Poetry Life and Times: Featured Poets

Featured Poets this month include: Leland Jamieson, Debashish Haar, Joe Ruggier, Alexander Shaumyan, Len Bourret.
Many thanks to all contributors.

LELAND JAMIESON

Brief bio: Leland Jamieson, a performing arts center manager for most of
his working life, is retired and lives in East Hampton, Connecticut,
USA. His recent and forthcoming work appears in *Bellowing Ark, Blue
Unicorn, Candelabrum, Raintown Review* and *3rd* Muse. He has gathered
many of his published formal poems, some with streaming audio, under the
title *Needles in a Pinewood* at www.geocities.com/lelandjamieson. He is
hawking a longer book manuscript by the same title. Major influences on
his work, after Shakespeare, of course, are Robert Frost, William Carlos
Williams, Wallace Stevens, William Stafford, and Timothy Steele.

OLD FOLKS AT HOME

In Memory of G.M.P., 1900-1979.

Persistence tastes of salt,
is sweeter than a malt,
achieving on its own
the codger and the crone.

They’ve ceased to need to mince
their words, or to evince
to neighbors, flush-cheeked youth,
their wisps of frivolous truth.

RELAXING INTO HIS OWN

Whose was that deep male voice he just
could hear beneath his study floor?
So late! Who was the neighbor thrust
himself on her at their front door?
Best he step down and rescue her,
so she can get some sleep tonight.
Pretext? He’ll raid the fridge! Yes-sir!
He clumped downstairs to get a bite.

The voice? Astonishing! Their son!
How could he not have recognized
their flesh and blood, who’d now outrun
his ears, and held them mesmerized?
The voice rose up, a child’s again.
Now — where’d he stash that fresh cayenne?

ART SCHOOL STUDENT WAITER’S SURMISE

“One table, seating eight.” The voice, a blare,
a bark accustomed to command, rolls in
on waves of frigid air, on snow’s white glare.

Four kids march in, each like a mannequin,
the youngest last, who’s clutching Mother’s slacks,
then Grandma, Papa, and Mister Discipline.

The elders’ water-view of Halifax,
their kids, their grand-kids — none holds their attention.
They eye each other’s eyes . . . . They grieve lost wax? *

*NOTE: “lost wax n (1909): [from] a process used in metal casting that consists of ...[sculpting] a wax model, coating it with a refractory to form a mold, [and] heating [it] until the wax melts and runs out....” — Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Ed.

c. All poems by Leland Jamieson, 2006.

top of page

JOE RUGGIER

BORN in Malta on 26 July 1956, JOE RUGGIER is primarily a poet and literary critic. He has been published significantly in poetry magazines in Britain and North America and has also published in MALTESE FORUM, a Toronto-based magazine for Maltese immigrants to Canada edited by the late C. CARUANA. Published by Pierpont Press, THE VOICE OF THE MILLIONS, his Selected Poems, appeared in Wisconsin in 1988, and since then the book has run into a 3rd Edition. The 8th, definitive Edition of OUT OF BLUE NOTHING - his cycle of 24 Shakespearean sonnets which first came out in 1985 and which previously ran into a 5th Edition as a book in its own right - is now featured as Part Three of the 3rd revised edition of THIS ETERNAL HUBBUB. The first seven editions of OUT OF BLUE NOTHING have been sold out and this book has now attained national best-seller status for a Canadian book of poetry.

MR. RUGGIER belongs to an international circle of poets and editors who have committed themselves to reforming the prevailing literary climate by bringing about a Traditionalist Revival in writing. In this regard, RUGGIER manages his own small Press, MULTICULTURAL BOOKS, and is the Managing Editor and 100% Owner of his own poetry magazine, THE ECLECTIC MUSE.

**Our Deserted Oceans [*]**

to my Old Man

Who hath not gazed in awe upon the Ocean?

or whose breath heaves not at its boundless motion?

For over eighty centuries sheer romance

hung o’er the Ocean, food, adventure, chance;

and lands beyond the sun held potent magic

of the unknown, a beauty wild and tragic.

We have shortchanged the coast for aerodromes;

the lovely sea for square, blank, inland homes.

One hundred years ago did liners throng

the waves, Marseilles , Bombay , New York , Hong Kong ,

a thousand names; a thousand more arose,

Swissair, AirFrance ... jet aircraft by the nose!

Planes used fine fuel then, the tankers now

pollute the Ocean, aircraft the ozone brow.

Earth’s bowels are burnt aloud above our head,

and make for global warming: man is mad!

Vessels then consumed a moderate fuel.

Jet aircraft now burn and unload their gruel

in millions of barrels a minute transformed to heat

and sulphurous fumes; and millions think it’s neat

to travel in a rush, where travelling once

was restful ease and sober, rare romance!

Old Wordsworth saw it coming, Humanity

at odds with Nature, and he blest the sanity

of those at peace with God and mother Earth.

The seas now lose their spell; we inhale dirt.

Our deserted Oceans need love and care:

use much more but much more wisely, and be fair!

In less than fifty years we short exchang’d

what Heaven harmoniz’d, plann’d and arrang’d,

for speed, the brainchild of two murderous wars

which blitzed old ways of life, and clos’d the doors

upon them, before we could weigh and assess

the dire consequences and the murderous mess!

Dazzled by speed, our joy is slowly sinking:

is it not time we stop, take stock, and thinking

retreat like monks, pray for support and guidance?

weigh all the progress made, the boons of Science?

do nothing more before we see the Light

shine through the plunging, dark, polluted Night?

and soften’d by Wisdom, utilize the proud

discoveries we made and boast aloud,

into a harmony resembling rhyme,

a richer blessing unto the end of Time?

19th January 1999

[1] From … A Richer Blessing, Poetry & Prose by Joe Ruggier.1st Edn July 1999. Multicultural Books, 307 – 6311 Gilbert Road , Richmond , BC , V7C 3V7 CANADA . ISBN 0-9681948-3-4. Copyright © 1999 Joe M. Ruggier. Our Deserted Oceans pp 62, 63.

Copyright © Joe Ruggier, 1999- 2006.

You can read a review of This Eternal Hubbub in the Pandora Box.

Alexander Shaumyan

Alexander Shaumyan was born in Russia in 1962 and immigrated to the US in 1975. His poetry gained international fame in many small presses and online publications. He published translations of Russian poetry and poetry in other languages. His poetry has been taught by Professor Gerald Smith at Oxford University .

"Alexander Shaumyan's trademark is wry or self-effacing humor, heart rending psalms of loneliness and love, and cynical commentaries on modern times. Alexander Shaumyan is a prolific poet who writes in a wide range of styles on a multitude of subjects. His work is well worth contemplating."

--Laurel Johnson, Midwest Book Review

Place Where Light Is

In these cold rainy nights,
In these streets, in these dreams
I'll walk in my solitude
To a place where light is.

Do not ask who I am,
Do not ask where I go--
I've lost all direction,
Yet I always knew this--
I'll find my way back
To a place where light is.

No, it can't be that far--
I've walked many miles,
I've seen it in a smile
Of a girl like a breeze--
I'll find my way back
To a place where light is.

I've been walking in darkness
Of frozen minds,
I saw hearts that were numb
And eyes that were blind,
I saw tears and pain,
War and disease,
But I just kept on walking
To a place where light is.

Yes, I know it's near,
By those mulberry trees
And those valleys of daffodils,
Where the hummingbirds sing,
Where my love rests in waiting
With a smile like a breeze--
Yes, I'll find my way back
To a place where light is.

Copyright © by Alexander Shaumyan

How Do I Love Thee?

I love you more than all the bull
That you'd been telling me,
I love you more than all those guys
That you had shagged for free,
I love you more than love itself,
For it is just a word,
I love you more than kitty cats
And chirping little birds,
I love you more than hollow lines
Of Hallmark poetry,
I love you more than little faith
That you'd placed in me.

I love you more than all your lies
And your bisexual ways,
I love you more than all your art
That I've come to hate,
I love you more than puny geeks
That you've been living with,
I love you more for teaching me
That I have more to give,
I love you more than empty sex
And lost virginity,
I love you more because I've learned
That love must start with me.

Copyright © by Alexander Shaumyan

She Storms My Brain

She storms my brain
in psychedelic colors
and discordant rhythms,
leaving me breathless
as I explore new shapes
and forms of knowing.

Like Lucy in the sky
and Mary Jane--
she storms my brain--
my strange new flower
with feverish bright petals
that leave me mystified.

She dances to the synesthetic
music of red and orange
notes that I can taste upon
my tongue, laughing like
a transparent angel
in a warm summer rain--
yes, there she goes again
storming my brain.

And I have no way of knowing
where I am or where I'll be--
I just come out deranged
and beautiful, smiling like
the sun. And she...
Well, she just laughs at me
and storms my brain.

Copyright © by Alexander Shaumyan

top of page

Debashish Haar

Debashish Haar is the editor of The Alchemy Post. He has served the publishing industry in various capacities, and has seen his work published in many journals across the world. He loves anonymity and lives a very simple life with his own world of lofty ideas. He is a theoretical physicist by training, and was once into cutting edge research.

Billboard Girl

She shows
her fiberglass hair,
double-edged tongue,
pierced at odd places.

She has a body,
a mind, a gleaming
necklace, a silk dress
that reveals more
than it hides.

She looks pale behind
dark glasses, her lips crack
like black-cotton soil
when she forgets
popping pills.

Diffuse

They leave me, as I leave them:
flesh, bones, blood,
violated corpses,

fossils of flies and insects
that do not last a day.

A half mind searches
another half,
half understood
by the other half,
a half-eaten butterfly, tastes
honey, searches
for its prey,
a worm on a leaf (eating,
being eaten) decomposes
into soil—
names and forms—
diffuse and erase.

Amnesia

I have written this before.
Last time it was incomplete
with words that made rows
of towers and buildings,
of flowers and ladies.
This stanza breathes
for words to complete
the transparency.
Take the liberty and enter
a new room without opening
a door, or walking a corridor.
Even the date and time have been effaced;
memory has drained out like ink in my pen.

When I speak of weather I mean share prices,
when I speak of business I mean movies,
when I speak I mean to listen,
when I listen I mean to speak.
The line-break suggests I am in wilderness
or somewhere far away from any information.
Is this a repeated story of my city,
with many destinies and few ways,
or is this about a cardiac arrest of a system
due to arteries blocked with dreams?
The distance between memory
and awareness traces maps:
deserts and oceans, snakes and sharks.

This Moment

This moment's an allegory
which nobody knows,
no one understands.
It stammers and rattles,
and speaks everything at once.

A risk to read its writing:
the helices, loops, and vanishing ink.
Not certain that it's itself,
no one else, not another moment.

This moment's a metaphor,
growing like thirst in a desert,
like garbage in a mega-city,
like hydrocarbon emissions,
like the population,
like the prologue of this story.

It's warmer than midday air,
colder than water,
faster than a shooting star,
gentler than an evening breeze.

This moment's a mirage.
It shifts like the dunes in a desert
and speaks everything at once.

Observing Nakedness

The marbled and the waxed name
the streets and parks, nameless die
in the name of God.
In forests and hill resorts leaders play
Chinese whisper with fireflies and stars.

Christs are chained in barbed wire,
Buddhas left to converse with daisies,
Krishnas with no melody left in flutes,
Prophets who have nobody to cure from fits.

There are worshippers under the sun,
whose eyes flash like newspaper headlines,
who'd be proud to reinvent wheel, if asked.
In the deserts, punctured by snake and cactus,
they shed their skin and dirty blood to observe
the nakedness of a few thousand years!

A Numerate

Each night I pass me like an arrow:
creating an Ouija infinitum,
leaving memories like old songs.

I disintegrate and reform:
drawing transparencies of the sky,
shifting like the sand dunes,
struggling like wind lost in the canyons.

I long to be launched in rockets
to look back at our smallness.
I long to magnify distances
to feel the separation.

I iron my history, and add creases,
buttons , zips and pockets
to suit latest fashions.
I'm the trendsetter.

I create zero gravity, scratch
the ocean floor, design
company logos with nanotechnology.
I'm a moral scavenger.

I pump blood for the MNCs,
conniving with law whores
and government policies.
I'm not us, a numerate
waiting for my arrival.

Copyright© 2006, Debashish Haar

Copyright© 2004–2006, Debashish Haar, All Rights Reserved ®
You can read an interview with D.H. on this issue.

Len Bourret

The author, who uses a cognitive-behavioral approach, has completed numerous graduate courses in social work at Springfield College School of Social Work and Roberts Wesleyan College, where he has received a cumulative average of 4.0 (an 'A' average). Additionally, he successfully completed social work internships at Project Aim and Continuing Developmental Services. He completed research studies, on the topics of depression and effective anger management, using a cognitive-behavioral approach, single-subject and single-group designs, and multi-dimensional assessment (including, but not limited to, standardized measuring instruments). The author's research study, on effective anger management, is used as an ideal in graduate courses taught by Dr. Jonathan Lieberman, at University of New Haven. His writing has also appeared in Poetry Workshop, Point of Life, and Vinland Journal.

Len Bourret, Poet and Writer
40-B Pascal Lane
Manchester, CT 06040-4626
Phone: (860) 647-9606
e-Mail: Len9876@juno.com

'Blue' Rhapsody (Poem)

by Len Bourret
(Copyright 2006)

Dedicated to George and
Ira Gershwin...
http://www.gershwin.com/

Hear Billie Holiday...
http://jdhaycan.tripod.com/BHolliday.htm, and
Enjoy 'Blue Neon Alley'...
http://www.neonalley.org/

Marking time in simple-song form,
32 bars, and 2 musical phrases,
I can hear music in the rhapsodic
color of blue.

A type of folk song, originating
from culture and ethnicity, and
eminating from the spirit and
the soul, with bells pealing in
history's melancholy of some
repeated notes. But, without
a closing section.

A song in a seemingly endless,
unfinished symphony.

A concerto with 3 movements,
in which a piano's keys strike
like the hammer of the harp's
strings, standing out in bold
relief, against an orchestra's
muted backdrop. The end
result being that I can only
hear the piano, but no other
instruments are significant.

The piano, like a harmonica,
resounds in two or more
independent, but related
melodic parts.

The sound is sometimes
dissonant, and not at all
pleasing to the ear. But,
practice makes perfect,
and its melody produces
a glissando of continuous
or sliding movements,
accelerating from a once-
too-rapid scale.

A barbershop quartet,
which graduates from
the repetitious and the
redundant, singing on
key in perfect pitch,
and in a balance of
raptured harmony,
like an improvised
masterpiece, which
gets better, as tone
deafness decreases.

A lullaby or cradle
song, in a gentle
rhythm, but with a
steady rocking of
ostinato, and an
accompaniment
compounded by
metered music,
which expands
to triplets.

Interacting in
rhythm and a
succession of
coherent pitch,
the sound has
a frequency
clear and
stable.

Differentiated
from chaos,
the sound is
peaceful, and
strikes a
tranquil chord.

A nocturne
becomes a
serenade,
expressing
a buoyant,
graceful
dream. In
contrast
sharply to
an opera
or heavy
theatrical
drama.

Orchestrational
characteristics,
or combinations,
to arrive at a
composition so
splendorous and
unequaled.

Time, like every
piece of life's
music, becomes
an introduction,
or prelude, of
things to come.

Curtain Call

Time being measured
in the softness of moss,
protective covering of
red velvet calm,
Soothing scent of
rampant wildflowers,
growing in the glades
of the rocks, and the
tucks in the grass,
ferns swept forward
in the breath of an
unguarded moment,
An hourglass filled
with awe, in and
beyond the horizon
of a plot of land,
dawn's curtain of
light is slowly
raised,
the beat and rhythm
of life awakened,
silenced as eve's
curtain drops, in
silenced tranquility
of night,
the appearance of
morning,
time awakens from
peaceful dreams,
and the changes
that must take place,
the sands of the
hourglass mark
and measure,
that which its
actors portray
in the center
stage of time.

in the center
stage of time.

© All poems by Len Bourret, 2006.

top of page

Access Space is a UK Registered educational charity, helping people to get creative, learn and communicate using digital technology

The Alchemy Cove

An online poetry journal and contemporary visual artists' gallery, coedited by poets Debashish Haar and Jim Dunlap.

WAKAN: Revista alternativa de Cultura

One of the best Spanish journals on music, cinema and poetry, edited by poet and artist Tesa Duncan.

Mindful of Poetry

Voices for Africa

Search for poems:

by PoemHunter.Com

To Top