Haiku
          by Ibe Ware Desu, LC

Around the full moon,
circles a thin corona.
It is cold in space.

Ibe Ware Desu, LC, is a haiku poet, lieutenant commander of the starship Webelca Iduser.

~~~

Orion
          by I. E. Sbace Weruld

Orion rises boldly in the evening sky,
where he was placed, at death, millennia ago,
His belt, the straight short line of three bright stars on high
is hung about his waist, a distance down below,
his shoulders, one of them, the red star Betelgeuse.
Beneath it shines the blue-white Rigel, his boot’s toe.
A line of fainter stars suspending, none called Bruce,
reveal his dagger. Sirius, his dog, pursues,
as he, in turn, goes after the Pleadic crew,
that is, according to but one of many views.
Both he and they were changed to constellations by
the gods who make all those they mark to pay their dues.

I. E. Sbace Weruld is a poet of the Universe. The bright, ruddy supergiant Betelgeuse, normally in the top ten brightest stars in the night sky, has been becoming fainter since October 2019, and scientists are wondering if Betelgeuse may be approaching a supernova explosion. This poem is a bilding.

~~~

Haiku
          by “Clear Dew” Ibuse

The cicadas who
drink clear dew do not envy
beetles who eat dung.

“Clear Dew” Ibuse is a poet of haiku.

~~~

Australian Fires
          by Walibee Scrude

As thousands headed to the beaches, it was not to swim,
but flee the fires raging, to protect both life and limb.
At least ten dead, and blazes turning blue skies black and red.
Australian coastal towns across the east were filled with dread.
In Millacoota, in Victoria, bush fires came;
the choking dust and smoking embers flared from frenzied flame.
Unfortunately cooling temp’ratures wrought stronger winds,
the firestorm tornados swarmed, enraged in blaze and din.
Yet north, the Sydney fireworks went forth without delay,
on New Year’s Day above the Harbour Bridge in grand display.

Walibee Scrude is a poet of the land down under. Millacoota has a population of about 1,000, but in the tourist seasons, numbers swell to thousands more.

~~~

Killing Zac Ephron
          by Cawb Edius Reel

While filming his adventure series “Killing Zac Ephron”,
in Papua New Guinea, he contracted—packed it on—
a bad bacterial infection, o, life threatening,
perhaps a form of typhoid, that had knocked him down a week
He’d been rushed off to Brisbane hospitals to stabilize,
and stayed at them until he’d fully been reabilized.
The doctors let him travel home back to the USA
on Christmas Eve; by then the crud had fin’lly gone away.
While filming twenty-one days off the grid in jungles dense,
one wonders if he ever thought it could get this intense.

Cawb Edius Reel is a poet of film and video. Beau Lecsi Werd notes the neologism reabilized suggest being made able again. Australian city Brisbane has population of about 2 ½ million.

~~~

Indonesia Rejects China’s Claims
          by Budi Eas Celewi

Now Indonesia is the latest to reject the claim
of China over all the China Sea with its new name.
Its Deputy of Maritime Affairs has pointedly
shown its own map, which it now shows is called Natuna Sea.
For two days Indonesia has protested a new trip
that recently was taken by a Chinese coastguard ship,
that traveled through Natuna Sea—it was perceptible.
The Indonesians said that it was unacceptable.
It seems that China is a neighbor all would like to have
as long as it keeps back from altering their very maps.

Budi Eas Celewi is a poet of Indonesia.

~~~

He Felt Like He Had Reached the Sky
          by Sri Wele Cebuda

He got into the lotus pose upon the dark brown couch,
beside the white plantation shutters closed upon the clouds.
He placed his hand upon the sofa’s top and listened to
sweet messages of deity and piety so true.

He bent his knees and spread his legs out on the cushion’s poof.
He raised his torso toward the ceiling underneath the roof.
He threw his head back, closed his eyes, and dreamed of lovely joys.
He strove to reach tranquility, a base of peaceful poise.

His mantra OM, he felt at home, agreeable gray walls.
O, Lord, he felt the presence of love’s universal laws.
He arched his back, he opened up his inner being’s eye,
and though he was inside he felt like he had reached the sky.

 

On a Universal Barge
          by Sri Wele Cebuda

He loved to do his yoga moves, he loved the lotus pose.
It put him in a happy place; it calmed his tense nerves so.
O, even in a poorly-lit room’s corner niche he could
get in the lotus pose and feel wonderful and good.
He opened up his soul to focus all around him there.
He steadied his whole being, feeling settled and aware.
He raised his head, he raised his shoulders, raised his torso too.
He felt like he was rising to a brand new cosmic view.
O, Lord, he felt connected to a cosmic kismet’s charge,
an activated being on a universal barge.

Sri Wele Cebuda is a poet who focuses on the lotus position and other yoga spots.

~~~

At the 40th-Day Memorial in Karaj, December 26, 2019
          by Darius Belewec

December 26th, the 40th day it began,
that is, the recent protests that took place across Iran,
became a day of grief for those whose life-blood had been spilled,
including Pouya Bahktiari, in Karaj there killed.
A crowd at Behesht’e Sakineh cemetery formed.
Around his gravesite hundreds came. The IRGC swarmed.
Their forces quickly intervened, assaulting people there.
Some called the Ayatollah Khamenei a murderer.
The mourners at the sad memorial were taken in,
arrested for remembering the agony and pain.

Darius Belewec is a poet of Iran.

~~~

Just Another Day
          by Cid Wa’eeb el Sur

Some 107-mm rockets hit a base
near Kirkuk in Iraq on Friday, deadly was that place.
One US cóntractor was killed and others wounded there,
Iraqis and Americans assaulted via air.
And so five sites of the Hesbollah rocket-shooters were
attacked with strikes in west Iraq and east in Syria.
So then militia personnel attacked the embassy
of the United States in Baghdad, upset by the spree.
But this was not Benghazi; the marines were sent to help.
It’s just another day in Baghdad’s own on-going hell.

Cid Wa’eeb el Sur is a poet Iraq and West Asia.

~~~

Katedrála by František Kupka, 1912-1913
          by Red Was Iceblue

The beautiful blue hues between the whites and darks,
in thin, long rhombuses and parallelograms,
are touched in drops of red, their crystal spires stark,
triangles, clear and splotched, like airy telegrams.
Christ’s silent blood remains, almost an afterthought,
before the coming onslaught weighed in kilograms:
the warmer colours sink below—are not that hot—
the oranges, the browns, the yellows—World War I.
It hasn’t happened yet. How could it be forgot?
Prismatic and refracted light: Where is the Son
of Man? the Moon? What light through yonder window harks?
It is a beast that frantic Kupka sees undone
[and Franz Marc had to face].

 

Guernica
          by Red Was Iceblue

Guernica is a town in northern Spain—the Basque—
a bastion of Republican resistance, when
‘t was taken to task by German warplanes and tactics,
and obliterated in 1937.
Pablo Picasso put that in a picture’s frame—
its pain in paint, in gray and black and white back then.
Above, a sun-lit light bulb’s eye and lantern’s flame
reveal a sweep of severed agony and flesh,
a bull, a horse, the women, men, and babe—all maimed,
or dead, in desperation, struggling for breath
to ask for…why, why, why, the bombing and the acts
of horror and destruction—this Gethsemane.

Red Was Iceblue is a poet of Modernist painting. Czech painter František Kupka (1871=1957) and Spanish painter Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) were Modernist artists. This week a Picasso painting “Bust of a Woman” values at £20,000,000 was slashed or torn at the Tate Museum by 20-year old Shakeel Massey. The previous two poems are bildings.

~~~

Vasco da Gama Bridge
          by Luis de Cawebre

Vasco da Gama Bridge, Lisboa, is ten miles long.
It took three years to make it century-proof and so strong.
It is expected that the bridge will carry traffic for
at least one hundred years or so, and maybe even more.
Designed so to withstand 155-mile-per-hour blasts,
and earthquakes 4 times stronger than Lisboa’s in the past.
It opened up in 1998 to celebrate
500 anniversary of the important date
when the discoverer da Gama managed in his ship
the martime route from West Europe to reach India.

Luis de Cawebre is a poet of Portugal.

~~~

The Four Hills Tournament
          by Rudi E. Welec, “Abs”

The Four Hills Tournament begins this week at German sites,
at Oberstdorf and Garmish-Partenkirchen, crisp delights.
The annu’l tourney wraps up early January in
the lovely little settled city, Innsbruck, Austria.
The skiers slide down white-blue slopes to show their mastery
of flying down these hills, as fast as they are able to.
Completed in 2003, Innsbruck’s most recent slope,
designed by Zaha Hadid, climbs up sinuous with hope,
where skiers leap up through the sky above the city’s hues,
which they can see amazingly, so beautiful its views.

 

Exercising Abs
          by Rudi E. Welec, “Abs”

He lay upon the flat, gray cushion, exercising abs,
that neat, clean-shaven, short-haired dude, uplifting legs and ass.
His thighs were shoved back on his stomach, aching when they met;
but he knew that, by doing this, that he could toughen them.
He kept it up—this workout’s length—as back and forth he went.
Though it was hard, he held on tight. O, he would be content.
His bony knees and flopping feet kept high up in the air,
as he continued through his drill, in bracing strength to bear.
He stared up at that rising plat that towered overhead.
He crunched, he scrunched, as on he punched his way through drear and dread.

Rudi E. Welec is a poet of sport. Oberstdorf, Germany, is a city of about 10,000, Garmish-Partenkirchen, Germany, about 25,000, and Innsbruck, Austria, about 125,000. Zaha Hadid (1950-2016) was a British-Iraqi architect.

~~~

The Replica of David
          by Alberdi Ucwese

I saw him standing at the David statue replica;
Australian David Redpath stood below its pedestal,
that famous, classic sculpture made by Michelangelo,
that Renaissance’s marble cultural evangelist.
That World traveler in aqua tee-shirt and gray jeans
had paused to have his picture taken at that tourist scene.
His hands were in his pockets, standing near the hedge-filled bins.
He looked relaxed and satisfied beside the edge of spin.
He stood beside that famous masterpiece of Italy,
more peaceful than most places found now in the Middle East.

Alberdi Ucwese is a poet of Italian art. Michelangelo (1475-1564) was an Italian classical painter, sculptor and poet.

~~~

Cauchy
          by Euclidrew Base

Cauchy, like his contemporary Honoré Balzac
had a capacity for an immense amount of work,
a Catholic, a royalist, and a legitimist,
with a deep understanding of math in his inner ess.
His contributions elsewhere were productive just as well;
light theory and mechanics were transformed beneath his spell.
It’s said that he disturbed Laplace’s poised anatomy,
when he first read on series at the French Academy,
who had to rush right home to check his Mécanique céleste,
and found there-then no errors were committed in his test!

Euclidrew Base is a poet of mathematics and mathematicians. Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was French novelist. Pierre Simon Laplace (1749-1827) was a French mathematician, like Augustin-Louis Cauchy (1789-1857). According to Beau Lecsi Werd, the neologism ess, meaning being and essence, first appeared in a poem “The Silver S”; also, there-then is an anglicized neologism of space-time, cued from a poem by E. E. Cummings.

~~~

Nasty Jake
          by Carb Deliseuwe

O, nasty Jake, amassing cake, that he so loved to bake,
would take it from a warmed-up oven, and then he’d partake.
He’d put the sugar icing on and frost it with a spoon.
He’d swirl designs in curving lines, as bright as any moon.
O, nasty Jake knew how to make a fancy-ass dessert,
a pièce de résistance, o, a poncey-like sweet tart.
And then, like tough Jack Horner in a corner, he would eat;
he’d stuff his mouth with tasty titbits. O, he loved a treat.
O, nasty Jake, was quite a rake. For Goodness’ sake it’s true.
Beware if he gets very near to anybody new…
or anyone like You.

Carb Deliseuwe is a poet of food,

At a Grassy Meadow Near a Grove
          by Ileac Burweeds

It was a sunny say. He got into his car and drove
out to the country and a grassy meadow near a grove.
He parked his car, and near its tires, got down on the grass,
and thought that he might pass some time out in the pasture—yes.
He got into the lotus pose, his black boot straps unwrapped.
He spread his legs out wide and flat, his mind became enrapt.
He tapped into the cosmic energy that came to him.
he felt like he was on a roll. He felt alive with vim.
He placed his right hand near his right knee, stuck his tongue out far;
it was as if he could taste air, right there beside his car.

Ileac Burweeds is a poet of nature’s settings.

~~~

The Time
          by “Wild” E. S. Bucaree

The time goes by so fast. Like a stagecoach across
America, it passes out of history
before you have a chance to take a ride. You toss
the reins in sunlight, beating, pounding, blistering,
and yelling “Giddyap!” you get the speed you want,
but then it’s over. Suddenly the mystery
is back at your back. And it’s not the time you thought;
it’s some other time, and as elusive, o, as e’er.
Then, like ghost riders in the sky, there at your haunt,
while you are getting up, they’re rising in the air.
You try your damnedest best to stop, to take a pause;
but it is hopeless, o, it keeps on going…everywhere.

“Wild” E. S. Bucaree is a poet of the Southwest, USA. The heyday of the stagecoach was the 1860s.

~~~

The Scenic View
          by Slade U. W. Bierce

Time present and time past are both perhaps in future time,
he thought while he was looking out across the vast sublime.
He had come outside to the garden at the noon of day.
The Sun was shining over all, its beauty on display.
He saw the distant mountains lit up by the solar flame.
He stood up tall. He placed his hand atop the trellis frame.
The climbing leaves rose to the top where one red flower bloomed.
The whole hilltop and open vale were bathed in sheer illume.
The gorgeous gorge, its orange forge, here at that altitude.
He could not help but be inspired, in sweet beatitude.
Time present is so beautiful, though scrunched up be its view.
He stood up tall, he gazed in awe, and saw that it was good.

Slade U. W. Bierce is a poet of the West.

~~~

Life
          by Wusril Edeceba

Life is mainly froth and bubble;
two things stand, like stone—
kindness in another’s trouble;
courage in your own.

Wusril Edeceba is a poet of epigrams.