The Policeman
By Brice U. Lawseed
He dreamed there were ten thousand demonstrators on the streets,
a nightmare of the vicious mixed with youngsters sending tweets.
He woke up in a sweat, but it had only been his mind
distressing o’er the volatility of humankind.
He watched the television news, protesters chanting out.
He worried what might happen to them lost in fist and shout.
He dreaded what might happen to the businesses they passed,
the things that could be broken… hearts, bones, windows, in a blast…
He fretted o’er his family and other families,
who might be swept up in chaotic possibilities.
He feared those arguing against the thoughtful, in a mob,
results of free elections, and belief in rule of law.
He dreaded those who could not tolerate the flaws of man,
and feared the dissidents whose hate burned like a turbofan.
He agonized so anxiously about what might hurt them.
But who out there was troubled in the least bit over him?
A Tiny Moment’s Fligh—
By Ira “Dweeb” Scule
A millisecond is a thousandth of a second, and
a nanosecond is a billionth of a second spanned;
but physicists in Munich fired an ultraviolet-
light-pulse onto a helium’s small atom parapet,
exciting the electrons, causing one to free itself,
and shot a laser pulse to calibrate it as it left.
The change in speed of this photoemission zipping by
was measured at a zeptosecond’s tiny moment’s fligh—
that is, a trillionth of a billionth of a second’s tick,
much quicker than a flicker, or a geiger-counter’s click.
Italy
By Alberdi Ucwese
From sun-scorched Sicily down in the south,
where Etna spews its boiling lavas out,
to freezing, ice-bound mountains in the north,
where tow’ring Alps rise high up through the clouds;
from the Tyrrhenian Sea in the west
where Isle Sardinia in sunshine sets,
to Adriatic waters in the east
that flow forth to Ionia and Greece:
this is the land pius Aeneas sought,
the land that sent an Empire out of Rome,
the land o’er which barbarian tribes fought,
the land the Renaissance in time called home,
the land that Garibaldi led to be;
this is that land, the land called Italy.
Bruce Dale Wise is a poet living in Washington State who often writes under anagrammatic pseudonyms.
This is a world without meter or rhyme. Thanks for keeping the faith.
I appreciate your sonnet on Italy, the home of the sonnet, although yours is an English sonnet (though your second quatrain a variant). I like the octave/sestet split of geographical to a chronological/ historical vision. In the octave your alliteration, e.g., s’s , and assonance, e.g., ou, is nice. I also enjoyed the rhetorical device of “the land,” and the placement of the title and topic of the poem Italy, at the last word of the couplet. Finally, I found your coincision of words, like Sicily, Tyrrhenian, Sardinia, Adriatic, Aeneas, barbarian, Renaissance, and Garibaldi, in the metre, adept. Is it not amazing the variety that can occur in fourteen lines of iambic pentameter?