The Words. Poem. Sage Sweetwater.



the words
opened a
wound

those nights 
we wrote
yours 
coming out like fine
hairs of a sable brush 
and mine
with the toughness 
of an orange peel well I want 
you to know
I rubbed your words off 
nightly into erotic soft powder screaming

in shades of pastel mixing it up for a day 
when we would have
a likely work to be juried 
by critics too close to ownership but
so far from
the truth
the
words
opened a wound
those
nights
the tension was
so heavy with denial
I could feel it
in the air
what wasn't being said I heard 
so loud until the
silence gave it
away

the words
opened a
wound

***

Sage_Marketing_Photo_Hand_Claw_1

***

Copyright © Ms. Sage Sweetwater, Celebrity firebrand lesbian novelist

 

 

Sage Sweetwater is an American Celebrity firebrand lesbian novelist, poet, storyteller, screenwriter, and business artist who hails from Colorado, USA. Her novels and screenplays are being made into Hollywood High-Budget films. Her complete list of works and bio can be found at   http://www.authorsden.com/sagesweetwater

***

editor@artvilla.com
robin@artvilla.com

www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
www.facebook.com/Artvilla.com

 

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Could I But Show You.Poem.Sonnet.Corey Harvard


***

Could I but show you how a word can grow

into a thorn that lodges deep within 

the softest places of the hardest men,

you wouldn't be so quick to let one go.

In silences, defenseless and alone,

security and self-esteem descend;

ambitions cease and aspirations bend

in victims of a fatal verbal blow. 

 

If I could show you how a word can rise —

bring laughter, bring excitement, bring rapport,

bring nations out of poverty and war —

perhaps your speech would seek a different guise.

What problems of this world could be deterred

if we revered the value of a word?

***

Corey Harvard Image

Corey Harvard  from Mobile, Alabama, (B.A. English & Philosophy, University of South Alabama, 2012), is a young American musician, pianist, vocalist and poet. He began writing verse at age 10 and music at age 12 when his parents bought him a keyboard. He went on to win his 8th grade talent show by performing an original song. Since then, he has published poetry and prose in journals including Tales of the Talisman, Pirene’s Fountain and Sense Magazine, and he has also been featured in Alabama’s prestigious Literary Mobile, an anthology of established (historical and contemporary) southern writers. He has served as associate editor of Sonnetto Poesia and Editor-in-Chief of Oracle Fine Arts Review. In 2009, he was a Pushcart Prize nominee.

***

editor@artvilla.com
robin@artvilla.com

www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
www.facebook.com/Artvilla.com

 

 

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Let the Sun set on me.Poem. Bhuwan Thapaliya.

 

Virgin dry is my throat
and anaemic the veins

that supply my semen
to your embryo.

I cannot ejaculate
a lover’s warmth in your womb

nor can I grab your breast
as they grasp the deity’s forehead.

The lips of the overhead sky bulb
are seeping the blood out of me,

and my tongue
is parched and lonely.

Let the sun
set on me.

Let its crimson sweat of ferocity
spill all over me.

My heart is ready
for the chill of the darkness.

I put my best shirt on
and wait for a bride of the light.

Let the darkness
rise from me,

the darkness that conceals
the bruises of the light.

 
 
 

Bhuwan Thapaliya works as an economist, and is the author of four poetry collections. Thapaliya’s books include the recently released Safa Tempo: Poems New and Selected (Nirala Publication, New Delhi), and Our Nepal, Our Pride (Cyberwit.net). Poetry by Thapaliya has been included in The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry and Tonight: An Anthology of World Love Poetry, as well as in literary journals such as Urhalpool, MahMag, Kritya, FOLLY, The Vallance Review, Nuvein Magazine, Foundling Review, Poetry Life and Times, Poets Against the War, Voices in Wartime, Taj Mahal Review, and more.

***
Bhuwanthapaliya picture
Author
Our Nepal, Our Pride
http://www.amazon.com/Our-Nepal-Pride-Bhuwan-Thapaliya/dp/8182531152

***

robin@artvilla.com
www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes

 

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

A Hard Rain. Poem. Candice James

A hard rain pelts down
Graying the sky to charcoal
The Quay is deserted,
And somehow out of key.

I stand at the guard rail,
Collar pulled tight,
Staring at the cold river.
The wind whirls and swirls
Inviting the river into its frenzy.
The river resists, then slowly submits.
Small ripples at first
Cresting to waves;
Synchronicity somehow present
In this simple chaos.

A young girl
In a pink fleece Parka
And well worn Mukluks
Passes by;
Her eyes as vague
As fading winter sparks

The day dissolves

Night chews on the last remnants
Of a non-descript twilight.
Appetite sated,
She licks her lips
And the thunder rolls
In the bruised atmosphere
Of a hard, hard rain

 

 
2 Poets Laureate — New Westminster Poet Laureate Candice James and Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate Fred Wah at Royal City Literary Arts Society Setp 22, 2013 membership drive
Candice James
***

Poet Laureate, New Westminster, BC

President, Royal City Literary Arts

Honorary Professor International Arts Acadamy, Greece

Board Advisor, Interantional Muse, India

Board Advisor, Federation of British Columbia Writers

Candice James is Poet Laureate of New Westminster, B.C. and President of Royal City Literary Arts Society. She is a poet, musician, songwriter and author of six poetry books A Split In The Water (Fiddlehead 1979);Inner Heart―A Journey; (2010), Bridges and Clouds (2011); Midnight Embers–A Book of Sonnets (2012); Shorelines-A Book of Villanelles (2013); and Ekphrasticism (2014).   Websites: http://saddlestone.shawwebspace.ca   and  www.candicejames.com

 

robin@artvilla.com

www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes

 

 

 

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Downtown Waco. Midnight. Heidegger Looks at the Moon. Poem. Sonnet. R.W.Haynes

 

The Bush Library really should be here,

For each dead city needs a laugh or two,

A little something so the skeletons can jeer

On nights like this when there’s little to do

And nothing to haunt but the haunting lack of hope

Where words are born to sputter anxiously

Toward brief life in some half-bungled trope

Irrecoverable etymologically.

Is there another cyclone on its way

To re-mix this desperation here?

To make words and deeds mutually obey

A dim correspondence–never more clear

Than the misshapen moon cruising so high

Over the Brazos in the hopeless Waco sky?

***

On the Savannah River 2013

***

R. W. Haynes has taught literature at Texas A&M International University since 1992.  His recent interests include the early British sonnet, and he is completing a second book on the Texas playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote (1916-2009).  In his poetry, Haynes seeks to celebrate life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without sounding any more dissonant notes than he has to.  In fiction, he works toward grasping that part of the past which made its mark on his generation.  He enjoys teaching drama, especially the Greeks, Ibsen, and Shakespeare, and he devoutly hopes for a stunning literary Renaissance in South Texas.

***

editor@artvilla.com
robin@artvilla.com

www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
www.facebook.com/Artvilla.com

 

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Settling City. Poem. John Horvath Jr

(i.)
A world made from the refuse of a higher world of culture,
a domain of trash, immature myths, inadmissible passions…
City is stench of alewife millions inextricably dead on pebbled
beaches after icebreaks on Lake Michigan. Fisheyes reflecting
beached debris and the latest arrivals arriving amid girder and
concrete Sullivans and Wrights. They as did them who built the
buildings join the city to become steel or slag, oiled machine,
part of the stench
 
Empty belongings from cars: Packard backseat divans, fruitcrate
end tables, curtains of plastic, crazy quilts, heirlooms, family
icons. On once cobbled streets, children are tribal on the curb–
at the edge of the world–displaying their valorous conquests
of enemies left behind, ancient or old, forgotten–no, in the city
never forgotten.
Work is rock: hard underfoot raucous dance of souls like morning
mists that settle, rise, vanish in the same low empty spaces–like
dunes that wander from waste to waste over farmlands abandoned.
The village known by its brokenness–That friend in the mist
boiled in oils from broken pipelines; The neighbor there in the mist
butchered by ingots thrown from rollers; There in the mist a father
crushed in the presses. Around the dancehall wallflower daughters
painted for paychecks recognize brothers and sons who in the mists
begin to belong to the city.
 
City is forge: rhythm out of the afternoon cacophone language of traffic-trapped
cousins cursing the ongoing babble of sledges and hammers that encircle their
metallic-tint enclaves of gas dreams. Afraid to unignite engines and escape, leap
the icefloes of autos jammed forever up and down stream–Ford, Dodge, Chevrolet,
Dodge, pimpwagon, Volkswagen, Dodge, druglord Mercedes, turn-about, run.
Who walks here passes into stone unfinished.
 
There faces are the sculptures of workdays beaten into their souls
over time that begins with the end of their villages, farms, families.
City is history. From Hoosier Dunes to Chicago Loop, then circle
      back again, down Dan Ryan to East-West 90 Interstate, round
      from Kankakee and Little Calumet to the temple of the rich,
      archaeology dreamlit with comers refusing to melt into mist
      later and earlier, 1846, late 80, 1926, 46, 56, today or after,
      maybe another time altogether and around every corner a new
      homeland where it’s always the Springtime and waves roll
      onto the lakeshore leaving new stenches of alewives with
      dead eyes rushing toward Bedlam out of old whoring Babylons
      across dead seas, across rolling vast flatlands.
               Come like belligerent hordes to the mills
      where summer heat sparks from dried loins,
      muscular shapes–like salted meats–boil
      onto asphalt murdering of thought, never
      take home the punishment, trouble, dirt,
      or the danger of workplace. Consumption
      and power in sweet sweaty hands gripping
      hot steering wheels along potted streets
      narrowly leading toward quiet exhaustion
      proud of private slow death for girders,
      rails, and–for the wealthier–appliances
      (sons and daughters desiring such honors
      follow footsteps of foolhardy martyr fathers.
      They dream they will conquer the dragons
      that spat the flames that marked fathers
      who worked in the mills for a living but
      only inherited scars like the slavebrands
      their daddies had carried as birthright).
            father, I love you.
A man hears himself saying what his father had said his son would
say when he looks into his rearview mirror mirroring traffic come
to a halt like Lot’s wife; He hears himself cursing his father’s
curse when he curses that self like himself stalling all forward
movement. In a language of the dead, sinner and saint correspond.
            father, I love you.
      When passion has gone after the work must end
      alone in the heat of coffin-like cars dead in
      the end of shift traffic, ghosts come to say,
      you, you are the father who brought you here.
            father I love you.
      you are the mistaken idea of rescue beyond the village walls
      escape into purgatory of factory days from the hell of knowing
      every valley dweller by name and the dates of their first loves.
This is the city: when you look back on what it was to you when
you were mocked neutered and cowered, primmed for display in it,
bled by it, when you have fled from it, left someone behind in it,
when you are gone from it, when you are gone… the city is yours.
            father, I love you.
            This city is yours.
            It is the village
            It is the valley
            The dried farm
      you sought to escape.
 
The city is history. Rebuild its monuments. Make way for boulevards;
Leave the façades, the mirroring windows, the pointed roofs, the false
faces of what you’ve made and the chimneys
whose rich dark smoke recall death’s communards.
This city is yours. It is where your child blew her first kiss away,
      It is where your sons blooded their first enemies, where all
      the passions denied you long ago from some false sense of dignity,
      honesty, integrity, the church that held like glue together family,
this city is yours now that all that is past.
It is your country to where the street signs end,
to where garbage is taken and the dead are buried.
***
(ii.)
CALUMET
 
a kulfoldi magyarjaihoz
for Hungarian emigres
 
Cartwrights and sailors and farmers
leaving families, histories, icons,
you came to this blast-furnace city
as if God’s own breath blew through
its chimneys a forgiveness of greed
but you were not the first to come:
Endlessly East moves West,
West moves endlessly East,
toward Calumet drab smoke,
into cauldrons and furnace,
into the moments of common
machine and common labors,
into this moment of common language.
Strangers forged into a new race.
 
Nothing–
not a slightest movement–
could have been differently.

 j horvarthartworks-000060366186-taqx8y-t200x200

 

Southside Chicagoan and second-wave immigrant John Horváth Jr. now lives in Mississippi; he has published his poetry nationally and internationally since the 1970s. “Doc” Horváth has taught creative writing, literary criticism, and theory. Having been an online mentor to new and emerging poets, in November 1997 he published and now edits poetryrepairs.com [www.poetryrepairs.com], a zine dedicated to promoting contemporary international poetry.
 

“Veteran of two wars, retired Professor of English in Mississippi, the poet with a unique and brilliant and cutting perspective of southern culture and religion teams up with talented musicians to produce something quite unique. The language of the Veteran and the south and poetic style with good music.”…..David Michael Jackson, www.artvilla.com

See also:  Excerpt from Blues Man Joe from the Album Reverend Terrebone Walker John Horvath Jr. Label The buy link at… fb.me/2T11LMNlh

 

editor@artvilla.com
robin@artvilla.com

www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
www.facebook.com/Artvilla.com

 

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Forsaken, the Carthaginian Quartet. Poem. Joseph Armstead



…the warm waters of the Punic ports stir fitfully…
 
City of Bones, languid and arid, it sleeps,
skeletal ruination of Phoenician dominion,
Hellenistic citadel, on the eastern shores
of Lake Tunis, once a sandy jewel
in the crown of Elissa,
birthplace to Hannibal,
and legends of endless war…
 
the squawking of gulls threatens the silence

1.) Confessio Nunquam
 
— my voice will hide —
the membranous gates
to my secret heart
are stitched shut, sown
of coarse thread, spun of denial,
I let nothing bathe
in the revealing light of day,
hiding nakedness
behind a fragile,
cracked, mirror-mask,
a spiders’ web map,
faultlines of the psyche…
 
— Sssshhhhh—!

2.) A Strange Blindness
 
History obscured
behind a wall of lucid dreaming,
soft-focus P.O.V.
through the vaseline
smeared over a camera lens,
I clutch the Past to my chest,
cautionary, restrictive,
custodial, prenominal,
let no picture escape, no image
be seen, no tableau unfold,
sub-rosa, clandestine,
none can know the Truth…
 
— cryptic, let sleeping dragons lie — 

3.) Sigmund Benedicta
 
…shamed, I camouflage my ferocity…
 
I am struck mute.
 
searing magma of flaming tears
behind eyes swimming
in the memory of damnation,
while shameful denial forms the lyrics
to a song stuck in my throat,
words set to the music of heartbreak
waiting to play
before an audience
eager to judge…
 
chaotic, quixotic, impracticable and dreamy
my anarchy seeks its voice
 
— hush, I will not speak —

4.) The Justinian Variation
 
the dam breaks, the levees are overrun,
the hot stones of the rocky shoreline hiss
as the waters cascade inward from the harbor
 
the necropolis coughs its myths
into the air, fable and folklore
dancing with skeletal ghosts
through the haze of antiquity,
 
and the waters rise yet higher
and the sun-baked ruins grow cool
 
The sound of my voice astonishes me:
bygone phonems, repressed grammar
and disremembered syntax mix
with nostalgia
creating a lullaby
for ravens.
 
Unrestrained, I sing
powerfully
in the City of Bones,
the squawking gulls
my choir…

 

BIO
 
Joseph Armstead is a suspense-thriller and horror author living in the United States’ San Francisco Bay Area.   Author of a dozen short stories and ten novels, his poetry has been published in a wide range of online journals, webzines and print magazines.   A mathematician, Futurist and computer technologist, Mr. Armstead’s poetry often defies easy description, but frequently includes neo-classical imagery, surrealist viewpoints and post-modern themes.

http://redroom.com/member/joseph-armstead

http://www.amazon.com/Condemned-Of-Heaven-Joseph-Armstead/dp/0578013665

 
robin@artvilla.com

www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes

 

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Madrid 1973.Poem.Video.Guadalupe Grande.

http://youtu.be/fv52Adoh_GE

***

 

¿Y si fuera otra la ciudad,

apenas vaho sobre el cristal”,

 apenas un puñado de azogue sobre el vidrio?

 

 

Pero entender es extranjero;

tienes que dar un paso a tu costado,

abandonar el familiar aliento:

ese que teje con su alma de humo

el calendario absorto de los días;

el que hilvana en la sombra del horizonte

la pupila del tiempo;

el que sostiene,

con alfileres de arena entre los dedos,

los muros de la infancia,

las calles que ya no son, las horas

que ya se fueron,

los escombrados descampados que ahora son penumbra en el mostrador

 

Sin embargo, tú sigues viendo

el horizonte con su sombra

allí donde hoy hay un garaje.

 Entre llaves y llantas,

 entre motores y carrocerías

 entre este mono azul y el suelo gris

 aún huyen por las piedras los lagartos,

 aún deja el caracol su rastro en la escombrera.

 

 Florecen los almendros,

 los trigales se elevan:

 regresas con un olor a cardo y cicatriz,

 vaho de miel,

 apenas                         fragmentos de un azogue

 ardidos en la hoguera.

 

 

La puerta del garaje se ha quedado abierta:

te asomas absorta a tu costado,

te quedas ahí, quieta, “respirando el verano”,

recordando,

respirando, recordando

la canícula secreta,

 

olvidando, mirando, quieta:

resbala una libélula

entre manos grasientas,

cae una tuerca,

cantan

¿quién canta?

llaves, llantas, ruedas

y unos niños que saltan

al estupor de piedra en piedra.

Correr sin caerse entre los escombros.

Correr deprisa, muy deprisa,

saltar, correr, cantar,

correr

antes de que todo desaparezca,

antes de que se acabe el verano,

antes de que ya solo quede

este garaje,

este vaho, este cristal,

este hombre rodeado de llaves,

aceites, llantas, tuercas,

piezas del velatorio de tu infancia.

 

Qué tarde se ha hecho:

aunque hemos sorteado los escombros,

cruzado los almendros, atravesado el trigal,

aunque estamos sudorosos y sin aliento,

la ciudad ha llegado antes,

ha llegado más lejos,

más deprisa, más dónde:

apenas un hilo sobre el cristal,

un puñado de azogue sobre el vidrio.

 

Es otra la ciudad

y entender es extranjero.

 

 ***

 Madrid, 1973

 

 

And if the city was otherwise,

just haze on crystal”.

just a handful of quicksilver on the glass?

 

But understanding is alien;

you need to step beside your side,

abandon the familiar breath:

the one that with its soul of smoke

knits the absorbed calendar days;

the one that threads the horizon´s shadow

through the pupil of time;

the one that holds

with pin heads of sand between its fingers

the walls of childhood,

the streets that are no more, the hours

already gone,

the dumping tips that are now twilight on the countertop.

 

Yet still you continue to see

the horizon with its shadow

where today a garage stands.

Between spanners and tyres,

between motors and bodyworks,

between a blue boiler suit and a grey floor

where lizards still dart amongst the stones,

where a snail still leaves its trail on the dump.

Almond trees flourish,

wheat fields rise up:

you return with a smell of thistle and scratches,

honey dew,

just fragments of quicksilver

burnt at the bonfire.

 

The garage door has remained open:

absorbed you peer into your side,

you remain there, still, “breathing the summer”,

remembering,

breathing, remembering

the secret midsummer heat

 

Forgetting, looking, still:

a dragonfly glides

between greasy hands,

a screw drops,

they sing,

who sings?

spanners, tyres, wheels

and children hop scotching

amazement from stone to stone.

 

Run without stumbling over the rubble.

Run fast, very fast,

skip, run, sing,

run

before everything vanishes,

before summer is over,

before only

this garage

this haze, this glass

remain,

this man surrounded by spanners,

oils, tyres, screws,

pieces of your childhood´s wake.

 

 How late it´s grown:

even though we´ve avoided the dump,

crossed by the almond trees, passed through the wheat field,

even though we are sweaty and breathless,

the city has arrived before,

has arrived more far,

more quick, more where:

just a thread on the crystal,

a handful of quicksilver on the glass.

 

The city is otherwise

and understanding is alien.

***

Original Translation Amparo Arrospide & Robin Ouzman Hislop

***

 Guadalupe

Guadalupe Grande was born in Madrid in 1965. She has a Bachelor degree in Social Anthropology. Published poetry books: El libro de Lilit, (Renacimiento, awarded the 1995 Rafael Alberti Award, 1995), La llave de niebla (Calambur, 2003), Mapas de cera (Poesía Circulante, Málaga, 2006 and La torre degli Arabeschi, Milán, 2009),  Hotel para erizos (Calambur, 2010) and Métier de crhysalide (an anthology, translated by Drothèe Suarez y Juliette Gheerbrant, Alidades, Évian-les-Bains, 2010).

As a literary critic, she has published in cultural journals and magazines, such as El Mundo, El Independiente, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, El Urogallo, Reseña and others.

In 2008 she was awarded the Valle Inclán grant for literary creation in the Academia de España in Rome.

In the publishing and cultural management areas, she has worked in institutions such as the Complutense University of Madrid Summer Courses, Casa de América and Teatro Real. Currently she manages poetical activities in the José Hierro Popular University at San Sebastian de los Reyes, Madrid.

The poems “Ocho y media” (Half past eight) and “Madrid, 1973” belong to La llave de niebla, and have been translated into English by Robin Ouzman Hislop and Amparo Arróspide.

 ***

Guadalupe Grande nació en Madrid en 1965. Es licenciada en Antropología Social.

Ha publicado los libros de poesía El libro de Lilit, (Renacimiento, Premio Rafael Alberti 1995), La llave de niebla (Calambur, 2003), Mapas de cera (Poesía Circulante, Málaga, 2006 y La torre degli Arabeschi, Milán, 2009),  Hotel para erizos (Calambur, 2010) y Métier de crhysalide (antología en traducción de Drothèe Suarez y Juliette Gheerbrant, Alidades, Évian-les-Bains, 2010).

Como crítico literario, ha colaborado en diversos diarios y revistas culturales, como El Mundo, El Independiente, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, El Urogallo, Reseña, etcétera.

En el año 2008 obtuvo la Beca Valle Inclán para la creación literaria en la Academia de España en Roma.

En el ámbito de la edición y la gestión cultural ha trabajado en diversas instituciones como los Cursos de Verano de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid, la Casa de América y el Teatro Real.  En la actualidad es responsable de la actividad poética de la Universidad Popular José Hierro, San Sebastián de los Reyes, Madrid.

Los poemas “Ocho y media” y “Madrid, 1973” pertenecen a La llave de niebla y han sido traducidos al inglés por Robin Ouzman Hislop y Amparo Arróspide.

 

 
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop Editor of the 12 year running on line monthly poetry journal Poetry Life and Times. (See its Wikipedia entry at Poetry Life and Times). He has made many appearances over the last years in the quarterly journals Canadian Zen Haiku, including In the Spotlight Winter 2010 & Sonnetto Poesia. Previously published in international magazines, his recent publications include Voices without Borders Volume 1 (USA), Cold Mountain Review, Appalachian University N Carolina, Post Hoc installed at Bank Street Arts Centre, Sheffield (UK), Uroborus Journal, 2011-2012 (Sheffield, UK), The Poetic Bond II & 111, available at The Poetic Bond and Phoenix Rising from the Ashes a recently published Anthology of Sonnets: Phoenix Rising from the Ashes. He has recently completed a volume of poetry, The World at Large, for future publication. He is currently resident in Spain engaged in poetry translation projects.
 
 
robin@artvilla.com
PoetryLifeTimes
Poetry Life & Times

editor@artvilla.com
www.artvilla.com
Artvilla.com
 
 
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
 

Amparo Arrospide (Argentina) is a Spanish poet and translator. She has published four poetry collections, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar and Presencia en el Misterio as well as poems, short stories and articles on literary and film criticism in anthologies and both national and foreign magazines. She has received numerous awards. Together with Robin Ouzman Hislop, she worked as co-editor of Poetry Life and Times, an E-zine.

Share and Enjoy !

Shares