The 2018 Winter Olympics
          by Rudi E. Welec, “Abs”

The lyrist plays a hymn for heroes on the ice and snow,
in skiing, sledding, curling, skating, o’er the bright, white glow,
like as a flowing, winter stream, Olympian and cold,
in Herculean melodies, so clear and pure and bold.
Though war’s stone throne, proclaiming victory, nearby persists,
each god, and goblin-guardian, upon PyeongChang sits;
where, February 2018, free song flies, time froze,
in the observing customs and good names of honoured souls.
The sure, Korean, kicking punt, the boot of Italy,
the sacrifice of spirits, far from Sicily and Greece,
beyond the wooded groves surrounding, athletes came to vie,
from places all around the globe, beneath a brilliant sky,
in luge, snow boarding, hockey and long-distant biathlon,
in jumping, racing, figure skating, and the skeleton,
in Nordic, Alpine, speeding races, graceful pirouettes,
in spins and turns, in jumps and flops, in twists and turns and splits.
The medals earned from Norway, Germany and Canada,
from USA, from Sweden, Russia, and the Netherlands,
from South Korea, Austria, from France and Switzerland,
from Italy and China, Czech Republic and Japan,
from Finland and Slovakia, from Belarus, Ukraine,
Great Britain, Poland, Hungary, Australia, Belgium, Spain,
Slovenia, New Zealand, Kazakhstan and Latvia,
including even, tiny mountain-nation Lichtenstein,
the prizes, gold is first, and silver second, bronze in third,
that hang about each winner’s neck, before the watching World.
Far from one’s native land, beyond the cauldron’s firey toss,
the joy of mastery, success, and overcoming loss.
Amidst all of the bickering, deceit, and mortal pain,
a chance to witness more than misery and hard disdain,
to gaze on skill and gain, despite the hatred and the vain,
a moment on the happy seven-hundred Pyeongchang.

_________________________________________________________________

The Residents of Eastern Ghouta
          by Cid Wa’eeb El Sur

The residents of eastern Ghouta, waiting for their turn…
to die…observe the dropping bombs, the enclave’s furnace burn.
At least five-hundred people have been killed by falling bombs.
There is no balm in Ghouta, o, it’s like the Siege of Homs.
Home to four-hundred-thousand, it has been beseiged for years,
and now it gets a fresh new round of barrel bombs and tears.
They fear the terror now down in their shelters where they live
with little food, and little hope, and little left to give.
They’ve spent the last weeks in the rubble, digging with their hands;
but none will let them leave, not rebels…Russians…Syrians.

Cid Wa’eeb El Sur is a poet of the Middle East.

_________________________________________________________________

Thunchathu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan
          by Sri Wele Cebuda

The poet Thunchathu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan
was a devotional linguístique in Malayalam.
Born near the present-day Turir, he roamed South India,
until he built a monastery near Palakkadu.
Translating Ramayama and Mahabharata at
that barren land, that forest gateway in the Western Ghats,
thus mingling Sanskrit and Dravidian expressive runs,
establishing an alphabet that grew to fifty-one.
For kanda, he used kalakanchi, keka, kakali
for cantos in the bird-song, kilippattu, singing free.

_________________________________________________________________

Bodies: The Exhibition
          by Lu “Reed ABCs” Wei

“The Exhibition: Bodies” opened in 2005,
from Albuquerque to Zagreb, around the globe it’s live:
Atlanta, Georgia, business Premier Exhibitions Inc.
displays cadavers it receives from China’s Dalian.
Concerns about the provenance of bodies issues forth,
particularly tortured Falun Gong practitioners.
Last year in 2017, in Czech Republic, Prague,
four doctors and four NPOs, called for consentu’l logs,
which not forthcoming, favoured banning the exhibits shown,
along with bodies buried, though no thing has yet been done.

_________________________________________________________________

Guyana
          by Ruel Widee Bacus
          “Joy, is not, elusive, it is like dreams, in pursuit of those seeking happiness.”
            —Leonard Dabydeen, a tetractys from “Searching for You”

The land of many waterfalls, like dropping Kaieteur,
that rush in brilliant, giant columns, crashing through the air.
The world’s second tallest, wooden church, St. George’s site,
designed by Blomfield, is one-hundred-forty feet in height.
In sports, Guyana’s cricketers compete on Windies team,
the seven curry dish is served with rise or roti steamed.
Out in the west, Roraima is Guyana’s highest point,
upon the border of Brazil, to Venezuela joined.
Most of the people live along the northeast coastal plain,
with sugar, rice and gold, the country’s greatest export gain;
Although much of the ocean coast below sea level lies,
the Dutch-constructed kokers help protect against the tides.
Though Walter Raleigh never found where Golden City was;
today though crime is rampant there, there’s El Dorado Rum.
And Parliament is pink and white beside palm trees and grass,
while flags of red and gold and green, flap lined by white and black.

Ruel Widee Bacus is a poet of Guyana.

_________________________________________________________________

The William Tell Overture by Rossini
          by Ewald E. Eisbruc

Rossini’s operatic overture to “William Tell”
begins at dawn, a tranquil prelude on an alpine hill,
as if the Sun is shining in E-major cello lows
accompanied by double basses, mellow tremolos;
until the cloudy storm appears, E-minor violence,
and hits in frenzied, vigourous viola-violins,
there punctuated by the winds, flutes, oboes, clarinets,
and more, a bass drum, French horns, tombones and a trumpet’s threat.
Ah, then, clear skies return to G, a calling to the cows,
the wistful, alternating cor anglais and flute arouse;
the lovely melody arises upward to the skies,
the meadow touched by happiness, pastoral, peaceful eyes;
until E-major hits, like as a revolution loosed,
and galloping across the hills the pace is raced and juiced;
full orchestra with trumpet herald runs across the land,
one sensing one has come upon the soul of Switzerland.

Ewald E. Eisbruc is a poet and literary critic of Central European music.

_________________________________________________________________

On Dana Gioia
          by Cal Wes Ubideer
          “Poetry…is a special way of speaking and listening.”
              —Dana Gioia

Amidst the busy-ness of life, he kept alive the voice
of crotchety old poets who never could rejoice.
And yet he seemed to be content. He smiled quite a bit.
Was it the notice of a few and their acknowledgment?
He let the modern hardness surface in his varied jaunts,
while never treading in the brambles of my ancient haunts.
I saw the effort that he gave was good, sincere, adept,
but wondered at the company he kept, and where he slept.
There were no grand advances, nor inventions we could bless;
it is so easy to misplace oneself amidst life’s busy-ness.

And I should know, because I, too, have many things to do,
and can not really do them all, but still somehow strive to.
Is it a failure of the spirit, or of the sublime?
Is it too much to ask? Is it a failure of the time?
I thought: What if there was a sound within the city’s roar;
and no one heard it, would it still exist forevermore?
He left some sentences of indeterminable length.
He was so serious I wondered at his health and strength.
He taught, he wrought, he wrote he frought, he called upon the muse;
and in his moments at the altar sang his bluesy dues.

Cal Wes Ubideer is a poet of California.

_________________________________________________________________

The Old Comedian
          by Esiad L. Werecub

As rugged as a bear, old Aristophanes,
could then no longer stand the groaning goat-song cries
of Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles.
They drove him to madness. He could not get a rise
out of such agony, nor could he try to put
on Plato’s idle dialogues for form or size.
He would not bridle an unbridled ultimate.
On all he looked, he saw the small, the tall fall short.
It made him laugh and joke—not happy, not glad—but
aware that what was needed was to halt, abort
pretention, short the rhetoric of Socrates.
As Ancient Greece began its fall, he fell to sport.

Esiad L. Werecub is a poet of ancient Greece.

_________________________________________________________________

Rude Ennius
          by Aedile Cwerbus
          “Nemo me dacrumis decoret nec funera fletu
Faxit. Cur? Volito vivu’ per ora virum.”
              —Quintus Ennius

He dreamed that Homer’s spirit had awakened within him,
perhaps at Rudiae, rude Ennius, of rustic hymn.
Greek, Latin, ancient Oscan, three strong hearts within him beat,
above the heel of Italy, of proud and pounding feet.
While in the Second Punic War, as a centurion,
he crossed the path of elder Cato in Sardinia.
He came to Rome, and in due time became a citizen,
who dwelled upon the Aventine, a private denizen.
Composing plays and Annales, his epic claim to fame,
he ended like a gallant steed, Olympian and plain.
His long-lost tomb, in golden muck, perhaps near some crude cove,
with but an old and aged tree, fades in some sacred grove.

_________________________________________________________________

Aedile Cwerbus is a poet of ancient Rome.

On Stoicheia
          by Ercules Edibwa
          “nor is it valid/ to discriminate against ‘business documents and/ school-books'”
              —Marianne Moore
          “Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare..”
              —Edna St. Vincent Millay

Euclid begins with fundamentals first,
and then proceeds through geo-algebra;
next, in deductive logic, loom circles,
inscribed and circumscribed polyhedra.
Abstract proportion follows and precedes
three books of number theory, which include
the indirect, exhaustive proof that cedes
there’s an infinity of primes. That is good.
But there is more, for he goes on in text
to show incommensurables—the surds,
and three-dimension objects, measurement
via reductio ad absurdum.
And with the five Platonic forms he ends
his brilliant compilation—th’ Elements.

Ercules Edibwa is a poet of ancient Greek myth, math, and the Pythian Path.

_________________________________________________________________

Along the Road to Gundagai
          by Walibee Scrude

It now appears that Google Shopping has set up defaults
for any product that contains guns in its search results.
Beware of Guns and Roses, toy guns can be dangerous.
Sex Pistols are a deadly group, glue-guns are nature’s pus.
Beware of Shōguns from Japan; they’re on the rise again.
“Revolver” by the Beatles must be censored—Eminem?
It seems there is a filter, keeping people safe from harm;
though one can still find knives, machetes, arsenic and bombs.
Now Google states there is “an error in our Shopping” scans.
Beware of burgundy excuses in tan Tuscan pans.

Walibee Scrude is a poet and Neo Jindyworobak.

_________________________________________________________________

Egyptian Singer Punished For Offending the River Nile
          by “Scribe” El Uwade

Sherine Abdel-Wahab was sentenced for suggesting that
you’d get Bilharzia if you drank Nile water splat.
“Drink Evian, it’s better,” she once said in UAE,
but since apologized to quell the tourist industry.
Schistosomiasis is caused by parasitic worms,
transmitted by contaminated water—plaguing germs.
How dare she make a joke about the pure and lovely Nile?
Suggesting such a thing is nothing less than base and vile.
Although she promised to be careful what she says aloud,
she must be punished; for such levity can’t be allowed.

“Scribe” El Uwade is a poet of ancient to New Millennial Egypt.