On~Line~Reading:  Robin Ouzman's Hinterland 2000, first book of Trilogy in memoria.

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BRYON D. HOWELL



BOTTOM DRAWER POETRY
 
I started writing sonnets, all of love;
to lovers I once had, some never weres;
I put my craft at risk, got pushed and shoved…
‘twas not the genre which today endures.
I don't believe in tossing any art ...
I saved the poems, still have them today;
love this, love that; "Why did you break my heart?"
Somebody told me, "Just throw them away!"
Though I may never send those sonnets out…
it’s truly nice to look back and reflect;
They may not be what publishing’s about…
but maybe I’ll find someone they’ll affect.
Discarding them forever seems absurd…
I’ll save them for the groupies should they herd.
  
 




Bryon Howell is also editor of a poetry e-zine  Persistent Mirage
 

© All poems by their author, 2007.



The Perils of Norris Cartoon has moved to its own gallery here... don't miss gorgeous Norris misadventures!



















Jeffrey Woodward

The Wandering Scholar

I tap my cane through public bookstalls
With a snail’s progress, with a feeble jest.
So I, in these shorter days, mark the time.
Dry, yellow bindings crumble.  Dust
Floats in the air.  What is my quest?
 
Friends and family lament my levity
Nor celebrate plain tattered sleeves.
Gentlemen draw faces, call me fool.
Boys quit their games, at a mother’s bidding,
And race indoors, where I scuff the leaves.
 
Was I mad to spurn a wage in my youth?
To dare, as a student, a study so long?
Never happier, alas, than a penniless
Eighteen, with a hand-me-down knapsack,
Far road and lilting step and song.
 
Many travels, it is said, brought
Only crumbs to my table.  Agreed.
Yet others, not I, complain.
Now old and bent close to the ground,
A narrow and slippery path is my bane.
 
Today,  while risking a teetering nook,
I thumbed a vellum much sullied, though slight.
A moth darted about my hand,
His wings a quick but papery blur
In the raking and raftering light.
 
There, past flitting shadows, on the page:
In my circle, only the dead
Do not  meet with hunger and cold.
So, T’ao Ch’ien, trenchantly,
His voice long a millennium old.
 
Arts and arms, alike, fade in autumn.
A swift procession for scholar or king.
Still, T’ao Ch’ien, the beggar, claps
And guffaws, like a child.  Today’s fashions
Shall draw laughter before next spring.

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