Cold Pluto
by I. E. Sbace Weruld
Cold Pluto, of the Kuiper Belt, is made of rock and ice,
accompanied by Charon through its underworld slice,
that carry souls across the rivers Styx and Acheron,
unlike the scattered disc of Eris ranging round the Sun.
Cold Pluto lacks the wealth of warmth, so far away is it;
th’ abductor of Persephone was hard and obdurate.
Though Orpheus once visited, with music of the spheres,
Eurydice remained, the god incapable of tears.
Cold Pluto now has met the flyby New Horizons probe,
in 2015, datapics were gleaned from that old globe.
And though for but the briefest time, in Hades horrid caves,
Alcestis rose up from the shades of interstellar graves.
Mr. I. E. Sbace Weruld is a poet of outer space. Sol Alan Stern is a NewMillennial planetary scientist.
~~~
Not One of Us
by Claedu Be Wires
He was not one of us, although he came to be with us.
He did not stay long, and, but for the briefest period.
In truth, he seemed a very distant individual;
when even he was very near, his words residual.
He told us that he came from Mars, but some thought that was queer.
Who could believe that he had come from any place but here?
I had just recently appeared, so I could not ask him
the questions that I would have had I known the idiom.
I would have asked him how his science differed from our own.
I would have asked what he thought he could do all alone.
I would have asked him what material his robot had.
I would have asked him many things, but I was but a lad.
I saw him in a cemetery, on gray sidewalks of cement;
but even if I’d tried, I could not know all that he meant.
The things that made him seem so different were very few;
but they were there, and obvious, o, easily in view.
His head was smaller, farther from his frame than most of us.
His manners were so polished that we seemed too vigourous.
His values differed from our own, by being less intense,
compared to our impatience, his intelligence seemed dense.
How could he be so patient with our vast stupidity?
How could he seem so different, yet be like you and me?
I wondered what it was that made it seem so obvious
that though he was right here with us, he was not one of us.
His knowledge was remarkable; his pacing was all wrong;
dispassionate, and in control; he seemed so very strong.
I would have like to go with him, when he left us right here;
but as I mentioned earlier, I, too, was new, one year.
I, too, discovered that this place—I think they called it Earth—
was hard to understand while I was there upon its girth.
Claedu Be Wires is a poet of the future.
~~~
Tanka
by “Wired Clues” Abe
Braced, shoulders back, tense,
head erect, prepped and propped up,
riding the maelstrom,
the sailor went soaring, o,
through the violent worm hole.
Haiku
by “Wired Clues” Abe
New patio tiles
are covered with leaves from trees
and yellow green dyes.
“Wired Clues” Abe is a poet of Japanese haiku in a postShiki world.
~~~
Haiku
by “Clear Dew” Ibuse
The storm is over.
The Sun shining over all
that remains in tact.
Haiku
by “Clear Dew” Ibuse
In late summer heat,
the flying grasshoppers soar
o’er the lion’s teeth.
“Clear Dew” Ibuse is a poet of traditional haiku.
~~~
The Eagle and the Crow
by E. “Birdcaws” Eule
The only bird that dares to fight an eagle is a crow.
A crow upon an eagle’s back can peck its neck, and more.
Although relentless and annoying, th’ eagle won’t fight back;
it simply rises higher in the sky; it don’t attack.
It soars into the thinner air until the crow lets go
and falls back from that altitude, because it cannot soar.
E. “Birdcaws” Eule is a poet of birds.
~~~
And These Two Despots Smile
by Baidu Wercs Lee
“where organs switch one human to another,
where one stays live, and one’s a discard donor.”
—Damian Robin
While walking side by side at the huge military show,
dictators Xi Jinping and Putin, talking to and fro,
were caught on a hot mike, discussing organ harvesting,
and living for one-hundred-fifty years by targeting
a captive citizenry of CCP prisoners,
like Uigurs, dissidents, and falun gong practitioners,
a Chinese population shrinking, sinking all the while;
great cities turn in to ghost towns, and these two despots smile.
Baidu Wercs Lee is a poet of China. Damian Robin (1951-2023), the author of “Organ Harvest”, was a PostModern British poet.
~~~
King and Knave
by Delir Ecwabeus
He felt as if he were within a dream’s amazing law.
He sat upon a peacock thrown, as if he were a shah.
But soon he realized he had been shoved down to his knees,
as if he had become a bum, or even worse, a beast.
It seemed as if his gorgeous throne had turned into a king,
who pushed him to an agonizing situation’s fling.
He had been flung into reality, as if he were
no more than but a bit of bitumen upon the floor;
but he remained upon that throne, though falling over too.
How could he be both king and slave, both knavish and yet true?
Delir Ecwabeus is a poet of Persia.
~~~
Newsreel:
Maneuvres, Minsk and Moscow moved on, military drills,
caused Poles to close their border from forced immigration spills.
The situation on the borderline with Belarus
remains intense and will be opened only when abuse
has gone away; but meanwhile China is upset because
the China-Europe Railway traffic has been put on pause.
~~~
On Energy
by Bruc “Diesel” Awe
The processes surrounding us, including life itself,
are governed by the constant flow of energy, rife elf,
transforming from one state into another, evermore,
not disappearing but emerging in a diff’rent form.
Hence, energy, it seems, is not created or destroyed,
but always is conserved; the universe is not a void.
Our state of breathing and consuming is a cycle of
transferring energy, from being, seeing, searing, love.
Inside the sun is a conversion of mass energy
into the heat and movement needed for life’s inner sea.
Bruc “Diesel” Awe is a poet of energy.
~~~
Newsreel:
They weren’t equipped with hypersonic Kinzhal missiles, when
three Russian MiGs flew o’er Estonia close to Tallinn.
~~~
Aristaeus
by Ercules Edibwa
I think I saw him—Aristaeus—at a grassy hole,
out planting oleander with a long and narrow pole;
but I could not observe his face, I only saw his legs.
Someday perhaps his tree would give rise to a treasure chest
of olives; but for now, it simply was the plodding work
of digging—dig, dig, dig—of lifting, heaving, jack and jerk.
He tried to make his true stand tall by putting firmly down
upon the brown earth of his mother Gaia’s godly ground.
And truly I was quite amazed to see him as he toiled,
a chthonic king in action on Boeotian, grassy soil.
Ercules Edibwa is a poet of Ancient Greece.
~~~
The Dying Gladiator
by Aedile Cwerbus
The dying gladiator, on his left elbow,
extends his right arm out to stave the pain away.
He leans upon his left thigh’s side, and cannot go;
he must remain transfixed upon that stone display.
His right knee’s up, as if he might escape his fate,
but his head leans to his left shoulder come what may.
He still has strength; and so he longs to lift his weight
from off that unforgiving horizontal plane;
but this he cannot do, and it is getting late.
Despite the strapped-up sandals on his feet, again
he will not rise. Though time is in slow motion, oh,
for him it matters naught; he fights against life’s grain.
Aedile Cwerbus is a poet of Ancient Rome.
~~~
Hausdorff Raum
by Euclidrew Base
To ev’ry single individual, there is at least
one neighbourhood containing it, a beauty or a beast;
and if there are two neighbourhoods of some point, then there must
exist a neighbourhood that’s a subset of both, we trust.
So if another lies within the neighbourhood, there too
must be a neighbourhood, a subset of the first—it’s true.
For two points, there must be two neighbourhoods in which no one
is common, that is, it must be housed off beneath the Sun.
In 1919, this is how Hausdorff described his space,
that is, his topologically, roomy ekstases.
Euclidrew Base is a poet of mathematics. Felix Hausdorff (1868-1942) was a noted Modernist German mathematician.
~~~
At the Train Station in Heilbronn
by Uwe Carl Diebes
“in horrid, hooting stanza”
—Emily Dickinson
He stood up at the station, waiting for the train to come.
He wasn’t bummed out—not at all—but was he not a bum?
The time was passing as he stood there, as it always is.
His arms tensed up, as did his abs; but he was free of frizz.
He wondered if it would be late. How soon would it be eight?
He didn’t know. He had to go. It was so hard to wait.
At times he felt like as a narrow fellow in the grass.
Although upright, not out of sight, without a looking glass.
He stretched his spine, and spread his legs for this back-breaking stand.
His feet were planted on the concrete, spaced in place, and spanned.
He felt like he was in formation, in the army, and
in danger of a roaring diesel’s hissing, fierce command.
Uwe Carl Diebes is a poet of Germany.
~~~
Newsreel:
Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee,
was knife-stabbed on a light rail line in Charlotte… fatally.
Just twenty-three, when she was murdered, on her way to home.
North Carolina was more deadly than where she came from.
~~~
At the Grand Canyon
by Sid Cee Uberawl
I saw a man in a sleeveless tee-shirt who stood
right at the edge on the ledge of a gorgeous gorge.
He looked down on those rocky slopes, and found it good,
although it was not something he could ever forge.
He bent down gazing at those rugged curves, and sighed.
The sunlight lit his legs and torso up—a torch.
I wondered if he’d fall head o’er heels down its side.
He seemed so anxious just to keep that view in sight.
I wondered if that canyon, oh, so deep and wide,
would swallow him alive and take him off in flight.
Across the sky, the sunset streamed in scarlet blood.
That man stayed there and stared with sheer delight till night.
Sid Cee Uberawl is a poet of tight rope walking.
~~~
At His Desk Again
by Des Wercebauli
He was back at his desk again—another day of work.
Although he’d really love to shirk it—that would not occur.
He rose up past the screen, his typical place he would type.
Despite his longing for another pose and johnstrupite,
that mineral composed of rather complex silicates,
occurring in prismatic crystals, if one’s technical.
But such was not to be. He had to face the tasks at hand.
They were the very ones demanding his prompts propped command.
He lifted up his spine, as if in meditating form;
and though not in the lotus pose, his head rose to the storm.
Des Wercebauli is a poet of work.
~~~
Old Rollercoaster Rides
by Cu Ebide Aswerl
“Up like a rocket ship/ Down like a roller coaster
Back like a loop-the-loop/ And around like a merry-go-round”
—Chuck Barris, “Palisades Park”
When he was young he was thrilled by the rollercoaster rides.
They were so fun; he loved the colours, and the whirling sky.
It was exciting, going up and down, from side to side.
They made him feel he was really living, and alive.
But now it ever seems life is a rollercoaster ride.
that’s full of twists and turns that’s difficult to take in stride.
One’s ever striving to keep up with, o, so many things:
work, leisure, sleep, as well as all the constant scheduling.
Perhaps those youthful moments at amusement parks were good
for getting ready for adulthood— and all one must do.
Cu Ebide Aswerl is a poet of thrills. Chuck Barris (1929-2017) was a song-writer and gameshow creator. Did he work for the CIA?
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