Aleppo
By Cid Wa’eeb El Sur
We will drain it dry as hay.
Peace shall neither night nor day
hang upon its pent-house lid;
it shall be a place forbid.
Weary seven months times nine,
shall it dwindle, peak and pine.
Though its spot cannot be lost,
yet it shall be tempest-tossed.
Look what we have done, and see,
wrought by our infernal deeds,
a great city broken down
into rubble, gravel, ground.
China vs Hong Kong
By Lu “Reed ABCs” Wei & Kent Van May
In China one can only use Weibo when one’s online;
In Hong Kong you’re connected to the World all the time.
The Chinese people cannot freely practice Falun Gong,
and that is what their rulers want to happen in Hong Kong.
Free people of Hong Kong are not the same as Chinese slaves;
they stand beneath umbrellas, not in iron hammer graves.
The people of Hong Kong dislike the hateful CCP;
they’d rather have democracy instead of tyranny.
In China they can’t wait to put Hong Kong in their regime.
In Hong Kong they’d prefer to be out of the Chinese dream.
An Argument
By Rudi E. Welec, “Abs”
Today* one more petition has been filed asking that
United States Supreme Court toss the settlement out flat,
the NFL one billion cap upon head injuries
for compensating only current claims for CTE**.
There’s little argument that football’s not a brutal sport;
and politics has spilled upon the playing field’s court.
Some kneel at the flag, some raise their fists in arrogance,
protesting killings of unarmed, dark-skinned Americans;
while others say those disrespect the nation and police;
so who is arguing for calm heads, justice, truth, and peace?
*September 29, 2016
**CTE is chronic traumatic encephalopathy
The Spirit
By Sri Wele Cebuda
The spirit is the thing that falls
between the cracks, it seems,
the item that the body calls
when it drops down, or dreams.
To hear it is impossible,
to see it just as rare,
and yet it is as voluble
as kindness in the air.
It steps in to remind us when
we’re missing something else,
it sparkles up the specimen
that lies flat on the shelf.
Vergil
By Aedile Cwerbus
Distant, alone, and remote, star-like, he dispersed his distinct rays,
heaving his heart to the echoing bellow, the opening epic,
furious, firey furnace, the radiant energy flowing,
touching the oceans of space for a second, a second’s duration,
hard, hot hell held fiercely, in iron, in blazing medallion,
glowing and groaning in pain, gilt-flame, framed, fated and fading,
then, gone, banished forever, a black hole holding its own light,
never returning again, disappearing beyond the horizon.
Tiziano Vecellio, Il Divino (Titian)
By Buceli da Wersa
His personality went everywhere,
from his eyes to his soul in one deep link;
full he was, and overflowing at the brink
with an elan of life and love—pure flair;
and able also to penetrate despair,
those dark places where shadow sits and sinks
into even the way a philosopher thinks
or a pilot drives his plane through the air.
Ah, yes, he flew like presence—sheer awe,
into and around all of his subjects,
imbuing them with beauty, deep and broad,
importing with power and poetic thought
all the diff’rent faces of his public
and all the diff’rent phases of his God.
John Milton
By Wilude Scabere
I.
The amazing thing about John Milton
was his enormous breadth and his vast strength.
He was like a colossal Samson
rising from th’ English Isle’s harsh, dark and dank
world, a full blown prophet of th’ universe,
speaking out boldly his huge thoughts of freedom,
reminding humanity with his words
of our potential for greater reason.
And he was like the God that he spoke of,
powerful, glorious, and commanding,
schooled proficiently in the ways of love,
proficiently wise in his understanding.
He was a great genius of our great race—
immense in his mind, awesome in his grace.
II.
‘Round him like a plaguey choir of curs
the criticks bark and yelp and harshly curse
the musick of Milton’s powerful verse,
and take him to task for his use of words.
But little do they know they throw but burrs
against his thick fleece. They who cannot immerse
themselves in his beauties, or, what is worse,
can’t recognize true genius when it murrs.
For me I only wish that I might hold
similar vision, that I might create
comp’rable glory, that I might display
such heroick wisdom, and be so bold,
reach such an incredible height—that gate
that was th’ open miracle of his way.
Bruce Dale Wise is a poet living in Washington State who often writes under anagrammatic pseudonyms.
I especially like the poem in honour if John Milton. One may not be quite in accord with his ideas but the grandeur and nobility of his verse is undeniable … Great work!
Day after day, the news from Aleppo is heart-breaking. You used flarf-like, Shakespearean, seven-syllable, trochaic tetrameters from the witches in Macbeth to capture the onslaught. Pent-house certainly has another meaning in this context. The Shakespearean phrase “tempest-tossed” likewise encapsulates the horrifying violence of the situation.
“Tiziano Vecellio, Il Divino” was a poem of his ekphastic phase in the early years of the NewMillennium; although the poem itself doesn’t target one of his paintings, but rather him. The sonnet is Italian, with a rhyme scheme of abbaabbacdecde. At the volta L9 should read “Ah, yes, he flew like a presence—sheer awe—”.