The Future Man of the Past
by Earl W. Sidecube
He had come to his own future; but it
was not what he had thought that it would be.
The empty streets he thought he’d find wouldn’t
be there when he got there. He was rudely
shocked by unruly gangs that all night combed
the LA nightmare he had come to. Oh,
there wasn’t silence either. Voices foamed
to Myusick* formed upon the radio.
He looked into his past. The nightmare that
he saw there didn’t last, but was replaced
with one he hadn’t figured on there at
the place he’d been. His nightmare was erased.
He cried out to his world, but no one heard.
There wasn’t anyone who heard a word.
Earl W. Sidecube is a poet of the future.According to Beau Lecsi Werd, “Myusick is the opposite
of Muzak in that it is loud, frenzied, obnoxious, and throbbing.
~~~
Haiku
by “Clear Dew” Ibuse
They swarm–the cowbirds—
into the filled bird feeder,
greedy—no cowards.
“Clear Dew” Ibuse is haiku writer.
~~~
Haiku
by “Wired Clues” Abe
A vending machine’s
tortilla chip, kid-shoe crushed:
a snack for grackles.
Haiku
by “Wired Clues” Abe
He saw the contours,
a micro scooter with seat,
shaped like a cat’s tail.
Haiku
by “Wired Clues” Abe
Chase after the ball.
Focus on getting to it.
Then kick it. Kick it.
“Wired Clues” Abe is a haikuist focused on NewMillennial observation.
~~~
A Crystalline Hexagon
by Wu “Sacred Bee” Li
As Han Ying wrote two thousand years ago, flowers of plants and trees are five-pointed usually; but those “flowers” of snow that fall from the heavens are six-pointed. Snowflakes have a particular structure due to their hydrogen and oxygen content, where their arranged architecture form always a crystalline hexagon.
Wu “Sacred Bee” Li is a poet of Ancient China. In the above prose poem (i. e., proem), Han Ying 韓嬰 (fl. c. 180 BC).
~~~
The Gladiator
by Aedile Cwerbus
He stood unbound before the multitudes—the crowd—
in the arena of the amphitheatre.
Above, the azure sky was touched by light and cloud.
To get to where he was, he had to be absurd.
He raised his torch, clad in brown leather straps and shorts.
The audience applauded—loud—as if he were
a Hercules—his torso bronze, his eyes were quartz.
He seemed a lummox and an idiot to boot;
but he felt right at home here in this public court.
He felt so hot out in the sun, yet he felt good.
Before th’ anonymous and massive mob he bowed.
This was his moment in the throes of pulchritude.
Aedile Cwerbus is a poet of Ancient Rome.
~~~
Guernica
by Edwe Bleca Ruís
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.
Edwe Bleca Ruís is a poet of Spain. Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was a Modernist Spanish painter.
Guernica has a population of around 15,000.
~~~
The Earl of Surrey
by Wilude Scabere
He lived before the lute of Shakespeare fell
to the ground, and picked up the melodies
that Wyatt tuned and turned to Britain’s swell,
Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey.
He likewise introduced the famed meter
of Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth—blank verse,
thereby permitting English song freer
movement in its linguistic universe.
But there’s more he can be remembered for,
for it was he who has the dubious
honor of having been, at thirty years
of age, the last victim of Henry the Eighth,
th’ English king who got rid of his friends,
his women, and his countrymen…and More!
Wilude Scabere is a poet of English literature. Henry Howard (1517-1547) was a poet of the English Renaissance.
~~~
Taylor Coleridge: a Fragment
by Beau Ecs Wilder
the exaggerated repute of Kubla Khan…”
—T. S. Eliot
In England in between Porlock and Linton, did
Sam Taylor Coleridge retire. On the Exmoor
confines of Somerset and Devonshire, he hid,
retiring in ill health. An anodyne was poured,
while reading Purchas’s Pilgrimage, “Here the Khan…”
He slept in sunless chair [I wonder, ‘Did he snore?’],
for three long hours, through caverns measureless to man,
three hundred lines or less, enclosed within four walls.
What vivid confidences did his drugged mind span?
The images arose down rills and waterfalls.
Here forests ancient as the hills enfolded him.
Awakening within those dark and dismal halls,
he had distinct remembrances of his dreamed gem.
He took pen, ink and paper up, and wrote them down,
until some guy from Porlock came and cut that stem.
When he returned back to his room, his dream unwound,
like images upon the surface of a stream
into the which a stone was cast—alas, without
the after restoration of the latter scheme.
Beau Ecs Wilder is a poet of 19th century English art. S. T. Coleridge (1772-1834) was a Romantic British poet and literary critic.
~~~
Newsreel:
Across the country, many died., more than seventy-two.
More than a thousand hid, stuck in Guadalajara’s zoo.
“El Mencho” had been killed. The army wanted him to go.
It took place in the western state, Jalisco, Mexico.
~~~
The Thrill Seeker
by Rudi E. Welec, “Abs”
He leaps from the bridge, like a bungie jumping fool,
but has no cord to hold him up as he flies down.
Adrenalin sweeps through him, but he keeps his cool,
and opens up his parachute, and in one bound,
he hits the ground running to an automobile.
He leaps in, turns the key, spins out and then around,
and speeds off, like a card shark pulls a bottom deal.
He slams on the breaks, grabs his skate board, and propels
himself along the walk beneath the glass and steel
up to a motorcycle, which he leaps on, swells
with oomph, and drives like an electrocuted mule
attempting to get out of th’ universe—Hell’s bells!
Rudi E. Welec, “Abs”, is a poet of physicality.
~~~
They Vanished
by Bic Uwel, “Erased”
Back in a century and country that
no longer is, they got aboard a train
to get across the border, but couldn’t.
The train, diverted again and again,
could not get out. The passengers were trapped,
caught in a bureaucratic, tangled web.
If only they were where the water lapped
upon the shore, where tides would rise and ebb.
Instead, they were engulfed by mountains, trees,
and cloistered towns, where citizens were stuck
on darkened roads of narrow certainties,
in barren houses made of wood or brick.
Bic Uwel, “Erased”, is a poet of the missing and the missed.
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