Wise Words with Bruce Wise

Haiku
          by “Clear Dew” Ibuse

The winds are blowing
the falling red-oak leaves
to Oklahoma.

December 7, 2022
          by “Clear Dew” Ibuse

The full, hard Cold Moon,
in lunar occultation,
eclipsed ice-capped Mars.

Haiku
          by “Wired Clues” Abe

The US soldier
loitered on the sacred ground
of Okinawa.

Haiku
          by “Wired Clues” Abe

American dad
and Japanese mother, o,
a blazing sunset.

“Wired Clues” Abe is a haiku writer. The above two haiku lean heavily on words of contemporary Japanese scholar, critic and poet Hasegawa Kai. The present mayor of Okinawa, Denny Tamaki, was born to an American father and a Japanese mother, though the above haiku is not a reference to him. There are currently thirty-one US military installations on the island of Okinawa, which has a population of around 1,400,000.

~~~

Whatcheeria
          by Bud “Weasel” Rice
          “…what I see is a limestone landscape.”
              —W. H. Auden, “In Praise of Limestone”

Whatcheeria, a tetrapod and apex preditor
lived an amphibious lifestyle, linked to the pederpes.
Its fossils have been found nearby to Delta, Iowa—
three-hundred-forty-million years ago—that vile cuss.
It grew two meters long, with pointy snout, and skull quite deep,
a cleithrum on its scapula, on palate, rows of teeth.
What cheer that ancient, extinct genus could have ever brought
is hard to fathom in the limestone layers of its plot,
that isolated brackish watery environment,
wherein it lived year after year, its life entire spent.

Bud “Weasel” Rice is a poet about Animalia.

~~~

In Contemplation of a Turning Wheel
          by Sri Wele Cebuda

Upon the light grey couch, he got into the lotus pose.
He lifted up his head and shoulders, as his spine uprose.
O, it was just…another chance…to meditate upon
the World around him, as he sat there in the early dawn.
He spread his legs out to each side; the sunlight filtered in
between the slats near where he sat; it spilt upon his chin.
He felt chagrin, but he could grin and bear it nonetheless,
if this would bring him but a bit of luscious happiness.
The furniture inside was basic’lly rectangular;
most all was silver, grey, or drab, o, hardly spangular.
Behind him the refrigerator shone in stainless steel,
and yet he sat in contemplation of a turning wheel.

Sri Wele Cebuda is a poet of mediation.

~~~

From Russia With Slova
          by Alecsei Burdew

He was second at Muranovo’s manse—
Yevgeny Baratynsky, he who took
for his muse, not one swept up in the dance,
but one who quietly picked up a book,
and when he passed away in Naples, left
it at the door, the few still there bereft.

Later, a son of Fyodor Tyutchev came
to Muranovo and its lime tree lane,
before his father had achieved much fame,
and gathered artifacts with the May rain:
capricious Hebe emptying a cup
that had by heaven’s thunder been filled up.

We now hear rumors of a fire’s fierce start,
by lightning’s strike or arson’s vicious care,
that has burned out the old museum’s heart,
at least some of the junk collected there,
which had endured the ravages of time
and revolution’s hard and bitter crime.

Yet what remains? a few selected words,
restrained and concentrated in the main,
as dear bought as contemporary swords,
like Lermontov and Pushkin dying vain.
We will not see their like again—it’s true.
But do we want to? There are still a few.

After Pyotr Ufimtsev
          by Alecsei Burdew

All I needed to do was to bypass
the radar waves trying to locate me
for a crime I didn’t do. But, alas,
it wasn’t going to be that easy.
I needed flat surfaces and sharp angles
to elude my pursuers. They wanted
to nail me, and curved surfaces would give
me away in a heart-beat. Fate strangles.
I had to escape that arching, vaunted,
high-flying world, if I wanted to live.
I had to go undercover, and fast.
The first thing I did was cover myself
with radar-absorbant paint that would last.
To get through, I’d also need all the stealth
technology I could get my hands on.
I had to throw off aerodynamics
and reduce the exposure of my face.
At the same time I had to put pads on,
not perpendicular hitting hammocks,
but a broken up, irregular space;
since the less sides the better, though that makes
flying harder. There are always trade-offs.
I did and will do whatever it takes
to succeed in this charged field of air crafts.

Alecsei Burdeew is a poet of Russia. Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837) Yevgeny Baratynsky (1800-1844), Fyodor Tyutchev (1803-1873) and Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841) were noteworthy Russian Romantic poets. Pyotr Ufimtsev (1931- ) is a noted contemporary PostModernist Russian physicist and mathematician who opened the field of stealth technology in the 1960s.

~~~

Newsreel
In Palmdale, California, the B-21 regaled,
America’s new nuclear stealth bomber was unveiled.

Palmdale, in southern California, is a city of approximately 170,000.

~~~

Newsreel:
Three Russian airfields have been hit by drone strikes from Ukraine,
at Engels-2, Khalino Base in Kursk, and Ryazan.

~~~

The Hard Core Ukrainian
          by Radice Lebewsu

Although he was at war, and life was hanging by a thread,
it didn’t stop him exercising, he was not yet dead.
He went down to his make-shift gym. He held the barbell tight.
He lifted it time and again with all his muscle might.
His head was reddish, underneath that shiny silver bar.
He wondered if it ever would be over—this hard war.
He held on; he was not content; but he would not give up;
as long as there was any hope, he’d pump and pump and pump.
And then he rose up from his bench, to face the wretched hate,
that kept on stabbing him and his. O, God, there at the gate.

Radice Lebewsu is a poet of Ukraine.

~~~

Newsreel:
In the vicinity of Bakhmut, on December 3rd,
Ukraine’s Armed Forces downed a Russian Su-34.

~~~

In Goblin Mode
          by Beau Lecsi Werd

He kicked back on his brown recliner in his study ell,
upholstered in a breathable, aloft, soft leather gel.
In goblin mode, he rode its comfort, like a Viking lord,
who watched the panoramic scenes surround his being bored.
He felt like as a dork, an orc uncorked, a sloven Slav,
a self-indulgent, unapologetic, sloppy Fauve.
But though he looked, like as a sloth, in his disheveled way,
there was a purpose to his stretching out a wrenching ache.
No, not a charlie horse. Was it a herniated disk
with some part pushing through a tear within the annulus?

Beau Lecsi Werd is a poet of language.

~~~

That Heart-felt Hymn
          by Ewald E. Eisbruc

The “Passion Chorale,” composed by Hans Leo Hassler, was later harmonized by Johann Sebastian Bach, and used decisively in his Saint Matthew’s Passion, words linked to it were ascribed to Bernard of Clairvaux, and then translated into German by Paul Gerhardt from the Latin text, Salve caput cruentatum, then later into English by James Alexander into “O Sacred Head Now Wounded,” that heart-felt hymn.

Of Coffee
          by Ewald E. Eisbruc

Coffee was popular in Leibzig, Germany, in th’ early decades of the 18th century, when Picander in humorous, satiric talk, wrote a libretto liked by coffee-drinking Bach, who made a percolating cantata guffaw, in form like an Italian opera buffa.

Ewald E. Eisbruc is a critic of German music. In the above prose poems are German Composer Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612), German Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), co-founder of the Knights Templars, Burgundian Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), German hymnist Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676), Romantic American translator James Alexander (1804-1859), and German poet Christian Picander (1700-1764).

~~~

Newsreel:
The FBI, the CIA, White House and Pentagon,
were all atwitter at the bitter winter coming on.

~~~

His Was an Age
          by Caud Sewer Bile
          “Le temple enseveli divulgue par la bouche
          Sépulchre d’égout bavant boue et rubis
          Abominablement quelque idole Anubis
          Tout le museau flambé comme un aboi farouche…”
              —Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898), “Le tombeau de Charles Baudelaire”

Paradoxograher Palaephatus was th’ author’s name,
apparently a pseudonym of unknown ancient fame,
attached to On Incredible Things that he wrote about,
absurdities, unlikely and untrue, that he did doubt.
His was an age, like ours, crammed up with flaky fakery,
like MSM, jam-packed with quakery and rakery,
so-called authorities in stocks and universities,
slaves to goolog monopolies and multiversities,
where strange conspiracists sometimes seem far more honest than
the White House, FBI, and CIA, etc.

Caud Sewer Bile is a poet of Gog, Magog, and the Bog. Palaephatus was a Greek writer (c. 4th Century BC).

~~~

Hollywood’s Black List
          by Cawb Edius Reel

In tweets, it seems the DNC pushed Twitter censoring
of Hunter Biden’s laptop, actor James Wood’s mentioning.

Cawb Edius Reel is a poet of the filmy.

~~~

Wind Farms
          by Sea Curlew Bide
          “Wind turbines have bird-kill quotas.”
              —E. Birdcaws Eule

A recent peer-reviewed report has indicated that
wind farms off of the North Sea have a negative impact.
Wind wakes affect marine life in some ways substantially,
by lowering oxygenation in the nearby sea,
increasing carbon in the sediment near turbine poles,
producing a cascade effect upon the food-chain rolls,
reducing sea bird populations in the area,
and after twenty years of service leave a garbage heap.
Where will they put them all, for this supposed free energy,
which has a cost that has not been explored extensively?

Sea Curlew Bide is a poet of sea life. The authors of the study in Communications Earth & Environment were NewMillennial environmentalists Ute Daewel, Naveed Akhtar, Niels Christiansen, and Corinn Schrum. Wind power makes up 8.4% of America’s electricity generation (in Iowa and Kansas over 50%). The top ten wind-turbine, energy-producing states, predominantly in the center of the country, are:

According to A. Manville, US Fish and Wildlife Service, American Bird Conservancy, approximately 1,000,000 birds are killed annually by wind turbines, 5,000,000 by communication towers, 60,000,000 by automobiles, 67,000,000 by pesticides, 100,000,000 from buildings, and 365,000,000, from cats.

~~~

Newsreel:
On zombie streets in the Northeast of Philadelphia,
the sedative “tranq”, xylazine, is mixed with fentanyl.

~~~

Mad Hatter Ways
          by Des Wercebauli

He sat before a bowl of fruit upon the table top.
He longed to cool off from his work, but could he ever stop?
He seemed to take it home with him, o, e’en on Saturdays.
He felt like he was plagued with madness and Mad Hatter ways.
When all he wanted to do was to meditate and rest,
why did he have to be filled up with extra pep and zest?
Beside him the white door was closed, and, turned away, he looked;
but still he sat there not at peace, like as his time was booked.
O, please, he cried out to the satyr that he could not see,
leave me alone when I am home here with my misery.

The Bellevue Interview
          by Des Wercebauli

He’d come in to th’ Art Deco building, pausing for a spell.
Dynamic rails and beam tails in that crisp-lined aura ell.
His hair was silver, like the killer seat on which he sat.
He stretched his legs out to each side for comfort, apt and pat.
His suit was neat and tight. Was it a pale aqua blue?
It seemed like as he sat there waiting for an interview.
One saw some trepidation on his face. Was he unsure?
Would he get this job, or not, in that sterile atmosphere?
Some guy came up in grey jeans offering a hand to shake.
Would he get this position, or was it another ache?

Des Wercebauli is a poet of work. The mad Hatter is a character from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), British Victorian proset, poet, and mathematician. Bellevue, Washington, a suburb of Seattle, is a city of about 150,000.

~~~

A Bit of MCT Oil
          by Carb Deliseuwe

He had a bit of MCT oil in his coffee cup,
so clearly and so beautifully, o, yes, it bubbled up.
He favoured its unflavoured taste that gave him energy,
and loved the fat that lubricated on its entering.
He felt so good and felt so full; it curbed his appetite.
While coating lips and throat with oily film, he felt less tight.
He wondered if it helped cognitive functions in his mind,
increasing focus and alertness, touching the divine.
But he could not be sure; th’ effect was not immediate.
Would capric and caprylic acids help remediate?

Carb Deliseuwe is a poet of food and drink. MCT stands for medium chain triglycerides.

~~~

Commuting in the City
          by Urbawel Cidese
          “The news like squirrels ran”
              —Emily Dickinson

It was not once upon a time; it was another one,
when winter was approaching fast, but it had not yet come.
The auburn leaves of autumn flew; they flew up to the north;
the oak trees let their occupants go forth beyond the thorn.
The roses still were growing, blooming from the distant spring;
it was a time of distancing, of keeping on the wing.
The masks were coming off. The vaccinations didn’t seem
to do what pharmaceuticals had said they would…their scheme?
This was no dream, as Eos rose above the city streets,
variegated ribbons crossing skies in streak by streak.

Among the rabbits, birds and squirrels, motorists arise,
and take off down the lanes and trails at dawn’s early sigh.
They head off to the busy highways and the interstates,
commuting through the interweaving traffic, patterned straits.
The green is go, the yellow slow, the red is time to stop,
until the template starts again, with little time to pause.
When all the driving and arriving strafes at smoothing poise,
the news and music in the vehicles adds s’m’other noise.
And coming home is like departing, but with less aplomb,
and after rest and sleep one does it all again therefrom.

Urbawel Cidese is a poet of urban spaces and moods. Greek Eos, like Roman Aurora and Rigveda Ushas, likely drew from the Proto-Indo-European goddess of dawn, reconstructed as Hausos (haéusōs). According to Beau Lecsi Werd, s’m’other is an adjectival trunc, etc.

~~~

Haiku
          by “Wired Clues” Abe

Braking is frequent
on these lanes, streets, drives and rows
for cars and squirrels.

“Wired Clues” Abe is a poet of high tech and haiku.