Ghosts twitter in my head like the memory of predawn birds. Digging below my present house I find a structural supportive past with rock veins to be mined. Upstairs the future isn’t fully built or roofed. Has someone goofed? The Architect is vague on final thirds.
*****
I am finding many ways to say I don’t understand existence at all; this is one of them.
This short, semi-formal poem was published recently in The Lyric.
So time went by and they were middle-aged, which seemed a cruel joke that time had played on two young lovers. They were newly caged canary birds – amused, not yet afraid. A golden anniversary came around where jokes were made and laughing stories told. The lovers joined the laugh, although they found the joke – though not themselves – was growing old. She started losing and forgetting things. Where had she left her keys, put down her comb? Her thoughts were like balloons with broken strings. Daily he visited the nursing home to make her smile and keep her in their game. Death came at last. But old age never came.
*****
Gail White writes: “Time is the strangest of the conditions we live in. Scientists, essayists, and poets can ring endless changes on this theme. Time has devastated the lives of the couple in this sonnet, but as Solomon told us long ago, love is as strong as death.”
Gail White is the resident poet and cat lady of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Her books ASPERITY STREET and CATECHISM are available on Amazon. She is a contributing editor to Light Poetry Magazine. “Tourist in India” won the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award for 2013. Her poems have appeared in the Potcake Chapbooks ‘Tourists and Cannibals’, ‘Rogues and Roses’, ‘Families and Other Fiascoes’, ‘Strip Down’ and ‘Lost Love’. ‘The Way It Ended’ was first published in 14 by 14 (which has also ended…) and is collected in her chapbook, ‘Sonnets in a Hostile World‘, also available on Amazon.
There’s thudding from the floor above that never seems to stop. I’m trying to sleep, or waiting for the other shoe to drop as midnight clomps toward 2 AM and hours of darkness dwindle into the gray of going to work. This rent’s a fucking swindle.
Where’s my damn connection gone? The internet’s too slow. Get me Jobs or get me Gates. Those bastards need to know.
I called her on a Friday, and we swore that we would meet. I hailed a taxi, ended up along a different street — similarly named, but swathed in layers of graffiti. A drip of sweat ran down my neck; the air was cold and sleety.
Where’s that old-time romance gone? Who will sigh and blubber over at hers at 3 AM with a lavatory rubber?
I saw a TV talking head while ordering a bagel who talked about the budget mess — but then he quoted Hegel about the end of history. Some Weltschmerz is okay, but save it for the pop songs, man, and don’t get in the way.
Where’s my hometown paper gone? The owner’s on the run from ranters on the blogosphere. Something must be done.
He met my eyes and shook my hand, and though you wouldn’t know it, that jerk-off in a business suit calls himself a poet/ critic/impresario and manages quite well. He smiled and quoted Dante, but I only thought of Hell.
Where’ve our tortured artists gone, Catullus or Syd Barrett? Chasing after the latest grant and following the carrot.
The upstairs stomps are quicker now and spreading to the hall. My head’s beneath the pillow. Damn it — won’t she ever call? I half hope that she’s safe in bed and blithely fast asleep, but fantasize her all alone and looking up mid-weep.
Where’s the just comeuppance gone? What happened to bad karma? It got renamed and bottled up and bought out by Big Pharma.
There’s violence in the movies, and there’s violence on TV; there’s violence on the city streets…. Fuck off! Don’t talk to me! There’s anger in the headlines, and there’s fury in the verse spat out at downtown open mikes. I don’t know whom to curse.
Where’ve the old-time standards gone? The censors look forlorn from hip hop, emo, techno, goth. What happened to the porn?
Times Square’s gone all Disneyfied. The red-light district’s blue. Godspeed to all you chicks with dicks, and hello, Scooby-Doo. Farewell, Adult Emporium! You’re now a clothing store, maybe a Planet Hollywood — and God knows which sucks more.
Where’s my filthy city gone? They smothered it in bleach, hired a doorman, raised the rent, and placed it out of reach.
What’s to blame? Is it our greed or lack of common sense? Is it violence in our past, or just incompetence? Perhaps it’s economic or the crush of circumstance. Or was it just a thwarted wish to get into her pants?
Where’s that upstairs thumping gone? The silence settles deep into the still and humid air. I still can’t get to sleep.
*****
Quincy R. Lehr writes: “Thud! is a New York City madsong, with gentrification, insomnia, political decay, and urban loneliness mixing together in a sort of minestrone soup of misery that is also, I think, pretty funny.”
Born in Oklahoma, Quincy R. Lehr is the author of several books of poetry, and his poems and criticism appear widely in venues in North America, Europe, and Australia. ‘Thud!‘ was first published in Measure and was reprinted in the Potcake Chapbook ‘City! Oh City!‘ His book-length poem ‘Heimat‘ was published in 2014. His most recent books are ‘The Dark Lord of the Tiki Bar‘ (2015) and ‘Near Hits and Lost Classics‘ (2021), a selection of early poems. He lives in Los Angeles. https://www.amazon.com/Quincy-R.-Lehr/e/B003VMY9AG
George, wishing to proceed at speed, built the world’s first Equestropede. This fusion of a horse and cart, a tribute to the welder’s art, had a strong engine, 12 hp, which meant George travelled speedily. It ran on oats and gasoline, a strange concoction, unforeseen by Elon Musk and the X folk who would have seen it as a joke. George, Michelangelo reborn, treated the neigh-sayers with scorn.
*****
Richard Fleming writes: “The Equestropede, when it was first unveiled at the Exposition Universelle in 1901, proved to be the centaur of attraction. I post a rhyming poem every day on my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/richard.fleming.92102564/ and accompany it with a quirky image that I’ve found online. Does the poem precede the image or vice versa? That depends. In the case of ‘The Equestropede’ the strange image definitely preceded the rhyme and fairly begged to be ‘poeticised’. The Equestropede name, however, is purely my invention as is its unveiling at the Exposition Universelle.”
Richard Fleming is an Irish-born poet (and humorist) currently living in Guernsey, a small island midway between Britain and France. His work has appeared in various magazines, most recently Snakeskin, Bewildering Stories, Lighten Up Online, the Taj Mahal Review and the Potcake Chapbook ‘Lost Love’, and has been broadcast on BBC radio. He has performed at several literary festivals and his latest collection of verse, Stone Witness, features the titular poem commissioned by the BBC for National Poetry Day. He writes in various genres and can be found at www.redhandwriter.blogspot.com or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/richard.fleming.92102564/
The Universe with which we grapple searching for structure, meaning, is no apple with glossy skin outside, substance beneath, where deep within its core it meets our needs to find its meaning: seeds. No, it’s an onion – peel off the outer sheath of sensory impressions, and you uncover explanations coming first from mystic revelations and then from faith’s and Science’s professions. Research from Galileo through to Quantum realms reveals, and contradicts, and overwhelms until you take away the final layer and find: there’s nothing there.
*****
I’m a Militant Agnostic: “I don’t know, and neither do you!” We keep searching and probing, the certainties get disproved, new lines of enquiry open up… and off we go again, Quixote-like, because we’re humans. This poem rhymes irregularly, and is in iambics of different line lengths. Semi-formal.
‘Layered Understanding’ was first published in the Shot Glass Journal #43.
The sky begins to cloak its face, Removing every streak of red. Above, two weary fliers trace The way back to their bough-held bed.
A boy, awash with joy, returns Soil-vested from a football field. To celebrate the victory earned, He swaggers with his pride revealed.
Along the lined tobacco stands, Pen-pushers at long last release Workloads with cigarettes in their hands, Exhaling little rings of peace.
Now earthen lamps begin to glow In homes–it’s time for evening prayer. Sweet wafts of scented incense flow, Cleansing the jaded summer air.
*****
‘A Summer Evening’ was first published in 3rd Wednesday.
Shamik Banerjee is a young poet from Assam, India where he resides with his parents. His poems have been published by The Society of Classical Poets, The Hypertexts, Third Wednesday, Thimble, Ink Sweat and Tears, Shot Glass, and The Pierian, among others.
“I just need help,” the homeless man announces to the train And, somehow, to himself as well. And everybody cares, Though no one makes a move.
“I just need help.” He mumble-shouts again his one refrain. And everybody sees his hell, Despite our downward stares. But how can we improve
His plight when I still can’t afford both surgery and food, And you live drowned in college debt And she just froze her eggs For when the rent hikes stop?
“I just need help,” he tries once more. Our eyes stay navel-glued. We want to fill his need and yet Just what’s the help he begs For? Should we call a cop?
We know the way that that has gone before. We know he’d simply suffer even more. We know he’s not what cops are really for. We hope we’re wrong, but we just see no choice, Except to steel our ears against his voice And, staidly silent, mourn inside As though he had already died.
*****
‘The Subway 2023’ was first published in The Lyric. Benjamin Cannnicott Shavitz writes:
The entire poem is in iambs.
Every line rhymes with at least one other line.
In the first four stanzas, the rhyme scheme is ABCDABCD repeated twice.
In each of the first four stanzas, the line lengths are as follows: line 1: seven feet; line 2: four feet; line 3: three feet; line 4: three feet.
In the last stanza, the rhyme scheme is AAABBCC.
In the last stanza, the line lengths are as follows: lines 1-5: five feet each, lines 6-7: four feet each.
Points (3)-(6) create a pattern in which any lines that rhyme are of the same length as each other.
“Some background about my approach to form: I received my PhD in linguistics last year and I have been using my knowledge of language structure and the math background I have from my undergraduate engineering studies to innovate and sometimes re-conceptualize form in poetry. As I’m sure you know, the past century has seen a massive decline in knowledge of how form works in general. What you may be less aware of is that that same period has seen major developments in linguistics that can be brought in to expand our understanding of form. Most people know nothing about form anymore and the few people who do are working with an understanding that, while based on a lot of sound information, would benefit from being updated by the last century’s developments in linguistics research. There is an expansive future for formal verse ahead of us if we not only revive interest in form but also recognize that we are still learning about it. Form is not just tradition. It is an aspect of nature and there is a lot more we haven’t done with it yet. There is an essay in the back of two of my books that deals with the way formal verse and its history have been mischaracterized by proponents of free verse, I have developed a short course for teaching formal verse writing from a linguistically informed perspective, and I hope to use my academic knowledge (and credentials) to provide further support for the revival and expansion of formal verse in the future.”
Benjamin Cannicott Shavitz is a writer and linguistics scholar whose studies in language have led him to a great enthusiasm for formal poetry. He lives in Manhattan, New York City and received his PhD in linguistics from the Graduate Center at The City University of New York. He has published two collections of his own poetry (Levities and Gravities), as well as an anthology of poems by New York City poets from throughout history (Songs of Excelsior). His work has also been published in The Lyric, The Fib Review, and the journal of The Society of Classical Poets. See www.kingsfieldendeavors.com/writing for links to his writing.
My question asking if you are OK in full knowledge that yes may well mean no— monosyllables build the barricade perimeter beyond which we can’t go into the sanctum where you admit fright, a precious hell guarded from special op humanitarian fact-finding flights— must voice loving concern. And then must stop to wait on answers truly indirect, accept teenager-brokered terms of love are spoken in non-sequiturs and gaps, a small concession I did not expect enough to give stalled confidence a shove, to tell us that you are OK perhaps.
James Lucas’ bio: “I was born in Sydney in 1965, and educated at the University of New South Wales, where I won the University Medal, and then at Cambridge, where I completed a Ph D in modernist poetry in 1997. I published two chapbooks in the UK in the 1990s, and my first Australian publication was in Southerly in 1994. Since then my poems have appeared in Communion, Contrappasso, Cordite Poetry Review, Heat, Island, Meanjin, New England Poetry Review, Overland, Quadrant, Salt, Scarp, Southerly, the Henry Kendall Award Anthology, and the 2020 Newcastle Poetry Prize Anthology. My first collection, Rare Bird, was published by Recent Work Press in March 2021, reviewed in ABR in August 2021, and Commended in the 2021 Anne Elder Award. I read as widely as I can in contemporary and older poetry. For many years I have taught English at Sydney Grammar School.”
A life is a bubble: somewhere the Grand Druid dips his wand into the universal fluid and then a new life is formed, floating on chance breezes until it – pops – and the thin skin coating falls back to earth as mere drops, the shape and rare rainbow glint gone to air, and the bubble is where?
Earth is a bauble in the universal flux, as it foams, boils and freezes, just dust from God’s various mucks, sneezes afloat on chance trans-solar breezes.
The humans babble, rabble rising from the rubble of other lives cut to stubble, they burble some Bible as they gab, grab and gobble, cobbling conning towers of Babel and Hubble, their progress hobbled by their wobbly bobble, reams of hopes, dreams and schemes just a bubble.
*****
Sometimes a chance-occurring phrase in some moody mode of thought lets me ramble wildly through tangled words and ideas. It’s not amenable to regular form, but it’s fun. It seems in the spirit of Spoken Verse, though I’ve never performed. The earliest poem I wrote in this style is from over 50 years ago… which is 30 years before I ever had a poem accepted for publication. I was definitely out of step with the non-verse that then controlled the poetry industry to the exclusion of almost all actual verse. Things have eased in recent years, and dozens of poems from those early years have since been published. (Note to struggling young poets: Don’t give up! But have another career that pays money!)
Anyway, ‘Life is a Bubble’ only needed a couple of years to be published in 2024 in The Lyric.
toil and spin we begin wool, stone cloth and bone fibers break fingers ache scarlet thread daily bread sisters bend knots end warp and weft right, left kneel and weep till and keep
the slanted ladder forms a stair work is prayer
*****
Kelly Scott Franklin writes: “Alvarado’s painting depicts women kneeling, which I think first suggested prayer. As a Catholic, I’m aware of the Benedictine idea of work and prayer as a spiritual pair; but St. Josemaría Escrivá and the Opus Dei movement have also proposed that work itself, done with love and patience and offered to the Original Giver of Creation, can be itself a form of prayer. I had fun with the truncated lines, and I focused on selecting the most evocative physical objects and simple gestures interwoven with Biblical phrases. Maximum density. The poem was first published in Ekphrastic Review”
Kelly Scott Franklin lives in Michigan with his wife and daughters. He teaches American Literature and the Great Books at Hillsdale College. His poems and translations have appeared in AbleMuse Review, Literary Matters, Driftwood Literary Magazine, Iowa City Poetry in Public, National Review, Thimble Literary Magazine, Ekstasis, and elsewhere. His essays and reviews can be found in Commonweal, The Wall Street Journal, The New Criterion, Local Culture, and elsewhere. https://www.hillsdale.edu/faculty/kelly-scott-franklin/
Women Making Textiles, by Mario Urteaga Alvarado, 1939
Form in Formless Times 