Wise Words with Bruce Wise

Haiku
          by “Clear Dew” Ibuse

The toddler stares at
a clothes hamper with the same
design he has on.

Haiku
          by “Clear Dew” Ibuse

All about my mind
scatter echoing haiku—
cicadas voices.

“Clear Dew” Ibuse is a haikuist of the natural world.

~~~

Haiku
          by “Wired Clues” Abe

Th’ entire neighbourhood
is plagued by cicada droves,
in good, growing groves.

“Wired Clues” Abe is a trad haiku writer, following on the work of writers, such as Nakamura Kusatao (1901-1983), Kaneko Tôta (1919-2018), Nagata Kôi (1900-1997), Nakamura Sonoko (1911-2001), and Akao Tôshi (1925-1981).

~~~

Haiku
          by “Lice Brews” Ueda

The toddler steps on
a sowbug, while viewing a
stop-sign octagon.

“Lice Brews” Ueda is a haikuist fond of Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828), though here he has in mind Edo poet and proset Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694).

~~~

Upon a Pedestal, With Stains
          by Walibee Scrude

Although his stock poetic lines weren’t well received
in his life, Adam Lindsay Gordon, still retains
a modicum of memory in Melbourne. Heaved
onto the Gordon Reserve, with who knows what pains,
he sprawls in bronze near five Canary Island palms,
the Stanford Fountain, and Gordon of Khartoum. Disdain
is never far from death, yet one can find its alms
near here. Beside the busy streets, on a stone plinth
in horse-riding attire, his casualness calms;
and there beneath the book hung from thin finger tips,
the very year he quit, in 1870,
his difficulties, life, and Melbourne’s labyrinth.

Walibee Scrude is a poet of Australia. Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-1870) was an Australian balladeer. Melbourne is a city of southeastern Australia of around 5,000,000.

~~~

Newsreel:
Since Google’s YouTube censored MP Ruddick’s maiden speech,
beyond Australia, it has had an ever greater reach.

~~~

A New Day Rising
          by Sri Wele Cebuda

The water is so blue, the leaves of grass are dry
as twigs beneath the similar-hued elephant,
so huge, beige brown and firm, beside the azure sky
and branching trees, big, rugged, clumsy. elegant,
not in a china shop, but in the wide outdoors,
important and magnificent, significant.
Right at the forefront of the scene, one sees forms—scores—
large ears, eyes spread, long trunk past tusks of ivory,
thick legs, splayed feet, on one of nature’s many floors,
and ambling, like nothing else in Tennessee,
or India. I wonder where this is. I sigh…
my sight—a new day rising, free. Where can it be?

Sri Wele Cebuda is a poet of India. This bilding draws on contemporary Indian painter Anand PKC.

~~~

At the Great Stupa in Nakhon Pathom
          by Daw Buricselee

To the Pagoda of the Holy Relics came
the poet chanting words: ‘May true religion live
forever; for it’s not the poet who needs fame.
He needs the Buddha’s help to give and to forgive,
to gain strength in attainment of enlightenment.
He needs his book of words to be affirmative,
preserving to the end of time and firmament,
the presence of your humble servant—SC
belonging to the King of the White Elephant,
a loyal subject ever to King Rama II,
here at Phra Pathom chedi’s shining orange flame,
as far as any love can go and still be true.’

Daw Buricselee is a poet of Thailand. This bilding draws from Sunthorn Phu (1737-1809), a poet of Thailand.

~~~

Nazrat Ahmad Yar
          by Sawceeb Dureli

He was a ride-share DC driver, Nazrat Ahmad Yar,
who had helped the Americans in their forestalling war—
two decades in Afghanistan. He wanted to be free,
and so he came to the United States eventu’lly.
He fled Kabul, and then went northwest with his family,
and managed to get on a flight from Mazar-i-Sharif.
They first arrived in Pennsylvania, but he was robbed there,
and so they left to north Virginia fleeing that despair;
but, driving in DC for Lyft, he was attacked by thugs,
who murdered him inside his car—four hoods, but just one slug.

Sawceeb Dureli is a poet of Afghanistan. Mazar-i-Sharif is a city in northern Afghanistan of around 500,000.

Top 15 Most Murderous Cities in the US (as per Wirepoints):

Homicides per 100,000 in the above cities ranged from 74.3 to 24.9.

~~~

Three Pyramids
          by Scribe El Uwade

There on the desert are three pyramids,
the tombs of the Pharoah Khufu, his son,
and his son’s son, built on the backs and skids
of thousands, there on the sands at Giza,
in the land of the Nile and mid-day fire.
Aligned to the heavenly stars, they stand,
stone monuments to time, of the desire
for immortality. Colossal, grand,
these records, the echoes of so many,
a testament to their sheer endurance,
still retain, in this anno domini
of 2023, preeminence.
Above, blank, in the sky, the lidless eye
grazes the granite sarcophagi.

Scribe El Uwade is a poet of Ancient Egypt. Khufu was a pharaoh of the 4th Dynasty.

~~~

Th’ Ilyushin-IL-22M
          by Rus Ciel Badeew

Th’ Ilyushin-IL-22M shot down from the sky,
was no illusion at the crash site, smoking, spewed awry.
Responsibility was from the Wagner forces group
before they melded back into the Putin Russian troop,
and Yevgeny Prigozhin scuttled off to Belarus,
and Rus perhaps, a hastily arranged and secret truce.

Rus Ciel Badeew is a poet of Russia.

~~~

Newsreel:
At Avdiika in Ukraine, seen lying on the ground
the capsule of a cluster bomb’s submunition rounds
sits where the Russians sent it to, in their ongoing war;
so Biden plans to send Ukraine such ordinance, therefore.

Putin’s military is bombing the hell out of Avdiika, Ukraine, which contains around 2000, from a prewar population of over 30,000.

~~~

The Prose Apartments
          by Esiad L Werecub

Along the highway of communication, one can find
the prose apartment paragraphs conveniently designed.
They rise above the light-green lawns, below the azure sky,
wherein the Sun is flaring, glaring, from its changing highs.

Here one can find Herodotus and his founding histories,
before one comes upon the theories of Thucydides;
as well as the dramatic works of Plato’s broad discourse
and all those mighty writing drafts of Thé Philosopher’s.

Those solid prose apartments are so tidy, neat and clean,
and from them there is quite a lot of living one can glean.
They are a place where one can dwell beside time’s swimming pool,
where fun and one luxuriate, in space, room after room.

Esiad L Werecub is a poet of Ancient Greece. Among the first prose writers of World literature are Herodotus (c. 484 BC – c. 424 BC), Thucydides (c. 460 BC – c. 400 BC), Plato (c. 428 BC – c. 348 BC) and Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC). In English literature, the poetic prose of Elizabethan Philip Sidney (1554-1586) remains impressive.

~~~

Ariosto Sang
          by Alberdi Ucwese

No Aristotle, Ariosto sang
of ladies, cavaliers, of arms and loves,
of courtesies and daring deeds that rang
of greatness, flew about like flights of doves.
He sang of the romance of Saracens
and Christian paladins, of giants, dwarfs,
magicians, maidens, kings, and amazons,
in many humors and in many morphs,
and more; for Orlando Furioso
is longer than th’ Aeneid, th’ Odyssey,
or th’ Iliad, its zest touching Tasso
and Spenser with its virtuosity,
acceptance and profound serenity
of all life’s bounty and variety.

Alberdi Ucwese is a poet of Italy. Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533) was an Italian Renaissance poet. Torquato Tasso (1544-1595) was an Italian poet and Edmund Spenser (1533-1599), an English Elizabethan poet.

~~~

A Note
          by Ewald E. Eisbruc

Reminiscent of Berlioz, Mahler’s First Symphony drew heavily upon the Songs of a Traveling Journeyman, the Viennese tradition, and klezmer. Longing for music of universal appeal made him encyclopedian; delicate with powerful sounds, pulling out all the bells and whistles—sans hollers.

Ewald E. Eisbruc is a poet of Austrian music. Gustave Mahler (1860-1911) was a late Romantic Austrian compose.

~~~

Newsreel:
As of the Second of July, 5000 cars were torched,
and hundreds of architectonic structures had been scorched.
Attacks upon the French police and people thus unleashed,
created the worst scenes in France within this century.

~~~

Succinct Inscript on Drink
          by Henry Aldrich

“If on my theme I rightly think,
There are five reasons why men drink:—
Good wine; a friend; because I’m dry;
Or lest I should be by and by;
Or —any other reason why.”

Henry Aldrich (1648-1710) was an English theologian, philosopher, architect, and composer. The above epitaph attributed to French classical scholar Jacques Sirmond (1559-1651).

~~~

While All Around
          by Walice du Beers
          “You have too much respect upon the world./ They lose it that do
          buy it with much care.”
              —William Shakespeare, “Merchant of Venice”

While all around are people blowing up
themselves and others, even on the beach
we stroll along with tea or coffee cup
in hand. All of a sudden we reach
the dead. The seagulls send their high-pitched screams
out to the day. We still have time to laugh.
The humorous surrounds our waking dreams.
If we will look, we’ll find it on the graph.
There’s love and fun as well, and happiness.
We needn’t be so glum or gloomy all
the time. The trick is to know how to guess
when the good occurs…it’s so beautiful.
Oh, life, how wonderful it is at times;
if only it could always be like that.

Walice du Beers is a poet of odd vistas.

~~~

Jones Very’s Bout
          by Lew Icarus Bede

At twenty-six, Jones Very had an attack of
mania, a mental breakdown in class.
He shared his rapt vision of God above,
and spoke out words of imminence. Alas,
upon telling his students to flee to
the mountain, he was sacked, and sent to an
asylum, where he wrote poetry. Through
those long weeks there he became more human,
returning eventually to health,
albeit cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in,
like an “extinct volcano” lost in stealth.
I wonder, Did he get to the mountain?
And if he did, or didn’t, what are we
to make of his bout with insanity?

Lew Icarus Bede is a poet and literary critic of flight. Jones Very (1813-1880) was an American poet and mystic.

~~~

Another NewMillennial Balladeer, Rich(ard Th)om(as
          by Wisec Baludeer
          “How shall I manage to compose a theme?”
              —e. e. cummings

He’d been a business teacher and coached sports in some high school,
in southern Pennsylvania in York County’s motor pool.
From there he switched to teaching middle school, at where he learned,
the poetry the students read was princip’lly free burn.

But as a boy, he had been fascinated, in those times,
by cadences of Poe and Kipling, in their metered rhymes;
and so he’d write rhymed metered poems for his students there;
and, after his retirement, continued in that lair.

He hoped his verse would entertain, influence acts, or more;
but by and large, he thought his words would not have much import;
yet he continued writing solely for the balances
of varied meters, brand-new rhymes, and phrasing challenges.

Wisec Baludeer is a balladeer. n the above dodeca, Pénn-syl-ván-ia has four syllables. Edgar Poe (1809-1849) was a Romantic American poet and short story proset, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was a Victorian British proset and poet, and E. E. Cummings (1894-1962) was an American Modernist poet.

~~~

On Kipling
          by Basil Drew Eceu

His vigour, not his rigour, is what most impresses me,
not esoteric exigencies into poesy.
And though he was not limited to balladry and such;
it is his verse I like the most, if maybe not that much.
I also liked that he would write on topical events.
His novels and short stories filled my mind with thoughtful sense.
His jungle jingles, epigrams and hymns were stirring stuff,
stiff upper lip and all that rot, be off, be damned—enough.
It seems such bliss to have been born and lived in India,
as Joseph Rudyard Kipling did, our English Gunga Din.

Basil Drew Eseu is a poet of British literature.

~~~

Mnemonic
          by Éclair Dub W. See

‘I’m so amazed at memory,’ he spoke aloud, but mete.
“However does the thing I’m searching for appear to me?
It seems it comes out of the blue-gray matter of my mind,
which if I ever searched for it I could not ever find.
Yet there it is—just what it was, that I was looking for.
Somehow I come upon it-s anamnetic open door.”
This mystery, enigma emanating psychic kick,
excites because it seem so random but it isn’t—click.
It’s there because one wanted it, though it may take its time,
acetylcholine colling with its rolling coenzyme.

Éclair Dub W. See is a poet of vision. According to Beau Lecsi Werd, the neologism “coll” a verb/al trunc from collect, hence “colling.”

~~~

Newsreel:
He was impressed with baseball’s Jacob deGrom’s slider pitch,
which clocks in at a 93-plus-mile-per-hour clip.
Sometimes his spin clocks in more than three-thousand RPMs.
But now he’ll need more surgery—another Tommy John’s.