A Solar Smile
by Wiscee Durable
He knew he needed to be strong, as strong as he could be.
This cosmos was an unforgiving place—eternally.
Yet there were times when it would share its harsh brutality
with beauteousness and a kind of cordiality
The Sun appears, as it has done, so many days and years,
yea, decades, centuries, millennia, and eras peers.
Faint gold and pinks, God’s fingerpaints, spread over there and here;
lights momentarily move all about the atmosphere.
The rooftops are submerged in orange auras for a while,
freestyling and beguiling, a sapphire solar smile.
Wiscee Durable is a poet of lasting strength.
~~~
Haiku
by “Wired Clues” Abe
A dozen grackles
ransack a ramen packet,
in the parking lot.
Haiku
by “Wired Clues” Abe
In the blazing heat,
the infant notes the bubbles
floating in the air.
Haiku
by “Wired Clues” Abe
A squeal of delight:
the Capitol on the wall,
above the mantle.
“Wired Clues” Abe is a poet of trad haiku.
~~~
Newsreel:
Post US bomber drills with South Korea and Japan,
the North Koreans launched a missile to the sea again.
~~~
Newsreel:
On Monday, China’s Evergrande stock plummeted down low,
while Country Garden warned of record losses and remorse.
~~~
So Many Voices
by “Clear Dew” Ibuse
There are so many voices in the modern world, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed by their display. In olden days there weren’t as many people swirled together on this planet whirling on its way; so it was easier to differentiate between competing voices and what they had to say. But now, it’s trying, first, to carry all that freight, and second, simultaneously speak out too. It’s hard to heed he thousands when the billions prate. Somehow one has to organize this hullaballoo, and then deal with it all no matter what is hurled, to find good principles, then hold them fast, like glue.
“Clear Dew” Ibuse is a poet of voices, like those of the cicadas. “So Many Voices” is a prosem.
~~~
Newsreel:
When Ali Bongo won again one more disputed vote,
loud gunfire shots, the sounds of rounds, were heard in Libreville.
Gabon declared a military coup had taken place,
and Ali Bongo, the dictator, has now been detained.
~~~
Nocturnal Conversation
by Basil Drew Eceu
Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde
went for a walk when dark outside.
The latter said to his good friend,
‘How nice it is day did descend.”
The former answered to his fiend,
who up against a lamppost leaned,
‘If that is so, then why must you
lean there upon the light we view?
Are you so weak that you must lean
upon what little light is seen?
Your very being seems to need
the pure and bright on which to feed.
Since this is so, I tell you true,
I think I’ve had enough of you;
and so, when comes the lovely dawn,
I’ll take my leave. And you, be gone.’
Basil Drew Ecue is a poet of 19th century British literature. Robert Louis Stephenson (1850-1894) was a Victorian novelist and short story writer.
~~~
The Poetess
by Wilbur Dee Case
She worked so hard, but she could not work hard enough, it seems,
to use those new things that she made, and still be tough, to see…
them through, despite all of the spite the gods spit on her way;
and yet she steeled herself to get as far as she did. Hey.
She managed to achieve a kind of greatness on her path,
a momentary stay, like as th’ L-function found in math,
conjectural, still out of reach of systematic proof,
but serious, if horrible, and terribly aloof.
I heard her manic and hysteric voice. It shocked me to
my very core, like the mad, crazed hyenas at the Zoo.
The Poet
by Wilbur Dee Case
Then David Landrum was standing at the mailbox.
He was wearing glasses, black gloves, and a black coat.
He looks like he is about to strangle what he wrote:
Words are “raw centers of suggestion…” Thus he talks,
like someone who has come upon some building blocks.
And then, “You don’t make a poem with ideas,
you make it with words,” he quotes Stéphane Mallarmé.
Then he himself has something else he wants to say:
“Words have a painful beauty.” Why? Perhaps because
it’s so; although I don’t think so. But there he was.
And then I noticed part of the burgundy shirt,
the rounded, red, tapering mailbox flag, the gray
cement sidewalk, the green lawn up to the driveway,
the white, two-story house with thin, dark, fake shutters,
and a leafless tree between. And then I was sure.
Wilbur Dee Case is a literary critic. Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) was an American PostModernist poet. David Landrum is a contemporary poet.
~~~
Newsreel:
Beware JRB Ware and Robert Peters, you may find
the IRS does not approve of robbing people blind.
~~~
On the Landing of the Subway
by Bruce “Diesel” Awe
I saw him standing on the landing of the subway train,
a gangly tangle of nerve ends connected to a brain.
It looked like he was waiting for the metro’s roaring wail,
upon the rails winding round the turning, curving trail,
there underground down in the tunnel of the engineers.
The engine was quite near. O, he could hear it in his ears.
But it was not there yet, and so he had to wait…and wait…
anticipating its arrival at the present gate,
where it would be presenting its self as the next in line,
like Superman, that man of steel, with its tempered spine.
This Stalwart American Engineer
by Bruc “Diesel” Awe
Born Ira Osborn Baker, 1853, in Linton, Indiana. He attended school in Illinois and graduated at age twenty in civil engineering at the IIU. He then became a teacher there of physics and of civil engineering. Having no textbooks, he made his own on Masonry Construction and on Roads and Pavements. In addition, he pioneered a cement-testing lab and strove to understand materials that could be used constructing tiered abodes and ways in brick, stone, cement, and concrete, this stalwart, American civil engineer.
Bruc “Diesel” Awe is a poet of roads. This prosem remembers Ira Osborn Baker (1853-1925), an American proset and engineer. IIU was the Illinois Industrial University, later the University of Illinois.
~~~
Newsreel:
The USA Marines have now put Tomahawks on trucks,
and the USA Army has now followed them with bucks.
~~~
Coming to a New Airport
by Air Weelbed Suc
Each airport in the US nation’s airspace system has
unique, distinct charácteristics, diff’rent surfaces,
that pilots need to know for take-off, landing, taxiing,
for mental clarity and overall mind rallying.
A pilot needs to know location of the port’s flight decks,
configurations, and the kinds of aircraft, planes or jets.
Diverse experiences offer flyers challenges,
as well as runways, parallel, of varied alley lengths.
When ready to ascend, don’t call the ATC, until
you’re next, then give the sequence number, so be prepped, but chill.
This will help them get one airborne, efficiently and safe,
into the broad, bright sky, blue, gray or white, that one will face.
Since there’s an R-NAV GPS approach to either end,
one mitigation strategy, when ready to descend,
is to upload an instrument approach and a waypoint
that is aligned with said runway, as an adept adjoint.
The Tower has established points used by the local schools,
perhaps not published on the pilots’ Visual Flight Rules;
and if one ‘s unfamiliar with such things, the Tower will
then issue alternate instructions, just run-of-the-mill.
While still inbound, advising ATC where one will be,
allows them to track one as safely as is possible.
Arriving after sunset, lighting can be different,
conventional or LED’s intensity augment.
Air Weelbed Suc is a poet of flight.
~~~
The Tall Communications Tower
by Arcideb Usewel
He saw the tall communications tower up so high,
a steel lattice and triangular, cross-sectioned rise,
that rose above the neighbourbood, like a gigantic mast,
that soared into the sky, with shaped antennae and crow’s nest.
Above the houses, buildings, streets and parking lots, untimed,
the self-supporting, ground-based, cantilevered structure climbed.
Here off of Georgetown-University’s gray drive he went,
and paused beside the fence, near thé eroding, paved cement.
So lofty were its parallines, beyond his thinking crown,
o, altitudinous, like ancient castles of renown,
that when he craned his neck to see its framework overhead,
he felt like as a king surveying monumental dread.
Tall Street Lamps
by Arcideb Usewel
He pointed to the tall street lamps around the neighbourhood;
exposed, embedded pebbles on their surfaces was good.
They were made strong to meet high wind loads, holes precast
and drilled,
then set and plumbed, the earth backfilled and tamped till they
were stilled,
surprising walkers on their walks with their high-rising forms.
which offer lighting from the evening to the dawning morn.
The concrete colour was a varied mix of neutral browns,
to fit in with the painted houses on the grass-green grounds.
They are both functional and statuesque those lofty poles,
with ample airborne, chamfered corners, its lumins are gold.
Arcideb Usewel is a poet of ordinary architectural structures.
~~~
All But the Shot
by Scubie Dew Lear
It was a quarter till the hour; time to take the test;
and yet he had to go…off to the bathroom…so he went.
He was without two number-two, lead pencils; yet he left.
So as he could get to the restroom fast, then back, he fled.
He hoped the proctor of the test would understand his plight,
and be okay with him not being there right at that time.
But then it happened, when he was enroute, and in the hall,
before he had time to prepare to reach his present goal,
a sudden, mild, and relaxing shower in his shorts—
a wet dream. He awoke. All disappearing…but the shot.
Scubie Dew Lear is a poet of sleepy times.
~~~
Beside a Sea of Trees
by Cu Ebide Aswerl
When I grew up, we lived beside a sea of trees;
so it is not surprising that I spent much time
creating trails and making cottages of ferns.
We also made tree houses, which were not sublime.
I can remember how I swept the leaves with sticks
those paths that took so many winding turns;
and how I’d run and leap and climb—oh, such high kicks.
My body flushed, I so enjoyed the fresh, hushed breeze.
Find the Thimble
by Cu Ebide Aswerl
Find the Thimble was a game of my youth
that I think nobody plays anymore;
and I think the game has, to tell the truth,
vanished into the mists of time. What for?
No longer do women darn clothes as much;
a thimble’s not as common an object;
nor are there so few pastimes, and as such,
that humble game folks presently neglect.
That leisured life, and that longing for games,
with that lack of them, has forever gone.
Our present has innumerable claims;
and looking for a thimble isn’t one.
In life, time and again, things show, and then
they go, hidden till you find them—again.
Cu Ebide Aswerl is a poet of leisure.
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