A HUGE thank you to Producer Tim Sanders for collaborating with me on the video for "New Experience."  The poem is about Jimi and I wrote and read it.  Tim did the music and video and all the other production magic.  LISTEN TO THIS VIDEO BY GOING TO THE AUDIO/VIDEO LINK ON THE RIGHT HAND SIDE OF THE PAGE AND CLICKING ON THE LINK. It's at the top.

Thank you to Editor Sand Pilarski of Piker Press for publishing my poem today.

https://www.pikerpress.com/article.php?aID=9976

Photo courtesy of Piker Press

Shelter

Effecting only one form of magic,
creatures, 
bearing placid features
have become masters 
of both configuration and color.
Their decided talent 
presents as
the gift of imagination.

It is therefore strange,
that within their shelter
they cannot find
the charismatic fire needed
to attract the legions
to any flame
of what they call
their emancipation.

 Thank you to Editor Mark Antony Rossi for publishing this poem in the August issue of Ariel Chart.

https://www.arielchart.com/2023/08/a-soul-stuck.html

A Soul Struck

 

Before your work is begun,

consider growing thoughts,

calm and reasoned,

using uncluttered pages of a text 

written about extraordinarily benevolent characters,  

penned vignettes 

typifying what will later transpire 

for the good of all.

 

Let satisfied visual senses 

absorb the bright as a prism does,

embracing a boldness of color,

like a fountain of light 

erupting from dull to pure green.

 

Compose canorous song 

with its best repetitions revealed.

 

Build your colossus with solid stones.

Restore ancient temples to resplendent glory

that shines forth with radiant energy.

 

We’ll see, with upturned eyes,

upon so lofty a plane,  

tall edifices with turrets of divine love,

housing the souls of the just,

and those who live under a flag of peace.

 

Thank you to Editor Mark Antony Rossi for publishing this poem in the August issue of Ariel Chart.

https://www.arielchart.com/2023/08/the-delicacy-of-oxygen.html

The Delicacy of Oxygen

 

Our most obligatory element,

our main medicine,

the source of the world’s vital essence, 

carrying the strong appeal of wizardry,

knowing that its fate is what leads our fates.

 

We sense the innate need for breath 

reflected in those glorious periods 

of inhalation/exhalation,

similar to the death and birth of spring.

 

Steadily drawn air,

recalled like streams of water with endless flow,

delicate mobility, fluidity on which we rely,

needing to be protected

to maintain its sacred demand.

 

 

Thank you to Editor Mark Antony Rossi for publishing this piece in the August issue of Ariel Chart. 

https://www.arielchart.com/2023/08/a-win.html

A Win

 

 

A sad and weary procession

Of Dukes and Counts

and all manner of Lords,

wearing plumed helmets 

marches past a mist-covered grove

with delicacy and grace.

 

Bearing

amber vases filled with 

dusty embodiments

of those once vibrant and beautiful. 

Masses of long wooden tubes 

carrying those with splendid legacy,

eyes sealed with coins.

 

They are lowered among gentle words

by those devoted to liberty,

by those seeing peace for all as a win,

by those who will forever now 

hear the still song

beyond the polyphonic tunes of war.

 

 

A big thank you to Editor Steve Cawte for publishing three of my poems in Issue 24 of Impspired.   

https://impspired.com/impspired-issue-24/

Here is one of the three:

Metallic Pinafore Apron

Pay the fine.
Pass the Rubicon
in one irrevocable journey.

As far back as the Eden’s residents’ first crossing,
the spare severity of the land
has been protected by
an impenetrable bib of aridity.

An ancient symbol 
of bleak permanence
is etched upon every door.
No bronze doors these.

Lurking in the darkness, 
a nameless woman bleats, 
within each wretched town.

Iron draperies fall in abstract folds,
heavily sag upon every airless window.

It takes supreme effort to take a single step,
and,
even if amulets were allowed here,
their properties would be nullified.

Like a steel cage with no slats, 
harboring unsleeping factories of fume and slag.
Like a metallic pinafore apron,
a protective shield for this machine
clings resolutely against all that should stand free.

 

Of Memoranda

Handmade quality of parchment’s texture

draws the hand across its silent texts;

many written in elegant prose,

some in verse.

Noted passages recorded,

read against candlelight

by those with a devotion to knowledge,

vellum modes for the hungry to learn from the cooks.

Important first rubrics of:

ceremonies and rituals,

canons for mourning,

chants of priests petitioned by both king and vagabonds,

prayers of the living,

the wants of the dead

handed down to those most in need of gifts.

Languages from the ancient past,

doctrines to be absorbed in the future,

personal messages reflecting sweet talk,

colorful dialogue, extravagant promises,

main points inked as

barren rhetoric in a high-flown style.

All these,

evidence of the continuing attraction

of sheepskin and papyrus.