Haiku
by “Wired Clues” Abe
When he crosses streets,
he doesn’t want to hold hands.
The kid’s on a quest.
“Wired Clues” Abe is a poet of tradical haiku.
~~~
At Siding Spring
by Walibee Scrude
In daylight, past the intricate, white-cupped
radio telescopes at Siding Spring,
Australia, one can see them pointing up,
and make another sighting—jumping—zing—
a kangaroo leap through the dry brown grass
beneath the brilliant, beautiful blue skies,
that doesn’t pause, but moves by very fast
the metal owls that are the planet’s eyes
down under, constantly alert, aimed at
the centre of the Milky Way, in day,
or night, as quiet as a wombat that
is hid below the Southern Cross display
or the two Magellanic Clouds nearby,
part of our Local Group, that round us fly.
Walibee Scrude is a poet of Australia. The nearest town to Siding Spring Observatory is Coonabarabran with a population of around 2,500.
~~~
Near Warkworth, New Zealand
by Eric Awl De Beus
The Warkworth Satellite Earth Station sits, on site,
upon the gently, rolling, grass-green, hilly lea,
beneath blue skies, white clouds, at day, and stars at night.
Occasionally one observes a kowhai tree.
Here they are looking outward to the universe,
from off New Zealand’s northern island, platformed tee;
the huge, white dishes opened wide diameters,
above their heralds at computer terminals.
They scatter information gleaned from monitors,
the reinforced links to the concrete pedestals,
the printed letters streamed in lines on-line, in sight,
antennae that reflect the light that’s usable.
Eric Awl De Beus is a poet of New Zealand.
~~~
One-Hundred Countries
by Esca Webuilder
Eight billion people on the planet, all across the Globe:
in China, India, US, Brazil, and Mexico,
in Russia, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Japan,
in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Iran, and Pakistan,
in Congo, Egypt, Turkey, Philippines, and Germany,
in Tanzania, Vietnam, UK, and Italy,
in Thailand, Kenya, Myanmar, France, Spain and South Africa,
in Argentina, South Korea, and Colombia,
in Canada, Morocco, Poland, and Afghanistan,
Ukraine, Iraq, Algeria, Uganda, and Sudan…
Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, and Cameroon,
Angola, Mozambique, Malaysia, Ghana and Peru,
Australia, Venezuela, Madagascar, Côte d’Ivoire,
Sri Lanka, Yemen, North Korea, Mali and Niger,
Romania, Burkina Faso, Ecuador, Taiwan,
Malawi, Guatemala, Zambia, and Kazakhstan,
Cambodia, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Senegal,
Burundi, Syria, Chad, Chile, Belgium and Nepal,
Rwanda, Netherlands, Bolivia, Azerbaijan,
Dominican Republic, Guinea, Haiti, South Sudan,
Benin, Tunisia, Cuba, Sweden, Jordan, Chechia,
Greece, Papua New Guinea, Hungary and Serbia,
Honduras, Portugal, United Arab Emirates,
Israel, Austria, Tajikistan, and Belarus.
The list goes on and on. There are a lot of people here:
so many that, at times it seems, an overwhelming Sphere.
Esca Webuilder is a poet of the Internet.
~~~
The GI Tracked
by Alec Subre Wide
The GI was overt about his dizziness on heights.
His vertigo took over and he had to go down flights.
He wouldn’t cross Hussani Hanging Bridge in Pakistan,
nor would he walk the Coiling Dragon Path found in Hunan.
Upon the Kakum Canopy, he did not want to stand.
Why should he try Trift Bridge up in the Alps of Switzerland?
Why should he cross the Puente de Ojuela, Mexico,
because it sways and creaks along the thousand feet it goes.
Nor Colorado’s Royal Gorge, or U Bein in Myanmar;
he’d rather drive the windy Chesapeake Bay in a car.
Alec Subre Wise is a poet of bridges.
~~~
Token Essay
by SubCIA Weelder
He took no lingering long toke of aromatic smoke,
while leaking out the highly classified coked artichoke.
He fled the nation, with his data cache and expertise,
and placed more than a hundred people in dire jeopardy.
Just last September, he became a Russian citizen.
Ed Snowden got his Russian passport in his snow-cold den.
He took the oath, and swore allegiance to the Russian state,
as it kept killing myriads still fighting in Ukraine.
He would not now be extradited to the USA,
and he could fade away into the fabric of the gray.
SubCIA Weelder is a poet of espionage.
~~~
Poem on a Greek Amphora
by Acwiles Berude
“If Hercules and Lichas play at dice
Which is the better man, the greater throw
May turn by fortune from the weaker man…”
William Shakespeare, “Merchant of Venice”
Not hating, but engaged in game, Achilles and Ajax
are playing with a die, at some board game upon a box.
The artist working in black-figure was Exekias,
assessed by art historians as one of Attic’s greats.
The text proclaims Achilles tossed a four, Ajax a three,
while they are still in body armour, holding to their spears.
The scene’s relaxed, a pause from fighting in the Trojan War,
completed in 6th century BC—amphora formed.
The kalos name that’s on the urn is Onetorides;
but the words truth or beauty are not found upon the vase.
Acwiles Berude is a poet of Ancient Greece. Exekias (fl. c. 550 BC – 525 BC) was an Ancient Greek potter and painter.
~~~
He Never Had a Home
by Waldi Berceuse
“Conscripted to a military labor corps,
was lucky, for he did not die in a death camp.”
—Béla Cedew Suri
He never had a home¬—György Ligeti—
Hungarian, born in central Romania,
upon May 28th in 1923,
in Târnăveni in stark Transylvania,
known for its scenic beauty and Count Dracula,
Bram Stoker’s venture into vampire mania.
In Ligeti, sound textures, as in Atmosphères,
replace repeated rhythm, harmony and mel-
ody with sliding clusterings and statica,
the music wrapped within the warp of sound itself,
from eerie to an elsewhere comic lickety-
split to escape both past and avant-garde-girt hell.
Waldi Berceuse is a poet of central European music. György Ligeti (1923-2006) was a PostModernist Hungarian composer. Abraham Stoker (1847-1912) was an Irish novelist.
~~~
Near Heilbronn
by Uwe Carl Diebes
Near Heilbronn, Herr Hölderlin saw what earth had to show,
where near the water, yellow pears and wild roses grow.
Like as a sniper mellowing, he gazed upon that sight,
that ripens when an artist happens to observe life’s flight.
Into the holy, sober waters of that somber lake,
some swans dipped heads for plants, o, those in which they could
partake.
Of course, when winter comes, like sunlight, flowers will recede
into the shadows of the earth, and lovely swans retreat
to warmer places where they could spend time, migrating south,
beyond these cold and speechless walls that have not beaks nor mouths,
here where worn weathervanes will rattle in the bitter wind,
and Hölderlin thought there on that which nature must rescind.
Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) was a German Romantic poet.
~~~
Another Individual
by Erisbawdle Cue
How could he feel paranoia; no one cared for him.
He was nobody everyone ignored, nor dared to meet.
Was he like Schopenhauer, aphoristic and extreme,
and able to endure existence, at a minimum?
O, it was hard to tell—another individual
is hard to read, though he or she be near habitual.
Erisbawdle Cue is a poesophist, in the manner of Heraclitus. Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was a German Romantic philosopher.
~~~
Cycloid
by Euclidrew Base
In 1658, the British architect
and mathematician Christopher Wren
proposed a proof of the rectification of
the cycloid, th’ Helen of geometry. He sent
it to Pascal. A cycloid is the curve traced by
a point upon a circle, i. e., a roulette;
the area beneath it is 3r2 π;
its arc length is 8 times the circle’s radius.
The place where it ‘s been used was in L. Kahn’s design
of Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas,
where flattened, concrete, vaulted shells let indirect
light in, reflected over ceilings, paintings, us.
Euclidrew Base is a poet of mathematics. Christopher Wren (1632-1723) was a British architect and mathematician. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was a French writer and mathematican. Louis Kahn (1901-1974) was a Modernist American architect.
~~~
Bowed Lair
by Eber L. Aucsidew
“contre la marbre vainement de Baudelaire”
—Stéphane Mallarmé
He rode the Road of Death on to Chuquicamata Mine,
the cemeᵰtery where the copper miners are enshrined,
there near Calama, Atacama, that Codelco tends,
its smokestack muzzles spewing forth ferocious ars’nic blends,
like some abominable statue to Aurubis raised,
new gases wiping out the air, the water, and the dazed.
Here cancer’s crab’s unleashed on the Chilean populace,
this sepulchre of gritty sand and copper opulence,
created for green energy, wind, solar and EV;
and though we die of it, it is forever to be breathed.
Eber L. Aucsidew is a poet of air and water “forever”. Codelco is the Chilean National Corporation of Copper. Calama is a city in Chile of around 150,000. Chuquicamata Mine is one of the largest copper mines in the World. Aurubis is one of the World’s largest producers of copper cathodes.
~~~
Lightning Striking
by Eber L. Aucsidew
He looked up high, and saw it—lightning striking—in the sky.
Sunt lacrimae in things, he thought, and he began to cry…
for mortal things that touch the mind, and interrupt the soul,
exciting, lighting up the mind, enlightening the whole.
And then he heard it afterwards—the thunder rum-bl-ing,
the crashing, smashing, pounding raindrops, pouring, tum-bl-ing.
It shook the atmosphere. He heard it there where he was at.
It rattled to his very bones, a booming rat-a-tat.
He felt so lost. How could he ever understand life’s cause?
It passed so fast. Alas, he didn’t have the time to pause.
Reacting to events encountered, swirling all around,
he faced them all, he met the squall, his feet still on the ground.
Eber L. Aucsidew is a poet of weather.
~~~
Phillip Marlowe
by Wilbur Dee Case
The first of Raymond Chandler’s books with Phillip Marlowe tec,
a classic LA crime-noir, thick with toughness and roughneck,
is soaked in smoke and booze, corruption everywhere there seen,
especially in the scenes between the action and the sheen.
The witty, striking similes create décor and style,
in 1930s California, in the rain or shine.
The jaded shamus takes a client, Sternwood in “Big Sleep”,
a world steeped in secrets, creeps and other grimy deeps.
The old tycoon is tending orchids in a hothouse room.
He speaks to Marlowe, tending each exotic, lovely bloom.
He’s being blackmailed for his daughters, so the story goes,
as atmosphere and character take over Chandler’s flows.
Wilbur Dee Case is a poet of American literature. Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) was a Modernist American detective fiction writer.
~~~
Sabin Howard
by Red Was Iceblue
He steps off of the airplane of the gods,
in black tee shirt, sun glasses and black shorts,
and stops. Beneath the cirrus clouds, he nods.
It’s hard to say what he is going to’rds.
He trods along the furrowed sands of time,
his head, his arms, his hands, his legs, in bronze;
a Hermes soaring high through the sublime,
he meets the renaissance of a new dawn.
With grandeur, grace, perhaps nobility,
why not a sculptor in America?
With greatness, as was once in Italy,
why not create Bronx capolavori?
He looks across th’ Atlantic, open eyes,
and then extends his sternum to the skies.
Red Was Iceblue is a poet of Modern, PostModern, and NewMillennial art. Sabin Howard is a contemporary NewMillennial American sculptor.
~~~
Horse-Nettle
by Ileac Burweeds
How beautiful it looks—Solanum carolinense—
light-violet horse-nettle rising in this bright spring day,
with five, pale-purple, star-shaped flowers, in the roadside grass,
it has five yellow stamens that protrude forth from its mass.
This subshrub with faint prickles on its stems and large-lobed leaves,
that hang below or up above, like flimsy, green-screen eaves,
is hardly comforting or soothing for a hungry horse,
who might consume it in its hay, a meal of three-course.
It tolerates both wet or dry demands; it loves full Sun;
and can grow well in sandy soils, as well as loamy ones.
Ileac Burweeds is a poet of plants.
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