Color me blue
I can swing in red
Feel my own skin
But color me blue
As in the blues with a beat
Slow cooling heat
Back of the bus blues
When life is unjust
Blue hoodie blues
Straight from the pipes
Brown dirty water blues
Songs of whiskey and sex
Blues slamming
Choke hold blues
Let me feel its color
Azure, cerulean, navy
Empathy blues filling the sky
Color me black
Judy started playing piano at the age of three, and studied at the Julliard School Of Music in New York City, her native city.
She became a jazz pianist and continues to play jazz. Now residing in Florida, she started writing poetry three years ago, and has been published in the Moonlight Dreamers Of The Yellow Haze anthology by Michael Lee Johnson, Thepoetcommunity, Whispersinthewind, Indiana Voice Journal. Poetry runs deep in her veins along with Music.
www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
www.facebook.com/Artvilla.com
robin@artvilla.com
editor@artvilla.com
goodreads.com/author/show/Robin Ouzman Hislop
http://www.aquillrelle.com/authorrobin.htm
http://www.amazon.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
www.lulu.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
https://www.amazon.com/author/robinouzmanhislop
http://www.innerchildpress.com/robin-ouzman-hislop.All the Babble of the Souk
Robin Ouzman Hislop
BOY DOWN THE WELL. A Poem by John Grey.
They say there was a boy who fell into the well years ago
and his body is still down there.
I was told to stay away,
as if his ghost would coax me into his dark bottomless world.
People even gave him a name – Hector.
And he’d be in my dreams, tiny and pale-faced,
dressed in a blue and white sailor’s suit,
begging me to come out and play.
A parent’s warnings were powerful medicines
but they didn’t work so well in the head.
Here was the danger that stalked innocents –
not the boogie man, not the pedophile cruising
the suburban streets, but reflections of our own selves –
curious and ignorant, edging too close to the holes in the world.
Then they said there was no such boy,
that it merely local legend invented by an older generation
just to frighten off the likes of me.
There were some who said the well served no purpose
and the council should just fill it in.
“Where’s the money coming from?” the mayor asked.
It seemed like make-believe Hector
would go without his decent burial.
Myth or no, the talk planted his seed in my brain.
My nights were his last opportunity for life in death.
“So what’s it like down there?” I’d often ask him.
“Look around you,” he’d reply.
As much as I sought out the world in stages,
there were always opportunities for brutal change at any moment.
Between learning how to read and kiss a girl,
a kid was paralyzed in a car accident.
Right on the verge of his first lesson in algebra,
another fell through the ice.
No one toppled down that well in my time
but I dropped from a tree and sprained an ankle.
And my knees were skinned more often than western settlers.
Nothing ever happened to Hector.
He was dead whether he existed or not.
I survived childhood. He disappeared,
figured I was too old not to know better.
Hector. You fell into that one, didn’t you.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, South Carolina Review, Gargoyle and Big Muddy Review with work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Cape Rock and Spoon River Poetry Review. To view more of his work Poetry Life & Times & www.artvilla.com
www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
www.facebook.com/Artvilla.com
robin@artvilla.com
editor@artvilla.com
goodreads.com/author/show/Robin Ouzman Hislop
http://www.aquillrelle.com/authorrobin.htm
http://www.amazon.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
www.lulu.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
https://www.amazon.com/author/robinouzmanhislop
http://www.innerchildpress.com/robin-ouzman-hislop.All the Babble of the Souk
Sly. A Poem by Goirick Brahmachari
It is not a coincidence that we abhor each other.
-
That we have never tried to understand each other
is true. But then, what are you?
I was never there, nor shall I ever be.
-
That we have to endure one another to let live
Is true. But then, what does mud tastes like? to you?
It is bitter but it’s true, I can’t help it.
-
That life will go on like this when we cease to be,
is true. But then, how real are you?
Goirick Brahmachari lives in New Delhi, India. He hails from Silchar, Assam. His poems have appeared in various Indian and international magazines. Further reading of his work can be found at www.artvilla.com
www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
editor@artvilla.com
Aquillrelle.com.Author.Robin Ouzman Hislop
Amazon.com.Author.Robin Ouzman Hislop
SHE NOW MIGHT WEAR DIAMONDS. A Poem by David Spicer
The tornado I knew as Sharon left after a brief
appearance. Her grey eyes romantic to me,
a pilgrim who worked in a barn near flowers
and the cornfield, the shacks sleeping.
I wish I had wings, I wish I could shimmer:
then she might have stayed. She thundered
when I compared her to a beautiful storm,
a tortuous wind breaking hundreds of hearts.
Sharon called me a dumb devotee of Apollo,
punched me so hard I saw linnets on the ceiling,
making me regret I owned a telescope.
Sad that she now might wear diamonds,
I can only sing hymns to her in school,
but sometimes she appears to me
in dreams as a wild palomino.
David Spicer has had poems in Yellow Mama, Reed Magazine, Slim Volume, The Laughing Dog, Jersey Devil Press, The American Poetry Review, New Verse News, Ploughshares, Bad Acid Laboratories, Inc., Dead Snakes, and in A Galaxy of Starfish: An Anthology of Modern Surrealism (Salo Press, 2016). He has been nominated for a Pushcart, is the author of one full-length collection of poems and four chapbooks, and is the former editor of Raccoon, Outlaw, and Ion Books. He lives in Memphis, Tennessee. For further views of his works see Poetry Life & Times & www.artvilla.com
www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
www.facebook.com/Artvilla.com
robin@artvilla.com
editor@artvilla.com
goodreads.com/author/show/Robin Ouzman Hislop
http://www.aquillrelle.com/authorrobin.htm
http://www.amazon.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
www.lulu.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
https://www.amazon.com/author/robinouzmanhislop
http://www.innerchildpress.com/robin-ouzman-hislop.All the Babble of the Souk
‘Library of Beautiful Hybrids’ Poetry by Ian Irvine Hobson
Songs of Interstitium is an online site created by Australian born poet, writer and academic Ian Irvine Hobson. I should start by telling the reader to this introduction. that I gather “Interstitium” to signify “inter-states” and that the writer in question is seeking to promote an idea of an emergent genre, as dimension for artistic creativity – “Transmedia”. The artifice he has chosen, as a literary device, is quantum physics and the multiverse, into it he pours, as in a cauldron, all the elements, science fiction, mysticism, metaphysics, mythology, archetypes, surreal fantasy, quantum physics and biological evolution to emerge with an art form in an age that finds itself transformed by the computer sciences and the digital media, the age of singularity.
A mysterious box containing 5 manuscripts of novels, a series of poetics and a DVD from a sect with super secrets from another world is discovered in an outback of Victoria, Australia transported from a parallel universe. The writings are created by poet and writer Rowan Sweeney, where later we find in the transcripts of the novels, Rowan Sweeney is himself a time traveller in other parallel universes, where he encounters his doppleganger likenesses living in alternative realities.
The theme of the multiverse, as fictional mode, is developed from the theory of physicist Hugh Everet, to explain the phenomena of the interference pattern and super position created through the double slit experiment in particle physics. The theory went into abeyance for nearly half a century until revived by quantum physicist and computer scientist David Deutch. Although, if I understand him correctly, in the two books he’s written on the subject, Fabric of Reality & The Beginning of Infinity, the idea of time travel and telepathy between parallel worlds is not a feasible reality. Nevertheless,Transmedia genre, launches us into the age of singularity, artificial intelligence and the digital media, where art and creativity must find there own special voice in an age otherwise transformed by the quantum computer .
In Songs of the Interstitium in Book 3 – Poetry Sequence from ‘Library of Beautiful Hybrids’ we are introduced to 3 series of poetics, all created by the fictional Rowan Sweeney. One is almost reminded of the Portuguese poet Pessoa and the many fictional identities he assumed to write poetry through. As I mentioned before, all the elements outlined previously in the first para, pervade these poems with tremendous innovative, imaginative literary force and mood. There are brilliant constructions, where the poet grapples with an understanding of consciousness and the history of archetypes that underlay it. However, I must admit, that for sheer force of lyricalism, where the poet depicts the shocked mind of Darwin, as the concept of evolution dawns on him, I personally am most drawn to the
” Coral Reverie: Voyage on the Beagle, The Darwinian Poems ” series.
But to return to the genre theme of Transmedia, David Deutch writes in The Beginning of Infinity his view of the importance of the art form in the emerging age of singularity in these words:
“This, too, is not as different from science and mathematics as it looks: poetry, mathematics or physics share the property that they develop a language different from ordinary language in order to state things efficiently that it would be very inefficient to state in ordinary language. And both do this by constructing variants of ordinary language: one has to understand the latter first in order to understand explanations, of, and in, the former.”
I can only add, that personally, i’m not an adherent to the multiverse theory in quantum physics, but that nevertheless it has been one of the great philosophical enigmas of the last and present century.
Editor Robin Ouzman Hislop
Book Three – Poetry Sequences from ‘Library of the Beautiful Hybrids’
Ian Irvine is an Australian-based poet/lyricist, fiction writer and non-fiction writer. His work has featured in many Australian and international publications, including Fire (UK) ‘Anthology of 20th Century and Contemporary Poets, ’ (2008) which contained the work of poets from over 60 nations. His work has also appeared in a number of Australian national poetry anthologies, and he is the author of three books and co-editor of many more (including Scintillae 2012, an anthology of work by over 50 Victorian and international writers and poets). He currently teaches writing and literature at Bendigo TAFE and Victoria University (Melbourne) and lives with fellow writer Sue King-Smith and their children on a 5 acre block near Bendigo, Australia.
www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
www.facebook.com/Artvilla.com
robin@artvilla.com
editor@artvilla.com
goodreads.com/author/show/Robin Ouzman Hislop
http://www.aquillrelle.com/authorrobin.htm
http://www.amazon.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
www.lulu.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
https://www.amazon.com/author/robinouzmanhislop
http://www.innerchildpress.com/robin-ouzman-hislop.All the Babble of the Souk
MARQUEE MOTIF. A Poem by Mathew Scott Harris
Neon lights broadcast sold out show of one Matthew Scott
expert stage craft presents quotidian shows without sound
sole audience forcibly revisits this biography performance
private owner lifetime supply of entire stock season tickets
(to one smash box office hit after another improvisational)
lightning speed mime hologram flashes life capsule oeuvre
corpus trials and tribulations indelibly recorded upon spool
sibilant auditory oohs and aahs from vindictive ultimatums
only one take each scene despite personal abysmal reviews
and serious consideration to hire professional management
accompanying actor, director, producer, projectionist writer
kept preserved upon cranial medium – so called gray matter
extant within the guarded and private repository Fort Knox
until the eventual disintegration from cumulative memories
become totally obscured with the thickening fogs of old age
and the curtain comes down on the final act upon mortality!
Mathew scott harris (the second offspring and only son of boyce and the late harriet harris) made his unheralded debut on a brutally cold January thirteenth! His father – employed as an aerospace mechanical engineer with general electric – heard the powerful lungs of this gangly newborn prior to being permitted to cradle said infant! Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, this sole son spent the majority of his existence at two rural areas fifty plus years ago! Audubon and Collegeville the geographic names of said locales.
He attended first at half of second grade at an elementary school in the former place name. Ability to adjust from one than another grade school evinced early signs of difficulty! Extreme shyness in tandem with a congenital speech defect (submucous cleft palate) seemed to alienate him from other classmates. As an outside neutral observer, this then angst riddled boyish psyche experienced gut wrenching agony sans constantly feeling ostracized. Classmates grudgingly feigned enticement, boot merely teased out detachment, and thus rarely invited to join in any reindeer games! A gross degree of taunting left him without friends! Lack of confidence and ultra reticence offered manna to bullies! Vulnerability and susceptibility per being on the receiving end of verbal slings continued all thru public education!
He graduated without any vocational idea (despite an ignoble attempt to fail – and yet got promoted nonetheless), and then endured parental wrath equal ultimatums with scathing expletive filled lectures! The absence of clear-cut goals found him enrolling and withdrawing from countless colleges and/or universities. Delay with interpersonal success accompanied like a dark shadow creeping closer like the edge of night! Desperation found him blithely shunning emotional, physical, and spiritual intimacy whereby apathy did predominate.
www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
www.facebook.com/Artvilla.com
robin@artvilla.com
editor@artvilla.com
goodreads.com/author/show/Robin Ouzman Hislop
http://www.aquillrelle.com/authorrobin.htm
http://www.amazon.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
www.lulu.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
https://www.amazon.com/author/robinouzmanhislop
http://www.innerchildpress.com/robin-ouzman-hislop.All the Babble of the Souk
Game Ball. A Poem by Miriam C. Jacobs
Above Hukte Ajaw’s court where the air stinks
of rotting flesh and rubber, darkest night of the year,
the sky is potent with cold.
Our astronomers fix the time of sacrifice,
time for the judge’s sharp whistles, the slam
as the ball, stuffed with the brains of the dead,
ricochets against sloping stone.
Once through the ring is all there is.
You’ve practiced your whole life for this loser’s joke –
costumed, absurdly masked, belt packed
with home-spun rags. Childless, you ape pregnancy,
waddling wide-legged, teasing your tongue
in the scent of sausages and fried maize, challenging
to laughter the chit-chat of families with no son or daughter
in the center, prattle of people with nothing,
in this moment, to lose. The regent is planted
on his dais, legs firm and upright like two pillars.
His flags wilt on the arms behind him
in the only world that matters, the only world
you know. And when his minions have cut
your heart from your body, the steam of it rising
in the mythic air as they pass it from mouth to mouth,
when your skull has rolled down the chiseled steps,
the crowd cheered and scuttled to their dim hovels, turned on television,
the forest stretches its vines to cover those who loved you,
who carved your name on a rock.
MIRIAM C. JACOBS is a alumnus of the University of Chicago and teaches college writing, literature and humanities. Jacobs is the editor of Eyedrum Periodically, the art/literature journal of Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery, Atlanta. Her poetry has appeared in Jewish Literary Journal, The East Coast Literary Review, Record Magazine, The Camel Saloon, Bluestem: the Art and Literary Journal of Eastern Illinois University, The King’s English, and Oklahoma Today, among other publications. Her chapbook of poetry, The Naked Prince, was published by Fort!/Da? Books in September 2013.
www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
www.facebook.com/Artvilla.com
robin@artvilla.com
editor@artvilla.com
goodreads.com/author/show/Robin Ouzman Hislop
http://www.aquillrelle.com/authorrobin.htm
http://www.amazon.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
www.lulu.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
https://www.amazon.com/author/robinouzmanhislop
http://www.innerchildpress.com/robin-ouzman-hislop.All the Babble of the Souk
In Bed. A Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop.
The homestead El Caserio i Bizkerre lodged upon the wall
has a large gable’s end symmetry, slightly
skew whiff in the canvass that encompasses it. I wonder if
she’s painted herself from within to without
Where she stands now, a cut out dark silhouette, on a patch
before the facade of splotches, daubs of windows
doors, heraldry shields, terraces, hatches. Two doors, right side
sharp, left a blur but can i enter, what will i see
She knows she’s concealed from me?
what will i find, dusty jars, a winding stairway, creaking
floorboards, a chest of drawers, which i will open
to secret treasures, but no, i am without with her dark silhouette.
What is that luminous blob suspended above
her head by almost invisible silvery strands of arms embedding it?
All in the foreground, the sharp, the blur, paths
to each door, blotches of rockery, smudged plants, dollops
Of green lawn. Overhead, a red angle roof, in the sharp, crows
swarm in a blue sky, where it blurs, branches
stretch to entangle, notch the gable corner in weird distortion.
Beside this painting is another, a naked Madonna
A faceless oval she kneels, arms clasped behind her sleek black
parted hair, her armpits bared to reveal the taut
of her breasts, her curves in orange & gold dust.
Is it she who waits behind these doors?
When night falls the sea is a distant death
is The Bed that is a Tree hewn from the stump
of an olive tree, drilled as a bed
post, as a mould for the rest, around which the chamber
Was built, waiting for us to enter?
She is more beautiful than her painter & we know it
but perhaps if we enter together
the splashes of paint will be softer than our creaking bones.
* In Bed. Italics. The Bed that is a Tree. Kim Lansky. Italics. The Odyssy. Book xxxiiv.
Robin Ouzman Hislop, born UK, a reader in philosophy & religions, has travelled extensively throughout his lifetime but now lives in semi- retirement as a TEFL teacher and translator in Spain & the UK.
Robin was editor of the 12 year running on-line monthly poetry journal Poetry Life and Times. In 2013 he joined with Dave Jackson as co-editor at Artvilla.com, where he presently edits Poetry Life & Times, Artvilla.com, Motherbird.com.
He’s been previously published in a variety of international magazines, later publications including Voices without Borders Volume 1 (USA), Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N. Carolina), The Poetic Bond Volumes (thepoeticbond.com) and Phoenix Rising from the Ashes (a recently published international Anthology of Sonnets). His last publication is a volume of collected poems All the Babble of the Souk available at all main online tributaries
www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
www.facebook.com/Artvilla.com
robin@artvilla.com
editor@artvilla.com
goodreads.com/author/show/Robin Ouzman Hislop
http://www.aquillrelle.com/authorrobin.htm
http://www.amazon.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
www.lulu.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
https://www.amazon.com/author/robinouzmanhislop
http://www.innerchildpress.com/robin-ouzman-hislop.All the Babble of the Souk
