Index of poets:



Robin Ouzman Hislop



Helga Ross



Sara L. Russell





Michael R. Burch











Robin Ouzman Hislop (Editor)



"CIUDAD DE LOS GITANOS" (Gypsy City)*

1.)

i. 


It is June and summer's
musk makes my heart heavy,
my head giddy.


ii.*


Morning brings the gulls' squall,
surreal beyond the curtained windows,
starting faint dawn's debate
flighting harsh and sweet.


iii.


The trees are ivy clad
in a laurel bay,
like ship, mast & rigging
sunk to the bottom of the sea.
¡Oh ciudad de los gitanos!
¿Quién te vio y no te recuerda?
Dejadla lejos del mar
sin peines para sus crenchas. (G. Lorca.)*

iv.

Guernica. 



Branches twist into the moon
a filament, silver stabs the heart,
here, where the unnatural electric light
shatters the naked eye, partitioning
here and there, and another eye
follows me everywhere, inhuman,
death's pallor in nightmare dream.

Theseus harrows hell, having severed
the umbilical cord of the Minotaur
to be betrayed by history.

v.*

Somewhere in the secret paths
of a springland wood a plastic bag
spews forth its inners of rags
like a desecrated corpse staining
the elfin fern with a black sin.
Tronchados astros genitales
Pudriéndose
Resucitando
En tu vagina,
Madre India,
India niña
Empapada de savia, semen, jugos venenos. (O.Paz)*


~~Poems from Hinterland 2000. Read more poems by RobOuzman

 

 Lord of the Mice

 i.


At times I write in my white cell
in which the light shines through.

I scratch in black ink
& watch vertigo cracks
for spiders to appear.

Outside is pandemonium,
a one word poem.

Inside is the silent white wall
with only the turn of the page.

ii.


Georgian coquette,
ruffles & coifed
wigette wrought
in cream merengue:
Ostrich plumes
delicately silhouetted.

iii.


The clouds seem as if
They are having a baby.
Keep your back straight
Keep your shoulders back
Keep your diaphragm in
& your chin level, look straight
Ahead, keep a stone face,
Wear dark glasses, listen to
The wind & walk on, walk on
..............& you’ll never...........



~~Poems from Blue Corn. Read more poems by RobOuzman


ROBIN OUZMAN HISLOP: Born UK. Childhood in Lyme Regis & Poole Dorset. Lived Scotland & Scandinavia, The East & Spain. He now lives in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK. He appeared in the  Dawn Millenium & Crystal Dawn Anthologies published by Kedco Studios. When he first joined the world wide net he abandoned his previous poet performance career, mostly had in Spain and often as bilingual joint translation recitals. His collected works now appear in Poetry Life and Times every  month, so far Hinterland 2000 and Blue Corn 2002 have appared. Next comes  After the Cave the Comet 2004, Just Suibhne So, Least Assuages Revistited & Hunters Moon 2006. The entire collection will be available in the epic form  2 Trilogies In Memoria. He started as resident poet with Poetry Life & Times in March 2005 & took over its editorship together with Spanish poetess  Amparo Arrospide from Sara Russell in May 2007 .

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SARA RUSSELL




The Book of Dead Names
Sonnet Trilogy by Sara Russell, 29/4/07
 
Introduction
 
Burning pages
Blood-red sky
Rage of angels
Days gone by
The Chosen one, with eyes of searing flames
Is opening the book of Living Names....
 

I
 
The turning pages tell of lives gone by,
Furled by the one whose eyes are blinding flames;
Hot ashes flutter to the blood-red sky,
Like burning souls of undeserving names.
 
Where justice fails in life, death compensates:
Rare Mercy brings the angel who redeems,
While cruelty brings down avenging fates,
Even if conscience sleeps throughout our dreams.
 
The one with eyes of flame sees everything,
His Book of Living Names is always fair;
Yet every page frail as a fledgeling's wing -
Tread carefully if your name is not there.
 
There are but two volumes: one leads to light,
The other leads to Hell, without respite.
 

II
 
He sat in shadows, working through the night;
A scribe writing in words of bloody red,
While brass lanterns imparted sickly light,
As nightmare voices raged inside his head.
 
And all the names of those forever doomed,
Of future deaths and those of ancient past,
Were on the page, committed and entombed
In holy blood, scarlet and colour-fast.
 
All those whom God shall cast into the flames,
Unworthy of Heaven's forgiving grace
Are ever here, in this Book of Dead Names -
Named, numbered souls, each one bereft of face.
 
Thus, all enjoying notoriety
Shall be vanquished in anonymity.
 

III
 
Place copper coins over these weary eyes,
Gather my gold around me in the tomb,
Pray overlook transgression, all my lies,
Cradle me unto death, as from the womb.
 
Bury my silver at my lifeless feet,
Burn sandalwood, utter my name in prayer,
Drench me with nard and hyssop, bittersweet,
Remember me with lilies in my hair.
 
Pray write me in the Book of Living Names,
God turn thy face from my iniquity;
Spare me the flail, the pit of raging flames,
But let the quiet waters carry me.
 
Float me upon the Styx when I am gone;
Erase me from the Necronomicon.
 
 

SARA RUSSELL Poet, cartoonist and short story writer. Founder of Poetry Life & Times. Newsgroup signature was originally 'Pinky Andrexa, Last Of The Cyber Vixen Poets From Outer Space'. Won Internet Arts Award from Kedco Studios Artist Profile Press. Runner-up in Capricorn International Love Poetry competition 1998. Her website Poetry Life & Times recently won the Alpha Poets' Poetic Eyes web award. Won Poet of the Week in the Poetry For Thought group (The Globe groups) for the week April 28-May 4th, 2001, with the poem "If You Were Mine". Inducted into The Poets' Hall of Fame, 2001, and included in its anthology for that year.
5 illustrated e-books published by Kedco Studios Artist Profile Press (most recent first): Worlds Inside The Head, Quickies, Spiders And Gliders, A Way With Words (in collaboration with four other poets) and Pinky's Little Book of Shadows.Also published in several Kedco e-book anthologies and Forward Press bound book anthologies.

The Perils of Norris Cartoon has moved to its own gallery here... don't miss gorgeous Norris misadventures!





MICHAEL BURCH





































MICHAEL BURCH

































MICHAEL BURCH

MICHAEL BURCH

Once

 

–for Beth
 
Once when her kisses were fire incarnate
and left in their imprint lipstick, and flame,
when her breath rose and fell over smoldering dunes,
leaving me listlessly sighing her name ...
 
Once when her breasts were as pale, as beguiling,
as wan rivers of sand shedding heat like a mist,
when her words would at times softly, mildly rebuke me
all the while as her lips did more wildly insist ...
 
Once when the thought of her echoed and whispered
through vast wastelands of need like a Bedouin chant,
I ached for the touch of her lips with such longing
that I vowed all my former vows to recant ...
 
Once, only once, something bloomed, of a desiccate seed–
this impossible blossom her wild rains of kisses decreed.
 



Originally published by The Lyric
 
 
 

Desdemona

 
Though you possessed the moon and stars,
you are bound to fate and wed to chance.
Your lips deny they crave a kiss;
your feet deny they ache to dance.
Your heart imagines wild romance.
 
Though you cupped fire in your hands
and molded incandescent forms,
you are barren now, and–spent of flame–
the ashes that remain are borne
toward the sun upon a storm.
 
You, who demanded more, have less,
your heart within its cells of sighs
held fast by chains of misery,
confined till death for peddling lies–
imprisonment your sense denies.
 
You, who collected hearts like leaves
and pressed each once within your book,
forgot. None–winsome, bright or rare . . .
not one was worth a second look.
My heart, as others, you forsook.
 
But I, though I loved you from afar
through silent dawns, and gathered rue
from gardens where your footsteps left
cold paths among the asters, knew–
each moonless night the nettles grew
 
and strangled hope, where love dies too.
 


Originally published by Penny Dreadful


 

 

To the Post-Modern Muse, Floundering

 
The anachronism in your poetry
is that it lacks a future history.
The line that rings, the forward-sounding bell,
tolls death for you, for drowning victims tell
of insignificance, of eerie shoals,
of voices underwater. Lichen grows
to mute the lips of those men paid no heed,
and though you cling by fingertips, and bleed,
there is no lifeline now, and what has slipped
lies far beyond your grasp. Iron fittings, stripped,
have left the hull unsound, bright cargo lost.
The argosy of all your toil is rust.
 
The anchor that you flung did not take hold
in any harbor where repair is sold.


 
Originally published by Ironwood


c. All poems by their respective authors, 2007.

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MICHAEL R. BURCH is the editor of The HyperTexts where he has published the work of three Pulitzer Prize nominees and recent winners of the T. S. Eliot, Richard Wilbur and Howard Nemerov awards. He has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and his work has appeared over 450 times in literary journals and sundry publications in the USA, England, Scotland, Canada, Australia, South Africa and India, including The Chariton Review, Poetry Magazine, Verse, Poet Lore, Unlikely Stories, Light Quarterly, Writer’s Digest – The Year’s Best Writing 2003, The Best of the Eclectic Muse 1989-2003, The Lyric, ByLine, Icon and Nebo.




THREE POEMS


by



HELGA ROSS

HELGA ROSS


Spring, Victoria!

 
An ugly baby is a very nasty object - and the prettiest is frightful.
~Queen Victoria
 
From across the pond your colony waved:
One for the monarchy! A holiday,
with fireworks nights, Victoria Day.
Sovereignty came, the tradition was saved.
More, the birthday means first-day rules obeyed:
We fete and get the garden underway;
the greenhouse madhouse grab and getaway;
a plot, across Canada, played and played.
Add an immodesty hard to ignore,
that’s multi-cultured and pagan in part,
the flesh loved as the flora—Skin is in!
Still The Prude who’d celebrate these eyesores,
bursts of colors day and night, living art,
that springs us into summers you begin!
 

© Helga Ross 2007


So Says Sophocles?

 
Sophocles, wise one, still the truth we seek,
so we learn, we hope, from Oedipus Rex,
a masterpiece that's a complex critique,
among themes: hybris*, hamartia*, and hex;
that weighs the belief Free Will bows to Fate,
and trying to dodge attracts tragedy;
"What's the point?" means we license what we hate,
and leave loved ones at risk, as remedy.
Oh! And who would not? The sane? He's to blame?
If so, then blame a fish it's not a bird.
Or—pride, premeditation's not his shame—
Unjust designs of careless gods occurred.
 
But, even so, to try—to know—to not—
Destiny would be met, unseen, begot!

 

© Helga Ross 2004, 2007

 

Hybris* - "hubris" Greek variant
Hamartia*- "tragic flaw" Greek variant



Such is Peace



What is Peace? Is it a pause between wars?
An abnormal existential state?
A distant goal we seek, once we’ve settled scores?
Grace periods the powerful negate?

Peace is a state of mind—and a virtue,
and soaks in nature's calm like the sunshine’s;
and knows a bad peace, a good war’s never true;
and accepts the suffering fate assigns.

Peace dwells in the soul, not in outward things;
isn't found; looks for you ready, instead;
and is the only battle worth waging;
one that begins when the hungry are fed.

Peace demands the most heroic labour:
Living God’s command to love thy neighbour.


© Helga Ross 2003, 2007


Acknowledgments:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza
Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe
John Muir
Benjamin Franklin
Albert Camus
Anonymous
Thomas Merton


Canadian poet, HELGA ROSS loves the well-written word and loves to write her own; derives great pleasure from great literature, art and life, and the great outdoors. Everything old is new again in 2007 – She’s moved back to her old home town, Burlington, Ontario, after half a lifetime--for a new start. "You can't go home again" so they say -- She shall see. Helga expresses herself through an eclectic writing repertoire of material, style and form. 2004, however, was her literary turning point: She 'discovered' poetry in a big way. Now, poetry is her passion and focus, particularly Sonnet forms, though not exclusively. For Helga, the theme is 'Passion' in the broadest sense. She believes and illustrates in her writing: "The creative mind plays with the objects it loves". - Carl Jung
Her poetic voice is playful, provocative, uplifting. Her serious pieces conclude on a positive note; reflect her approach to life: "Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for." — Ray Bradbury On the key to success
Recent Accomplishments: Prix Poesie's laissez-faire Faire Award, April 2004. Poetry selections published in Sonnetto Poesia Vol.3 no.2 Spring 2004; Vol.4 no.4 Autumn 2005; Vol. 5 no.2 Spring 2006.

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