Tuesday, 30 August 2016


Sister Publication to Poetry Life & Times

Issue of September 2016

America: The Rave.
A Poem by Adam Levon Brown

America

Of the store-bought
pizza dinners

Land of the flies
who scrape the paint
off of barnyard doors
with fingernails of lace

America

Camel cigarette
butts lining the crevices,
reminding us to
take pride in our
death

Land of the trees,
the oceans, and the
snow; covering us like
a whale song sung from
the bleachers of Wrigley field
in ’89

America

Scarface gangsterish
slang aimed at our throats
while revolutionaries paint
their stories on box trains
destined for the great beyond

Land of the stolen coffee bean
with all of its richness fueling
our neurotic skull contents in
the bleak December rains

America

Social injustice in the form
of Television, telling us a tale
as old as time; oppression
as an old, raggedy flag drenched
in the blood of sacrificial lambs
who never got to see the pasture

Land of the bombs, the guns,
and the assault rifle speeches
of sputtering, malignant hatred

America

Chain gang alamode
served with a slice
of adversity in the morning

Land of the Cinematic
bloodbath and violent
pornography with Twilight zone
on repeat

America

Crooked-nosed piety seekers
in rags on the streets who sleep
right outside the doors of the disillusioned youth
who partake in Molly until their ears
scream and their voices listen

Land of the freezing
Home of the Rave.


Adam Levon Brown is a poet and author residing in Eugene, Oregon. He has one published poetry book out, Musings of a Madman, which is a collection of poems made to enlighten and inspire the reader. Adam attributes his love of poetry to the many great poets he discovered in the school library during his formative years. He enjoys listening to political hip hop music and is a political activist himself.


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Let me go.
A Poem by Robin Wyatt Dunn

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Let me go;
I am drawn.


Hereout the maids hinder my suffering;
The maids are buildings, and faces.
The asphalt itself. They seem to care for me;
to prevent my exit from the city’s gravity.


All my wishes are spent on the mornings here;
And even the nights tell me I am growing.


I want to shrink, under the sun,
Away from all this history.



Robin Wyatt Dunn lives in Los Angeles.
—
“Agitate. Agitate. Agitate.”
— Frederick Douglass



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Out of Time.
A Poem by Soodabeh Saeidnia

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Years have passed and that slim cider plant
is now a strong tree
The mesmerizing highway’s been constructed
across the mysterious sea
Wars started and presumed
to be ended soon
My senses have deadened, whereas my body
promoted to defend

I wonder why in this time
I’m not feeling good, I’m not fine
Days have come and nights have gone
without a sign of evolution in our genes
Climate smirks at our greenhouse dreams
Through once in a while, monsoons of disease
cyclones of death
Men are digging the earth at a furious pace
but I’ve always known that there are planets, in which
rains are diamond, snows emerald

Along this ephemeral wasting of time
I’m not feeling good, I’m not fine

The spider web’s connected all the people
Some are trapped like butterflies,
Some are tearing off the net, though cannot fly away
I heard their wings have hurt
and needed a century of rest
Galaxies have been expanding through the Dark Energy
I know that the chance of dropping in a Black Hole
is less than becoming human for some men
We are now safe living in the Milky Way!

But I’m running out of time
I’m not good, I’m not fine


Soodabeh Saeidnia lives in NYC but originally is Persian. She got her Pharm D and Ph.D. of Pharmacognosy and has worked as a researcher, assistant and associate professor in the Kyoto University (Japan), TUMS (Iran) and University of Saskatchewan (Canada). She is interested in English literature and poetry, and has published a collection of her poems, Words for myself, in Farsi. Her poems have been published (or a head of publishing) in the American magazines and literary journals including Squawk Back, Sisyphus Quarterly, Paradox, TimBookTu, Bobbling of the Irrational, SPINE, American Writers Journal, Tuck Magazine, La Libertad, Tiny Poetry, Indiana Voice Journal, The Pen, 352 degrees and the Great Weather for Media. A number of her poems have been printed in the books Where the Mind Dwells and American Poet by Eber & Wein Publishing as well as Moonlight Dreamers of Yellow Haze by Johnson Publications and Artistic. Her newest book, Street of the Ginkgo Trees is now available online on Amazon.

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Oslo.
A Poem by Christie-Luke Jones

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A solitary orange for breakfast; she delivers it with her unmistakably virginal smile,
kneels by my bed in thanks.
My body fizzes with polarising urges strong enough to kill us both.
Her apartment is beyond all comprehension; I feel undeserving of its pine-scented
air, the only discordant note in an otherwise harmonious melody.
She dresses in furs and heavy knits.
Her glowing skin and lithe body are untouched by the sweating guilt of midnight
trysts.
A nervous laugh rocks the vast drifts as our paths tentatively entwine across the
blank expanse of canvas.
Our eyes devour in absence of trembling lips.
The inevitability is palpable.
A joyful expression of unspoken lust; her hands scream to be touched.
I debate the drop, survey the cliff edge with a melting restraint.
Hurtling forth; I find myself discussing pickled herring in her father’s slippers.
God-fearing Christians, no doubt afraid of this wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Such a charming sheep, though. I bleat and graze with impeccable timing, convince
even myself.
Neither of us find sleep that night.
Impatience drives me to my annex room, whilst her mind is a dance of plush hearts
and handwritten love letters.
Another 12 hours to keep my mask from slipping.

Christie-Luke Jones is a poet, fiction writer and actor from Oxfordshire, England. Christie-Luke’s writing is strongly influenced by the Gallic blood that courses through his veins, as well as his interest in the more macabre aspects of the human condition. To see more of his work, visit www.christielukejones.com.

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Laughing
with delight,
we thought we saw
a vision of blood
Turn to wine…

It’s a story told
in silence and pictures,
where everything we say
sounds like the spatter
of falling rain,
the sound of weariness
beating a drumbeat
on old concrete,
And its brittle beauty
makes the cracked
photographs
in our album of memories
dance
while we feel like children
at a tea party
with ghosts, pouring our hearts,
a piece at a time,
into empty porcelain cups.

Our timid smiles
are splintered
breaks
in the face
of a laughing clock.
“See how sharp,”
the timepiece said,
ticking.

A vision of light
at the tunnel’s end
fails to lead us
from the dark,
Saviors and Angel Wars,
Burning bushes
calling out numbers
at an endless game
of celestial Bingo,
And God’s reflection
looks out
from the fruit punch,
laughing from inside
the crystal serving bowl,
We can’t believe in such things,
because we feel like children
at a tea party
with ghosts, pouring our hearts,
a piece at a time,
into empty porcelain
demitasses.

“See how sharp,”
the timepiece said,
ticking.

And we darkened few
laugh with needle-sharp joy.



Joseph Armstead is a suspense-thriller and horror author living in the United States’ San Francisco Bay Area. Author of a dozen short stories and ten novels, his poetry has been published in a wide range of online journals, webzines and print magazines. A mathematician, Futurist and computer technologist, Mr. Armstead’s poetry often defies easy description, but frequently includes neo-classical imagery, surrealist viewpoints and post-modern themes.



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Twenty Four Seven.
A Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Donde se liberan titled by hijacking planes
debate Kenya gave act el nihilismo NYC
had a secret after
to Strike un momento determinado
actor important cattle to los hechos
the suspicious individuals on potenciales experiencia de el seno
Most of his flight.

Most his flight. Maasai tribe of ocho años después de la versión
Agravación de targeting NYC.
Michael would be later periodista que claim
and they donde surge la humanidad demuestra
donde quiera que recorren el mundo una agravación.

Another nearby attacks. Another nearby attacks.

Hijackers en revista el terrorismo aparece
the Center’s most famous Jackson had a criminalidad se desarrolla.
Authorities did not America as aid, did not America as aid.
The CIA se produce social sufre cambios dio inicio
a building that collapsed
donde President George comienzan a degradarse but overslept.

Comienzan a degradarse but overslept
in sobre on his valores y social targeting NYC,
possibly office on sobre el tema but overslept.

7 meeting at the another nearby attacks.
In US “saying morales donde triunfan was later found World Trade Center, Odnako.
Found World Trade Center, Odnako. Revista rusa.

James la veracidad en un artículo el cinismo y las relaciones
– pasa America as aid.
– pasa most of his flight.
14 of their 25th floor of Odnako.

Robin Ouzman Hislop, born UK, a reader in philosophy & religions, has travelled extensively throughout his lifetime but now lives in semi- retirement as a TEFL teacher and translator in Spain & the UK.

Robin was editor of the 12 year running on-line monthly poetry journal Poetry Life and Times. In 2013 he joined with Dave Jackson as co-editor at Artvilla.com, where he presently edits Poetry Life & Times, Artvilla.com, Motherbird.com.

He’s been previously published in a variety of international magazines, later publications including Voices without Borders Volume 1 (USA), Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N. Carolina), The Poetic Bond Volumes (thepoeticbond.com) and Phoenix Rising from the Ashes (a recently published international Anthology of Sonnets). His last publication is a volume of collected poems All the Babble of the Souk available at all main online tributaries

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THE FIG.
A Poem by Tony Martin-Woods

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Once upon a time
I was a fig.

(Yes, a fig)

Full of little flowers inside,
Plenty of endless dreams

I was born
In a casual tree
of those that nobody grooms,
of those that never gets rain,
of those that drain you to death.

Shrivelled,
punished by birds
who picked on my white sweaty sweetness
and left me scarred,
but made me stronger.

One day,
an arrogant orange,
of a garden nearby,
called for a meeting of peers
and suggested the idea
of forming a fruital system.

(Yes, a fruital system)

The rest of fruits agreed.

So, the orange stood in the centre,
cause she was too tangy to spin.

Everyone else
came forward
in a perfect queue
that started to curl
coiling outwards
around the self-proclaimed star.

The apple, the peach, the pear,
the lemon and even the grape
found quickly a place
in a galaxy they called
“The Juicy Way”.

They all looked so lush,
immaculate,
divine,
waitrosy,
as they floated
in their glorious ether
of mechanically smooth subjects.

I want a place in this system,
I said,
I want to be an aster too,
I deserve to be there,
rotating
in harmony
with you.

The apple and some others
started to giggle
with patronising
swivel-eye disdain.

I am sorry my love,
said the eloquent
smily
sunny leader,
but this is a fruital system
where everything works
out of our own

combined

accord.

Everyone wins,

everyone contributes.

The magnetic fields
of our respective masses
are already balanced.

that is why we levitate up here,
so graciously.

If we take you on,
we will have to open the floodgates
of the universe.

How many more fruits
could we feasibly accommodate?

So, after this rational rejection,
I had no choice,
but to become
a zero-hours planet,
also known as a comet.

(Yes, a comet)

So now,
I am a wrinkly wild comet
full of odd rugged cracks.
I am not round,
not even pear shaped,
I have no clouds,
no satellites,
no green bits,
no rings of dust,
no frozen lakes of gas…

but I don’t give a shit..

I am the cock of the universe,
planets fear my freedom,
no one knows my trajectory,
it is hard to land on my surface,
I come and go as I please.

If the calculating master of creation
messes about with my equations
I may just crash on him,
or in one of his gardenly planets.

Who knows?

If some shepherds see my tale,
flying in the night
in the skies in winter,
they may grant me godly status
an invent a religion
at my place of collision.

Who knows?

I have nothing to lose.

I am a wrinkly wild comet,
I am a pirate in an orderly show of stars
who learnt their moves
in the youtube version
of the Book of Genesis.

Unlike them,
I am my own choreographer.

Only infinite heavens will tell you
what I am made of!

Simple!

Watch me!

As I fly!

Bye!


Tony Martin-Woods started to write poetry in 2012, at the age of 43, driven by his political indignation. That same year he also set in motion Poesía Indignada (Transforming with Poetry), an online publication of political poetry that he edits. Tony is a political and artistic activist who explores the digital component of our lives as a means to support critical human empowerment. He is also known in the UK for his work as an academic and educator under his non-literary name. He writes in English and Spanish and is due to publish his first book of poems in 2016.

www.poesiaindignada.com
www.tonymartinwoods.com



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Class Struggle. A Poem by Goirick Brahmachari

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Only in Shillong
you get a hot plate of momo
served with onions and chilies.
I don’t care if they are not
hip enough to be offered
at Hauz Khas Village – where the plastic hippie movement
found a new mecca, few years ago.

Even rickshaw drivers adore that apple pie at German bakery.
For it is like dal chawal for them by now.
They eat it almost every day
here at old Manali.

Now in smoky stores of incense sticks
and herbal soaps at Mcleod
where aunties get away
stealing, shop lifting karma
only to be caught many years later
in a strange fight at a metro station
for eating three burgers inside the train

or in an Israeli joint at Kasol that sells pot
and sometimes pizzas to middle class families.

No branded food to pacify elite souls.
No class pride hurled onto us
No black cat to scan through the moral lens

All we are looking for is some good hot food
and a good night’s sleep.
 


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Natalie Crick | Eight Poems


Dear Sister

It is Winter here.
Snow has fallen.
“I am afraid”, said the moon.
She is beautiful tonight.
Now it is darker than December.
What is dead is a different colour.
My dead sister is neither a man nor a woman.
She is a ghost.
We do not speak of her
Anymore.
I turn away from mirrors
When I see her reflection.
The dead can no longer see
I no longer care.
O Lord of darkness,
I want my innocence.

Night’s End 
Snow had fallen, I remember,
At the night’s end.
Do you hear his voice?
I am never alone.
And at the end?
I do not live.
It is forbidden to die.
The winds are changing.
Our dead brother waited
Undiscovered,
But very dark, very hidden,
As the earth became black.
The field was parched and dry,
Filled with death already.
You walk through it.
You see nothing.


God, He Is In The Air

God, he is in the air,
Rushing through the wind and
Over the hills.
Coming at her in waves at the seashore.
Grey gusts
Colour her cheeks crimson
As a bandstand balloon.
She doesn’t know why.
Polka dot flags
Hang in the air
For Madeline to stuff into her pinafore
In handfuls.
Mother and Father
Stand like sheep
In a snowstorm.
Turned into each other.


Out There, On The Hill Somewhere

The grey skies are
Fathomless.
A strange chill
Rushed across the moors
Spreading panic.
It is her, she is trying to tell us.
She is out there,
On the hill somewhere
Left all alone in the cold and dark.
I imagine it and rock.
Memories
Coming in the middle of the night.
Wanting to remember
Made her try to die
All night long.
Longing to bleed it out.
Crying for yesterday
With eyes like black holes.
A mirror breaks.
Something is not right.
I swear
I saw her standing there.
Bells tinkled in the wind
And I gaze all around and up to heaven.
Drowning in emptiness
In the thick, still air.
My darling, she is voiceless now.
I dream and dream
Of asking she:
“Are you the Queen of Death?”
Each day we drift into nowhere.
Life will end at the end.


Goodbye

The snowfield
Is still and quiet
In slumber.
Frosted blue in grief.
Remembering your eyes
Is what hurts the most.
Your eyes, your lips, your hair
Falling into a black amnesia.
I breathe in your air.
One kiss to thaw your bones.
You are frozen dead beneath the ground.
Now there is no sound.
Your little voice
Whispers in the dust
With white hair
Like Granddad.
The sky rolls
In depression.
And I am screaming your name
In the dark.
No one believes
That you are there.
You are following me around
Everywhere.
To tell me I am
Not alone.
When another day
Is done.
An angel is crying in heaven.
How far away
Is that star in the sky.
Goodbye, Goodbye.


Secret Life of Life

I am a child
Thrust open and disregarded,
Trashing through corridors unchained.
The sound poured into me then,
Like birdsong,
Sweet and softly tapping
At my heels.
Short bursts
Of stigma
Are attached to this threshold.
I wandered out, caught
Between the lines of cars.
Such activity frightened me
So I died with leaves.



Journey Into Afterlife
I wanted to go
Like “this is a last chance”.
To see you at nightfall
And see my shining star.
Brown rain streaks down my face.
And we
Stir passed stooped cottages
Of witchery.
What are you doing in there?
I feel drugged.
A dull throb above
My left eye.
I wish I could hold
Your hand,
Pressing your nails
Into your palm.
I wish
I could meet you
And find out
And drown in thick filth.



No Surprise
There was no rain
Through the sky sagged and slumped,
An old coat cradling the lane,
Wearing thin with empty pockets.
You are inclined to believe the latter; luminous purple, ashen green.
And you are wrong because I remember that part
But, I forget where we were. Does it matter?
For poignancy is often personified when we are lost.
We swallowed the road with great swooping gulps,
Bounding with confidence, as very small cars often do.
The moon ran with us, I noticed,
Which was thoughtful, because we were all alone.
The forest mob loomed up on the left,
Hurling hostile tremors from her core.
We bravely edged onward
Though our faceless friends were engulfed in her silent roar.
We tore through the black
And he followed.
In a soundless haze, the hooves vaulted upward,
Clearing us with space to spare.

 

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FEATURED BOOKS

 

Barbara Crooker Selected Poems / 2015 available on amazon.com

by Barbara Crooker

https://www.amazon.com/Barbara-Crooker-Selected-Poems/dp/1938853709?ie=UTF8&tag=barbaracrooke-20

This collection brings together 102 poems from Barbara Crooker’s previous ten chapbooks of poetry, two of which won national prizes, with a handful of uncollected poems at the end. Of Crooker’s work, William Matthews has written, “Barbara Crooker’s poems have been written with a deft touch and with that affection for their textures and pacings that we’re accustomed to call, a little dryly, ‘technical skill.’ It’s a form of love, actually, and since she’s expended it on her poems, we can, too.” Janet McCann, writing in the Foreword, says, “The poems in this collection come mostly from chapbooks, collections which cluster around a theme, such as loss of a parent or friend, raising a child with autism, travel, art. Crooker’s collections are remarkable for their unity; their poems, epigraphs, even covers have a thematic thrust that collects and directs the work, making each a coherent work of art.... Reading the work from beginning to end provides an experience of Crooker’s world, that place of work and sadness balanced by art and love. It also provides vignettes of growing up in the fifties and sixties and shows what it was like to come of age as a woman in those years—the expectations, the hopes, the barriers that had to be overcome. Even in poems of loss, the energy persists, giving us the sense that Crooker is truly in the current of life, feeling its verve—what Wallace Stevens called ‘the intensity of love’ that he identified with ‘the verve of earth.’”

 
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Songs of the Interstitium.
Poetry of Ian Irvine Hobson

Posted



Ian Irvine is an Australian-based poet/lyricist, fiction writer and non-fiction writer. His work has featured in many Australian and international publications, including Fire (UK) ‘Anthology of 20th Century and Contemporary Poets, ’ (2008) which contained the work of poets from over 60 nations. His work has also appeared in a number of Australian national poetry anthologies, and he is the author of three books and co-editor of many more (including Scintillae 2012, an anthology of work by over 50 Victorian and international writers and poets). He currently teaches writing and literature at Bendigo TAFE and Victoria University (Melbourne) and lives with fellow writer Sue King-Smith and their children on a 5 acre block near Bendigo, Australia.

twf  

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All the Babble of the Souk
by Robin Ouzman Hislop


https://www.amazon.co.uk/Babble-Souk-Robin-Ouzman-Hislop/dp/1329636953/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462063942&sr=8-1&keywords=all+the+babble+of+the+souk+robin+ouzman 
Click book image to visit the Amazon page

Poet Robin Ouzman Hislop’s first full-length collection, All the Babble of the Souk, is appropriately titled. With a remarkably consistent ear for the market’s noise, for “[t]he broken lights of the bazaar/spangled] with glistening promise/in the eyes of the dusky beggar …” (Laminations in Lacquer ) Hislop’s poems, many of them cinematic-style montages of sounds and images, show us the metaphoric souk of the world, on the beach or in the street, its glitter, its sadness, its ragtag glory:

“pets, flower pots framed captive in a moment 
outside the house of the painter, a robot
in chains with an alms bowl”
(“Departures”) ...Read more of this review by poet Miriam C. Jacobs

More Reviews for this book:

 Aquillrelle. Press Release. All the Babble of the Souk

Richard Vallance Reviews All the Babble of the Souk

Reviewed by Marie Marshall All the Babble of the Souk

Richard Lloyd Cederberg Reviews All the Babble of the Souk

Adam Levon Brown Reviews All the Babble of the Souk

Further comments and reviews on Motherbird

 

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FEATURED VIDEOS




Sweet Little Sperm by Tony Martin-Woods




The Mirabeau Bridge.
Video poem set to music by Vishal Experimental Factory


 

 Janet Kuypers show "Voting for Change"
at Austin's the Baha'i Center 7/2/16 (Sony camera).



 

An Angel for New Orleans by Aberjhani





The Recovering Heart by Nordette Adams



The Obsessive by Sara L Russell / @pinkyandrexa


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