Seeking world peace and personal peace through poetry
Junior Rollator Poem
Oh junior rollator
why do we need you?
Why does our God
make us make you?
Down at the rollator factory
they have stopped being blue
for when they make you
they see a heart that’s strong and true
and they place a kiss into their fingers
and touch the box
as they ship it to you
Rude Awakenings is a 112 page poetry collection. Available in paperback with a retail price of $11.99. ISBN 1941058809, and a kindle edition for $4.99. Published by Winter Goose Publishing. Available now through all major retailers. For information or to request a review copy, contact:jessica@wintergoosepublishing.com
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Can an artist achieve the American dream without compromising creativity? Can lovers navigate the search of their desires while mourning the loss of past connection? And if the disillusioned accept our world of empty promises, don’t we all lose when that fire burns out? Poet Gary Beck masterfully approaches serious questions of human integrity, as well as the small odd moments our realities may share, in his brilliant new collection, Rude Awakenings.
We love your poems – Orchards Poetry
Wonderful work – Panoplyzine
Imagery and emotion that felt unique yet universal – Paradise Review
Featured Poems from Rude Awakenings:
i.
Faded
Dim flame dying
like a senile candle,
a flickering old woman,
crinkled fingers drooping
from large jeweled rings
as she sobs in septic sleep
that no lover’s steps
tread the midnights
of her bedroom.
ii.
Pilgrim
Leaving my land, place, roots,
another strange American
dazed with hungers,
breakfast cereal anticipations
for change, glory, just enough lust
to risk Moloch-belly flames
licking fire at asbestos bones,
spinning and circling a torturous orbit
returning me to beginnings,
stubborn, ruthless, orphan greedy,
playing no more rhymes on my toes, Granpa,
past twiddling, caring about rag clad dreams,
leaving me shivering for survival
from frostbite of vindictive atoms
unseen in the bustling commotion
in the churning harbor of unrest.
iii.
Two Refrains
For in darkness women came
and carried his body away.
The children by the shore of the lake
picked up his bones and followed the barge
and shrieked of the games they’d play the next day.
And while the children reveled
greed, our god, cloyed our senses
and ignorance, the priest,
drugged our minds,
leaving us stranded
on confusion’s shore.
Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldn’t make a living in theater. He has 12 published chapbooks and 2 accepted for publication. His poetry collections include: Days of Destruction (Skive Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press). Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, Displays, Perceptions, Fault Lines, Tremors and Perturbations (Winter Goose Publishing) Rude Awakenings and The Remission of Order will be published by Winter Goose Publishing. Conditioned Response (Nazar Look). Resonance (Dreaming Big Publications). Virtual Living (Thurston Howl Publications). Blossoms of Decay (Wordcatcher Publishing). Blunt Force and Expectations will be published by Wordcatcher Publishing. His novels include: Extreme Change (Cogwheel Press), Flawed Connections (Black Rose Writing), Call to Valor (Gnome on Pigs Productions) and Sudden Conflicts (Lillicat Publishers). State of Rage will be published by Rainy Day Reads Publishing, Crumbling Ramparts by Gnome on Pigs Productions. His short story collections include, A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications) and. Now I Accuse and other stories (Winter Goose Publishing). His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines. He currently lives in New York City.
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (Leeds University)
Identity as explorer,
as an eagle with a powerful spread,
or as a sparrow, budding delicate, stirring
tenderness in others.
Identity as a mother, as a single flame monk
in the 4 a.m. quiet, under a dome, encased
in creativity and loneliness. Identity
as drink, poverty, excessive cash flow or beauty
beside the grave of the visibly mediocre.
Identity in discipline or free-spirit strength
that enriches the landscape with humour and charm.
Identity as a man whose skin has become core,
and the burden of time has passed through his sky
like a setting moon.
Stoic or gregarious, just the shape of a cloud,
changing, merging with other clouds
than dissipating. Speaking – backwards, forwards –
when the bearer of that identity dares to skip over the madness
of self-loathing, self-congratulating, skip
the moan in summer, the ovation indoors
and be in love,
like when first in love, ever swallowing
the joy into the fear, then the fear into joy,
the how-can-this-be? the will-I-ever-be-pure-enough?
struggling to keep up with such a devouring-bliss. Devour me,
more, more, let it be, be what never rests,
what is always too much, always
electrified, perfect. Heal me of identities,
allow me to step longing for divinity with every step,
engulfed in a splintering ecstasy while longing –
this beat, this beat – folding over, under and
everywhere, mastering the dance,
where my identity is just like a child with a toy,
there to enact a deed of great imagination.
Bio: Allison Grayhurst is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Four times nominated for “Best of the Net”, 2015/2017, she has over 1125 poems published in over 450 international journals and anthologies. She has 21 published books of poetry, six collections and six chapbooks. She lives in Toronto with her family. She is a vegan. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com
Tom Raworth was a UK poet died 2017 he owed much of his influence in Language Poetry to contemporary movements in the USA, where he spent a considerable portion of his life. Editors note.
Tom Raworth is a London-based poet and visual artist whose many works include Ace (1974), West Wind (1984), Visible Shivers (1987), Eternal Sections (1993), Survival (1994), Clean & Well Lit (1996), and Let Baby Fall (2008); his Collected Poems was published by Carcanet in 2003.
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (Leeds University) .
This is a sonnet from my 2001 collection ‘Return to One: A Sonnet Odyssey’, and the section ‘The Whale, the Bull and the Lightbringer’. DC Shakespeare Theatre’s Ed Gero is the reader. I’ve often wondered if Man’s excessive cruelty towards the whale goes beyond mere commerce. Is there something even more fundamental at play, a jealousy perhaps?
(Norman Ball)
Leviathan, what coaxed you back to sea?
Did premonition sour you to the land?
Perhaps you saw the vex of history
and, wisely, chose a watery remand.
Awkward, we Fell; you sank to cooler climes,
your massive girth played foil to Yahweh’s glare.
We battled seas; you swam to rhythmic tides
while sailors scrimshawed biblical despairs.
We’ve harpooned all pretense at gentle neighbor
reserving special violence for your end.
Nor does predation justify these labors.
No, cruelty masks an envious intent:
we fend alone on this terrestrial stage;
no depths too deep to plunge our jealous rage.
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (Leeds University) .
The Aquillrelle Wall of Poetry Members Anthology, book seven ©2018
Friends, poets,
Aquillrelle’s Anthology Wall7 is now released and published in both Ebook/PDF and Paper formats. It can be purchased on Lulu (and a couple of months from now also on Amazon, etc.).
Many thanks to the participants and to the supporters, it was hard yet gratifying work. Enjoy your (and your friends’) art!
The seventh wall. Some graffiti. Some works of art. Even some smudges included since they hold a message to be heard. Because this is the essence of every Aquillrelle wall – let everyone who values his/her word get a piece of the wall to themselves. You, the readers, are the beneficiaries. Read!
The poem included below is an excerpt from the above reviewed anthology
Elliptical Shift by Robin Ouzman Hislop
Meadows of wild flowers
sweet in an urban niche
framed by a hand of nostalgia
framed in an enclosure
for the price of pathos
riots of the human race
rampage across its space
in resistance, resentment
everywhere history obscures the view
an enigmatic phantom
it projects its rapacious plans onto tomorrow
McDonald’s signs, stewards of the planet, protein signifier
regularities merge into a wholeness
the news comes on, in a refrain of the same monotone
as if the world were made new again.
*
The darkest regions of the planet’s mind
the photon of a star in a formless moment
becomes an instance of a memory
as the desert invites the ripple
to a turbulence of refrain
a window frame constrains
its world view to all that follows on
as if it could choose between what’s real
what’s imaginary
such choices, shape our view
to the now, before an open future
*
sunset on the high street, traffic
vanishing into it like black dots
whizzing out of the blind, the zonk
plonk, disappearing into its shadow
dust of ages, its record
all the particles cascading
into the horizon’s viewpoint
all the bits, pieces in their parts
blowing on the horizon’s sunset
Time is not the shadow cast by the world
the world is the shadow cast by time
(excerpt from All the Babble of the Souk)
To order: http://www.lulu.com/shop/Aquillrelle/The Aquillrelle-Wall of Poetry Book Seven/paperback/
e-book: http://www.lulu.com/shop/Aquillrelle/The Aquillrelle Wall of Poetry Book Seven/ebook/
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (Leeds University) .
