Friday, December 26, 2014

A Poem by Leilanie Stewart


Reeds
 
On a field trip
my tutor pulled apart a clump
of what looked like rotten seaweed
clinging to a battered rock
but turned out to be
7000 year old reeds,
flattened, paper-thin
and I thought about the people
who busied around,
moulding pots or knapping flint
and may have knelt
on those very reeds
before they folded
into the golden-brown
of their autumn years
 
 
 
Leilanie Stewart's poetry has appeared in numerous print and online magazines and anthologies in the UK and US. She worked as a professional archaeologist in Northern Ireland and her forthcoming pamphlet from Eyewear Publishing, A Model Archaeologist, explores the theme. Her writing blog is at: http:// leilaniestewart.wordpress.com

Monday, December 22, 2014

Two Poems by Miki Byrnes


Flooded Landscape

A landscape lies flat.
Curves, hollows,
Tussocks, fences,
Rolled by an obese weight
of water.  That fell like nails
hammered into the earth.
Now we are but flecks
upon a mirror.  Stubborn marks
where silvering has rubbed through.
Clouds reflect
an unending metallic plain.
Pierced only by spires,
huddled island communities.
Sharp black spikes
of mud-trapped trees.



Lickey Hills

A steep path.  Steps too high for comfort.
Straining calf muscles at each knee-bend, mud-slick in rain.
It rose behind the training center.  Boys hung like apes
on tree strung ropes.  Learned team spirit, rules of convention.
Their shouts twined under thick boughs.  Higher up trees clotted.
A green palisade that blocked road, view, noise.
Pine cones littered ground cushioned upon a million shed needles.
Mottled, fragrant.  Dotted with open lobed cones.  Light fell
in dancing patches.  Flickered over the ground in mirror-ball splashes.
Silence lay pure.  An open mouth into which I fed thoughts,
worries, an expansion of optimism.  That returned to me
chewed into more recognizable shapes.
Going down was best achieved on ones backside.
Hands gripping each steps edge.  To arrive at the road
mucky, nails filled with earth.  Head softly rested.




Miki Byrne began performing her poetry in a Bikers Club.  She has had three collections of poetry published and work included in over 160 respected poetry magazines and anthologies.  Miki has won poetry competitions and has been placed in many others.  She has read on both Radio and TV and judged poetry competitions.  She was a finalist for Gloucester Poet Laureate.  Miki is a member of the charity Arthritis Care's People Bank.  She has been disabled for many years.



Saturday, December 20, 2014

A Poem by Sue Neufarth Howard


 SOUNDS LIKE MUSIC

Bamboo grove
amidst the fading forest
defoliating - gold, red,
the sounds of a chorus of
thousands
 
an evening meet-up,
more arriving each minute -
avian chit-chatting while
up high a curious squirrel,
cheek full of walnut, observes.
 
 
 
Sue Neufarth Howard: Poet and visual artist, member - Greater Cincinnati Writers League (GCWL)  and Colerain Artists. Received Third Prize and/or Honorable Mention in several Ohio Poetry Day Contests since 1998. Poems published in Her Limestone Bones: Selections from Lexington (KY) Poetry Month 2013; Pyrokinection and High Coupe online journals; Tic Toc, Storm Cycle, and Gilded Frame Anthologies - Kind of a Hurricane Press; Cattails online journal; AEQAI online magazine; the Journal of Kentucky Studies - 25th Anniversary Edition; the Mid-America Poetry Review; and The Incliner - Cincinnati Art Museum. Poetry chapbooks: TreeScapes, EarthWords, In and Out of the Blue Zoo and Haiku Moments.

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Two Poems by Ken L. Jones


Half Formed Lullaby

On this implosion of a morning
There’s something sour and aloof
Something lonely in the guitar notes
That give me chills in the cat lithe garden
That calls me across the fog
Weary February is gilded and serene like an angel
And on the lace of its fine bone china ice fields
I saw you kiss the hill’s melodies
Till I was yearning for the silver dreams
Wherein one hears the confessions of the leaves

Late At Night When No One Is There  

My silver bride bends low colored by the rainbow tint
Of the blackbird atop the old hotel
Who is the dark guardian of my wineskin full of salt wind
That turns my sleep to a snow most deep
Above which the moon unfurls
Where a pulsating starlight brings to fruition
The ripe, ripe seeds of the very long burning log fire
That in my beloved’s fireplace stirs and pops
Till long past daylight and first crowing of the cock
As it slowly awakens every village and farm
In the verdant valley far below
And sends to tasks more repetitious drones less free
Than any in any real beehive that I’ve ever seen

  

You Carry Them With You

Slumber dances just out of reach as my memories form
Harp strings to be plucked by finger’s decades worn
For music has always been my trade winds
Been the skin that carries the tattoos of my deepest stirrings
As they come on me in tidal waves in a manner almost blurring
And like a coral bed discovered for the first time in a cove I’ve never seen
Will lead me to undiscovered lands that are the essence of all dreams




For the past thirty-five years Ken L. Jones has been a professionally published author who has done everything from writing Donald Duck Comic books to creating things for Freddy Krueger to say in some of his movies.  In the last six years he has concentrated on his lifelong ambition of becoming a published poet and he has published widely in all genres of that discipline in books, online, in chapbooks and in several solo collections of poetry.  



 

Monday, December 15, 2014

Three Poems by Neil Ellman


Woods (2)
 
     after the painting by Gerhard Richter 
 
In the woods a lexicon’s
concentric rings
speak ancient dialects
 
of seasons come and gone
broken promises
civilizations’ rise and fall
 
liaisons in the shade
of twisted limbs
names carved in weathered bark
 
of the forgiven and unforgiving
confessions and lies
the birth and death of gods
 
straining to the light
trees endure, survive
to teach the earth its past.


Woods (5)
 
     after the painting by Gerhard Richter
 
Blue and yellow trees
with purple bark
Inhabit a world of black and grey
grow old
grow leaves that shift to red
as they escape this time
this place
along the speed of fall and light
with a reason to survive
the end of time
as blue and yellow trees
that will not die
when the woods grow dark
in the winter of the sun


Woods (10)
 
     after the painting by Gerhard Richter 
 
Who live among the trees
on hallowed ground
in the hollows of the earth
hold communion with            
the gods of wind and rain
who gather in the sediment
of falling leaves
to feed eternity
as if it were their child
who comes to know
that destiny is a tree
that sometimes dies
to live again and again
to command the forest floor.
 
 
 
 
Neil Ellman, a poet from New Jersey, has published more than 1,000 poems, many of which are ekphrastic and written in response to works of modern and contemporary art, in print and online journals, anthologies and chapbooks throughout the world.