Poem

Making the Best of It. A Video and Text Poem by Sarah Russell

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Make time for oatmeal
slap it on your face
A mask is always useful

Think about Mindfulness
enter the id
explore the more spiritual

Get into baking
throw nothing away
cut your own hair

A virtual pub quiz
almost the same
as being there

So here is Friday
a bit like Thursday
by another name

Here is a message
stay home save lives
be good, play the game

Here comes a baldy
With cold dead eyes
to tell you again

Here’s a comedian
saying the same thing
but makes it a joke

There’s good little children
there’s a good housewife
that’s a good bloke

Spring is forbidden
summer is cancelled
commerce has died

So dance in your bedroom
sing into your hairbrush
Pretend they all lied.

Sara L. Russell 17th April 2020

 

 

Sara Russel latest

Sara Louise Russell, aka PinkyAndrexa, is a UK poet and poetry ezine editor, specialising particularly in sonnets, lyric-style poetry and occasionally writing in more modern styles. She founded Poetry Life & Times and edited it from 1998 to 2006, when she handed it over to Robin Ouzman Hislop, who now runs it as Editor  at this site. Her poems and sonnets have been published in many paper and online publications including Sonnetto Poesia, Mindful of Poetry and Autumn Leaves a monthly Poetry ezine from the late Sondra Ball. Her sonnets also currently appear in the recently published anthology of sonnets Phoenix Rising from the Ashes. She is also one of the first poets ever to be published on multimedia CD ROMs, published by Kedco Studios Inc.; the first one being “Pinky’s Little Book of Shadows”, which was featured by the UK’s national newspaper The Mirror, in October 1999. (Picture link for Mirror article) Angel Fire

 

 

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

The last words of George Floyd by HanShan

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Hanshan (poet)
Chinese monk and poet
 
Hanshan is a figure associated with a collection of poems from the Chinese Tang Dynasty in the Taoist and Chan tradition. No one knows who he was, when he lived and died, or whether he actually existed. In the Chinese Buddhist tradition, Hanshan and his sidekick Shide are honored as emanations of the bodhisattvas Mañjuśrī and Samantabhadra, respectively. In Japanese and Chinese paintings, Hanshan is often depicted together with Shide or with Fenggan, another monk with legendary attributes.

Faith. A Poem by Despy Boutris

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I knew the dying was coming—
knew her heart struck twelve
because I couldn’t sleep,
 
could only gaze out at the hallway,
past my door as it creaked
on its hinges, the wind outside
 
the open window running
its hands over everything in sight.
If I closed my eyes, I could pretend
 
it was my grandmother, running
her fingers through my hair.
I knew my father would call soon,
 
stranded at the hospital with her,
not wanting me
or my brother to see death so young.
 
I knew the lawyer would stop by,
present us with her
will. I didn’t know she’d leave
 
my brother her rocking chair,
and me: my favorite breakfast—
her recipe for buttered biscuits.
 
Didn’t know my father’s face
could glisten with tears or how hard
I’d sob, or how my mother’s palm
 
would smooth back my hair
me as we watched the coffin descend
into the ground, my grandmother
 
making her way into eternal life,
as the priest promised.
I wish I believed in eternal life.
 
It’s too much work to try
to imagine a realm without darkness,
no croaking
 
toads, nothing with claws.
It’s too hard to believe in her
cheering for me up above.
 
But how tempting it is to have faith
in her floating like pollen above us,
the clouds blurring her angles,
 
her body all tangled up with God’s.

 
 

(first published in Prairie Schooner)

 
 
 
 

Processed with VSCO with a6 preset
 
 
BIO:
Despy Boutris is published or forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Copper Nickel, Colorado Review, The Adroit Journal, Prairie Schooner, Palette Poetry, Third Coast, Raleigh Review, Diode, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. Currently, she teaches at the University of Houston and serves as Assistant Poetry Editor for Gulf Coast.
 
 
 
 

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Strange Fruit. Audio Textual Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop

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Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems. A translation from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae, the award winning (X111 Premio César Simón De Poesía), in November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds. UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

No Place Like. An Audio Textual Poem by Robin Ouzman Hislop

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Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times at Artvilla.com. His numerous appearances include Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Aquillrelle’s Best. His publications are collected poems All the Babble of the Souk, Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals & Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems. A translation from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae, the award winning (X111 Premio César Simón De Poesía), in November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds. UK. A forthcoming publication of collected poems Off the Menu is expected in 2020

You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

The Fear Factor and Covid19. Video Poem by Debashish Haar.

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Debashish is a machine learning scientist, who has been published in literary magazines severaltimes across the globe, including Poetry Life & Times, where he was interviewed twice. He is currently contending with a severe writer’s block spanning a decade, when he has hardly produced any publishable content. He is also losing emotional connection with his own work gradually, and spends more time to edit / tighten his old poems than creating any new content.

 

Editor’s Note: Debashish Haar was interviewed twice in the old Poetry Life and Times, once by Sarah Russell then Editor & later by myself as a new Editor before it folded in 2008. The New Poetry Life & Times restarted in 2013 at Artvilla.com site, Admin David Jackson.

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

The Spirit of Corona Times. An Audio Textual Poem by Debashish Haar

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This moment is a metaphor, 

        the metaphor is a war,

               the war for the survival of mankind.


Its victims are those who sold weapon

     its victims are those who bought the weapons,

          its victims are those on whom incendiary explosives were and are being fired.


Its victims are those who armtwisted national regimes, 

     its victims are the benighted nations,

          its victims are rich, its victims are poor.

           
Its victims are those who stockpile nuclear arsenal, 

     but have scant PPEs and Ventilators,

             its victims are the stereotyped minorities.


Its victims are the old who have lived their lives,

     its victims are millennials in callow youth having starry dreams, 

          its victims are infants and even new borns.


Its victims are those who are living lives in house arrest 
     
      fending an invisible nano scale enemy threatening to reduce the world

           in a nuclear winter without any bombs being dropped.


This moment is an allegory,

       which nobody knows, no one understands,

             it stammers and rattles, and speaks everything at once!

 

Debashish is a machine learning scientist, who has been published in literary magazines 
severaltimes across the globe, including Poetry Life & Times, where he was interviewed 
twice.

He is currently contending with a severe writer's block spanning a decade, when he has 
hardly produced any publishable content. He is also losing emotional connection with his 
own work gradually,  and spends more time to edit / tighten his old poems than creating 
any new content.

 

Editor's Note: Debashish Haar was interviewed twice in the old Poetry Life and Times, 
once by Sarah Russell then Editor & later by myself as a new Editor before it folded in 
2008. 

The New Poetry Life & Times restarted in 2013 at Artvilla.com site, Admin David Jackson. 

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

In Perfection. A Poem by Antonio Martínez Arboleda

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                        Nothing is in

                                               perfect,

                         Isn´t it?

Everyone counts

no Body is dispensable

                     Energy in

                     Energy out

The Equation holds

                    -The Fort-

until the End

                                              Nothing is in

                                                                       perfect,

                                              Isn´t it?

                                              Except for this bastard Universe

                                    In its self-fulfilling Logic

                         of cruel Creation

                        and cruel destruction

             following its Own

            beautiful blueprint

 

 

 

Antonio Martínez Arboleda:
Antonio (Tony Martin-Woods) started to write poetry for the public in 2012, at the age of 43, driven by his political indignation. That same year he also set in motion Poesía Indignada, an online publication of political poetry. He runs the poetry evening Transforming with Poetry at Inkwell, in Leeds, and collaborates with 100 Thousands Poets for Change 100tpc.org/. Tony is also known in the UK for his work as an academic and educator under his real-life name, Antonio Martínez Arboleda at the University of Leeds. His project of digitisation of poetry, Ártemis, compiles more than 100 high quality videos of Spanish poets and other Open Educational Resources. http://www.artemispoesia.com/ .

He is the delegate in the UK of Crátera Revista de Crítica y Poesía Contemporánea , where he also publishes his work as translator from English into Spanish. He published his first volume of poetry in Spanish, Los viajes de Diosa (The Travels of Goddess), in 2015, as a response to the Great Recession, particularly in Spain. His second book, Goddess Summons the Nation Paperback ,  Goddess Summons the Nation Kindle Edition , is a critique of the ideas of nation and capitalism, mainly in the British Brexit context. It incorporates voices of culprits, victims and heroes with mordacity and rhythm. It consists of 21 poems, 18 of which are originally written in English, available in print

and kindle in Amazon and other platforms.

Editor’s note: further information bio & academic activities can be found at this link: https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/languages/staff/91/antonio-martinez-arboleda

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

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