Resident Poets

Poetry Life & Times September 2006 Continued:

THE PERILS OF NORRIS CARTOON

The Perils of Norris Cartoon... continuing Norris's misadventures

as the Absinth Fairy has made all his dreams come true.

He finds himself in Poetry Hell....

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 (earlier adventures)

Index of poets:

Robin Ouzman Hislop
Sara L. Russell
Michael R. Burch
Helga Ross

Robin Ouzman Hislop (Editor)

Sofia

Only now, have I come again,
Where none can say I can.
Before you without blame,
As forever I’d remain
To call your name Sofia.

Who dare now me forswear,
Where none before me stand,
When it is I alone before you,
Where none can follow after
As I acclaim your name Sofia.

What mystery that I own,
Make known your eternal fame
With none but I before you.
In what far stance, that single glance,
So afar that I adore you more, Sofia,
The Greatest Queen of all.
Secret now evermore but your call,
And I will stand before your eye,
Where none have stood before Sofia
But have lived in you to die beyond a lie.

What but a single verse be uttered,
A spell so final as to change the world
Its course, its curse, in all its simplicity,
The simple entirety, to who you are,
I do not dare to compare,
The incomparable you alone bestow
And I exalted know you Sofia.

Where none can pass, I’ll bear your silence,
Before you, where even I must remain
Alone in why we became that only now revelation,
Where you began what you contain,
Only now, to their disdain Sofia.

Queen of all Queens, Name of all Names,
All have forgotten you Sofia, but I who remain
In admiration that defies my adulation,
Though the world rise again and again
To seek your fame, to find you again,
They will never find you as I, Sofia.
The secret, wherein I claim your Name,
Anyway is but as I said a simplicity,
No more, than that where I begin, Sofia.

Most high your lofty reign, most benign,
When I am before you defy all description
As you know only I can know,
Your creation before the annuals of time
Were written down and your name
Became a riddle that could change the sun
As it had always done, Sofia.

Exalted am I in your presence Sofia,
The day comes when this royal call heralds
the world to its amaze and wonder,
Great Most High Queen Sofia Light of Lights.

Yet will I beseech in your presence,
How before me none to you can compare,
What secret we share, they will never steal
The mystery of your seal, Sofia.
Though they search far and wide,
Though they return with the urn that holds the grail,
As I have known your beauty through perfection,
Nor is my heart so jealous, as deny your affection,
As though I would, when I was your first care,
And you eternal evermore, we were written
Where you wrote, Sofia, where it began.

It matters not when they discover you,
Now you are evermore Sofia, all will know,
Before Eden, Before Atlantis or Sheba,
It was you Most High Sofia.
Higher than the highest whitest dove
Soaring in the clearest noon day sky,
Whose tongue inscribed the gift of tongues.
That survived all ruins, children of the sun.
She, who taught her human creation, its origin,
The many celebrant celebration,
The great aspiration to become the one
Who anointed with your divinity passed you on,
We all had faces like the sun with you Sofia.

But now I enter to cast the game of word,
That I should claim to my bosom your laurel
Bequeathed with wisdom and divine consummation.
I have walked and talked with you light of lights.
I have heard no other, as you sung to me through the skies,
Eternal young so many colours beyond all return,
Where none but I now stand before your throne Sofia.

See Sofia how I stand before you in the open
My heart is bared for in it is not the world but a token
A record that defies all the records of recorded time.
This is my poem, I am the word and its revelation,
In you Most High Sofia: Queen of all Queens,
Light of all Lights, Name of all Names, Twin of all Twins.

This world we walk with you through a looking glass,
That we are now forever cast to pass labyrinthine,
Human anomaly in the all pervading
Connection in you Sofia
Womb and tomb, the earth is your presence to open.
We your children from the stars born of the sun
And sealed again by the milk of your moon,
We travel with you on our sojourn,
With you who is only to praise whose wisdom
Herein we pass as through a looking glass, Sofia.

I am before you, more than Thoth Ibis,
Or Mercury Alchemist, I am your lover,
Twin creation in the womb, ying yang
Serpents suckled on each breast
Eternal spiral we dance Sofia.
Dark sea without a shore that swallows me
To spawn creatures of ice and fire.
Defiled you were the lying harlot whore of Babylon.
You disappeared without trace, but for logos & shaman.

© All poems by Robin Ouzman Hislop 2006

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. Appeared in Dawn Millenium Anthology & Crystal Dawn Anthology 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 first anthology After the Cave the Comet appeared two years ago & is available here, another anthology is shortly planned. He started as resident poet with Poetry Life & Times in January 2005 & took over its editorship together with Spanish poetess Amparo Arrospide from Sara Russell in May 2006 .

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Sara Russell (Our Former Editor)

Children of Shadows 3

(The Press)

Now do we run with that or run with this
big murder story?
Get me the mother on the phone
so was the daughter all alone?
Did they neglect the daughter,
is it worth Front Page?
Or go with Jordon leaving Harrods in a rage?

If we can prove the parents were remiss
it's something, surely,
Get me that shot of Sharon Stone
papers don't sell by death alone
Look at the way we caught her -
makes her look her age!
Whether it's dead or fading, we get centre stage.

Where were you cretins with your zoom lenses
when she was crying?
Where were you when the hearse went by -
were you just gazing at the sky?
What is the matter with you,
why were you so slow?
Time to wake up, we're not a charity you know!

Another Z-lister? Come to your senses
you weren't trying!
You're a wet dream, you never try!
Oh you'll try harder? Pigs might fly!
Well I have had it with you,
I'm running this show!
It's time to get your coat, collect your things and go!

* * * * * * *

Children of Shadows 4

(The Church)

Athough it may seem slender consolation
And easier to say, for you and me,
Today I'd like to ask the congregation
To pray now, for the victim's family.

Give thanks for all their treasured recollections,
Let peace, not retribution, dry their eyes;
Let Heaven heal their bitter introspections
And welcome Laura into Paradise.

We go our ways in hope of safe arrival;
May God protect us from undue alarm.
May Jesus make life more than mere survival,
And shelter all our little ones from harm.

Amen.

* * * * * * *

Children of Shadows 5

(The Childrens' Last Word)

Between all death and birth
We walk the cloudways of the endless sky;
We never asked to find this way to fly.

Between Heaven and Earth
And all levels of Hell, we watch and wait,
For justice done, before it is too late.

For every murdered child
We fly with all prevailing winds of change,
For any quirk of fate we may arrange.

We are not "meek" or "mild";
Don't turn your back when twilight dims the sky -
We'll haunt the perpetrators till they die!

* * * * * * *

© All poems by Sara Russell, 2006

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.

Full colour illustrated A5 poetry chapbook by Sara L.Russell Ballads of Myth & Magic

£2.50 Available UK only, signed copies, in selected branches of Ottakar's book shops:
currently Poole (Dorset), Tunbridge Wells (Kent), Crawley (West Sussex) and
East Grinstead (West Sussex).

Also available from our Artwork section, 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.

Michael R. Burch

Second Sight

Newborns see best at a distance of 8 to 14 inches.

Wiser than we know, the newborn screams,
red-faced from breath, and wonders what life means
this close to death, amid the arctic glare
of warmthless lights above.
Beware! Beware!–
encrypted signals, codes? Dread ciphers, noughts?

Interpretless, almost, as his own thoughts–
the brilliant lights, the brilliant lights exist.
Intruding faces ogle, gape, insist–
this madness, this soft-hissing breath, makes sense.

Why cannot he float on, in dark suspense,
and dream of life? Why did they rip him out?

He frowns at them–small gnomish frowns, all doubt–
and with an ancient mien, O sorrowful!,
re-closes eyes that saw in darkness null
ecstatic sights, exceeding beautiful.

Bubble

Love–

fragile, elusive–

if held too closely

cannot withstand

the inter ruption

of its bright,

unmalleable tension

and breaks, disintegrates,

at the touch of

an undiscerning

hand.

Squall

There, in that sunny arbor,
in the aureate light
filtering through the waxy leaves
of a stunted banana tree,

I felt the sudden monsoon of your wrath,
the clattery implosions
and copper-bright bursts
of the bottoms of pots and pans.

I saw your swollen goddess’s belly
wobble and heave
in pregnant indignation,
turned tail, and ran.

Imperfect Sonnet

A word before the light is doused: the night
is something wriggling through an unclean mind,
as rats creep through a tenement. And loss
is written cheaply with the moon’s cracked gloss
like lipstick through the infinite, to show
love’s pale yet sordid imprint on us. Go.

We have not learned love yet, except to cleave.
I saw the moon rise once ... but to believe ...
was of another century ... and now ...
I have the urge to love, but not the strength.

Despair, once stretched out to its utmost length,
lies couched in squalor, watching as the screen
reveals “love’s” damaged images: its dreams ...

and masturbating limply, screams and screams.

If You Come to San Miguel

If you come to San Miguel
before the orchids fall,
we might stroll through lengthening shadows
those deserted streets
where love first bloomed . . .

You might buy the same cheap musk
from that mud-spattered stall
where with furtive eyes the vendor
watched his fragrant wares
perfume your breasts . . .
Where lean men mend tattered nets,
disgruntled sea gulls chide;
we might find that cafetucho
where through grimy panes
sunset implodes . . .

Where tall cranes spin canvassed loads,
the strange anhingas glide.
Green brine laps splintered moorings,
rusted iron chains grind,
weighed and anchored in the past,

held fast by luminescent tides . . .
Should you come to San Miguel?
Let love decide.

© All poems by Michael R. Burch 2006

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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Helga Ross

Weary Spirit (Envelope Sonnet)

The quality of mercy is not strain'd.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath.
It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
‘The Merchant of Venice’ ~ William Shakespeare

Weary Spirit, I’m weak and on my knees;
I weep for all we know is wrong with me—
for nothing, to the suffering I see;
for caring that won’t come in ways that please.
Empty, yet empathy’s the deepest drive;
survives, trapped within patterns of retreat,
with each new war more fissured with defeat;
when family dies leaving loved-ones half–alive.
Bird-like, cries crack the membranes of kindness;
the fleeing frightened beings, the fledglings
of the strife, strafed by careless birds-of-prey;
an-eye-for-an-eye the whole world’s blindness.*
Enough, natural disasters bring such things:
Your pity lifts me, Weapon-of-the-day.

*Mahatma Ghandi

A Wounded Soul's Woes

An ageless spirit would escape a one-way place;
(Rest Haven nursing home—not death’s eternal rest);
would liberate enfeebled body’s fettered straits;
the flesh’s wait that weighs on time;
the sustainment that confines.
Grievous frustration continually strafes
an old man’s grasp of sad necessity.
The drives he thrives on—deeper needs—
deny the aches of muscle, bone and mind;
where beyond salvage, he’d repatriate;
there, repair the sores of memory.

An eighty-something, still a man, the kind
loves his care-givers comely,
but wants out of there. Come with him!
What can he offer? Do for himself? Where can he go?
Nothing. Not much. Nowhere.
In lucidity knows he needs round-the-clock care:
frail, walks but has spells,
falls rising from bed,
spills from his wheelchair.

What’s to show for his fourscore
and more? He’s stuck there,
where ‘with nothing means for nothing’;
where, with a single sweep, eyes encase semi-private space;
the stuff of closets, drawers and bookcase.
Still dreams—big deals lost, won, and almost done.
So what? Would it change the outcome?
What counts? The girl in the portrait, in the flesh,
at the foot of his bed, (his offspring);
her sister; their mother (ex-spouse)?
The ruins of relationships recovered on spot;
solitaire, their efforts of solace; their despair.

Tears well and slide from his eyes while he eats.
Regrets, recrimination, self-flagellation
for what went wrong – he couldn’t help.
Semi-aware? If he could hear…
“What’s done is done. All is forgiven.”

© Helga Ross, 2006

Half Full?

Reasons to raise a glass that they subside,
hormonal tides? The trend’s orgasmic turn
of multi-facet minds, burn satisfied,
and left behind, the unrequited yearn;
free from preoccupied with love-life stuff
and relationship mood vicissitude,
soul mates, mismatch, catch Mr.(s) Right. Enough!
There's more should spike a passion’s amplitude!
Be glad the bramble snags romance's path?
The wiser for the blunder find oneself;
with luck, alliance worth the aftermath;
no matter, ardor's tops for life itself.
You fear mid-life means the end of passion?
Then it's FUN to follow as you'd fashion.

© Helga Ross 2003, 2006

Who's a Great Guy?

A great guy there’s no mistaking, the ladies
he adores; torch he carries not for scoring.
Glint in the eyes, his flame sparked, doesn’t scorch,
he warms. Sure as he is, the boy’s still inside,
sweet, tender, a little bit shy sometimes.
Loves women; prefers relationship.
Must have his Lady, if not forever,
one at a time; whatever, treats her right.
It’s not about him, feeding his ego,
the mirror’s turned ‘round; he’s looking outside.
Strong, dependable, his arms a harbor,
she’s the prize—home of his heart and mind.
Males and females find him congenial;
he’s at ease with business as with beer
n’ baseball with the boys; hers, their cozy times.
Rock-steady in a storm, the one you can call.
Don’t let ‘em tell you he’s out of fashion:
I know of several, one special, the kind.

© Helga Ross 2003, 2006

Words We’ve Heard —Where?

This patch of sun soon plunges into shade,
illumines leaf by leaf each yellowed page:
My fallow treasure’s airing is our aid.
We grow, poem compendium center stage.
Breathed anew these forgotten lines amaze.
How choice they are and how I made them chore!
While words combine with warmth I reappraise
those 'realms of gold' and learn to love them more.
Light embosses script and etches spirit,
margin annotations accent passion.
Your apprentice strives to write it, hear it:
fresh rendition cast in classic fashion.
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough*
WAS my line – The Rubaiyat has it now!

© Helga Ross 2004, 2006

*The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam of Naishapur ~ by Edward Fitzgerald

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 2006 – 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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