Haiku
          by E. “Blue Screw” Dai

Ransetsu observed
the Milky Way at midnight—
a spray of fireworks.

Hattori Ransetsu (1654-1707) was a student of Basho.

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The Tokyo Tower
          by E “Blue Screw” Dai

It rises high into the sky, the Tokyo Tower spear,
like as an Eiffel Tower climbing to the atmosphere.
It’s a huge iron scrap that shines above the cityscape,
that’s painted gray, then pink, and orange, in ‘ts familiar shape.
The tower built in 1958 was not as bright,
until Motoko Ishii designed its brilliant light.
It then became a symbol of the Heisei period
right after Hirohito died, and left his era dead.
Since then repainting teams have painted it for many years,
applying patiently the paint with brushing stroke veneers.

E “Blue Screw” Dai is a poet of Modernist and Postmodernist Japan. The death of Emperor Hirohito (1901-1989) put in motion the present Heisei period. Motoko Ishii (石井 幹子) is a present-day lighting designer, who worked in Germany and Finland, before she set up shop in Japan.

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The Jeddah Tower
          by Saudi Becrewel

The Jeddah Tower when complete, a thousand meters tall,
will then replace the Burj Khalifa—highest overall.
Construction of the building costs a billion dollars plus,
the new crown jewel of the Jeddah economic lust.
A residential and commercial project in the sky,
like as a giant, slender tweezers founded on a Y.
It will have more than but 250 stories when erect,
and, at that time, the World’s highest observation deck.
It will possess an outdoor plat, 500 meters square;
Prince Al-Waleed, its major backer, pressing through the air.

Saudi Becrewel is a poet of Arabia days and nights.

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This Messed-Up Zone
          by Cid Wa’eeb El Sur

The Sun was unforgiving, the land was flat and dry.
Above their dirty vehicle, there hung a pale sky.
They paused to search for IEDs, which could be anywhere.
They looked about the rugged grass, the sand, hard, white and bare.
It was not beautiful, heroic, or inspiring.
Two men were simply testing objects in the empty scene.
They wondered what had brought them here, beside this camo jeep.
There wasn’t anything profound or beautiful or deep.
They walked in black boots over ground that was best left alone.
What was it they had done to end up in this messed-up zone?

Cid Wa’eeb El Sur is a poet of the Mideast. This week in Manbij, sixteen people were killed, four US soldiers, when a terrorist suicide bomber dressed in civilian clothing blew up himself and those around him.

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Kumbh Mela, 2019
          by Badri Suwecele

The largest gathering of people for a pilgrimage,
the two month-long mass Hindu traveling to Prayagraj,
where the attendees will wash off the sins they have accrued
by dipping in the amrita, in clothes, or in the nude,
where Ganges, Saraswati and the Yamuna combine
into the sacred sangam waters, bathers find divine.
It’s there where they hope to achieve desired moksha from
the cycle of both life and death, to this Kumbh Mela come.
It celebrates the victory, Lord Vishnu got the pot,
and on the large and bird-like creature, Garuda, flew off.

Badri Suwecele is a poet of Hindu India. 10,000 policemen are on patrol.

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The Beauty at the Ball
          by Red Was Iceblue

She stands, and looks into the light; gold, white and rose swirl round;
her bare and lovely back above the bustle of her gown.
Awaiting in anticipation at the whirling ball,
like as Natasha hoping for Andrei to make his call.
Her dress of blue and lavender, a billowing bowl blown,
formed out into a hemisphere, like as a grand, ribbed dome.
She seems so thin, her hair drawn back, amidst the purple mist,
as if she’s lost in violet, simply overlooked and missed.
She opens, like a flower, up-side-down, Prince Anatole
is in the wings, like painter Vasandhara Tolia.

Red Was Iceblue is a poet of Modernist, Postmodernist, and New Millennial painting.

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Deadly Nairobi Attack
          by Bacweris Udele

Survivor of the deadly 9-11 murder spree,
he, Jason Spindler, died this time in Kenya—Nairobi.
The CEO and Managing Director of I-DEV,
he was among the many who were killed by al-Shabaab.
He wanted to help people grow their businesses abroad;
but that was ended by armed men in Westlands neighbourhood.
More than a dozen others died, each with his life and loves;
but four black-clothed Islamic terrorists gave them a shove.
A fifth one detonated his bomb in the lobby of
the Dusit D2 Complex, restaurant and offices.

Bacweris Udele is a poet of central Africa.

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An Apuleian Passage
          by Air Weelbed Suc

When he has risen very high, up through the clouds, in fact,
and eagle-eyed, has passed above where rain and snow are flakked,
if not beyond the slashing lightning and the thunder’s roar,
he, at the ether’s edge and o’er the weather’s rooftop, soars.
He glides his jet from right to left and banks upon the shrouds;
the pilot gazes over everything he sees, and down,
the jet wings hovering, so far from any prey that roams,
there in the heavens, monitored by radar from below.
He scans, as well, the fields, mountains, cities, at a glance,
and then, caught in a slant, he dives nose-first, and gladly lands.

Air Weelbed Suc is a poet of flight. Here he is transforming a prose passage from Apuleius (c. 124- c. 170) the Elocutio Novella into a New Millennium tennos.

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A Moment at the Cliff
          by Claude I. S. Weber

The craggy, sunlit, lichen-covered, beige and rugged rocks
rise up above the dark-blue sea, no place for any docks.
A pirate, in his long, brown boots, has forced his captive there
to climb those sharp, forbidding, unforgiving steeps in air.

Each step is hard for forlorn captive who must make the trip.
He has no boots upon his feet. How can his hurt feet grip?
O, these are days of long ago; brutality is king;
there are no easy places to relax from hiking this.

What is the plan? How can the man with no boots on his feet
stand on that jagged, sea-slapped cliff and feel he’s complete?
Is Scylla lurking somewhere near, Charybdis off below?
Is this some ancient ritual of some time long ago?

The captive stretches out his foot to balance on the cliff.
The pirate stretches out his hand to give his prey a lift.
The Count of Monte Cristo turns to go. He cannot stay.
The World turns upon the power of another day.

Claude I. S. Weber is a poet of French literature and distant grottos.

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Downward Löwenheim-Skolem Theorem
          by Eulcidrew Base

The Downward Löwenheim-Skolem Theorem tells us that if
you’ve got some set of sentences, which has a model fit,
and the set’s either finite or countably infinite,
then its domain is countable, or finite, in finesse.

It is a bit surprising. Yet, the crux is that it is
that way because, within a tree, one still can make a list.
Therefore, it’s countable because it’s formed inductively,
with only a finite number of names each branch and limb.

The language of first-order predicate logic is fine
at classifying where you are within a finite mine;
but not so good when one attempts to do distinguishing
in infinitely large, uncountable numbers of things.

Euclidrew Base is a poet of math. Leopold Löwenheim (1878-1957) and Thoraf Skolem (1887-1963) were Modernist mathematicians who worked on mathematical logic.

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The Quiet Man
          by Subcia Weedler

He stood behind a coloured wheel spinning round
in red and orange, yellow, green, and purple, blue.
He wore sunglasses, looking like a spy. He frowned.
His skin and hair were dun, his pants, a gray-green hue.
He looked far off, off to the left. Across his chest
his arms were folded firmly, tight. What was his view?
He looked out, like an eagle on a crest, at rest.
He dropped his hands down to his hips, and took a step
backward. He placed his weight aright. Was this a test?
He turned his head around and stared, but not upset.
He paused where he was at, unstirred, unheard, unbound,
arrested momentarily, adept at depth.

Subcia Weedler is a poet of the internally distant and clandestine.

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On Wheeled Rails
          by Bruc “Diesel” Awe

I saw them boarding on the train; it was a horrid time;
surrounded by two world wars it hardly seemed sublime.
In fact, it seemed so terribly benighted, it appalled;
the wretchedness…was everywhere…one looked…the era galled.
One wondered how there even was a bit of sanity,
amidst the violence all round. Oh, humanity.
It was as if one had a heavy bonk upon the bean,
and started seeing double everywhere one looked between;
the world one had entered, cold as hell, and hard as nails,
announcing: All aboard! It’s time to go on wheeled rails.

Bruc “Diesel” Awe is a poet of transportation.

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The Twin Towers
          by Urbawel Cidese

I still remember vividly, as if it were
just some short time ago, those high Twin Towers, grand
against the gorgeous city, stalwart and secure.
They were so beautiful, upright above the land.
They were so sleek and tall, and fit so perfectly
beside the other buildings, life-filled, lofty and
pulsating. But, alas, o, such was not to be
for long; for vicious men had plotted their demise.
They longed to knock them down with wild insanity.
They longed to tear them from their heights with harsh surprise.
How long will I remember them, there at that perch,
forever shoved from morning’s rosy-coloured skies?

Urbawel Cidese is a poet of urban areas

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The Bridge
          by Dic Asburee Wel

How many dusks shall fall upon its shores,
with ferries passing under its strung lights
and buildings climbing high above its moors,
some disappearing in day’s darkest nights?

Its low, hard curve that spans the East River
follows the Earth, does not forsake our eyes.
Stone towers and steel cables deliver
a million vehicles across its rise.

We think, therefore, we are amidst greatness.
The multitudes move over its quaint dream
of surety, unsure what its fate is,
a thousand thousand watching its feint stream.

And here it harbors still, for ill or good,
the machinations of a nation’s will,
emotions ever spent on that which could
be in the future, free and rational.

Below, the subway trains take travelers
to points around the city’s era’s span.
Above, the elevated drone unravels,
the traffic moves, a honking caravan.

Down Wall Street past the gilded, girdered heights
that scrape the sky’s sleek blue-black back, unsettling
as glittering imprints on starry sites,
we fly upon time’s wind with metal wing.

Cloaked in inchoate chaos, there it stands
before God’s throne, minute and miniscule.
About Orion, beaded ceinture bands
and bright electric strands adorn the cool.

Here once the belted Mayakovsky stood,
composing syllable by syllable;
the bolted buildings of the neighborhood
surround a threshold taut and terrible.

The traffic lights continue time to skim
the surface of its firm unfractured path,
where Crane condensed the cosmic all: for him
and Moore, an actuality, a math.

Such figures still ascend in lucid glow
the windowed structures of that shadowed skull,
while all around the living come and go,
undubitable, inevitable.

Asleep, that mighty heart is beating still
that faces the Atlantic Ocean’s waves,
submerged in the infinite and the eternal,
alone on all that lives, what Jesus saves.

Dic Asburee Wel is a poet of New York City. The above poetic structure, a quadraginta quattuor, is a structure Dic Asburee Wel drew from the work of Hart Crane (1899-1932). Also mentioned in “The Bridge” are Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) and Marianne Moore (1887-1972).

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On the American Legislature: Lines Composed After Claudianus
          Caud Sewer Bile

Do I dare sing, o, Muse, of these great, august ruling groups,
these fine assemblies known throughout the World’s whirling pools?
With no renown, am I not now forbidden to do it?
and greater than I am, don’t they deserve a wit, to wit?
for how disgraceful it would be to dare diminish them.
O, does the fighting soldier now possess a poet’s phlegm?
Behold the flower of the US legislature lives
in majesty, the House and Senate representatives.

The whole Earth is my audience; my song shall cross its span;
though who will know my love’s constrained by Jupiter, alas.
When He would know the great extent America extends,
he sent two eagles out, one from the east, one from the west.
In Kansas in the heavens over corn, those eagles met;
however, eagles are not needed by our President.
It’s these assemblies that give us a measure of the World,
ubiquitous and brilliant, see them in the Universe.

Caud Sewer Bile is a poet of the US government and Washington DC.