poetry

The Body Politik. A Poem by Ron Olsen

March 13, 2016 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

The truth too painful to bear
Honesty becomes the fault
For those who would control
A basis in deceit
Down the Devil’s hole
Where the light of truth
Never shines

Come unto me
You who suffer
And I will comfort you
With words so sweet
So euphoric
An eternal promise
Where fear never dies

A choice
Between fear and hope
Fear the stronger arm
Wins the contest
The evil of lies
Overtaking good
The truth too painful to bear

Only love
Overcomes
Reaching out
Challenging the call
For the annihilation
Of belief
In something better

The beginning the end
The end the beginning
The struggle
To control and contain
The truth
That love enters in
Where fear is cast out

Ron Olsen is a Peabody and Emmy award winning journalist based in Southern California. He is recently retired from the Tribune Company, where he was stationed at the Los Angeles Times, working with the newspaper’s writers and editors to adapt newspaper stories for KTLA-TV. He is the author of more than one-thousand essays and an occasional poem. His essays have been published by several local papers in the Los Angeles area. He began writing poetry just recently. He says he loves the craft of saying more with fewer words, with each word playing a significant role in the piece. “I am sometimes struck by my poetry”
he says.”I’ll look at what I’ve written and wonder where it came from-some wellspring that’s beyond my understanding. What a strange and wonderful process.”

A more complete bio can be found here –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Olsen
http://workingreporter.com/wordpress/a-question-of-priorities/
or at his blog at
http://workingreporter.com/wordpress or his Facebook page at
https://www.facebook.com/workingreporter?ref=bookmarks

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End of World Blues. A Poem by Akpa Arinzechukwu

March 12, 2016 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

The world is aging
Soon perchance
It shall forget how to dance to the rhythm
Of this song

Our lovers in bed with us
Shall become nothing to our eyes than
Logs of wood

Their smiles shall become nooses
To which we shall be hung

And sex
Shall become a frontline
Where blood shall flow in abundance
Desecrating our lands

And the smokes from the chimneys
With other flames from burning bushes
Shall to the atmosphere return

Then
The world shall die
And we the inhabitants

Shall vaporise into the thin
Air

Akpa Arinzechukwu is a Nigerian born poet, environmental activist, blogger and tutor. His works have appeared or will feature on Fundza, Visual Verse, Eastlit, Poetry Pacific and elsewhere. He is currently working on his collection of poetry.

The Last Film. A Poem By Steve Klepetar

March 12, 2016 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

The last film we saw was about a house
in the woods, with an owl circling..

After, you said you saw a painting once, in a museum
in some back street, with a Roman god

parked in front – a house with a circling owl
whose white wings stretched beyond the canvas.

Its wrinkled face tickled your eyes, but the house
itself looked small and broken –

crumbling with rotten boards and holes,
windows cracked and great trees dripping

above a derelict roof. You stopped for coffee then,
small, pale hands warming around the cup,

then bounded down uneven marble stairs just as
snarling guards ushered patrons out into the glowing night.

Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared worldwide, in such journals as Boston Literary Magazine, Deep Water, Expound, The Muse: India, Red River Review, Snakeskin, Voices Israel, Ygdrasil, and many others. Several of his poems have been nominated for \Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize (including three in 2015). Recent collections include Speaking to the Field Mice (Sweatshoppe Publications, 2013), My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto (Flutter Press, 2013) and Return of the Bride of Frankenstein (Kind of a Hurricane Press).

Shadow Land. A Poem by David Chorlton

March 12, 2016 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

The jaguar’s a deity
running away from those who believe in him.

He blends in with the mottled light
that falls on rocks,
turns to breath passing through long grass,
and guides himself by memory

across territory he knew
when he moved in a different body

centuries before
it was settled and mined and divided.
He is so bright now
as he descends from a ridge

the land is the shadow he casts.

David Chorlton was born in Austria, grew up in Manchester, England, and lived for several years in Vienna before moving to Phoenix in 1978. Arizona’s landscapes and wildlife have become increasingly important to him and a significant part of his poetry. Meanwhile, he retains an appetite for reading Eugenio Montale, W. S. Merwin, Tomas Tranströmer and many other, often less celebrated, poets.

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http://www.innerchildpress.com/robin-ouzman-hislop.All the Babble of the Souk

Fruit of Insulin. A Poem by Mark Antony Rossi

February 11, 2019March 12, 2016 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

die hard
the diet
that turns
urine red

watering
grape-stained
bones
of the dead.

sugar sweeter
than young women
unwed

is far kinder
than reason
spoon-fed

Mark Antony Rossi’s poetry, criticism, fiction and photography have appeared in The Antigonish Review, Another Chicago Review, Bareback Magazine, Black Heart Review, Collages & Bricolages, Death Throes, Ethical Spectacle, Gravel, Flash Fiction, Japanophile, On The Rusk, Purple Patch, Scrivener Creative Review, Sentiment Literary Journal, The Sacrificial ,Wild Quarterly and Yellow Chair Review.
http://markantonyrossi.jigsy.com

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Warm. (Series 7/8/9) Poems by Darren C. Demaree

February 11, 2019February 21, 2016 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

WARM #7

I took a turn
into the outskirts
of the assumption

that each darkness
is a cool pool
waiting

for my warmth
& I got burned
many times

by the thick life
that never dies
in that world.

I left
whole years
in those places.

WARM #8

I look twice
at the pinch
of away

& away from
me. I am
taken by

how often
I long to be
the collision.

WARM #9

All over again,
I talked about birth
as flight,

but to take the air
& the wind
at the same time

takes maturity.
We crawl
though every inch

of the warm
cascade before
we ever look up.

We shake
for decades
after we stand.

Darren C. Demaree

“Darren is a dangerous dreamer, concocting love poems to his home state, and pastorals to his true love. But there’s always something more beneath the surface: sex and violence, villainy, mutilation, uneasy redemption and troubled ecstasy. These poems are pins pressed deep in the disfigured heart of America. They work a dark magic on the reader — they’re unsettling in necessary ways.” Christopher Michel

My poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear in numerous magazines/journals, including the South Dakota Review, Meridian, The Louisville Review, Diagram, and the Colorado Review.

I am the author of “As We Refer To Our Bodies” (2013, 8th House), “Temporary Champions” (2014, Main Street Rag), “The Pony Governor” (2015, After the Pause Press), and “Not For Art Nor Prayer” (2015, 8th House). I am the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology.

I am currently living and writing in Columbus, Ohio with my wife and children.

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Whispering Noose. A Poem by Adam Levon Brown

February 11, 2019February 20, 2016 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

The noose perches

above the mold

ridden door, waiting

for all to play

its game

of Thanatos

Swinging

pendulum

of fate’s

design

Slip knot

tied with

blistered

hands

Calling

to the

inner voice

to squelch

the remains

of a life

once celebrated

Rotting, festering

Heat fever dreams

of cooling dread

The dead await I

Adam Levon Brown is a poet and author residing in Eugene, Oregon. He has one published poetry book out, Musings of a Madman, which is a collection of poems made to enlighten and inspire the reader. Adam attributes his love of poetry to the many great poets he discovered in the school library during his formative years. He enjoys listening to political hip hop music and is a political activist himself.

My Author Page: www.ctupublishinggroup.com/adam-levon-brown-.html
My Facebook Author Page: www.facebook.com/AuthorAdamBrown
My Twitter Account: twitter.com/adamlevonbrown

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Stay Close. A Poem by Rehan Qayoom

February 13, 2016 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Stay close to me
My killer, my cherished, stay close
The moment the night crawls
The black night crawls having drunk the blood of the heavens
Carrying a musk balm, carrying a diamond lancet
Arrives mourning laughing, singing
Arrives clinking the crimson anklets of pain
The moment when hearts drowned in bosoms
Begin searching the path of hands hidden in sleeves
In Anticipation
And the regression of wine too like children-sobbing
When the peevish agitated ocean doesn’t divert when diverted
When no precept is made when made
When nothing goes
The moment night crawls
The moment the dwindling, dreary, night crawls
Stay close
My killer, my cherished stay close to me

After Faiz

Rehan Qayoom is a poet of English and Urdu, editor, translator and archivist, educated at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has featured in numerous literary publications and performed his work internationally. He has published 2 books of poetry and several works of prose.

www.rehanqayoom.weebly.com

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