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Index of poets:
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Aborigine 1. Aborigine. i. gone is the day to the spirits' memories, phantom companion on the winds where the boomerang wings & nothing remains but its return. ii. Boomerang link of skies on the waters over arid plains of the bird's flight to heaven over us dust of human animals eternally awaiting return on the wing of the boomerang iii. Horizon. in sight only turn of the light without reflection as in a flame that against a mirror leaves only a stain iv.* crouched in remorse for a guilt too long ago to be remembered he bears weakness like a child. * After Edwin Muir Egyptian Beggar. v. Calque A trapezium vellum A tympanum dolmen A virgin oracle. vi. East Wind. After Tsunami moon. On this full moon, Snowflakes fall on these isles Borne on an ill east wind Riding on the beast This winter's end for spring, That leaves outside only shrouds. I would offer the moon my heart To consecrate it her temple That I might burn incense in her name. © robin ouzman hislop 2005. The Battle of the Ancient Misanthrope. i. King Kat's Speech* [excerpt from the battle of the ancient misanthrope. act i scene i ] it gets darker for the winter dashed sunday walker to the children the nasty little people on the street asking you the time their clockwork brains in the waterworks working out where the electricity works as you loom into view like a gate crasher as the food of love plays on between their ear phones where they block your way question your right to existence & their right to take it away but not as orphans their Piccadilly gang war grin teeth & claws as they dare you come over & tell them to tell their folks they spoke with the king of cats as you strut one foot back in the track & beg the shadow reach between you & the little people the nasty dangerous aggressive silly little people peeping out their drains like rats because time's a thief & you dont mind wasting a thief. * After hip hop composers ii. Merchant's speech. [excerpt from the battle of the ancient misanthrope act iv scene i.] A gang of teenagers brood at a bus shelter's bisected plastic funnel canopy. November wraps them in damp lamp night, a gnome wraps them gnomic rhyme. Folk leak off trained to bark at strangers. The road's like an engine gone flat. Guys rev their bikes on the pavements & dolls sit it out on the rails. No one crosses & the air gets split in a garrotted shout, a ritual the dark engulfs with their homeless hunchback sorrows & numb pallid faces. The bus rolls in bringing an electric city, dropping bodies off in concealed threat, the door closes with a lie of security, glad to depart & even before it arrived they'd known not to count on it. there's no protection for their exposure, they're offered none, they give none, the quality of mercy not strained Huddled into an end, as in a stadium, their mobile programmed text message reads, "You're all shit & you know it. Bleep...bleep, so much for Alpha Man." iii. Jack Engineer's Speech [excerpt from the battle of the ancient misanthrope act ii scene vii] trial & error has been the way of invention, time & place the application, to know where the earthquake will strike, to control the satellite's orbit, they have their exits & their entrances our power acceded to by we the inheritors but are not the elements that we compose themselves tyrannous there came a time to stand free that domain of brand & fame the fight for glory or fall on the battlefield his banner in the sky on what day did he die!? iv. Mac Gog's Speech [excerpt from the battle of the ancient misanthrope act v scene v] stride to a horizon of a shot down british isles rose pink heaven, where once four winds blew mystery & promise, long ago. familiar hues, nuance! this petty pace on a skyline's slammed door. morn's sentiment driven in a hearse, an ordinary bloke's heartbreak joke. but snow comes on christmas day & there's a full moon in a brilliant clear sky & i think that the moon visits a place & we are no more than a tale told but how rare the night on this moor's hill & the far sea where four winds blow. but why am i here alone in the night snow outside of the electric world & the cars on the highway. a lunatic pedestrian wanting to tune into astral altitudes & somehow got into the park at a time when curfew is afoot & the neighbourhood is contained, show the fellah who's in control & cancel tomorrow's helicopter with a spellcharm. v. Statesman's Speech: [excerpt from the battle of the ancient misanthrope act v scene v] My son will be Emperor of Rome tomorrow on the battlefield toy soldiers will be clay i have dreamed a fearful dream a day of ghosts & demons yet without gaining the impossible world war drives to defeat where ever it befalls the price of retreat i am a prisoner i am classified i have a moral i shall be fate i shall be walls where shall be hung framed words & peace will reign this considered universe follow a certain order of things & they shall be rules that you will comply to man twittering shade of the underworld in your tomb to rise sword in hand & march beside your host death who will snatch you on your ride as you stumble in defeat or victory as you carry the wounded hero from the field dead in your arms you justified your existence a conqueror who raised a glory to die for to taste the bitter sweet taste of nothingness in death to have sold it all though they write your name down in the halls of infamy a gallery of flawed mirrors that wink from the skies like stars that blink out faster than you think as you sink beneath the waves. vi. Epilogue. [excerpt from the battle of the ancient misanthrope act v scene ii] on the high pass track down at out post twilight soaks mist on the borders i make it to the rendezvous with a few scratches but still a refugee with only time to hitch in & let you know i'm sorry on the ridge that i got here where you wait in silent state give me your hand if we be friends though we know it's late & as i leave my heart feels clean the pain our next rendezvous if disaster strikes again on the pass or across the plains on the high borders & when i go on dark through the dusk & the jagged sky the stranger i pass will not know i've been nor come from the out post on the high pass.© Robin Ouzman Hislop 2005 All of Robin's poems this month are excerpts from the Blue Corn Anthology 2005, to be published by Kedco Studios later this year. ROBIN OUZMAN HISLOP: Born UK. Childhood in Lyme Regis & Poole Dorset. Lived Scotland & Scandinavia, The East & Spain. A great deal of my life has been spent out of England, my mother's side is Scottish & I take the name Hislop, as writer's name from her family name. Bachelor in Arts (Hns). Philosophy & Religion. Manchester University. Resident at Pakistan, Lahore. Studies at Punjab University, New Campus, Lahore: Sufism (Tasawuf), Jalal-U-Din Rumi & Ibn Arabi. Sheffield University: Spanish & Latin American Cultural Studies. Resident in Spain from 1985 until December 1998 (Madrid and Salamanca): Resident at Salamanca, 1996-98: English Language teacher and translator for “El Ateneo”. Organisation of bilingual poetry readings at Casa do Brasil, Madrid Complutense University, Escuela Oficial de Idiomas, (Madrid Official School of Languages), Cafés Manuela and Magerit, O’Connors Pub, Madrid, El Ateneo and El Corrillo in Salamanca. Translations of poetry include 1927 Spanish Generation Poets: selections of F.G. Lorca, Luis Cernuda, Rafael Alberti, M. Altolaguirre, Miguel Hernandez and Vicente Aleixandre’s poems; and the Chilean poet Andres Fisher, Las Diosas Blancas an Anthology edited Ramon Buenaventura, an anthology of poetry Alchemy by Tessa Duncan from Spanish and James Stephens Fairy Stories into Spanish have been more recent activities. I hope to feature these, as well as introducing new translations with originals on my web page soon to be opened IBIS. I am interested in revivalist movements in modern poetry. Appeared in Dawn Millenium Anthology published by Kedco Studios & this year appeared in their Crystal Dawn Anthology. Frequently featured in the E zines Poetry Life and Times, Autumn Leaves, Sonnetto Poesia, Canadian Zen Haiku, appeared on Artvilla, Poetry Repairs, the Celtic Pagan Poetry Pages Journal, as featured poet in the Beltane edition & Ancient Dawn E zines amongst others. This year will publish own anthology Blue Corn which will incorporate performance, on web cam and voice recital with Kedco Studios. Mystic East publishers are now in process of editing my anthology After the Cave, the Comet for publication later this year, as well as their Mystic East Anthology of poets, where further work is due to appear, and am pleased to announce our forthcoming New Pleiades Anthology 2005, to be published by Kedco Studios, which will feature our own New Pleiades poetry list of international poets, where I am a co editor & list moderator. My present book After the Cave the Comet was published this month by Mystic East. Robin will become a Resident Poet of Poetry Life & Times from January 2005. More of Robin's work can be found here:
Amparo Arróspide's Gift of Tongues: EXCLUSIVE NEWS UPDATE: Some of Robin's poems are due to appear in an anthology "Blue Corn", to be published by Kedco in 2005. 
Also Robin's exciting epic "After the Cave, the Comet" is now available for purchase either as a CD or Ebook at Mystic East.
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The Eye of Suffering [1967]
for Matthew Arnold (1822-1888),
on the Centenary of
"Dover Beach" (1867)
"And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night. "
Here where
the sea grips the hem of the land and
grates its deaf waves back
back on the murmuring sand,
grasping black pebbles and sucking them back
into its roiling mass,
blind seabirds pass,
laughing at strife
everywhere rife
with their hot abandoned screeches...
Nearby
dark desolate beaches
swathed by a glimmering moon
moan at her own unseeing eyes,
as seagulls mutter their slate cries,
mournfully echoing echoes,
the sounds of the less than truly
(if you must it) know sea,
chanting its perennial ghastly dirge
to the flanks of dumb mountains
facing it, it, it that impudent sea
where nothing else but stiff
and jutting rocky cliffs
must (and do) repeat
mustn't they? -- such dark complaints,
such whispered sounds, falling next to mute,
they echo mindlessly to the inland plain,
all the pain
the canvas before my dark-
bedazzled eyes
has so deftly etched
in deafening colours
from all the pain that artist, he,
like the poet, I,
has seen.
II
Both he and the novelist Hardy have seen
sick beggars go surging down their darkling plain,
creeping like bugs under paler stars
that cruelly smile as humans fall slain.
I sense, don't I, the thunder's drear that rolls above
a thousand lepers straying wherever they may in flight,
as it sounds and resounds dull, inflicting sounds
into their long, abysmal night.
Come, flee! Mustn't we? -- those beggars, lepers by that sea,
pretend like phantom rains and lathe tombstone clouds,
and gone insane, let our rain-laved souls run free
on a long tack sailing along in death's sail shrouds.
All Nature, deaf, defies us now --
a cross hangs limp beneath our shredded skies:
the massive earth emits a passive sigh,
"Golgotha!". Human nature croaks and dies.
Dürer, artist, sketched both land and sea,
grotesquely bleeding deep Apocalypse:
perhaps his black brush strokes were meant to free
our lives from the moon's next dark eclipse.
As white as wildflowers' petalled lips,
as aetherially compassioned too,
our tortured souls the cold Earth grips
with death at last discover God's Love's true.
Erstwhile mountains' bleak and heaving clouds
let rending seagulls' cries assail our ocean's shoals
as we roam along our wild night strands,
afraid of God, whose tides wash up our souls.
© by Richard Vallance 1967 & 2005 (originally composed at age 22)
Mirrors (1972)
My Wild Rice Moon, reveal true songs I write
on trails as composed as our forest's soul,
whose remotest lakes harvest summer's light
on paddling voyageurs, hale arms aglow.
As they who hourly through commanding brush
portage, will I, in scorching sun or shade
occasional in haunts they've found as lush
as our paradise where Blackrobes * once prayed.
I too, in haunting mists, will find his sun
as deviant as my Ojibway's smile.
I too must scull in awe as rapids run
from calm to standing tumult for a mile.
There it was, summer. Now long wintered frost
chills portages, lakes, forests. Is all lost?
© Richard Vallance, 1972 & 2005 (originally composed at age 27)
RICHARD VALLANCE was Born in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, March 11th., 1945. He holds an Honours B.A. and Master of Library Science, and is fluently bilingual in English and French. He also reads Spanish and Italian, ancient Greek and Latin well. He wrote his first major poem at the age of 18, in 1963. Richard has also distinguished himself in the field of library and information science. In 1983, he won the $1,000 Data Courier Award for Excellence in Online Published Papers.
Richard has composed over 2,500 poems. He is the Chairperson of the Ottawa Chapter of The Canadian Poetry Association, website = Canadian Poetry Association: Affiliation Ottawa Chapter. He is also a member of The Canadian Federation of Poets, where he is the Canadian Federation of Poets/ Featured Poet (January 2005). Richard judges and pre-selects all rhymed verse poetry for CFP's official journal, POETRY CANADA. Richard's world class poetry page is Poesie’s laissez-faire Faire Foire, which showcases over 40 poets worldwide. PLFFF features sonnets, haiku, contemporary and historical poetry. PLFFF is a member of Phenomenal Men of The Web: Arts & Humanities. Richard is the Editor of 2 Canadian poetry E-Zines, Canadian Zen Haiku canadien ISSN 1705-4508 and Poetry in Emotion = La Poésie à s'émouvoir ISSN 1705-4516, and is the editor of the sonnet journal in print, SONNETTO POESIA ISSN 1705-4508, to be listed in 2006 Poet's Market and distributed online by OpenMic.com. Creativity Pays (USA). Richard's poetry and sonnets frequently appear in such in print poetry journals as POETRY CANADA, POEMATA (Canadian Poetry Association), The Neovictorian/Cochlea (Madison, Wisc., USA) and The Nisqually Delta Review (USA). His CD-ROM book, Canadian Spirit Voices, Kedco Studios, Las Vegas, NV © 2003, ISBN 1-878431-44-7, some 500 pp. long, contains over 130 of his poems, almost 300 haiku, 32 translations of poetry in ancient Greek, Latin, Italian, German and French into English poems by the author, a novella, DENIZEN, and the 100 + pp. essay, "The Historical Evolution of the Sonnet". He is the Editor-in-Chief of the all-new multilingual international poetry anthology, The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry = le Florilège de la nouvelle Pléiade, Kedco Studios, ISBN ISBN 1-878431-52-8 to be published in the summer of 2005. Finally, Richard is co-editor with Sondra Ball of the USA, of the North American poetry anthology, The Human Face = le Visage humain, Kedco Studios, ISBN ISBN 1-878431-52-X, to be published in 2006. Richard Vallance moderates 2 major poetry discussion groups, The New Pleiades Mirror and Canadian Zen Haiku canadien. CONTACT: Richard Vallance
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UTILITY We know that they are there Lurking in their secret passageways, Hooting high frequencies through their lair. The sound itself chills the blood. It dismays Any attempt to communicate, to find Congeniality within this horrid race, This concealed threat moved by its evil mind. Counter-reaction must be made apace.. These Martians cleverly concealed canals Sharply spotted by the Lowell scope. H.G.Wells long recognized these nasty animals Who would descend to ravage Earth of hope. But our wise leader now can foresee This interplanetary threat to our nation Which plans to assail our liberty. Brave astronauts shall dispense annihilation. The project must be made at high expense. Education, health care, pensions will be sacrificed. Huge benefits will nurture businesses of defense Whose contributions will be generously priced. Our delusions now are lost of WMDs But we are confident of the threat from Mars Which belittles terrorists in our communities. We must now gird NASA for the stars. Our wondrous foes are lost back in the past. The Commies now gone but Mars retains ability To endow a threat, perpetual, to last For decades. What a magnificent utility! © Jan Sand, 2005 BUS STOP Six am. The morning’s freeze Tweaks the nose, chews the ears, Numbs the chin, chills the knees, Persuades the eyes to leak their tears. It’s Helsinki, twenty below. Double sweatered, double gloved. The dawn has yet to start its glow. I’m frozen here. Feeling unloved. Breath blows white against the night. Nothing moves, nothing sounds. No bus yet in my sight. Snow just sits in dirty mounds. Where’s the bus? Is it late? I’ll freeze to death with little fuss. Rubber lips. I curse my fate. Hey! What’s that? Here comes the bus! © Jan Sand, 2005 COOL IT There is suspicion of intent In everything, no purpose bent, For living things must orient Purposes where none is meant. Nature cannot swerve or sway To please a whim or calm a qualm. It cannot cease or delay To please a plea nor hear a psalm. The past, we know, is rigid, static. Future’s assumed wild, erratic, Changeable , not automatic And certainly not democratic. Random action, some assume, Bestows a kind of flexing choice, Gives decision elbow room, Permits a dissenting voice. But mindless chance is an illusion, Purposeless, total confusion, Cannot unglue tacky sequence From past cause and consequence. Condemned, we are, by place and force To run our predetermined course. There is no strange external source So, what the hell! Forget remorse. © Jan Sand, 2005JAN SAND is a poet and illustrator from New York (now residing in Helsinki), is a regular contributor to Poetry Life & Times and the newsgroup alt.arts.poetry.comments. A great deal of his work is about animals, or science fiction. Recently Jan was published by Kedco Studios Artist Profile Press, on their latest CD ROM e-book, "A Way With Words (Poetry Real and Surreal), which also includes complete books by Dale Houstman, Sara L. Russell and Keith Gabriel Hendricks. Jan's illustrated book on the CD is called "Wild Figments And Odd Conjectures", which is also sold separately, in a limited-edition "single" CD. To see an illustrated article about Jan's poems, visit the November '98 issue of Poetry Life & Times, and scroll down past the Editor's Letter. He also has his own poetry pages on Charlotte's Web at Artvilla. Back to top
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THE HYPNOTIST (Sonnet) Come down into the warm billows of trance Where pillows of marshmallow couch the soul Whole worlds of ocean govern lives of chance Whose tides revive the lives that living stole. Let soothing words caress your drowsy ear Layers of sound, deep and mellifluous, That never more those eyes release a tear; Embrace indulgence, sense the sensuous. I spiral in your pearly aural shell Inspiring moments of infantile bliss Offering honeyed words of wishing well Light as a whisper, tender as a kiss. Come into trance, let tendrils of delight Guide you to restful sleep, with each new night. © Sara L. Russell, 10th March 2004 SWEET CHOCOLATE Come sweetest chocolate, help me to forget The wayward twists and turns life throws to me The trusting friends that I've yet to upset The dull relentlessness of misery. I long to hear the darkly-bitter snap That promises me cocoa butter's high, I burn to taste the honeyed dieter's trap Of smooth white chocolate's soft vanilla sigh. Though righteous souls may brand me as a flake, My happiness is never more complete Than when I eat chocolate for chocolate's sake, And swim with the endorphins when replete. © Sara L. Russell, March 2004 THE MASONIC LODGE Note: I found that this poem of mine recently became the subject of discussion on a Masonic forum online. A semicircle sunburst shines within a painted sky within its curved and formal lines a large, all-seeing eye; Attendant stars below its stare festoon a chalky cloud the compass symbol, with set square, moulded in gold, stands proud Roped off with hempen cable where the floor is cracked and old, There stands an altar table Of wood inlaid with gold. Bees frozen in marquetry swarm round a silent hive: small workers of Freemasonry, keeping their craft alive. Below, beneath the marble floor with black, unseeing eyes, just before the north wing door a reckless traitor lies. The flagstones keep a silent peace over his hapless bones, bereft of stars, of worker bees, and queen bees flanked with drones. © Sara L. Russell 2003SARA RUSSELL Poet, cartoonist and short story writer. Editor 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. Recently broke several bones after falling from a train; now fully recovered after almost a year, and walking without a limp following a recent successful hip operation. Published Works: 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.
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