On Falling Trees: March 2, 2018
          by Usa W. Celebride

A fierce Nor’easter knocked out power, flooding East Coast streets,
and toppled down an old Canadian spruce-hemlock tree,
that had been planted back in the late 18th century
upon George Washington’s Mount Vernon landscaped property.

As well another tree that overlooked the tomb fell too,
the lost Virginia cedar dropped within the windy brew,
beside the low, obscure brick vault, where ivy vine leaves dew,
a plain and modest, unassuming, ordinary view.

Americans, it seems, pay less attention to their past.
Heroic leaders once they’re dead and buried vanish fast.
For after all, it isn’t walls or trees in spaces cast,
but something more intangible, a nation hopes will last.

Usa W. Celebride is a poet of America.

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Sun Zing and Epic Madness
          by Acwiles Berude

Sing, goddess, of the hate, and killings, on the Earth unleashed,
destructive wrath which brings such woes to south, west, north and east,
and sends to hell heroic souls, to vile dogs of war,
to crows and vultures, scavengers of death, and all their corps.
This plan of Super Raw continues through this spinning World,
since first humanity came forth, and strife was thus unfurled.

Who were the gods and goddesses who brought this mania,
this evil pestilence, Afghanistan to Zambia,
Zimbabwe to Albania, this anger and this zeal?
Who brought this death into the World, o, adamantine seal?
So perish people ev’rywhere; Priest Crisis can’t avail.
It is our fate; dishonour comes; it is our lot to wail.

Across the oceans and the seas, the fast ships sail by.
Past counting are the troubles that reside beneath the sky.
Aureole shafts and arrows storm Earth. See and feel them soar.
Apollo strikes us from afar, his golden orb outpours.
No sons of Atreus, Achilles, or Achaian kings
can save us from, or have the power equal to Sun Zing.

Not All of the great power of the Zorro Astrian,
no Titan tossed nor loosed upon Olympus can withstand,
no Energy Sustained that crosses Earth’s magnetic Poles,
no sickled, hammer-armed Grim Reaper of Thor’s Blackest Holes,
no red-eyed Kom or fiercest Ohin dubious of Thing,
can save us from, or have the power equal to Sun Zing.

Sun’s hate is greater than the greatest hate there ever was,
because it isn’t even hate Sun showers over us.
Its deadly, fatal rays, Jazz Tech cannot redeem or dim,
nor could foul Moloch in his raging worst be half as grim.
Its life-sustaining and life-killing powers can’t be stopped,
by any less than one quintillion nuclear bombs dropped.

Acwiles Berude is a poet of Homeric epic. One quintillion is 1,000, 000,000,000,000,000.

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When I Despair
          by Basil Drew Eceu

When I despair, as Livy did, at living in these climes,
I should remember that each era changes with the times.
The rule of many, rule of few, and rule of only one,
although they be benign, are weak, and fade as time goes on,
from monarchy and aristocracy, democracy,
comes tyranny and oligarchy and ochlocracy.

I should recall the ancient writers, like Polybius,
reminding me of human schemes and anacyclosis.
Malignancy appears, but also undergoes demise;
corruption disappears when souls prefer the good and wise.
When I despair, I must remember, even anguish dies.
O, but, such will not lessen hardship when bad things arise.

Basil Drew Eceu is a poet of the British, particularly of the Romantic and Victorian eras.

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Postlude: Ash Wednesday, February 14, 2018, in the Metroplex
          by “Wild” E. S. Bucaree

Because I cannot turn again—the cavalcade is gone—
I have such little hope, it is as if I am undone.
Why should I keep on driving down the highways of the time?
What hope is there for the sublime? From concrete can I climb?
The grackles cackle on the rooftops of the businesses.
I enter to procure some merchandise sans blessedness.
Why should I sigh for things that can no longer come to be?
Because I cannot turn again, why should I try to see?

We dropped the car off to be fixed; the back had been locked up.
We drove amidst the schools and churches, looking for a stop.
And then we fled meandering the going nowhere stir.
We drove back to the interstate. We longed to reach the pure.
Instead we came upon a restaurant where we could rest,
and grab a bite to eat, a glass of water we could test.
It was Saint Valentine’s Day, but nobody else was there,
as if we had come to a meal for us alone to share.

Although it was Ash Wednesday, and we sat within the place;
you ate the beef, and I the chicken from our rice-filled plates.
Rejoicing in your blessed face, enjoying more your voice,
I loved each sweet and sour second, passing by the soy.
We left the undigestable proportions on our plates.
We left the roses in the garden near the apple gates.
We laughed at random fortune cookies on thin, paper strips,
so insignificant for us on our impending trips.

O, may the judgement be not heavy on our feeble bones.
O, pray for us, we sinners, who keep looking at our phones.
We saw no leopards near the leafless live oaks by the road.
We passed the tan grass, dry and crinkled, wrinkled where it groaned.
I pray God may have mercy on us as we travel forth.
Although we won’t go all that far, approaching truest north.
At times I simply can’t believe that I am living on.
I offer all these deedless phrases to oblivion.

I cannot be forgotten as I never here was known.
I prophesy to no one but the wind, and wind alone.
The silences are very deep; they never will be heard,
like brittle, little hoppers chirping, crisper than a word.
Love satisfied, unsatisfied, with, or without, an end.
We drove into the sunlight setting, watching it descend.
We heard the airplanes flying overhead, and watched them cross,
some flying off, some coming down, all shiny in the sauce.

“Wild” E. S. Bucaree is a poet of Texas. The Metroplex is the conglomeration of cities that includes cities over 100,000, Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, Plano, Garland, Irving, Grand Prairie, McKinney, Frisco, Mesquite, Carrolton, Denton, Richardson, Lewisville, and then over another hundred more less than 99,999.

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Sensitive Sino Censoring
          by Lu “Reed ABCs”

“If there are no term limits on our country’s leader Xi,
then we’re returning back to an imperial regime,”
the former editor of state-run daily China Youth;
said Li Datong, “We lived through Mao. How can we go back to ‘t?”

Wang Yi, a businesswoman who now advocates reforms,
feared that the Communists will sow the seeds of raging storms.
It’s “an outright betrayal.” Oh, it is “against the tides.”
“I know…one…voice is…useless,” next to leadership’s designs.

But now those voices are deleted off of WeChat’s plat.
Official censors have been working hard to scrub such rant.
Winnie the Pooh is sticking to his honey pot, it seems;
but such an image can’t be part of Xi’s New China Dreams.

And even “n” is dangerous, appearing as it does;
next to a thing becoming like strewn dandelion fuzz.
Not “1984” nor “Animal Farm” may be read,
because the two of them are not po-li-ti-cal-ly red.

Don’t use the words “my emperor” or to “ascend the throne,”
Don’t say “lifelong” or “I oppose” or you will lose your phone.
And now it seems that Xi Jinping can stay, if stay he must.
Ho, China’s on its way to 2023 or bust.

Lu “Reed ABCs” is a poet of China. Over a quarter of a billion people live in China’s fifteen most populated cities, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Beijing, Shenzhen, Wuhan, Chengdu, Chongqing, Tianjin, Hangzhou, Xian, Changzhou, Shantou, Nanjing, Jinan, and Harbin, all over 10,000,000 people.

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Seti I
          by “Scribe” El Uwade

He was the son of Ramesses the First and Tia-Sitre,
Egyptian pharaoh of New Kingdom’s Nineteenth Dynasty.
He sat upon the royal seat, a consecrate to Set,
the god of desert, storms, disorder, and the foreign threat.
He, Seti I, set forth upon his decade off beyond,
in war in western Asia, and war with the Libyan.

He led his force along the Horus Military Road,
the coastal way that led from Tjaru to the Sinai goad.
The capture of Kadesh and Amurru, his greatest feat,
could not be kept from Hittite hands, and hence was incomplete,
though artisans left an impressive war memorial,
which magnified his deeds, both glorious and personal.

His tomb was well preserved there in the Valley of the Kings,
discovered by Belzoni in year 1817,
the longest and the deepest of New Kingdom royal tombs,
the first with decorations in the passageways and rooms,
including Nut, the Heaven Cow, revolt against Sun Ra,
the Fields of Paradise, and suffering before the god.

“Scribe” El Uwade is a poet of ancient Egyptian civilization.

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“Leyenda” by Isaac Albéniz
          by El Cid E. W. Rubesa

First written for piano with G minor as its key,
“Leyenda” is a piece composed by Isaac Albéniz.
The name “Asturias” came from a German publisher,
who laboured in the store begun by Friedrich Hofmeister.
If not suggestive of that northern Spanish area,
it’s rather more flamencoesque from Andalusia.
The theme, like a twelve-beat bulería, takes off, and goes,
its strong staccato markings like the footwork of quick toes.
The second section, like a copla, then is followed by
a malagueña, and a dismount from the buzzing flight.

El Cid E. W. Rubesa is a poet of Spain, and its traditions in poetry, in music, and in art.

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Rome’s Ancient Colosseum was Lit Red
          by Crise de Abu Wel

Rome’s ancient Colosseum was lit red on Saturday,
protesting Christian persecution, Pakistani hate.
Since 2010 one Asia Bibi has been on death row
for drinking from a cup that Muslims drank from—Lord, oh, no!
How dare she contrast Jesus Christ with cruelty unleashed
by vicious haters of the good and pure. Hell, who is she?
But don’t forget Shabaz Bhatti and Salmaan Taseer,
who were assassinated merely for supporting her,
the Roman Cath’lic politician, from the cabinet,
and Muslim politician, Governor of the Punjab.

Crise de Abu Wel is a poet of the persecuted, wherever they may be, as these three from Pakistan.

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An Attack in the Back of the Head
          by Reedul Bicewas

Zafar Iqbal, a Bangladeshi science fictionist,
had gone too far for being a professing physicist;
and so the copotronic activist has been attacked,
by a knife-wielding Islamist who wanted Iqbal blacked.
Stabbed in the back of his sage head, though he was near to death,
he lived, to see another day, to take another breath.
His father had been martyred in the Liberation War,
where thousands had been murdered in that genocidal gore;
and even now it is not safe at ceremonials,
where prizes being given out become memorials.

Reedul Bicwas is a poet of Bangladesh.

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The Avant-garde
          by Rus Ciel Badeew

Vladimir Putin raised the stakes for a new nuke arms race.
By his unveiling hypersonic nukes, he’s upped the pace.
The weapon he alluded to was a cruise-missile nuke.
The Avangard’s unlimited, and cannot be rebuked.
It strikes, like meteorites, twenty times the speed of sound.
And there’s an underwater drone that also can’t be bound.
He said such have no parity with those built in the “West”.
If necessary Russia can have war with the US.
“We are not threatening,” he said. “We won’t take anything.”
Though we, too, might be working on a “laser weapon screen.”

Rus Ciel Badeew is a poet of Russia. Though Russia has the 11th highest nominal GDP in the World, it is often placed at 1, 2, or 3 in military power, along with China and the USA.

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To James A. Tweedie
          by Ubs Reece Idwal

Thanks, Mr. Tweedie, for your tweeds, your homespun cheviots,
your woven twills are very good; I have no caveats.
They’re finely woven outer clothing, strong and durable;
they can withstand Northwestern rains, when fierce and terrible.
Like Ms. A. Foreman, I enjoy your forays into form;
for they are firm, resisting moisture in the raging storm,
a humble Presbyter, who ‘s been around Pacific ports,
a master of the woolen fabric, pastoral, of course.
A bit of Aussie grit, no moaning crossing of the bar,
o, Mr. Toad and Sherlock Holmes have nothing on…your garb.

Ubs Reece Idwal is a poet of the Pacific Northwest; James A. Tweedie is a poet of Long Beach, Washington, where he and his wife like to walk on the beach.