Deja Vu

Geopolitics
attack geopolitics
altering governments.
The secret war

A strategic endeavor
on a large-scale
tilts on its axis
as we're infiltrated.

Invaded
by this army
of coconspirators
conspiring to rule
the new world.

Sorting raids
the guerillas by night
guerillas by day,
quell rebellions.

Sudden strikes
attack the state.
A bloodless coup
never bloodless.

Politicide occurs
of bourgeois views.
Mass murder
déjà-vu.

All infantryman
skirmish in dark
armor and riot gear
toward democide.

THE END

The Anarchous

To misguide the nations into the great divide
endless oceans of embryon atoms collide
The confusion sets in amidst the battle cries
an eternal cattle list, to an illimitable war,
the boundless secret of the deep, dark hoar:

Lore is the immortal space without dimension,
that maze us mortals in Dementia
Gaze where time and place is lost
Chaos holds the Anarchous.

This Just In

The TV flashes
Propaganda, demonization with rumors
of child sacrifice. A perception
of a bleak future. Disinformation.
A culture feared and brainwashed.

An official declaration of war
inherent violence, troops deployed
outlet to prolong military conflicts,
displacing bias and hatred, top down views,
dictated by politics in different theatres.
The paranoid mentally unstable men launch
campaigns and battles, missiles and bombs.

Seize territory, annilhate the rival,
destroy the prosecutor, subjudicate the state,
commit mass genocide, nullify resistance,
spread pestilence, starvation, influence
until opposing forces desert or surrender.

But it is never over.
Peace never existed
Just time for preparation.
No way to escape it.
War will kill us all.

Accelerant destruction.
Termination, domination.
"For the mother land."
For death's demonstrations
to balance the power.
Diminute nations.
Control populations.
The incentive to deceive:

One man wants to rule us all
One man wants to level Carthage
One man wants to plunder gold
One man wants to gamble lies
The war acquires all our lives.
The people beg for food.
The soldiers position and shoot.
The heroes all get booed.

THE END

Before the End Came

My life is a spirit deep
under the surface of water
moving, separated.

A breath, my soul, the night
blasts darkness in the gloom,
the misty inking blackness.

Time sits in the middle
mourning mourn. The dark stirred
darkened, kindled the obscure.

Kindle is the darken apple.
Eye lids weigh heavily.
The pupils yearn.

Blackout like berries on Tuesday
flies and the skies,
the fear of Bart and
Benjamin Franklin's book
the killer 13,
imitate Jesus and Socrates.
The blemished marks are developing holes.

They have blackened my boots
and the blacksmith made me a chain.
I can taste your Judgment Day.

THE END

Vein of Taunt

Now we see in a dim-mirror, darkly,
a riddle but then face to face.
Partial, yet, fully known-eternity.
A broken reflection of the truth
clear and polished like a simile.
Darkon scatterer uncertainly derived.
The ancient hands of language touch
alluding nothingness, the wicked walk.

THE END

Bring this butterfly to the temple
at the present, on the double.
Ask this of the Bible,
Was I correct when I assumed
the Dark Day would be all gloom?
And if promise walks with Yahweh
in the dark and on doomsday,
when He is discernibly nothing,
then to Him am I also missing?
Or is everything pretending to be
as visionaries have Utopian dreams?
Should I believe amongst the bluster,
another serf stranded as a dreamer,
dreaming the dreams within my grip
on the brilliant seeds of saintship?
Virtue's too scarce! The Snake writhes
constant manipulation for the tithes.
As I bawl, they worship Baal.
O divine deiform, is religion in a clamp?
Could you light a lighter lamp?
Or is everything pretending to be
as visionaries have Utopian dreams?

THE END OF ENDINGS

James Dye

I have taught in the Department of English at Appalachian State University, in Boone, North Carolina, since 1989, and work in the area of World Literature, with particular interest in Asian culture, literature and philosophy, as well as Latin American literature. I have co-edited An Introduction to Chinese Culture through the Family (SUNY Press, 2001), and edited a volume of Chinese folktales (NTC / Contemporary, 1997), as well as written articles on Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges and published poetry. I have taught in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America, and live with my wife Vicki in Millers Creek, North Carolina.

SAVANNAH

Rounding the hill it came into view
Clouds and earth
There are moments
When the body drops away
Then vision slowly settles back
But something remains
Plotinus and Emerson
Tell us so.


WAKING

In the light of memory
This has its charms
Only in memory mind you
Though as time passes
Memory becomes all
Damp air, rhythmic pattering
Of drops drumming
Musky scent of decaying leaves.


SUMMER

A slit of blue in a canopy of green
Fire tower in the distance
You think about your life
The future which seems
Unfairly out of reach
Like fine strands of blown glass
Now out of the flame
You pass the night in a
Small shelter
In a clearing by a stream
Making a fire by night
Then settling down to sleep
Listening to insects and
Night creatures.


CANOEING THE DELAWARE


The torrent’s violent
Crests and eddies
Suck and push

Yet there’s a
Palpable joy
In the wind

The river breathes
A multitude of things
As the shore

Slides along
Rocks diving
And bobbing.


GIZA

Slanted passageway to the
king’s burial

chamber; stone sarcophagus perfect
center

you and I and a gaggle of tourists

in this womb
visible from space

a hole for pharaoh’s soul to
rocket skyward

later we wandered Cairo markets and
sipped tea.


MEDITATION

Snow piled high
Warm inside beside the stove

Sitting breathing being waiting
For the bell to ring

Snow piled high it’s warm inside
Quiet mind

Snow is falling
Mind is wind and falling snow

Snow piled high outside the zendo
Sitting breathing dreaming falling

Snow is drifting wind is blowing
Trees are swaying night has fallen.

Howard Giskin

On Utopia Parkway


Cornell’s boxes keep getting
Smaller.
The space inside
Keeps
Getting Larger.

He turns a dusty jar into
A warehouse of light.

A blue comb
A gray marble.
A copper penny,
Pose on the rim of nowhere.

His ruler measures
Eternity in inches.

Greens no explorer ever found
Quiver in boxed shadows.
Discarded galaxies
Sift through a spider web.

The old man peers at his own sun,
Through a window no larger
Than a thumb tack -- clutches A book to his ear, listening
To the endless hive of words.

Mystery is no farther away
Than the robin taking forever
To rise
From the sky hatching
In his cupped

Hands


Greco Coast, Lorca Life

A child's
Moving fist
Traces
Its mother's
Tired veined
Wrist
Along the town’s
Groggy shadow

Bells burnt with cork
Burst,
Burn down
White heights,
Puncturing
Canopies
Of silence
With wish, ash
And winds of whisper.

Spanish houses
Adobe blister
Their way
Through another
Mediterranean
Day.
Castilian shadows
Muscle and crack
Against an Andalusian
Wall.

Wild flowers
Twist and madly
Blue


Hard Feelings

Could be the name of a town
Out in the Mojave,
A place to gas up,
Buy a cold drink and look around;
Telling yourself,
“I sure wouldn’t want to live here.”

But someone
Overhears your thoughts,
And your troubles begin.

Years later, an Eagle Scout ducking behind
A boulder to piss, finds your skull
Emptied of everything.

So when you see the sign,
Keep driving
Even if you do run out of gas.
Even if you have to walk for a while
In the blistering sun,
Someone will stop and give you a ride.

Someone always does.


Leon Spiellieart

The vacant dining room,
The barren beach,
The deserted bedroom,
Those curtains held back by
The wind to reveal
The nowhere of everywhere,
Where did you take the people
You removed from the scenes
You painted?
Everyone has vanished
Down the wooden tunnel of your brush.

At the end of your life
It is said
Your appeared in photographs
With the calm gaze of an exploder
Back from where
No one had been before;
Offering proof in your faint smile
Absence was a disease from
Which you eventually recovered.

Piranese's Prison Drawings


An architect of solitude
Built us a home
Inside no where’s vast address.

The vertical prisons we stare
Into: enormous stone mirrors
Standing up, reflecting us

Alone in prison.
Our stares of comprehension: Shadows begging
Light from walls.

Our words of understanding, Endless spiral
Staircases we mount and follow
Out of view. Wearying

From such a climb, Wanting release from this labyrinth In black & white
We pause, gaze down and see

Only the landscape of darkness.

At the bottom of it all, his name
Glistens in the corner, like a key

Dropped from a great height.


Amy Ginnetti

I am aspiring to become established as a poet and a short story writer. I have written 100 books of poetry over the past several years and 17 novels: I have been submitting my work for the past two years. I am thrilled by acceptance. I am always looking for an audience. I have published 450 poems, 270 short stories, and 82 pieces of art in over 128 periodicals, books and anthologies. I have been published in The Storyteller, Ceremony, Write On!!! (Poetry Magazette), Freshly Baked Fiction and Necrology Shorts. Also I recently won the People’s Choice Award for poetry In The Storyteller for a poem titled Secret Sash. I have been accepted in England, Australia, Canada, Thailand and India. I love to write and offer an experience to the reader. I am a member of The American Poet’s Society as well as The Isles Poetry Association. I hope you enjoy my work. (My art is viewable at face book, will806095@bellsouth.net)
*Website-SwampLit (RonnieWK.weebly.com)
* Website-Shadows at Night-Tide (Shadowsatnighttide.weebly.com)
* Website-WolfFray.Blogspot.com
* Website- Ravenswont.blogspot.com
* Website- FarthermostDream.Blogspot.Com
Sincerely
Ron Koppelberger


Soot umbra

Dampened in tomes of song

And Cheshire trust, the desolate strife of cadavers

In cool enclosures of verdant moss.

A chrysalis, a cocoon in butterfly

Assumptions and unrevealed assay.

The orphan adornments in screams of garden

Snow shine scenery and scarlet patent.

A piece of heaven and a dollop of demon passage,

A charcoal and soot umbra in Siberian ice.


Disheveled Cur

Roaring thought and soils of cost,

A philosophy of vapor and due, a disheveled

Cur in devotions of choice,

Companion and direction.

The border of amusement

And importance,

A mischief in running

Cockeyed temper.


Blooming Sedition

Provided and uncovered by the fortune

Of bearing and boast,

A rare host, a thrill in skills of traveling devotion

And repealed boundless emotion, a referee in fees of fate and spirits

Late , born in berths of occasion and addition, in

blooming sedition.


Wild Wolf

The mournful conviction of love’s desolate

Abandon and passion’s swelling penance,

The useful rant and roar in searing tinder

And special races of tender contrition, the intimate

Whisper in assay and allay, a developing sufferance
In slavering raves and wild wolf fascination.


Brandy Wine

Cultivated by the birth of quiet reserve and parallels in

Desire, in wont. A find in essential parapets of stone

And entrance to decline, an unencumbered

Momentum defined by the eyes of maiden fray

And flaw, by signatures in dust and selfless

Oblivion, initiated in castles and chateaus’, in cool
Crystal goblets framed by flags and brandy wine.


By the Birth of Roosters

Emerging in hesitant expectation of sunshine and dawn’s

Cool mist, guided by the birth of Roosters’ and babies

In real realms of consciousness and loving embrace,

By destiny and amber tuft, by the allowance of cries in nascent

Brilliance, the shape of betrothal unto the day, unto the will
Of laughter and barnyard bassinets‘.

Ron Koppelberger

Ben Nardolilli is a twenty five year old writer currently living in Montclair, New Jersey. His work has appeared in the Houston Literary Review, Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, One Ghana One Voice, Caper Literary Journal, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, Poems Niederngasse, Gold Dust, Scythe, Anemone Sidecar, The Delmarva Review, Contemporary American Voices, the Eudaimonia Poetry Review, Gloom Cupboard, Shakespeare’s Monkey Revue, Black Words on White Paper, and Beltway Poetry Quarterly. In addition he maintains a blog at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is looking to publish my first novel.

Better Than Anything

Finally, we settled our wishing
Well of glasses joined
On health, there was agreement,
Except for the dualist
In the corner, who smoked himself
Into thoughts, we
Beat on upon that haze,
(I think he did not want the temptation
Of skin and bones alone
Making a good enough home)
And though some of us turned
(As I did)
Away from talk of wealth,
We all could not reject
A body sturdy as bronze,
With no hollow ring to it.



Associative Narratives and Tunes

We entered a line for line,
Fluent in the best known,
Eyes in interest
Over exquisite archaic costumes
Tricky to explore,
We found each other
By an ordinary tree,
Goddesses
Cleft from this point:
Pygmalion, Demeter, Eurydice,
We continued monologues
And dreamy reliance
On our cadences


One Day

One day, young poet,
Words will not be enough,
You must throw away
Thy pen and walk.

I got colors,
But no visions,
Cannot verify change,
Only purchase.

Tear stained pages,
Ink stained pillows,
You’ve got things wrong,
You fill a shelf with books
But not with pictures.

You ask me to forget,
But I never said you had to remember.
I’ve kept the old testaments alive
With a sea of allusions

If you must use your evening
For the day's lament,
Leave the night free
To focus on your intent.

I’m turning off the computer
And getting to bed,
To cover myself with night
And let the laptop have its dreams.


Handling the Future

Some people greet the future in funny voices,
They bend down and make faces,
Hoping the future will remember them
With a memory that puts a warm frame
Around the face they make red for the forthcoming.

And others play hide and seek, a few
Who want the future to grow up quickly,
Set up checkered boards and fight
Callous battles where armies of ivory and ebony
Perish to their delight, and they let the future cheat.

The strict people tell the future to keep quiet,
Tell the future to stay still, hand it pills
They play old songs for the future to learn,
They knit it fine clothes to keep it covered.

And some are very good, always cleaning up
After the yet-to-come, they do it
With a smile and hands that grow coarse,
They live on a daydream that wafts
Through their labor, the closest to intoxication
They know, one day they hope the future
Will feel guilty and look after them.

Police are always on the lookout for those
Who never care about the future,
They watch television all day, make no meals,
Patch up no leaky roofs, they are terrible
With love and affection, and the future
Often sees them with spots on their arm,
Or an empty glass vial in hand.

Personals Ad #47

There is no law against Jonathan,
Because he makes his laws,
Each night he comes down a mountain
And takes two tablets in the morning,
His sins, his crimes, all pass
Through the beaded curtains of dreams,
Remorse turns to reason,
And then he is fine again, free
To live as dictator of his dictates,
But his body o’ flaws ends at his body,
Jonathan is an auto-jurisdiction,
His constitution is strong,
He knows it well, walks on footnotes,
He is leviathan of his commonwealth,
All Jonathans are equal before his law,
He tips the scales and makes them even,
It’s a small kingdom
(It grows from time to time)
But admire him,
He is sovereign somewhere.


Proud to Say

Superficially, there have to be the scrapes,
The abrasions, injuries to spiritual knees,
A job, position, or role leaving me,
One potential after another going to another,
A small desire ripped apart from the skin
And leaving behind only a red mark,
So many small reminders of old attachments,
I am proud to say these disappointments
Left only polka dots on my handkerchief.

Bachelor’s Decree

You have not suffered,
You have not apologized,
You have not come to regret
All that you broke away
Without giving me the chance
To go out and respond.

I do not forgive you, because
You do not need the release,
You look happy enough
In the life you are leading
Every day farther away,
You have no need for me at all.

I only want to do what you
Have already done,
To forget about you and go on,
Able to make a distance
That I can spread out over
And call an accomplishment.

Ben Nardolilli

Michael Bruce Foster was born and raised in California. A retired veteran of the US Air Force, he has been writing poetry for over 47 years. He has been published in numerous publications, including Record Magazine, Mobius The Poetry Magazine, Bear Creek Haiku, and Pasque Petals. His first book of poetry, "Violin Memories", was published in Sep 2010, by Publish America. He lives in Rapid City, SD, with his wife Ruth and two youngest daughters, Kamerra and Kolleen.

Skin

Old Age covers me,
like a snake ready
to shed its skin.
The only way I can
shed mine, is die.



Gargling Light

For a long moment
I listened to the window
gargling light, and I
thought the sun would
burst out laughing.
But the window stopped,
and the sun went on
to more important things.



You, at 29

(For Ruth)

I remember you sitting
in that square in Munich,
the one with the Glockenspiel clock.
Your face turned towards
me, those big sunglasses
and beautiful lips. Your
long brown hair in love
with the light.



Absurdity

On a street corner in
Rapid City, SD
Richard Nixon sits on
a high backed chair, his head
and shoulders covered with snow,
his metal finger tips touching,
as though he is contemplating
the absurdity of it all.



Last Waltz

In the park an old couple
waltz barefooted in the summer
grass. She, leading tenderly,
he, unable to remember her name.
Their smiles the only memories
that matter.



A Single Snowflake Fell

A single snowflake
fell last winter.
It landed on the
face of a dead
girl, missing in
the woods. She was
found in February,
the snowflake still
keeping watch.