Zhao Zhenkai
          by Lu “Reed ABCs” Wei

He fell into the bay, down by that northern isle’s coast,
and floated out of China on a boat, a lonely boast.
The waves rolled over him as he continued on his way,
the distances grew larger as each night turned in…to…day.
He pressed on through the tides and passed through light that was so dim.
He paused beside the edge of sky that covered over him.
He dropped into the dreams of Dao, beyond the Red Guard Dog,
that barked and barked and barked and barked, until he drowned in fog.
The mists of time have left him right upon the cold seashore,
and this is where he will remain until forevermore.

 

Lu “Reed ABCs” Wei is a poet of China. Among his contemporaries, the poet he is most attuned to is Bei Dao.

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The Third Man
          by Cawb Edius Reel

The Third Man, a noir Trümmerfilm, cast by director Reed,
was written by the noted English novel-writer Greene,
and starred Welles, Cotton, Valli, Howard, Ponto, Breuer, Deutsch,
along with Halbik, Chesnakov, Lee, Hyde-White and Bleibtreu.
The film takes place in Post-World-War Vienna’s war debris,
expressionist, Dutch-angle-shot cinematography.
The zither player Karas played its easy score and theme,
its soundtrack topping charts with comic incongruity.
The movie caught the cynical, exhausted atmosphere
of devastated, Cold-War Europe filled with angst and fear.

 

Cawb Edius Reel is a poet of film, its shadows and its sheens. Reel has always thought Welles’ main contribution to “The Third Man” was his absence, and remains unimpressed with Welles’ line, “You know what the fellow said—in Italy for thirty years, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” I would point out that the great Swiss mathematicians, Euler and the Benoullis, easily compete with Michelangelo and Da Vinci, in their visions, and as such leave Welles with the cuckoo clocks.

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MC-130 Combat Talon Transport Aircraft Drop
          by Ed “Bear” C. U. Lewis

The US forces dropped a GBU-43 upon
an ISIS tunnel complex used in east Afghanistan.
It was the first time that the weapon had been utilized,
more than ten tons of TNT, its blast was realized.
The MOAB (Massive Ordnance Air Blast) bomb, though smaller than
the four-times stronger Russian thermobaric bomb, still can
deliver on plus-ninety murderers in Nangarhar,
and rage against the black-flag death-promoters waging war.
The Mother of All Bombs, though not the Father of All Bombs,
can still destroy a group that butchers children, dads and moms.

 

Ed “Bear” C. U. Lewis is a taciturn poet of military equipment. One of his favourite autobiographers is W. T. Sherman, for his decisiveness, “If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve…” and for his sobriety, “I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot, nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded, who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.”

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I Hear America
          by Usa W. Celebride

I hear America now howling, diverse yawps I hear,
those of protesters, chanting, those policing, loud and clear,
the politicians arguing about creeds and beliefs,
the media engaged in controversy, rage and grief,
the rock stars and the rappers, actors on the movie screen,
the gangs of violence, those dealing drugs and the obscene,
truck drivers, autos, buses, RVs, roaring down our roads,
the TV advertisers, louder than their episodes,
the bombers and the murderers destroying people lives,
and people singing karaoke in carousing dives.

 

Usa W. Celebride is a poet of America. He enjoys the expansive energy and dynamism of Walt Whitman.