CODA: THE GHOSTS GO HOME. A Poem by EM Schorb.

      O lost and by the wind grieved,
      ghost, come back again.
      —Thomas Wolfe

. . . so this is luck says Maxine
you can take your freaking luck and shove it
Mama says it was the aliens who helped us
hundreds of flying saucers piloted by
Elvises in sequined pod suits
they lifted us off the cliff
I told you they would I told you
she’s nuts Buddy we’re dead right now
dead and floating away Max dispersing smoke
and just when I thought I was going to heaven
to God’s bright musical castle
where I could play the organ
play Meet Me Tonight in Dreamland
for all the heavenly days of my death
O.K. Buddy but what in hell do you think
I’m travelling for
we left the other goddamned Disney place
three thousand miles back
I want to get away from it all
that’s my heaven
every place is the same Max
every place is Disneyland
now don’t you start sniveling Mama
but home is where the heart is
my heart is with Harry in Orlando
poor old Alzheimer man
I loved him so much
for God’s sake we got all freaking bummed out
I sent a card back home to tell
how you’ve acted you son-of-a-bitch you killed us
and I think you did it on purpose
you think you can drive through space now Buddy
still steering Max
Maxine
what Mama
you children are enough to drive me out of my mind
but the National Star
and the Pod People keep me sane
look at all that space
can you fly this thing Buddy
an American G.I. can do anything he has to do Mama
Buddy sometimes you remind me of Harry
why thanks Mama
doughboys is what we called G.I.s in my day
like you he came back full of holes
but gassed in Belleau Wood
beautiful name to be so horrible
I know I don’t tell you very much
but now that I know we are all going to
heaven together or somewhere
well wherever the pod people take us
I love you both
we love you too Mama
don’t we Max
O.K. so all us suckers love each other
just keep this smoke floating
Mama I think Maxine is blubbering up
crocodile tears Buddy she’s hard as a rock
no Mama you should see her up here
shut up Buddy
she’s had too much beer
no I think the crash is just now sinking in on me
but I’m not going to stop drinking my Lite
I don’t care if I’m dead
you are dead Max we’re all dead
Buddy are you sure you can fly are you
does smoke rise up from a fire
and finally vanish in the sky
I keep on truckin’ like I always done Max
through war and peace Mama
our flag must still wave
through hell and high water Max
I could go on flying this big beautiful
Winnebago with the eagle wing span of an
Enola Gay forever across America
back and forth across this great big
God bless America country

FROM SEA TO SHINING SEA
 
 
E.M. Schorb’s Murderer’s Day, was awarded the Verna Emery Poetry Prize and published by Purdue University Press, and a subsequent collection, Time and Fevers, was the recipient of the Writer’s Digest International Self-Published Award for Poetry and also an Eric Hoffer Award.
 
Other works include 50 Poems, Hill House New York; Words in Passing, The New Formalist Press; The Ideologues and Other Retrospec­tive Poems, Aldrich Press; Eclectica Americana, Hill House New York; Manhattan Spleen, Aldrich Press; Last Exit to East Hampton, Kelsay Books; and The Poor Boy, Dragon’s Teeth Press, Living Poets Series. The title poem, “The Poor Boy,” was awarded the International Keats Poetry Prize by London Literary Editions, Ltd., judged by Howard Sergeant.
 
Schorb’s novel, Paradise Square, received the Grand Prize for Fiction from the International eBook Award Founda­tion at the Frankfurt Book Fair. A Portable Chaos was the First Prize Winner of the Eric Hoffer Award for Fiction. His latest novel, R&R, a Sex Comedy, has won the Beverly Hills Book Award for Humor. But Schorb maintains that he is first and foremost a poet, and his poetry has appeared in numerous publi­ca­tions, such as Agenda (UK), The American Scholar (US), Frank (FR), The Hudson Review (US), Stand (UK), Poetry Salzburg Review (AU), Queen’s Quarterly (CA), The Yale Review (US), and Oxford Poetry (UK), among others.

Now Even Now. A Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop

now even now
it’s like a ghost town now
& O the distant hills

are a more ghostly blue
than before

now even a few stray locals
come & go stranger even now
than they were before &

O the dear police cars patrol
with speakers are more ghostly too

& through my bedroom window
the gable ended stone house wall
grows evermore iconic faces

than before — even now
as daily the days flock by
more than before — now even now

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, and the recently published Moon Selected Audio Textual 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)

Laminations in Lacquer. Audio Textual Poem. Excerpt from Moon by Robin Ouzman Hislop

http://www.aquillrelle.com/authorrobin.htm
 

 
 
In a bright lit night, he lays his bed
deep in hues of Lapis Lazuli.
In the corners sit the winds
dressed like musical chairs.
 
An olive ferments in a pastel saucer
into mossy green minutiae
where a painted flower swallows
against its form, liquid spaces
in lean reflections towards a bottomless well.
 
Veils swim on the verge the flower
defines drawn against
an olive splash of skin
in the glazed lacquer
gloss to the anonymous images.
 
A cock crows cockle doodle do
discrete, concrete, on the fronds
ruffles in the red sprocketed throat
a screech of feathers
stilled in the flower’s passion
in the pool’s hoard.
 
The gibbous mound
a crimson flash in the curtain
through which he passes
beneath the bridges.
A stairway in pastel hue
laps tranquilly cool
to a hole in a wall
a cavernous breach which retains
the scream of the arch
scrawled on a screen
defiant in the stance of plumages
hordes of epiphanies
buried in petrified pastel ripples.
 
Below the rift of its eye
the sealed beak that will open
gleams on the lee.
 
Throughout the entire circumference
can be seen the tilt giving rise
to both translucence, transparency
where the acid, oil separate
only to appear to coalesce
in the almost pure liquid sheen
containing its own light
even in the presence of the vegetative
silt at the bottom of the bowl.
 
At the moment of its brimming
at that line of definition
in a room that roams without corners
he must rise with a chalice of blood for lips of shades
where the vertigo edge of the flower distils the dish
together with the quantities of immeasurable throng
on watery groves billowing with ivy bowers
sprung over hidden lairs of concealed hoards.
 
Night begins and the dogs draw nigh
scavenging for scraps
yapping at the walker’s naked ankles
in the dust of unknown alleys.
 
The broken lights of the bazaar
spangle with glittering promises
the eyes of the dusky beggar
sunk in their sockets maze
in crooked cul de sacs embargo
amidst the furls of silk that foil
the flickering lantern niche
throttled in an olive tray
whilst the flower’s blur does not allow
the stroke that blurs its horizon
and all beneath to return.
 
It is helpless in its light
a camouflage to visitation
to the sigh of the rock’s flow
so few, so few, so few.
 
The olive saturates its wish
outlining monuments amidst the rubble
in momentary musical explosions
and the spell is cast.
 
Fireworks like a diaphanous lithograph
print an emblazoned sky
on the craggy mountains of the night
where comets play at kites
& glistening the eerie beak hisses.
 
 

 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems and translations from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae (the award winning XIII Premio César Simón De Poesía). In November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds, UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020.

Janet Kuypers’ poetry “November 2017 Book Release Reading” 11/1/17

video stills from show

    November 1st marked a November 2017 Book Release Reading through Community Poetry of new books from Scars Publications, which saw the release of the books “Warrior’s Light” from cc&d magazine (with cover photography of the “diamond ruing” of the sun peeking behind the moon during the total eclipse of the sun 8/21/17); and “Monsters” from Down in the Dirt magazine. In his reading, Janet Kuypers read performance art poetry material from cc&d magazine’s book, and haiku as well as poetry from “Monsters”.

    Because there was time during this feature poetry reading event, Janet Kuypers also read material from her 2014 mini-books (from her “Partial Nudity”/“Revealed” book releases) “Part of my Pain”, “Twitterati”, and “Let me See You Stripped” as the finale to the Community Poetry @ Half Price Books reading in Austin.

[tubepress mode=’playlist’ playlistValue=’PLYa-AZK78_hqQoy8FokrQ5KseaUbCwheC’ ]

Poems in this show include (in multiple readings):
the Bathroom at the Green Mill
Frozen Together
the Battle at Hand
On Ashes
Kick Someone Out
Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls

knife
easy
ghosts
Ernesto
Just Thinking About It
Political Merry-Go-Round
Verge on Meditation

Good Escape
In These Times
Part of my Pain
Now That You Got Me
Ever Since you Got Me
Know You Only Got Me
Push Your Button
How People Interpret my Words
Observer’s Love Poem

Poverty in America
Oklahoma water-surfing
Zach makes me Think about these Things
Mechanical Soldiers
Fingers Black
You Cannot Burn Me
Opening Our Own Doors
Guantanamo Bay
Even if the Pope Claims It
Quenching Anybody’s Thirst
From Words to Wars
Money Became an Abstract
Where does the Love Go
Spent
Cast in Stone

Like I was Never There
Scratch the Surface
You are a Force
You Repel Me
Holding Hands

Janet Kuypers’ 9/21/17 “Seasons Change” Dripping Springs, TX “Thirsty Thursday” show

    Chicago poet and Austin resident Janet Kuypers was honored to join poets and musicians at the Dripping Springs City Hall, where she was asked to do a feature for Thirsty Thursday on September st 2017 (9/2/21, or 20170921).

    Included in her poetry show, she started with guitar from John while singing and performing her poem “True Happiness in the New Millennium (2017 Dripping Springs edit)”. In the remainder of her show, her poetry reading about all of the seasons as they change was accompanied by music recordings from the HA!Man of South Africa (including “big drops falling on my walk” and “the cold feeling of touch”, from his “Hotel Music”). The entire show was also accompanied by a random art generation on a computer screen of her images from around the world.

[tubepress mode=’playlist’ playlistValue=’PLYa-AZK78_hoQDsslIhPFa2uoETIBU3Ma’ ]

Seasons Change

    Before the show started she also released a chapbook of all of the short poems she read in this show, and this chapbook “Seasons Change” is still available online even during her reading, so anyone could (and can) download the chapbook titled “Seasons Change” as a PDF file for free any time.

Read the poems and songs from the from the “Seasons Change” show:

True Happiness in the New Millennium (2017 Dripping Springs edit)
Knew I Had to be Ready
Original Snowbirds” (in her book “(pheromemes) 2015-2017 show poems”), “Autumn (2017 Dripping Springs / Bahá’í Faith Center edit)
Marry you in Autumn
Sepia Leaves
Quell the Vibrancy
Seasons 1998”, and “Death Takes Many Forms
Quiver with no Home
Viewing the Woman in a 19th Century Photograph

100 Thousand Poets for Change(100TPC) Leeds 2017 Free Online Anthology

100 Thousand Poets for Change (100TPC) is a worldwide artistic movement whose aim is to raise awareness about our man-made social, political, environmental, moral and economic crises.
Artists have an especial sensitivity and language, as well as a commitment to beauty, spirituality and truth and that is why Artists can and should make a difference in bringing people together and reinforcing their solidarity, with a view on transforming society.
This book was incepted as a digital initiative supporting the 2017 100TPC events across the World that took place on 30 September 2017 concertedly with Thousands of other Artists on the whole planet, including our own reading in Leeds, held in The Chemic Tavern in Woodhouse under the auspices of Word Club.
We have included poems by generous West Yorkshire artists who wanted to contribute to our cause by responding to our invitation with poems on: Revolution, War, Streets, Business, Nations, Equality, Politicians, Conquest, Racism, Love, Europe, Nature, Death, Life, The World, The Good, the Great, the Evil. The Human and beyond.
This is the second of a series of 100TPC published by Transforming with Poetry, this time in conjunction with Word Club.
 
 

 
 

 
 
Co Editors of 100 Thousand Poets for Change (100TPC) Leeds 2017. UK
 
 
Mark Connors:
Mark Connors is a poet and novelist from Horsforth, Leeds. His debut poetry pamphlet Life is a Long is a Long Song was published by OWF Press in 2015. His first full length poetry collection, Nothing is meant to be Broken was published by Stairwell Books in 2017. Mark won the Ilkley Literature Festival Open Mic competition in both 2014 and 2015 and has received a number of prizes and commendations for his short fiction. His debut novel Stickleback was published by Armley Press in 2016 and was longlisted for The Guardian’s ‘Not the Booker Prize.’ His second novel, Tom Tit and the Maniacs was published in 2018 by Armley Press. He runs spoken word nights for WORD CLUB in Leeds and comperes and performs regularly at Literature Festivals. He is a managing editor of the new independent publishing company, Yaffle Press, For more info visit www.markconnors.co.uk
 
 

 
 
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. Tony is also known in the UK for his work as an academic and educator under his real-life name, Antonio Martínez Arboleda. 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, 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. It is available in print and kindle in Amazon and other platforms.
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds) and his latest Collected Poems Volume at Next-Arrivals