Tanka
          by E. “Birdcaws” Eule

In the winter sun,
the morning dove preens itself
on the wooden fence.
Inside, the man is changing
his blanket and his linen.

E. “Birdcaws” Eule is a poet of birds, and a follower of the verse of Ariwara no Narihira (825-880).

~~~

Haiku
          by “Clear Dew” Ibuse

The pale white round soul,
moves beyond the houses whole.
He is walking sole.

 

Haiku
          by “Clear Dew” Ibuse

Turning in his sleep,
the child is not closer
to the lunar light.

“Clear Dew” Ibuse is an haikuist. The above poem draws from Yūko Tsushima (1947-2016).

~~~

Haiku
          by “Wired Clues” Abe

Like his cratered face
and transparent skeleton
is winter moonlight.

“Wired Clues” Abe is a rad 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), Sugimura Seirinshi (1912-1990), and Akao Tôshi (1925-1981). The above haiku draws from contemporary poet Yukiko Itoyama.

~~~

Intuitive Machines’ Moon Lander
          by I. E. Sbace Weruld
          “…that they be wise and shine, like as the bright-lit firmament,
          and lead to righteousness, like stars, forever permanent…”
              —Daniel 12:3

The spacecraft lifted off upon a Space-X Falcon-9,
the lunar lander—IM-1 “Odysseus”—aligned.
As Nova-C let go, the separation was confirmed,
proceeding through the firmament, its followers affirmed.
Arriving on the Moon on February 22,
was only the beginning; there was still so much to do.

 

J0529-4351
          by I. E. Sbace Weruld

Astronomers have found one of the brightest cosmic jawns,
a quasar with a black hole at its heart that swallows dawns.
It grows so fast it gobbles up a star each single day,
five-hundred-trillion times as bright as is our own Sun’s rays.
And while this quasar is but a mere dot in images,
it’s likely a ferocious place, a cosmic hurricane,
whose scrimages of swirling gases are a baneful whirl,
whose mass is eighteen billion times that of our solar world,
about twelve billion light-years from our turning, burning Earth,
this planet which is hearth and home of the homoiotherm.

Mr. I. E. Sbace Weruld is a poet of the Universe.

~~~

The Pharaoh
          by “Scribe” El Uwade
          “From th’ heights of forty centuries, they will look down on us.”
              —Lucre Wadi Se’eb

He felt like as a pharaoh sitting upright on his throne;
but he was at his monitor nearby a map and phone.
He saw those rigid statues sitting on stone in the air;
but he was sitting on a cushioned, wooden, swivel chair.
A hawk flew past him at his desk beneath the glaring Sun;
but it was not the godly Horus falcon Airy One.
Positioning his belt, he lifted up his spine aligned;
but wore no shent about his waist, nor brooch he had to bind.
His head was wrapped in brightness; but he did not have a neme,
with large striped flaps in blue and gold, a head-and-shoulders stream.
He stared straightforwardly, but his hands weren’t upon his knees;
they rested on his desk, his fingers on a mouse and keys.

“Scribe” El Uwade is a poet of Egypt.

~~~

Noah
          by Israel W. Ebecud

Noah, a tiller of the soil, had planned and planted a vineyard; and he drank of its wine, becoming drunk. Because of that, when he was in his tent, he lay uncovered, naked as a jay or skanky skunk. There was no clothing on his shoulders or his chest. He looked more like a modern body-building hunk than biblic patriarch. He was a nude at rest. But Ham saw him unclothed, and told his brothers this. They laid a garment over him. They thought that best. When Noah woke and saw what happened, he was pissed. He cursed his son’s son Canaan, “Be a slave of slaves!” His was a hard, stern face, inflamed breast, fierce tight fist.

Israel W. Ebecud is a poet of Israel. The above prosem draws from Genesis 9:20-25.

~~~

Newsreel:
Navalny, critic of Tsar Putin, has reportedly
died in a brutal prison camp—the human butcher free.
Was his death a political assassination plot?
Another Putin critic found dead in a graveyard plot.

~~~

Navalny Died
          by Alecsei Durbew

Authorities in Russia simply said Navalny died
within his maximum security cell…open wide…
those grim wild howls of pain…say, was he novichoked again,
or simply mangled by the Polar Wolf and Putin’s men?
On Valentine’s Day he had sent a letter to his wife:
“Between us there are cities, airfield takeoff lights…” ah, life…
“…blue snowstorms…” o, such strife… “and thousands of kilometers…”
How many are the readings of those old barometers?
Surrounded by the tundra, in that hard-core freezing blight,
he left the planet poorer with his little bit of light.

Alecsei Durbew is a poet of Russia.

~~~

Newsreel:
It seems a Russian pilot died of “early death syndrome;”
in Spain, his body, bullet-riddled—Maxim Kuzminov.
The Federal Intelligence Service described him as
“a moral corpse” for standing up to an “immoral mass.”

~~~

The Equal of a God
          by Aedile Cwerbus

He seems to be the equal of a god, at least to me.
He seems superior to gods as well, if this can be.
This single man who’s sitting here—What’s his identity?
He seems both auditor and spectator. He hears, and sees.

You laugh. That rips him off of feeling fluttered misery.
His senses roll and roil in simultaneity.
The moment that he looks upon your aspect, Isabel,
he has naught, and his voice is now his disability.

His voice is in his mouth, his tongue is numb, inside, deep down.
A thin flame runs beneath his limbs, and echoes its own sounds.
His ears are ringing; his two eyes are covered by the night,
that dims the light he once could see, but now has left his sight.

 

That Drab, Gray Day
          by Aedile Qwerbus

It was so cold—o, freezing—he put on his winter coat.
He felt like as a Roman ghost, half-human and half-goat.
Yet not like as the legendary Faunus of the woods,
but rather more, like as the Boar who hasn’t got the goods,
or Latinus, who held sway o’er the vales and the towns,
the son of Faunus, long-accepted, sound of mind, in down.
He walked along the hallway carpet of the palace, warmed
by zip-pull, sherpa-lined, fleece-hoodie, jacket-padded form,
that added to his attitude as he went on his way
throughout the house of usher, plusher than that drab, gray day.

Aedile Cwerbus is a poet of Ancient Rome. “The Equal of a God” draws mainly from Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (84 BC – 54 BC). “Catullus 51” itself draws from “Sappho 31.”

~~~

Guernica
          by Red Was Iceblue

Guernica is a town in northern Spain—the Basque—
a bastion of Republican resistance, when
‘t was taken to task by German warplanes and tactics,
and obliterated in 1937.
Pablo Picasso put that in a picture’s frame—
its pain in paint, in gray and black and white back then.
Above, a sun-lit light bulb’s eye and lantern’s flame
reveal a sweep of severed agony and flesh,
a bull, a horse, the women, men, and babe—all maimed,
or dead, in desperation, struggling for breath
to ask for…why, why, why, the bombing and the acts
of horror and destruction—this Gethsemane.

Red Was Iceblue is a poet of Modernist, PostModernist, and New Millennial art, like the picture Guernica of Modernist Spanish painter Pablo Picasso (1881-1973).

~~~

Ode to an American Aircraft Carrier
          by Ed “Bear” C. U. Lewis

Loud, thousand foot, one-hundred-thousand tons,
one of the largest warships in the world,
a crew of thousands, speed of thirty knots,
into what danger zones won’t you be hurled?
When troops were stationed, during the Cold War,
with Pershing missiles, in West Germany,
you came to the Mediterranean.
Did you observe the blue Aegean Sea
where Homer once had sailed long, long ago?
where Aeschylus fought th’ old Iranian?

Your noisy nuclear reactors churn
a draft of thirty-seven feet or more.
How much fuel do your Super Hornets burn?
Though you can’t hear, how many hear your roar?
Fair youth who serve your huge monstrosity,
with a propulsion system in excess
of tens of thousands of horsepower boost,
by bronze propellers moved across the sea
and steered by massive rudders where you roost,
such steel bodies they will never kiss.

Here are no boughs because there are no trees.
Your leaves are when the sailors leave your grounds.
Like Modernist composers’ melodies,
your piping makes all kinds of metal sounds.
Yours is no setting for more happy love,
skyscraper floating and turned on its side.
Your flight-deck flat top, panting far from land,
is but a strip below the sky above.
The crew does all the breathing. They abide
their time, their hopes, their dreams, to cold command.

Yours is a tour of force and sacrifice
for captain, chaplain, chief, chef or deck crew.
Your island on this island is your eyes,
but you don’t see all that the people do.
You are a little city on the sea
with lookout views on hangar, vulture’s row,
fantail or deck, though all are dangerous.
You are a techno Moby Dick unleashed
that travels where commanders make you go:
Taiwan, Korea, or the Persian Gulf.

American contraption and airbase,
deploying and recovering aircraft
upon the waters of the World, Earth’s face,
you tease us out of thought from stern to aft,
as does eternity’s hard epic tale.
Where will you go, when this age goes away?
You too shall find this Earth shall be your urn.
What other ships some day will also sail
into a truly beautiful new day
which neither you nor we shall see return?

Ed “Bear” C. U. Lewis is a poet of military equipment. Though noted Greek writers Homer (c. 8th century BC) and Aeschylus (c. 524 BC – c. 456 BC) are mentioned in the poem, it mainly draws on British Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821).

~~~

A Hunter-Thompson Vegas Nightmare Trip
          by Cawb Edius Reel

He woke up from a Hunter-Thompson Vegas nightmare trip.
He felt so dizzy that he grabbed the couch. He had to sit.
This was the pits. The floor was moving all wound-up around.
The nausea he felt was real. He feared he would fall down.
A flashback back to 1971 was enough
to make him queasy, so uneasy. Damn that mood was rough.
He tried some morning meditation, wanting to attain
homeostasis, if he only could, relax his nape.
It wasn’t pain he felt; it was the vertigo that came,
with loss of balance from that book, when he became a wake.

Cawb Edius Reel is a poet of whirling motion. Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005) was a PostModernist American proset. 1971 is a reference to his book of that year “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”. Las Vegas is a city in Nevada of around 640,000.

~~~

Beyond Astoria
          by Ubs Reece Idwal

Leashed from the continent, they fly—
the seagulls’ wings spread out along the bridge—
and catch the currents of the airy sky
that swirl about above the river’s edge.

Sweet liberty, Columbia flows on,
while all about in cars, on bikes, afoot,
we follow gray asphalted curves at dawn
between the buildings climbing high and mute.

We multitudes move toward some flashing scene,
past cinemas and panoramic sights,
and speed to reach the ever-turning green,
amidst the traffic, wires, lines and lights.

And there, beyond Astoria, we rise
upon the spiral of infinity,
and drive up to the bright, white, cloudy skies,
as if we were enroute to being free,

away from elevators, subways, els,
and we had come to Eldorado’s door,
there momentarily atilt—hell’s bells!
phantasmagorically at heaven’s floor.

We shoot past girders, steel, green, aloft,
a settling acetylene, as hard
as rock, against wet morning’s misty soft,
here on this earthly stage on this mere shard.

Beyond, the vast Pacific Ocean writhes,
absorbing waters from the East and West.
The nations of the World pay their tithes
in lives, in transports, contrails from their jets.

Percussive melodies from radios
burst from the open windows of the cars,
occasionally fiery talk shows;
the voices of the forceful slice the farce.

We leave the shores of lovely Oregon,
while following the compass to true North,
and purposefully go to Washington;
Columbia continues to pour forth.

We sweep past crashing wavelets flickering.
The city in the distance vanishes
amidst a brief, but sweet, tranquility
that time erases, living banishes.

It is a dream, American and real,
that we, who now are wide awake, can see;
though we’ll fall too asleep soon at the wheel
as it spins onward through eternity.

Ubs Reece Idwal is a poet of the Pacific Northwest. This poem draws from Hart Crane (1899-1932), an American Modernist poet. Astoria, Oregon, is a city of around 10,000.

~~~

In The Atrium
          by Eber L. Aucsidew

He stood up in the atrium o’ th’ natatorium.
He wore his flip-flops for protection, a tentorium.
He grabbed his tow’l and carried it out to the poolside gym.
His trunks were beige, a nice drab shade; he was prepared to swim.

From lockers in the changing room, he walked on out the door.
He jumped into the water, as he’d done so oft before.
He sought to do aquatic exercises, pool-lane length,
for flexibility, endurance, and enhancing strength.

He loved the water’s buoyancy. O, how its splash anoints.
There he could do his work-out on his muscles and his joints.
Then afterwords, he made his way back to the dressing room,
and doffed his flip-flops and his trunks for a quick dry and groom.

Eber L. Aucsidew is a poet of water and air.

~~~

To Get His Heart Beat Up
          by Rudi E. Welec, “Abs”
          “Life ever was a challenge, just to live and to exist.
          One needed to do many things in order to subsist.”
              —Erisbawdle Cue

He longed to exercise because it brought him greater health;
it helped his mitochondria to heal, get well, more wealth.
He put on his athletic shoes and desert camo trunks.
He had to get his heart beat up, to put all in to flux.
He did his stretches, legs and edges, arms, nape, neck and pecs.
He had to make his body shake, to move, to groove, and flex.
He opened up his pace and space, from bottom up to top.
He squeezed his abs, that slab of flab—and raised his spine aloft.
He tightened biceps, heightened triceps, opening his chest,
awaiting affirmation, while anticipating rest.
He was a happy camper, when at last his run was done,
and he could catch his breath, and do it all again in fun.

Rudi E. Welec, “Abs”, is a poet of exercise.