Haiku
          by “Clear Dew” Ibuse

Across the ocean
I hear of another’s voice…
and another one.

 

Haiku
          by “Clear Dew” Ibuse

In winter’s quiet,
white ice shines and white frost glows.
One hears…the wind goes.

“Clear Dew” Ibuse is a haiku poet in English. The above haiku was influenced by Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694), a noted Japanese poet and proset.

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Haiku
          by “Wired Clues” Abe

Abe’s policies—
he could not tolerate—
Koneko Tôta.

“Wired Clues” Abe is a haikuist of rad trad [sic]. Shinzo Abe (1954-2022) was a long-serving Japanese Prime Minister, Koneko Tôta (1919-2018) was a Japanese PostModernist haikuist, who often wrote without traditional seasonal references and incorporated social issues and ideologies into his poems. Not trusting the US commitment, the Japanese Ministry of Defense has unveiled a list of equipment and weapons slated for development: UUVs, sea mines, target observation munitions, improved surface-to-air missiles, improved high-speed glide bombs, and hypersonic weapons.

~~~

Newsreel:
Australian experts who went out to thé Oz Outback found,
the small but ra-di-o-ac-tive capsúle lost ‘l/on/g the road.

~~~

Yoga American Style
          by Sri Wele Cebuda

Although he had his baseball cap and outside shoes still on,
he got into the lotus pose for meditation’s song.
He hummed his OM, his OMG, at home upon the couch.
He raised his head and ess-shaped spine, while tightening his pouch.
He spread his legs out wide and opened up his inner eye.
He bent his knees out to each side, and sat upon the sky.
He felt like as he was afloat upon some gorgeous pond.
He felt like as a sorcerer touched by a magic wand.
He saw a star shine in the East. He rose beside a door.
He wondered at the awe of it above the shining floor.

Sri Wele Cebuda is a poet of yoga.

~~~

Newsreel:
More than one-hundred died in Peshawar, in Pakistan,
when one lone man blew up a mosque in a police compound.

Peshawar is a city in northwest Pakistan of around 2,000,000.

~~~

Sunday Church
          by Crise de Abu Wel

It had been a long time since he had gone to Sunday church.
He missed that open feeling and his perch upon the pew.
He had enjoyed discussing topics with the elders there,
and listening to others in that merry-bearing air.
He would be so inspired by the sermon of the day
by some mature, austere, excited dominie in gray.
His troubles seemed to melt away. O, yes, he’d feel so good,
as if the very light of Christ had reached his neighbourhood.
But he knew it was just…a moem in eternity…
and he’d have to return elation to modernity.

Crise de Abu Wel is a poet of Christianity.

~~~

Newsreel:
Pope Francis, Friday, made his way to war-torn South Sudan,
where some four-million were displaced, four-hundred-thousand dead.

South Sudan is a nation of around 11,000,000. Independent in 2011, for a decade it has endured a civil war.

~~~

Two Soldiers in the Makeshift Shelter
          by Radice Lebewsu

They were beneath the makeshift shelter under wooden beams;
from drab-gray dogtags hanging low there were no silver gleams.
In drab-green camo, two troops were attempting to find peace,
o, momentarily beside the deadly and deceased.
One soldier tried to offer consolation to his mate,
but there was little he could do; the drones would not abate.
They kept on coming—missiles too—from cloudy, winter skies.
There wasn’t much that they could do—those wary fighting guys.
And yet they had to be prepared for what the day would bring;
th’ invading wasn’t stopping, no; it kept on coming. Stay.

Radice Lebewsu is a poet of Ukraine.

~~~

The God of Opportunity
          by Caerus Bel Wide
          “non ipse possit Iuppiter reprehendere”
              —Phaedrus, “Fables”

Not even Zeus is fast enough to catch him, if he ‘s passed—
the god of opportunity—he moves extremely fast.
He may be seen on tiptoes, on this sphere in cosmic flux.
With scanty hair atop his head, he’s hard to stop. Good luck.

Though once in Sicyon, the sculptor Lysippos nabbed him,
his statue made of bronze, not mythic dionesium.
He held him for a time on Earth within his gracile style,
that elder Pliny noted in his Hist’ry Natural.

Caerus Bel Wide is a poet of Opportunity and Ancient Greek art. Lysippos (c. 390 BC – c. 300 BC) was a Greek sculptor of the 4th century BC. Dionesium is a contemporary, mythical element. Pliny (24 – 79) was a Roman author and naturalist.

~~~

From Sonnet to Tennos
          by Claude I. S. Weber

I. January 2008
The Thames below Westminster by Monet
is quite an interesting painted scene.
What’s seen along the riverside is gray:
the sky, the water, sidewalk, and Big Ben.
All is a haze, though color is throughout;
a duller brilliance would be hard to find,
reminding one of Wordsworth—there is no doubt—
though this is filled with people, ships, and kind.
Yet it’s the pier that pierces from the right,
and focuses the picture. Vague and black,
yet crisp beneath the City bathed in light,
we leave somes leaves but peer not too far back.
Above, the House of Parliament does rise
and we are left with memories and eyes.

II. January 2023
The Thames below Westminster by impressionist Monet,
a copy of which hangs in the guest bedroom on display,
where a young infant gazes at its colours and its shapes,
while balancing himself upon plain, wooden, bedpost orbs,
portrays a London scene in winter. It is foggy, gray.
Its breadth is wonderful and massive, not radiant, but drained.
In a mysterious cloak, faint and misty in its haze,
the city wears a pale raincoat, o’er ships on wavy Thames.
This was in 1871…strife was far away;
the Franco-Prussian War was ending in its waning daze.

Claude I. S. Weber is a poet of the French, particularly in their artistic moems. French Realist Claude Monet (1840-1926) was a painter and founder of Impressionism. William Wordsworth (1770-1850) was a British Romantic poet.

~~~

The Art Student
          by Red Was Iceblue

A long and slender mural hung upon the azure wall,
and there beneath it on the bed, he saw a waterfall.
Although he was still in his socks and boots upon those sheets,
he sat there satisfied, free from love’s labour’s loss or leash.
He lifted up his head, o, he could see so many things;
yet when he looked down to those sheets…Did it have any w/rings?
He loved to gaze upon the beautiful—not glutinous—
observing nervy curving lovely and velutinous;
but also firm right-angular lines, neat and orderly.
O, Lord, if he could move through life so forth and forwardly.

Red Was Iceblue is a poet of NewMillennial painting.

~~~

On Solving Fermat’s Last Theorem
          by Euclidrew Base

To try to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem* was
the bane and vain attempt of many souls;
and yet the world believed it true, because
no counterexample closed its black holes.

Yet Euler’s Conjecture** resulted in
the discovery of precisely that,
five large numbers, each over ten million,
strangely existing and disproving it.

So when Andrew Wiles spent seven long years
and found there was a flaw in his thinking,
did that, like Jacob once, renew his fears,
and bring to him a feeling of sinking?

If so, as Jacob went on counting sheep
from dawn to dusk, so too Wiles never dropped
his proof; not even when he went to sleep,
not till he reached its end. ‘T was then he stopped.

* If an integer x is greater than 2, then the equation ax + bx = cx, has no non-zero solutions for integers a, b, and c.
** If integer x > 2, the sum of n-1 nth powers of integers cannot itself be an nth power. In 1966, Lander and Parkin found a counterexample for x = 5: 275 + 845 + 1105 + 1335 = 1445. In 1986, Elkies found the first counterexample of x = 4: 2,682,4404 + 15,365,6394 + 18,796,7604 = 20,615,6734. In 1988, R. Frye found the smallest example for x = 4: 95,8004 + 217,5194 + 414,5604 = 422,8214.

Euclidrew Base is a poet of mathematics. Andrew Wiles is a contemporary British mathematician. Pierre de Fermat (1601-1665) was a noted Early Baroque French mathematician, Leonhard Euler (1707-1783) was a brilliant, 18th century Swiss mathematician and physicist. Jacob was a Hebrew patriarch who flourished perhaps around 1700 BC.

~~~

That Trip
          by Walice du Beers

It’s very odd. He doesn’t even remember where he was.
But he was driving down some roadway in that airy sug.
The Sun was shining, as it always did—night, clouds or ripped—
and yet, try as he might, he could not recollect that trip.
Still, there was something there he wanted to record, or note,
a tone as serious as anything that he had known.
It was so strange to not recall, like an amnesiac,
who had forgotten what it was that he had done, in fact.
Still, he went on. O, what else could he do? He had no choice.
He had no clue, caught in some play that he could not enjoy.

 

The Man at the Recycling Dump
          by Walice du Beers

It was a sunny, winter day; he had gone to the dump.
His car was filled with flattened cardboard, and the man was pumped.
He came the same time as the workers in their garbage truck.
He asked if he could toss his cardboard in. He was in luck.
One of the dudes said, yes, go right ahead, just toss it in.
He watched the boxes crumple up in a slow crushing spin.
And then he left, as others came to dump their cardboard too,
there at the site—o, what a sight—that corregated view.
And then he thought about the the, and airily, an an.
The time that he would spend on that was briefer than a nap.

Walice du Beers is a poet influenced by American Modernist poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955).

~~~

The Elevated Storage Tank
          by Arcideb Usewel

Like as a giant spider pausing on the fenced-in lawn,
the oblate spheroid water tower stood tall in the dawn.
Gargantuan it sat—the Northwest Booster Station Pump—
an alien spaceship that landed far from muddy dump.
Behind surrounding fence, the elevated storage tank
rose columnar, a Parthenon, and towering rain bank.
A masterpiece of functionality in a green field,
that cost more than a million dollars. How much will it yield?
Like as a white, colossal mushroom being held in place;
it was an actuality of grace and awesomeness.

Arcideb Usewel is a poet of architecture.

~~~

A Southern Man
          by Cause Bewilder
          “I am the red-winged blackbird’s gulping tone,
          The swallow, swift, the collared dove, the hoopoe—”
              —Charles Southerland

I picture him in plaid, a rimy Whitman from the South,
a white unwieldy beard, a taste of bile in his mouth,
a feral hog upon a sharp, ridged hill, from Arkansas,
who showed some of the symptoms, but did not have Parkinson’s.
He was too real. I couldn’t take his diction for too long.
His language was too rich, too filled with life, I couldn’t yawn.
I longed to flee; he kept reminding me of character,
and what it was to be a poet in America.
Good Lord, a stupid hoopoe. Who, who, who, o, who is he?
Not Poe within primeval wood, nor Faulkner in a tree.

Cause Bewilder is a poet of the South. Charles Southerland is a contemporary poet from Arkansas. Romantic poet and proset Edgar Poe (1809-1849), Realist poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892), and Modernist proset William Faulkner (1897-1962) were all American writers.

~~~

Walter at the Seaside
          by U. Liberace Dews

He had a look about him of the grey eternal sea;
saltwater filled the ocean beaches wherein Walter sat.
His fav’rite loafing places were by rivers, wharves and boats;
his lines moved back and forth like crashing waves, o, flats and floats.

His poetry was like the motion of the ocean tides,
like billowing and liquid rolls, those falling-rising rides,
the cradle and the grave of life, the curving flows and foam,
the first and last confession of the Globe, which was his home.

U. Liberace Dews is a poet of the showy.

~~~

That Man at Work
          by Des Wercebauli

He came to work in a gray suit and cherry-dark red tie.
Slacks dark, shirt white, indeed he was a business sort of guy.
And he meant business, working hard, not shirking at his job.
He wore a tight-lipped grimace on his face, but was no slob.
He strove to overcome whatever came before his desk,
that blunt, but clean, not truly mean, man, neat in mien and dress.
His body slim, with cuffs so trim, attempting to be good;
he’d force each moment to its crisis nice, that upright dude.
He didn’t jerk around his fellow workers, but remained
well-mannered, never condescending, firm, but still restrained.

Des Wercebauli is a poet of work.

~~~

On the Recliner
          by Cu Ebide Aswerl

He leaned back on the gray and white recliner in the morn.
The Sun was shining—beautif’lly—he loved to feel its warmth.
He had been exercising hard; he was still panting yet.
O, that would be a workout that he would not soon forget.
It made him feel, like as great Cerus, that grand thunder bull.
He loved how tense his abs could get. But was it wonderful?
He loved loved to lie back on the patio. O, he tapped that.
And though he was not yet in total peace, he still was flat.
He closed his eyes and contemplated what it would be like,
if he could rise up high and fly like as a wind-swept kite.

Cu Ebide Aswerl is a poet of leisure.

~~~

Simple Bodyweight Squats
          by Rudi E. Welec, “Abs”

He went into the exercising room in early morn
to do some simple bodyweight squats, working for good form.
Beside the dumbbells by the wall, he focused on his moves;
and did his best to meet that test and get into a groove.
His feet were slightly wider than his hips, toes pointing out.
He picked a spot to gaze at, as he viewed it, up and down.
He tightened up his arms and kept his chest up high and proud;
his spine was in a neutral pose; he went in for the count.
His core was flexed, like as he was prepared for a gut punch.
and deeply breathed, pushed back his butt, and crunched a number clump.

Rudi E. Welec, “Abs” is a poet of exercise.

~~~

OMAD
          by Carb Deliseuwe

He sat up at the table; it was time to eat OMAD,
not angry, like Achilles, no, but thankful, yes, and glad;
for it had been a day since he had had a thing to eat;
and now, that fasting was complete, o, he could have a feast.
He saw the up-high ceiling and the lovely light above.
It was the time he could partake, the time he knew he’d love.

He’d love some eggs, though they were quite expensive at this time;
he loved their runny, golden yolks, like spokes of the sublime;
and heated sausage too—indeed he loved its meatiness—
and then perhaps a piece of buttered toast; it was the best.
But that would not be all that he would eat; he’d take much more;
and keep on filling up on varied foods that he adored.

 

Ginger Turmeric Tea
          by Carb Deliseuwe

He loved to drink turmeric-ginger tea, o, anywhere,
like there outside beside th’ electric meter by the stair.
O, it was so appealing, in its flavour and its taste,
so savoury when laced with orange peel, oil based.
He loved its brightness, some black pepper, and some licorice;
together…it was so together…lovely, pungent, rich.
If he could but have it each night before he went to bed,
beside these bricks beneath the moon, lit yellow-orange-red,
o, he would be content to sleep, if only to await
another day to drink that drink, curcumin saturate.

Carb Deliseuwe is a poet presently avoiding himself, id est, delicious carbs. Achilles was a Greek warrior in the Trojan War.