Osumune John Chinedu

Living Hope

When I heard the spurring whisper
Like a numinous euphonic jangle
My spirit harkened in blithesome tremble
The line of nexus
Though in swooning spangle
Like starry speckle
I deciphered, but in eerie medley
My heart a glowed
But in triumphant bundle!

Sachchidananda S. Kore

Love Loves The Spring

Everything in the physical world
Has its own congenial and genial
Season and love has its own season
And truly is it the sprightly season
Of spring that causes and controls
The mighty mainspring of love in
The honey-comb of the haunted hearts
Of passionate lovers and lovely beloveds.
Lush and luxuriant vegetation puts
On a green garb of fresh foliage and
The wise wind willingly wafts away
The pleasant perfume of fresh flowers that
Sweetens the hearts and noses of young
Lads and lasses who fall in love
With each other ardently and avidly
And who are in the good graces of
Cupid-the lusty and mighty God of
Love who adds love's loveliness to
The vernal beauty of external nature.

Ibukun Abraham Lawore

Masterpiece

You are priceless and
one of your kind,
i have a mixed version
of your eulogy on my mind.
I have your fine name
written in my diary,
i have your beautiful picture
painted in my gallery,
i have i thought of you
beaming in my memory.
You are a great thing
the lily of the valley,
the most beautiful thing
i have ever seen,
the natural source of being happy.
Your graceful smile left me convinced
perfectly created and a must to have,
you are-all just
because you are a masterpiece!

Amitava Chakrabarty

Insane

Small bits of myself was shattered on the floor
And scattered it lay smeared with blood of pain
I gave the healer time to nurse the sore
To pick my pieces and recreate myself again;
Thus up I stood with fractured inner core
Where wound did heal but gaping scars remain,
Inflicted soul sought to escape the gloom
And cool the careworn veins where nature bloom.

Oh! Words Oh! Words had tormented my nerves
And made a perfect orifice through my ribs,
What love did breed such vengeful venomous barbs?
And ripped the strands of closest relationships;
What divine purpose the lashing tongue did serve?
Those scurrilous, vicious, cruel adjectives,
Today in tranquil lap of mountain vale
The curses impinge me in gusty spell.

Teresinka Pereira

Poem For Someone
Who Is Sorry For Me

Just a moment, please!
The night sleeps calmly.
Why do you want to annihilate
the silence of the infinite?
Leave my anguish alone,
let me protect myself
from your perfidious hopes!

Margaret Brown-Bailey

What's The Matter With Her?

What's the matter with her?
Why doesn't she comprehend?
A simple task shouldn't take till the day's end,
How could they say she's brilliant,
It's more like she's starting a dumb trend,
What's the matter with her?
Does she take dope?
Is her mind fogged with bubbles of soap?
Doesn't she process information like everyone else?
I swear it's like talking to stuffed animals sitting on a shelf.

*A little patience goes a long way with an autistic child.

Michael A. Wells

Vertigo

There is no east or west sun.
Indifference blankets the sky
In smoky haze, leaving me

To feel my way homeward.
A thousand protrusions
Slapping my outstretched tentacles

Silly, twisting me one way,
Rotating another.
This way- that.

A blind needle
Of a compass
Bobsledding a labyrinth.

Brandon Magorka

The Beautiful Garden

You can come into my garden, full of secrets and insecurities,
Buried deep down, where you will never see them,
All you will ever see is the surface,
Brimming with its beauty and confidence,
When one man died, another rose,
Where one man is buried, the other visits,
While one man smiles for his fate, the other cries,
I have killed myself trying to change,
That I no longer know who I am,
As I stand in my garden, I ask,
Can that one man be the other as well?
Past and future live,
While the lonely present is never,
If I let you into my garden,
Are you going to dig?
Ruin the beauty of the surface,
Just to find out things, that you do not want to know,
Or will you be content to lay in the flowers and clover,
In the middle of a rain storm.

J. Scott Malby

Point Conception

Something in this landscape of birthing
before it collides that swells in us waves
sweating their chaotic cadences consuming
accumulated testimonies; the secret tensions
transformed from confrontations into love
for this headland of discarded inhibitions
and primal screams.

Here, the world confesses itself. We are
its echo, chorus, its refrain, borne by private
confessions of unrest to seethe with the sea
between our thighs with hope like steel
piercing our hearts.

Nina Gabriel

Only In My Dreams

It used to be only in my dreams,
That I would become a butterfly,
And fly to the places that,
I could not visit walking on this Earth,
But, now it all became a reality,
Since I truly transformed myself into a Butterfly,
Because the time was and is too short,
To live only in my dreams,
And now I am free and I fly,
Wherever and whenever I want to,
But there is this place and the one,
That I still cannot visit as yet,
And it is you, and those magic moments,
That I will live only in my dreams for now.

Maurus Young

Sunset And Grief

The setting Sun
Has been holding by the ocean
Casting golden light at sea and rosy clouds in the sky

Spring thunders in rain
Has been blockaded by the mountain when traveling in valley
Made the world shaking and frightening

Your sorrow
Being caught by me
Left bloody marks in my heart

My grief
Being taken away by wind
Drifting away as cloud

Silent Lotus

Here Lies The In Between

Yesterday
Was never
My view of the future
And i never had a collection of broken dreams
So when i walk through fields of head markers
My soul knows here lies only the in between
And if you ever come looking for me
Let the silence awaken you
To eternity

Jan Oskar Hansen

Haiku

A dazzling woman
Kills my beautiful poems
Every morning.

Shards of green glass
On top of forbidden walls
Sparkle in moonlight.

Rapacity
To plunder a soul’s gold
To buy glass beads.

Joan Taylor (Bramble Web)

Dark Night Of The Soul

I wish I could forget you, but every time I tried
A sadness stirs inside of me, and tears I cannot hide.
My thoughts are always with you, and every time I see,
A standing stone, a crystal, You seem so close to me.
The candles on my alter, I burn them in your name,
For now I know my future will never be the same.
My mind just reaches for you, I just cant fathom why,
You seem to have forgotten me, not even a goodbye.
I wish I knew the reason, for surely there is one.
Perhaps because of who I am, I flew close to the sun.
You say! I feel, I say, I do, but that is just my way.
I could not hide the way I felt, that bright September day.
The memory of your poems all lyrical and deep,
I hear the words within the night, when I am close to sleep.
I see so many visions, I know that you do too.
If I could only once again, share them all with you.

Joseph Josephides

Nature Advice

On a pole across your neck
Carrying two chinese water-pots
Praising the perfect one on the right
For its accomplishment, as you believe,
Why you blame the cracked one on the left?

Give the weak a chance, Nature advises!
It cannot contain the whole water, but
Garden expands everywhere: just plant seeds
On the left side of the path you walk.
See backwards: the cracked pot waters
A long line of flowers, drop after drop.
The poor pot offers you a rewarding grace.
So, pick up those flowers for decorations
Enjoy their fragrance; accept inequality
Since the weak ones are blessed by Nature.

As for my weakness: Take me for what I am
And better look for what is good in me.

Sue-Ellen Newman

The Shipwrecks Of My Mind

I travel through the Shipwrecks of my mind.
Turmoil of the past, stead with time.
Into the depths, darkness and despair abounds,
Hurt with sorrow, shame with regrets surrounds.
These Shipwrecks, What a mess,
Strewn beneath the depths.
From the depths I see The LIGHT, His hand
Reaching out,
No more running from Fear and doubts,
Battle is not of the swift but of the strong.
He calls me to journey along.
Placing His hand in mine, with HIM in all HIS
Mercy, deeper and deeper we go,
Into the Shipwrecks of my mind.
Standing and looking out over my wrecks,
A healing hand upon my crown rests.
Three Seas I see, one of Forgetfulness,
Forgiveness and one of No Regrets, swell.
Time to release my Shipwrecks, no longer to dwell.
Faithful and Powerful is your Love,
When my light meets, THE LIGHT,
I turn and bid farewell,
The Shipwrecks of my mind.

Lisa Haviland

Now Normal

It is

now normal, the way that sea level
has been shaken upside down,
a perfect way for have-nots
to drown.

now normal, the way the deranged order you
to pull yourself up
while they whip you
with those proverbial bootstraps.

now normal, to out an operative,
and, two tired years later, when you are finally
indicted, to be referred to as noble
by the news.

now normal,
to prosecute blow jobs,
but not treason, this
age of absent reason.

now normal,
to look back on Nixon
with something bordering on nostalgia –
but not quite.

now normal, to pretend poor people
are better off in a dome
than a home, though it is
sort of scary – for you, not them.

now normal, to rebuild a Catholic church
by adding a fountain and some
marble flooring, forgetting
the pedophiles you’re supposedly abhorring.

It is now normal.
They don’t even need
to make this stuff up any more –
unless they want to wage official war.

Charles Frederickson

Unknowns

Drawing curtains back on ageless
Life and lives I never
Bothered caring enough about to
Touch or be touched by

Far removed world less distant
After having moved there been
Moved by still moving while
Standing still getting caught up

Clearing out collected relics of
Eons ago ruins revealing mostly
Fake antique forgeries spread out
Filling time and space dispossessed

More remains concealed than confided
Long guarded secrets spill out
Reserved for private ears to
Hear nobody ever listened keepsakes

Unaware I was ever lost
Though admittedly never saying so
Reliving history not yet recorded
Searching for buried treasure chest

Digging up bygone fragments of
Eugenic past reduced to rubble
What never really was might
Have been exiled to oblivion

People attitudes places emotions things
Changed my life starring roles
Cast of characters keeps changing
As do endings curtains drawn

Kumuda Ranjan Panda

Unemployment

Unemployment
is the sea of desert
sea of tranquility
sea of scorpion
crumbling and slipping
having no direction
but it is a sea in mind

Unemployed
is a treee of wooden structure
tree of black burnt wood
no green bird , except
vulture, eagle preys
starving for flesh
under the tree
foxes wolves hunter dogs
liquid of mouh of greediness
an unemployed
is a deaf having hearing power
a dumb being a good speaker
of the teen
blind even being selected in
air force earlier
a handicappied
being skilled physically

Unemployed is sufferer
from society, family
mentally, individually
spiritually as well materially
hence a diseased like
epilepsy abnormality and parlysis

Unemployed
is a illiterate with a degree
a lonely man with
thousand friends and relatives
a frustrated man seening the youth
moving luxuriously
a jelous of
wealthy playing and dancing youth
a blamer of fate

Milner Place

Favela

The sun hammers the corrugated iron,
cracks the thin boards; but over the sea
the clouds push their black hearts closer

and it is discussed that the evening
will be a washing-out of the runnels of shit;
plastic buckets and old tins will find

their appropriate pitches, and the children
who go down to the city with boxes of brushes,
rags and polish, are near to becoming apathetic.

This afternoon the music is only anticipating
the drumbeat; aguardiente is opening the eyes
of old men and bright dresses are all the colours

of the desperation of hope. And this is a brief
time of the sleeping of spiders and a shining
of moonstones on the buckles of sad shoes.

Albert Russo

Atavism

the sight of a burnt-down car
wrenches a howl out of his clutched jaws
a raucous primeval howl
which is the genesis of fear
ashen as our planet
atter the big bang

and the stench of molten rubber
grips him by the lungs
the unrelenting howl
reverberates in his bones
as it suddenly hollowed out ...
hollowed out ... hollowed out

a myriad sparkles illuminate his mind
then at once the history of mankind unfurls,
thrust upon him,
deaf to the miseries of the heart
oblivious to the lament of the flesh

it is written there, as a testament
to our collective memory
that no one shall escape IT
no matter how it is disguised
whether through the mask of hypocrisy
or the smirk at our great cynics

and there will always be
a burnt-down car
to remind us of our collision course
with the ultimate unifier
yet, we still need
the judeo-christian-islamic bogeyman
to brandish IT betore our eyes lest we forget

and whoever claimed
that faith was an exercise in futility
equating the love at God
with the sentiment ot guilt?

Dimitris P. Kraniotis

Fictitious Line

Smokes
of cigarettes
and mugs
full of coffee,
next
to the fictitious line
where the eddy
of words
leans against
and nods,
wounded,
to my silence.

Rosemary C. Wilkinson

This Is The Moment

This is the moment
when I see the dull sky
sprinkle pure white flakes
bending ponderosa pines fifty feet tall
creating a dripping "in tune"
as the sun shines through.
I smell the clean air, inhaling deep
within me, as I touch covered leaves
of flowers frozen, no longer to breathe
fragrance stifled by cleansing thereof,
imbuing soft stillness, I feel,
bringing peace within.

Giovanna Mulas

Heathen Chant

Of nectar (the moss)
that bacchanal perfume's
lips are made, beauty
and the raised choruses of mine,
lewd,
sensual, blithe.
Like algae, odorous,
glaucous you emerge, dive again
(labyrinths are those brave ones)
and now—aye—you part the hair
the skin demands.
Now—aye—now
mine you respond,
now—aye—now
docile you are.

Adam Donaldson Powell

After The Rapture

Spent, sweaty and out-of-breath
We lay back and
Light a single cigarette
To be shared in symbolic
Celebration after an intergalactic
Battle between brazen faith and
Foolish adventure.
My tattered wings clumsily
Tucked in between my back
And the thin Styrofoam mattress;
Your head buried in my chest
And your matted hair still wet from
Our midnight dip in the Styx.
Who would have guessed that
The heaven of our making
Would be like this? .. so
Characterized by the mundane,
With intermittent interruptions
Of surrealistic struggles for
Survival: win or lose .. all
Or nothing .. one day at a time.
As the moon eclipses the last
Sight I see before I drift off
Is the withered bonsai in the
Opening of our pre-war dwelling.
A reminder of a time when
We still dared to sleep soundly;
Carefully wrapped in unencumbered
Dreams in the style of our ancestors.

Uzeyir Lokman Cayci

I Was In These Pages

Without making you feel at all
In lands very distant from you
I raised flowers which you like
I know
I left you by yourself
With unforgettable memories...

Every so often
You felt uneasy
Because of my badly digested words
You stayed sleepless...
During successive days
I dragged you towards mornings without a sun
I was in these pages.

I hurt you with touching songs which I liked
I touched you with my poems
Again and again, I drenched you
With my feelings...
I was in these pages.

I often took you for walks
On the most populated streets
Of Istanbul
With your heart beating
Your beliefs and acknowledgments moulded time
Behind blurred window panes...
I was in these pages.

The sky was different
Light was acid
Avenues were without people
Streets were without soul
When I lost you
In the stopping of a bus...
I was in these pages.

I made you wait until mornings
On the streets of Istanbul
I made you tremble in full jolts while you dreamed
During your sighs I threw your shades
Into seas
On blank pages I wrote that I love you...
I made your drawings
On all the walls of the city...
I was in these pages.

Konstantin Kedrov

Computer Of Love

Heaven is the width of a look
A look is the depth of heaven
Pain is the touch of God
God is the touch of pain
Dream is the width of a soul
Soul is the depth of a dream
Light is the voice of silence
Silence is the voice of light
Darkness is the cry of shining
Shining is the silence of darkness
Rainbow is the gladness of light
An idea is the dumbness of the soul
Soul is an idea undraped
Light is the depth of knowledge
Knowledge is the height of light
A steed is an animal of space
A cat is an animal of time
Time is space curled into a ball
Space is jump of a steed
Sun is the body of moon
A body is the moon of love
A ship is wave of metal
Water is the ship of wave
Sorrow is the emptiness of space
Gladness is the completeness of time
Time is the sorrow of space
Space is the completeness of time
A man is the heaven turned inside out
A woman is the man turned inside out
A man is the woman turned inside out
A heaven is the man turned inside out
A touch is the space of a man
Love is the touch of infinity
The eternal life is the moment of love
A sail-ship is the computer of memory
Memory is the sail-ship of computer
Poetry is the time of a thief
A poet is the thief of time
Sea is the space of moon
Moon is the time of sun
Time is the moon of space
Stars are the voices of a night
Voices are the stars of a day
A ship is the quay of the whole ocean
Ocean is the quay of the ship
A skin is the drawing of constellation
Constellation is the drawing of the skin
Christ is the sun of Buddha
Buddha is the moon of Christ
The time of sun can be measured by the moon of space
Space of moon is the time of sun
The horizon is the width of a look
A look is the width of the horizon
Height is the border of vision
A palm is a boat for a bride
A bride is a boat in a palm
A camel is a ship of desert
Desert is a camel's ship
Beauty is the hate for death
The hate for death is a beauty
The constellation Orion is a sword of love
Love is the sword of the constellation Orion
The Little Dipper is the space of the Big Dipper
The Big Dipper is the time of Little Dipper
A look is the width of heaven
Heaven is the height of a look
A thought is the depth of a night
Night is the width a thought
The Galaxy is the way to the moon
Moon is the developed Galaxy
Every star is the pleasures of the flesh
Erotics is all stars
Space between stars is the time without love
People are the bridges between stars
Bridges are stars between people
Passion is flying
Flying is the continuation of passion
Voice is a jump of one to another
A friend is the understanding of cry
The distance between people is full of stars
The distance of stars is full of people.

Maria Cristina Azcona

A Shady City

Relentlessly… acid rain…

is falling continuously…

(It had been rain some day).

Street….Never lonely, shadows and
shows,

So, so…shady shows, shadowy
streets.

Muddy human souls, cruel crowds,
empty bowls, hands, Smoke and fuel
that provoke wars.

Smokes of glory, empty of principles.

A hollow, a show, a shadow and a
bare plate.

Empty of glory, fin secular hands.

Drugs and scare, violet violence

On violet dreams.

Abrupt, interrupt, disrupt, sudden,
rushed,

a hundred feet insect falls under a
car…

Tongue on Tango. Argot of the dirty
city,

The city of the dirty money. A dirty
angel…

There’s a muddy injure in his small
hand.

Scuff, ouch, it hurts, a pain restrains
me.

Why me? No bread, no brotherhood,
no breath…

In the middle of the muddy rubbish,
Only dreams of glory.

In the muddy city in an empty world,

I am the child, the baby,

A rabbit,

A bit.

G. Mend -Ooyo

The Moon Over An Old Temple

From behind the temple the moon is ascending.
Buddha's ancient aureole gleams on the shiny top.
From a bamboo flute a lonely tune flows suspiring:
Nostalgic linger of a melancholic, wagging heart!

Wild grass sprouts in the slit of the stairway stones
Along the road that leads to the golden-lit Buddha!
The image of Buddha is getting clearer and clearer.
The Living Buddha's yard is hard to see the starlight.

From behind the temple the moon is ascending.
Buddha's suavely sieving evening twilight and
The grave, sad tune of the flute confer solace
To the pilgrims, who come from back of beyond!

Simple alcoves, old scrolls of painted characters!
It's a heavenly renewed temple filled with mystery
The silhouettes reflect the people's world in deep
Pondering to become like Buddha's shiny heart!

Whatever you want, just show off looking at Buddha's
Image, where the cross-legged Buddha sits abidingly.
Let the heavenly bamboo flute flow out its pneuma
While the moon from behind the temple is ascending!

Nikhil Parekh

Assemblage Of Heavenly Blue

The sky with its tinge of heavenly blue,
The sky which is coherent and true.
The sky so beautiful with its purplish face,
The sky that can conquer the human race.
The sky so sweet at lemonade,
The sky that can bring the earth an adolescent grade.
The sky that helps at the time of drought,
The sky that causes newborn seeds to sprout.
The sky that can bring crackling floods,
Doing so can shed a lot of blood.
The sky black and swollen near the river bank,
Hungry clusters of flower expecting all they can.
The drops of pelting water all hope for,
The sheets of rain showers already gone.
The sky with it protuberant legs stretched,
The sky that can get a house creshed.

C. P. Aboobacker

Onion

I am peeling the onion
The first layer is silver red
Ok, itís a pleasure to help her in the kitchen
An overburdened wife is a burden
With children ready to go to school
Myself ready for office

And I peel the onion
The aroma of her food is inviting
I peel the next layer of the onion
Layer after layer
Color fades
And turns white
A petrified sight
A beautiful morning

Eyes begin to dampen
Onions dampen my eyes

It's not easy to peel onions
A mastermind created every layer
Joined them together
With an art of nature
And with a care of the man
I go on peeling

Onion has a secret
It secretes dampness in eyes
Something to be sorry for
"Hey", she calls,
"What the hell are you doing?
Peel it, ya!"
Layers unfold
A manifold curiosity
Now! It is edible!
The tender innerself of the onion
I take it to my lips
To put it on my tongue

Kae Morii

Elegy

On the snow in blue twilight
I put the moon

The iced your sleeping face
I shall sink it in snows
With your softness
With loneliness

Beside trees thick with snow
Recalling the time passed with you
Early evening in spring
Fregrance of rape blossoms

Even mountain ridge
As you looked dangerous
In the urban lonely pigeons are flying
You would still has stifled

Don't you smiled at your infant, yet?

Looking up
Tingling
The finger of the tree with snow and ice

Snows-

Where shall it become snow?

Ada Aharoni

Peace Is A Woman And A Mother

How do you know
peace is a woman?
I know, for
I met her yesterday
on my winding way
to the world's fare.
She had such a sorrowful face
just like a golden flower faded
before her prime.

I asked her why
she was so sad?
She told me her baby
was killed in Auschwitz,
her daughter in Hiroshima
and her sons in Vietnam,
Ireland, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon,
Bosnia, Rwanda and Chechnya.

All the rest of her children, she said,
are on the nuclear
black- list of the dead,
all the rest, unless
the whole world understands -
that peace is a woman

A thousand candles then lit
in her starry eyes, and I saw -
Peace is indeed a pregnant woman,
Peace is a mother.

Dorin Popa

A Letter In The Wind In Benumbed Weather

to run, to break my fetters
to smash the death
that seized me so
to make my way to you
my princess, my princess

I was still looking in the distance
I still believed that all
belongs to me
I was still swelling out my breast
happy to meet you
happy to touch you
when I heard already
my horses neighing
in nether world

I was still preparing myself to welcome you
I was still waving hung by the old mirror
when I was told that you had left

to make my way, now, near you
now, when you left, to hold and embrace you!
death chained me up so well
that I' m ashamed of crying even
my princess, my princess.

Joanne Olivieri

Seagulls At Night

A twilight canvas
barren of life
prelude to the masterpiece
hovers unseen
upon desolate skies
waiting to be fashioned.

Out of darkness
they emerge
white winged choreographers
painting circles and
breeding life.

Seagulls At Night soar,
faithfully,
indiscriminately
a free form phenomenon.

Katy Kianush

The Ancient Heart

My ancient heart
has made a wondrous pearl
of the pains passed.

My mind, eagle - eyed,
flies high and sees all
the Darkness and the Light.

The breeze of My hands,
caresses the gentle Wombs
haping the mountains and the plains.

The notes of My thoughts
flow in the air,
embracing a few passing hearts,
and now fade away.

Joneve McCormick

The Visitor

Like rain dropping into the sea
like mist evaporating
when boundaries disappear
I grow larger and larger

The shape-shifter that sets me free
unveils what I hold too tightly,
lives behind my masks and in them,
in stones too, and mere words

Faithful as a rising sun
love appears dressed in light
to unite with me, to create new life,
when I am willing.

Dimitris P. Kraniotis

Illusions

Noiseless wrinkles
on our forehead
the frontiers of history,
shed oblique glances
at Homer' s verses.
Illusions
full of guilt
redeem
wounded whispers
that became echoes
in lighted caves
of the fools and the innocent.

Argo Spier

Carried Along

in the garden of love
and on the day of deliverance, frisky
the morning rose opens her pedals

in half-lit simmering of dawn
spreading her scent

now the night has died on the day
and it fell into its face
- my Mistress' toll is taken -

she started to decay
loosing her scent - grandeur -
and her majesty

the summer too will end
and the bleak debris of love
it'll wrinkle like waste

Rati Saxena

At The Last Moment

When words are stuck on lips
Thoughts get tired and put off / Then
There is no prayer and no complaint

Why don' t I keep today' s prayer
For the last moment?

Those bells were fake
That rang, Time to time
Ears became habitual
To hearing falsehood

What was truth?
What was false?
Now is the time
To start the journey again
What is the difference between
False and true?

Let me sing a false prayer
Prayer in dishonesty
And untruthfulness in honesty
Both mixed so much
Cannot pray for long

You closed the door
That opened toward the world
Now you can hit me
With all your bullets
Will you now squeeze me
To the last drop of blood?

Roger B. Humes

I Placed Stones In My Words

I placed stones in my words
and screamed at the ocean
until i could hear them whisper over the waves

I placed my soul in exile
and reached through the walls
to touch a world which wouldn't heed my thoughts

I placed my eyes in the garden
and learned to listen quietly
for the opening and closing of the dew glistened rose

I placed my feet upon a path
and realized that i could never turn back
until i could hear my words whisper over the waves

Elma D. Photikarm

Coffee? - Coffee.

I brewed it with love, showered with my kisses
And poured in a mint green Thai Celadon mug.
It settled there and gave me joy
in intervals of one minute sips
Oh, that the patch in rural northwestern
Guatemala far away would bring a yield
and serve me this - my perk, my morning
delight, my heart's desire.

And time could go on making me oblivious
to cares of day, find me dancing to music
I alone could hear.

I have to go on with my sips, get the best
from these, grab every precious moment
before aroma fades and cup turns lifeless cold
leaving only a bitter taste in lip-stained cup
where once the coffee was so good.

And so it is with feelings- nurture them
take your sips to savor all the best
there is in peace of mind and heart and soul.

And when you sink to all time lows
and sometimes hit rock bottom
Do not stay there, do not give up.
Learn to tread and float and tell yourself
it's time again to brew a fresh new pot.

John Francis Missett

For My Rivals

I don't want to lapse into the promiscuity.
Lapsed Idealisms obscurity.
As around me religions and religious' fail.
Nor do I want to write my poetry and prose.
From within the confines of some jail?
Or see my poetry turn into the paperwork?
For someone else's love affairs?
Rather I'd see my heart turn against?
The sacrilegious acts of The Pen.
Clutched in the uncaring money stained hands.
Of, my rivals, other men.

Ilona Hegedus

Trial

Rightful or unjust?
It's the place of claims
and pleas and lies.
Questions reverberate
on the corridors of the mind.
The hall is crowded
and all want to
get into the court room.

It's the place where I defended
rapists, crooks,
the man-eater
and the vivisector.
But who will defend me,
the most terrible monster of all?

A long row of corpses turn up,
they were all called to testify.

Andrew Angus

Cowboys On The Range

I.

Cowboys on the range
Adapt to wilderness life
And arid deserts!

Riding on a horse
The cowboy aims the rope's loop
Towards a bull's head!

Cowboys wearing chaps
Firing rifle into air
To herd the cattle!

The sun starts to set
They guard the cattle at night
When the wolves come out!

Full moon in May's spring
The mountain lion wakes up
To search for a meal!

II.

The cold evening bites
Cowboys prepare a bonfire
To cook a man's meal!

Cowboys love music
He grabs a guitar and sing
Country music rules!

The fire warms the skin
Hands become warm over flames
Branch turns into ash!

A hot chicken soup
So soothing to tired cowboys
It perks up the soul!

Barbecue chicken
Corns, hotdogs and marshmallows
One delicious meal!

III.

Silver moon appears
A pack of wolves start to howl
Ready for a kill!

He shoots in the air
To scare the wolves on the prowl
Terror lurks at night!

Cattle huddle close
Upon hearing the wolves' voice
Sounds of great horror!

Howling wolves strike fear
Brave cowboy's heart beats so fast
Nervous in the dark!

Sunset to sunrise
Cowboys take shifts in guarding
The herd feels so safe!

Dimitris P. Kraniotis

Ideals

Snow-covered mountains,
ancient monuments,
a north wind that nods to us,
a thought that flows,
images imbued
with hymns of history,
words on signs
with ideals of geometry.