the fish,Mother Ganga & festering. 3 Poems by Stephen House

by 
the fish

i’m in horror 
watching him 
pull up the hooked fish
on the end of the jetty 
where i am taking in the sunset  

and while i know i can’t do anything 
to save the fish 
from this accepted by most slaughter  

i look into the fisherman’s eyes 
and quietly say
‘that poor dying fish’ 

to which he shrugs 

but i get a sense 
by the look he gives the fish 
and me

that just for moment
hearing my words 
he completely falls into 
what i said

and i suppose
that counts for something

re: the fish
and the life 
it has lived

on planet earth

our shared home
 

Mother Ganga

i stand 

hold the rusty chain 
that stops bathing people 
being swept away  

and lower my body 
into the healing stream
of Mother Ganga 

flowing fast into the plains of India 
from the Himalayas north 

and unexpectedly 
(for i am a sceptic 
until something
is scientifically proven)
 
i instantly feel my inner dirt 
being washed away

and a renewal take place

and i do know 
what i feel

whether i believe it
or not 


festering

i have often wondered 
why we won’t return to those years
through a conversation 
and put it to rest for good 

but we don’t bring it up

and so 
it continues to sit 

festering 

like an unopened box of distress 
lurking by us 

each time 
we are together

and it probably always will
unless something changes

between us

again

Stephen House has won many awards and nominations as a poet, playwright, and actor. He’s had 20 plays produced with many published by Australian Plays Transform. He’s received several international literature residencies from The Australia Council for the Arts, and an Asialink India literature residency. He’s had two chapbooks published by ICOE Press Australia: ‘real and unreal’ poetry and ‘The Ajoona Guest House’ monologue. His next book drops soon. He performs his acclaimed monologues widely.

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IN TIMES OF CHANGE,Memories (that beat like a second heart), Life’s Dance of Moments, 3 Poems by Richard Lloyd Cederberg

by 
Grief has a way of inducing tunnel-vision. When heartache hampers progress, 
find discipline in breathing, openness in loving, and simple honesty in writing; 
human life is precious.

IN TIMES OF CHANGE (Tankas)

Serendipity
was involved in what happened
When I feted you
but it gave me no pleasure
losing contact with your soul
.
So I tried shaping
the shifting times to suit us,
to build a safeguard
around the soft parts of you,
those parts prone to impairment
.
But all I did failed,
the colors began fading,
the blossoms fell, and
the fictions I’d once embraced 
became a strangling hindrance
.
How does one cope with
an overwhelming sorrow,
a consuming storm,
when all you feel depletes you 
and writing is not enough
.
But there was hope, still,
(I thought) in all these struggles,
life’s trying seasons 
challenging ev’ry human
willing to search the unknown
.
Now,
.
each day I press on,
eager to write something new, 
even as heartache
impedes my reaction to 
livings wild rage of echoes
.
There’s a place for friends,
when forgetfulness deepens,
a place in the heart
where memories of closeness
remain strong in times of change
.
You will always be with me… 

I began understanding myself (and my place in life) far better after almost destroying 
myself. And in the process  of fixing myself and healing, I began recognizing who I really 
was. Love and wisdom  are the keys.
Memories (that beat like a second heart)
.
Come twilight, come mist, 
These ever-changing heavens
inspire me to purge
what suppresses loves heartlight 
and stays a healthy minds thoughts…
. 
Knowing life’s mistakes      
were only a life lesson,
not a life sentence,
.
We’ve espoused a way,
you and I, where hope remains,
notwithstanding these
fraught thoughts churning within us,
come they shall, in time they must
yet love will still deliver us
from all that grips us deep within
and stays the hand of reason
.
Come twilight, come mist, 
this dark cerulean sky
seeks to arouse us
as the night draws us closer
in a flame of enchantment
.
To again regain  
simple sensibilities,  
notwithstanding these  
broken days that plague us yet,
come they shall, and so they must
still wisdom will deliver us
from all that plagues us deep within
and causes us to suffer
.
Some days, I relive
my hearts deafening silence,
where hard memories
dwell within what they quicken,
and beat like a second heart… 

“Why…. you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? 
You are a mist that appears a little while, and then vanishes.”
 James 4:14 NIV.
Life’s Dance of Moments

‘Water-man’ image was taken at Lake Ellery in the Sierra Nevada 
outside the Tuolumne Meadows. Ekphrastic. 
.
Michele and I
watch, as snow pure 
streams worm down over   
the grays and reddish umbers   
of mountain granite, 
both of us 
charmed with the  
fleetingness of shapes, 
and how it streams freely
around and throughout all it
touches, and how the musicalness  
of flowing water (to our ears) embodies   
the wayward lightness of moments…. And
.
as we test various   
angles and shutter speeds 
(hoping to capture  
the magic 
of moments)  
the flow suddenly 
strengthens, and an 
odd water figure appears, 
sitting stoically staring at us shifting 
in the briefness of streaming seconds…. Then it
.
becomes clear how 
life moves in moments,
and how with each breath  
there is constant action     
in all things (visible      
and invisible) as 
nothing in creation  
ever remains motionless….
a dance of moments  
in the Creator’s  
breath, in which life’s
greater lessons and mysteries  
can be understood at times simply 
as the moon’s reflection floating in
an old water barrel, or in the 
heavy drops that form on
leaf tips, (as fleetingly 
beautiful as a
mother's tears)  
or how in each droplet  
exist a myriad of microbes   
and soulish reflections that all
surrender to the swish and swirl 
of living’s ephemerality’s….
.
Life’s dance of moments fades so fast
the scent of time in mem’ry’s cast
reminding us of all things past,
the days pass quickly,
the night turns dark and vast,
but nothing remains… nothing lasts….

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY – 2022
RICHARD LLOYD CEDERBERG was born in Chicago Illinois. He is the progeny of Swedish and Norwegian immigrants. Richard began his journey into the arts at the age of six. For twelve years he played classical trumpet. But when the wonderful incursion of British music invaded America, he set aside the trumpet and took up acoustic and electric guitar. Richard began writing songs and lyrics and poetry. He performed in 17 professional bands. He played clubs, halls, cabarets, and concerts in Europe, Canada, across the USA, Alaska, and even Whitehorse in the Yukon Territories. Richard’s band SECRETS was one of the top four Pop-Jazz bands in San Diego for 5 years. In 1995 Richard was privileged to design and build his own Midi-centered digital Recording Studio ~ TAYLOR & GRACE ~ where he worked feverishly until 2002. During that time, he composed, and multi-track recorded, over 500 compositions. Only two CD’s were compiled: WHAT LOVE HAS DONE and THE PATH. Richard retired from music in 2003….
.
Richard traveled extensively throughout the USA, British Columbia, Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, in Canada, the Yukon Territories, Kodiak Island, Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, Sitka, Petersburg, and Glacier Bay, in Alaska, the Azorean Archipelagoes, and throughout Germany, Switzerland, Spain, and Holland. Richard and his wife, Michele, have been avid adventurers. They’ve hiked the Laguna Mountains, the Cuyamaca Mountains, the High Deserts in Southern California, the Eastern Sierra’s, the Dixie National Forest, the Northern California and Southern Oregon coastlines, and the “Four Corners” region of the United States.
.
RICHARD’S POETRY contains history, mythology, personal relationships (past and present), parlance, alliteration, metaphor, characterization, spiritual faith, eschatology, and art. He relishes the challenge of poetic stylization: Rhythmical, Poetiprose, Triolets, Syllable formats, Story-Poems, Freeform, Haiku, Tanka, Haibun, and Acrostic. Richard has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize.
.
PUBLISHED BOOKS by Richard L. Cederberg.
The MONUMENTAL JOURNEY SERIES is a confluence of adventure, mystery, and historical fiction. Journey on the schooner Heimdall with Dr. Gabriel Proudmore, John, Helga, Betsy, Garrett, Captain Olaf Amundsen, Rorek Amundsen, Anders (Norse) Vildarsen, and Rolf the Wolfhound…
1. A MONUMENTAL JOURNEY…
2. JOURNEY 2 – IN SEARCH OF THE FIRST TRIBE…
3. JOURNEY 3 – THE UNDERGROUND RIVER…
4. JOURNEY 4 – BEYOND UNDERSTANDING…
5. BETWEEN THE CRACKS… a spinoff from the MJ Series…
6. A NEW RACE OF HuMANS – Published 10/25/2022. A NEW RACE OF HuMANS is an eschatological drama-venture that follows the lives of Grant Callarman (the Christian), Peter Pegarian (the plagiarist conman), Haddon Hathaway (the Humanist), and Professor Wilmington Jonah (the doubting intellect) as they experience the shocking global translation of the Saints, Daniels 70th Week, and the Kingdom Age, in which all four men are predestined to meet once again.

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THROUGH A FOG, AFTER THE FALL & WISDOM. 3 Poems by George Freek

by 

THROUGH A FOG (After Su Tung Po) 

Wind rustles the leaves
with rough fingers,
then blows away.
Silence is a muted scream.
Clouds look at nothing
when they pass by
like men who
no longer ask why.
The moon, once so bright,
is a dim light
in that immense sea,
while I search for
things that are not to be.

AFTER THE FALL (After Mei Yao Chen)

Dying flowers lie like corpses
with discolored heads.
If my wife were here,
She’d try to revive them,
but she’s also dead.
Night holds me in its arms,
as if I were a child,
abandoned in a desolate spot.
Stars crawl across the sky
like bugs wandering
lost and blind,
over an infinite rug,
Life is unkind.
Life will never be how it was,
but I think the way it was
was only in my mind

WISDOM (After Tu Fu)

I stare at my unmade bed.
Outside, a chilling breeze
rustles the dead leaves,
as if they were feathers.
The moon is a ball of lead.
I gaze at distant stars,
lost in the infinite sky,
as if they had
nowhere to abide.
A torn shirt, hanging from
a tree, waves in the breeze,
like an abandoned flag,
now a tattered rag.
I feel the approaching cold.
I watch traffic pass me by,
as if I were a stone.
I’ve learned 
what it means to become old.

George Freek’s poem “Written At Blue Lake” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His poem “Enigmatic Variations” was also recently nominated for Best of the Net. His collection “Melancholia” is published by Red Wolf Editions.

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Temporal, Forest Paths & The Fringe. 3 Poems by JD DeHart

by 
Temporal

 
Everyone I talk to lately
seems to be mediating on the passage of time.

 It goes so fast, they say. Almost in chorus.

 It’s the greying in all of our hair, or
the effect of being holed up for two years,
twenty-four months that have felt like
a decade of worry and anticipatory grief.

 Of course, we are creatures
that have an inevitable terminus. There
are a variety of words for this truth.

 Crapshoot and shitshow both come to mind.
Funny how scatological such terms are,
indicating how we truly feel about the ultimate

 away and, in some cases, our lodging here.

 I munch another bite of the remnants
of a creature that met its demise to
sustain me for a few more hours.

 I contemplate how the past is not real
anymore, and neither are my speculations
of the future. The body bears the mark of all

 but everything eventually becomes
memory or a vague sense that someone,
even someone much like us,

 used to be here.


Forest Paths

 
I can still trace
the way our feet fell
where few other feet stood,

 I would walk further
ahead, always drafting in my mind.

 The comic books and adventure
stories I built with each step,
while you, my father, walked

 just behind me, the sound
of our family hunting dog
lapping and sniffing.

 That time when I was younger,
when you threatened to cut
our walk short. I must have
deserved it, but said:

“If I come back without you,
no big deal, but if you come back
without me, you’re in trouble,
mister.”

 What was I thinking to speak
to you in such a way, but you
and Mom laughed about that
for years, probably still telling
that story whenever you can.

 Did you know I still go back
when life is full to those quiet places,
where I can hear wind
moving through the trees of memory?

It’s true.

 My brain still finds that place
where the forest grows denser,
past the well-trod path,

 rounding curves and bends,
being careful of stray dogs
and spiderwebs, to go to places

 few others go.

 I will always be
a creature of the woods.


The Fringe

 
So, here I am.
Always on the edges.

 Wondering what word
captures me. Belonging and never
belonging.

 Maybe I’ve always fit in somewhere
and just haven’t seen it yet.

 A figure from the fringes, do I
love? Of course I do, trying my best to

 hold the affection for neighbors
that I ought to hold for myself (that I work
on holding for myself).

 Yet, always at the edge, somehow,
at the corner of the room, looking in.

 A describer’s heart, an ethnographer’s
mind.

 

 
JD DeHart is a writer and teacher. His latest poetry collection, A Five-Year Journey, is available from Dreaming Big Publications.

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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

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Damn You All & No Mars Poems by Robin Ouzman Hislop

by 
Damn you all

wild cooing of doves in distant branches
beyond the curtain drawn window
 in the darkened room
where he sits on the edge of the bed
frail & thin gently nodding to & fro
thinking progress be damned

nation states wear hoods
ghost riders in the sky stampede
the plains & piss in the oceans
the salmon from the rivers have gone
in what seas will they now spawn
& he is down by the riverside

down by the riverside	            where
he casts his line into its waters
waiting for it to tauten     the sudden
tug     the thrill electric of connection
the flick     the jerk      as a wriggling
sparkling life           glints in the light
sails through space to land at his feet

the poetic stance
oh not at all	damn you all


“No Mars”

return to the Jaguar Moon
                                           what is perpetuation
                                          one is many is everyone
                                          is everything is a person
                                           a matter of perspective
                              she alone will adorn the many	Jaguar Moon
 
evolution is but diversity
                                        it will always come again
                                       but sapiens are but rapiens
                                            now their remains

                 if the world should come again 	then come O Jaguar Moon

the sleek Brazilian jaguar does not in her aboreal gloom
distill so rank a feline smell as grishkin in a drawing room

who is grishkin	   O Jaguar Moon
when she’s feline	& we her prey
unless we outlive the day
                                  
                               her kiss that sips our blood like nectar

 
 
 

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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The Canyon de Chelly Poems by David Chorlton

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The two poems draw on a trip through the northeastern part of Arizona and to our well known Canyon de Chelly, the jpgs are of some watercolous that are “abstractions” with the red rock landscape in mind that match what happens in the poems. David Chorlton

 



Canyon de Chelly


The rain turns around and begins

to flow back into the sky. A low cloud

grips a mesa with its talons

and pulls it from the surface of the Earth

revealing one more red rock canyon

filled with souls. The walls are marked by clawing

where they tried to climb out.

                                               History
curls up at the edges

and the open spaces tear apart as easy

as ripping up a treaty.

A dark heat settles over the land.

There are no ladders any more

to reach houses built into

the walls, but those between the houses

and the sky

                  remain in place

for access to join a hawk in flight.

Easy now to navigate

the cliffs, circle columns rising

from the stony ground, and balance

on the heat. To fly

and not be followed, settle high

where nobody can reach

and be a spirit leaving when

the body can’t hold on.





Navajo Landscapes

 
The road remembered glides

with no effort across

flat country that ends in a brushstroke dragged

along a sky soaked in water

where the weight of it

rests while the edges bloom into the land’s

imagination.

                   Rocks the ground

can no longer contain

stand up as landmarks for anyone

who needs to know

where they are going,

                                   but which

direction hardly matters.

The landscape’s inner life reveals

a kind of loneliness. It’s easy

to feel lost where the Earth arcs

and the sun is balanced

on its highest point

                              like the destination

at journey’s end, when the way

there is by holding

to the underside of a cloud

as it follows the broken yellow line

to infinity.

 
 

 
 
David Chorlton is a transplanted European, who has lived in Phoenix since 1978. His poems have appeared in many publications online and in print, and often reflect his affection for the natural world, as well as occasional bewilderment at aspects of human behavior. His newest collection of poems is Unmapped Worlds from FutureCycle, and The Bitter Oleander Press published Shatter the Bell in my Ear, his translations of poems by Austrian poet Christine Lavan

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Six Poems from EL PLAZO (THE DEADLINE) by Olga Muñoz. Translated by Amparo Arrospide and Robin Ouzman Hislop

by

Six poems from EL PLAZO (THE DEADLINE)

16.
Desapareceríamos todos si las abejas murieran. Por ahora somos cuatro: dos adultos y dos crías que cargar en brazos en caso necesario. Pronostican una marcha tranquila, aunque el zumbido nos alcance en las próximas jornadas. Como alimento llevamos la oscura miel de la familia, indigesta, dulzona. Los nuevos evitamos derramarla, ya que una gota perdida trae la maldición de confundir las criaturas propias. Sin olerla llegó el animalillo de nombre equivocado, en medio del camino.

16.
Were bees to die, we would all disappear. Right now we are just four: two adults and two cubs to carry in our arms if necessary. In spite of the buzz reaching us in the next few days, a peaceful march is predicted. We carry as food for the family our dark sickly sweet indigestible honey. As the newly arrived we take care not to spill a drop as a drop lost would curse us into confusing our own offspring. Not smelling the honey, a little animal with a wrong name appeared into the middle of the road.

17.
Volvemos a casa con la cría y el espacio se ha hecho redondo. Las elásticas paredes ceden a nuestras voces. Parece que el hueco estaba listo desde hace meses, pues cada objeto ocupa su espacio densamente. Sólo a la llegada nos percatamos. Despacio penetramos el aire, conseguimos traspasarlo para cobijar a los nuestros.

17. We return home with the cub into a space that has become round. The elastic walls recede with our voices. It seems the vacuity had been prepared for months, as each object occupies its own dense space. Only after arrival do we realize it as we slowly penetrate the air and manage to cross it to find a shelter for our own.

18.
No rodará, no caerá al vacío. No lo abrazará el aire, continente escueto al principio, península improvisada, isla final. Como en los trucos de magia, existen hilos invisibles, saliva que me ata a tres cuerpos y hace de mí una marioneta ciega.

18.
It will not roll nor fall into a void nor embrace the air, a bare continent at the beginning, an improvised peninsula, an island at the end. As with tricks of magic, invisible threads exist, saliva that ties me to three bodies like a blind marionette.

19.
Cada uno aguarda su turno para respirar. No nos vemos siquiera. Ocupamos salas de cristal con cuerpos transparentes, reflejados al azar. La gran mentira, el espejismo del aire. Mientras, las crías dormitan en la madriguera, repleta de oxígeno su sangre recién nacida.

19.
We each wait for our turn to breathe. We can’t even see each other. Our transparent bodies occupy glass rooms, randomly reflected. The mirage of air, a great lie. Meanwhile, the cubs are dozing snuggled close, their newborn blood full of oxygen.

20.
Escucha a su madre leer un cuento, la historia que lo espera al otro lado. Aún lo separan unos centímetros del designio. Un jabalí descompuesto en el bosque recuerda a ese niño alumbrado a la muerte. El deseo repetido de luna en luna, la tristeza rojiza del vacío. Mujer estéril que sueña al hijo con solo apartar la mano a tiempo.

20.
He listens as his mother reads a story, a story that waits for him from the other side. Yet still a few centimeters separate him from his fate. A rotting boar in the forest resembles the birth of the child born to death. The same desire passed from moon to moon, the reddish sadness of emptiness. A barren woman who dreams her son with only the withdrawal of her hand on time.

21.
Encontraste el sedal entre la arena, lejos del lugar del sacrificio. Casi caíste, y con todo tu cuerpo –uñas, árbol, océano– preguntabas qué era ese hilo. Te dimos palabras precisas, las más adecuadas seguramente. Nos pierde la exactitud. Aún así, siguen muriendo los peces de asfixia, con ese mismo sedal de tus dedos.

21.
You found the fishing line in the sand, far from the place of sacrifice. You almost fell down, and with your whole body – nails, tree, ocean – asked what was that thread. We replied with precise words, surely the most adequate. Exactitude is our undoing. But still fish continue to die of suffocation, with that same thread from your fingers.

Olga Muñoz Carrasco is author of the books: La caja de música (Madrid, Fundación Inquietudes/Asociación Poética Caudal, 2011), El plazo (Madrid, Amargord, 2012), Cada palabra una ceniza blanca (Valencia, Ejemplar Único, 2013), Cráter, danza (Barcelona, Calambur, 2016), 15 Filos (Madrid, Cartonera del escorpión azul, 2021), Tapiz rojo con pájaros (Madrid, Bala Perdida, 2021) and Filo (unpublished). Her editorial work is linked to the Genialogías collection at the Tigres de Papel publishing house and the Lengua de Agua collective. She completed her doctoral studies in Philology in Madrid, USA and Peru, and is currently a professor and researcher at Saint Louis University (Madrid Campus). In Lima she published her monograph Sigiloso desvelo- The poetry of Blanca Varela (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, 2007). She prepared Blanca Varela’s anthology Y todo debe ser mentira (Barcelona, Galaxia Gutenberg, 2020) and in France she has just published her study Palabras para un canto. La escritura en espiral de Blanca Varela (Paris, Belin Éducation/Humensis, 2022). In recent years, her works have appeared in the field of Spanish-American and Spanish poetry. She is part of the research project “El impacto de la guerra civil española en la vida intelectual de Hispanoamérica” (“The impact of the Spanish civil war on the intellectual life of Latin America”) , which led to her book Perú y la guerra civil española. La voz de los intelecturales (Madrid, Calambur, 2013). She also teaches at the José Hierro Foundation (Madrid) and at the Diploma Course on Appreciation and Poetic Studies, Caracas (Venezuela).
 
 
Amparo Arróspide (born in Buenos Aires) is an M.Phil. by the University of Salford. As well as poems, short stories and articles on literature and films in anthologies and international magazines, she has published five poetry collections: Presencia en el Misterio, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar and En el oído del viento. The latter is part of a trilogy together with Jacuzzi and Hormigas en diaspora, which are in the course of being published. In 2010 she acted as a co-editor of webzine Poetry Life Times, where many of her translations of Spanish poems have appeared, she has translated authors such as Margaret Atwood, Stevie Smith and James Stephens into Spanish, and others such as Guadalupe Grande, Ángel Minaya, Francisca Aguirre, Carmen Crespo, Javier Díaz Gil into English. She takes part in poetry festivals, recently Centro de Poesía José Hierro (Getafe).
 
 
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 (University of Leeds) .

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