Poets

Because Of The Deep Notes. Audio Poems by Stephen Philip Druce

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Because Of The Deep Notes by Stephen Philip Druce
 
I saw poker faced monsters in shuffling cars plot,
i saw the misshapen grins of arching fountains,
the pulsing hounds in shadowed gunshot.
In lost ships i saw ghosts within coats of forgotten stitch,
under the strips of desert skin i saw the old bones twitch.
I saw giants big as churches juggle fire in the alleys
where the fleeing fox sat, among the cracked walls
were the manacled cat calls and pouring fibre rat.
I saw the broken spine of stopped clock as the scattered stars wept,
without the midnight chimes the great conductor in the sky slept.
I saw misbehaving angels in chariots clad in gazelle breeze run,
i saw the roll of a hurricane bowl of palm trees glad of a golden peach sun.
I saw flesh crawl upon deserted beach floors in the name of contorted sin,
i saw the ocean contours rock in tender velvet skin.
I saw horses gallop under backstreet tunnels that curved in graffiti art,
of a rainbow arc illuminating in the dark and our names penned in a love heart –
because of the deep notes.
 
 
img_1140-copy-2
 
 
Stephen Philip Druce is a fifty year old poet from Shrewsbury ( birthplace of Charles Darwin) in England. At college his literary tutors referred to him as ‘The Real Fantasist’, such was the rich imagery he would display in his fantasy based poetry.
 
Stephen is published with Pulsar, Century 121, The Right Place At The Right Time, Bad Scents Of Humour, Muse Literary Journal, The Screech Owl, Hermes, Bareback Literature, Fade, and The Inconsequential.
 
Stephen enjoys reading William Carlos Williams, WH Auden, Philip Larkin, Charles Bukowski, John Keats, and Dylan Thomas.
 
 
Key of Mist. Guadalupe Grande.Translated.Amparo Arróspide.Robin Ouzman Hislop
 
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http://www.amazon.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
https://www.amazon.com/author/robinouzmanhislop

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Adam, Where Are You? A Poem by Franchot Ballinger

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I wasn’t long for that world.
I was treated like dirt.
OK, so I didn’t get to choose my
Name, but I’m my own man, I’ll tell you.
I got to name the filthy beasts,
Who were already there when I
Woke from that dreamless, selfless sleep
I’d been in. What a greeting they gave me—
Their snarling bared teeth, claws and hooves
Mauling the air before me.
They were something else, and I
Was more than glad to say what they were.
It was like the names kept them off.
 
Then she happened, sudden.
I woke from a nap (This one a dreaming-of-me
Sleep). And there she was. Now, where’d she come from?
Not something I could (or would have) dreamt up.
I got to name her too: Eve.
Prophetic, eh?
If such things as beasts and she must be,
There’s comfort in giving a name.
Still, the orders were to take her
As my flesh and bone. One,
We were supposed to be—like lichen or pondlight,
I guess—as if there were no edges to us.
 
What a puzzle. But, you know,
Sometimes that being one stuff wasn’t bad.
I’d wake in the morning from my dreams,
Her head on my chest,
And the light would be like a lilt in the air—
A choral radiance greeting us—and we
Smiled a lot in a certain dim-witted way.
 
But most often we’d stand staring at each other,
Dull as dirt, stunned as deer caught in torchlight.
She clearly wasn’t me and I wasn’t her,
Not that I cared to be. So, all in all, I for one
Was only too glad to get out. Never mind the rumors…
I chose.
During all the “he said, she said” after the trouble,
I felt something crack inside, like a flawed pot
Over-heated in all the hiss and boil of the tiff.
From then on, it was all careless looks and words
Flicked like snot from fingertips.
The light in her eyes flew off
Like a puff of milkweed down across an empty field at dusk.
I saw there was nothing
Between us but echoing air. I
Couldn’t stay, had to be free, and left in dark of night.
Damned if she didn’t follow. I
Could sense her skulking out behind me. I
Didn’t look for fear I’d get yanked back. Maybe
I should have; maybe the old evil eye
Would have sent her back. But She
Caught up, and we stumbled dumbly along.
 
As we still do.
Now, most days and in the long, long
Nights, we scarcely converse.
When we do our voices seem to caress themselves,
And something in them spills and spills
Like rain down denuded hills.
Is this karma, or what?
 
 
Franchot Ballinger
 
 
In retirement after nearly 40 years teaching English at the University of Cincinnati, Franchot Ballinger has continued volunteering with the Cincinnati Nature Center in various capacities and is also a spiritual care volunteer with Hospice of Cincinnati. His poems have appeared in numerous poetry journals in print and on-line.
 
 
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“Jus primae noctis” A Poem by Christine Stoddard

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You call this bed your splendor; I call it my cemetery.
This pillow is my tombstone. This sheet, death’s veil.
 
Your prick has made a ghost of me, yet glaistig I am not.
If I could sing, I might lure you and drink your blood
but voice have I none. No, Monseigneur, none.
 
As soon as my husband slipped the ring on my finger,
you whisked me away to your dark, mossy castle.
The fog filled my lungs and I fainted on your steed.
 
Open any book and you’ll know how the story goes,
‘The funeral follows the wedding.’
 
When the servant slumbering in the trundle bed
bolts up at your bellowing, we shall have a witness
to the death of my honor.
 
I had hoped the priest would deflower me instead.
He is soft and white like a maggot, hardly fearful.
But you are big, as big as a hairy highland coo,
so fearful and yet still so soft, still so white.
 
I had hoped you would’ve been wearing chainmail–
perhaps my silence would seem less pitiful.
Perhaps my husband could forgive me then.
 
Do not call me ‘bonny’ as I writhe beneath you.
Bone the sorrowful lass and be done, bassa.
Be done, be done, be done, be done, be done.
 
 
Christine Stoddard Headshot 2
 
 
Christine Stoddard is a wordsmith and visual storyteller originally from Virginia. While an undergrad at VCUarts, she founded Quail Bell Magazine , which has been featured in Time Out New York, Volume 1 Brooklyn, and Washington Post Express. Her words and images have appeared in The New York Transit Museum, The Feminist Wire, Thought Catalog, The Poe Museum, The Brooklyn Quarterly, Bustle, Figment D.C., the Annapolis Fringe Festival, and elsewhere. Check out more of Christine’s work at
WordsmithChristine.com and WorldOfChristineStoddard.com.
 
 
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Brief Visions of Contemporary Life. A Poem by Ian Irvine Hobson

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I

This gaudy tourist beach
  retired scum of 
      exploit the poor 
      Australia. Playing
golf, faking orgasm, moved
  to pornographic
      cunt/cock fix. 
Sea change? 
  Take me
      back to the ghetto! Alive 
      and troubled.

II

If you work hard to
  privatise your
      testicles, lick
  the cum of 
      ‘benchmark’ and
      ‘quota’; you’ll
  accumulate enough super to
retire here,
      among the buggies
      and boredom.

III

All those four wheel drive
      pseudo - jeeps, with
  with bobbed blonde narcissists
      and three kids to
piano this, and soccer that
  dancing this and tutoring
  that —
such clumsy tanks on the roads
  at twilight 
  crawling home to their
McMansion garages. She
      eyes me like a
      night in the swamp.

IV

A morning where I want to 
   XXXX the world, want
to belch and fart 
   fumes of bodily liberation 
and laugh at the monkeys
   red - assed with scrofula. The 
monkeys off to their paper mausoleums 
   seeking adrenaline-junky highs
from contact sport, all 
   those sado - masochistic males
      banging into each other
      like painted fridges —
   millions of them, aiming between
      human goalposts. I

laugh at the monkeys, red - assed
      with scrofula.

 
 
Ian Irvine Photo

Ian Irvine is an Australian-based poet/lyricist, fiction writer and non-fiction writer:
 
His work has featured in many Australian and international publications, including Fire (UK) ‘Anthology of 20th Century and Contemporary Poets,’ (2008) which contained the work of poets from over 60 nations. His work has also appeared in a number of Australian national poetry anthologies, and he is the author of three books and co-editor of many more (including Scintillae 2012, an anthology of work by over 50 Victorian and international writers and poets). He currently teaches writing and literature at Bendigo TAFE and Victoria University (Melbourne) and lives with fellow writer Sue King-Smith and their children on a 5 acre block near Bendigo, Australia.
 
Links related to his work are as follows:
 
http://authorsden.com/ianirvine
http://www.scribd.com/IanHobson
 
 
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Housing. A Poem by Frederick Pollack

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Dead poets wake in a tremendous castle,
all dark beams, fireplaces, stone stone stone.
Pop-era people flash on Middle-earth,
but older types (like Byron, deadly with boredom)
set them straight. They point out and explain
runes, the wolf and ouroboros
motifs, the giant scattered meadhorns
and outsized chairs – this is
Valhalla. Someone academic, peering
through a window-slit at a misty waste,
asks where the heroes are, who train by hacking
each other apart all day, then drink all night?
Not to mention the Valkyries …
And Coleridge, more than usually stoned,
laughs, Do you think someone would fight for us?
(At which Petőfi and D’Annunzio
frown.) But now the latest crop of dead
nag about dinner. Since most of the place is a freezer
and always full, they’re well-supplied
with venison and auroch, though Marianne Moore
says yet again she would kill for a salad.
Something possesses Ashbery, who tries
to pull an ornamental sword
from a wall, and collapses. Where –
someone asks inevitably – are the gods?
But not even the oldest inmate,
not Pound or the Beowulf-poet, knows
they are off forever trashing the Cabaret Voltaire.

 
 
Frederick Pollock 1
 
 
Author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both published by Story Line Press. A collection of shorter poems, A POVERTY OF WORDS, forthcoming in 2015 from Prolific Press. Has appeared in Hudson Review, Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, Die Gazette (Munich), The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Representations, Magma (UK), Iota (UK), Bateau, Fulcrum, etc. Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, Diagram, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire Review, Mudlark, Occupoetry, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, etc. Adjunct professor creative writing George Washington University.

 
 
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Mascot. A Poem by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

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The cheerleaders
raise a baby elephant over their heads
They are deceptively strong
from years of gymnastics, weightlifting
and cheering
 
Their cheering is so powerful
the other teams default in fear
The cheerleaders’ teams are the champions
without ever dribbling a ball
or giving or receiving a concussion on the gridiron
 
If opponents dare show up
they throw the baby elephant at them
mow them down like
bowling pins
 
The elephant hates this
hates his life
but he tolerates it
 
He knows it’s better than ‘growing up
to be killed for ivory
 
 
Mitchell Poet
 
 
Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois’ poems and fictions have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. He is a regular contributor to The Prague Revue, and has been thrice nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for 99 cents from Kindle and Nook or as a Print Edition
 
 
 
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A Modest Operation of Exclusion. A Poem by R.W. Haynes

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A modest operation of exclusion
Extracts the rain-frog from the desert sands,
The cornered mouse from his confusion,
The vaguely dreaming poet from drowsy lands,
And it even explains, eventually,
Why we do not know, even vaguely,
How we wish happiness to be.
And the operator standing by,
Whose merciful, providential hands
Make this story whole so that I
Throw such eloquence at the silent sky?
 
You see how it is. Ever since I fell
Into the Niagara from that hot-air balloon,
I dream of smiling crocodiles in Hell
Feeding me sherbet with a golden spoon.
 
 

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.

 
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We Hiked West. A Poem by Bhuwan Thapaliya

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We hiked west through the woods
to the tunes of an old Chinese FM radio.
Far away, far away from the anguish
of the malnourished children
scouring railway tracks for food
that may have fallen from passing trains.
 
Far away, far away from the smell
of the rot and sewage of an industrial charade.
Far away, far away from the massacre
in the Narayanhiti
and the Ceausescu’s celibacy tax.
 
Far away , very far away from the
echoes of those black churches in America
where worshipers are seized by the Holy Spirit.
 
We hiked west through the woods.
 
Anxious, exhausted, frail,
we sat around a log fire,
on the edge of the forests
chatting and visualizing a different
vision of the future.
 
But after a while,
the profusion
of sights and sounds
near the flower market
in the Ason Bazaar
invited us home yet again.
 
 
We can’t hike forever, can we?

 
 
 
Bhuwanthapaliya picture

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.
 
Author
Amazon.com/Our Nepal Pride Bhuwan Thapaliya
 
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