At the Pyeongchang Olympics
by Dae Wi “Scrub” Lee

This winter two Koreas will march in together in
the Pyeongchang Olympics, walking as if they were one.
They will be marching under the Korean Uni-flag,
white background with blue silhouette of the peninsula.
The two Koreas plan to field an ice-hockey team;
it is an effort to thaw frosty-cold diplomacy.
Though ladies from the South Korean team aren’t happy, since
some will be dropped from off the team they thought they would be with.
Though Moon Jae-in thanked Trump for talks between the enemies,
not all agreed with adversary ex-pe-di-en-cy.

Dae Wi “Scrub” Lee is a poet of Korea.

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JFK Airport Arrest, January 15, 2018
by Lu “Reed ABCs” Wei

Ex-CIA case officer, one Jerry Chun Shing Lee,
who has been living in Hong Kong is now in custody.
Arrested when he came to JFK airport today;
he was charged with one felony count in the USA.
Apparently while working for America he was
responsible for deaths in China of some op’ratives.
Perhaps it was as many as a dozen, maybe more,
he cavalierly sent them to their deaths. What was it for?
He had been caught with two booklets containing names and notes,
of assets and covert facilities inside his totes.

Lu Wei is a poet of China, his moniker “Reed ABCs” speaks of his letters, as if they were growing wetland grasses.

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Operation Olive Branch
by Eweseçü Birdal
“…from Manjib [Turkey will] clean our region from this trouble completely.”
—Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
“Erdoğan, the new Sadaam Hussein, murdering Kurds.”
—Curdise Belawe

On Saturday the Turkish military marched into…
the northern Syrian enclave of Afrin…in its view.
They marched in with Free Syrian Armed troops upon the ground,
while overhead their bombing planes began their deadly pound.
The purpose for their operation code named “Olive Branch”
was rooting out the Kurdish groups Erdoğan wants to stanch.
As hundreds die, there is “no stepping back,” from their desire;
the tanks press on with their relentless heavy shelling fire.
The Turks want to maintain a presence on their southern side,
a people famous for their history of genocide.

Eweseçü Birdal is a poet of Turkey.

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Rattan Caning in Aceh, Indonesia
Budi Secrewael

She knelt down on the scarlet carpet in the glaring sun,
a woman draped in white, her head bowed forward, looking down.
She was about to be lashed in Sumatra’s public shame;
around her hundreds came to see her, jeering at her pain.
The crowd pulled in to watch the flogging, savouring her fate,
for being too close to her man before her wedding date,
which was just days away. He,too, received the punishment,
the twenty lashes from the al-go-jo, not banishment.
Unlike Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne, she shared the stage,
with eight men and another woman near to her in age.

Budi Secrewael is a poet of Indonesia.

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Scott Thomas Outlar
by Cause Bewilder

Out there somewhere, Scott Thomas Outlar, an outlander, is.
He’s simply breathing, drinking, eating, sleeping, getting his.
He is researching and besmirching, writing prose-poke squawks.
And you may even find him taking meditative walks.
He’s contemplating existential quandaries supine,
while gazing at the stars, in tune to music, or to wine.
He is a lover of the truth, and likes vibrations too,
the higher that they are the better, only more will do.
A white hot rage is pulsing through his fever-ridden chants.
He filters through the bullshit barely managing the rants.
He burst forth from the ooze with thoughts of Renaissance revved up.
He grasps at straws of neuron synapse in his conscious cup.
He came to Earth with both a piercing sword and gorgeous rose.
He has a love for all the good and hate for all the gross.
When not caught up in spirits, crazy ravings or mad romps,
he likes to chill and think about his rapt trips through the swamps.
He hails from Atlantis, praying mantis of a man,
upon this frying pan called Earth with an attention span.
He feels he is at the edge of a new epic stage,
and hopes he has the courage and the grace to face his Age.
Oracular, suburban, psychedelic, pandering,
Scott Thomas Outlar is outrageous and meandering,
a lifelong resident of Georgia, in the lost and found,
a member of the Phoenix generation on the bound.

Cause Bewilder is a poet of the South.

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The Case of the Missing Person
by Bic Uwel, “Erased”

He vanished in the city, glittering in neon lights,
and lost himself amidst the glaring shops and sultry nights.
He floundered in the aisles of the cheap and gawdy stores,
and fell into the theatres performing filmy noirs.
Around him clashed the cloudy cymbals of smoke and romance,
sophisticated swagger, gritty crime and high finance.
The jazzy, bluesy rhythms found in his receptive ears,
were grinding worries and depression, fantasies and fears.
He fled the alcohol and drugs that swirled on the streets,
and disappeared without a trace in pounding, throbbing beats.

Bic Uwel, “Erased” is a poet of the unknown and the missing, of the anonymous and the lost.

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T. S. Eliot, 1940s
by B. S. Eliud Acrewe
“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.”
—T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Below the glaring light bulb, T. S. Eliot is at
a desk upon which sits typewriter, papers in a stack,
a loose-leafed calendar, a pencil, and a large ashtray,
upon a desk-pad piled up, yet in an ordered way.
He’s in a suit and tie, his fingers rest upon the keys.
An open window just behind suggests a longed-for breeze.
It is the 1940s. Maybe he is working on
the Four Quartets—the Anglo high-priest, literary don.
He sits upright upon a chair. He’s focused on his work,
as if he still were labouring at Lloyds Bank as a clerk.

B. S. Eliud Acrewe is a poet and critic of the United Kingdom

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Along the Winding River Avon
by Wilude Scabere

Along the winding River Avon, Stratford, Warwickshire,
a swan was swimming past the hanging willows by the shore,
the long and slender, yellow, green and brown leaves hanging down,
perhaps the distant call of London touched a thoughtful crown,
a family would need financial sources to go on,
perhaps an usher at his school got on his horse at dawn,
perhaps a playing group of men appeared with one less man,
performing Richard, Henry, Lear, enrolled an honest man,
and he proceeded with that company or on his own,
onto the World’s stage and international renown.
It would have been momentous for his troop or all alone.

Wilude Scabere is a poet of England.

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Words of Callimachus
by Esiad L. Werecub

Callimachus, they told me that your poetry was dead,
that no one cared about its flight; and that was all they said.
I thought about their words awhile, but not for very long,
and then I paused to think about the briefness of your song.
It’s true that you are dead and gone, since long ago you died.
You chatted with the sun awhile in a brief aside.
But I can hear your words awing, like wakened nightingales,
that fly across millennia and pass me as they sail.

Esiad L. Werecub is a poet of ancient Greece.

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In Russia, at a Subway Station
by Rus Ciel Badeew

Here at a subway station’s plat, a gang attacked a youth.
They knocked him to the ground and put him in a headlock’s truth.
One dragged him on the floor, like as he was a sack of wheat;
his friend attempted talking, but was shoved back on his feet.
Then out of nowhere he appeared, the old age pensioner,
who kidney-punched the stomach of one misadventurer.
Gang members tried to pull him off, but he knocked three more down,
and kicked his foot into their sides while they were on the ground.
Closed-circuit TV caught the goons, hoods up and skulking off;
and afterwards, those punches hit the online viral troff.

Rus Ciel Badeew is a poet of Russia.

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Alcina
by Ewald E. Eisbruc

Just after Ruggiero and the hippogryph land on
an island in the middle of the ocean, o, sand-blown!
Alcina, Händel’s opera begins. The hippogryph
begins to munch upon a myrtle bush’s leaves—they lift!
The bush speaks. It was once a man named Sir Astolfo! Knights
Alcina tires of are turned into what she delights!

The love of Ruggiero, Bradamante, then shows up
with Ruggiero’s former tutor named Melisso; but
Alcina has already captivated her loved one.
So with a magic ring, disguised in armour, she moves on,
pretending to be one Ricciardo, a distinguished man.
Alcina’s sister sorceress Morgana falls for “him.”

Together they proceed to reach the island’s magic court,
where Bradamante finds the man she loves, thrall of Amor.
Alcina has completely captivated him, alas!
Oberto’s also here. He’s looking for Astolfo—dad.
Though scolded, Ruggiero can think of no one except
Alcina, Bradamante and Melisso are upset.

By now, Oronte, lover of Morgana, feels a fool;
and so, in hate, he challenges Ricciardo to a duel.
“Alcina,” also he says, “turns all her loves into things!”
Ricciardo then pretends to love Alcina, which then brings
Ruggiero to a jealous frenzy to see his amor,
Alcina, wooed. Confusions follow. Whom don’t each adore?

So then Melisso comes up with some magic of his own.
He gives Ruggiero a charmed magic ring with shining stone.
Alcina wants to turn Ricciardo to an animal,
but sorceress Morgana pleads to halt her sister’s spell.
Eventually Ruggiero sees through all the sorcery
Alcina has perpetuated, and he wants to leave.

Together Bradamante and her true love plan to go.
They want to flee the desert isle, escape this wretched shore.
Alcina calls on monsters, devils, vile, evil bane;
but just because she is in love, her powers start to wane.
They meet again, the former lovers, and Ruggiero tells
Alcina he loves Bradamante and their love excels.

And so, Ruggiero, happy now that he is back in love
with Bradamante, grabs the urn that holds the powers of
Alcina, and he takes it up and breaks the magic urn.
All of the magic spells are broken, and the men return.
Oberto’s father’s back, Astolfo and the rest are free;
Alcina and Morgana vanish in eternity

The maestro Handel is magician in the midst of his
enchantments, charming melodies and lovely arias.
Alcina takes the stage from Ariosto’s fertile mind;
Broschi’s libretto from Orlando furioso’s lines.
The necromancer brings alive th’ Italian poet’s work;
Alcina likewise keeping Handel in this moment’s curr.*

*curr: current occurence, neologism by E.E.E.

Ewald E. Eisbruc is a poet of the German musical tradition, even when it is an Italian opera performed and made in England.