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Index of poets:
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ROBIN OUZMAN
HISLOP
*
~~After
the Cave, the Comet: Read here the full text
~~Least Assuages
Revisited: Read here the full text
~~Poems from Blue Corn. Read more poems by RobOuzman
Robin Ouzman's Hinterland
2000, first book of (Trilogy) In Memoria.
~~Just Suibhne
So: Poetry by Robin Ouzman (Editor)
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From "Least Assuages
Revisited".
xvii.
The Miller´s Woodland
We crossed meer at weir into the shires:
many have died on the borders beneath
these now mast winds of silt & sedge that
haunt allotments laid a ploughman's cage.
Day after day lessens in woodland´s green
unwinding screen wearing not its anointed
crown that harvested charcoal, salt, brimstone
for ore. Timber henge that fenced no fen down
for mead nor hemp & wicker by meer´s brook.
What spoils then have fallen to petty kings
proud & tyrannous, their wars & the ruin
ridings where no mill grinds beside the weir?*
*
where no bird sings.
La
Belle Dans Sans Merci. J Keats.
xxxvii.
The Swamp
Recovered from her sickness
like a sick calf shakes on the morn.
Before even the ape became human
She'd transformed her womb,
given birth to new incubation
Metamorphosis of the dragon fly,
came we human on the crane's wing
to a shore with a word hoard,
where the lilies set sail to the sea
before the angels were born.
Who fell from the stars to skies
long after we'd left those starry isles
as memories on waters, which we once
trod beyond these ruins & their stars,
where labyrinths run to sewers.
Hunter’s Moon
xi.
There will be Dancing.
After the war, there will be dancing.
Buried in the world, world, world,
the raven in the window shrieks,
dressed like a black flamenco.
Cymbals clash in burnished splash
& every one spills in the shapeless
sky shedding rags in pirouettes.
After the dancing, there will be world,
a sulphurous dawn before the mast,
hand in hand on the silvery sand,*
the great sky skull shell sinking
on the scalloped shore, a fellow of
infinite jest,* marooned daft apeth,
dark shard piercing the cleft sunset.
*After
Edward Lear: The Owl and the Pussycat
*Shakespeare:
Hamlet.
From Hinterland 1
Part 3 Summer Stalks
iv.
I imagine: before history began, pagan,
an oak trunk wider than a two way street,
taller than a three story Tudor house,
again twice the width its golden boughs,
yielding there a three colour sorb fruit,
hazel nut, red crab apple and ochre acorn,
bronze leaf, ebony vine, mistletoe its crown,
cut down with the coming of the Christian.
Countdown on a Blue Planet
grant, you follow in the wake
& stand there in the break
as morn gapes & forsakes
unable even to call heaven down
to the now open but yet doom
already too late & still too soon
for the rest which remains unborn
in the emptiness where you quicken
as a world fades on another horizon
unknown a spectre that parts aghast
in the nothing which ends as the last
in time's invincible ruins reaching
a hollowness beyond touch & dream
in the tyranny of history's remains.
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ROBIN
OUZMAN HISLOP:
Born
UK. Childhood in Lyme Regis & Poole
Dorset. Lived Scotland & Scandinavia, The East & Spain. He now
lives in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK. He appeared in the
Dawn Millenium & Crystal Dawn Anthologies published by
Kedco Studios. When he first joined the world wide net he abandoned his
previous poet performance career, mostly had in Spain and often as
bilingual joint translation recitals. His collected works now appear in
Poetry Life and Times every month, so far Hinterland 2000 and
Blue Corn 2002 have appared. Next comes After the
Cave the Comet 2004, Just Suibhne So, Least Assuages Revistited &
Hunters Moon 2006. The entire collection will be available in the epic
form 2 Trilogies In Memoria. He started as resident poet with
Poetry
Life & Times in March 2005 & took over its editorship
together with Spanish poetess Amparo Arrospide from Sara Russell
in May 2006.
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*
SARA
RUSSELL
*
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Heaven's Rage
(for everyone affected by the floods)
The heavens open, heaven's rage descends,
Falling on drudge and debutante alike.
Before it starts, the English summer ends,
Just as the postal workers go on strike.
The goldfish swims along beside the cat
Above the Axminster laid down last week;
Water has blown Miss Symon's thermostat,
The King's Arms kegs have all gone up the creek.
We cry for fitted kitchens steeped in mud,
For drowned computers, lost hamsters, spilt milk,
And malcontent boils in our English blood
For tainted curtains sewn in Chinese silk.
What did we do, deserving of such pain,
That rivers burst their banks because of rain?
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SARA
RUSSELL Poet, cartoonist and short story writer.
Founder of Poetry
Life & Times. Newsgroup signature was
originally 'Pinky Andrexa, Last Of The Cyber Vixen Poets From Outer
Space'. Won Internet Arts Award from Kedco Studios Artist Profile
Press. Runner-up in Capricorn International Love Poetry competition
1998. Her
website Poetry Life & Times recently won the Alpha Poets' Poetic
Eyes web award. Won Poet of the Week in the Poetry For Thought group
(The Globe groups) for the week April 28-May 4th, 2001, with the poem
"If You Were Mine". Inducted into The Poets' Hall of Fame, 2001, and
included in its anthology for that year.
5
illustrated e-books published by Kedco Studios Artist Profile Press
(most recent first): Worlds Inside The Head, Quickies, Spiders And
Gliders, A Way With Words (in collaboration with four other poets) and
Pinky's Little Book of Shadows.Also published in several Kedco e-book
anthologies and Forward Press bound book anthologies.
The
Perils of
Norris Cartoon by Sara Russell has moved to its own gallery
here...
don't miss gorgeous Norris misadventures!
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***
MICHAEL BURCH
***
MICHAEL BURCH
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Frail
Envelope of Flesh
Frail envelope of flesh,
lying cold on the surgeon’s table
with wispy curls
like your mother’s curls,
and a heartbeat weak, unstable ...
Frail crucible of dust,
brief flower come to this–
your tiny hand
in your mother’s hand
for a last bewildered kiss ...
Brief mayfly of a child,
to live two artless years!
Now your mother’s lips
seal up your lips
from the Deluge of her tears ...
Author's Note: The line
"frail
envelope
of flesh" was one of my first encounters with poetry, although I read
it in a comic book! It's funny how words sometimes stick with us. Over
30 years later, the line kept popping into my head and I wrote this
poem.
At Tintagel
The
legend
of what happened on a stormy night at Tintagel is endlessly intriguing.
Supposedly, Merlin transformed Uther Pendragon to look like Gorlois so
that he could sleep with Ygraine,
the lovely wife of the unlucky duke.
While Uther was enjoying Ygraine’s lovemaking, Gorlois was off getting
himself killed.
The question is: did Igraine suspect that her lover was not her
husband? Regardless, Arthur was the child
conceived out of this supernatural (?) encounter.
That night,
at Tintagel,
there was darkness such as man had never seen . . .
darkness and treachery,
and the unholy thundering of the sea . . .
In his arms,
who is to say how much she knew?
And if he whispered her name . . .
“Ygraine”
could she tell above the howling wind and rain?
Could she tell, or did she care,
by the length of his hair
or the heat of his flesh, . . .
that her faceless companion
was Uther, the dragon,
and Gorlois lay dead?
She Spoke, for Beth
She spoke
and her words
were like a ringing echo dying
or like smoke
rising and drifting
while the earth below is spinning.
She awoke
with a cry
from a dream that had no ending,
without hope
or strength to rise,
into hopelessness descending.
And an ache
in her heart
toward that dream, retreating,
left a wake
of small waves
in circles never completing.
c.
All poems by their respective authors, 2007.
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MICHAEL R. BURCH is the editor of
The
HyperTexts where he has
published the work of three Pulitzer Prize nominees and
recent winners of the T. S. Eliot, Richard Wilbur and Howard Nemerov
awards. He has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and his
work has appeared over 450 times in literary journals and sundry
publications in the USA, England, Scotland, Canada, Australia, South
Africa and India, including The Chariton Review, Poetry Magazine,
Verse, Poet Lore, Unlikely Stories, Light Quarterly, Writer’s Digest –
The Year’s Best Writing 2003, The Best of the Eclectic Muse 1989-2003,
The Lyric, ByLine, Icon and Nebo.
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TWO POEMS
by
HELGA ROSS
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She’s Hot!
Mother Nature’s making strange
in her distress
and I’m just one to bear witness;
worship and fear the mistress,
slave to her whimsy—mercy/cruelty;
brave the barely bearable umbrella shade,
hot as a greenhouse tomato these days;
whose penthouse view’s a minimalist’s painting,
of late:
of acres of parks a color of ale,
boulevards khaki green going pale;
planters wilting red geraniums
along a plain wrought iron rail;
reflecting growing elemental change—
sweltering; erratic rain;
hot air hitting cold in bold stokes;
wind and water whipped in scary ways.
Not a mosquito’s seen or been to bite me,
to date!
One bumblebee!
Where’s the hawks I used to see
hovering above these trees?
The little signs of living things
we need to mind, to know
they’re missing—and they matter.
A solitary wasp, or so, settles my vicinity—
friendly enough—a wide berth between us
maintained.
The careless creationist may scoff—
but—
what if Man’s made Madame mad
trashing her gifts
the way—you know—chauvinists do?
Provoking her; projecting on Him?
© Helga Ross 2007
Light on Her Feet
She’s downsized and found a dream home to suit;
a locale she can do without her car;
with wants in walking distance, bus en route,
rail commute; lighter pocketbook by far.
She leads the trend to the lighter footprint,
of the carbon kind, while it costs her less;
she rides express as sexy as she sprints,
and shares with Goodwill her drive to possess.
She’s cleared her closets, and is still well-dressed,
her impress pared to ballerina point;
as air and light, to spare, as turns on best,
and spins, recycles, do not disappoint.
Her every toe-step soiled by some BigFoot,
whose bombs and emissions douse it in soot*.
© Helga Ross 2007
*soot: a black colloidal substance consisting wholly or
principally of amorphous carbon
the fine powder consisting chiefly of carbon that colors smoke.
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Canadian
poet, HELGA ROSS loves the
well-written word and loves to
write her own; derives great pleasure from great literature, art and
life, and the great outdoors. Everything old is new again in 2007 –
She’s moved back to her old home town, Burlington, Ontario, after half
a lifetime--for a new start. "You can't go home again" so they say --
She shall see. Helga expresses herself through an eclectic writing
repertoire of material, style and form. 2004, however, was her literary
turning point: She 'discovered' poetry in a big way. Now, poetry is her
passion and focus, particularly Sonnet forms, though not exclusively.
For Helga, the theme is 'Passion' in the broadest sense. She believes
and illustrates in her writing: "The creative mind plays with the
objects it loves". - Carl Jung
Her poetic voice is
playful,
provocative, uplifting. Her serious pieces
conclude on a positive note; reflect her approach to life: "Love. Fall
in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you
write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and
write something you love, something to live for." — Ray Bradbury On the
key to success
Recent Accomplishments:
Prix
Poesie's laissez-faire Faire Award, April
2004. Poetry selections published in Sonnetto Poesia Vol.3 no.2 Spring
2004; Vol.4 no.4 Autumn 2005; Vol. 5 no.2 Spring 2006.
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