Haiku
by “Clear Dew” Ibuse
A drone dropped a line,
delivering a package,
then pulled the line back.
“Clear Dew” Ibuse is a haiku poet.
~~~
Haiku
by “Wired Clues” Abe
Artemis Two mission,
for a ten day’s space journey.
launched four astronauts.
Tanka
by “Wired Clues” Abe
He celebrated
with lemon-lime drink in hand—
Saint Patrick’s Day,
stirring with a swizzle stick,
shining like an emerald.
“Wired Clues” Abe is a NewMillennial haiku poet.
~~~
Ancient Beer
by Cale Budweiser
Before Confucian Analects and Taoist anecdotes,
upon the Central Chinese plains, 5000 years ago,
shaped funnels, pots and jugs were found that brewed and filtered beers,
produced with broomcorn, millet, barley, tubers and Job’s tears.
Some archaeologists at Stanford University
have analyzed an ancient residue discovery;
a stove for carb-to-sugar breakdown was found at the site,
and ion chromatography was used to test its bite.
The evidence showed grains were damaged, malted and/or mashed,
but quite a happy hour when the liquid-gold was cached.
Cale Budweiser, an acquaintance of Walice du Beers, is a poet of beer.
~~~
Newsreel:
The conflict in Iran has closed Strait of Hormuz shipped freight.
The price of oil is rising fast, and will not soon abate.
~~~
Flashback:
In Kocho, in Iraq, the holocaust went on.
Islamic State jihadists killed, and killed again.
In just that single village, there will be no dawn
for boys twelve years and older, and for all the men.
The massacre continued on Yazidis there.
Islamic State jihadists took their gold, and then
in Kocho, in Iraq, they shot all of them dead,
and rounded up the women, children. Where are they?
We know because a man escaped by feigning death.
Islamic State jihadists slaughtered more each day;
those scores were added to the thousands drained blood-red,
beheaded, butchered , murdered, futures blown away.
In Kocho, in Iraq, Yazidi men are gone;
Islamic State jihadists came, and made their stay.
~~~
Newsreel:
Tehran attacked and set ablaze a tanker filled with oil,
Kuwaiti-flagged, Al-Salmi crude, West Asia is aboil.
~~~
O, Forty Years Ago, Chernobyl
by Radice Lebewsu
O, forty years ago, Chernobyl blew where nature was,
the radiation of a score of bombed Hiroshimas.
Wolves, roe and bison, boars and moose supposedly now thrive
between abandoned buildings and dead gardens once alive.
The animals are too contaminated there to eat,
as they meander through the empty streets of Pripyat.
No tourists take their photos of decay and loneliness,
ignoring gamma-particles that through their bodies press.
None scout the sanctuary for the creatures living there,
a mixture of delapidation and deep-eyed despair.
And now in April 2026, the Russian drones,
endanger nuclear facilities with deadly zones.
Radice Lebewsu is a poet of Ukraine.
~~~
That Strong Quadruped
by Cur A Wildebees
Was it in Africa, or was it North America?
He saw it—was it ruminating—that strong quadruped?
He looked askance. Was it attempting to pause in the grass?
He took another glance. Was it endeavouring to piss or pass?
Was this a bull? a troublesome force on the rolling plain?
or was it on a vast savannah gladly eating grain?
Cur A. Wildebees is a poet of animals.
~~~
Newsreel:
Jihadists opened fire on Palm Sunday Christians in
Nigeria, and killed more than two dozen citizens.
~~~
Postludes
by B. S. Eliud Acrewe
I
The evening spring winds down with smells of steak and sounds of cars.
It’s six o’clock. Th’ warm, sunny day fades out…not yet to stars.
The air is dry. A hose’s tender shower wets the lawn.
The neighbourhood is neat. The brown and withered leaves are gone.
Brick houses with their chimneys stand together, not alone.
Newspapers are replaced by phones. Out here there’s only one.
One hears a playing radio. Some work in a garage.
It is so plain and lovely; it is re-al—no mirage.
The street lamps have turned on, like the Moon, automatic’ly.
The number of light-seconds for its light is 1.3.
II
The morning light comes into lovely consciousness at noon,
One smells the cooking barbecue of Sunday, fresh and new.
One hears the northern cardinal. ‘It’s here. It’s here.’ One hears,
as one meanders down the street, as soon as one is near.
Here are no masquerades, just cloudless skies and sunlit trees.
One feels the bluster and the rush o’ th’ cooling, peaceful breeze.
One hears the distant crowds of baseball fans and doughty kids.
One hears the smack of bat on ball. Here are no pyramids.
The houses keep their shutters closed—protection from the Sun,
and all the momentary gladness of an ambling one.
B. S. Eliud Acrewe is a poet of preludes. T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) was a Modernist American-British poet, playwright, and literary critic.
~~~
At Itchycoo Park Field
by Red Was Iceblue
His eyes had been dilated when he went to the eye doc,
and he could read the EXIT sign, ‘You’ve the eyes of a hawk.’
But he felt nothing of it, till he drove all the way home;
he thought he should not stop to shop, but should no longer roam.
Things seemed okay. The day was plain. Cloud c-over made it grey.
So he got back and ate some eggs and bacon. They were great.
But afterwards, he suddenly felt like one of les Fauves;
such dazzling colours swarmed his sight: pink, orange, red, and gold.
The hues of blues, the greens he’d seen—such vibrant violence,
such clarity, variety, and brilliant violets.
His vision was so wild—far too beautiful—yet real.
He felt as if he’d been dropped off at Itchycoo Park Field.
Red Was Iceblue is a poet of colour. “Itchycoo Park” was a song by Small Faces, largely written by PostModernist lyricist Ronnie Lane (1946-1997).
~~~
Schrödinger’s Cat
by Ira “Dweeb” Scule
“But the cat came back, thought she were a goner.”
—Harry S. Miller (1860-1934)
Not only can Schrödinger’s cat be both alive and dead,
but it can simultaneously be elsewhere instead.
At Yale University, some scientists suggest
the cat is in two boxes at the same time it’s at rest.
The Yale team created a device—two 3-D holes—
and an excrescent port, so as to monitor the moles.
An alternating view is that there is entanglement,
between two cats within two boxes’ angled measurements.
Superposition is a tricky nicotine to seek,
but added will become a sticky wicket, so to speak.
Some Nanoscientists at Delft
by Ira “Dweeb” Scule
Each day society creates a trillion gigabytes
of brand-new data, information, and profound insights.
It has become increasingly important storing such
in ever smaller, more compact things that can hold so much.
Some nanoscientists at Delft have built a memory,
8,000 bits upon a chlorine atom’s density.
Though in its current form this memory alone occurs
in clean vacuum conditions—liquid-nitro temper’tures;
still, all the books that people ever have created could
be placed upon a single stamp, and God see it is good.
Ira “Dweeb” Scule is a poet of science. Delft, Netherlands, has a population of around 100,000.
~~~
Kevin Slaven Comments
by Esca Webuilder
It takes 500,000 microseconds just
to click a mouse, tech guru Kevin Slavin states;
so then much longer typing down the thought, I trust,
and thinking through this poem with its heavy waits.
He then goes on to say, we’re living in a world,
increasing controlled by algorithmic gates.
What has complex computer programming unhurled?
Esca Webuilder is a poet of the Internet. Kevin Slavin is a contemporary entrepreneur.
~~~
Cooper Creek
by B. S. Eliud Acrewe
I
The gods are angry, rum-bl-ing across the open skies.
The dark clouds hover over us, but there is no surprise.
And when the lightning and the thunder vanish as they must;
it is as if the gods are gone again. Who can we trust?
Fierce rains start Cooper Creek beside the highway and the hill.
Without them it’s naught but the adumbration of a rill,
that grows until the water that it carries has an edge,
a problem that confronts the builders when they build a bridge.
O pioneers, who cleared the way, constructing routes to go,
o worshippers of the machine who helped us cross its flow.
Beside the first bridge one can see a rabbit leaps its banks,
so narrow and so still it hardly seems more than a thanks.
Beyond, it goes to Trinity, past so much past to bear.
The river goes without us to the sea, its constant lair.
Bestride the second bridge, one spots a little larger marsh,
its charm is more the lushness of the plants within its charge.
Beyond the crickets, one can hear the traffic on the road,
each vehicle in its own way there carrying its load,
the road a bridge itself though hardly visible at all,
unlike the arched bridge with wood planks above the water’s crawl.
II
Where is the end, the soundless waiting, silent withering?
calamitous annunciation, winding slithering?
the consequence of further days, the rotting of the log?
the slimy vegetation of the cricket and the toad?
Here at the green and wooden-slatted bridge that arched the flood,
spring’s brisk winds are unfurled, hardly noticed by the World.
There is an end; for time and nature spare no one or thing,
including all the questioning and answering in spring.
The creek meanders through the banks past plant and shallow pant;
the shadows of the morning cast their great lengths at a slant.
As one gets older, one should be exploring pioneer,
especi’lly when the future is inevitably near.
One sees a man and woman with a baby and a dog
atop the cement engineering, over reed and bog.
One sees the walkers, runners, bikers, o, so many souls,
each passing one, and you as well, part of the cosmos whole.
And yet so small, each like an ant upon a rugged rock,
in gorgeous morning sunlight clear or near fog-covered frog.
It was a tone, almost a moan, both deep and serious,
which steadied, whether weather halcyon or furious.
III
The future is no faded song, no Royal Rose perfumed.
It too, in time, once oped and closed, will also be exhumed.
As the coronavirus spreads, from there to far and near;
time is no healer, when the patient is no longer here.
Bulrushes, reeds, cattails and sedge, pink evening primrose stalks,
greet those, who pass in dawn’s light dance, on rides, in runs or walks.
This is a place of Evers, there a church and here a school.
A large, brown, wood cross stands…for more than just the golden rule.
Forever’s not a long time; it can never be the same.
It is like as the future, come what will and come what may.
The past is over and the future is beyond the news;
but here upon the bench that’s only one of many views,
you pause to catch your breath; it is too hard to take all in—
the many passing images. The head begins to spin.
Each time of peace is but the rest between this and the next.
All’s so complex, and then there is the editing of text.
How can one make sense of the grasses and the passing creek?
Each time you cross its flowing water is itself unique.
As Krishna told Arjuna to buck up and face it—all—
the voyager must fare well as he journeys spacetime’s fall.
IV
O, all along its length, they go about their business—birds—
without the everchanging rearranging, gaging words.
Upon the bright green railings of the arching bridge, they perch,
or down beside the marshy route, they make their driving search.
Across the catchment battlements, the killdeer scurry fast;
at this good spot, they want all travelers to hurry past.
Above the first bridge flying round about in swirling sweeps,
barn swallows seek out insects in the scented air so sweet.
Atop the lamppost singing in the early morning light,
o, mimic, many-tongued, the mockingbird sings out and bright.
V
Eventu’lly one comes to find there are new routes to take,
another way, another day, another heart to brake.
Observe disease in signatures, evoke biography
from wrinkles of the open palm, from fingers, tragedy.
The tea leaves of this morning’s drink alert one to the press
of time upon each individual and each distress,
o whether one is on the shores of Asia or this path
in North America beyond Achilles and his wrath.
Wherever one may find oneself that is where one should be
forever in the arms of space and time, eternity.
The trail ends before the dead end of Longfellow Lane,
here where a lone white egret cautiously surveys terrain,
and then flies high into a circle on enlightened wing,
above the squirrels round the oaks and creek bed widening.
Here the impossible connects the future to the past,
the movement of the open freedom of the present, vast.
Here one returns back to the place where one begins again,
past empty church and empty playing field devoid of men,
past wakened mourning doves that take a sprinkler’s shaking bath:
your word a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path.
B. S. Eliud Acrewe is a poet of time.
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