Long Ago, The Land Was Green

Long ago, the land was green
Blue and shades of brown
And now, the mass of concrete slabs
Form rainbows all around

Once the air was lonely
Except the majestic birds
Now, screams of airplanes fill the air
And cities are filled with words

Rivers of old, were crowded with fish
Too many for us to eat
Now, we fish in quiet rest
For cans and other treats

Bless the ones who gave us this
Inhaling smoke for breath
Bless the ones who gave us comfort
Although the cost is death

poem by Wakefield Mahon
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So Fingertips Kiss

Five kids, eight years.
And then one day my wife
shouts to me on the tractor
roaring in the field:

“I’ve had enough.”
And like a ballerina,
she rises on one foot, sole
of the other foot firm

against her knee
and with arms overhead
so fingertips kiss,
she smiles,

pirouettes,
and then like a helicopter
lifts into the air,
whirls over the garage

[...] Read more

poem by Donal Mahoney
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Three Tulips For The Ultimate Fate Of The Universe

In the door frame
Your spinal column
Your immaculate neck

By nightfall
Your commuter train
Or in an airplane cockpit
An alabaster jar

At the imperial garden
You sit on the autumnal bench
Near a hummingbird

From the cheekbone
To the corners of your mouth

Until the clouds go by
You sigh
A smile
A sweet kiss on my right hand

[...] Read more

poem by Nicolas Grenier
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The Corsages and Cul-De-Sacs

Slipping into the palmettos like a serpent
Going to see a whore:
Underneath the open wounds of airplanes
Bathing in their two piece swimsuits:
Languishing topside of the astral planes
Using wigi boards to say I love you
To ghosts who try to tell you their names-
Inside a house of diamonds
In the eyes of the crocodile who never smiles
But ticks like a clock, giving fair warning
To prepare the boys for their bar mitzvahs
In the corsages and cul-de-sacs of their
Immortality.

poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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Two Towers Lie As Rubble

Two towers lie as rubble:
the television news proclaims it,
aircraft has flown into them
broken obtuse, collapsed.

There are smoke, flames and dust
and somewhere something exploding.

Twisted, scorched steel
is pointed against the earth, cut off
where building was near to the heavens
there are only rubble, pieces of concrete and ash.

Defenceless people have been killed without reason,
as if the human race has lost its sanity,
shattered, crushed, burnt
made from sand to sand.

poem by Gert Strydom
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Silk Road

Farghana valley
the splendour of a mythical dream.
The fabled silk route
snaked its way through here,
bringing new cultures, silk and jade,
and no drones filled the night sky with fear.
In this valley of ancient dreams
beautiful horses made the landscape enchanting.
Civilizations come and go; yes, religions too.
They will claim to have the key to the ultimate truth.
Our time also will be cosmic dust in history of man,
but the valley of Farghana shall endure.

poem by Oskar Hansen
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A stroll at Sea Point

I walk right into
the wind that blows softly,
for a meeting
with the dark blue ocean
that stretches out far
under the bright blue sky
and suddenly I know
that Sea Point had been
a prosperous neighbourhood

but now there are numbers of old folk,
children hanging around like hippies
with liquor, cigarettes and drugs
and car guards catching my eye

while seagulls screeching
with impudence grab
flabby chips from a man’s hand
and like screaming helicopters
hang above him

[...] Read more

poem by Gert Strydom
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Battle of Will & Exhaustion, Mother & Child

Two knights surrounded by dinosaurs
are cornered in the kitchen--all threat and bluster.
Action figures always act
even as night tries to soothe them under.

I am the one who laid a nervous hand
on a child's exhausted threat and bluster.
The bunk bed creaks as the story settles,
as night's cool hand tries to soothe us. Under

a Seussian drone I am thinking, anxious,
about someone with a nervous hand.
Will he sleep? Will he sleep? When will he sleep?
The bunk bed creaks as the shipboard settles.

What is the myth of a woman alone
who's thinking through Seuss? Her thoughts are drones
serving a terrible queen of their own.
Can she sleep? Will she sleep? When will she sleep?

[...] Read more

poem by Jenny Factor
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Jack-a-lynn

Cold aeroplanes, slow boats, warm trains
Remind me of jack-a-lynn.
Lush hotels and pretty girls
Wont cheer the misty mood Im in.
Silly, sad --- Ive never had to write this before ---
Oh, jack-a-lynn.
Funny how long nights allow
Thoughts of jack-a-lynn.
When phantoms tread around my bed
To offer restless dreams they bring.
And its just the time and place to find
A sad song to play
For jack-a-lynn.
Magpies that shriek, old boots that leak
Call me to jack-a-lynn.
Coal-black cats in policemans hats
Nosing where the mice have been.
And the long miaows beginning now
And Im far, far from home ---
And jack-a-lynn.

song performed by Jethro Tull
Added by Lucian Velea
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Havfruen ved Samsøe

Det er sildigt alt paa Aft'nen, Stormen stiger meer og meer,
Bølgen vælter sig mod Kysten, hvor man Fiskerhytten seer.
O, der er saa luunt derinde, gamle Mutter sidder her,
Og ved Fyrrepindens Flamme bøder hun paa Garnet der.
Hist i Krogen ligger Katten, den er ei i Ungdoms Vaar,
Sildehoveder den spiser af et gammelt Potteskaar.
Lav er Døren, uden Lukke ryster den ved Stormens Kast,
Skjøndt den nok saa godt er bunden med en gammel Strikke fast.
Hør — nu rasler det derude, gamle Fatter kommer hjem;
„Gud skee Lov, han kom den Gamle! Søen er i Aften slem."
Men, hvor han er bleg og stille, Skyer paa hans Pande staae;
Han sin gamle Klædning kaster, tager Søndags-Stadsen paa.
Haaret børster han med Haanden; see, hans Øie ruller vildt;
Undrende hans gamle Qvinde trykker ham i Haanden mildt.
Hende kan han ikke dølge, hvad der driver ham afsted;
„Jeg maa bort! til Dannerhoffet; før faaer jeg ei nogen Fred.
Havfruen igjen jeg hørte, det er nu den tredie Gang;
Hvis jeg dvæler længer, vil hun synge snart min Dødningsang.
Hvert af hendes Ord jeg husker, o det klang saa stort, saa smukt!
Snart skal Jubelklokken klinge over Belte, Sund og Bugt,

[...] Read more

poem by Hans Christian Andersen
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Cassinga

Just like spring when the blue sky is full of falling leaves,
there are three hundred and seventy parachutes that decent,
on a ominous day
with enemy AA-guns reporting
and the enemy are more
than a thousand and a half in number.

The barrels of the enemy AA-guns are lowered,
to break us
and the enemy tries to sow havoc
and to decimate us.

Enemy snipers are shooting from trees
and from everywhere
there are shots being fired,
that munches pieces from us

From behind ruins
we fire almost endlessly
at trenches where some enemy soldiers hide

[...] Read more

poem by Gert Strydom
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In The Era Of The Drone

Violation of rights?
The only rights of those being violated,
May be those known.
To heighten suspicion.

However...
Those rights being droned,
Spied upon on a daily basis...
In the privacy one believes is left alone,
Secured in one's home...
Will never be known to be violated or not.

In the era of the drone,
The movement of insects is condoned.

poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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If You Don't Take The Risk, Jump The Abyss Like A Firefly

If you don't take the risk, jump the abyss like a firefly
between two polarities, how are you ever going
to release your potential as the stem cell of a bridge of light
from one hemisphere of your brain of starmud
to the other side of your shining? Whenever
there are two eyes it's crucial that you make a third.
And if you haven't got the courage to jump from your artificial paradise
without knowing whether you've got a parachute on or not,
go ask the dandelions gone to seed how to take a fall
like the free radical of a kiss on the breeze, touch life
lightly as if you were feeling the weave of the silk mist
rising like someone's last breath off the morning lake
or ask the seasoned helicopter pilots of the dragonflies
and maple keys about doing double wheelies like dna helices
when you've driven way past the end of the road like Thelma and Louise
and your animation's been suspended trying to cling
to the wind like a rafter of air you can hang from
like the larva of a caterpillar repelling down a Dutch elm
on a thread of fate you've got to pull like a rip cord
if you want to be a skydiver instead of a half-baked butterfly

[...] Read more

poem by Patrick White
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In The Middle of School

Pranksters of my boyhood still lighting off
Fireworks across the roofs of another school day—
Like all of Mexico laughing
As they propagated and made new streams into our
Beautiful delusion—and shot roman candles straight into
Our eyes,
Scarring us with the song that was in their loins:
Not afraid of airplanes, because knowing that, like the moon,
They could steal that too:
Until I found you safely under a bus in a rainstorm
And we made love forever right in the middle of school.

poem by Bret R. Crabrooke
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Museum Of The City Of...

It beats Keats for frozen motion-
this gelatin-silver 8 by 12 glossy
from nineteen seventy eight or seventy nine
(ancient history in American time-
why, James Schuyler was alive and living at the Chelsea!) ,
of frogmen dropt from a low-hovering chopper
down into a stream of turgid riverwater
two, just off, suspended giddily in mid-air,
fuselage portals yawning wide behind,
one on either side, neatly clearing the skids,
like dancers in an aerial dance,
or human hieroglyphs
eternally outspread-while a third,
sleek noggin bobs below, already down in the drink,
(this, not, mind you, being the sea,
since off on the distant, further shore repines
the faint exosketeton of Queens;
and there where the isle of Manhattan nearest draws
it's Queenly Abydos-the ghostly tracery of
the Hellsgate.

[...] Read more

poem by Morgan Michaels
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0207 Hover Fly

The hover fly
that's just demonstrated
that it's one of the Creation's greatest
and smallest, most compact miracles of lawful
imagination (imagine flying, then stopping
quite still in the air, no slowing down,
just, zap, like that, dead steady,
and it's smaller (!) than a helicopter, wow)
right here in front of me in silhouette, but
illuminated on one wing by the PC screen,
and pausing for a freeze-frame moment of eternity
as if to tell me something
(illumination, too?) -
all this, and yet it
doesn't know I'm writing about it.
Presumably.

poem by Michael Shepherd
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Happy Summer Days

Happy Summer Days
Tinkling wind chimes
Soaring kites
Scenes of Summmer
Long, balmy nights
Aircraft against blue sky
Vapour trail writing
Lawn mowers buzzing
Barbecue lighting
Fun bouncy castles
Families out biking
Backpacks on
Walking and hiking
Splishing and splashing
Paddling pool or beach
Summer fruit tasting
Berries, kiwi and peach
Ice cream and soda
Picnics by streams
A slow game of cricket

[...] Read more

poem by Akingbehin Daniel Murphy
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WHAT FOLKS DID(for Lyn)

She was born
into a world

without telephone...television
motor car or aeroplane

“all the damn modern things”

she never did get used to
even when they invidiously invaded her life.

Even now
in her little one room flat

at the end of her life
she berates the telephone.

“It just rings and...rings! ”

She loudly complains.

[...] Read more

poem by Dónall Dempsey
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Electric eel astrocities

Accidentally turn on the t.v
Its the 6 o'clock news reel
Psyoptic subjugation beta programming
Desensitization scheme
Relax, recline remove skull and exchange brain
For drone
The beta transfers to the thetan mode
Alot of images pour through the screen
As the lights flicker and flash
Warning
Sometimes this causes instilled neurosis
And a paralyzed mindset

poem by Yonder Boatcar
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Skipping!

A little girl was skipping;
As she swung her skipping rope
The neighbors heard her singing
And the song she sang was - Quote:

'Mummy's in the parlour
And she's there with Uncle Fred,
Daddy's in the garage
Says she's doing in his head,
Auntie Jane was crying
Now she's swimming in the pool
And I must keep on skipping
'Til it's time to go to school.'

The neighbors saw her skipping
All along the afternoon,
She skipped a hundred singles
As she sang her little tune:

'Mummy's saying nothing

[...] Read more

poem by David Lewis Paget
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