The Australian poet Peter Nicholson was born in Sydney, New South Wales. He has published three books of poetry, A Temporary Grace 1991, Such Sweet Thunder 1994 and A Dwelling Place 1997. http://peternicholson.com.au/
Kursk
Nice to be sure of life and life's long leavings,
To wrap the world in meaning,
Seal our hope in exponential form
And putty out blood's fissure with just law.
That would be good, to be one with the other,
But not, so sudden, have the chance to gather
In at one end all the ordered ranks
Or at the other loved one's dolphin shanks.
I see the sailor from the submarine
Buried back on earth beneath a polar gleam
And think - there, but for the grace of God,
Go I, still vertical, still with the wish for good.
I feel the terror rise up in my chest,
Spreading violence through the golden vest
Of beauty that is crumpling to the shore
History's slate warning of despair.
Beneath the Barents Sea the sailors sleep
Far from time and our remorseless need
While, in troubled prayer, remembrance is kind
As floating hands reach noiselessly back at pouring time.
Copyright © by Peter Nicholson
In 1995 Maurice traveled around the world for eight months, recording his experiences in a journal instead of photos. His poetry has appeared in The Potomac Journal, The MAG, The Surface, Word Riot, Taj Mahal Review (India), Stride (UK), and Retort (Australia). He lives in Portland, Oregon where he is a private tutor. www.bloxster.net/mauriceoliver.
Acknowledgements.... And Anything.... Blazing Panache.... I Mean.... Verbs, Lost.... Whispers, Waving....
Copyright © by Maurice Oliver
And Anything Else Is A Letdown
Then what you're really saying is that it all comes down to this:
Everybody ends up here,
in a theme park wearing merely a flimsy Pisces throughout the human kingdom by propelling the sun to move
towards a frictional Hollywood square pattern with Mars bound to fail
or maybe brusque with friends does the harsh scent
so love ones will boomerang until every nasty consequence
(made more significant by red planet envy)
tarzans pass the limp silk strap of desperation
and on into the spring-loaded harness of a bottomless abyss
hoping against hope
but still never waking up in the cold motel room
to find the him-or-herself in us cuddled up with Don Rickles.
Blazing Panache.White-Hot Courage.
"I've spent the whole day as noir as night", she repeats, as if the audience didn't hear her the first time. We're acting out the stage version of beat up & grown up. In this adaptation I become a short poem about her father who is a traveling salesman of articulate jealousy & desire. He never wears the same pair of socks twice. He eats dinner with his chair facing away from the table. He is near enough to the cardboard props to feel their rage. Elegance is our model. A book our national treasury or maybe our customs studiously sleep in the footnotes. What's important is every mysterious adulthood is but a jagged piece of glass murdered in bed. Nothing is luminous enough to shine at heart and even I something want to be nothing too but the moral of the story is to never forget that even Joe DiMaggio had an Adam's Apple that thought it was too cool to go to school. Oh yeah, and don't worry, the applause will drown out any sounds the curtains make as its being lowered.
OK. I've had it up to here with the notion that an Air France flight could seriously blow through Lily Marlene strong enough to cause anything but a version of life where things happen in reverse. Mask. Ghost. Footprints from a welded impostor. So change the channel already. Find a show where the angel-butch double-agent loses the key to her safety deposit box & turns like a Venetian blind. Or better yet, let's tune-in to an episode of dying for faith where the ever impossible request torches explicitly on the piano top. I want to hear a severe melody try holding its breath under water while life comes and goes in a red dress split up one side. I want to be skull-hung just before the gargoyle in its late-forties with jet black hair & a five o'clock shadow surveys the filth from above then decides to put the whole bar under house arrest just to make a point.
Verbs, Lost In Their Transitive Cases
As I remember it, the whole thing begins after a palm branch scars the horizon deep enough to bruise its skin. In turn, that causes a crescendo of lavender scent to leak all along the naked limbs of an apricot wind with its passport at hand. Next, the mirror of white pearls pluses on the way to Lourdes and then takes the wrong turn in dense fog pressed against the hip. Coffee table leather jacket. Golden gate lazy earthquake. Cloak and dagger hillside town. Or a stale box of animal crackers falling out of the vast spree of redemption. Either way, it all adds up to a raspberry beret of colored fingernail polish much too flesh to bread or thoroughly soaked in a railroad crossing where a horseshoe on a dashboard has access to any dusk coupling riddle and can activate it by repeating this narrative in a foreign language as written on a red enamel bedside table or by tenth grade students who say, "Wow, that was an awesome lecture".
Whispers, Waving To An April Dawn
It all begins with a scream of wind through the wet hair of willows & then continues to:
-One dusty pickup on a highway partial of suspense novels.
-A pristine Blue Grotto slightly gold framed & naked in the rain.
-All of Costa Rica playing a caprice on a red violin.
-A feral garden that eats out of a complete stranger's hand.
-Bales of freshly-mowed hay with legs that scissor the air.
-A slice of burnt toast with a scab already forming.
-Voices used for the audio portion of a soccer match.
-Two streetlights watching re-runs of an episode on lunar ellipses.
-A hillside terrace that slopes into a cross-dresser's closet.
-The blazing gaze and stonewall demeanor of a field of sunflowers.
-Life darkened at the edges to make the heart seem more luminous.Copyright © by Maurice Oliver
Gilbert Wesley PurdyMark Hanna Under Starry Skies Poetry 2000 TM
The vague stars loom above Mark Hanna’s head.
His cigar smoke wafts a Milky Way.
He stands between two potted palms,
beside Lake Erie, an autumn night.
A darkie porter holds his coat.
Another gathers dinner plates.
The leavings of a modest meal
betray a man of modest tastes.
In Lowell, maidens, full of grace,
trail textiles as they float through aisles.
He sees the yarn-guides in those stars:
the light-beams weaving taffeta.
In San Francisco, Chinamen
press the fabrics made of them.
Their grandfolks sit in state upstairs
and quote Confusions with their tea.
In Pennsylvania coal-mines miners dig;
and, as they do, they sing pure tenor strains.
Up those mountains wind the notes
through woodlands cleared to frame the shafts.
They wind past children safe abed
on linens those bright yarn-guides weave.
The patchwork quilts which keep them warm
show farmyards rich with artlessness.
The miners’ wives each light a lamp
to keep their husbands safe from harm.
They dot the hills just like those stars
and touch his heart with their ascent.
He recalls a song his mother sang
as she rocked her babies on her lap.
Before he knows its over him,
the notes rise up to join that choir.
It’s an old song of a simple life,
of simple people, simple loves.
A simple beauty fills the words.
His quavering voice is choked with it.
He clears his throat and looks askance.
A single tear runs down his face.
Mark Hanna looking vaguely toward the stars
holds out his hand to have his coat.
Within he holds a brand new dime
as if he reached and pulled it down.
His hirelings track the Bryan train.
They tear the posters down and spit.
His buyers place their orders with
the proviso: Should McKinley win.
The porter thanks him kindly, sir.
‘Someone must protect the currency,’ he sighs.
In particular, it is a language designed expressly for streamlining the writing of novels (or poetry).
-Metamagical Themas, Douglas R. Hofstadter
Hello and welcome to Poetry 2000TM,
the finest in poetry programs today. Please read
the End User’s License Agreement, sign and send
the pre-addressed reply card, then proceed.
The System 2000 is simple to use. Just point
the tiny quill and click. The pull-down menus
will lead the way to self expression choice
by choice. Then click the icon of the Muse.
In seconds your first-draft appears, correct
in style, grammar, spelling, length and theme:
A wistful moment that you recollect,
perhaps, or snap-shot of someplace you’ve seen.
Next simply click the Shakespeare icon. Note
that an eraser has replaced your pen.
You simply rub out each word or phrase that’s not
just right. Just click the little visor, then.
Now watch 2000 really show its stuff.
It's searching through the Anthology Data Base,
and, while the Bard of Avon chews his nub,
the changes you selected are being made.
Revision is the key to writing well
and now those boring late-night hours are done.
Erase as many times as you wish and still
have time to mix at our virtual Cafe Dôme.
So then, (1) click on File. (2) Click on New. Note
the little scroll unfurl. (3) Click on Edit.
(4) Click Special next. (Note: Never double-click Rose
without Expanded Tautology Gertrude-Stein-Set.)
The Special Editing Scroll has unfurled now
and all the choices are yours to make --
each a pretested adjective, each a pretested noun.
(For pretested neurosis click Emotional State.)
Perhaps you’ll pick Poetic Nouns. Your menu
will display a list of over twenty choices
selected by the hundred most successful
contemporary American poetic voices.
Choose ice, perhaps, or mirror, salt or moon.
Wing, bed-slash-bedroom, breast, bone, heart or blood --
just click the ones you want. (Note: You must Undo
or the system will assume mouth, tongue and love.)
Or Botanicals, perhaps: just click the flower
and poetical gardens blossom before your eye.
Plant camomile or crocus in your bower.
Pick baby’s-breath, viburnum, gorse, or thyme.
And Colors are a poet’s special tools.
With a single choice a poem may be made.
Too many poems fail for simple blues
which indigo or cobalt might have saved.
Just click the little palette icon. There
before your very eyes appears a rainbow
of mauve, pop-sickle pink and lavender,
the spectrum of turquoise, silver, jade and rose.
Choose Adjectives or Place-Names next perhaps.
Djakarta, Titicaca, Kathmandu,
Kuala Lumpur dot our market-tested maps.
In all, twenty poetic places are there for you.
Before you close, consult the Style screen
to choose your poem’s type-face, shape and size,
including Hen-Scratch, Random, and Prestige,
and, the present standard, Under Thirty Lines.
Now click the Muse (see figure 1, above),
And watch your favorite sitcom while you wait,
Or prepare a meal, perhaps, with Gourmet StoveTM.
(For a one week trial just click the little soufflè.)
Warning: product is only meant to be used
in the manner prescribed. For injuries which may
result should the product be altered or abused
Poetry7 will be harmless in every way.
For damages which may result (either
direct or indirect) to leather, tweed,
berets, careers, relationships, or other,
it excludes all legal liability.
The Poetry 2000TM is designed
for exciting years of personal expression.
When used as directed no group may be maligned
or suffer insufferable fascist oppression.
It respects all rights of property, the laws
of all the 48 contiguous States.
The little Walt Whitman pixel even applauds
when a poem mentions lower short-term rates.
WARNING!
The product is designed to be perfectly safe.
To modify the program in any fashion
is a violation of Federal Statute and may
be referred to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Copyright © by Gilbert Wesley Purdy
Beneath The Rise.... City Station, Under Arches of Sky Musings On A Lighthouse Near An Eastern Isle Sapphics The Serial Cheat.... With The Stars....
Copyright © by Iain James Robb
City Station, Under Arches of Sky
In the shallows of the silences I hear your voice,
In the gaps between the shadows of the city station-
Copyright © by Iain James Robb
Musings On A Lighthouse Near An Eastern Isle
It is bright tonight; this plain, displaced from place
In Time's broad flight, wields nothing to the strains
Of air, no marbled hand unstrafed by rains
Or gales retraced through past days' shaded waste.
Great things may fall; through all life's vagrant seas
Drift things so small we pass them as they fly-
Yet a man may have no memories of these:
Things carved against doom's deep shall last yet die.
What listless whispers from the winds are these,
That lead thoughts prior to pass of fortune's page?
All death's a dream that fades upon the stage
That raised strayed sails, to strange eternities.
Beneath the wreaths of green and Eastern skies
That wheeled through fields of liquid emerald,
Your range of years, white watcher of the world,
Perennial as the fires that marked your rise,
Had outfaced an age. Your pale palladium
To those who'd tamed the treason of the seas
Awaits no voice of time's now but the thrum
Of waves, cast far from strands and galaxies.
In lampless lands where sunlight never glides,
Your eye gone out, what man may mourn you now,
No guiding height by weightless Wain or Plough,
No land-bound star and temptress to the tides?
Now hushed beneath the breezes and the bays,
Now shut from all the seasons touched by sun,
Your plinth's height through its Hepastadion
Could not forestall your fall; your starboard rays
Had reached at length your fatal yield of years;
The spells that stars cast pass but won't reverse.
Had a shape been traced in space that sigiled tears,
That had passed across the looming universe
For prophets' tongues? They seem to live where press
The currents that succumb or beat their breasts,
Past lightless realms where suns are rocked to rest-
That rise to leave your shipless wilderness.
Faint Pharos, shall men ring your name once more,
Or praise the safeguard of light's beaten breath?
Some things, it seems, are only born for death:
You seemed as ageless as your salt-lipped shore.
What bronze-thewed youth or white-haired wanderer,
From lands unguided now through floodlit seas,
Rides by raftered strands to Alexandria,
Over windless ways no steep sun seeks or sees?
Detained past hope and range of loss and rage,
Corrode to pumiced stone, and turn from sight:
O voiceless watcher once through lanes of light
On night-bound paths: to narrowed straits of age.
Copyright © by Iain James Robb
Copyright © by Iain James Robb
What matters it, this June, if you or I
Redeem ourselves in other’s eyes, as trust,
To each our images inside which vaunt to sky?
We are our selves: Spring gilds to Autumn’s rust.
You are my pawn; myself, if I should veer
Against the captious minion of my sight,
Our distances once more will make us near:
Our distance now will make us benedight.
What matters this if my dull words inspire
Your will to lose; my loss will be the same
If passion wants, its wontedness to tire
In febrile haunts; what innocence to blame?
It was just me, but you are also I:
Her cunt can not estrange your majesty.
Copyright © by Iain James Robb
With The Stars That Rob Me, Of A Cloth Of Gold
A hush beats soundly in the rounds of evening,
From the reigning lifelessness that clamps the cold;
And I stand here, gathered to the weeping season
Of this day's forsaken, in its cloaks of gold.
Far across, a ship drifts with the skies as anchor,
That bequeath to sod and grass no force of flame,
And I, once wearied of the worlds, find harbour;
And the eye lies caught by what the clear leaves claim.
Before the greyness of the lame air's vastest,
To make sense of what to winds the treetops tell,
I'd rather lie in blackness with the stars as harvest:
Yet the flutes of dusk adrift, adown the dell
Copyright © by Iain James Robb
Alex Sheremet Alex Sheremet was born in Belarus and moved to Brooklyn, NYC when he was six. He is an undergraduate studying English Lit and Classics.
Cities In Decline: A History Drama: At The Station For Graffiti
Cities In Decline: A History
"I must match its weird refrain..."
- Countee Cullen
Again they left, the old Italians, a gutted, late-fenced lawn,
the soil’s inadvertent feed still reaching from the tenured dole —
the hand-delivered, chink-stitched pumice,
an unconvincing, pickled blast
of louder days:
In a hardbound, gull-drawn renaissance,
August torched, and cities swung, and Brooklyn raked
the branching skyline down to sour stumps,
castled back to barking towers, the earth thick
with the floured bits of carbon clutter: wild fruit
once censured in a less sophisticated mouth,
the softer, dangling midparts cored and seeded,
his teeth strung for a pilgrim’s pious neck, a jeweled
leash, tugging dustward.
"...our last winter, which now tires
against pumice-strewn shores..."
- Horace
That spring, a Roman slavegirl — hair bunched,
or nervously unbraiding to the whip’s indenting
whims, he rests his throbbing thumb
against the faux-imperial embroidery,
a maladjusted lion dunked in the swimming center,
its nose wrinkling with the master’s lungs —
smells the hanging crater with her mouth,
a spewing sore, still-miles from the town,
from bed, from the unawakened, golden floor
of bottled minds, soon tipped
by a solitary finger:
this, I think, is how it ends,
long before the earth can prune its bloated bottom
with a priest’s exacting fork, or jar its grisly store
in ashy shades of unconventional disaster,
and clump the pumice in a hand still trembling
to a specious breeze from the Atlantic.
Copyright © by Alex Sheremet
Drama: At The Station For Graffiti
Timothy "Spek" Falzone, 1982 - 2001
I. Tim, to Officer
Grip's crooked. I should have been a carpenter:
hangnails, caked Krylon, abraded palms
on colored hammers, mocking bone.
Alright, imagine: I'd still rot some day,
firm-legged, right -- dirt-grown splinters
worming through these hands. And I'd still burn
glass, refit the speckled subway windows,
name (and co.) on bottom. (The crew sticks,
the fines don't -- fat caps for fat tickets,
unless you smack the third rail, face-down.)
Thick pen, Officer. You scribble knotty names
that straddle an imagined line, palms
inking through the lettered hoops,
but I'd rather cake 'em -- grip's crooked, see --
high above that record shop, 'cause walls stretch
blankly -- inarticulate stares just burning
to be read. And think: across the borough,
such pangs are the staple of the soul,
a strange, rudimentary rehearsal
in case the last paint spills, the button-down
is finally ironed, the silk bandanas trashed
as spiders, walled by the new or the slightly
unusual, might casually abandon
an old web.
[Stares.]
You listening? Yeah,
niggas aren't meant to be understood.
II. Officer, to Tim
And I plucked the job a changed man! Sure,
sure -- I couldn't curb this pompous belly,
and Night still drapes the day from lamp to lamp,
hiccups blunts, bad guys, and other artifacts
we stretch-still and fossilize into a page,
a paragraph, this stuffed police report.
It's hard to blink those ingrained hues -- you scent
stiff traces, blowing bubbles at the wall:
you see the dumb-brief, separating rock,
your ringed initials worn to dust
on unborn, bookish hands. They'll chase
your rock-bound annals from the soil. Belly-
out, that pussyfoot might even look like me:
she'd piece the unmanned, prim-cut specks,
and jot your blue-built ingenuity.
I've thumbed your name in each report,
each letter compassed horizontally;
smudged the crude-cast pencil figures,
laminating favorites; taped your files, as twine
would pepper-down my manicure to dust.
Still, as I tied your blunt enigma,
as I pat your papers busily --
in short, as I buckled to that old routine,
I never thought that trust of men,
that banded ring of awful stares
would find you in its crooked center
high above that record shop, tonight.
You snickered, sharpened the enigma
with a flint budge --
[He moves sparingly.]
and affirmed it all: the imagined fine, palms
pinking through the colored hoops,
and there -- your knotted name, just burning
to be read. And in case that last paint spills,
in case my waning grip -- like star-rent brass,
approximately shelved -- docs and draws
your rail-smacked figure, evaporates,
aborts, and tosses you mid-sentence
like an unexpected, grainy cough
across those rough iambic freight-lines,
in case you're bled into that button-down --
[Points somewhat.]
you're a star-sown actor,
dumped and potted into this flawed,
sublunary drama.
Copyright © by Alex Sheremet
Dynamite 25 Facade Of A Montreal God I Give Betty Smith.... The Red Desert The Whirlpool
The birthday candle unravels its wax—
unfurling the curve that shatters its graph,
it rockets to Blonde—as man shimmers back.
A core, immortal, wills past—to its pax;
as grain culminates and unwraps from its chaff,
the birthday candle unravels its wax.
Unpinned from the wick, it bolts and unpacks,
as motion unsnaps from a still photograph.
It rockets to Blonde—as man shimmers back.
No breath from a wish can cool its attack;
when each note of song sparks from the staff—
the birthday candle unravels its wax.
Lethal: the drop from the sweat on its back,
its shock vaults through octaves and Richters a laugh;
it rockets to Blonde—as man shimmers back.
A sizzling blue vine writhes through cold blacks;
ecstatic—as ecdysis jettisons half,
the birthday candle unravels its wax;
it rockets to Blonde—as man shimmers back
Copyright © by Anthony Zanetti
Façade of a Montreal God
photograph of Fascist HQ, Rome
I’ve stabbed a flag into the Fascist
March eye. You make the bullet
cry, you make the nation
sing. A sovereigned head on a coin,
the shallow inks of wings—align
to remind me: I’ve chosen again. In the city,
at the rally, they shout: he is strong,
il est fort. I find myself chanting along;
I can’t abort. Gods trapped
in a head—we are everything except free:
the azurite Italian, the glittering Mussolini—
orating and exhorting—mathematically
operatic—your head suspended
against the word repeating: si si si si
Copyright © by Anthony Zanetti
I Give Betty Smith—And Live In, But Not With
Coffee stirs me out of you. Tired
Of shyness: I type to my vox.
Boxed in an office—lust must wander
Past—to last, as literature
Manifests immortality. Many leave me
Flat—as a thumbtacked Alanis,
Or the glass panorama the train tries to pass.
But your visage enriches;
Into poverty—reaches
And travels a song—
A Brooklyn: bygone.
Through me, she writes you—
As cities soak streets;
As pines sew their green.
My gift knows you better; it knows what to do.
Artifice excites—writing
Of me: in you.
Copyright © by Anthony Zanetti
*after Antonioni
There is a mind inside an island. By the brim
Of her shore, a boy culls from the sand; a ship,
Unmanned, scores the gulled coast
While cormorants repose on the glittering rose.
From the ocean, Poseidon is goading the shore.
Drops spray the boy’s back. He is shelled
To attack; his searching turns in; becomes
An internal thing. Friulian lyrics
Smooth crests from within. Who sings
Dialectic, in dialect unseen?
It is the island; it is everything.
Copyright © by Anthony Zanetti
You stare from the wire that cuts sky from brine.
Effeminate desert, you thought it benign;
But inside—I collect corals & spines.
Currents twist as flesh curls to a fist.
Feel the form of my force:
In the core of the vortex, concussion
Is pure—the pressure of poetry
Waves into lines—
Breaks. On the bottom: funnelled
To finish,
Lies your mind.
Copyright © by Anthony Zanetti
MIA Poets: The following are poets of excellent ability whom I have unfortunately lost contact with.
RICHARD DANA CARLSON I first met Richard at the old Irish Well Poetry Readings in St. Paul in the early 1990s. In '95 he self-published his ms. POEMS FOR THE PUBLIC, AND SOME NOT. I shall, in time, be posting some of those poems here, however I would much like to know his whereabouts. The last he was heard from he was in San Diego, CA.
GREG CLARK Greg is, next to me, the best poet I have ever personally known. I 1st met him at the Garden Crow Poetry Group, but he is wont to losing touch with people. He still has relatives, I believe, in the Coon Rapids, MN area. If I can find some of his older poems- some excellent lyrics- I shall post them.
LEAH CUTTER Leah was a UPG regular from late '95 to late '97 when she moved to San Francisco to be with her fiance. She is mainly, however, a sci fi writer (as is her now-husband). They then moved to Arizona where both letters & emails came back empty. FOUND!- Click here for INFO!
SHAWN DURRETT Shawn's a multi-talented artist I first met in 1993. She was an intern for The Loft & ran a reading series at the old Susan's Coffeehouse in St. Paul. She had an excellent poetic future ahead of her when she left in 1997 for the University of Michigan. She was planning on going into Social Services. Anyone who can locate her and/or put her in touch with Cosmoetica would get appreciation, as I would love to post some of her poems- old & new!
ANGELA HAUG Another multi-talented young woman- poet, dancer, photographer- who was a UPG semi-regular from mid '98-late '99. She may have left the Twin Cities for college but any way to contact her would be appreciated. Her poems deserve notice.
APRIL LOTT A young woman who was a UPG semi-regular back in '97 & who had alot of talent. She is still in the Twin Cities area- as of late 2000- & I would like to post some of her poems.
STEVE PERKINS I only met him twice- at a reading & once at the UPG. He wrote spare little lyrics that were just charming. He never returned because he got a 2nd shift job- this was about 1996. Anyone who knows his whereabouts please let me know.
MAGGIE SULLIVAN I once wrote a Le Bestiaré poem (1st ms.) on her called The Enigma & anyone who met her knows why. I first met her at the old Ophelia's Pale Lilies group & subsequent readings in 1993. She left Minnesota around late '96-early '97 & headed to California- I believe San Francisco. I lost touch with her a year or so later. Her works would find a place here. Calling the Enigmatic One....
Return to Cosmoetica