Ode to Olivia. A Poem By Jack D. Harvey

       Ode to Olivia

Oh, Olivia, during
what disingenuous dialogue,
getting closer and closer,
you told me
in that bar by the seashore
"pretty good-time girl
comes once, comes often,"
eyelashes shyly lowered,
thick and lustrous,
lowered time and again
to hide the hard eyes
I knew were there.

I was surprised by
your interest;
vital with intent,
your lithe body
tilted towards me,
white teeth showing
in a smile, breasts
firm and unfettered
in your summer blouse.

Delirious with your fancy magic
I nearly fell off the bar stool,
fell like a fairy-tale frog
clear down to the bottom
of the mossy well, my member
swelling in your favor,
transported to
to your body's joyful openings,
anticipating
hot and wet,
those ports of entry,
those sweet breasts,
that sweet tongue
flicking between your lips;
promises of things to come.

O ye spermy nights of the gods!

The rune on our canoe's tail
says "enter here, ye of little haste"
and willows brush our arms
as we paddle down the river
of ardor and fulfillment
and coming together and
whatever else
we can muster up
from a time of dreams,
from the manna
of this earthly paradise.

Olivia, you were brown as a nut
from a summer of sun;
a glamorous summer goddess
there for the taking and still
it came to nothing.
A change of heart,
a parting glance,
and off you went.

Your naked this I never saw,
your curly that I never pawed;
alone in the majestic garden
of self I sit stiff and cold
as a block of ice;
a lonesome soldier in a sentry box
waiting for the gate to open;
it never does.

Olivia, you left me
as you found me
and just as well
for the both of us.
There we were
in that bar,
and there we are forever,
enshrined, inscribed
like Keats’ Grecian urn,
graceful outlines,
a frieze of some long past event,
at rest in that luminous
wasted moment forever;
no future, no past,
no time at all and
what never happened,
what is not there
just as real
as what is there.

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and elsewhere. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies.

The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired.

His book, Mark the Dwarf is available on Kindle. https://www.amazon.com/Mark Dwarf Jack D Harvey ebook

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Life. A Poem by Amita Sanghavi

Life:

The tear,

The sigh,

The twinkle in the eye.

The whisper,

The wrinkle,

The silent, true story

You and I survive.

Amita Sanghavi writes poetry, teaches at university and loves to visit art galleries and museums.She teaches English at Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat Oman. An is MA from Lancaster University, UK, she is pronounced Ambassador of Poetry to Oman by World Poetry, Canada and Representative of Immages&Poetry Art Movement, Italy and Affilate Researcher at CELCE University of Leeds, UK.

Her poetry book “Lavender Memories” and two edited poetry anthologies were published in 2018, 2020 and 2021 respectively. Her latest book s ‘Astad Deboo: Poetry in Dance’

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

The Inventory Poems by John Okey

Steps

These days,
sequential in their order,
random in their events.

Yet,
I am supposed to come through
	every 24 hours
With some sort of understanding,
a plan for the next day,
and the same every day after.

What am I supposed to do?
Control the guessing…
	Suppress the panic…
It’d be more human
	to be a lab rat
or a lamb
	in a Chicago slaughterhouse.

I am stupid with my intelligence.
I sequence,
Collate,
Numerate,
Alphabetize,
Chronicle,
Dewey Decimal, 
Periodic Table,
even square root…

All fucking useless.
More importantly,
it all misses the fucking point.

Inventory

I am the poet,
a disaster in stanza,
the upside-down verse,
enjoying one good mistake
	after the next.
Turn in each ugly line 
sloppier than the last.

The pen is a weak sword
	against suicidal woes.
I scribble nothings across
	scraps of paper.
Really anything I can get
	my hands on,
then lose before I get home.

My attempts at bringing
	the dark side to the outside.

Double-Checking the Inventory

No shine.
No polish.
No pretense.

I am dirty and unkempt.
I from when I should smile.
I am a disaster in every
	human way.

Lacking popular respectability,
I revel in my ill-repute.

My style is blue jeans and t-shirts.
My attitude is to smirk
	with a hint of alcohol.

I am the question mark
and the exclamation point.
The means without an end.

Final Inventory

As a sane man,
I am a catastrophe.
As an insane man,
I have it rather tied together.

Bio
Okey is a forty-four-year-old bakery employee. He has written poetry since he was a teenager. It was during the pandemic that he finally decided to publish his work. A novel, This Here Night Life…, and a poetry collection, Back to Masturbating Monkeys and God’s Plan, are available on Amazon. These poems are reprints from his poetry collection.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Three Poems Telos, Tabula Rasa & Algor by Carl Scharwath

Telos

Two evening lovers’ echoes
In you forgotten dreams and
memories of essence.

Touch wordlessly in a greater optimism.

Waves of summer morn
Under a cloudless sky with
flickering lights of desire.

Turning like a dancer alone on the stage of life

The evening leaves turn after 
Their first death and sleep
In the place of forgotten Gods.

Does it break you apart to see the expectation so muddled?

Tabula Rasa

I saw the ethos of a
generation destroyed-
mourning the philosophers
In their artful vision.

The sense datum clouds
with cries of the 
nymphs welcoming 
new world dawns.

Mentality is, in its way forming,
a sign of hopeful intelligence.
Knavish roadblocks obstruct
triumphant returns to Arcadia.

A sterism fills my sight
As the false memories
Of a partial Utopia
Flood my soul.

Algor

Like a winter landscape fearful
Of revealing what lies underneath
And I-one minute
Adrift from myself.

Opening up to you
Is as easy as breathing
In the quest for completion
Of a new threshold.

Poetry is a constructed conversation
On the frontier of dreaming.
I cannot help but freeze-and
Scrutinize the ideology doctrine.

Carl Scharwath, has appeared globally with 170+ journals selecting his poetry, short stories, interviews, essays, plays or art. Two poetry books Journey to Become Forgotten (Kind of a Hurricane Press) and Abandoned (Scars Tv) have been published. His new book “The Playground of Destiny” (Impspired Press 8/21) features prose, poems and photography. His first photography book was published by Praxis in Africa. His photography was also exhibited in the Mount Dora Center for The Arts and Leesburg Center for The Arts galleries. Carl is the art editor for Minute Magazine (USA,) has a monthly interview column with ILA Magazine, a competitive runner, and a 2nd degree black- belt in Taekwondo.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

LAKE TITICACA. A Poem by Lorraine Caputo

 LAKE TITICACA

I.
The fuchsia-orange sun
  is cresting the Eastern cordillera
Its colors seep through muslin clouds
  & sheen upon the icy lake


II.
Across the altiplano between
  maroon worn-ribbed mountains
    & bright turquoise waters

Shaggy-roofed adobe homes
  land parceled by stone walls
In swampy pastures graze
  sheep & llama, cows &
    long-haired donkeys

The weekly market at
  Benemerita Zepita
Pollera-skirted women sit upon
  dwarf grass, surrounded by
    their herds of livestock

Beyond the distant shores
  of Titicaca the snowy
    Andes horizon


III.
On this bank of the deep
  cerulean lake edged with marshland
A woman, child to back
  tends her sheep

Totora boats anchor
  amidst golden-green reeds
A small boy beats
  fresh-plowed earth
    with a hoe

On the far side
  dark copses speckle
    parch hills
Ghostly into the clouds rises
  that snow-capped range  

Wandering troubadour Lorraine Caputo is a documentary poet, translator and travel writer. Her works appear in over 250 journals on six continents; and 18 collections of poetry – including On Galápagos Shores (dancing girl press, 2019) and Escape to the Sea (Origami Poems Project, 2021). She also authors travel narratives, articles and guidebooks. In 2011, the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada honored her verse. Caputo has done literary readings from Alaska to the Patagonia. She journeys through Latin America with her faithful travel companion, Rocinante (that is, her knapsack), listening to the voices of the pueblos and Earth. Follow her travels at: www.facebook.com/lorrainecaputo.wanderer or https://latinamericawanderer.wordpress.com.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Go Forward & Elephant Riding. Poems by Maki Starfield


Go Forward


The book I got for the first time was the Bible
"In the beginning was the word..."
I was attracted to this word

Adam and Eve met in this world and the human world began
Even if the stories of those two people are over, our life will not end

From yesterday to today
Connected like a horizon
I will move from today to tomorrow

Upon this heaviness…
O wind, go forward!

In the heart,
Let's change the darkness of the Bible
Into sparkling stars

Endlessly flowing, spreading
My words before it


Elephant Riding


I experienced elephant riding in Thailand for the first time
Raising his nose, the elephant opened the sweaty nose widely
Just before I was about to leave
I put the money in the nostrils at once.
The elephant took it and handed it to his master.

Obeying him, the elephant just carried the next customer
and started walking out
Held by the reins by his master
The elephant doesn’t think about running away from him

Goodbye
This is the first time I met him, and I should think I will not meet him again
But I don’t need any kiss from him

Goodbye

Maki Starfield

Poet, painter and translator.Born in Ehime, Japan, 1972. MA from Sophia University, studying International business management and TESOL in Canada. She recently has published in the second poetry collection, In Love A Sound. https://immaginepoesia.jimdofree.com
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

King Kong vs. the Green Witch. A Poem by Richard L. Weissman

King Kong vs. the Green Witch

Shuttered in that arched ceiling house with oversized window eyes,
fear frozen as ten foot high Green Witch and King Kong square off
neath crabapple tree beside the scotch heavy station wagon.
Flared feminine nostrils bull out white choking smoke
as accented witch hurls broomstick spears at Brooklyn's hairy ape.
Uncertain who to root for
I cower neath my cottony get,
and pray for peace.

Even now
some nights that five-year-old boy revives
ever cowering neath warm get
as warbled voices of the long dead king and Green Witch,
throw rock centered snowballs
down from sad rooftops of this life.
Amplified through sterile echo chambers,
their cold white straitjackets bind me to safer letters,
as pained hourglass grains drift relentlessly south.
So I wake and puke up vanilla conformity
echoing art house dramas or MGM movie plots,
neutering unknown verses
till they sound like every mediocre show on thin air.
Whispering,
"Picture this... it's easier,"
in hope that peace will come to this mental house divided
if only I write as they want.

 

 
Bio:
 
Richard L Weissman has written fiction since 1987.
In 2000, his theatrical play, “The Healing” was selected by Abdingdon Theatre for a staged reading Off-Broadway.
Richard is the author of two Wiley Trading titles. His second book, Trade Like a Casino was selected as a Finalist for the 2012 Technical Analyst Book of the Year Award.
 
In 2016, Mr. Weissman completed his historical novel in the tradition of magical realism, “Generations”.
 
In 2020 his poem, “Mountain Bird and Loquat” was selected as the grand prize winner of the Florida Loquat Literary Festival.
 
In addition to hosting, “In Our Craft or Sullen Art” – a biweekly poetry radio talk show, Richard participates in live spoken word events throughout the U.S. https://richard-weissman.com/
on Facebook: @magicalrealismnovels
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Unexpected Disturbances & Rhododendrons Blooming in the Smokies. Two Poems by Gary Grossman

Unexpected Disturbances

Damn, what the hell?
I shuffle upstream, rod
in hand, just outside the  
rhododendron line, and
am struck by flying needles 
forearm, ankle and neck.
effing yellow jackets. 

Mother drove poorly
always fiddling,
cigarettes or radio.
until her ‘65 
Karmann Ghia vaulted
a 30 foot embankment
on the road cleaving 

the sage-shrouded hills 
between Tecate and 
Tijuana – DOA—
this story is true, not
artistic license. I
was orphaned at eighteen,
no sibs, no dad.

And so life is an
erupting Krakatoa,
a Hurricane Katrina,
an unexpected disturbance, 
COVID-19, recession
cancer, bipolarity
and yellow jackets,

till the chips are cashed. 
Rhododendrons Blooming in the Smokies 

In Summer’s rumpled heat, the blue 
Scent of hemlocks slides upwards, 
Spreading comfort across the ridgetops.

Stooped shoulders the ridges, remainders 
Of pinnacles, scoured by centuries 
Then slowly cloaked in oak and maple.   
 
Just below the ridgetops, an emerald 
Sea, sharp pines weaving winds 
That unfurl through the hollers.

From the top of a ridge I can almost 
Touch them, reach down through wet air, 
To green-bedded pink blossoms. 

The fluttering hearts of a slow-rolling valley.

 

 
Gary Grossman is Professor Emeritus of Animal Ecology at University of Georgia. His poetry is published or forthcoming in 30 reviews including: Verse-Virtual, Your Daily Poem, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Poetry Superhighway, and Delta Poetry Review. Short fiction in MacQueen’s Quinterly and creative non-fiction in Tamarind Literary Magazine. For 10 years he wrote the “Ask Dr. Trout” column for American Angler. Gary’s first book of poems, Lyrical Years is forthcoming in 2023 from Kelsay Press, and his graphic novel My Life in Fish: One Scientist’s Journey is forthcoming. Hobbies include running, music, fishing, and gardening. Website: https://www.garygrossman.net/ Writing: Blog: https://garydavidgrossman.medium.com/ .
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author & https://poetrylifeandtimes.com See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

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