Author Archives: Robin Helweg-Larsen

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About Robin Helweg-Larsen

Director, Andromeda Simulations International, Bahamas: a global education company providing online and in-person workshops in business finance. Series Editor, Sampson Low's 'Potcake Chapbooks'. Formal verse about traveling, family, love, etc...

Ruth S. Baker, ‘Moneykind’

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That kind of money is swishy and flashy.
That kind of money’s a bore, I find;
That kind of money is fishy and splashy.
That kind of money is not my kind.

My kind of money is somewhat quieter.
My kind of money won’t hog the stage.
My kind of money’s a long-term dieter:
My kind of money is slim for its age.

That kind of money is horribly tethering.
That kind of money one’s better without.
My kind of money’s enough for anything.
(Anything more I’ve forgotten about.)  

*****

‘Moneykind’ was originally published in The Asses of Parnassus. Ruth S. Baker writes: “It was triggered really just by catching myself out trying to feel superior to people with that kind of money!  As for bio, I’ve published in a few journals on line, mostly on animals and visual art.”

Photo: “Cooperate game companies have too much money and control of the market” by The People Speak is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Brooke Clark, ‘Letter from an Unknown Writer’

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We met one night at a book launch,
we drank, we talked, we laughed,
I said, “I’m writing a novel,”
and you said, “Send me a draft.”

So I sent it to your address
hoping a well-placed word
from you would get me started;
I waited, but never heard.

Now you’ve published your latest
and the critics fellate you in print,
it’s a runaway bestseller
and Hollywood’s taken the hint.

I read it myself last weekend
and my entrails turned to stone—
my book, but so badly rewritten
you’d almost made it your own.

*****

Brooke Clark writes: “This two-liner by Martial (Epigrams I.38) is the basis of my poem:
quem recitas meus est, o Fidentine, libellus:
sed male cum recitas, incipit esse tuus.
(The book you’re reciting is mine, Fidentinus; but when you recite it badly, it begins to be yours.)
Originally read in Wheelock’s Latin, I think, when I was learning the language, this was one of the first versions of Martial I did that I was happy with. I obviously expanded it greatly (I hadn’t learned to appreciate Martial’s concision) but I liked the swingy rhythm and the treatment of it as a mini-narrative that I landed on. Also one of the first epigrams I published, in Light, which gave me some confidence that the project of turning ancient epigrams into contemporary poems might be worth pursuing.”

Brooke Clark is the author of the poetry collection Urbanities and has published work in Arion, Literary Imagination, THINK, The Walrus, LA Review of Books, and other places. He is also the editor of the online epigrams journal The Asses of Parnassus and the book reviews editor at Able Muse.
Twitter: @thatbrookeclark
Bluesky: @brookeclark.bsky.social

Photo: “Treasures of Ushaw Book Launch in Westminster” by Catholic Church (England and Wales) is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Political poem: Janet Kenny, ‘Broken’

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The pig smashed the music
and turned off the sun.
As the pig couldn’t use it
nor should anyone.

O remember the time when the violins played
and the meadows were blooming and we, unafraid
dared to splash in the river and lie in the grass.
But they’re mowing the field now and scattering glass.

The mother in China,
the daughter in Spain,
must learn to design a
new habit again.

The athletes are anxious, the singers are dumb,
the children are fractious and calling for Mum.
Now Dad is in futures and selling his shares
and his foreign computers are yesterday’s wares.

Who let the pig loose
in the garden? and why
have we cooked our own goose?
I await a reply.

*****

This poem was originally published on Facebook. Concerning the trigger for creating it, Janet Kenny writes: “The only event was the world economy being interfered with by the folly of one awful man. One ignorant bully can dismantle the world.”

Janet Kenny left New Zealand to pursue a career as an operatic and concert singer in London, then settled in Sydney, Australia, where she worked in the anti-nuclear movement and jointly compiled, wrote and edited a book about the nuclear industry, Beyond Chernobyl, published by Envirobook in 1993.

Her poems have been published in printed and online journals, including Avatar, The Chimaera, Folly, 14 by 14, Iambs & Trochees, The Literary Review, Mi Poesias, The Guardian, The Spectator, The New Formalist, The Barefoot Muse, The Raintown Review, The Shit Creek Review, Snakeskin, Lavender Review, Soundz ine, Victorian Violet Press, The Susquehanna Quarterly and Umbrella. Her work is in the collections The Book of Hope and Filled With Breath: 30 sonnets by 30 poets and in the Outer Space anthology, Cambridge University Press. She shared an anthology of bird poems, Passing Through, with Jerry H. Jenkins. She has received three Pushcart nominations.

Her latest book, Whistling in the Dark (2016, Kelsay Books) can be ordered from https://www.amazon.com/Whistling-Dark-Janet-Kenny/dp/1945752092. Her previous book, This Way to the Exit (White Violet Press), can be ordered from http://www.amazon.com/This-Way-Exit-Janet-Kenny/dp/0615615937. You can read several poems from her books at https://janetkenny.netpublish.net/

Photo: “Pig-hog” by Kusukhtak is licensed under CC BY 3.0.

Using form: Couplets/Sonnet: Gail White, ‘Prayer Updated’

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To Anyone who still may be
attentive from Infinity,
we bless you from our dot in space
and thank you for our privileged place.

Give us this day on which to feed
a bit more gluten than we need,
and when we’re adequately fed,
help us to get and stay ahead
and save for our retirement
enough plus twenty-five per cent.

May old age find us cheerful still,
our life in order like our will,
with neither pain nor care nor debt.
Thy kingdom come, but not just yet.

*****

Gail White writes: “Religion and irony are not incompatible I find that a good deal of poetry comes from taking a speculative or questioning view of Bible stories (e.g, how did Adam and Eve react to the murder of Abel by Cain? We don’t hear a peep out of them about it.) And I’ve often said that if God hadn’t wanted at least one cynical feminist poet, I wouldn’t exist.”

‘Prayer Updated’ was published in the current issue of Lighten Up Online.

Gail White is the resident poet and cat lady of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Her books ASPERITY STREET and CATECHISM and the chapbook SONNETS IN A HOSTILE WORLD 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’.

Illustration: “Global Prayer” by thorntonsdigital is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

Tom Vaughan: ‘Is This It?’

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Well if it is, and this is it
then what will be will be
and time will toil and time will tell
if there’s a guarantee

that at the least and at the last
the daily here and now
which now and here are thick as thieves
will be transformed, somehow

and either way, here’s my advice –
lie back and think of all
the ups which came between the downs
before your curtain call.

*****

Tom Vaughan writes: “There was no particular trigger for this poem, apart from my fitful attempts to be Stoical about the state – and weirdness – of the world. But just at the moment the anger occasioned by the former keeps breaking through.”

‘Is This It?’ was published in the current Lighten Up Online.

Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and three poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance; and Just a Minute, 2024, from Cyberwit). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks and frequently in Snakeskin and Lighten Up Online. He currently lives in Brittany.
https://tomvaughan.website

Photo: “man-relaxing-in-the-grass_8954-480×359” by Public Domain Photos is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Shamik Banerjee, ‘Memories of a Flood’

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For one full week, the sun was dead,
     unloosening the gray,
wild clouds that swamped each paddy bed—
     the plowman’s great dismay.

The regal night sky, once agleam,
     was purloined of its stars.
Each lane became a water stream.
     Dinghies replaced the cars.

Mazdoors, waist-hidden, waded to
     their distant factory sites.
The Tongas‘ (since they were a few)
     demand reached greater heights.

But our town did what it does best—
     it kept the hoo-ha going.
In every church and temple’s chest,
     hope’s candles were still glowing.

On the roadside estaminets,
     sports went with malt whisky,
and there were pleasant tête-à-têtes
     on every balcony.

Mazdoor: an unskilled labourer
Tonga: a light horse-drawn two-wheeled vehicle
‘Memories of a Flood’ was first published in the San Antonio Review..

Shamik Banerjee is a poet from Assam, India. Some of his recent publications include Spelt, Ink Sweat & Tears, St. Austin Review, Modern Reformation, San Antonio Review, The Society of Classical Poets, Third Wednesday, California Quarterly, and Amethyst Review, among others.

Photo: Times of India, July 5, 2024

Using form: Pantoum: Brian Allgar, ‘And then I told you’

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We kissed. And then I told you (it was over
dinner at some fancy restaurant)
I loved you, but I couldn’t live like this,
meeting from time to time; I needed more.

Dinner at some fancy restaurant,
and timid sex at your place; that was all, each
meeting. From time to time, I needed more
than you were ready for, so reticent

and timid. Sex at your place – that was all. Each
meeting’s end, I tried not to ask more of you
than you were ready for. So, reticent,
I touched your face in silence, lovingly.

Meetings end. I tried not to ask more of you;
I loved you, but I couldn’t live like this.
I touched your face. In silence, lovingly,
we kissed, and then I told you it was over.

*****

Brian Allgar writes: “In general, I don’t much care for poetic forms, such as the triolet and the villanelle, with repeated lines. But I was attracted by the pantoum’s requirement that the repeated lines, though containing exactly the same words, should somewhat change in meaning each time.”

‘And then I told you’ was first published in Snakeskin.

Brian Allgar was born a mere 22 months before Adolf Hitler committed suicide, although no causal connection between the two events has ever been firmly established. Despite having lived in Paris since 1982, he remains immutably English. He started entering humorous competitions in 1967, but took a 35-year break, finally re-emerging in 2011 as a kind of Rip Van Winkle of the literary competition world. He also drinks malt whisky and writes music, which may explain his fondness for Mendelssohn’s Scottish Symphony. He is the author of The Ayterzedd: A Bestiary of (mostly) Alien Beings and An Answer from the Past, being the story of Rasselas and Figaro. He is also the co-author, with Marcus Bales, of Baleful Biographica, all published by Kelsay Books and available from the publisher or from Amazon.

Photo: “French restaurant with Jean” by obvio171 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Weekend read: Cherokee myth: “Nursery Rhyme for Lazy Children” by Jennifer Reeser

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They live at bottom of the deep
In ocean waters or in fresh.
They feed with greed on human flesh.
They kill the ones who oversleep.

You never will be fully grown.
They shoot with arrows while you dream,
Then drag you down like cod or bream,
But first replace you with a clone.

They leave it sleeping in your tent.
It has your eyes. It has your cheeks.
It wakes up early and it speaks.
The tribe won’t wonder where you went.

It does your chores and may amaze.
Like you, it plays and even thinks
But very soon, your double shrinks
And it will die in seven days.

Your people will not ever know.
You’ll never love. You’ll never marry.
Your twin’s the one that they will bury
For you’ve gone where the fish bones go.

But if you listen you will thrive:
Get out of bed and brush your hair.
The hunter’s coming. Be aware
Lest you be swallowed up, alive.

*****

Jennifer Reeser’s ‘Nursery Rhyme for Lazy Children’ was first published in New Verse Review. She cites the following Cherokee myth, ‘The Water Cannibals‘:

Besides the friendly Nûñnë’hï of the streams and mountains there is a race of cannibal spirits, who stay at the bottom of the deep rivers and live upon human flesh, especially that of little children. They come out just after daybreak and go about unseen from house to house until they find some one still asleep, when they shoot him with their invisible arrows and carry the dead body down under the water to feast upon it. That no one may know what has happened they leave in place of the body a shade or image of the dead man or little child, that wakes up and talks and goes about just as he did, but there is no life in it, and in seven days it withers and dies, and the people bury it and think they are burying their dead friend. It was a long time before the people found out about this, but now they always try to be awake at daylight and wake up the children, telling them “The hunters are among you.”

This is the way they first knew about the water cannibals: There was a man in Tïkwäli’tsï town who became sick and grew worse until the doctors said he could not live, and then his friends went away from the house and left him alone to die, They were not so kind to each other in the old times as they are now, because they were afraid of the witches that came to torment dying people.

He was alone several days, not able to rise from his bed, when one morning an old woman came in at the door. She looked just like the other women of the settlement, but he did not know her. She came over to the bed and said, “You are very sick and your friends seem to have left you. Come with me and I will make you well.” The man was so near death that he could not move, but now her words made him feel stronger at once, and he asked her where she wanted him to go. “We live close by; come with me and I will show you,” said the woman, so he got up from his bed and she led the way down to the water. When she came to the water she stepped in and he followed, and there was a road under the water, and another country there just like that above.

They went on until they came to a settlement with a great many houses, and women going about their work and children playing. They met a party of hunters coming in from a hunt, but instead of deer or bear quarters hanging from their shoulders they carried the bodies of dead men and children, and several of the bodies the man knew for those of his own friends in Tïkwäli’tsï. They came to a house and the woman said “This is where I live,” and took him in and fixed a bed for him and made him comfortable.

By this time he was very hungry, but the woman knew his thoughts and said, “We must get him something to eat. She took one of the bodies that the hunters had just brought in and cut off a slice to roast. The man was terribly frightened, but she read his thoughts again and said, “I see you can not eat our food.” Then she turned away from him and held her hands before her stomach–so–and when she turned around again she had them full of bread and beans such as he used to have at home.

So it was every day, until soon he was well and strong again. Then she told him he might go home now, but he must be sure not to speak to anyone for seven days, and if any of his friends should question him he must make signs as if his throat were sore and keep silent. She went with him along the same trail to the water’s edge, and the water closed over her and he went back alone to Tïkwäli’tsï. When he came there his friends were surprised, because they thought he had wandered off and died in the woods. They asked him where he had been, but he only pointed to his throat and said nothing, so they thought he was not yet well and let him alone until the seven days were past, when he began to talk again and told the whole story.

*****

Jennifer Reeser is the author of seven books of poetry. She is an author with Penguin Random House, London’s “Everyman’s Library” series, and Able Muse. Her poems, translations, essays and critical reviews have appeared internationally in POETRY, The Hudson Review, RATTLE, and elsewhere, with new work forthcoming in Nimrod from the University of Tulsa. She divides her time between her Gulf Coast estate and home on the Cherokee reservation in Indian Country, Oklahoma.

“It’s too late to take up ‘sleeping in’ kid, time for school 🙂” by Brent Halstead is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Using form: Quatrains with refrain: Jerome Betts, ‘Plus ça change. . .’

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If, as a child, he had a spreading rash,
The squitters, then, far worse, was constipated,
Or boasted big blue bruise and graze and gash,
A doctor murmured, “Yes, it’s age-related.”

When, in mid-life, and seeking novel thrills,
He got a dose of something best not stated
So had to suffer jabs and bitter pills,
A doctor murmured, “Yes, it’s age-related.”

Come his declining years, which tax most brains,
His wits would wander, now grown antiquated,
And while he rambled down his memory’s lanes
A doctor murmured, “Yes, it’s age-related.”

Until, one day of flowers and muffled peals,
Cause of demise at last certificated,
As up the aisle he rolled, worm-food on wheels,
A doctor murmured, “Yes, it’s age-related.”

*****

Jerome Betts writes: “Hearing a phrase new to you can start some process in the brain leading toa piece of verse. Here it was my GP saying of some minor ailment It’s age-related. It stuck in my mind, and I think triggered a recollection of a Thomas Hood poem, The Doctor, its seven stanzas all ending with the refrain Yes, yes, said the Doctor, / I meant it for that!, the dodgy physician’s unvarying response to reports of the disastrous effects, even death, of his prescriptions. Not long after, the sight of a hearse on wheels rather than on bearers’ shoulders entering a Devon church provided the idea for the last stanza of this essay in black humour which appeared in Snakeskin.“

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, where he edits the quarterly Lighten Up Online. Pushcart-nominated twice, his verse has appeared in a wide variety of UK publications and in anthologies such as Love Affairs At The Villa Nelle, Limerick Nation, The Potcake Chapbooks 1, 2 and 12, and Beth Houston’s three Extreme collections. British, European, and North American web venues include Amsterdam Quarterly, Better Than Starbucks,  Light, The Asses of Parnassus, The Hypertexts, The New Verse News, and  Snakeskin.

Illustration: “Great Grandfather and Child” by Melissa Flores is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Melissa Balmain: ‘A Super-Subtle Metaphor’

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(For my son)

Dear Unruly Backyard Maple:
I’ve been clipping you for years,
convinced that efforts to reshape’ll
pay for one who perseveres.

But now I get it, stubborn maple –
though I’ve trained your docile peers,
my double-bladed snip and scrape’ll
never give you classic tiers.

And I am seeing, steadfast maple,
how your tousled crown endears:
you shelter birds; come spring, your drape’ll
glow just like a chandelier’s.

So please forgive me, patient maple,
if it’s not too late, for here’s
my blessing, solemn as the papal.
Grow your way.
                        Love, Pruning Shears

*****

Melissa Balmain writes: “Looking back at poems I’ve written for and about my family, I realize many are metaphorical. I suspect that metaphor–like rhyme and meter–helps steer me toward interesting thoughts and away from over-sentimentality. (Whether my son agrees has yet to be seen!)”

‘A Super-Subtle Metaphor’ is the lead poem in the current issue of Lighten Up Online.

Melissa Balmain’s third poetry collection, Satan Talks to His Therapist, is available from Paul Dry Books (and from all the usual retail empires). Balmain is the editor-in-chief of Light, America’s longest-running journal of light verse, and has been a member of the University of Rochester’s English Department since 2010. She is a recovering mime.  

Photo: “Red Maple Tree” by Stanley Zimny (Thank You for 52 Million views) is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.