Hollywood Woman A Poem by Sara L Russell 18th March 2023

She has had an illustrious lifestyle
and many well-earned accolades;
donates to some causes quite worthwhile
she has gongs and awards now, in spades.

Her mansion’s been featured in Tatler
in Mode Avantgarde and OK;
She’s been called a trooper and a battler
and she always has plenty to say.

But her face is a bone of contention
it is fixed in a permanent grin
from a facelift hauled too tight to mention
and too much Botox in her skin,

And her lips, in an unnatural rictus,
have a top lip that sticks out too far,
Yet she boasts how her surgeon could fix us
if we weren’t as poor as we are.

She goes to cafés with her ladies
all from the same era as she;
and their pooches are treated like babies
and given fresh truffles for tea;

And when she is smiling or laughing
The waiters recoil in sheer fright
For her terrible grin leaves them gasping
She’s like a cobra poised to bite;

and some of her friends look like harpies
and some of them look like vampires
and their eyeliner’s drawn on with sharpies
and they drink to lost loves and desires;

But they carry on laughing regardless
For they clothes-shop at Rodeo Drive;
They are diamonds of high grade and hardness,
though they look to be barely alive.

 

Sara L Russell aka pinkyandrexa

Sara Louise Russell, aka PinkyAndrexa, is a UK poet and poetry ezine editor, specialising particularly in sonnets, lyric-style poetry and occasionally writing in more modern styles. She founded Poetry Life & Times and edited it from 1998 to 2006, when she handed it over to Robin Ouzman Hislop and Amparo Arrospide; Robin now runs it as Editor from Poetry Life & Times at this site.  Her poems and sonnets have been published in many paper and online publications including Sonnetto Poesia, Mindful of Poetry and Autumn Leaves a monthly Poetry ezine from the late Sondra Ball. Her sonnets also currently appear in the recently published anthology of sonnets Phoenix Rising from the Ashes. She is also one of the first poets ever to be published on multimedia CD ROMs, published by Kedco Studios Inc.; the first one being Pinky’s Little Book of Shadows, which was featured by the UK’s national newspaper The Mirror, in October 1999. (Picture link for Mirror article) Angel Fire. And the 2024 AI version of The Perils of Norris cartoon, by Sara L Russell using Canva Pro AI, Episode 1. The Perils of Norris featured from this site Poetry Life and Times

To kill or not to kill Bill. A Poetry Text by Robin Ouzman Hislop. Excerpt from Cartoon Molecules

To kill or not to kill Bill*										

i

Weary   if it weren’t a country from whose border
the slings and arrows of ardent hope for   die

us   to put up with those of them
put up with those of them   to die

you that   actually   Bill's last bullet to get to this point

the question for him was obscured by reflecting on it
end that we would all or not
unexplored natural miseries    human beings as simple as that
and the consideration that creates the that we don’t know about!

and i the movie advertisements refer to

so an unbearable situation   or to an authority
and the advantage that must make us pause
that must make us pause

 i can tell now   can tell now   the only one left   only one left

that’s us   that follows that first impulse of troubles that afflict one
the great and important plans life    because   who would tolerate
to suffer   we might have been the best   with a naked blade?
oneself with a naked blade?

(woman)

who would continue to exist
and end the dread of the love
the calamity of such a long problem
because in the end our life is a hurry for others
who are diluted to the point of sleep

perhaps thinking about a sleep of death
this mortal body has to endure
is in us all

i went on what hell of a lot of people i wasn't

the whips and scorns
the pain of rejected time
the tyranny against this load   sweating and grunting
the prospect    sweating and grunting the prospect
that confounds us and makes a traveller
return    ay   that’s the thing       ,

looked dead   didn't i?     dead   didn't  i?    well        .,

ii

As to that and the consideration
of impulses of troubles afflicting   grunting
the prospect that confounds rejected time
the tyranny that creates the that we miserable human beings
as simple mortal body have to endure
that would continue to exist and a long problem
because its an unbearable situation

the one I'm driving to right   a coma

or to tolerate   to suffer us to end the dread
of the that we don’t know about
so we wouldn't be in a hurry for others
from whose borders of authority 									
and the advantage plans of life - because
who put up with those of hope for us to die
all or not?

 a roaring rampage of revenge    rampage of revenge  

unexplored natural might have been the best for us
that follows from the first of them
the question for him of love   the calamity of such   the end of our life
with a naked blade obscured by reflecting on a sleep of death
the slings and arrows of ardent whips and scorns
the pain diluted to the point of weary
if it weren’t a country that must make us pause
against this sweating load and the one great important thinking about      ,

the last when I arrive at my destination

iii

Or to tolerate   to suffer us
has been the best for us   that follows us
to pause against this sweating load
and that would continue to exist
even if it weren’t a country   that must make that -

the one i'm driving to     i'm driving to

that confounds rejected time   the tyranny of a sleep of death
the slings of life   because who puts up with arrows of ardent whips
and the scorns in a hurry for others whose such ends our life with?

a hell of a lot of people now    can tell now    i can tell satisfaction    i've killed you that

as to that   and the consideration of end   the dread
of the that we as a simple mortal body have to endure
from the first of them   the question of a naked blade
obscured by reflecting on impulses of troubles
afflicting   grunting the prospect
all or not

actually   Bill's last bullet the movie advertisements refer to as an in for i got bloody last

unexplored natural might have been for him of love
the calamity of long problem   because of its unbearable situation

only one left    only one left

the borders of authority and the advantage plans
pain diluted to the point of  weariness
if we don’t know about it    so we wouldn't be it!

the one i'm driving to    i'm driving to

or not to be   creates the that for us to die   to die

when I only woke up    i went on one left    only one left    i wasn't    people i wasn't    
but put me in a coma – destination    it wasn't from one    wasn't from one more    
only one more    to get to this point   but right a coma     ,



*
To kill or not to kill Bill   text derived extracts from Hamlet’s 
‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy Hamlet Act3 Scene1 taken from the No Sweat Shakespeare Hamlet ebook 
& Uma Thuman’s car scene in Kill Bill 2. 

 
 
 
Amazon.com/Cartoon Molecules-Robin Ouzman Hislop Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; at Artvilla.com
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author.
 
 
See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Africa North. An Excerpt from All the Babble of the Souk by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Africa North


Solstice winds, rain return in spells
a moon waxes full, dogs howl as well.

All the babble of the Souk
men over there, over there women.  

All the life of the planet
so little part of it that I breathe.

Weather beaten highlands, once passed through.

The river bed, no more like a parched bone
its late autumnal river meanders as a vein
past four reservoirs
a quest that will end in winter´s flood.

Between them are momentary mists
where brightly clad figures of the north, suddenly dim.

On the frontier’s beach taxis come, go
only the stranded remain, together with the seagulls
four men huddled, drenched in pouring rain
dead once more, again, all pathways home
washed away, again.  A broken song

remember me, sung in a doorway
brings the world at large together
as suddenly as it narrows.

Water runs on marble
nakedness revealed, nakedness concealed
form water words, water memories, mists, fates.

Veins wrestle the marble into mangled knots
blemished pearls on an implacable skin
shards leaving fragmentary traces
empty spaces awaiting faces.

Lights dance in the night, picturesque
“casas blancas del pueblo”
appear through the darkness

as the brush strokes of my mind steal the action of the shadow.

Mists cordon the mountain tops
guerdoned crowns  like wreathes.

Ancient fields' still colours surrounded
by burgeoning new lead to the valley below.

Old women , old as aglow, so slow they go
poised aloof in an untouchable world, trapped.

High in kiln firelight they cowl night’s shade
to oversee goats on the hill beneath.

Daughters of necessity naked in the rock
unleashed in white trefoil in the marsh
swamp of night rain, stark where epochs
sleep in their shadows

replication of memories, where the old
becomes the new, a world splits in two
with Morpheus in the breach.  

Beyond control, beyond reach the erratic butterfly
flits bloom to bloom, the intrepid stalker with net
both captured in the mimic mould.

A  knot is tied, a knot that wrestles
embraces, that ravels birth
unravels death & binds its existence.

Her face is as if a moon glazed over
with a less serene ceramic dust that in the end
after its perplexity contains its surety.

She draws her forefinger laterally across
under her eye lid in a smear

nor can you change the image of what you are
in the pupil of her eye.

Babble bodies blur
voices with their echoes down the street
sky high, prices fly

a bird song breaks, a splash charade
Faces in the rain thin
weakness of watery years.

A winnowing canvass tosses corn
as fireflies in the blazing day.

The hag in her rags begs her bag
holding all shadows to account.

You sit in the solitary corner
at the empty dice board
to throw, as the music swells, as strings play.

On the washing line clothes of all shapes
sizes are waiting to be filled
suspended between earth, sky, where white sheets blow.

A twinge of nostalgia flashes
a link between a fluttering curtain
an open window frame, a sun shadow game
a flickering apparition pattern leaving only - strands.

A breeze flutters an open foolscap on the table
as though a phantom reader
should flick with regard through a score of notes
then stops at the first blank white sheets
stays, the moving hand that wrote, wrote no more.

On record, old honky-tonk goes on
amidst the heaps of consumer city sneakers
in the same dust where faces
turn from their spring red lustre to a sun soiled wear

through a beehive of allies
names, aye to fetch them home again
as if where the countless dead resided, you’d said
in a market of women shrouded in shawls.

Berlin falls, Baghdad falls
all the years turn to further tears
further fears to merge with your voyage
the shape of dreams to come
to be only endearments of what has gone before.

A flower opens after a thousand years in a shell of tears
indifferent to its beholders’ sight
who paint it with the colours from the waters of their night
on an unknown shore, to whose sight it opened once before.

Children’s faces like radiant imps
play carefree in the streets below
overhead on red tiles, fat pigeons bicker, coo.

In an internet cafe, an Arab girl discrete in headdress
plays with cartoon molecules of Micky Mouse
Kola bear

nubile women’s faces dream of nudity in their shrouds.

Wonky pinz nez specs, jumble sale clothes
bad teeth, unshaven grin
looking a faded duplicate of a down
out James Joyce with the come on
are you Irish, he asks
perhaps he was once upon a time.

They came through the cleft of the mountain
 - where the river ran
to swim as a blur in the naked purple of the eye

on the mountain face there is a scar
once a sacred place, now extinct, as they are.

Yet wild still she runs, amidst the sheep, goats
toils at the hearth, dutifully bears children
yesterday she knows but not tomorrow
where she hides her sorrow

even as he ploughs the hillside
a photo will steal his soul, but his beasts will do.

Twilight’s girls, girls, girls
throng the bustling street corners eating caracoles.

By day the olive tree green in the blue sky of the window
seems almost immortal enriched with the blood
it’s enriched, now at its roots.
Costa de la playa, white beehives in the sun, all money, no honey.

In the broken lights of the bazaar
the dusky eyes of the beggar sunk in their sockets
maze in crooked cul de sacs embargo amidst
the furls of silk that foil the flickering lantern niche.
In the gloaming a solitary reaper reaps its shadow.
Streets packs ravage carcasses
at dawn, the city wakes to the city’s obedience
to obey its disappearing shadows.

A ghost city of watchers
watched as shadows by a memory that has outlived them
now fragments in an admixture of old, new
- amidst a junk yard of rubble

watcher shadows phased captive to their fading stories.

The street’s mechanics of the day
obey their limits, patterns of parts
where we end only to start in a series of nows

post mortem of the world at large
an autopsy of ghosts on the slab.

Born to see, in the boutiques people seem
like their own mannequins
existence is a mystery with no purpose

only we endow it with a destiny, it does not seek from us.

All the Babble of the Souk.amazon.com

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; at Artvilla.com
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author.

See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Antonio Martínez Arboleda´s Cosmic VideoPoem. Voyage


 
Greetings,
Siblings of the World:
This is Tony,
your flight assistant and prophet for today
 
Welcome to the end of planet earth as we know it
 
The big mass of the rock with water
that we inhabited for thousands of years
is now about to be transferred to another Galaxy
 
Unfortunately,
This is a rather perilous voyage,
but those of you who have been Good
shall be spared from any damage
 
What are the flying conditions for this adventure
we are about to embark upon?
 
Well, according to Office of Cosmical Statistics
and the weather algorithmic authority
we shall have no trouble
 
Please ensure that you have located
all your molecules of H2o
in the designated compartment
Above you
Remember:
during this journey
You will remain seated
inside your containers
until full re-composition is successfully completed
in our lavish destination
 
And now
 
heads up!
the hologram of our savour and patron
is about to be projected
on your virtual reality glasses
 
Let us pray,
each of you,
whatever you want, really,
it doesn’t matter
 
Our Captain, is ready to take off
 
See you at the other end!
 
 

 
Antonio Martínez Arboleda:
Antonio (Tony Martin-Woods) started to write poetry for the public in 2012, at the age of 43, driven by his political indignation. That same year he also set in motion Poesía Indignada, an online publication of political poetry. He runs the poetry evening Transforming with Poetry at Inkwell, in Leeds, and collaborates with 100 Thousands Poets for Change 100tpc.org/. Tony is also known in the UK for his work as an academic and educator under his real-life name, Antonio Martínez Arboleda at the University of Leeds. His project of digitisation of poetry, Ártemis, compiles more than 100 high quality videos of Spanish poets and other Open Educational Resources. http://www.artemispoesia.com/ .

He is the delegate in the UK of Crátera Revista de Crítica y Poesía Contemporánea , where he also publishes his work as translator from English into Spanish. He published his first volume of poetry in Spanish, Los viajes de Diosa (The Travels of Goddess), in 2015, as a response to the Great Recession, particularly in Spain. His second book, Goddess Summons the Nation Paperback , Goddess Summons the Nation Kindle Edition , is a critique of the ideas of nation and capitalism, mainly in the British Brexit context. It incorporates voices of culprits, victims and heroes with mordacity and rhythm. It consists of 21 poems, 18 of which are originally written in English, available in print and kindle in Amazon and other platforms. Editor’s note: further information bio & academic activities can be found at this link: https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/languages/staff/91/antonio-martinez-arboleda

 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

A Robin Ouzman Hislop Video Poem Knocking on the Moonlit Door

Editor’s note: knocking on the moonlit door is an adaptation & reconstruction of Walter de la Mare’s The Listeners – it experiments with moods, ambience, environments. supernatural allusions,
it can be both present, past or future. Subtitles can be accessed by clicking on the subtitle text switch on the bottom bar of the YouTube Video:
 

 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; at Artvilla.com his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, collected poems, & Moon selected Audio Textual Poems available at Amazon.com as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
 
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

A Poem by Sara L Russell Eulogy for Freedom 30th March 2021

 
Was it here we used to drink on Saturday afternoons,
on the beer garden decking, under the trees,
you would be talking of funny things that happened
in your student days,
or the woes of working life
and I would find myself looking down at a garden
far below the upper decking,
wondering who lived at the house there
and if they were anything like us…
.
Was it every third or fourth weekend we might
jump on the bus to Tunbridge Wells,
to wander around the Pantiles;
to go treasure hunting
in bespoke jewellery and antique shops,
to dine at The Tunbridge Wells Hotel
on open steak sandwiches, drink
fine Malbec, watch people pass by
outside, and dream, and speak of future plans…
.
DId we really sometimes stay at that hotel in Bath
and visit that spa; did I dream that I swam
in the rooftop pool overlooking the city?
Did our hotel really have two swimming pools
and a sea of lavender surrounding the terrace?
I look at a photo I took through the window
of our room, at the full moon
through a black tracery of tree branches;
it seems worlds away now.
.
Watching a show on TV last night
I could only wonder
did people really
pile into those huge stadiums
swaying, waving, singing along
with the good old boys of rock n roll;
or purveyors of soul, or singers of blues
where everyone was carried away
on magic carpets of music,
with the base jumping, fists pounding
and hearts all bursting with joy?
.
Was it really only a couple of years ago
that friends and relations could still be reunited
with embraces and kisses?
Is the past forever foregone
or is there a place somewhere
which might let us return,
as easily as opening a door?
Just send me the key.
I swear I will stay faithfully indoors
until it arrives.
 
 
Sara Russel latest
 
 
Sara Louise Russell, aka PinkyAndrexa, is a UK poet and poetry ezine editor, specialising particularly in sonnets, lyric-style poetry and occasionally writing in more modern styles. She founded Poetry Life & Times and edited it from 1998 to 2006, when she handed it over to Robin Ouzman Hislop, who now runs it as Editor at this site. Her poems and sonnets have been published in many paper and online publications including Sonnetto Poesia, Mindful of Poetry and Autumn Leaves a monthly Poetry ezine from the late Sondra Ball. Her sonnets also currently appear in the recently published anthology of sonnets Phoenix Rising from the Ashes. She is also one of the first poets ever to be published on multimedia CD ROMs, published by Kedco Studios Inc.; the first one being “Pinky’s Little Book of Shadows”, which was featured by the UK’s national newspaper The Mirror, in October 1999. – (Picture link for Mirror article) – Angel Fire

 
 
 

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)