In This Summer of Discontent
          by Lebudias Crewe
          “O Lord! break forth and wash the slime from this earth.”
              —Flannery O’Connor, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”

I cry aloud. O, who will hear me. Hate rains on the land.
My heart is heavy. I seek solace. Help me understand.
The rising deaths across the land, there are so many dead.
The day is dark. My soul refuses to be comforted.
When I remember, when I meditate, my spirit faints.
My eyes are open to the horrors and the hard complaints.
When I consider days of old, the years of long ago,
I cannot speak. I cannot rest. I am in vertigo.
How can we live amidst such evil? Where has goodness gone?
Don’t spurn our nation. Bring us favour. Bring us love at dawn?

My hands are stretched out in the night. Let me remember life.
O, bring us grace, o, bring us hope, not anger, sin and strife.
I will remember deeds of kindness. Let compassion reign.
O, let me ponder on such holy wonders once again.
Redeem the people. Bring us joy. Deliver us from pain:
the rising waters, flying bludgeons, thunder on the plain.
O, put a song of praise into our mouths, and gratitude.
Humility and reconcilliation, be renewed.
The Earth is trembling in the whirlwind. Missiles now are hurled.
Preserve us from this misery. Bring mercy to the World.

 

Lebudias Crewe is a poet of the long-suffering, the patient, and the tolerant.

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Ode to the Confederate Dead
          by Cause Bewilder

Grave statue after statue falls with stict impunity.
Memorials and monuments yield to community.
The wind whips up no recollection; it cannot forget;
the soldiers dead in Dixieland must twice be crushed to death.

Robert E. Lee must lose again; the bronze equestrian
must ride anew into eternity—oblivion.
Cement or plaster, marble too, by time’s fierce scrutiny;
the Gallant Eight must join again the Southern mutiny.

All must be cannon fodder: mortar, bricks, cement and lime.
A quarter million must not be remembered in our Time.
As headstones fall like dominoes to Nature’s firm command,
the rumour of mortality blows all across the land.

 

Cause Bewilder is a poet of the South. His favourite Postmodern American novel is Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, and his favourite Postmodern American short-story writer is Flannery O’ Connor.

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Magog and Gog
          by Brad Lee Suciew

Cofounders of Gawed Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page,
once they had made gazillions made a new conGlomeRage
that glommed on to as much as they could get by greedy means
and Alphabet Inc. came about by {grab-by [gob-(bl-ings)]}.

From Google’s “Do No Evil,” they have changed their motto to
“Do the Right Thing” unless it clashes with their Mountain View.
They’ve come down with their tablets making “rare and sweeping change”:
Thou shall not speak out freely & Thou shall not be unchained.

And now with Google, they control Nest Labs, CapitalG,
X, Waymo, Google Fiber, Calico and Verily.
Like as Magog and Gog, they crawl across the Internet:
Big Brother’s agents, grin engaged, may come and get you yet.

 

Brad Lee Suciew (pronounced “suck you”) is a poet of business.

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Paris, from the Air
          by U. Carew Delibes
          “Les rues son des jardins, je danse sur les troittoir,
          Il sembles que mes bras soient devenus des ailes…”
              Carla Bruni, L’amoureuse

I saw it in the afternoon, bathed in a gleaming mode,
the city buildings shining, like a beehive honeycomb.
The colours were so beautiful—red-orange, amber hues—
except exotic Eiffel Tower rising to the blues.
I saw the city spreading out to the horizon’s end.
I longed to stop and stay there till the evening-dream-ascend.
It was so gorgeous, shimmering and glittering, like gold.
I wanted to embrace its graceful lines, so grand and bold.
I saw it from a distant seat, up high and far above,
like jewels in a treasure chest, a booty borne of love.
 

U. Carew Delibes is a lover of Paris, even though it has become a top venue for terrorists blowing it up and killing Parisians.

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Untitled
          by Red Was Iceblue

The painting of a black skull by Jean-Michel Basquiat
was purchased by Yusaku Maezawa—costly art—
and sold at Sotheby’s in May of 2017—
in millions, it approximately was one-hundred-ten—
110% of life to pay for black on blue,
white circles dripping where two eyes are violence in view,
red, gold, and black lines frame those eyes, graffiti nearly square,
the penetrating gaze askew in heroin despair,
and harrowin’ dis-pare,
the tic-tac-toes with 5’s and O’s and X’s on the top;
and lower left, unaddled, A-d l—there slightly dropt.

 

Red Was Iceblue is a poet of Modernist and Postmodernist art. His favourite Fauvist is Raoul Dufy, of which he once said: “Raoul Dufy displays well a fine balance twixt the air and sky—a light, swift, and graceful ease that suggests rather than manifests mixed. He takes the stillness and turns it into a breeze, with curves and swirls, he swerves and curls—swings as he sings of all the many pleasing things that his eyes seize, a lily or a sail, even female strings, he brings forth lucidity, a

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Beipanjiang Bridge
          by Alec Subre Wide

Above the clouds it rises—Beipanjiang Bridge near Bijie—
the four-lane structure spans a gorge o’er 1800 feet.
Connecting Yunnan and Guizhou in Southwest China’s hills,
it’s part of Hangrui Highway to Myanmar, in Ruili.
Above the brown and winding Beipan River down below,
across the verdant, karst landforms, the cable-stayed bridge goes.
Named Duge bridge, it now surpasses other high-rise roads,
like Sidu, Puli, and Baluarte Bridge in Mexico.
Its narrow, orange line’s topped with triangular, long wires,
in misty gray and drizzly rain, this wind qin, mountain lyre.

Alec Subre Wide is a poet of bridges.

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The Lilliputians Analyze the Oracle of Light
          by Educable Wires

We found an object in his pocket that intrigued our minds,
a flat, rectangular device, one side was dark, one shined.
Upon the glowing side, we saw strange figured-shapes arrayed
in rows and columns all about, which at a whim were changed.

Though we could move them all about, we could not reach inside.
Because of some material, such access was denied.
He put it next to us. It was about two-thirds our size.
We stood in awe before its screen, for it amazed our eyes.

And we conjecture that it is the god he worships, since,
he said he seldom did a thing without consulting it,
and told us that he carried it to bed with him at night.
So we believe that it must be his Oracle of Light.

 

Educable Wires is a poet of electronics. With over 2,000,000,000 smartphone users and 5,000,000,000 mobile-phone users in 2017, he is not surprised at the rise of nomophobia, the fear of being without a cell phone.