Poet – Page 10 – Motherbird

Wartime And Everyday Blues. A Poem by Phillip Christopher Henry

July 25, 2020 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

Scourin’ the racks
at the D-A-V
for some thing
that says Blues
that sings
other times
vivid in
bottleneck steel string
guitar caterwaulin’
Mississipp,
found an ancient,
long-to-the-shins
olive drab double-breasted
heavy-as-1942
United States Army issue
stiff sandpaper collar,
tall-on-the-neck-of-a-GI-my-size
coat.

Slip my arms down sleeves
a dozen years older
than the flesh and bone going in,
gaze at the reflection
looking back from inside
a tall looking glass,
and wonder why
the perfect fit
feels so wrong,
why the same bold coat of
Hollywood World at War
flickering light movie star
hero posturing
monochrome pompadour
looks paltry beneath
haphazard chaos
of thin gray hair,
midriff bulging and
cheeks stretching
almost into jowls.

Pull on the collar and
sixty-two year old wool
meets fifty year old face and
scrub of dry sagebrush goatee,
mirror reflecting incongruity,
and ponder how this
thing of wartime
and heroes
just won’t fit
my everyday blues.

“Wartime and Everyday Blues” appeared in Lullwater Review, Vol XV, No 2 (2005)

https://www.facebook.com/philliphenrychristopher/

Poet, novelist and singer/songwriter Phillip Henry Christopher spent his early years in France, Germany and Greece. His nomadic family then took him to Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio and Vermont before settling in the steel mill town of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, where he grew up in the smokestack shadows of blue collar America.Escaping high school, he made Philadelphia his home, alternating between Philly and cities across America, living for a time in Buffalo, New Orleans, Fort Worth, even remote Fairfield, Iowa, before settling in Indianapolis. While wandering America he has placed poems and stories in publications across the country and in Europe and Asia, including such noteworthy journals as The Caribbean Writer, Gargoyle, Lullwater Review, Hazmat Review, Blue Collar Review, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Blind Man’s Rainbow and New York Quarterly

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include

All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.

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

POEM ON COVID19 Lockdown, UK. When Dreams Go Viral. Sara L Russell.

July 18, 2020 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

I will haunt those tree-lined avenues again
I will watch white seagulls circling in the sky
I will once more see the Leidseplein in rain
Let this still cocoon unfold its wings and fly

I’ll rebuild that club the council had pulled down
dust off my leather trousers and boot chains
I will browse the market stalls of Camden town
Go on short bus rides; long trips on fast trains

I will wander free amid the aftermath
I’ll claw back all that seemed so out of reach
Swim in that rooftop pool again, in Bath
Throw pebbles out to sea on Brighton beach.

When freedom comes to grant us one last wish
When once more people meet, to drink and dance
You’ll be a dried-up smear on a petrie dish,
worn down and stripped of all significance.

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)

Road rage prayer. A Poem by Alex Z. Salinas

July 12, 2020 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

I need emergency Dial
Soap, Lord, my mouth
Speaks the darndest
Lines during rush hour,
Easy hate spreading like
Wolf spider poison in vein
Canals and I wonder,
Where else has it bore
Holes in my heart?
Halting at stoplights
Makes me curse one’s
Dark skin, beautiful
Singing, old age,
Aimless female gaze.
I must kill it, The Beast,
Right here right now,
Lord. Rescue me from
Disease passed for tradition.
Give me the strength to
Honk my horn
If I have to, if I must.

Bio:
Alex Z. Salinas lives in San Antonio, Texas. He is the author of WARBLES, his debut full-length poetry collection by Hekate Publishing. He is poetry editor for the San Antonio Review, and holds an M.A. in English Literature and Language from St. Mary’s University.

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

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

July 18, 2020July 10, 2020 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

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 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

May 30, 2020 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

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

May 22, 2020May 21, 2020 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

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)

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

May 13, 2020 by Robin Ouzman Hislop

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