Index of poets:



Robin Ouzman Hislop



Helga Ross



Sara L. Russell





Michael R. Burch










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ROBIN OUZMAN
HISLOP
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Robin Ouzman Hislop (Editor)

 

From Hinterland 2000, Part 4. Black Roses.

1)

ii.

 Frankenstein.

Shelley. Mary, creation beyond
human powers, Godlike creation,
must be seen as producing monsters.

Mary. Shelley, a poet´s poem must seem
to him reborn, even God is made in man´s
image, resurrected from the grave, a
perfect form, there you must seek its eyes,
ear, nose, mouth, all of the word made flesh.

Frankenstein, my own dear love, is your
weird, who knows no other name, but yours
in the gilt mirror of crooked butterflies
where paper boats float with gondeliers beneath
its arches and children drown in the innocence
of the first reflected face, to the back of Boreas,
where the sun never shines.



~~Poems from Hinterland 2000. Read more poems by RobOuzman



From Blue Corn:

1.) Narrow Straights
i.
Song in the Blue Corn


grey sky heat pours dark rain
drenching the green
& then sudden explosion.

as if the centre of the universe
& not some small place in the world,
a whip´s crack
lashed in the middle of the year,
bang & blind
into the man in the room.

out in the rain,
in the garden in the garden,
in the dream in the dream,
who lightning
does not cut down,
as heaven splits open
& the newsman comes on
with his voice from prison
& his promise utopian.

measure of all things,
who rose from the glaciers,
to whose village the tiger came
& the polar bear to his igloo,
as the last call blows for home
soon beyond living memory,
a veteran of once four million
but today but four. *

man in the room
you are a celebration,
only the world moves on.
who knows but its fame
& the newsman in prison,
who knows no completion.

& the last woman you knew,
when you were alone
in the room.

& remembered
she went to a barn
by moonlight in a white gown

across fields of blue corn,
where silver wolves ran
& ravens flew on the borders.

where nightmare & the world
meet for the sake of freedom.
winding zig zag

the cliff face in a night
obliterated of stars
in the wind´s black maw

& the sea´s exploding roar,
as you stare through a screen´s
shattered transparency,

translucent in those cold
waters, suspended
in an almost absolute

vanishing moment,
which the edge of the world
grinds beaten black thin

between water & time,
as ephemeral as dream
& the shore of the world.

*The reference is to the Veterans Day Anniversary for the First
World War 1914-18



~~Poems from Blue Corn. Read more poems by RobOuzman


From After the Cave, the Comet

Dirge of the Ferryman.


[A homage to Coleridge, whose writing on the mystical journey of Kubla Khan to Xanadu was interrupted by the arrival of the visitor from Porlock and lost except for a few extant verses]

(1)

i.

After lightning strikes it returns to the dark tremor from whence it issues,  its naked music unleashed for an instant on the concealed land which flees as a spectre through its light.

ii.

Those who reach the isles do in a blink of an eye.

iii.

You are within the mirror eye, a flash in eternity in a movement
beyond its existence, nearing the distance.

iv.

Glimpsing island boundaries with their cries of pass on
as they disappear concealed in flight.

v.

Darkness pierces your sight.

vi.

In the chasm  there are only echoes, where their voices once called now is yours alone, a shout in the abyss that none will hear but the echoes.


vii.

A river of blood must have bones, ballast for the barge & every crossing must be borne on its dirge & though none will be remembered, none are the same.

(2)

i.

Yet see those other seas, voyagers of the albatross to these same citadels, the same siren song that brings storm & lightning, brings also eternal  wandering for they are your three memories.

ii.

You follow in the footsteps the wind prints on your dreams & they follow you as they find you, in every turning there is doom but you cannot choose, for none are remembered after the isles.

iii.

The threshold is nigh, the instant awes, this is the crossing.

iv.

You are in the eye of the mirror a glass isle between earth & sky.

v.

Blink now.

vi.

In the virgin light scatter the nine calico moon masques of Scaramouch* from white to ash from ash to white on the wind.

vii.

White on the waters these are your tears in their passing as tears must fall.

(3)

i.

On this sea you hale all voyagers but none can see you for none but you can  see them.

ii.

They lay siege to the isles & the isles lay siege to them.

iii.

Already they walk among the ruins of Kubla Khan´s fallen Xanadu.

 iv.

These too, you must pass through.

v.

They hoist flag & sail on unknowing the fallen is borne with them,
unknowing even as they enter the portals of life again, lost.

vi.

Here stood Kubla Khan´s Xanadu fallen before you even in your reaching, or perhaps again arising on that next horizon before you.

vii.

Those who reach the isles do in a blink of an eye within the mirror eye,
a flash in eternity in a movement beyond its existence, nearing the distance,  for lightning strikes but to repeat the tremor of darkness to which it returns.

~~After the Cave, the Comet: Read here the full text


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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SARA RUSSELL
 
HELL HOUSE
A Sonnet Trilogy by Sara L. Russell
 
I
 
Pray never let the lamplight burn too low
Nor let the fire extinguish in the grate,
Nor stare into the garden, down below,
When shadows lengthen as the hour grows late.
 
Beneath the roof, the rafters, eves and beams,
Down through the layer of the upper floor,
Beyond where marble cherubs, lost in dreams,
Swirl round the fireplace for evermore,
 
Out of the parlour to the drawing room,
Into the passage, down the cellar stairs
- Oh never venture there in twilight's gloom,
The dead move fast, and twilight's realm is theirs.
 
When midnight comes, keep fast unto thy bed;
For soon will come their quick and stealthy tread!
 

II
 
They warned her not to dawdle on the stairs,
But Betsy never heeded their advice.
In those days doctors used mere pills and prayers,
And no-one lived to miss their footing twice.
 
Young Betsy clambered on the balustrades,
The ghost of Robert Flint espied her there,
And as he pushed, the lanterns burst their shades,
As Betsy plummetted through empty air.
 
Now Betsy follows Robert through the halls,
Through walls and into corridors of gloom.
Still every midnight, once again she falls,
Into the stairwell's gaping catacomb.
 
Oh unsuspecting visitor, beware!
Go very quickly past the topmost stair.
 

III
 
The secret doorway in the cellar wall
Is only visible to knowing eyes;
The passageway is low-ceilinged and small,
Hidden behind a wood panelled disguise.
 
The bones of luckless trespassers are strewn
Amid the cobwebs on the dusty floor.
No sunlight, nor the silver of the moon,
Escapes or enters through the hidden door.
 
Down deeper still, a trap door made of stone
Leads to the room most terrible of all,
Wherein a monstrous voice is heard to moan
Like some mad beast of Hell, after nightfall.
 
This house, exuding evil, rank and stale,
Is in the papers, offered for quick sale.
 
 
 
 c. by Sara Russell, 2007.

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!











MICHAEL BURCH







































MICHAEL BURCH

































MICHAEL BURCH

MICHAEL BURCH

Goddess

“What will you conceive in me?”–
I asked her. But she
only smiled.
 
“Naked, I bore your child
when the wolf wind howled,
when the cold moon scowled . . .
naked, and gladly.”
 
“What will become of me?”–
I asked her, as she
absently stroked my hand.
 
Centuries later, I understand;
she whispered–“I Am.”

 

Salat Days

Dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, Paul Ray Burch, Sr.
 
I remember how my grandfather used to pick poke salat ...
though first, usually, he’d stretch back in the front porch swing,
dangling his long thin legs, watching the sweat bees drone,
talking about poke salat–
how easy it was to find, sometimes, in the morning,
standing in damp green clumps, often unseen, by the side of a road,
straddling a fence post, overflowing small ditches, mingling with weeds.
 

“Nobody knows that it’s there, lad, or that it’s fit tuh eat
with some bacon drippin’s or lard.”
 
“Don’t eat the berries. You see–the berry’s no good.
And you have to wash the leaves a good long time.”
 
“I’d boil it twice, less’n I wus in a hurry.
Lawd, it’s tough to eat, chile, if you boil it jest wonst.”
 
He seldom was hurried; I can see him still,
silently mowing his yard at eighty-eight,
stooped, but with a tall man’s angular gray grace.
 
Sometimes he’d pause to watch me running across the yard,
trampling his beans,
dislodging the shoots of his tomato plants.
 
He never grew flowers.
 
I never laughed at his jokes about The Depression.
 
I found the name–“pokeweed”–once, in a dictionary.
Surprised, I asked why anyone would eat a weed.
He just laughed. “Sometimes them times wus hard.”

 

An Obscenity Trial

 
The defendant was a poet held in many iron restraints
against whom several critics cited numerous complaints.
They accused him of trying to reach the "common crowd,"
and they said his poems incited recitals far too loud.
 
The prosecutor alleged himself most artful (and best-dressed);
it seems he’d never lost a case, nor really once been pressed.
He was known far and wide for intensely hating clarity;
twelve dilettantes at once declared the defendant another fatality.
 
The judge was an intellectual well-known for his great mind,
though not for being merciful, honest, sane or kind.
"The Hanging Judge," clerks called him, and the critics were his kin.
Bystanders said, "They'll crucify him!" The public was not let in.
 
The prosecutor began his case by spitting in the poet's face,
knowing the trial would be a farce.
"It is obscene," he screamed, "to expose the naked heart!"
The recorder (bewildered Society), well aware of his notoriety,
 greeted this statement with applause.
"This man is no poet. Just look–his Hallmark shows it.
Why, see, he utilizes rhyme, symmetry and grammar! He speaks without a stammer!
His sense of rhythm is too fine!
He does not use recondite words or conjure ancient Latin verbs.
This man is an imposter!
I ask that his sentence be . . . the almost perceptible indignity
of removal from the Post-Modernistic roster."
The jury left, in tears of joy, literally sequestered.
The defendant sighed in mild despair, "Might I not answer to my peers?"
But how His Honor giggled then,
seeing no poets were let in.
 
Later, the clashing symbols of their pronouncements drove him mad
and he admitted both rhyme and reason were bad.

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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4 POEMS
by

HELGA ROSS

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HELGA ROSS

Poet Royalty

How dreary - to be - somebody!
How public - like a frog - to tell your name - the livelong June - to an admiring bog!
 ~Emily Dickinson

I'm not a diva. I'm a tadpole trying to be a frog.
 ~Toni Braxton


We see ourselves as poet kings and queens,
and watch us watch his highness kiss her hand,
and lively flirts and curtsies set the scenes
for flatteries from fans, egos demand.
We’re royalty’s real and throne pretenders;
widely acclaimed and want-to-be legends;
though few titles deigned have no defenders
and who’s who depends on audience trends.
Here, rhymes a Cinderella small town girl;
there, graced, a common princess without peer;
far, frog-of-a-prince with many a pearl;
near, suburban boys Goliath should fear.
Writing realities making them myth:
Readers will rule who’s identified with.

© Helga Ross 2004, 2007

Entr'acte

A toast to a lovely time:
lunch by the lake.
Left an aftertaste of uncommon flavor
like the blend of grapes imbibed, preoccupied—
Bacchus might have minded.
The fish dish was delicious;
she lingered on the letters, cleaned the plate;
Waldorf words and bits of Italy,
he savored, hardly ate.

On a day of a kind
the best place to be—outside—
where the air and the alchemy
of colliding minds,
in the mix of menu items,
the minutes flew by, belied.
Dined on the waterfront
with a view wider than miles
overhead, higher than noon,
the daylight sunglasses bright,
sank ever so slowly into the eyes,
blinding,(umbrella?) (they switched sides)
(philosophized)
and the whiteness bracketed shades of blue
in parallel lines, the deeper hues
rippled and underscored by a lone SeaDoo,
the odd seagull (to punctuate the point).

Their table talk—elicits poetry:
An affinity hinged on the same humanity,
swinging to and fro—
on arts and history
separately and free—
of politics as ideology,
war as THE philosophy
we-and-they ethnicity
the stuff of he-and-she.
A view that counts, in common,
as a door opens, closes, on the same scenery.

A toast to a lovely time:
A lovely time is a lovely time
and is enough.
Each one loves another.


Would I Pen You?


There’s a place I’ve been, where ‘America starts’
road to Paradise therein—who wouldn’t go there
on the promise? Companions on a passion pilgrimage;
partners chasing history as pleasure pursuit;
making memory the past;
wrong-turn impressions that last.
Could we do it again, let bucolic byway Bird-in-Hand
lead us astray to Intercourse?
Where pastoral quaint
the charms of Amish country sate
earthly appetites, lend spirit respite—
but beware—make way horse and buggies,
roads’ right of ways, Old Conestoga’s hitching posts.
Refresh and compare nearby battlefield fare,
peaceful sojourns lead on from there—Yes!
To war! Where routes converge on Gettysburg
armies—Brothers—blundered into each other
for want of shoes. Fought, some died unshod
in field and wood. There—Devil’s Den, the Slaughter Pen,
looks down on town; rocks Little Round Top!
Oh, to retrace their paths, face Pickett’s Charge again!
Would I pen you the merits of Peace and War
but to engage my fancy, your interests, near and afar?

© Helga Ross 2003, 2007


America Starts Here—tourist slogan used by the state of Pennsylvania during the 1980s

In Italics in the original—historic villages, battlefield sites

Rainbow Rage

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
 ~Dylan Thomas

Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life.
The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray.
 ~Lord Byron

It was the rainbow gave thee birth, and left thee all her lovely hues.
 ~W. H. Davies

Awake, a rainbow arches behind closed eyes
as sunrise insinuates its motion,
when you’d rather sink in sorrow’s ocean,
and it doesn’t seem right life goes on, besides.
Why, when dearest died, these indifferent skies?
Unseemly signs? Monochrome emotion
lies between the grave and selfish notion
where loved one suffers—better than demise!
For you; for yours, who faced that final day;
and did not go gentle in that good night;*
and hung onto each gasp you would let go;
do as much as they; and those who gave way,
while firm in the faith they’d fought the good fight.
The rainbow gave thee birth—Tint tomorrow.*



© Helga Ross 2007


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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