Featured poets this month include Richard James van der Draaij, David M. Jackson, Charlotte Mair, Rick Fry and Jan Sand.

Many thanks to all contributors.

RICHARD JAMES VAN DER DRAAIJ has been writing poetry for a number of years and since Spring '97 has started to be published, first in print magazines such as 'Still magazine' of the U.K., and 'Famous Reporter' in Australia, among others. More recently has seen poems appear on the internet in various poetry zines and poetry- related sites. Motto: "Poetry is Passion!" Two sites for some of his poetry: http://personal.nbnet.nb.ca and http://www.dreamagic.com/poetry/draaij.htm

Covent Garden © Richard James van de Draaij She played the harp in Covent Garden, A kind-looking girl with long blond hair, Her touch of the strings was masterly, But she appeared to be slightly nervous, Performing in front of the Christmas crowds, Hurrying past in search of even more shopping, And I stood watching; a foreigner, Watching and listening, And for a moment even, Somewhat at home. Farewell © Richard James van de Draaij A farewell at the station, Your train about to leave, I can hardly make out your face, Among all the travellers gathered in there, There were some harsh words before, And we spoke too soon, Thinking of better days, Spent in splendid isolation, On a beach somewhere South, With the sun overhead, And the cheap wine flowing, Now as your train picks up speed, I think of what you once said: 'Merry meet, merry part, And merry meet again.' Wordsparks © Richard James van de Draaij Words, in a frenzy flying, Words and whispers in a rage of dying- -Alone. Simple or crazy and complex, Conveying all to one with ears, Nothing to those with none, Stones of verbal structures remain, Amid the rivers in my mind, All the world's asleep right now, And dreams of heroic verse, Myths of monsters, praise of psalms, Intermingle, intertwine, Thoughts and mystic powersparks, All from one sacred fire, Locked away inside, Glowing, burning, glowing, fading, Rest a while with me, We sit and hardly speak, Conversing none the less, And heartfelt wishes, aspirations, Keep on pouring into you, Into me, Give me one good reason, Not to simply love you, Stars and age-old moon above, Witness to this thing, To say it is to do, And act upon the stage. Galaxy Inferno © Richard James van de Draaij Smashing crystal vessels, Firestorm of sparks, The planets fiery angels, A demonhost of stars, All is lost, forsaken, Or will a phoenix reappear? A lonely world of feelings, And hurt and heartache, Wants desperately to remain, Cold habitats in outer space, Robots socializing in sparse spare time, Can no one interfere? The sounds are soft or deafening, All depending on taste, And sensibility, Solving riddles as we go, Pray for chances left and hope, Escape from all our fears, At once the sun explodes, A glittering final prize, Dissolving all around he screams, And fiery tears rain down. Dutch Haiku © Richard James van de Draaij Bloemen van de lente Flowers of Spring De verassing werd verwacht, Expected surprise Leven komt weerom Life comes around Blaffende honden Barking dogs Geluiden van de zomer Sounds of Summer Kinderstemmetjes Children's voices r.j.vd.[email protected]

Charlotte & granddaughter Grace CHARLOTTE GAI MAIR is one of David Jackson's editors at Artvilla, and has designed and maintained Web pages for Elisha Porat, Charlotte's Web, Shoptillyadrop Virtual Mall, BarNone Coffeehouse. She is a former singer-musician ; born of Irish decent family named Coughlan , February 14/49, presently residing on the lower mainland of British Columbia, Canada. Always a fighter and very passionate by nature, she has never allowed her lifes circumstances to pull her down. It is in fact lifes journeys and episodes that have inspired this writer not to give up and to make known her love of life through her writing and poetic endeavors. In a period of two years almost 100 poems have been in various hard copy Antholigies, Newsletters, Newpapers and many websites in United Kingdom, Ireland and across the United States. ANTHOLOGIES: Poetic Voices of America - Sparrowgrass Poetry Forum W. Virginia, USA - 1999 *ISBN 0-923242-64-3 Crossroads - Iliad Press Sterling Heights - MI, USA - 1999 Feelings - Cader Publishing Sterling Heights - MI, USA - 1999 *ISBN 1-885206-69-0 President's Recognition for Literary Excellence, MI, USA - 2000 No Love Lost - Hidden Brook Press Toronto, Ontario, CD - 1999 No Love Lost II - Hidden Brook Press Toronto, Ontario CD - 2000 The Open Window - Hidden Brook Press Toronto, Ontario, CD - 1999 *ISBN 0-9699598-4-2 The Open Window II - Hidden Brook Press Toronto, Ontario, CD - 2000 Illuminations lll - Hidden Brook Press Toronto, Ontario, CD - 1999 Cherished Poems of the Western World - Famous Poets Hollywood, Ca, USA - /99 * ISBN 0-96414989 NEWSLETTERS: Wildlife Rescue Association of British Columbia Burnaby, BC, CD - 1999 * ISSN 1188-5106 Poemata - The Canadian Poetry Association Toronto, Ontario - 1999 * ISSN 1203-6595 NEWSPAPER: Choices Toronto, Ontario - 1999 * 107-3295-11 WEBSITES - Published on multilpe Websites including Canada & United States, Britain & Ireland - 1999 & 2000: Dublin Writer's Workshop, - Ireland Deep Underground - Alternative Poetry Site, U.K Poetry Repair - United States Lady In The Lake - Los Angelos, U.S.A. Above Ground Testing - Trenton, Ontario, Canada Survivor's Poetry Site SELF-PUBLISHED CHAPBOOK: The First Fifty Years. Authored and illustrated by Charlotte Gai Mair, Published by Charlotte Mair @ Hidden Brook Press, 412 - 701 King Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada - 1999 HONORABLE MENTIONS: The Reflection - The Spring 1998 Iliad Literary Awards Program Peace - The 1998 Nature Awards Program Message in the Sand - The 1998 Browning Awards Program Forget Me Not - The 1998 Longfellow Awards Program The First Fifty Years - Chapbook Competition 1998 BOOK REVIEWS: David Ingram - Channel 4 Talk Show Host, Book Reviewer *1999 Ward Kelley - Writer - Indianapolis , USA *2000 People's Poetry Newsletter - Toronto, Canada *2000 Recently-written Book review for Elisha Porat: http://www.artvilla.com/mair/poratrvw.htm TELEVISION INTERVIEW: Mike McCardell - Newsreporter, BCTV News, Channel 8, Burnaby, BC *1999

Talisman © Charlotte Gai Mair When warmth left you sent beams of hope and so lost hearts gave lead to mend in warm believers glow talisman is what you are rare scepter amulet golden fleece faith...hope oh grey may hover and life will inevitably cease one day but still upon my brow in the glow of life's last breath I'll taste the memory of your kindness on my lips as I exhale Court Jest © Charlotte Gai Mair Warm spotlights, shaded glows of read and blue Misty, smoke-filled halls Hands speak in rhythms In flickering blackness keynote sounds its call Summons me Centre stageshine on act proud Breathe and feel the magnet pull Becoming one with crowd Seek the mythical sounds of fame While ladies of the night like vultures, plucking meat Act scenes of Moulin Rouge again The cracking in the distance of an angry game of pool The stench of booze and cigarettes As I swoon blues of jewels Glasses clink, laughter roars, to me silencing the room As I retreat off centre stage applaud the clown the fool Levi Strauss Shuffle © Charlotte Gai Mair After bangin' a button box for the day it came time to check out some new threads levi strauss it's time to hit the local brasserie grab a pint or two sing mean woman blues dont let me spoil the jute joint foil atmosphere of your scene folks tonight's my free ticket my freedom pass to slip through bar style doors enter act one tall cool man khakis to match my camouflaged heart of stone a panther on the prowl slinkin round my optimistic view how goes it says he not in question of me pausing eyes to interrogate my female disposition I passed a terminal look his way na, na but that didn't sway this suave predator with the Jack Daniel belt buckle catchin my eye what say we split this scene to greener pastures? mister Jack lay heavy on his breath but not one sway of imbalance did I detect and felt as if this meeting was not by chance somehow now as if I knew him from a past life if ya catch my drift? I Speak © Charlotte Gai Mair Free all flood gates Flowered words pour from these thoughts full bloom luscious, soft scented roses to speak Roots remain firmly in terra nova Yet the bounty of change can be seen as the bee lands upon its budding promise I have awakened the sleeping poet And now he stretches his arms wide to gather me, so speak to me to take me to my waters edge He is awakened refreshed Born as the softness of a baby on a breezy April morn He writes as one with me and so, I promenade by side and I speak, at last I speak [email protected]

David Michael Jackson DAVID MICHAEL JACKSON David Michael Jackson is a publisher and poet, an Outsider Artist. musician and a songwriter. He's Jake and half of Eclectic. Maybe he just doesn’t know who he is. Paints pictures, writes songs, publishes an ezine, but he is always first an artist and poet. Born in 1948 to small acreage tobacco farmers in Tennessee. His mother is Brazilian, his father Scottish/Irish. Educated and supported as a mechanical engineer who designs products for a major appliance maker. He wrote nothing, painted nothing until age 39. His first painting is dated 1987. Wayne Jackson was the first to hang David's painting in his house. He even put a light under it. David has a briefcase full of words by Wayne which he is slowly presenting. Sometime after Wayne’s death in 1989 he started writing poetry again and still does. He is also into family, music, songwriting, recording, web publishing, cats, and Schmutt, his dog. "People are starting to notice the poetry more lately." David tells me. "I’m becoming known a little as an editor for sure. ArtPage Images is between Atlantic Monthly and the Atlanta Review at Yahoo. The little guy can compete on the web. So I’m reaching people but I’m still outsider Dave and I constantly remind myself that these 1800 pages I have published on the web depend on $23.50 a month to the hosting guys. It’s all a mirage, but so is life. It’s all done with mirrors. I know. I’m an engineer."

Author's Intro: I hesitate to dedicate a poem to Wayne Jackson because it seems to have a finality about it, but sometimes I cannot help myself to say that any poem I may ever write is dedicated to Wayne Jackson and it leaves me in his debt. Durn his hide! Sugar Camp Hollow © David Michael Jackson We were raised in Sugar Camp Hollow on Passenger Creek where them reb soldiers camped it is said and the confederate gold is buried there or so the story goes and I knew you there and you and I both knew to leave those grounds where the small creek meets Passenger. We both knew to leave those grounds before dark. You and I shared the secrets of Sugar Camp Hollow, them rebs, that gold. The neighbor Simpson told the tale, his skinny fingers waving, pointing to that spot where the springs flow to create that small creek, that place where dreams are formed. a poem for you tonight Sugar Camp Hollow, Passenger Creek, them rebs, that gold, and I pause beside this spring of remembrance this moment is a thin stream of water flowing from a tiny spring somewhere Carry Me Home © David Michael Jackson 1998 Carry me home home to the creek and the water and the leaves on the trees. Carry me home past the worry and the frantic pace to the water and the dew on the grass and the summer days when grasshoppers are plentiful bait for the fishes. Carry me home to the field and the newly plowed earth and that smell of the soil recently turned so that I may replant myself with hope for a new harvest, so that I may kill the weeds which have grown over me until I cannot see the light. Carry me home past the roads, past the buildings, past the red lights. Carry me home through the darkness of a thousand nights spent grasping for something which is not there, something which could never be there or anywhere The Cat © David Michael Jackson 1998 I was created to notice the cat, catching butterflies. If I were God I would be lonely and I would need someone to notice how the cat catches butterflies and brings them into the house and how they are to her as big a prize as any mole or mouse. The Crows © David Michael Jackson 1998 The criticism struck into him like a butter knive slides through butter he was butter itself in the other man’s hands so he looked out the window and watched the blackbirds weaving a tapestry in the sky They chased a hawk on the winds swooping to bite at his body as he tried to elude them Caw Caw Caw they cried. Caw Caw Caw His eyes returned to find more criticism in the look on the man’s face The hawk flew steadfastly and tried no more to evade The crows picked and picked until finally the hawk slowly faded into the sky and the crows returned to wait More critisism struck home this time “Do you understand me, Mister?” “Yes I believe I do” [email protected]

Rick Fry with his adopted children, Suthida and Siwarack RICK FRY Richard Fry was born February 24, 1968, in Toronto, Canada, where he continues to reside. He was abandoned by his parents at an early age, and raised by a wild pack of American television broadcasters. He posts regularly on the newsgroup alt.arts.poetry.comments, and his piece "Rise Again" has been accepted for inclusion in the May 2000 issue of Melange.

If he hollers, let him go © Rick Fry I kicked the mystery all the way home, I hadn't done that since I was a kid. The estrangement of siblings has its own rules; it's always the youngest who feels dead somehow. Growing in the projects, there was always a pop can to send skittering along the pavement; flat ones to sail along the wind. We huddled in a circle counting each other in, and The Others out. I remember the day Geoffrey played. "eeny meany" began the litany, counting each in turn there was a pause at "catch a.. (I saw the feline pounce in geoffrey's sharp, brown eyes. I saw the hurt in the black pupils) ..tigger by the toe, eeny meany miny moe". Untitled © Rick Fry I met with Albert beneath a Mandara moon, and asked him "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" "Do you see that star?" "Yes." "How old is the light from that star?" "A thousand years?" "Probably. What happens to time at the speed of light?" "It stands still" "Yes. If you were the light from a star, how much time would elapse during the journey from the star to the watcher's eye?" "None." "Yes, so as the light, you would have left the star at the same instant you entered the watcher's eye" "Yes." "So the star has touched you, although you experienced this touch a million years later than the star." "Yes" "Then you know the sound of one hand clapping, and you have seen its echo" A lifetime of forward eyes and motion vanishes like sweat at ground zero, my hands coming clean as desert bone. I see that the earth is just a child flying her stone kite through the void, her wild white hair roiling against the blue. I no longer feel the flagellation of desire driving it's blunt head into the first egg. - I have counted its divisions to a final tally, and bond myself to the prescience of silicate: I pass the days winking at people from beach pebbles; they stoop, hold me up to the light, and share with me their subtleties. Matriarch © Rick Fry I fanned a flame from robin's breast, a stolen nest for tinder, The stars lay drunk and boneless, weeping their marrow liquor. I groped the cedar beneath a crackling moon, a spoon in each bleary eyed feast, And fed the fire that singed the feathers of the rain, the rain, the cupless years. The tusk ends danced from my coal rubbed lobes, to the mastodon's ghostly trumpet boast; "Footprints in tundra", spoke the massive trundle, "my words, this page" In a godless, solvent dripping wind, that slaked her homeless tears. Umarked Grave © Rick Fry Silenced, brutal to the root's embrace by twice dammed hasty shovel hands, as vultures stretched vile necks to sing the rain's ephermal strangled song; grimly echoing the deeds of the day. Pining years have stripped all flesh from fact, as in spirit, she rides to the maple's crown and there to bloom, come cold october nights, in all the colors of betrayals child; succumbed to winter's white numb shroud. I lay my breath upon the jaded snow, and listen as the creak of cradled grief becomes a swaying forest lullaby; my arms, this child, and the moon's gentle glow; I kiss her peaceful, on the wind rocked bough. [email protected]

Self-portrait by Jan Sand JAN SAND, poet and illustrator from New York, is a regular contributor to Poetry Life & Times. and the newsgroup alt.arts.poetry.comments. A great deal of his work is about animals, or science fiction. Recently Jan was published by Kedco Studios Artist Profile Press, on their latest CD ROM e-book, "A Way With Words (Poetry Real and Surreal), which also includes complete books by Dale Houstman, Sara L. Russell and Keith Gabriel Hendricks. Jan's illustrated book on the CD is called "Wild Figments And Odd Conjectures", which is also sold separately, in a limited-edition "single" CD. To see an illustrated article about Jan's poems, visit the November '98 issue of Poetry Life & Times, and scroll down past the Editor's Letter.

CROCKERY © Jan Sand I set my words upon the windowsill, Open cups to catch the sun and rain, To catch the sounds of birds, to fill Up with the buzz of life, marked with the stain Of sun and moon and flecked with pointed stars. My words now stand upon my cupboard shelf And when I tap them with my thought their bars Of earthly melodies resound within myself. EARTH AND SKY © Jan Sand Each day the belly of the sky Displays itself, rotund with possibility. Although it has the quality of transparency, It conceals the myth and mystery Of tomorrow. Out there, waiting single file, Are all the mornings and the evenings In discrete gift packages of days To be opened, one at a time So multitudes of minutes, hordes of seconds May tumble out like loose jewel stones Full of sun and stars. Behind the clouds fly dragons, gods and angels, Crafts from other galaxies stuffed with treasures And, perhaps, our own far voyagers Returning through a twist of time and space To bring news of things unthought and unthinkable. A finger pushed down into soil invades The dark domains of forgetfulness. Shaped calcium sketches out what has been. Thoughts of our mothers and our fathers And theirs and theirs and theirs Back to where parentage dissolves Into strange monsters long gone, Devolving down to fundamental molecules That joined to explore life's possibilities. Far below the fulminating syrup out of stone Writhes in heat and squeeze to break the shell Which caps the planet. Crack and chasm Give access and the angry genie escapes To see the sky once more to exult In fire and molten stone Until the wounded Earth reheals To blind the prisoner and send him back To his congenial hell. In between, in Subterranea above magmatic heat, Faint wraiths flow back and forth Among the dark dreams of acid hates, Loves forlorn, and the abandoned aspirations. These are the nightmares full of fury Awaiting the call of a sorcerer To loose their capabilities of pain and anguish. THE POINTED DIRK © Jan Sand To walk across the columned sky, To watch green frogs turn brown and die, To sing the thing that all men dread, To mourn each wing above my bed, Will never find the flat blue mind Nor satisfy standards that bind, For each and every molecule Which builds contempt in every fool Will fumble for its hooks and lines To understand that humble signs Are useless in a curl of space. Reality is hard to face. IN DEFENSE OF RATS © Jan Sand Where is the curse In leaving sinking ships? I never met a rat That I could criticize. These guys, whom heritage equips With good instincts to combat An inexorable demise Should not be ashamed, Should not be blamed For avoiding all the worse The world might tender. The world endlessly does submerge All hopes and pleasures. So does it convert Daily events to black surprise To make us each, an offender In which we, ratwise, at end, desert. [email protected]