View Issue vol. 10, no. 5
ISSN 2369-6516 (Print)
ISSN 2369-6524 (Online)
Click the author’s name to view a short biography (if supplied) and all poems by that author.
LeeAnn Wallage Brown – Never Just a Kiss…
Harry Garrison – The Intersection Of Music And Math
Jari-Matti Helppi – T.S. Eliot’s Ether
Scot Jamieson – We Are Such Things
Scott Lynch – wellspring forge
David Mac Eachern – Master the Art
Elizabeth Myers – Take It Slow
Richard S. Payne – Flower Power
Robert John Schwarzmann – Dandelions
Gordon Young – The Noble Mallard
The City
Hasn’t forgotten me
Despite How tall I’ve become
Its stone and metal walls
Ever enveloping
With street lights like fireflies
The Sun
Poem by Melissa Boland
Rejuvenating
Refreshing
Life giving
Life taking
The sun gives us so much
Hope for a fresh harvest
Joy after a storm
We languish without it
Winter blues
Cabin fever
Too much burns us
Too little drains us
When we get it just right
Mother Sun sustains us
The scream…
Poem by Robert Gilreath
Meaning and purpose hang limp
On the twisted logic of words
With no inherent meaning.
Collecting broken bits
Of fractured psyches.
The screams of terror
Grow louder by the day.
Impotent hope rules supreme.
Collectively the species
Goes bat-shit crazy.
As the house of cards
Comes tumbling down.
Dandelions
Poem by Robert John Schwarzmann
From dents de lion – lion’s teeth,
Due to their jaggedly spiked leaves
Ravenously conquer well-manicured lawns.
They sprout from gravel driveways,
Erupt out of cracks in asphalt and concrete.
Rapacious, rude and crude weeds,
Shooting up milkdrop-filled stalks,
Topped by bright-yellow sunbursts,
With a fireball centre of brilliant orange.
Then, a miraculous metamorphosis:
Close tight, reopen as round space helmets,
Soft, grey, fluffy as newborn kittens.
The wind lifts thousands of parachutes,
D-Day paratroopers landing behind enemy lines,
Each carries one precious dry brown seed.
And so the invasion continues. Dandelions!
From outer space, taking over the world!
Never Just a Kiss…
Poem by LeeAnn Wallage Brown
A simple meeting of the lips,
Cures loneliness and sorrow.
Brings forth pain to the surface
To escape between the meeting of the mouths.
Merged together in a land of escape,
Murmurs of words whispered with tongues.
Raw and crimson swirls of sweet tasting affection.
Gasps of passion in that moments embrace.
Lips left nibbled upon.
Sparks flying with wings of desperation.
Melted as one in liquid-filled desire.
A kiss is never just two mouths touching.
To Love
Poem by Jasmin Stoffer
To Love,
To everything that Love is
and to everything it should be,
To the way Love feels when you’re in it
and how it feels when you’re not.
To Love,
To Love’s flame, heat, comfort and purity
When the world seems so filled with hate
Love is still love is still love is still love.
To Love,
To how love comes and goes
like tides that ebb and flow
To how love erodes us
down until we are one part of a whole.
To Love,
To less perfection and more rejection
To kiss 100 frogs before princes
and princesses
are found who sweep us off our feet
and make us unstable.
To Love,
To its permanent impermanence
To the way it makes us more of who we are
Like love we are born and we flourish
Like love, we are reborn.
Flower Power
Poem by Richard S. Payne
I’m a Hurdy Gurdy Man,
Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay,
after a Hard Day’s Night.
Me and Bobby McGee,
listening to Mr. Bojangles.
Dreaming of Atlantis,
and the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius.
Flying the Magic Carpet Ride,
in a Gadda Da Vida.
Strawberry Fields Forever,
near the House of the Rising Sun.
and a Whole Lotta Love,
Blowin’ in the Wind,
in a place called Woodstock.
Summer Shore
Poem by Rod Stewart
Let the sun licked sand flow
Between my toes,
While the salted pungent air
Fills my every breath,
Beneath the flecks
Of cloud winged gulls,
That soar heaven high
With shrill banter
Piercing the purest blue.
Only the tumbling surf
Is allowed to echo murmurs
In fleeting passage,
Among nomadic wordless thoughts
Skipping like effortless kisses
Across the rippled surface
Of ambient awares,
Until, I too,
Melt away into nothing
More than a whisper,
From a child’s shell,
Loved and tossed
Away again,
From whence it came.
wellspring forge
Poem by Scott Lynch
spring directs
delicately delicately
from nothing
a new pack of crayons
spills in every shade of green
a blush of pink
the popping of maple buds
terrestrial fireworks
birches call again in irregular lines
mist mysterious
in murmuration
in wonder
dew drops dangle like
the bejewelled baubles of a host of hydra
forsythia magnolia
blossoms of apple and cherry
pastel rainbows
floating above
waves of flooding green
senses are slyly seduced
day upon day
when you remember
to listen with your heart
Master the Art
Poem by David Mac Eachern
A massive system, people’s fate
Better felt by the heart
Care among many, nurtured state
Dealing with symptoms, saving part
Enough can manage the play
For life earned so aligned
Growing among style and phase
High morning through evening design
In many a day away
Just getting together, combined wealth
Knowing rivers by their sway
Love be acquired as health
Making into a storied train
Newly fashioned craze, weather stage
Opened like season minded brain
Peace resolute of passionate age
The beautiful dress has gone
The body exposed door, window’s eyes
Have blurred
It looks the passer or loser
As if it wants to tell them the story of building
But nobody stops to hear its whispers
Until one day an earthmover comes…
chubby bell
Poem by Harry Wayne Mah
Take It Slow
Poem by Elizabeth Myers
Hands raised upwards to plead for relief!
From the expectation of the morning light
To help the weary traveler
To run for the bus,
To catch the droplets of nourishment,
The Gods say to be wise and learn,
What the universe is offering up,
For enlightment;
Become friends with your instincts!
Threshold
Haiku by Ella Dodson
Sun cleaves to Earth’s rim,
Twice daily, liminal space,
Pregnant pause, now choose
We Are Such Things
Poem by Scot Jamieson
We are such things that know we know not,
Nor yet the extent of our will to know,
Nor even if we are caught in a plot
Nor who we are, nor where we go.
Undecided now and then self-derided,
Each everybody gets in their own way.
Are we constructed to be self-obstructed?
We can act parts, but cannot write the play.
Are we a cast of all playwright-actors
Each trying to write the play they’re all in?
We need action, but so many less factors–
There’s all this infighting before we begin.
Noses sniff fears and faces feel tears; eyes
See mouths working, but where are the ears?
The Noble Mallard
Poem by Gordon Young
The noble mallard came soaring
Past a decoy on its mooring
In raspy voice he did declare
“My dear….
You are alluring!”
Her stare was fixed, though coy,
Beautiful, and shy
To any suitor who swam by.
He thought “how fortunate to see
A creature fashioned so perfectly!”
But he was not as he thought so lucky.
For this piece of crafted ornithology,
Was deadly duck pornography.
T.S. Eliot’s Ether
Poem by Jari-Matti Helppi
The table I lied to lay on
lies well the bending pages
of wind swept books
and love letters ethered
to the cruelest month,
as April’s may always does my love, my well spooned coffee love.
And a heart’s distant mystery
asks J. Alfred Prufrock for advice.
The Intersection Of Music And Math
Rectangle Poem by Harry Garrison
Open Heart Forgery 