Richard Schnap- A Poem

BLEAK WIND

The world passes by
Speaking a strange language

That seems like the tongue
Of a distant planet

Where the notion of suicide
Seems a viable option

For those under the spell
Of alien gods

So that madness becomes
The season’s latest fashion

Advertised by the victories
Of armies of death

And if this is a preface
To the fabled end of days

We can only hope it comes
While we’re lost in better dreams

Bradley Williams- Cartoon

Noel Negele- A Poem

Unending Enslavement, Desired, Accepted And Meaningful.

She followed my steps
like a snake dancing to a fluit
both cooped up within the confines
of our interrelationship
and I'd always say I wouldnt stay long
but I'd end up spending the night
with those talks on the bed
three hours deep into midnight
with the silence we used to spread on the room
together
like throwing paint on canvas
and then and still
I spend the night
again and again
as the years run like water.

Michael Ceraolo- Three Poems

Steal

This one was no great feat
of top-notch athleticism,
nor
was it the product
of extensive film study
of players' tendencies;
no,
you just had to remain awake
One player waved the trigger man away
in order to take it out himself,
and
then motioned
the first player
to the low post,
the better to take advantage of a height advantage
Like a cliched plot
I saw the pass coming a mile away
and deflected it to one of my teammates



Drive

It was a textbook demonstration
of the principle of Three Ds,
given
in the live action of 3-D:
Drive
through the lane
Draw
the defense to you
and
Dish
the ball,
turning
your body away from the basket,
bringing the ball over your head with two hands,
and
tossing the ball to the spot-up shooter
who then knocks down the open three



Buzzer Beater

He gets a short pass from the rebounder
with six seconds left,
his team down two
He dribbles downcourt on the left wing,
crosses over to the middle of the court,
stumbles
rather than glides moving right,
nearly losing the dribble,
then,
grace on the play low, drama high,
launches a fadeaway three-pointer for the win

Donal Mahoney- Three Poems

Daydream

Down the patio walk,
white stones, through the garden,
under the trellis toward me
yellow frock, yellow hair
rising and falling

I lie in my lawn chair,
spoon honeydew sherbet, sip
pink ade from a tall glass,
cubes circling

She is almost upon me
I look up and I tell her
I have sand, sea, skies, laughs,
all paid for and nothing
nothing at all to do.



Another Spring

I heard from Harold
this morning, someone
older than I am, the two of us
in winter staring at another spring

someone I haven’t seen in 50 years,
side by side in cubicles again
making plans for lives
that might have been

waiting for the quitting bell
to say it’s 5 o’clock, time
to dunk our time cards,
hop the trolley and go home.



Pecking Order

We hung suet out
on the deck today
hoping the wrens
would come
and stay the winter,
nest in the yard
and next summer
fill the air with song.

In an hour or so
the wrens arrived
but minutes later
the beak of a flicker
hammered at them
and they flew away.

The flicker had time
for a snack before
a blue jay brusque
as the weather came
and took over.

The jay as well
had a snack before
a squadron of starlings
landed to feast
and Fuzzy the cat
rolled over the fence
eager to leap.

With the starlings gone
the cat lost interest
and moseyed around
for a minute or two
and then dove back
over the fence.

With no one around
and the suet deserted
the wrens came back
and ate some more
until the jay came back
and took over again.

Any minute now
we expect to see
the starlings return
and take over the suet
for a raucous dessert.



Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

Scott Thomas Outlar- A Poem

Point Blank Dreariness

The neuron-frayed rabbit is scrambling
for a fresh perspective.
Its crusted hole of wonderland hallucinations dried out
after years of tangent conspiratorial burn out syndrome.
The feather-lite insecurity
died in the rapture
while a black pulse from paradise
spit a rain drenched symphony
down from heaven to suffocate all illusions.

The vegetarian just shot a bull
point blank between the eyes,
shattering perfectly ordered enlightenment
into sixteen shards of chaos.
The adrenaline-laced agony of the heifer
didn’t play a role
in the split second decision.
The itchy trigger finger was based solely on raw hunger pangs
screaming outwardly from the depths of a skeletal frame.

The bible belt is flooding with wine…
A ruby red recipe for salvation
gets crumpled up and tossed in the fire
to spark a fresh dose of righteous regression.
The savior tiptoes down the ornamented hallway,
avoiding snakes around every corner
until the ark manifests
to float the jetsam dreariness
and pull up sideways at the nearest dock
with twisted kidneys begging for the next new high.

Paul Tristram- Three Poems

Semtex Kiss

...and speechless I remained

for hours…

© Paul Tristram 2014



It’ll All End In Beers (2 Poems, One Sad & One Happy!)

She is a decade or two younger than him
and just about as flirty as they come.
This made him smile widely at first
but for a while now, it’s been deeply troubling him.
He doesn’t quite think of her as a ‘Trophy’
even though that is indeed what she might be.
It’s just that she awoke something inside of him, again
that he had thought was long lost and dead forever.
A Springtime shine and thaw to his Autumnal years
with a heavy Winter cold-buried heart.
He does not begrudge her the gifts and money,
he’s a business man after all and understands
completely that everything in life is trade.
But her moods, tantrums and cold indifference,
which she turns on and off like a switch,
is literally draining the energy from the battery
which she had once so easily helped to charge up again.
The obscene amount of wrong numbers dialled
by different male voices to her phone each day
is driving him around the bend and making a blatant
mockery of his normally quite high intelligence.
Yet, he’s like a pit-bull locked on to a love without caring,
a selfish stubbornness that will bring him to his knees.
He’ll be drinking like a bum in an expensive hotel room
very soon, with a gun barrel to his temple pathetically
lamenting a lost love which in fact never truly existed?

© Paul Tristram 2015



It’ll All End In Beers (2 Poems, One Happy & One Sad!)

They did not meet through a mutual friend,
it was instead Momentous, a Happening!
like Springtime exploding into life
and being crammed into three or four seconds,
the rush was like a cocaine bungee jump to the senses.
They both only slept for the same one hour
out of the first five days together.
Being old enough, wise enough and battle-scarred enough
to realize what a Gift from the God’s they had been given.
That, when it’s right it’s just right
and when the lights come on again in your heart
(Because it does not happen with everybody!)
to remember to savour and enjoy it to its very full.
They are both thankful for the little things
which of course, makes them bigger by default.
Their smiles are many, true and sincere, always
and they are a source of light and inspiration to everyone
who cares and takes an interest in their joy.
There is a wedding planned for when the snows come,
a small select gathering by the cool Mountain’s waters,
to help lift a glass of cheers and beers to the future
of two lives entwined and now being born together a-new.

© Paul Tristram 2015

Paul Tristram is a Welsh writer who has poems, short stories, sketches and photography published in many publications around the world, he yearns to tattoo porcelain bridesmaids instead of digging empty graves for innocence at midnight, this too may pass, yet.

You can read his poems and stories here! http://paultristram.blogspot.co.uk/

Michael Estabrook- A Poem

Susan

She never said a word
not one word
to me in high school

but I never expected her to
why would she have
she was stunning – beautiful and confident

athletic and popular
with her blonde hair and tight
unstoppable teenage body

so when I received a Facebook “Friend Request”
from her I hit the “Accept” button so fast
I almost fell off my chair!

And yet I still had the audacity
to expect her to respond
to the dopey note I sent her:

“I just had to say hi
now that we are ‘friends’ on FB,
how are you?”

Of course she never responded
how could she, no of course she couldn’t
reminding me that even after 50 years

some things never change
without upsetting life’s delicate balance
reminding me that I should have remained

tongue-tied and awestruck, content
with my humble place
within the universe’s unimpeachable physics
and oddly I am.



Michael Estabrook is a recently retired baby boomer child-of-the-sixties poet freed finally after working 40 years for “The Man” and sometimes “The Woman.” No more useless meetings under florescent lights in stuffy windowless rooms. Now he’s able to devote serious time to making better poems when he’s not, of course, trying to satisfy his wife’s legendary Honey-Do List.

Ayaz Daryl Nielsen- Three Poems

widowed neighbor

a tuneup for 

her Harley trike

the graveyard

father’s old dog 

knows his way around 

grumpy neighbor

his garden’s scarecrow

lost a boot

ayaz daryl nielsen, x-roughneck (as on oil rigs)/hospice nurse, editor ofbear creek haiku (25+ years/125+ issues), homes for poems includeLilliput Review, SCIFAIKUEST, Dead Snakes, Shamrock, Kind of a Hurricane, and! online at: bear creek haiku poetry, poems and info

B.Z. Niditch- Three Poems

VENICE BEACH BLUES

Not expecting to go back
to the features of the 90's
expecting awareness
of a Beat poet's adventure
enamored of enchanted
words taken off city light shelves
my posthumous self declined
like a quivering expression
from a straitjacket gesture
and jackbooted memory
still frozen from my urban read
a brother still in the shivers
of alley darkness
with an apotheosis of my sax
blown on the streets
and park bandstands
embracing a life's work
in a Whitman existence
prepared on the night sands
of Venice Beach
by secret slopes as life stops
for love making everything new.



LARKIN AND I

On back roads
remembering my hands
playing piano at a pub
opening your letters
from your jazz writings
on landscapes of wind
here in London
invisible except to dreams
of those who hold lamps
to itinerant poets
with an alembic alphabet
motionless as my body
in a new language hour,
nothing is foreign to us
but earthy to everyone else
as trees, springs, shadows
cool off all hidden tongues
from rumors in the city
that a poet takes chances
in hours of days
barters for warmth
under his green back pack
fixes on breathing in
enigmas and omens
unchained from words
in an absurd time
of a language
that feeds us on patience,
when everyone wanted
his fifteen minutes
to get known,
but others realized
our dreams would be uprooted
as entangled graffiti
on city walls
we were only starry-eyed
fading by morning
within publicity's range
of a once familiar face.



URBAN RECITAL

Taking a taxi
in a wintry snow
late for my sax gig
riffs of flakes
on the windshield wiper
a flagon of vodka
and fried potatoes
next to me,
the scent of notes
full of whispering words
and probabilities
as the driver intimates
in Russian
he is not charging me
if will play a solo for him
my hands not knowing
any boundaries
as we almost crash
and barely escape through
a half opened door.