| February 2006 | Café Society's Poetry News Update |
| February 2006 | Café Society's Poetry News Update |
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| I am a lesbian novelist signed by a literary screen agent who is representing my lesbian pulp fiction novels in Hollywood for screen adaptation. I released my debut novel, The Buckskin Skirt Oar Traveler in May 2005. I signed a 5-book deal with my publisher AuthorHouse on June 30, 2005. My second novel in line, From The Convent To The Rawhide: The Saga of Sadie Cade and Vi Montana is geared for release in February 2006. I am reviving lesbian pulp fiction. I have also been to the recording studio to record The Biker Chronicles, poetic tales of the Harley-Davidson biker lifestyle, backed with Celtic Renaissance music; banjoes, dulcimers, mandolins, harmonicas, eight soft-R-rated selections approximately one hour in length. Upcoming titles are:
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The idea of the stoneware crocks comes from primitive times, and the canoe and the trade scene go as far back as time itself. Sugarbush and the tapping of maple trees to derive the maple sap to make maple syrup is a sweet, ancient wisdom that has been passed down and flowed over into the modern-day collection of sap to boil into maple syrup.
Inspired also by strong, good fathers, of topmost importance are the fathers Tom Henry and Joe Cloud cast for the two characters, the Buckskin Skirt Oar Traveler and Fringe Water Many Bosom.
And finally, I wanted to purvey the notion of an ancient gay tribal society did exist in reality through the Kutenai Warrior women, transsexual women and the Berdache, gay male Indians referred to as "soft males." The novel skips back and forth in time frame from modern day to the 1800s. The Buckskin Skirt Oar Traveler's counterpart, Fringe Water Many Bosom, gives us a look at how the Buckskin Skirt Oar Traveler would have lived in another century. Metaphorically, this reminds us of a loon's wing which has not "properly" aligned, society waiting for her to molt her feathers, hoping the new ones will come in "straight."
The Vision Jammer was inspired by the mindset of many of the Vietnam bikers I was in the company of in my twenties, the badass Hell's Angels, the Outlaws, and the Banditos, and over a few shots of whiskey, those haunting stories were unvaulted only for the priveleged and chosen few like me. Some of the stories were downright grizzly. Things I cannot even talk about or fathom. The gentlemen behind all of those big, burly, hard-core beards, tattooes, and piercings cried, one even fell to his knees and prayed. Stories about doing low crawls as opposed to sleep walking in fear of the enemy brought an awareness to my soul of the residue of war. A haunting awareness. It's real, Sara!
I have been to the recording studio to record The Biker Chronicles, poetic narration tales of the Harley-Davidson biker lifestyle. The tales are backed by Celtic Renaissance music; banjoes, dulcimers, harps, harmonicas, and mandolins.
I have ridden a Harley-Davidson across the Colorado asphalt, weaving stories inside and out of the gypsy wind, spinning iron tales from the legendary Milwaukee wheel.
From my past life in the wind, I pounded The Biker Chronicles out of the hard pavement and softened them with the renaissance wind for a traveling storyteller always available to entertain bikers in their cribs, cages, wrenching in their garages, at swap meets, poker runs, toy, charity, and blood runs, pig roasts, and biker bars.
The Biker Chronicles is approximately one hour in length and contains 8 soft-R-rated selections.
Panama Whiskey
I wil be publishing this in audio on CD. I have also developed The Biker Chronicles board game to go along with the CD. It is a biker Jeopardy. The answers to the questions must be obtained by purchasing The Biker Chronicles CD.
I have written this project under the pseudonymn of Keysta D. Lorean. I am not marketing this as lesbian. It is written for a much wider market so that I may perhaps entertain women and men alike. Also, I want to grab the Fortune 500 Harley-Davidson Motor Company's attention on making The Biker Chronicles an officially-licensed product of the Harley-Davidson Motor Company.
The Biker Chronicles needs only to find a producer. It is recorded and mastered professionally on cassette tape. It needs to be transferred to CD and a "J-card" CD album cover designed. Perhaps you would be interested in producing The Biker Chronicles, Sara. It's ready to market. The storylines are also highly screen adaptable, merging the Vision Jammer in with the other tales.
I listen to cowboy poetry on tape. I am inspired by cowboy poetry and famous cowboy poet Waddie Mitchell. I lived in Elko, Nevada for a brief time , home of the annual cowboy poetry festival and home of Waddie Mitchell. Waddie Mitchell is my inspiration for rhyme and meter. I studied cowboy poetry to render The Biker Chronicles, consisting of both biker poetry and short stories. Waddie's Lone Driftin' Rider, What Will I Tell Him, Judgement Day, The Riders, You Haven't Sold Your Saddle Yet, and When They've Finished Shipping Cattle In The Fall have all had a positive effect on my ability to pen my creative Biker, Cowgirl, Goddess, and Lesbian poetry. I refuse to be pigeonholed into one genre. There's just too many brands of living out there and they all intrigue me.
Poetry L & T: How and why did you first start writing poetry, Sage?
Sage:
Sara, I first started writing poetry twenty years ago while riding my Harley up Bigelow Divide in the San Isabel National Forest in Colorado, a winding mountain highway near where I live, when I witnessed a healing miracle. On the left side of the road, sits an ancient structure of a homestead, rusted, tin-roof shack and a plot of spud patch. A homesteader's wife had tick fever and was miraculously healed from a mountain biker's moonshine whiskey. I wrote my very first poem, Panama Whiskey as I witnessed it. That poem was inspiration for The Biker Chronicles. From there, many years later, I took it into the recording studio and brought it to the light of day. The eagle flies!
Poetry L & T:
Who are your favourite poets?
Sage:
My favorite poets are Joan Baez and Bob Dylan. This pair of songster poets of the 60s (I am a daughter of the 60s) let me believe there was a strong creative drive within my female soul. I watched Woodstock and Monterey Pop clips on television. Baez's Diamonds in Rust song and Dylan's Maggie's Farm left a deep impression in me. Here are partial lines of each poet Baez and Dylan in answer of my favorite poets. I recommend listening to these two songs.
Diamonds in Rust
Well I'll be damned
Here comes your ghost again
But that's not unusual
It's just that the moon is full
And you happened to call
And here I sit
Hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I'd known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall
As I remember your eyes
Were bluer than robin's eggs
My poetry was lousy you said
Where are you calling from?
A booth in the midwest
Ten years ago
I bought you some cufflinks
You brought me something
We both know what memories can bring
They bring diamonds and rust
Maggie's Farm
Well I try my best
To be just like I am
But everybody wants you
To be just like them
Poetry L & T:
What inspired you to write your novel, "The Buckskin Skirt Oar Traveler"?
Sage:
Having some Native American blood coursing through my veins and me being from another time and place, (I was born one hundred years too late) the inspiration for The Buckskin Skirt Oar Traveler came from a source of many little rivers which feeds into the Big river, mainly that everything today is tied to ancient times. The basis for The Buckskin Skirt Oar Traveler lies in the buckskin skirt. The idea of a tanned hide and a vintage fringe skirt pattern is the evolution of woman. A feminist and lesbian story told of a smart mix of primitive times and modern-day culture gives us a linkage of how and why we perform the womanly tasks the way we do to include the primitive lesbian mating call, which at its best can be told through the wild cry of the loon.
Poetry L & T:
If it is made into a movie, who would you like to cast in the leading role?
Sage:
Sara, Hollywood is short of both Native American actresses and talented actresses. The new young Hollywood actresses, in my opinion cannot fit the mold. One has to know spiritually, the maple trees, the loons, and the spiritual harmony oaring a canoe down the river. I would like to see cast two 27-year-old (the age of my characters the Buckskin Skirt Oar Traveler and Fringe Water Many Bosom) modern-day Tribal women who have this spiritual connection I speak of, inherited from their ancestors.
Poetry L & T:
I love the mystical symbolism in your poem "Ancient Whispers: Gaia Returns", especially the stanza at the end, mentioning the wild unicorn. Is this poem tied in with your own spiritual beliefs, or those of someone who inspired you?
Sage:
That last stanza in Ancient Whispers: Gaia Returns is definately very tied in (I am a practitioner of Wicca) with my spiritual beliefs and inspired, of course, from a woman I feel spiritually connected to, who carries herself to be spiritually aligned and in touch with Gaia in the ultimate sense. Of couse this stanza is wildly metaphorical and totally Goddess sexual, it is indeed a playful lesbian metaphor for seducing Gaia, me being reciprocal for what she gives me. I am smiling as I write this! Sara, well-behaved women never make the headlines! Here is the last stanza you are referring to.
As for me, I am the wild
unicorn who has a desire
to lay my horn in her lap
at the new, full, and waning,
the phases of the moon.
Poetry L & T:
Some of your poems evoke the imagery of powerful, beautiful and heroic women, especially "Liquid Light Feather: Native Distillation" and "Astral Dance: Tango of the Superlative Mind". Are these poems allegorical, or are they inspired by women you have met?
Sage:
Neither of these two poems are allegorical. There is no fable here. They are inspired by a woman I am burning the wick for. There is a message in Liquid Light Feather: Native Distillation. This message invokes a powerful spiritually-aligned celibate relationship. There is truth in this poem. It is a seduction tool. I will admit to being temporarily celibate personally here and now because I am currently single, my choice because I have not connected with a woman ever on a spiritual level. This is a sexual Gestalt poem! Lesbian sexual energy is very powerful. If you don't make it into something bigger than yourself, it is wasted energy. I chose writing. I will say that I will not be involved with any woman if she is not in touch with her inner Goddess and Gaia. She will also be inspired, have inner beauty, will be powerful in her delivery of thought, and will be heroic in her flame-keeping abilities. This line in Liquid Light Feather: Native Distillation is just awe-inspiring and I once again hear the lesbian mating call, as I referred to in the earlier question about what inspired me to write The Buckskin Skirt Oar Traveler. I have heard the lesbian mating call repetitiously and consistently lately. The arousal in these lines are explosive!
she is a babe
Astral Dance: Tango of the Superlative Mind has undertones of telepathically dancing with a woman and having an astral affair, ignited by sexual chemistry which aligns with Hermetic philosophy. This stanza states this quite well.
in the woods
the bewitching
call of the
painted
warrioress
Mentalism,
All is mind,
Universal Mental,
keep alive the
sacred flame of
the Hermetic
philosopher.
Poetry L & T:
Your poem "The Vision Jammer" is very poignant. Do you feel that poets can help to raise awareness about the effects of war?
Sage:
The Vision Jammer is a merge of my living it, both riding my Harley and employed at a Veteran's nursing home for seven years, starting in my early twenties. What a better way to merge the biker lifestyle with the Nam vets who all had a story to tell me. The poet/storyteller can effectively raise awareness about the effects of war.
Poetry L & T:
In your bio, your mention of "The Biker Chronicles" interests me - I love the title and would like to know more about it.
Sage:
Harley's are an American legend. They are also popular recreation and reliable transportation.
Mash Camp
Elinoar and Randall
Vison Jammer
Outlaw's Revenge (Milwaukee Steel Prayer)
Brothers, Jugs, and Weed
Tattooed on Coney's Eye-Land
All Colors Welcome, No Attitudes!
Poetry L & T:
Do you spend much time reading contemporary poetry and fiction online?
Sage:
No, I really don't read much contemporary poetry and fiction online. For one thing, there's not enough time for me to do so at this stage of my career. I stay offline for entertainment. My entertainment is my eleven acres of mountain land bordered by one thousand more acres of nature; deer, raccoon, coyote, fox, lion, rabbit, and of course my five Arctic white wolves I keep, in view, a retreat for meditation and training Catholic monks I see at the base of the mountain from my wall of window, but recently I have been online for many hours a day because of my business commitments. I do read many of the poets on Authors Den. There are a few who really have something worthy to say and I am inspired by a handful of them. These handful of poets I speak of are an elite group on Authors Den.
Poetry L & T:
Is there anything in poetry or poetry forums online that annoys you?
Sage:
Constructive criticism is always welcomed. It is how we grow as writers, however, I see very little constructive criticism in the poetry forums. Rather, I see a whole load of destructive, illiterate opinions, and a multitude of jealousy, rivalry and homophobia. I see poetry as being a Whole, as I see all life. Another thing that annoys me about online poetry is that I see way too much "I." Unless there's a healing or spiritual message, "I" should be used sparingly in poetry. When I use "I" in my poetry, there is often a spiritual or healing message. People seem to want to write about themselves. They do not do vital research to include in their poetry or storylines. Everybody wants to write their autobiography in their poetry! We don't care! Publishers don't care! In fact, editors and publishers say if you're not famous, your autobiography has no place in this business. It's a waste of their valuable time and resources. I can always pick out an original poem, which is well-worth my valuable time.
Poetry L & T:
What, in your opinion, makes a poem good or memorable?
Sage:
What makes a poem good or memorable to me, is one that uplifts and inspires. This type of poem is very powerful in that it can change people's lives. When read, this type of poem requires you to have a quieted mind, where your heart and soul meet somewhere spiritually in poetic chemistry and brand the words through alchemy into your soul. These poems stick with a person for a lifetime. This is the type of poem that a poet aspires to write.
Poetry L & T:
Finally, Sage, what are your main ambitions for the future?
Sage:
My ambitions for the future is for the lesbian pulp fiction of Sage Sweetwater to be adapted for an explosion on big screen! My next novel due out here in February or soon thereafter, From the Convent to the Rawhide: The Saga of Sadie Cade and Vi Montana is the female equivalent cowgirl love story to Brokeback Mountain, the newly released popular gay-themed film which just earned seven globes nomination. I'm already a household word, so I'm half way there, Sara. Also, I am ambitious in creating a spin-off pottery line for my third novel out, Blue Corn Woman. The pottery Stonewash Blue is mentioned in this novel and I have designed a tarot card to honor Stonewash Blue in my 28-card Tarot deck.
Poetry L & T: Thank you for the interview, Sage.
Sage:
Thank you for inviting me to participate in this interview, Sara. I greatly appreciate your interest.
 | NEW - in our merchandise store: the Poetry Life & Times Poetry Journal... click image to find out more.
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| Dear Poets, Welcome to the February 2006 issue of Poetry Life & Times (For those of you reading this on a mirror site and not poetrylifeandtimes.com, click here).
This month's interview features Sage Sweetwater; firebrand lesbian novelist and poet.
Featured Poets include:Tess Gingrich, Robert Andre Szabo and Christopher Barnes.
Resident Poets feature Robin Ouzman Hislop, Richard Vallance, Jan Sand and Sara L. Russell. See below Featured Poets for the link to this page.
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In the Vallance Review for February 2006, Richard's Review No. 54 features Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585): Je vous envoie un bouquet... / This is as fine and fair bouquet ...
Fans of The Perils of Norris cartoon: You can buy Norris merchandise for home and office, including apparel and stationery... Click here to visit the store at CafePress.com. More goodies will be added as soon!
My own poetry can be found on AuthorsDen, these days. The links in the left-hand column of my pages include books and articles as well as poetry. Some of the articles give advice on making chapbooks, or finding publishers - and there is even an item on ghosts.
My latest e-book: Worlds Inside The Head, is now available, featuring animated poetry pages, short stories, video & audio recitals, plus pages in PDF format. Click here to scroll down to the animated ad at the bottom of the page, and click the link to find out more.
NEW - Poetry Life & Times Mobile Phone Pages + Free Ringtones & Wallpapers! We now have new mini-sized Poetry Life & Times supplement pages for mobile phones, which include information on the main site, occasional interviews, short poems + free ringtones and wallpapers. If you have a WAP-enabled mobile phone with a colour screen, point your mobile's browser at these pages (on your mobile you can usually omit http//:):
www.poetrylifeandtimes.com/pltmobile/index.htm
Ringtones are both classical and new original music (my own). Wallpapers are mostly from The Perils of Norris cartoon.
Any comments on this issue or back issues can be emailed to me on the link at the bottom of the page. Announcements are always welcome (brief if possible), you can also promote poetry books here.
Poetry submissions should be in plain text in the body of an email, with a small jpeg author picture attached, also a bio, with the URLs of any ezines mentioned, so that they can be shown as links. This increases the chance of inclusion, especially for late submissions. Pictures are best at a maximum of 520 pixels across, otherwise they take ages to arrive by email, especially in bitmap or TIFF format. I recommend that poets click the submissions link on our main page, for full guidelines, and please, always use a spellchecker.
Poets can submit previously-published work here. If another editor likes it, there's a chance we'll like it too. A Happy New Year to all our readers.
Best Regards,
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Richard Vallance reviews sonnets, both classic and modern.
Featured Poets this month include Tess Gingrich, Robert Andre Szabo and Christopher Barnes. Many thanks to all contributors. See below Featured Poets for our Resident Poets' page link.
Click title below for this month's Vallance Review feature
TESS GINGRICH
Tess Gingrich makes her poetry publishing debut with this issue. Though she has been writing most of her life – columns, interviews, short stories, partial and completed novels (as yet unpublished as well), and other prose -- she began to write poetry only in the last two years, after a lifetime of reading and listening to it. Originally enchanted by William Butler Yeats’ “A Faerie Song” as an idealistically romantic young teen, Tess has retained her love of Yeats some forty years; but diversified her interests in authors to include everything from ancient epics to recent trends in angst-ridden prose-poetry. Her own style is still evolving, with forays into different forms to find how best to realize her unique voice. She draws from both life experience and small, subtle observations of the world around her for inspiration. Currently, Tess is at work writing a novel, a fictionalized memoir of her family to pass on life lessons to her very real granddaughter, aged one year.
Some of her fiction can be found on the new Longbourn Loungers website, which features fan fiction on the 2005 Focus Features' movie, Pride & Prejudice, under the pen name "teg".
ROBERT ANDRE SZABO Robert Andre Szabo was born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa in 1981 to a Dutch father and a mother of English descent. His genetic inheritance is a complex phenomenon, drawing on the diverse humours of Hungary, Germany, Scotland and England.
He attended a colonial style, semi-military boys' school during the dying years of Apartheid. During the worst years in the 1980’s, his father moved the family to England where the boy learned to read with scope and vigour. On returning in 1989, he experienced the honeymoon period of the New South Africa and continued his education. He received his Bachelors Degree (with Honours) in English Literature and Philosophy from Rhodes University in 2003. Antagonistic to Western imperialism and alienated from Africa (the sickening injustice of Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe a catalyst), he left for Central Europe.
He now lives in Poland and has been travelling, teaching, talking and riding the old trains through the winter.
He draws great inspiration from the works of Josef Konrad Korzeniowski, William Blake, Allen Ginsberg, Oscar Wilde and Russell Hoban.
South African writers that speak to him, include the inestimable JM Coetzee, Herman Charles Bosman and the contemporary author Hagen Engler.
CHRISTOPHER BARNES In 1998 I won a Northern Arts writers award. In July 200 I read at Waterstones bookshop to promote the anthology 'Titles Are Bitches'. Christmas 2001 I debuted at Newcastle's famous Morden Tower doing a reading of my poems. Each year I read for Proudwords lesbain and gay writing festival and I partake in workshops. 2005 saw the publication of my collection LOVEBITES published by Chanticleer Press, 6/1 Jamaica Mews, Edinburgh.
I also have two BBC webpages:
www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/gay/2004/05section28.shtml
www.bbc.co.uk/tyne/videonation/stories/gay_history.shtml
Christmas 2001 The Northern Cultural Skills Partnership sponsored me to be mentored by Andy Croft in conjunction with New Writing North. I am about to make a radio programme for Web FM community radio about my writing group. October-November 2005, he entered a poem/visual image into the art exhibition The Art Cafe Project, his piece Post-Mark was shown in Betty's Newcastle. This event was sponsored by Pride On The Tyne. He has made a digital film with artists Kate Sweeney and Julie Ballands at a film making workshop called Out Of The Picture which was shown at the festival party for Proudwords. The film is going into an archive at The Discovery Museum in Newcastle and contains his poem The Old Heave-Ho. He is working on a collaborative art and literature project called How Gay Are Your Genes, facilitated by Lisa Mathews (poet) which will exhibit at The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University before touring the country and it is expected to go abroad, this will be funded by The Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Institute, Bioscience Centre at Newcastle's Centre for Life.
Shopgirl
© Tess Gingrich
written to accompany a cubist painting of a crying woman
Couturier-clad matrons
Pummeling me with demands
Their diamond trophies dangling
Obscene, from claw-like hands
Attendez-vous! They cry all day
As if their needs could ever be met
I thought my shift would never end
Mon Dieu! I need a cigarette.
Gratitude (for mom and Joseph Campbell)
© Tess Gingrich
You asked me to remember
Who you were when.
Before the demon claimed your voice.
Before the act of knowing died.
Daughter of Time No-Time
While I diminish, you shall be
Conceived. Dream bounties, swim
Aqua, in the white-capped waves of Ether,
Gulping the elixir of the Cosmos.
Child of Radiance and Dusk
Wise woman of gentle agency,
Architect of life times three.
Now in twilight, my Grey Haven,
Tranquil herald of wisdom still.
Daughter of Time No-Time
When I expire, you shall be come.
Burst forth from the Miasma
Astride Rhiannon’s sturdy, heady steeds;
Boundless, reveling in the unyielding sphere.
Child of Radiance and Dusk
Dalai Lama of the West
Now locked in silent reverie
All words forever stilled in you,
The volumes spoken in your eyes.
Daughter of Time No-Time
Villanelle Waltz
© Tess Gingrich
My course was set, but was detoured by chance;
Life’s plans abandoned, drifting on the wake.
I can but choose to revel in the dance
Of waves that pushes me toward happenstance.
Planning little for mishaps and mistakes,
I set my course. It was detoured by chance
And fortune, might-have-beens, derailed romance;
Vagaries of life in which we partake.
I can but choose to revel in the dance.
Education completed, I advanced
To my career, my fortune fair to take.
My course was set, but then detoured by chance.
Love’s fickle nature changed to dalliance
A life-long commitment I’d thought to make.
Could I still choose to revel in the dance?
No guarantees in life are there, demands
And lost desires could cause a heart to break.
My course was set, but then detoured by chance;
I can’t but choose to revel. -- To the dance!
The Valley of Desolation
© Robert Andre Szabo, 2004
Hades is a windswept desert
A grinning skull
On a barbed-wire fence
No entry:
Trespassers will be shot.
I stand naked
on an outcrop of rock
scream my lack of innocence
to the burning air
and I am held
in the belly of the dustclouds
swirled in the gut of the Animal,
I am that paltry seed
desiring dissemination.
and I wished that I could heal,
that which I love immeasurably,
this parched soil.
spread my humble and failing tendrils
send the green things that grow
across the plains
witness the uncontrollable
majesty of nature,
that sings with no words,
that owns itself
and is compounded by wonder.
Afrika!
I resign.
Notes: Written from notes taken in the Valley of Desolation,
the Karoo Desert, Eastern Cape, South Africa. 2004.
Optimism
© Robert Andre Szabo, 2004
The implicit aristocracy
of the elegant dream
is manifest in
the rippling universal light.
That shared halo.
Refracted rays gleam
and strike
the soul
at angles, healing
rifts and cleansing wounds.
They make their wars.
We do not know.
We are unknown.
The story finds us
as adventurers on a reed-boat,
away from the banks,
toward the moon.
Notes: Written on waking, Johannesburg, 2004.
Katowice, Poland
© Robert Andre Szabo, 2004
black ice lit by neon blinking
free market diodes aching
all the way down your left side
above the street,
a sick luminescence
pours
from the
dirty yellow
halo of an advertising board
that tragi-comic frog,
a vacant grin that chills
as only cartoons can convey horror.
in those darkened arches
the ravening dogs of winter
nose around in dirty snow
cursed by the
old men with bleeding heads
and no gloves
I walk in the shadow of the Cathedral
down Ulica Mariacki
I hear an old train rumbling
overhead
steam rises
from the manholes
Isengard!
To look on these mineshafts
is to know the mind of Saruman.
Notes: Written in Katowice, Poland 2006.
The Right Of Way
© Christopher Barnes
On the hungry planes
a hegemony of elephants
with drear prehensile trunks
flatten like history
with oblique reference to the pre.
The wicky-up and the crop
will fall to the big-footed morning;
the defining organ is not the trunk
but the sole.
Iko sits wide-eyed
where a Coca-Cola sign
hangs
on the mongrelised
brown brick mish-mash
of the empty store.
He taps his hands;
a frigid desert wind
weighs cold disappointment
blowing back squeaks
to the ventriloquism
of his African belly.
I read an article:
an elephant can be called just
about anything
as long as people agree about it.
The Seaside Music Of Postponing Rocks
© Christopher Barnes
Walks in sixths, toeing tips of gullies
is a bird across the crisp
diadem of ocean,
slap-dash irruption.
Waves wet into wet, rolling
grayer than sky, taps turned on
(asphodel sand
caught in the sun’s thumb-thrumb
strum)
wavering through lighthouses
incondite shivers flashing – inklings
darkling middles, chords
flaking
flaking…
Schooling
© Christopher Barnes
There’s a heartbeat
in that cradled
set-agoing shot.
Bull’s-eye a twelve bore
at an unpromising pigeon
- or a pistol,
sin-hugged, sun-dazzled.
A tensioned finger
will do for a set-against sparrow.
Children,
all hands should tremor,
thrill.
We’ve a guardian angel in this,
the calibre to despirit
from a stand-off.
Here’s matchlock, wheel-lock,
flintlock – the percussion cap.
Let’s add a rider
to the epic-yarn press
of a grievously efficient trigger.
After all…
We popped The Wild West home
didn’t we?
The Licorice Daughter:
Winner of the Texas Review Award
Click the book image on the left to visit Linlifshin.com to
Five-star Amazon Customer Review by Mary B. Subramanian "Belinda Subraman" (El Paso, TX USA):
New, full colour illustrated A5 poetry chapbook by Sara L.Russell
OUT NOW FROM LYN LIFSHIN...
My Year with Ruffian
find out more, or visit amazon.com to buy the book.
"The spirit of Ruffian actually lived through this woman! This is an awesome account of a great and beautiful spirit, inside a race horse, speaking through the soul of a woman. Everyone who reads this will be touched, and blessed. It is a metaphor for what is the best in us."
Ballads of Myth & Magic
currently Poole (Dorset), Tunbridge Wells (Kent), Crawley (West Sussex) and
East Grinstead (West Sussex).
Also available online from Giftoftongues.com, for readers both in and outside the UK.
Plus - a limited number of signed, complimentary review copies are available for
poet friends in the USA or Canada.
Special Features: Vellum cover, 28 pages of poems, with colour illustrations & line drawings.
Poems on the theme of legends and lost worlds of fantasy and magic.
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AVAILABLE NOW - Sara Russell's new e-book on CD ROM: WORLDS INSIDE THE HEAD ISBN 1-878431-47-1 / Kedco Studios Inc., Las Vegas with poetry, short stories, videos, animations, music, wavs and 3D art throughout... Only $9.95 - CLICK HERE to find out more... or Mail us here at Poetry Life & Times.
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Photo © by Richard Vallance, 1993 (Northern Ontario)
Canadian Spirit Voices is now available from Kedco Studios Press (Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.)... in a full multi-media CD book, consisting of poetry, prose, the essay, original MIDI music and plenty of splendid artistic illustrations. The CD-ROM book is the equivalent of a hard-copy book in excess of 500 pages!
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Come Meet our Poet Friends!
Check out the poetry sites of some of our friends and
Voulez-vous recontrez de nos amis poètes et rédacteurs Meet my literary friends! Rencontrez mes amis littéraires!
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Visit Crystal Rose's Place
Val Magnuson Galactic Poet Award
An exciting new anthology, by Kedco Studios Artist Profile Press,
The Crystal Rose © Ice Shard
OUT NOW! CRYSTAL DAWN
ISBN 1-878431-71-9.
Award-winning poetry, a full novel, 10 Shakespeare plays plus free photographs for any use. Contributors: Robin Ouzman Hislop - Richard Van der Draaij - Cara Alson - Gillian Stokes -Jasmine
Dienes - Tyler Wiseman - Doctor C. S. Shaw - Vladimir Orlov - Monica Smith - Nick Zegarac
- Aurora Antonovic - C. S. Snow - K. V. Davis, full novel.
THE PERILS OF NORRIS, #67 - When the Absinth Fairy is around, you have to be careful what you wish for...!
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The image of the Hill's Absinth bottle in recent episodes of The Perils of Norris cartoon was used by kind permission of Dan Hill at hillsabsinth.com. For more information about this exciting bohemian drink, plus Vicky Vixen cartoon and info about Hill's Absinth cocktails, click the bottle link on the left to visit their fun, interactive website... |
NEW: The Poetry Life & Times Store
Buy Perils of Norris Merchandise online, including mouse mats, clocks, tote bags and postcards. |  |
The Perils of Norris started in August 2000. To catch up on past episodes, click the links below.
The Perils of Norris Page 6 (Current adventure)
The Perils of Norris Page 5 (page 2 of earlier adventures)
The Perils of Norris Page 1 (early stories, start page)
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Email us early
with poetry, articles or poetry news, by 17th February for the March 2006 issue, as February is a short month.
