Solar Eclipse, August 21, 2017
          by Drew U. A. Eclibse

The sky is cloudless, blue azure, some shadows lengthening;
there is a stillness in the air, a tension strengthening.
Across the landscape, people empty houses of their souls
to come out as the Moon moves past, within the Sun’s control.
The Earth is still its changing self, rotating axis-wise.
The Sun still beats upon the landscape with its firm reprise.
The trees remain upstanding, traffic on the highway goes,
one hears in vain the waning birdsong in the day’s unclose.
Uncivil unrest is on pause; bats are confused; dogs bark;
it seem there is a momentary lapswing into dark.

 

Drew U. A. Eclibse, a poet of astronomical ruminations, is frequently seen staring off into space.

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To the Grotto of Catullus
          by Aedile Cwerbus
          for Douglas Thornton

In northern Italy, an hour from Verona is
Lake Garda, Italy’s large lake and famed peninsula,
Catullus called his dearest home, the pearl Sermio,
and Pound thought worth the journey, o, a century ago.

Free from Bithynia, Catullus could unwind his mind,
and leave, in limping iambs, all his burdens far behind;
and Tennyson as well could pause and see the ruins left,
eroding walls, gray stoneway falls, and archways time bereft.

In Sermio, the tourists swarm the waterfront cafes,
beside the trinket shops and vibrant flowery displays;
but at Catullus’ grotto where the grass and olives grow,
though all things fade, there are some that, ah, we do not let go.

Aedile Cwerbus is a poet interested in Latin literature.

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Ten PreSocratic Attics
          by Erisbawdle Cue

Miletan Thales thought that water was the basic thing;
Anaximander, that opposing, thought apeiron king;
while Anaximenes conceived the vital link was air;
Pythagoras thought number was the key to everywhere;
in constant flux, for Heraclitus, logos reigned supreme;
Parmenides believed change was illusory, a dream;
for Eleatic Zeno change created paradox;
Empedocles felt love and hate a cyclic spew of rocks;
the nous of Anaxagoras advanced ideal seeds.
Democritus thought atoms stocked the universe’s needs.

 

Erisbawdle Cue is a poet of philosophy, in particular, those thinkers, like Plato and Aristotle, from Augustine to Aquinas, including Duns Scotus to Descartes, and Bacon to Berkeley, along with Hobbes to Hume, and Kant to Nietzsche, and Russell and Husserl to Wittgenstein and beyond.

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Jack Kerouac
          by “Weird” Ace Blues

On scrolls of paper rolled around his type-wry-tur-n,
he wrote the cinematic reals of his life,
he rode the enigmatic musings of his stir,
and rowed the crazy racing rapids of his strive,
attempting to get more than just an ordered flow,
an ordained flood he’d follow merely to survive,
an ordinary fold. He wanted so to go,
to go, to keep on moving from all that he was:
He was an arrow speeding through axe-handle holes,
a kerosine acetylene, lit, beat, pure jazz,
wherever he would go, a river of raw nerve,
a braZen Dharma bum upon Mount NeveRest.

 

“Weird” Ace Blues is a poet of the beat.

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Karl “King” Wenclas
          by Web Reediculas

I saw him flying in the sky,
on spoofy, puffy clouds up high, bold Kingly K.
He flew with love, far up above,
Publicity Director of…the ULA,

which went defunct and was debunked,
but that would not stop Mr. Skunk, oh, no.
He strode into the Storm upon a whimmmmmmm.

He rode atop his AgitProp,
and piloted his HeliCopt low overhead.
Because he dared fly through the air
with less than just a meagre fare, most thought him mad.

But he would not give up the ship,
and he continued on his trip, o, yeh…
wrought synergy with vinegar and vimmmmmmm.

So in the blue, with ballyhoo,
from Philly to Detroit he flew, past solar disk.
Long after ceasing publishing
his plucky zeen New Philistine, he took a risk.

In daily jogs upon his blogs,
he vented rants in monologues, uh huh.
And perforce, General Horse advances the Wal)l)l)l)l)l)l)s.

He thought he’d try to make it by,
and rode a cannonball, oh my, that crazy git.
He leapt thru hoops, and made great loops,
like Snoopy facing poet-poops, with New Pop Lit.

It was his latest and his greatest hit
that lit the iterary Net, hurrah.
The elevated Kingly K. will cha(lle)nge them Alllllll.

 

Web Reediculas is an avid netizen.

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A Censored Surd
          by Esca Webuilder
          for Joseph Salemi
          “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never herd me.”
              —Wic E. Ruse Blade

The censorship ‘s in earnest now. We hate diversity.
We can’t allow free speech here at this University.
And we must ban some voices from the Internet it seems,
because they disagree with us and our elitist dreams.
GoDaddy, Google, Apple, Cloudfare—let us all pile on.
We cannot tolerate those who dare Gab outside the throng.
Y Combinator too has joined the feeding, frenzied fray;
and this is happening this moment in the USA.
Ah, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest, attacking Liberty:
Ulysses could be next, and later Lady Chatterley.

 

Esca Webuilder is not a member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but he does appreciate its promoting Internet civil liberties.