The Full Moon
by I. E. Sbace Weruld
“The moon’s reflection, on the surface of a pond—
a frog leaps through it.”
—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828)
He saw the full Moon in the night sky, lit up by the Sun.
Its beauty was spectacular, although but just pale dun.
It hardly was more than a rock and rolling through space-time,
an empty orb there orbiting, so old and cold as rime.
It shone like as a big balloon or street lamp way up high
its movement slight, not slow or shy, inducing but a sigh.
He saw its craters and its cracks; it seemed indifferent,
but that was only if one had a handy referent.
Was there a gold corona tracing its circumference?
Not really, but one…still drank moonshine…in its curvature.
Sedoka
by U “Bird Claw” Eese
Deadheading roses
a startling buzzing arose,
a frustrated hummingbird.
U “Bird Claw” Eese is an avian poet of brief flight.
Haiku
by “Wired Clues” Abe
Supermarket wars:
fighting over groceries,
are sharp-beaked grackles.
“Wired Clues” Abe is a poet of Japanese haiku in a postShiki world.
~~~
Haiku
by “Clear Dew” Ibuse
In the lightning storm,
it fell out of the pear tree,
an empty bird’s nest.
“Clear Dew” Ibuse is a poet of traditional haiku.
~~~
The Capital
by Aw “Curbside” Lee
The capital looks like the setting of a zombie flick.
The city once had swagger; it was bright and rich and slick.
At night the neon lights shone over hustlers on the streets,
who’d sell you m-any thing-s amidst the smells of skewered meats,
a whirl of midnight trades and early AM morning deals,
a swirl of business contacts, contracts, hurling squeaks and squeals.
But now it’s empty, ghostlike. You can hear your own foot steps.
The profits of the restaurants dropped 88%.
It’s a collapse of traffic; people on the walks have left.
It’s not bad luck. O, no, it’s years of hacking and neglect.
Aw “Curbside” Lee. Ken Cao, a contemporary Chinese blogger, notes China’s economic downturn and demographic implosion.
~~~
Meditation in A-Major
by Sri Wele Cebuda
Again he got into the lotus pose upon the couch.
He spread his legs out to each side. He wasn’t eating chow.
He wanted to relax himself from all the stress he felt.
He stretched his spine t’ward the divine. He wore a dark-brown belt.
He longed to meet divinity. He longed to reach his god;
but he was stuck there on the daven-port in his flesh bod’.
Would lucky number eight appear to make him less in-tense?
He gazed up at the ceiling. O, he felt so thick and dense.
Yes, he wished he could embrace the teeming, cosmic karma’s force
at one with both humanity an’ th’ raging Universe.
His baseball cap was worn, and drab, and olive green as well.
How long he sat in that position one could hardly tell.
Sri Wele Cebuda is a poet of medi-edi-tation.
~~~
Four Lepers at the Gate
by Esecwiel Barud
Now there were four men who were lepers at the gate,
and they said to each other, “Why do we sit here
until we die? Oh, why do we sit here and wait?
If we say, ‘Let us enter the city,’ there where
is famine, we shall die. If we stay we will die.
Let’s go to the Syrian camp. Then they may spare
our lives. If not, why care if we perish or fly?”
So they arose at twilight to go to the camp.
But when they to the Syrian camp had come nigh,
no one was there. Away all had managed to scamp.
The sound of chariots and horses had scared them,
an army’s sound beneath the sun’s bright, burning lamp.
They’d cried, “Egyptians and Hittites against us come!”
They’d left their horses, tents and all. They’d fled in haste.
The lepers came to a brilliant, shining kingdom
of silver, gold, and clothes. Freely they drank and ate.
Esecwiel Barud is a poet of Ancient Judea. Jeremiah (c. 650 BC – c. 570 BC), Ezekial (c. 623 BC – c. 571 BC), and Ezra (c. 537 BC – c. 456 BC) were Israelite priests.
~~~
Newsreel:
The Sea of Galilee turned red this month due to algae,
and not apocalyptic fears of plagues and agues. Gee!
~~~
Life of Empedocles
by Esiad L. Werecub
Empedocles upon his bed, ecclesiastic’lly
haphazarded the forces, love and strife, moved drastic’lly,
this citizen of Acragas, who lived in Sicily,
suggesting the four elements of earth, air, flame and sea.
Influenced by Pythagoras, supporter of the poor,
he was associated with physicians and their lore.
Reportedly controlling storms, a brilliant orator,
he was the last philosopher in Greek to write in verse.
Tradition says he perished diving in to Etna’s snare,
his body to the earth, his blood to water, breath to air.
Infuriated on his bed, succumbing to the fates,
the solids, liquids, gases, plasma, and the condensates.
Esiad L. Werecub is a poet of Ancient Greeks. Empedocles (c. 494 BC – c. 434 BC) was a PreSocratic philosopher.
~~~
A Brief
by Waldeci Erebus
He studied law at Charles University in Prague,
and after one year there became a good friend of Max Brod.
His first insurance job was at th’ Italian company
Assicurazioni Generali—drudgingly.
Ten hour shifts. Within a year he quit. He next worked at
the—better—Worker’s Accident Insurance Institute,
investigating for the Kingdom of Bohemia
the compensation due for injuries—competently.
Within ten years he helped start an asbestos factory;
he studied Yiddish and became a vegetarian.
When war broke out, he was deferred, but later tried to join;
tuberculosis halted that; so he was left to pine.
Upon a pension due to illness—then there was no cure;
he spent much of life left in sanatorium endure.
Waldeci Erebus is a poet of Central Europe. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a Modernist Czech proset.
~~~
No Longer
by Uwe Carl Diebes
No longer
at life’s middle,
hanging with the golden pears,
and wild roses,
I am dangling
at the water—there.
The air is fresh.
I see the swans.
They dip their long necks down.
They grab the mollusks
clinging to wet, vegetative ground.
They kiss small fish,
the wiggling worms,
perhaps a swimming frog.
The grass is also beautiful
beside a mossy log.
When winter comes,
where will I find
the flowers and the light?
Where will the holy shadows be
that offered me this sight?
These walls are speechless,
cold and vain.
The rattling weathervanes
are clattering
in sightless winds
along these lonely lanes.
Who Knew, or the Importance of Being Zimmer
by Uwe Carl Diebes
Who knew of him back then
in Heilbronn, Baden-Württemberg,
along the Neckar,
flowing northward,
up past Heidelberg?
Those were the heady days
when he was at Tübingen Stift,
along with Schelling, Hegel,
and his mind began to drift…
from Klopstock to Susette,
he met the Schiller-Goethe team,
and passed Novalis on his way
down his Romantic stream;
at Stuttgart working
on translating Pindar’s pure extreme,
and later at Bordeaux
what will endure remembering.
He walked back home on foot,
exhausted, reaching Nürtingen,
and physic’lly and mentally
dissolved at Tübingen.
Ernst Zimmer and his family,
there cared for Hölderlin,
the only mourners at his death,
that thought quite sobering.
His patrimony left him
by his father at age two,
his mother kept;
so he died rich;
although he never knew.
Uwe Carl Diebes is a poet of Germanic pictures. Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) was a Classical-Romantic German poet. Heilbronn, Baden-Württemberg, is a city of around 130,000.
~~~
The Desire for Utter Reality
by Claude I. S. Weber
It’s the desire for utter reality,
for the simple, the average, the prosaic,
the sober, the subdued, and the ordinary,
as tho all life were wrapped in such a mosaic
created by the likes of, say, Piazzetta
or Chardin, hexameterless, untrochaic,
definitely without the posish vendetta’s
forgettable stance, rid of all but the essential,
as, for example, the scaping about Jeddah,
bare of everything but the indispensable,
the necessary, and absolute purity,
that which is in truth the best, hence, most substantial
sensible.
Claude I. S. Weber is a poet of realist sentiments. Giovanni Battista Piazetta (1682-1754) was an Italian Rococo painter. Jean Siméon Chardin (1699-1779) was a French domestic painter. Jeddah. Saudi Arabia, is a city of around 3,750,000.
~~~
William Blake
by Ablicudew Seer
He was visionary, apocalyptic, dynamic,
filled with the revolutionary fury of freedom,
wild with raging energy and passionate feeling,
alive to inspiration, ecstasy, rapture, and hell—
William Blake, the poet, the painter, and the, yes, seer,
the prophet, the mystic, o, the herald of the new song,
the PostMiltonic Kingdom of God in all its splendor,
the divine believer charged with missionary zeal,
reeling from the heights and swells of oceanic tides,
the onrushing waves roaring thru the universal flux.
Ablicudew Seer is a poet of visions. John Milton (1608-1674) was an English epic poet and proset. William Blake (1757-1827) was an English Romantic poet and painter.
~~~
Lit Crit
by AI Welder, “Cubes”
I know AI would not note that Ms. Coats’ “Together” was
Words-worthian or Earthian, a fallen feather’s fluff.
How could it note the falling off, the following last words,
that break the stanza with its anguish and remembered hurt?
How could it understand such ambling, reassembling thoughts,
that wander through such rhymes and meter to connect those dots…?
Should baryon acoustic oscillations gather to
admeasure Ms. Coats’ verbal pressures with a standard rule?
How could AI mechanic’lly interpret heartfelt sounds,
proceeding analytic’lly throughout her outer grounds?
By heaven, I do think love for her brother is as rare,
as any AI would belie with utter false compare.
AI Welder, “Cubes”, is a literary critic and poet of techno knowing. Ms. Coats is a contemporary Californian poet.
~~~
Conversation of a Priest and a Scientist
by Cardiwel Ebuse
“She [Pearl] now skipped from one grave to another…”
—Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Scarlet Letter”
Once within the month of June
on a sunny day in June
one could hear a robin’s tune,
if one turned to list.
There a little girl danced
over gravestones in a trance.
Up she looked and caught the glance
of a scientist.
He was talking to a priest,
saying, “Spirit has deceased.
Only matter has a yeast.”
That is what he said.
Then the priest looked off, away.
“There is more than what you say.
Look upon this lovely day.
Spirit is not dead.”
“See yon girl skipping past.
See the plants that she holds fast.
Neither she nor they will last,
but they are alive.”
“Spirit still is living here.
Why can’t you see it appear?
It is very real and near.
By the truth it thrives.”
Then the man of science spoke,
“What you say is just a joke.
I’m surprised you do not choke
on your wishful words.”
“Can’t you see that truth is more
than a young girl skipping o’er
mossy-covered gravestones or
listening to birds?”
Then the girl giggled out,
as she jumped and jigged about,
“You are both like sauerkraut,
pickled cabbage strings.
“Let it go, your dour fuss.
Do not be a sourpuss.
Come and skip an hour plus.
Death is less than things.”
Cardiwel Ebuse is a poet of quaint pictures.
~~~
Before the Dawn
by Rudi E. Welec, “Abs”
Before the dawn, he got up in the darkness of the night.
He wiped the sleep from off his eyes. He turned on varied lights.
He longed to do some exercises prior to his work,
attending to his arms and legs. He heard the coffee perk.
He twisted torso, back and forth. He moved his shoulders fro.
He did his best to git ‘er done, before he had to go.
He strove t’ improve his posture, bending, stretching, tensing up,
extending neck and spreading pecs, and lifting head, spine pumped.
He felt like as those standing, sculpted Babylonians,
or active, statued, vigourous, upright Ionians.
Outside, he saw both Jupiter and Venus in the sky.
this was his time for exercises, open, hollow-eyed.
The Evening of the Day
by Rudi E. Welec, “Abs”
It is the evening of the day; the twilit dusk recedes.
The heat of day has dropped down to just 93 degrees.
Cicadas make their final choirs—semi no koe—
mechanical, but vigourous, they fill tree after tree.
The full Moon rises in the East. The Sun begins to dip.
Around the block in August heat, the walker takes his trip.
He doesn’t stop to watch the jet-planes flying overhead,
or pause to talk to anybody in the neighbourhood.
He simply makes his way upon the sidewalks and cement,
forever striving to explain exactly what he meant.
Rudi E. Welec, “Abs” is a poet of exercises.