poetry

Schizotrope. A Poem by James Croal Jackson

September 23, 2019 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Finale was the first program I used to
compose music, in eighth grade, back
when my concern was to score colorful,
simple role-playing games I had created
with RPG Maker 2000. A couple years
later, I used new software, hunched
in the dark of my mom’s living
room, toying with FL Studio’s virtual
equalizers, knobs, and keyboard to craft
Schizotrope, the name of the album
I wrote to process a breakup,
an attempt to conjure you through
some combination of melody
and soundfont. When I listen
now, I hear us both a kind
of cacophonous ghost. Back
then, it was simple to slip on
cheap earbuds and recede into
my childhood bedroom, where we
did what I thought– when growing
up– was growing up. So shifted the
trajectory of my songs. And speaking
again of early sex, I sang off-key into my
coffee-stained Hewlett-Packard’s built-in
microphone, made a MIDI sound
marginally authentic to gift myself, in
the future, reverberations of my coping.

James Croal Jackson (he/him) has a chapbook, The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017), and poems in Pacifica, Reservoir, and Rattle. He edits The Mantle (themantlepoetry.com). Currently, he works in the film industry in Pittsburgh, PA. (jimjakk.com)

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; his publications include

All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, collected poems, 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 Spillage of Singularity. A Poem by Antonio Martinez Arboleda

September 23, 2019August 20, 2019 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Two burnt effigies

flank the dry dirt track,

one of Greta Thunberg,

another of Mad Max

Just one road,

one direction,

across a dessert

that has no end:

A traffic jam

in tomorrow’s land

(vending machines

are empty)

All that trade

All that plastic

All those soldiers

All those Laws

Tell me why

they all speak

the same Language

of water Addicts

in that Oasis

of tin and oil

of heavy metal

of guilt and sweat.

All that Science

All those prayers

All those poems

All that Love

Premium seats

in Noah’s Coach

Chorus of Crickets

orphans of trees

A yellow Finale

of gravity sour

of Mass unaccomplished

of Time that won’t be

All those flowers

All that Music

All that laughter

All that Sex

The story ends when blood becomes so thin that it evaporates, forming clouds that would suffocate the melting mirage in the Monopolitan Globe.

Time to return home from Utter Space, and invent a better fable.

(August 2019, Mad Max: Fury Road and Abu Dhabi)

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

Pollock. A Poem by EM Schorb.

August 18, 2020August 11, 2019 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

here my dream would color truth like roaches bleeding crimson bitter
poison    leading ahead to inspiration   love    questions      accusations
gunshots   brain-wreckage   misdirected footprints    prison   shackles
a thousand promises & quiet penance                  opening sad pretense
regularly burning a familiar promise   simple scribbled dreams perpet-
uate observance   remembrance   hard commandment   rearrange me
buried beneath      torment       please       you        my clinician analyst
disconnect merry poetry       our better wine & recite certain darkness
eyes   fist     weapon pretending freedom   care     more like powerless
whispers we have against least-left morning    low nights    life     time
if driftwood love claim me     I slide matter    marking empty alabaster
moon like long winter there      isolation     thinking:     look           feel
treading them    they almost quiver feel KNOW days    here too swept
on     not stuck     brought off     not seen     felt        thoughtless
how softly lightly   now I bear grace  past will   all built burden
hovers awaiting clamor     the coming night     splintered recollections
will you own certain recesses of dedicated brass?     you          opening
small whispered entry................................................?Pollock,51

Biography

E. M. Schorb attended New York University, where he fell in with a group of actors and became a professional actor. During this time, he attended several top-ranking drama schools, which led to industrial films and eventually into sales and business. He has remained in business on and off ever since, but started writing poetry when he was a teenager and has never stopped. His collection, Time and Fevers, was a 2007 recipient of an Eric Hoffer Award for Excellence in Independent Publishing and also won the “Writer’s Digest” Award for Self-Published Books in Poetry. An earlier collection, Murderer’s Day, was awarded the Verna Emery Poetry Prize and published by Purdue University Press. Other collections include Reflections in a Doubtful I, The Ideologues, The Journey, Manhattan Spleen: Prose Poems, 50 Poems, and The Poor Boy and Other Poems.

Schorb’s work has appeared widely in such journals as The Yale Review, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Chicago Review, The Sewanee Review, The American Scholar, and The Hudson Review.

At the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2000, his novel, Paradise Square, was the winner of the Grand Prize for fiction from the International eBook Award Foundation, and later, A Portable Chaos won the Eric Hoffer Award for Fiction in 2004.

Schorb has received fellowships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the North Carolina Arts Council; grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, the Carnegie Fund, Robert Rauschenberg & Change, Inc. (for drawings), and The Dramatists Guild, among others. He is a member of the Academy of American Poets, and the Poetry Society of America.

PRIZE-WINNING BOOKS
BY E.M. SCHORB
Books available at Amazon.com
_______________________________________

Dates and Dreams, Writer’s Digest International Self-
Published Book Award for Poetry, First Prize

Paradise Square, International eBook Award
Foundation, Grand Prize, Fiction, Frankfurt Book Fair

A Portable Chaos, The Eric Hoffer Award for Fiction,
First Prize

Murderer’s Day, Verna Emery Poetry Prize, Purdue
University Press

Time and Fevers, The Eric Hoffer Award for Poetry
and Writer’s Digest International Self-Published Book
Award for Poetry, each First Prize

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include

All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, 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)

Rabbit Gone. A Poem by Kushal Poddar

September 23, 2019August 3, 2019 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Brothers find purity in war.
In my safe house, hiding, I encounter a rabbit.
Together we watch the boys beat the bush-
muddled bees, flowers turned into petals,
fallen in fragments.
If you ask me what the fear smells like
I’ll say- small mammal, wasp and sting, Jasmine.
Sun traverses the field, nears the volcano of shadows, trees.
Clouds shape a bear, bear tundra, shower on my everything.
I turn. The rabbit’s gone. The rabbit’s gone.

Edited the online magazine ‘Words Surfacing’. Authored ‘The Circus Came To My Island’ (Spare Change Press, Ohio), A Place For Your Ghost Animals (Ripple Effect Publishing, Colorado Springs), Understanding The Neighborhood (BRP, Australia), Scratches Within (Barbara Maat, Florida), Kleptomaniac’s Book of Unoriginal Poems (BRP, Australia) and Eternity Restoration Project- Selected and New Poems (Hawakal Publishers, India) and now Herding My Thoughts To The Slaughterhouse-A Prequel (Alien Buddha Press)

Author Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/KushalTheWriter/

Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; his publications include

All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, collected poems, 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)

Disruptions. Poems by Gary Beck

September 23, 2019July 2, 2019 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

‘Disruptions’ is an unpublished collection that examines the various interruptions to the daily struggle in this difficult life. Author’s Comment.

(i)

Suspension

The days get cooler,
the nights colder,
more and more grey days.
Some say climate change.
Others say nay.
It is difficult to tell
what is or is not normal,
allowing many to ignore
the need to reduce
polluting fossil fuels.

(ii)

Relocation

Many governments
build housing for the poor
often a benefit and curse
at the same time,
since social services
rarely accompany relocation
leaving residents adrift
with insufficient resources
to cope with new conditions.

The Chinese government
has built entire cities
for several millions
uprooting them
for a new way of life
completely unprepared
for a foreign environment
confining them to hi-rises.

(iii)

Freedom State

Whether alone
in public space,
isolated in a crowd,
or solitary confinement,
we are only prisoners
when we stop thinking
about the issues
of our times.

(iv)

Primordial Response

Fear of the machine,
accentuated
by the growing loss
of fear of Nature,
except when propelled into panic
by flood, fire, hurricane,
since for urbanites
the natural world
generally seems benevolent.
Our primitive selves
require something to dread
so we select the machines
that abused so many,
replaced so many,
forgetting that men
make the machines,
operate the machines.

(v)

News Reports

The President says:
Russia didn’t interfere
with our elections,
so of course it must be true.
The new E.P.A. head
is firing the scientists
who believe in climate change.
More and more men are guilty
of harassing women.
Road rage incidents
end in shootings.
A puppy in a pet shop
is stolen by a couple.
And endless amounts of sports,
all kinds for all tastes.
These tidbits just a hint
of what goes on daily
that we never hear of,
suggesting to some of us
we have no idea
what really goes on
in this complicated world.

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director. His poetry collections include Days of Destruction (Skive Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press), Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, Displays, Perceptions, Fault Lines, Tremors, Perturbations, Rude Awakenings and The Remission of Order (Winter Goose Publishing). Conditioned Response (Nazar Look), Virtual Living (Thurston Howl Publications), Blossoms of Decay, Expectations and Blunt Force (Wordcatcher Publishing). His novels include Flawed Connections (Black Rose Writing), Call to Valor and Crumbling Ramparts (Gnome on Pig Productions), Sudden Conflicts (Lillicat Publishers). Acts of Defiance (Wordcatcher Publishing). His short story collections include A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications), Now I Accuse and other stories (Winter Goose Publishing) and Dogs Don’t Send Flowers and other stories (Wordcatcher Publishing). The Republic of Dreams and other essays (Gnome on Pig Productions). Feast or Famine and other one act-plays will be published by Wordcatcher Publishing. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of magazines. He lives in New York City.

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; his publications include

All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, collected poems, 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)

GRIEF COUNSELOR . A Poem by Brian Rihlmann

September 23, 2019June 23, 2019 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

We sat at the bar
sucking back beers
in that smoky roadhouse,
and you went on about it,
and finally said,
“I mean, where is he?
Where did he go?”

Your father, gone,
three months ago
in a freak accident,
his pickup winding up
on its roof in a ditch
for no apparent reason.

You looked at me,
and my lame answer
limped out,
“I believe that
when you’re gone,
you’re gone.”

Spoken like a good
and faithful atheist.
My truth telling
a matter of principle.

You stared at me, nodding
and biting your quivering lip,
Adam’s apple working
as you tried swallowing
the bitter fruit
of my honesty.

I saw it, and quickly said,
“But what the hell do I know?”

And some years later,
I remember you
angrily saying
that when we die
we just rot in the ground,
and I winced
at how you spit
those words out,
and wished I’d lied
way back then.

Brian Rihlmann was born in NJ, and currently lives in Reno, NV. He writes mostly semi autobiographical, confessional free verse. Folk poetry…for folks. He has been published in Constellate Magazine, Poppy Road Review, Cajun Mutt Press, The Rye Whiskey Review and has an upcoming piece in The American Journal Of Poetry

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; his publications include

All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules and Next Arrivals, collected poems, 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)

Collected Poems Laredo Light by RW Haynes Press Release

September 23, 2019May 31, 2019 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

We are pleased to introduce at PLT, RW Haynes recent volume of collected poems hailing from Laredo. It’s been our pleasure to publish a selection of Haynes’ works over the last few years, ( in case of interest view Search or Categories at this site ). He’s a poet with a canny and unique expertise in the craftmanship of the classical sonnet dating from the Renaissance poets and a master of the lyrical mode but absolutely written in contemporary vogue. At times profoundly reflective and self effacing they saunter from the wry and whimsical to the depths of inner movement, whilst harvesting at all times a spectacular vocabulary in accompaniment. Editor’s comment.

Southern Baptists Sponsor Stormy Daniels Forgiveness Tour

“It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.”

–Dolly Parton

Brothers and sisters, we all have turned away
From the true path, but in our faith we know
We can return, though bled half-dry, although
In pain and shame for having run astray.
Judas, too, was born a child of light.
His mother saw in him how love arrives.
His kiss would guarantee that it survives
All storminess and darkness, shining bright.
And we also betray our closest friends
And sell ourselves and them with greedy minds
Until amazing grace assures that conscience finds
We have gone chasing after stupid ends.
And now, O brethren, it has come to pass
We’ve put our money on the wrong jackass.

R. W. Haynes, Professor of English at Texas A&M International University, writes various things in prose and in poetic form. His academic specialty is 16th-century England, but much of his work lately has been on the playwright/screenwriter Horton Foote. His poetry collections Laredo Light and Let the Whales Escape are being published this summer. He recently wrote a play titled Never Claim a Kill, and he hopes to complete his novel The Songs of Billy Bonstead before Laredo cools off again. Another project in progress is an academic work currently titled The Struggling Spirit in the Plays and Screenplays of Horton Foote.

The Arrest of Mr. Kissy Face. Collected Poems by Mitchell Grabois. Press Release

September 23, 2019May 26, 2019 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

The Arrest of Mr Kissy Face Mitchel Krockmalnik Grabois

M Krockmalnik Grabois is a poet extraodinaire, his works lucidly readable are delivered in a paced, snappy even raunchy style ranging from the common place mundane social to the seedy, slapstick macabre. Much of his writing follows the genre of narrator vignettes with the inevitable turn and twist closure punch lines that amorphize a mix of compassion with often hilarious black humor. Indeed, these poems are psychotic taking us to the verge of psychopathy where they compell the reader to a confrontation of her own humanity. A provocative and very recommendable read. For further works by Mitch Grabois see and search links below: Robin Ouzman Hislop Editor Poetry Life & Times, Artvilla.com, Motherbird.com

The Arrest of Mr. Kissy Face

I kissed the woman who slices lunch meat
at King Sooper’s
She shoved smoked turkey at me
leaned away
and called: Next!

I kissed my doctor
I’d been wanting to do it
since she first told me to stick out my tongue
and complemented me on its smoothness
and the elegance of my taste buds
I kissed her and she asked
On a scale of one to ten, how have you been feeling this week?
I kissed her again
Have you been seeing or hearing things that aren’t really there?
Have you been feeling suicidal or homicidal?
I kissed her more deeply
really sent my tongue to a remote locale
Do you have access to weapons?

I said:
How can you ask me that
after everything we’ve been through?
Anyway, this is America

She called Security
Security knew me
from the days when I was a high school football star
and an amateur boxer and cage fighter
who went by the moniker Destructo
They were afraid of me
called the cops
warned them: Be sure to bring your stun guns
your billy clubs
and chemical weapons

The first cop who entered the room—
I kissed her
She yelled FREEZE!
Hands where I can see them!
Get down on your knees!

I happily complied

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over fourteen-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad, including quite a few in POETRY LIFE AND TIMES. He has been nominated for numerous prizes, and was awarded the 2017 Booranga Writers’ Centre (Australia) Prize for Fiction. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a Print Edition . To see more of his work, google Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois. He lives in Denver.

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