the sun is sparkling, the rain rumbling, and we badly need some poetry...

Tuesday 27 March 2012

Amit Parmessur - One Poem

O Thamizh Kadavul
(a poem dedicated to Lord Muruga)

O Thamizh Kadavul, you’ve always, always been
the rose enclosed by the mountains of my heart,
just that I’ve often lost myself in a dense forest.

I’ll seek you, my Guruhuha, every Tuesday –
I’ll dwell in that pious cave of devotion and
mould a melodious, holy Tuesday out of every
day. You are someone’s child, just like me,
and this makes me very proud.

I want to pour milk over your grace and
see my sinful soul slide down serpentine rivers.

I’ll repent for forgetting you by clattering
my teeth in painful, perpetual passion, and
washing my eyes with warm and serene tears.

To feel the power of your Arupadaiveedu Temples
I’ll show my feet the most religious paths.
Please, release me from all emotional debts,

physical and abstract diseases
in this polluted place.

Help me to let go of my ego.
Unveil me to myself.
Cleanse me!

Now.

O Thamizh Kadavul, offer me your nectar,
love and wisdom.
Inspire me to heaven.

O Thamizh Kadavul you’ve always been
the rose enclosed by the mountains of my heart,
just that I’ve opened my eyes just now, forever.

BIOGRAPHY: Born in 1983, Amit Parmessur lives with his black cat nowadays. Since 2010, his poems have appeared in more than 100 literary magazines such as Ann Arbor Review, Black-Listed Magazine, Censored Poets, Damazine, Eunoia Review, Front Porch Review, Red Fez, Poetic Medicine, The Short Humour Site and many others. His book on blog Lord Shiva and other poems has also been published by The Camel Saloon. He is nominated for the Pushcart Award and lives in Quatre-Bornes, Mauritius. He is an ex-student of Collège du Saint Esprit. As long as he gets published, he knows he is on the right track.

Sunday 25 March 2012

Christopher Kenneth Hanson - One Poem

Telegram Of Telepathy
 
Radio frequencies in our mind:
A transmitter signal lies, weakened-
Now broke, corrupts.
Identical chambered function-
On Illicit boundaries:
Framed
Unknown crippling bandits-
Perception of bizarre static 
Bandwidth output currently
The frequency line, compromised-
code error-
Stop.
Won't be home-
Stop.

Biography: Greetings, how are you? Christopher Kenneth Hanson is an innovative poet from New Jersey. You may find Christopher's art and poetry via the internet by searching additionally for ckhanson81.

Donal Mahoney - One Poem

Serial Killer
 
The puma of the will
has pounced again
 
This time, a doe
too slow through snow
 
The fangs are in
The kill’s the will’s
 
The stomach roars
as it devours 

the blood and gristle
in its lair
 
BIOGRAPHY: Donal Mahoney has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. He has had poems published in The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Commonweal, The Christian Science Monitor and a number of online publications.

Monday 19 March 2012

Jeffrey Park - One Poem

PENANCE

And so I pull on
the scratchy flesh-colored
underwear
and walk stiff legged
among the citizens in the town square,
stand just by the entrance
to the drugstore
and pretend not to watch
as they emerge
with fragrant purchases
though the herbal aromas tear
at my nostrils.
And so I sit on the bench
in front of the old folks’ home
and don’t feed
the hard-staring bitter pigeons.
And so I
pour a handful of sharp
pebbles into
my best pair of shoes.
Look at me, please, acknowledge
the painful steps I take.
Not painful enough by a long shot
but at least give me an E
for effort.

BIOGRAPHY: Jeffrey Park is a native of Baltimore, Maryland. He currently lives in Munich, Germany where he works at a private secondary school, as well as teaching business English to adults. His most recent poems have appeared in Subliminal Interiors, Danse Macabre, Punk Soul Poet, Mobius, Darkling Magazine and elsewhere.
 

Friday 16 March 2012

Donal Mahoney - One Poem

Sadie Says

Perhaps it’s true
perhaps it's not

we'll never know  
if it's the reason 

Sadie sleeps 
till noon each day

then with her limp 
walks to the beach  

to feed wild cats 
but never a dog

because Sadie says 
everyone knows

cats are poetry
dogs are prose.

BIOGRAPHY:
Donal Mahoney has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. He has had poems published in The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Commonweal, The Christian Science Monitor and a number of online publications.

Tuesday 13 March 2012

Stephen Jarrell Williams - One Poem

Forever

So many of us wilting
under our circumstances,

craving

a quiet pause,

flower by the stream

sipping cool water,

our strength coming back

again young...

and for a moment we are there,

no numbering of days,

timeless in the sun,

no questioning heaven,

falling into the future

beginning,

we bloom forever.

BIOGRAPHY: Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to stay up all night and write with lightning bolts until they fizzle down behind the dark horizon.  He is the editor of Dead Snakes at http://deadsnakes.blogspot.com/ and UFO Gigolo at http://ufogigolo.blogspot.com/

Monday 12 March 2012

Felino A. Soriano - One Poem

Of evening this horizonal mantle

Trance

(maintain unable
            meander ameliorated | preference of the syntax

held within hand of the colder climate, corporeal
appreciation this
                                    untangled verb of solid shine with mosaic)

with miscellany
unbroken         guidance of eloping light
lifting
            eyed
ingurgitation these
                                                imagistic motions
gladden replacement behavioral function these

orchestrations of naturalized


                                                                                    communication

Amid

opacity’s conviction collating numerous hours with
                        asterisks decorating hidden

cells
circulating
saturating

revised fulcrums this

isolated memory gradating prisms

Lamentation

light—

burgeoned       becoming         unbroken
undulating       syzygy             paralleled

final apopemptic more so fleeting aggregation

alliance in the vocal lunation

cultivating spectral

deliberation

BIOGRAPHY: Felino A. Soriano has authored 50 collections of poetry, including Analyzed Depictions (white sky books) and Intentions of Aligned Demarcations (Desperanto, 2011).  He publishes the online endeavors Counterexample Poetics and Differentia Press.  His work finds foundation in philosophical studies and connection to various idioms of jazz music.  He lives in California with his wife and family and is a case manager and advocate for adults with developmental and physical disabilities.  For further information, please visit www.felinoasoriano.info

Saturday 10 March 2012

Bryan Murphy - One Poem

In Palestra

Relentless mosquitoes work out on us
as we sweat to choreograph a miracle:
reversing atrophy, forestalling entropy.
Supple beauties stretch for an alternative
to anorexia as enhancement of allure;
veterans of Balkan peace-keeping
flex fingers to set a punch-bag swinging;
a hopeful hunter of a Syrian siren
labours to give her something solid
to cling to in the wreckage.
In confraternity of mindless exertion,
we strive to recruit forgotten muscles,
sweep free our minds, enter the nirvana
of this hour leased from the world outside. 

Biography: Bryan Murphy is a former language teacher and translator who currently lives in Turin, Italy. Places that have hosted his work range from the Brighton Evening Argus to the Venice Biennale.

Thursday 8 March 2012

Stephen Jarrell Williams - One Poem

SOMEWHERE
 
I see
the last of them
climbing over the mountaintops

searching for a better place

sun setting
lavender clouds

hopefully
a safer world within the distance

some heaven waiting
somewhere

a harvest time
daily

singing from the many
houses knitted in the green countryside...

Biography: Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to stay up all night and write with lightning bolts until they fizzle down behind the dark horizon.  He is the editor of Dead Snakes at http://deadsnakes.blogspot.com/.

Neil Ellman - Three Poems

Puppet Theater
(after the painting by Paul Klee)

We are puppets
moved by strings
whichever way
the puppeteer
turns his hand
herky jerky
papier mâché
we obey
his silent words.

Cyclops
(after the painting by William Baziotes)

From its enclosure
at the zoo
the rhinoceros
wonders
why the one-eyed man
has lost his eye
and still can see
while the one-eyed man
wonders
why the rhinoceros
has a single horn
and still can fight
and even mate
with other creatures
having two.

Hurrah for the Red, White and Blue 
(after the lithograph by Sam Francis)

What a country
It must be
to have a flag
frayed at the edges
perhaps
red and white
where blue
should be
in so few shapes
no states
no stars or stripes—
unfurl it
to the wind
and watch it fly.

Biography: Neil Ellman lives and writes in New Jersey.  His poems, many of them ekphrastic, appear in numerous international print and online journals, including Alba, Anastomoo, Crack the Spine, Counterexample Poetics, Clutching at Straws, Carcinogenic Poetry, ditch, Dead Snakes, Indigo Rising and Otoliths, plus more than a hundred others.  His eighth chapbook, Convergence and Conversion, is due out shortly from The Knives, Forks and Spoons Press

Wednesday 7 March 2012

Donal Mahoney - One Poem

Lifts Her Like A Chalice
 
The weekday Mass at 6 a.m.
brings the old folks out 
from bungalows 
around the church.
They move like caterpillars  
down sidewalks, 
some with canes, 
some on walkers. 

Father Doyle says the Mass 
and then goes back to the rectory 
to care for his mother 
who cannot move or speak 
because of a stroke.

And every Sunday at noon 
when the church is full, 
Father Doyle, in full vestments, 
wheels his mother
in a lump
down the middle aisle
and lifts her like a chalice 
and places her in the front pew  
before he ascends to the altar.

Sometimes at night,
when his mother's asleep, 
Father Doyle comes back to the Church 
and rehearses in the dark 
three hymns she long ago 
asked him to sing at her funeral.

He practices the hymns 
because the doctor said  
she could go at any time.
When that time comes,
he doesn't want to miss a note.
The last thing she ever said was 
"Son, I'll be listening."
 
Biography: Donal Mahoney has worked as an editor for The Chicago Sun-Times, Loyola University Press and Washington University in St. Louis. He has had poems published in The Wisconsin Review, The Kansas Quarterly, The South Carolina Review, Commonweal, The Christian Science Monitor as well as a number of online publications.