/a-question-of-priorities/
or at his blog at
http://workingreporter.com/wordpress or his Facebook page at
https://www.facebook.com/workingreporter?ref=bookmarks
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After the Dead. A Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop
Are my dreams of the dead
dreams of purgatory
battered, wounded as they are?
Where I live now!
The mad struggle of the dead
in the vacuous corridors of time.
Really, they’ve gone
they don’t return, except as myths
to reinvent time.
Our time of broken dreams
‘creatures of tradition moulding a nature
that weeps not for us for the wounds
it heals, impervious
after it nurtured us into existence’
Blind Tiresias had warned.
As if we had a choice in this paradox
as if we could escape
the blunder which created us
the cosmic joke, where time
will destroy even the world
for time to be reborn.
In this dream world, where I
only seem to wake
to this small dance of words
a dance of phantoms with their shadows
where this poem shapes its becoming.
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[the betrayal of a tree] A Poem by Yuan Changming
You long to be a Douglas fir
Tall, straight, almost immortal
But you stand like a Peking willow
Prone to cankers, full of twisted twigs
Worse still, you are not so resistant
As the authentic willow that can bend gracefully
Shake off all its unwanted leaves in autumn
When there is a wind blowing even from nowhere
No matter how much sunshine you receive
During the summer, you have nothing but scars
To show off against winter storms
The scars that you can never shake off
[bio info]:: Yuan Changming, 8-time Pushcart nominee and author of 5 chapbooks, is the most widely published poetry author who speaks Mandarin but writes English: since mid-2005, he has had poetry appearing in Best Canadian Poetry, Best New Poems Online, London Magazine, Threepenny Review and 1069 others across 36 countries. With a PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan in Vancouver.
poetrypacific.blogspot.ca/
http://poetrypacificpress.blogspot.ca/
http://www.facebook.com/poetry.pacific
http://yuanspoetry.blogspot.ca/
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Charter for Peace | Anthem. A Poem by Prabhu Iyer
1. Prologue
Splash words across: images on canvas.
Before Abraham was, I am:
the cubist of poets. Mangled and tangled;
Here thoughts emerge, in reverent perspective.
How many, the dimensions? Monotone
in my unidimensions. Filter. Baritone.
Coffee-brown is the best colour around.
2. Love
Here we sit by two-arms distance. To north,
to south. Facing opposing poles.
There is an attraction.
Here are images from the industrial world
gone post-industrial. Broken commodes.
Outsource your misery here. The sky can afford
a hole from on here. As long as
there’s none in my shoe.
Sometimes, I roll over in waves.
Sometimes, you wave over.
Questions still hidden in the corners.
3. Peace
All that’s passed remains flickering
green like the wireless router
silently at nights: recover, play it over.
Flush it all up. Splash it all around. Cubism.
Art nouveau. Portmanteau. Now fruck the world.
Neon shades rippling through the smoke,
laughter like that of an empty skull:
smoke the pipe, brother,
spread the peace around. 2013, stupid.
Idealism died in ‘67. And many times since.
Repeats always a farce.
4. Spirit
Only one man died for the poor.
Who else called the dead to life?
All other stories are about barons and hedgehats:
while the millions were ground over
to oil the world. While they roiled the world.
How the poor die under the heels
of those that claim to love that man?
Agree? Take the throne. Disagree? Drone.
Yes, we can, brother, we can defeat this
corruption, bloody. Brother,
be not corrupt.
5. Prospect
A sigh of disapproval, soft in sleep.
I come and lie, back to your back,
waiting for love to seep over.
Yes, we can, brother, we can overcome
bigotry vile. Brother,
say not, mine, the only way ever.
Happy lovers day. Shout out aloud,
peans more to the meek women’s rights.
Forget not, there’s some in your sights.
Two arms’ distance is about the right in the day.
There are two faces seen in this bubble,
formed at the mouth of the tube.
Peace to the world, every morning after.
Every little home by home.
Educated in India and England, Prabhu Iyer writes contemporary rhythm poetry. He counts the classical Romantics and Mystics among his influences. Among modern poets Neruda and Tagore are his favourites for their haunting and inspirational lyrical verse. Prabhu has also explored the meaning of modern art movements such as surrealism and cubism and their role in anchoring the society through his art-poetry. Currently he is based out of Chennai, India, where he has a day job as an academic scientist.
In 2012 Prabhu collected over 50 of his poems and self-published them on Amazon Kindle: Ten Years of Moons and Mists More recently, his 2014 entry made it to the long list from among over 5000 entrants to the annual international poetry contest conducted by the UK-based publishing house, Erbacce Press. Some of Prabhu’s poems are at http://hellopoetry.com/-prabhu-iyer/ His major current projects include a further volume of poetry, his first fictional novella and a planned series of translations of lyrics from Indian film music.
Editor’s Note: for further information see Interview with Prabhu Iyer at this site
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Secretariat: The Red Freak, The Miracle by Lyn Lifshin
ON A NIGHT HERONS WERE DIVING THRU THE WAVES OF NIGHT
up in the forties weeks
past heavy February snow.
Geese on the pond. Bleak,
drizzly. Black mist over
Meadow Farm. Grass
flattened, matted as in
hours straw will be in the
foaling shed, a dark rose
spreading under the mare’s
heaving sighs
WET GRASS DARKENING
the walk past the barn
as blood would matted
straw before it was
light again. Two figures
cross the lawn, the
wildness of geese in the
distance. The men
get in a car. One bulb
hangs in the foaling shed.
Under the almost
jade slopes roots are
growing. The mare
calms herself with groan
songs as milk begins
to wax, pearls on
her nipples like
a bud opening
THRU MIST, ONE LIGHT IN THE FOALING BARN
the drizzle, close to freezing.
In barn 17 A, the brood
mare, Somethingroyal,
carries the last foal of Bold
Ruler, dying in Kentucky.
Milk on her nipples. if
the rafters. If rafters could
talk they would be singing
soon he will be yours and
you must take care of
what you’ve been given
THRU DAMP FIELDS PERFUMED WITH OAK LEAVES
the men moved thru drizzle
to barn 17 A, moved over
gravel in grey fog, moved
toward the one light. The
mare was breathing fast.
she was warm and sweaty,
edgy. She was circling
as if caged. Then she was
lying on her side. Then it
was just a heart beat before
the tip of a foot burst into
flower, the first petal of
what would flower
MARCH 30, JUST PAST MIDNIGHT
She was warm and her
nostrils, wild. Ready,
nearly ready. Only
the mare’s breath like
a silence you could
understand. The mare
on straw on her side
and just past midnight
the tip of one foot.
Then, gently as some
one kissing eyes that
are crying, the foaling
man reached in to ease
a folded leg out of the
birth canal
ONCE THE SHOULDER EMERGED
the men moved closer in the
long blue damp wind. Blood
on the warm straw. The mare’s
body opening. The men pull
gently. Slosh of water and
then the foal’ s slippery body,
iodine and the smell of birth
in the wind the minutes
after midnight. “A wooper,”
some. ” “white feet, a lovely
colt,” in Secretariat’s record
fan book. “Lovely,” was
underlined twice.
PAST WILLOWS ON THE MOST WESTERN EDGE OF THE FARM
The mare’s udder swells
with milk, something
wax like drying on her
nipples like the just
polished swirls of wood.
After her wild breath,
the heaving, the blood,
three feet and a star,
dark flowers of his hair
against the drained mare
falling back easily as
the wind rising up
from North Anna’s
River
RIVETED TO SECRETARIAT’S BURSTING FORTH
those easing him from
Somethingroyal’s body
said he was on his feet
in twenty minutes, in
45 he was nursing. “Big
strong, male foal with
plenty of bone.” Warm
breath of horses, Carolina
Riverwind. In her log,
Elizabeth Ham the farm
secretary wrote “well
made colt, good straight
hind legs, good shoulders,
good quarters: you
have to like him.”
IN PENNY CHENNERY’S NOTEBOOK AFTER THE NIGHT OF DRIZZLE, RAIN
as the river settled
and willow leaves
yellowed: one
word: Wow
WHEN A LEGGY FOAL COMES INTO THE WORLD
and cherry boughs are
swelling, hope flowers
like these buds. When
the foal seems different,
unlike others, who
doesn’t dream it can
go the distance, that a
“miracle has arrived”
HE WAS DIFFERENT
someone who was around
Secretariat from the time
of his birth said he was
different. Just walking
the horse in the paddock
it was as if the wind
tongued the cups of his
ears and he a flash, if the
handler lost focus, the
horse knew it
and was gone
JUST WALKING THE HORSE TO THE PADDOCK
a bruiser some
one said bigger than
the other foals his age.
His legs barely
touched the ground
under the shiny trees.
He could cuff the other
foals, bite and
kick . He was playing.
Licked by his
mare, not only at
birth but long after
with everyone touching
and holding him he
grew bolder,
confident
HE HAD A MIND OF HIS OWN
wild for something
deep in the bodies of
trees. He’d bolt in
a breathbeat. “A very
aggressive type colt.”
Jazz in the air. Ghostly,
magical. A loop thru his
halter to keep him in
check
ON THAT FIRST DAY WAS SOMETHING ROYAL
his mare panting?
puzzled? Those huge
shoulders. Something
she couldn’t see
quivering thru her.
The mare had foaled
easily before but
this time, even with
her feet on the dirt floor,
easier footing than
cement but this time
with the foal’s fore leg
folded like a petal
before it opens,
someone following
the mare’s contractions
gently eased him out of
the birth canal. Beautiful
the vet remembered,
his legs were perfect,
he had a beautiful
head and was
red as fire
Lyn Lifshin at the Horse Museum
Lyn Lifshin has published over 140 books and chapbooks and edited three anthologies of women’s writing including Tangled Vines that stayed in print 20 years. She has several books from Black Sparrow books. Her web site, www.lynlifshin.com shows the variety of her work from the equine books, The Licorice Daughter: My Year with Ruffian and Barbaro: Beyond Brokenness to recent books about dance: Ballroom, Knife Edge and Absinthe: The Tango Poems. Other new books include For the Roses, poems for Joni Mitchell, All The Poets Who Touched Me; A Girl goes Into The Woods; Malala, Tangled as the Alphabet: The Istanbul Poems. Also just out: Secretariat: The Red Freak, The Miracle Malala and Luminous Women: Enheducanna, Scheherazade and Nefertiti. web site:www.lynlifshin.com
Fox in the Snow. A Poem by Holly Day
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.
Poverty of screams. A Poem by Sonnet Mondal
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
Treading The Fire. A Poem by Dr. Ernest William 111
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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