Haiku
by “Wired Clues” Abe
On a garage floor,
not floating on the cement,
a cricket, quiet.
Haiku
by “Wired Clues” Abe
The infant pauses,
to touch each of the small flags
lined on the sidewalk.
“Wired Clues” Abe is a trad haiku writer.
~~~
The Infant Pauses
by “Lice Brews” Ueda
“Why the taboret? Why, oh why, the doily?”
—Elizabeth Bishop, “The Filling Station”
He pauses on the sidewalk to observe the lawn care guy.
His work machines are louder than the fleet birds flying by.
This is a rarety the infant has not see before,
so different compared with everything inside his door.
Who is this individual? What is he doing here?
What does it mean? What’s its significance? Why is it near?
He wonders at these simple acts performed by one so strong.
Is this what he will grow into? Is this where he belongs?
And after he has had his fill, and he goes moving on,
he wonders at this strange new world appearing now at dawn.
“Lice Brews” Ueda is a poet of the small.
~~~
Quotidian:
Occasionally tap into internal quietude,
and you will find within your mind a satisfying mood,
that penetrates your inner reservoirs. It is so good,
you will achieve a peaceful purity’s beatitude.
—Sri Wele Cebuda
~~~
Item:
In India, a government official lost his job
because he drained a reservoir to get his phone he dropped.
More than two million litres of the precious fluid pumped,
but once retrieved it wouldn’t start since it was waterlogged.
~~~
In Pakistan
by Waseel Budecir
“Friends, I have seen the spectacles of this place—That’s enough.
I, Khwaja Mir Dard, go home; you may stay here if you want.”
In Pakistan, it is the military that holds sway.
If any fall afowl of them, they will be cast away.
It has been thus since 1947, when the Brits,
then left its shores forevermore, and called their stay there quits.
And so, though Imran Khan has the support of millions, he
should wonder if his fate lines up with those of history;
as too, Shehbaz Sharif, the fan of Urdu poetry
whose brother had to leave the sorrowless Ashoka tree.
Waseel Budesir is a poet of Pakistan. Khwaja Mir Dard (1720-1785) was an Urdu poet of the Delhi School.
~~~
Newsreel:
Why doesn’t Tara Reade want to stay in the USA?
Is it so dangerous to be in these United States?
~~~
USSR
by Rus Ciel Badeew
It was for nothing—all that talk about Trotsky,
and Lenin, and Stalin. It was a nightmare.
We might just as well have been Fascist, or Nazi.
What were we thinking? We were brainwashed in despair.
How could we call such palaver idealism?
Pavlovian pablum maybe—in that hopeless air—
but what a pile—that socialist realism—
Optimism is the opium of Das Volk.
It was a joke, a big load of dogmatism.
We took a toke and saw ourselves go up in smoke,
in a cloud of nihilistic stupidity.
Though it fades, I wonder how many lives it broke…
Rus Ciel Badeew is a poet of Russia. Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin were Modernist Soviet political figures.
~~~
Newsreel:
A drone attack that targeted the Russian Capital,
hit three apartment buildings—Kyiv is unflappable.
The largest drone attack so far in this horrific war
May 28th, fell on Kyiv—knockin’ on heaven’s door.
~~~
Th’ Ongoing Battle of Vuhledar
by Radice Lebewsu
On January 27, Russia broke the “calm”—
a TOS-1 Buratino thermobaric bomb.
By February, it was stated Vuhledar’s destroyed;
all of the buildings had been damaged; its whole site was void.
Once populated, 15,000 residents were now
less than one-thousand citizens in the entire town.
Was this tank battle Russia’s worst in the entire war—
one-hundred-thirty Russian tanks destroyed, or maybe more?
Radice Lebewsu is a poet of Ukraine.
~~~
Pindaresque
by Esiad L. Werecub
To most high Zeus, unfaltering, of thunderbolt repute,
here is a song set to the subtle music of the lute,
a witness to the greatest of all games upon the Earth,
Olympian, pursuit of poetry’s gigantic girth.
O, Son of Kronos, crusher of fierce Typhon’s hundred heads,
great Etna’s owner, and triumphant victor of dread deeds,
receive this verbal load won by the Graces’ favoured gifts,
enduring light, prevailing valour, and enamoured lifts.
With what lie could one tinge time’s trials, these hard tests of life?
Though one be fleet, with heart to match, we all face constant strife.
Esiud L Werecub is a poet of Ancient Greece.
~~~
On an Island in the Caribbean Sea
by Lud Wes Caribee
Stuck on an island in the Caribbean Sea,
a sultan in his own small bungalow,
so hot sometimes, all that he wanted was a breeze,
sweet in that sultry, sweaty heat and dark gold glow.
Sometimes at night, when it was raining hard and long,
the windows open, slats of light would cross his soul,
and he’d wake up and feel the cool air blow upon
his skin. O, how he wanted so to let it in,
although he thought already everything was gone.
He was alone. He felt as if he had not been;
and yet, he still recalled that fleeting ecstasy,
that fresh and flushing flash upon his flesh back then
when he had been an operative in the field.
A Poem After Lea Knowles
by Lud Wes Caribee
To wake before the dawn from a Belizean drawn night,
and watch the bright sky shatter, pouring down its fingered light
to fondle early clouds that gild stone-templed Lamanai,
in haze arising from the jungle chill, is quite a sight,
while howlers screech and scamper, to drive warmth into stiff limbs,
a squawking parrot squadron scudding overhead in mist.
A great blue heron flaps majestic’lly into morn’s hoot,
and bat groups reassemble, clustering, like leather fruit.
On branch and bough, the whirring rises to crescendoing,
as blazing Sun, endowing light, dispels the shadowing.
Its rays cross rainbowed reefs and cayes onto white coral sand,
where palm trees sway and turtles lay, that realm of pelicans.
Ospreys consort with whale sharks, stingrays, and parrotfish,
while shiny silvery-gray dolpins swim in drifting shifts.
Is one inclined to zone out to the drum of raindrop hail
on iron roof, the engine thrum, or slap of kayak sail?
One gleans food from the sea, and sips a coconut rum punch,
enjoying salt-sea fragrances within a tropic chug.
Belize a name that drifts in time, a breeze of love alive,
that is, at least, until mosquitoes swarm warm and arrive.
Lud Wes Caribee is a poet of the Caribbean. Three island nations of the Caribbean with around 11,000,000 are Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Cuba. Lea Knowles is a contemporary British poet. Belize is a nation of around 440,000 in Central America.
~~~
Newsreel:
The FBI Director Wray has indicated the
existence of th’ FD-1023 belatedly;
but will not share with Oversight Committee in the House;
the FBI ‘s above the law, and weaponized for grouse.
~~~
Thou, You(th)
by Educable Wires
“Youth goes right on growing old.”
—E. E. Cummings
It appeals to youth: the pealing of bells
over countryside and city, Sunday;
a banana peeled on one of the els,
an electrolyte potassium charge,
facing the future fiercely come what may;
a new plan, a new canal, a new barge.
It fires youth up: the glorification
of technology, the advancing step,
the vast plain of the imagination;
planes flying through the scarlet atmosphere;
heavy doses of joy, energy, and pep
no matter what line or plane one is near.
It obsesses the young mind: statistics,
mass society, amassing money,
five year plans, strategies and logistics;
vast arrays of anything that time brings;
landscapes that are plain, massive and sunny,
dotted with points, innumerable things.
It carries young minds: the winds of the world,
the wings of new ideas, whirling thoughts
spiraling upward, stairs winding and whirled;
dynamic situations involving
aircraft carriers, computers, robots,
all carried away with time, revolving.
Revolution! movements! youth soaks it up:
motion that takes it to a brand new place
away from where it is—two, three, four, hup!
this emotional roller coaster—life—
youth wants to face it straight on, face to face,
the past effaced and erased in this strife.
Educable Wires is a poet of youthful electronic music. E. E. Cummings (1894-1962) was a Modernist American poet.
~~~
The Comic Books of Youth
by Red Was Iceblue
From skyscraper to skyscraper, they fly,
the urban myths, Superman, Spiderman,
Clark Kent, Peter Parker, the regular guy
with superhuman powers for good. Can
such things not be? Why, then, do we dream them?
What are dreams for? Are they really only
decaying sense? mind-prints of a demon?
Even in cities some are so lonely.
Comic-book fantasies make the world seem
ordered to a child who wants clean borders.
What will not his unsatisfied mind scheme?
All it took was a couple of quarters
and a trip down to the local store, or…
anywhere. There is always something more.
The Sculptor David Iles
by Red Was Iceblue
In Bolivar, in Denton County, Texas, one may find,
the foundry started by the sculptor David Iles’ mind.
Within his foyer stand a bronze red-tailed hawk and crow;
a buck with massive antlers in the workroom too could show.
The foundry room is one huge vat, and smaller one, one sees,
where metals heat to eighteen-hundred Fahrenheit degrees,
where his creations—public art—become realities,
like “Harvest Song” with squirrels on an upward climbing tree.
He and his son are quite inspiring for the work they do
of local fauna in and on a local flora brew.
Red Was Iceblue is a poet of NewMillennial art. David Iles is a contemporary sculptor.
~~~
Sunday Morning at the Filling Station
by Bruc “Diesel” Awe
The filling station manager must fill his tank as well…
as starting, cleaning, closing gas pumps for his clientele.
His car is first in line, along the coiffured grounds around,
a butterfly-bush row of trees whose manicure astounds;
its rise above the neat, black metal fence and new-mown lawn,
the main attraction of this peaceful paradisal yawn.
He notices the nice, clear lettering and selling price,
then grabs and puts the hose’s nozzle in the filler pipe,
He watches the flow measurement. What it says he must pay—
this rotary encoder’s fine, numerical display.
Vague thoughts about past picnics mix with sunny flooding pics;
and then he hears the automatic cut-off valve’s slick click.
At an Intersection
by Bruc “Diesel” Awe
He saw this morning morning’s master, King o’er all the Earth,
the daylight’s dawn-drawn, golden, awesome Power of all Birth,
there, riding in the air, beyond the city’s rich facade,
on nothing but eternity, the brilliant eye of God.
He, in his ecstasy, his mystic rapture-captured trance,
was pausing in his cariot in which he would advance.
He glanced but briefly at the orange-gold-vermilion Orb,
whose billion brilliant rays were dangerous to chemisorb.
He dared not stay, and anyway the light would change to green,
and he would have to leave the scene and all that he had seen.
Bruc “Diesel” Awe is a poet of transportation. According to Beau Lecsi Werd, “cariot” is a neologism meaning a motorized chariot, i. e., a car. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was a Victorian British poet, on which this tennos relies.
~~~
Its Second Finding
by Brac Lei Uweeds
“…the beautiful changes/ In such kind ways…”
—Richard Wilbur
It is its second finding—June’s rose-bush blooms reignite.
Green leaves are turning red, as new buds come into the light.
Amidst green grass and trees, rough rocks and smoothed-out, gray cement,
the thorny, branching stems present a growing-edge extent.
Though small beneath the giant oaks found soaking in the sun,
the bright pink flowers manifest a rich and lively run.
The lovely changes just as much as does the dutiful.
If not for roots, where would these be, this pleasing, petalled luff,
these sails in the wagging wind that don’t go anywhere,
but satisfy their wanderlust in simple paths of air.
Brac Lei Uweeds is a poet of flowers. Richard Wilbur (1921-2017) was an American PostModernist poet.
~~~
What Must Do
by I Warble Seduce
My heart leaps up when I think of those happy days.
A pretty girl in braids is laughing at the world.
Back then life was a swirl. Back then life was a haze.
Who would have thought this is how time would have unfurled?
I look up at the hill. The same train’s passing by.
Where does it go, as round the corner it is curled?
So quickly is it gone. I look up at the sky.
I do not see a thing but miles and miles of blue.
I sigh. No tear is in my eye. Why don’t I cry?
She has gone; I have too. I wonder if she knew.
We all must go on through this complicated maze.
I had no idea that this is what must do.
That Lovely Lady
by I Warble Seduce
I open the coke; the fizz goes pop.
The lovely lady sashays past me.
I want her to pause. Oh, will she stop?
No woman is as lovely as she.
Her eyes sparkle like the shining sea.
Her skin’s as soft as the sandy beach.
O, she is so beautiful to me,
so close, and yet she’s so out o’ reach.
Her hair flows like grass in the windy dunes.
Coral lips smile like strands of thin kelp.
Along she hums the sweetest of tunes.
Her will I love forever, God help me.
Mr. I Warble Seduce is a poet of love.
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