Haiku
by “Clear Dew” Ibuse
On summersweet blooms,
a buckeye butterfly rests,
sharing its short life.
“Clear Dew” Ibuse is a haiku poet, influenced by the Japanese painter-poet Yosa Buson (1716-1784).
~~~
Haiku
by “Wired Clues” Abe
An elderly man
stumbles on the hard pavement:
no sound of water
“Wired Clues” Abe is a NewMillennial haiku writer, influenced by Japanese poets, such as Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694).
~~~
Tanka Revisit
by “Lice Brews” Ueda
Within the meadow,
he watched the solar eclipse.
The birds went quiet.
Then of a sudden he heard
the sound of crickets chirping.
“Lice Brews” Ueda is a poet of seemingly insignificant moments.
~~~
Flashback
by Drew U. A. Eclibse
He watched the shadow bands across his driveway cross in waves,
appearing as the total Sun’s eclipse was taking place.
Refraction of the narrowed light creating this effect
was most amazing as it wasn’t something he’d predict.
But there they were—those curving lines—that rippled o’er concrete,
like waves in water on a pond, an undulating feat.
Did they occur because they were produced by the Sun’s rays
distorted by Earth’s atmosphere to make an eerie haze?
Could this be the result of that thin filament of light
appearing coming from sunshine in long, small shady tides?
Whatever was the case, he felt as though his feet were at
the edge of some great city, billowing and undulant.
Drew U. A. Eclibse is a poet of the Moon.
~~~
The Probe in Interstellar Space
by I. E. Sbace Weruld
On April 20, Voyager I’s team heard back from it;
the probe in interstellar space had of late gotten fixed.
With memory of less than seventy-some kilobytes,
it was recording data in a digital-tape type,
two dozen billions of kilometers away from Earth
and trekking sixty-thousand-plus kilometers per hour.
Chris Hadfield, a retired astronaut from Canada,
compared JPL’s mission to long-distance maintenance
upon a vintage craft by keen mechanics of the yon,
who strive to keep on getting inputs forty-six years on.
Mr. I. E. Sbace Weruld is a poet of space. JPL stands for Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
~~~
Angeroo
by De Buis Lawrece
Then gradually, through the silver glisten of
new freedom, a dull, sinister vibration came
from the interior, an evil wind, like love;
some stone-cold, hatchet-wielding, devil lived untame,
and heavy, hard, reptilian hostility
appearing from his gruesomely repulsive aim.
He had come to eternity, infinity,
from off the opal land—Australia—malheur’s home,
as if its scaly back of flamed insanity
had paused beneath its claws below the azure dome,
as hot and wild as blazing sunlight throne above,
a nuclear explosion’s violent shroom-foam.
De Buis Lawrece is a poet of Down Under.
~~~
Lu Xun Remembered Mr. Fujino
by Lu “Reed ABCs” Wei
When cherry blossoms shimmered in Ueno, Tokyo,
they looked like light, pink clouds, a memory he took with him,
when he went to the college medical school in Sendai.
His ostiology prof was Fujino Genkuro,
a dark and lean instructor, who wore glasses and moustache,
and carried, underneath his arm, a stash of books to class.
Old students said he sometimes didn’t even wear a tie,
and wore an old, worn-overcoat in coldest wintertime.
One week into his studies, he went to his teacher’s lab
of skeletons and skulls, on which he’d make a monograph.
His teacher asked to see his notes from class, and said that he
should turn them in each week to him, so he could see and read.
Returned, he was surprised to see his supplemented notes
had been corrected in red ink, including grammar faults.
And so it went on till he’d taught the class neurology,
as well as angiology, and osteology.
When th’ annual exam was done, he went to Tokyo,
enjoying summer, and the break from Mr. Fujino.
In fall the subsequential courses that his teacher taught
were practical and topographical anatomy.
And though some students thought the notes he took had helped
him cheat,
the close investigation found that he need not repent.
And afterwards he studied next bacteriology;
but Russia’s-Japanese War made it hard to be Chinese.
Once second year was over, he said he’d soon leave the class.
The disappointed teacher then gave him a photograph,
and hoped that he would write him and return the favour too;
but months and years passed by; no picture came, nor letter due.
He left, returning back to China, and he lost those notes,
and yet he still remembered dark-faced Mr. Fujino,
whom he thought was a great man, though his name remain unknown,
his picture still there of the man who spoke in measured tones.
Lu “Reed ABCs” Wei is a poet of Modernist China. Lu Xun (1881-1936) was a Chinese Modernist writer. The above poem draws from his informal essay “Mr. Fujino” in his book “Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk”.
~~~
Newsreel:
Upon a major air-base/nuclear site in Iran,
two hundred miles south of Tehran, there at Isfahan,
Israeli jets have struck an S-300 (SA-10),
that used a “flap-lid” radar and space feeded phased-array.
~~~
The Tomb of Zebulun
by Uberecid Swale
“Zebulun shall dwell at the shore of the sea…and his border shall be at Sidon.”
—Moshe, “Genesis 49:13”
Because he could not run away—O, where would he run to?—
he paused to reassess where he was at, what he could do?
So he would go on past the pastures where the cattle were,
and past the ruins of the emptied cities—that flaneur.
Maniacal dictators strive to wreck for wretched ends.
The war was ever pressing in on him, close kin and friends.
So though the World had been through much—such harsh horrific wars,
it seems the people of the planet wanted more, perforce.
He passed the fields of raising sugar cane. He wanted none.
And then he passed the glaring Sun. The day was hot and young.
So on he tripped through thistle rip in camo hat and suit.
The Earth was hard. He wished he had some better rugged boots.
He wondered where specific’lly the foe would next attack—
Adjusting his belt, he thought, to the south of Alnitak.
And so he held—his horses still—in Sidon, Lebanon,
Eternity, the Horsehead Nebula and Zebulun.
Uberecid Swale is a poet of shallow troughs and coastlines. Moshe (fl. 14th – 13th centuries BC) was a leader, teacher, and prophet. Zebulun was a figure of Ancient Israel. Present day Sidon, Lebanon, has a population of around 80,000.
~~~
Newsreel:
Ukraine has bombed a Russian military airbase in
Crimea with long-range ballistic missiles—hair-raising.
The A-T-A-C-M-S missiles fire from platforms
the MLRS M270 and huge HIMARS.
~~~
The World Homer Sang Of
by Acwiles Berude
In the orange twilight of the dawn in darkest night,
out of the gloom of bleak eternity, he came,
a poet who could sing out verses in that blight
of heroes, like Odysseus and those of fame.
In sun’s first flame of three millenia ago,
a mythical and splendid world arose to claim
attention to its supernatural rose glow:
it was the world that Homer the Greek poet sang
of—Troy’s turmoil, Odysseus’ travail and soul,
the body’s many crucibles, the heart’s hard pang,
the woes of war and sail, the foes one has to fight,
the mix of joy and pain upon which life must hang.
Acwiles Berude is a poet of Ancient Greece. Homer (c. 8th century BC) was an Ancient Greek poet.
~~~
The Arch of Constantine
by Aedile Cwerbus
He saw the arch high overhead—the Arch of Constantine—
commemorating the fierce Battle of Milvian Bridge—
312 AD, next to the Colosseum found in Rome,
on Via Triumphalis, ceremonial route road.
Here emperors would enter in the City when they came,
amidst the pomp and circumstance of victory and fame.
There one could see on its grand sides, each firm, rescuplted face:
from Circus Maximus, through its space, to the Forum’s place.
But it was high. O, yes, it rose some twenty meters tall;
and wide as well; it swelled to a two-dozen meter sprawl.
As flatterers thrive on credulity, its art was known
as thé “Cornacchia di Esopo”, as “Aesop’s crow”.
The circle-shaped reliefs, made in the reign of Hadrian,
a boar hunt to Apollo, Hercules, a lion hunt,
were added to this largest arch of all Rome’s monuments;
likewise extensive cleaning in the present century.
Aedile Cwerbus is a poet of Roma. Constantine (c. 272 – 337) was a noted Roman emperor, who ceased the persecution of Christians.
~~~
At Seventeen
by Ewald E. Eisbruc
At seventeen, Joseph Haydn’s voice broke,
and he was dismissed from the choir at
Saint Stephen’s Cathedral, because he “crowed
like a rooster” according to her, that
is, the Empress Maria Theresa.
Although she desired to banish him from
music, she was not able to erase him;
he made his way back into the kingdom.
Ewald E. Eisbruc is a poet of Germanic music. Empress Maria Theresa (1717-1780) was the 18th century ruler of the Austrian Empire; Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) was a Classical era Austrian composer.
~~~
Of César Aira
by Wibele Escudar
Of course, he did not acquiesce completely to the aims
of César Aira, though he was inspired and amazed;
for that man focused on connections in the Universe,
those numerous remunerations of the numinous,
like the blast of a car horn, or kids playing with a ball,
a falling leaf, divinest forms, the sky’s bright hues at dawn.
But most of all, because he kept his writing pure and brief,
though as for that allowing for a bit too much of grief.
He liked that Aira sang forth fresh meshed verbal arias,
extending barriers and sites of his calvaria,
moves from the macro to the micro, and then back again,
in space and time, in place and chyme—O, see th’ oak tree catkins.
Wibele Escudar is a poet of Argentina. César Aira is a contemporary Argentinian proset.
~~~
A Prophet
by Seer Ablicadew
No man is a prophet in his own land,
nor is he regarded in his own town.
In his family he has no command.
If he be, he must be, one on his own
Seer Ablicadew is a poet of prophecy.
~~~
Throughout American Academies
by Ira “Dweeb” Scule
One hears throughout American academies a strain
that is at once belligerent, intolerant, and strange.
It drips with antisemitism all across the land.
What new “Mein Kampf” is being written? What new hate is planned?
From Harvard, Stanford, Michigan State University,
to Swarthmore, Tufts, U of Chicago, SUNY, MIT.
Unbated seething, hatred-breathing, rancour tense, high-pitched;
in Yale and Columbia, vituperation cinched.
What must the scholarship be like within such institutes?
What demagogues have taken to the streets and Internet?
Are these the early stages of another Holocaust?
At such ex-pensive schools, how can the nation bear the cost?
Ira “Dweeb” Scule is a poet of education.
~~~
Newsreel:
In Google offices—Seattle, New York, Sunnyvale—
they were protesting Project Nimbus linked to Israel.
Sit-in protestors there were fired—there were twenty-eight—
and Google said it will “continue to investigate.”
~~~
Sunnyvale, California, is a city of around 150,000.
The Pyrrhuloxia
by E. Birdcaws Eule
“No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at
that altitude.”
—Ernest Hemingway, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”
He popped up very suddenly—a pyrrhuloxia—
inspecting round the trunk’s gray base, beneath the red oak tree.
Perhaps he was procuring food for incubating mate,
in some dense shrub upon a nest of twigs and grassy plait.
Whatever was the case, he was quite busy foraging
for food, beyond the normal range of desert cardinals.
And though he was distinctive and exotic to eye sight,
he didn’t seem to care about his grooming in dawn’s light,
from crimson highlights in his neat, long, thin, and wispy crest,
to orange curving beak and scarlet flecks upon his chest.
He had gone further than he would have been expected to,
but he was not pretentious, no, and he had things to do.
E. Birdcaws Eule is a poet of los pájaros.
~~~
To Take It In
by Carb Deliseuwe
[The pussy cat was up there at the table in the dawn.]
He had a cup of coffee with some MCT’s clear jawn.
O, he was waking up, as dawn was breaking up the night.
O, Lord, he couldn’t help himself. He loved this life and light.
He rolled his eyes and scrolled his phone. He read the latest news;
so he could know just what he knew, what he would win and lose.
He cupped his warm, round coffee holder, sipping it with jast.
He loved each sip—o, yes, he did—until the very last.
He rubbed his shin without chagrin; he drank the daybreak in;
and as time passed before his eyes, he grinned to take it in.
Carb Deliseuwe is a poet of drink and food.
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