Newsreel:
The shortages of baby formula are worsening,
especially, it seems, among low-income families.
~~~
Haiku
by “Wired Clues” Abe
Learning how to eat,
the baby samples ice cream.
It’s cold to the tongue.
“Wired Clues” Abe is a poet using Japanese forms united with technology, who although he appreciates the Gendai movement and New Rising Haiku, very much admires traditional haiku.
~~~
Newsreel:
The Peo-ple’s-Li-ber-a-tion-Ar-my—never-frees-a-one—
sent thirty warplanes into Taiwan’s air defensive zone.
~~~
The Cost as of June 1, 2022
by Radice Lebewsu
The cost: 100,000 casualties, the maimed and dead,
some 7,000,000 refugees, 6,000,000 more displaced,
horrific damage to the infrastructure of Ukraine,
and all in only 90 days, in only 90 days.
Radice Lebewsu is a poet of Ukraine.
~~~
Newsreel:
The European Union banned by sea its Russian oil,
but Hungary and sev’ral other nations were a foil;
and as the EU talked, the Russian military stalked
the Donbas region. Troops, artillery and rockets launch.
~~~
A Note on Theophrastus’ Gems
by Erisbawdle Cue
Ah, here the pink Dianthus grows beneath the hedges’ edge,
one thinks of the divinity of Theophrastus gems,
which, Aristotle thought so godly, but which rather seem
more cribbed and ordinary than what inspiration deems.
For him, good style was appropriate, ornate and clear,
but most importantly grammatic’lly correct, austere,
as Arthur Hort has pointed out, “elliptical…compressed”,
and most of what we have of his is lecture notes expressed.
Erisbawdle Cue is a poet of philosophy. Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) was the teacher and cohort of Theophrastus (c. 372 BC – c. 287 BC), a noted Greek Peripatetic philosopher whom Linnaeus called the “Father of Botany”. Arthur F. Hort (1864-1935) was a noted British botanist and translator of Greek and Latin texts.
~~~
Da Vinci Portrait
by Buceli da Werse
Her eyes on the horizon, soft, brown, look upon
the viewer from wherever he or she may be,
her head to chest, a golden section finely drawn
to match the half-length portraiture of the lady
who sits upon an armchair near a parapet,
her right hand resting on her left arm. The hazy
background’s warm, earth tones hovering around her breast
and cooling to the blues and greens and white around
her head, her long hair falling in an airy net.
What is there not in Mona Lisa to astound?
La Gioconda’s smile? the subtly ranging tones?
the human frame’s perfectibility unbound?
Buceli da Werse is a poet of Renaissance painting. Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was one of the major painters and sculptors of the Classical period. Insured for $100,000,000 in 1962, translating to over $600,000,000 in 2022, “Mona Lisa” is the highest insured painting in the World.
~~~
Newsreel:
The “Mona Lisa” at the Louvre behind protective glass
was being looked at by a man, while sitting on his ass.
Disguised as an old woman in a wheelchair assist,
he was instead a mad cake-throwing climate activist.
~~~
The Cesare Burali-Forti Paradox
by Euclidrew Base
Burali-Forti was born in Arezzo, Italy,
on August 13, 1861, Cesare—sì.
He was assistant to Peano in Torino’s arms
in the mid 1890s—within mathematics charms.
He found a theorem Bertrand Russell later realized
had contradicted a result that Cantor analyzed,
that is, “the set of ordinals” is contradictory
in its construction, showing thusly an antinomy.
The paradox is side-stepped in NF and ZFC
by not allowing constructs an improper property.
Euclidrew Base is a poet of mathematics. German mathematician Georg Cantor (1845-1918), Italian mathematicians Giuseppe Peano (1858-1932) and Cesare Burali-Forti (1861-1931), and British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) were noted logicians in the history of mathematics. ZFC is German Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory and NF is American Quine’s “New Foundations”. Arezzo is a Tuscan city of about 100,000 and Torino is a Piedmont city, whose metro has a population of around 2,200,000.
~~~
Erich Heller (1911-1990)
by Uwe Carl Diebes
His mind was disinherited but not inferior.
He took the artist’s journey into the interior.
Although predominance of the prosaic bothered him,
he used prose to find solace in the literary realm.
He lobbied for the preservation of ideal thought,
yet that’s not what his anecdata of the really ever wrought.
He—Erich Heller—analyzed the writers that he liked,
from Goethe to those living during th’ homicidal reich,
including Hölderlin and Nietzche, Rilke, Mann and Kraus,
as well as Hegel, Kafka, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Kleist.
Uwe Carl Diebes is a poet of Germany. Erich Heller (1911-1990) was a PostModern British essayist, focused on critical studies of German-language philosophy and literature.
~~~
Hamlet Act I: Scene I
by Walude Scabere
Who is there? What spirit hangs over this
dark, lonely stage? It’s after twelve o’clock.
Horatio and Marcellus meet with
Bernardo. It seems a ghost does stalk
all three at this dread hour. The whole thing
is so far-fetched it’s unbelievable.
Three men in time of war observe a ghost,
and to them it appears—a former king.
It defies sense. It’s inconceivable.
And yet they speak as though it were their host,
some royal figure bothering their minds,
as if that regal form contained the real.
Perhaps because too kind they see such kinds
of things, are fooled by a desired ideal
too easily? Whatever the case be,
when the cock crows, th’ illusion speeds away,
and morning, in a streaming scarlet robe,
undoes the night wherein they were pacing,
and their tomorrow fades into today,
as irretrievable as sun’s bright strobe.
Walude Scabere is a poet intrigued by the writing of the Elizabethan poetic dramatist William Shakespeare (1564-1616).
~~~
The Meuse-Argonne Memorial
by War di Belecuse
Atop Blanc Mont one finds a monument
that commemorates both American
and French troops that fought in the Meuse-Argonne
Sector in October, 1918.
Set in a grove of green trees, a gold-white
rectangular prism rises above them,
itself upon a square approached by stairs;
the surrounding fields, from the tower’s height,
seeming to harmonize with Harmon’s gem,
this firm, gleaming stone cataract that tears
the fabric of eternity with its
hard memory of so many hard deaths,
(each less known than th’ death at sea of Percy
Shelley), the crushing of so many breaths,
granted so little memory, time, or mercy.
Alvin Cullum York
by War di Belecuse
Born in Pall Mall, Tennessee, in 1887,
Alvin Cullum York, popularly known as Sergeant York,
joined the American Army in 1917
after twice refused conscientious objector status.
In October 1918 in th’ Meuse-Argonnes Sector,
his platoon came up against some German machine gunners.
With seven men, he fearlessly charged the German machine gunners,
killing twenty-five, capturing one-hundred-thirty-two
and taking thirty-five machine guns. He was promoted
to Sergeant York upon his leaving th’ Meuse-Argonnes Sector.
This Christian man from Tennessee, who didn’t want to go
to war, became the name associated with
Pershing’s phrase “the greatest civilian soldier of the war.”
So fame plays tricks on us all, including him from Pall Mall.
The Meuse-Argonne Offensive during World War I was fought from September 26, 1918, until November 11, 1918 (Armistice Day), involving 1,200,000 American and French soldiers, along with a small contingent of Thai personnel. Alvin York (1877-1964) was a highly decorated soldier of World War I.
~~~
Memorial Day Morning
by War di Belecuse
Anxieties of the peignoir upon a cloudy morn,
Memorial Day musings at the patio unborne,
strawberry yogurt and a cup of coffee, creamy froth,
on the recliner in the fresh, brisk wind, engaged in thought.
Beyond the white-outlined-gray clouds, shines the translucent Sun;
its slanting rays descend to Earth, miraculous, undone,
like brilliant manna from the Heavens opening the mind
to the transcendent essence of the awesome, neatly lined.
The crisp and juicy watermelon is the foreground of
red cardinals, flycatchers, swallows and the mourning dove;
a squirrel rushes past the oaks, the veteran recalls
escape from Germany and rising to the Überall.
War di Belecuse is a poet of veterans.
~~~
Newsreel:
The US CyberSec and Infrastructure Agency
warned that Dominion votes are hackable on their machines.
The sixteen states that use them could be messed with easily,
and need to be aware this year of vuln’rabilities.
~~~
The New River Gorge Bridge
by Alec Subre Wide
Finished in 1977,
at 876 feet high,
the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia,
spans spectacularly against the sky,
at a length of 3030 feet,
a $37,000,000 cost,
and made with Cor-ten steel, which, when complete,
though rust-like in its appearance, doesn’t
need painting. Though 88,000,000 pounds
in weight, it is a gorgeous work of art
that from wooded hill to wooded hill bounds
majestic’lly, a tribute to the heart
and spirit of the laborers who built
it, which only eternity will tilt.
Alec Subre Wide is a poet of bridges.
~~~
Newsreel:
The bridge above Lvzhijiang, the Green-Juice-River V,
the World’s longest single tower, spans a steep ravine.
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