A Prosem on the Enormity of It All
by R. Lee Ubicwedas
It is the enormity of it all that amazes and raises the feeling of awe. This vision of our World, vital and monumental, leaves me raw, reeling, wondering if it is sustainable. And then, as naturally as a tree falling in the woods, that it not appal, it vanishes, fades from reality, and leaves the miracle of life peaceful, standing at the door of eternity, gazing on the grand and remarkable everywhere around blazing, glittering, glowing, entirely inexpressible and unexplainable, this mystery.
R. Lee Ubicwedas is a poet of Ubiquity. According to Beau Lecsi Werd, “prosem” is a trunc for prosepoem.
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Haiku
by “Clear Dew” Ibuse
The child observes,
in the light of summer’s Sun,
a grasshopper fleet.
“Clear Dew” Ibuse is a haikuist of the natural world.
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Haiku
by “Wired Clues” Abe
A flock of swallows
at an interesection is
perched on three street signs.
“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).
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Couplet After Kaijin Akashi
by “Lice Brews” Ueda
Like luminescent fish that dwell in darkness in the sea,
there is no light till I alight from deep within my me.
A Small, Stone Monument
by “Lice Brews” Ueda
“ikite aogu / sora not takasa yo / aka tonbo”
—Sōseki
Beneath the towering skyscrapers found in Shinjuku,
in Kikuichō, one may find a small, stone monument,
that marks the birth place of Sōseki, at the restaurant,
green, growing ivy, advertisements, going into noon.
However, Kinnosuke Natsume was not embraced;
th’ unwanted child—eighth—was sent off to another place.
Unwelcome at his birth, o, an embarrassment of age,
he later came back from his foster home—another page.
A lesser cuckoo—singing in the heights of thé haiku,
that stub-born Edo soul in Matsuyama, Shikoku,
who early studied Chinese lit, then English, at prep school,
where he met Masaoka Shiki—Hototogisu.
“Lice Brews” Ueda is a poet of the small and recondite, particularly in Japan. “ikite aogu / sora not takasa yo / aka tonbo” could be translated into English, as “alive and gazing up / o, the soaring sky is high/ red dragonfly”. Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) was a major Meiji haiku writer. Kaijin Akashi (1901-1939) was a Modernist Japanese poet and confined leper.
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A Natsume Sōseki Android Demonstration
by “Wired Clues” Abe
It is a ghost; it’s not a person, at the podium;
nor is it in some building, or some Roman odeum,
used for performances of music and/or poetry:
it merely is an android of Sōseki Natsume.
It stands before a giant checkerboard of white and green;
a curving N and characters of Japanese are seen.
It stands upright in suit and tie, before the cameras
that click and flash repeatedly, like phantom chímeras.
Here is no soil; there is no soy; no poison and no poise.
There is a microphone projecting out the speaking voice.
“Wired Clues” Abe is a poet of Japanese technology. Natsume Sōseki (1868-1916) was a noted Japanese poet and proset. It is not his android that is fascinating—no, it is his haiku and his novels, like “I Am a Cat”, “Botchan”, “Kusamakura”, and “Kokoro.”
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A Fractal
by Euclidrew Base
A fractal is a geometric shape that is self-similar and has a fractional dimension, like perhaps a crepe, a crispy, curled pancake turned on its back. It can be used to measure broccoli, describe a coastline, and explain a fern, for fluid dynamic technology and brain analysis or forest burn.
Euclidrew Base is a poet of mathematics. This prosem (sci-spec) is composed of eighty syllables. Attempting to make something of the iteration theories of French Modernist mathematicians, Pierre Fatou (1878-1929) and Gaston Julia (1893-1978), Polish-born, French PostModernist mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot (1924-2010) brought fractals to light.
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Newsreel:
Is Imran Khan held now within a small and dirty cell,
in Punjab’s Attock jail, known as a damn, harsh, living hell?
The city of Attock has a population of around 145,000.
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A Multi-Skilled Consultant
by Badrue Ecsweli
He is a multi-skilled consultant with experience,
a passionate, enthusiast with labyrinthine sense,
especi’lly in combining businesses and marketing
with the world of psychology. What cannot be achieved?
With the right leadership and mindset, and a focused team,
communication is the key, and challenging beliefs.
With mental health and self-development, what might one find
to live a happier and more fulfilling life in kind?
convening expertise across distinctive disciplines,
South Africa north to Gabon, woods and savannah lands.
Badrue Ecsweli is a poet of South Africa. Hannen van Eeden is a contemporary multi-skilled consultant.
~~~
Newsreel:
The land-locked nation of Niger, south of Algeria
and Libya, and likewise lies north of Nigeria,
experienced a coup d’état July the 26th.
Was Russia’s Wagner group involved within that deadly mix?
Niger has a poulation of around 25,000,000.
~~~
The Praedia of Julia Felix
by Aedile Cwerbus
He walked into the praedia of Julia Felix
that took up two entire blocks, fine insulas of land.
Within the giant house there were apartment rooms for rent,
luxurious large baths, and leisure gardens—time well spent.
The painted windows on the walls, bright, sky-blue, pure azure,
as your eyes pan upon the span, clouds coloured white-allure;
a waterfall, by marble benches—the triclinium—
and vigourous Fourth-Style frescoes at the tablinum.
The art, the gardens, and the fruit trees growing at the rear,
an orchard just beyond the villa, and yet very near.
Aedile Cwerbus is a poet of Ancient Rome. Julia Felix unfortunately perished when Mount Vesuvius exploded in 79 and destroyed Pompeii.
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“The wind sae cauld blew south and north, and blew into the floor.
Quoth our goodman to our goodwife, ‘Gae out and bar the door.’”
—David Herd (1732-1810), “Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs”
~~~
Newsreel:
Police in Oakland, California, tell their residents,
“Get out and bar their doors.” Amid a crime-surge, it make sense.
Police suggest they also get air horns to blast at thieves,
and put security bars on their windows, if you please.
Police reported one old woman, seventy-five years,
used a .357 magnum, at her racketeers.
~~~
The Roses
by Basil Drew Eceu
He did not see ten-thousand garden roses at a glance,
nor did they dance—those dozens growing in the clayey sand.
They were not yellow, no, nor golden, o, in any sense;
but they ranged from white to a deep pink, randomly and dense.
Green leaves and stems were stricken with blight, spots, above, below;
of course, they could have been much healthier, as roses go.
Around their blossoms and their thorns, large spiders wove their webs,
in hopes of trapping insects in their sticky, silver nets.
He hated when the hornets darted in between their blooms,
but butterflies, so colourful, yes, could improve his mood.
But when he lay upon his couch, they did not come to mind;
for many other things would flash upon his inward eye.
Coming Into Shore
by Basil Drew Eceu
“I am a part of all that I have met.”
Alfred Tennyson, “Ulysses”
He pointed toward the land; the waves would roll him shoreward soon—
King Arthur’s daydream in sublunar Tuesday afternoon.
He came unto a land, that always seemed the afternoon,
and stood there pointing full-faced at the pale summer Moon.
Upon the coast, he felt the languid air about him swoon,
and saw the wind-swept beach-grass growing on dune after dune.
Basil Drew Eceu is a poet of English literature of the 19th century, including British Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850), an early influence upon his poetry. Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) was a British Victorian writer, who combed the depths and the heights of Englis poetry.
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Her High-School Theme
by Educable Wires
“Over the Mountains of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow…”
—Edgar Allan Poe, “Eldorado”
It was her major high-school paper, many pages long—
hand-written on two-dozen cursive—tossed, not lost, but gone.
The title “Eldorado” was her subject and her theme;
the penmanship was neat, in ink, aesthetic, fine, and mete.
But what was in it he could not recall, though he did read
its collocation, and the fancy phrasing of her screed.
He vaguely thought she wrote of quests of its reputed prize,
Pizarro’s brother, Raleigh, more, near Orinoco’s rise.
but did she write of myths portayed in Castellanos’ verse,
like the grand tribal zipa of the Muisca universe?
Educable Wires is a poet of education. Juan de Castellanos (1522-1606) was a Spanish, Siglo de Oro soldier, priest, and poet, who wrote the lengthy “Elegías de varones ilustres de Indias” of over 100,000 verses, admired for his use of pastoral, epic, elegy, chivalric tale, and historical romance. Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was an Romantic American poet and proset. Shirley Eleanor Wise (1929-2011) was a PostModernist American writer and crossword enthusiast.
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The Great Divide
by Raise Club Weed
There in the Rocky Mountains is a hole, a basin that is called the Great Divide, in southern Wyoming. Shaped like a bowl of sand dunes, its extent is vast and wide. Formed by a geologic anticline, it is an endorheic watershed.
At times, it seems that there is little sign of life in this part of the Red Desert. No longer are there herds of buffalo, though you might see a pronghorn walking by, despite precipitation being low and the evaporation being high. For even here some critters make a “house”: the pocket gopher and the kangaroo rat; here lives the pygmy rabbit and sage grouse amongst sage brush wash and alkali flat. It seems that even in such emptiness, one can find life, and some can do with less.
Raise Club Weed is a poet of Wyoming scenes. The above prosem contains 180 syllables.
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The B-52
by Air Weelbed Suc
Developed in the 1950s as a heavy bomber, the B-52, that giant, eight-jet Stratofortress, was, even as it flew through the heaven blue, considered obsolete by that decade’s end. However, in the 1960s, its fate was not sealed; for it was commissioned to Vietnam, where it made many hits up into the 1970s, still being used in the 1980s, where it hauled thermonuclear cruise missiles through the air to the end of the Cold War, which occurred in the 1990s, when, in Iraq’s fierce storms, it surfaced again.
Air Weelbed Suc is a poet of aircraft. The above prosem of 140 syllables is an example of sci-spec, as per the ideas of French Modernist prosepoet Paul Valéry (1871-1945) and Lew Icarus Bede.
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The Ordinary Pedestrian
by Earl W. Sidecube
He entered out into that silence of the evening heat.
Upon the buckling concrete he had placed his weary feet.
His hands weren’t in his pockets as he took off down the walk.
That is what he liked most to do, take off at eight o’clock.
He passed the lanes; it was in 2023 AD;
health consciously, but not alone, though with no company.
He would not walk till it was dark; he was not Leonard Mead,
that stránge pedestrian in á short Ráy Bradbury screed.
Cicadas screamed, some dogs barked out, this was no peaceful eve;
the dry creek-bed, these empty streets, it was now time to leave.
He didn’t spend his night out walking; he would go inside;
and maybe go to his computer—he might read or write.
Earl W. Sidecube is a poet of scientific speculation (sci-spec). Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) was a PostModernist American science fiction (sci-fi) proset.
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On His Poetic Aims
by Claude I. S. Weber
He fell between the aims of Mallarmé and Valéry,
the polished forms, the open morphs, and goals of Reverdy,
not the sublime simplicity of his reality,
but something more, right at the fore of ideality.
Claude I. S. Weber is a poet of poetic theory. Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898), Paul Valéry (1871-1945), and Pierre Reverdy (1889-1960), were three French poets.
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