The First Thanksgiving
by Usa W. Celebride
Though not the first time folks had given thanks to God above,
the first Thanksgiving in America was touched with love;
for of one-hundred-two Mayflower passengers arrived,
just forty-four or so by the next autumn had survived.
Chief Massasoit of nearby Wampanoags made a pack
with Puritans because he feared Narragansett attack.
With help from Squanto, Pilgrims learned to fertilize their fields;
with fish remains their corn grew tall and made enormous yields.
The Harvest Festival came in Fall 1621
and thankful people dined on turkey, corn and venison.
In 1863, Abe Lincoln made Thanksgiving Day,
a celebration for the nation in times just as gray.
Usa W. Celebride is a poet of America.
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Leonard Cohen
by Wes Caribu Deel
“I would have done the same things/ even if there were no death…”
—Leonard Cohen, What I’m Doing Here
He sat upon the cyclone, like a bird upon a wire,
in conversation singsong, like a drunk in midnight choir,
who danced to beauty’s favour with a burning violin,
when not off course in sorrow or engaged in holy sin;
a raspy singer, as unhappy as Bob Dylan, but
without the social bitterness and fire in his gut;
a light for those in darkness who were trying to be free,
in their lone ways, through their own haze, in this reality.
There is a crack in everything, including death, it seems;
off flapped old Leonard Cohen on gaunt, hallelujah wings.
Wes Caribu Deel is a poet of Canada who has been influenced by writers such as Robert Service, John McCrae, and John Gillespie Magee, Jr. He is also an intimate of native North American “Blue Cedar” Siew.
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Amid Mid-November Embers
by E “Blue Screw” Dai
In the four-cornered room, the hip hop music winding down
to DEFCON 5, the golden fleece upon the padded ground,
those blistered bars of Pete Rock, “I’m a poet…writing rhyme…”
O, see what has become of me, Paul Simon, Time, Time, Time.
Hey, Jason, I’m a mental patient wading patiently,
who feels as if I’m at the edge…edge of an ancient sea.
Chysanthemums have lost their yellow colour, o, yes, sir,
when Buson lit the lanterns and Ryota spoke no words.
Where are the guests, where is the host, the white chysanthemums?
A visitor is in his beige Toyota adding sums.
E “Blue Screw” Dai is a poet fond of free-style verse writers, like Modernist Hagiwara Sakutaro, or Romantic Novalis, id est, Georg Philipp Friedrich “Freiherr” von Hardenberg.
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At the Auto Showroom
by Bruc “Diesel” Awe
Amidst the silver glistening and bright white light, I sit,
an auto showroom filled with brand new cars of glint and glitz.
Above, beat-driven music cascades o’er in quiet roars,
a waterfall of soaring sounds, its lyric-lung’d out-pours.
Rectangles, curves and circles round the tired vehicles,
sleek-lined icicles sparkling on square, aqua-mica tiles.
On TV screens, emotive voices, sprinkled with applause,
austere, exacting beauty, brilliant emptiness, appalls.
It fills the silent loneliness with busyness and gleam,
like fleshy fish aflutter in a flashy, frothy stream.
Bruc “Diesel” Awe is a poet of transportation, in short he likes cars and trucks, and thinks there are few technologies suggesting the revolution gathering around us as compelling as driverless vehicles.
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John Philoponus (c. 490 – c. 570)
by Crise de Abu Wel
He was a lover of hard work, John Philoponus, known
as the Grammarian and ant’Aristotelian.
He said some views of Aristotle were erroneous,
and actu’l observation trumped all verbal arguments.
From the same height, two diff’rent weighted things, if one lets fall,
the difference in time, at which they hit, is very small.
No wonder Galileo read his Philoponus well;
for the ideas in his works were a galvanic cell.
And since John’s views were also thought heretical, it seems,
that Galileo could relate how his thoughts too were deemed.
Crise de Abu Wel is a poet of the Middle East, whose influences include Armenian and Coptic, as well as Assyrian, Catholic and Synoptic writers. For him, Christ is the nonpareil religious figure of the World.
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Salvator Mundi
by Buceli da Werse
Considered just a copy of a lost Da Vinci back
when purchased in 2005 on an estate sale’s rack;
completed in the year of 1500, it was once
in the collection of the English king King Charles I.
Within the oil on walnut, Christ is in a deep blue robe;
he gives a benediction, as he holds a crystal globe;
Salvator Mundi fronts the black background, his long hair curled;
crossed by a rich embroidered brown, he faces forth the World.
The oil painting just this week, at Christie’s in New York,
was sold for o’er $450,000,000 core.
Buceli da Werse is a poet of painting in the Italian Renaissance. Among his favourite painters of the classical era are Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael.
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The Handmann Portrait of Leonard Euler
by Ewald E. Eisbruc
Like as a madcap lunatic, with gray hat on his head,
which looks like folded underwear, a sloppy, flopping spread,
the painting of Leonhard Euler made by Handmann’s hand,
appears as if satirical, a Hogarth man unmanned.
But such is not the case, for Euler had then lost an eye,
and that’s what makes the sitter seem unbalanced and awry.
In wrinkled dark-stripped coat of blue, white collar at the neck,
it seems as if he’s in pajamas, and a nervous wreck.
Yet Handmann’s got a likeness of the Swiss guy, bold and bright,
whose work transformed the World with such penetrating sight.
Ewald E. Eisbruc is a poet of the arts of central Europe, particularly Austria, Germany and Switzerland.
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UCLA Shoplifting Team Mates
by Cal Wes Ubideer
LiAngelo Ball, Jalen Hill, and Cody Riley were
arrested for shoplifting at Louis Vuitton and more.
The freshmen then surrendered their passports for posting bail;
and so they were released from custody in Chinese jail.
Surveillance footage of the players in Hangzhou proved that
them stealing things, like cool sun glasses was indeed a fact.
It seems that Donald Trump put in a word to Xi Jinping;
and the three basketballers thanked him doing such a thing.
But LaVar Ball, the father of LiAngelo, had doubt
“Everyone wants to make it seem…[as if]…he helped me out.”
Cal Wes Ubideer is a poet of California.