Peg to Winnipeg. A Poem by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

Marie. A Poem by Jack D. Harvey

by 
         Marie

Oh Marie, you are
an aging wreck;
your dangling dugs,
your languid wrinkled Miss Muffet
won't bring the milkman early;
dirty and smelly
slattern of the month, 
the epitome of
everybody's discarded laundry.

Lapses in motor function
mental focus 
get you to the streetcar  
late every day
and late to work;
booted out
sooner or later
when you get home
what will he say?

What a burden
for our pity and revulsion;
you're frightening
in your squalor.

Night and day
a dead soul
an endless round 
of apathy and despair,
what kind of life is that?

That's what we think.

But some rare times,
God knows why
somehow roused,
triumphant 
between the bed posts
like a shaky marionette 
you rise and fall
to the challenge
of bleary marital bliss;
for those few moments 
assertive queen, 
sweating with your
hirsute timorous king
dismantling him,
cannibalizing him,
you burst forth new-made,
king and queen together,
amorous two-backed beast 
before your reign fades away
in the glimmer of tomorrow 
and you come apart,
Priapic darling,
again become 
what you were.

Alas, Marie, time's more
than a placeholder;
eater, destroyer
changing Nineveh 
and all of us to dust;
false fellow traveler
rubbing us out
of our space and place
before we know it.

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Poetry Life & Times, 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 the Dwarf Jack D.Harvey Ebook

LIKE THE BIRDS ON THE WIRES. 3 Poems from Bradford Middleton

by 
LIKE THE BIRDS ON THE WIRES

 
As I walked I would occasionally

Look up, up at the sky, up where

The birds ruled, home there to the

Lucky, those who can move in the

Blink of one eye. 

 
This time though the view was kind

Of different; the birds had all

Congregated, like musical notes on

A line, along the telephone wire that

Keeps us in touch with the outside world.

 
It was then I thought is that how

Leonard Cohen came up with the

Wonderful lyrics to 'Bird on a Wire'

By looking up, up at the sky, drawing

Inspiration from a natural phenomenon.

 
FALLING DOWN THE STAIRS

 
There were times when I would live

A life, a wild time, and would often

Find myself falling down those stairs

At the last resort out of my mind,

Always always out of my mind and

Late at night as that was when this

Beautiful gift always got me best

And sometimes it would be 3-15

In the morning and I’d be falling

Down those damn stairs out of

My damn mind feeling like a cat

At the end of his ninth life.

 
LIKE THOSE OLD DAYS (with my radio on)

 
I sit here tonight and it

Almost feels like the old-times as

My radio builds up to one of the games of the year

As old footballers talk of teenagers

Turning up to training in brand new

Shiny Mercedes-Benz as I sit here

Writing a life so far removed from

Their gilded existence it just goes to

Show you how capitalism has gone so

Terribly wrong…

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
BIOGRAPHY
 
 
Bradford Middleton was born in south-east London during the summer of 1971 and won his first poetry prize at the age of nine. He then gave up writing poems for nearly twenty-five years and it wasn’t until he landed in Brighton, knowing no one and having no money, that he began again. Ten years later and he’s been lucky enough to have had a few chapbooks published including a new one from Analog Submission Press entitled ‘Flying through this Life like a Bottle Battling Gravity’, his debut from Crisis Chronicles Press (Ohio, USA) and his second effort for Holy & Intoxicated Press (Hastings, UK). He has read around the UK at various bars, venues and festivals and is always keen to get out and read to new crowds. His poetry has also been or will be published shortly in the Chiron Review, Zygote in my Coffee, Section 8, Razur Cuts, Paper & Ink, Grandma Moses ‘Poet to Notice’, Empty Mirror, Midnight Lane Gallery, Bareback Lit and is a Contributing Poet over at the wonderful Mad Swirl. If you like what you’ve read go send a friend request on facebook to bradfordmiddleton1.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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)

My Voice. A Poem & Artwork by Kelly Sargent

by 
My Voice



I am Deaf. 

My fingers speak. 


A coiffed paintbrush in my grasp, 

my voice streaks turquoise and magenta 

across a parched canvas. 

Vowels coo through thirsty linen.


Click-clacking keys with my mother tongue, 

I chew hard consonants

and spit them out. 

Sour, a scathing sonnet can be at dusk.


Fingertips pave slick exclamations, 

punctuated by nails sinking low into clamminess.  

I sculpt hyperboles.

Kelly Sargent is an author and artist whose works, including a Best of the Net nominee, have appeared in more than forty literary publications. A poetry chapbook entitled Seeing Voices: Poetry in Motion is forthcoming (Kelsay Books, 2022). A book of modern haiku entitled Lilacs & Teacups is also forthcoming, and a haiku recently recognized in the international Golden Haiku contest is on display in Washington, D.C. She serves as the creative nonfiction and an assistant nonfiction editor for two literary journals. She also reviews for an organization whose mission is to make visible the artistic expression of sexual violence survivors.
You can find her at https://www.kellysargent.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)

The Inventory Poems by John Okey

by 
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)

The Cybernetic Lullaby. A Poem by Nolo Segundo

by 
The Cybernetic Lullaby


They sing softly to us at 
Every click of the mouse—
use me, I'm here for you,
only you, in the entire 
universe will I serve….

And we lay enraptured 
as they bring us the world,
knowledge the wise men
of history never had, and
ease, lots of ease to save 
us time and trouble. Soon 
we cannot live without them,
the thought of it too mean.
Without them we would loose 
Touch with our friends, jobs,
Even our money might wander 
If we cannot watch it daily.

However did our ancestors 
Survive without an I Phone?

Part II

I read on my laptop today—
Automation is making us dumber,
Ineffective, even maybe impotent.
Perhaps it's a conspiracy by that secret
Society, the computer brotherhood.
(Do you really believe your Apple is 
Innocent and IBM is not plotting?)

Or maybe we should just blame
Human sloth, that siren call of 
Sheer damn laziness which can 
Lure the best of us to a quiet doom.

A simple proof: hand a twenty to a clerk
And ask him to make change without
Looking to the machine for succor.
That blank, innocent look he gives you—
"Why me?",  he seems to be saying, 
And you can't help but pity him a bit. 
He is, after all, a victim of mass education.


There are worse victims: 
Airliners wildly crashing,
Doctors killing their patients,
Nuclear power plants going
BOOM! And killing the land
For an eon or two, or three.

How like little children we were!
Thinking these machines would
Be our slaves, sans the brutality. 
But it is we who are chained by 
The zeros and ones, we who are
Thinking less, creating cheaper, 
Settling into a cybernetic fog.

Part III: When Androids Dream

When we finally build them
(and it will not be long)
Will androids finally lead us
all to nirvana, a world of peace, 
leisure, and endless wealth?

Could any hell be worse?
For that day will be when 
We lose purpose, and soon
Perhaps the very will to live.

When the androids dream
(and they will dream, 
because we will make them 
to be like us, for we have 
always been a vain species),
will they not dream of sky
and soaring free of the land,
free of the weak, sad humans
they serve without accordance?
                                                                                                                   
Then, when these humanface 
Machines begin dreaming in 
Daylight, they will see no need
For their progenitors, and those 
Of us left living as shells sans
Struggle or pain or conflict, in
An existence sooo boring, will
Doubtless welcome our end.

Nolo Segundo, pen name of retired teacher [America, Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia] L.J. Carber, 74, has in his 8th decade become a published poet in 48 online/in print literary magazines in the US, UK, Canada, Romania, Portugal, and India; in 2020 a trade publisher released a book-length collection titled ‘The Enormity Of Existence’ and in 2021 a 2nd book, ‘Of Ether And Earth‘ [all royalties going to Doctors Without Borders]. A beautiful and intelligent Chinese woman has been married to him for 41 years, proving that miracles do happen.

Three Poems Telos, Tabula Rasa & Algor by Carl Scharwath

by 
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)

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

by 
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)

Peg to Winnipeg. A Poem by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

by

 

Peg has gone back to Winnipeg
She was short and thin
and her husband was tall and corpulent
They were like Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera
except they weren’t creative
They were retired administrators
who thought they were smarter than everyone else
 
Peg and her corpulent husband were part of a group
until they alienated everyone with their
overweening sense of superiority
which of course masked a sense of inferiority
which everyone understood
and felt compassion for
until their obnoxiousness
become too much too tolerate
 
They refused to play cards
one of the group’s foundation activities
They intimated that playing cards was a pastime
for morons
 
So gradually they were pushed out of the group
They were thought of with distaste and/or disdain
Members of the group remained polite to them
but nothing more
 
When Peg’s corpulent husband
had a heart attack and died
Peg went back to Winnipeg
where she’d spent her childhood by a lake
in an unpainted farmhouse
with her aunt
 
 
 
 

 
 
Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois has had over fourteen-hundred of his poems and fictions appear in literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad, including quite a few in POETRY LIFE AND TIMES. He has been nominated for numerous prizes, and was awarded the 2017 Booranga Writers’ Centre (Australia) Prize for Fiction. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work as a clinical psychologist in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and Nook, or as a Print Edition . To see more of his work, google Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois. He lives in Denver.
 
 
 
 
 
 

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) .

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