A Poem by JD DeHart

Loud Music

thumps of vandal music
fade as we rise
around the hill,
a lake finding us,
a water fall discovering us
and our escape
right before our eyes.



JD DeHart is a writer and teacher.  His chapbook, The Truth About Snails, is available from RedDashboard.

Three Poems by Ken L. Jones

The seven seas that are my garden
Take on the ripeness of colors
That are continually new to me
Withering in their luminescence
That I take one sip of
Like it is some exquisite Chinese tea
As I seek exile in the desolate
Imperious sedimentary layers
That babble beneath my slippered feet
In a language I've never quite before heard
While crows and humming birds
Wander through my eyesight
As the morning dew dries into a silent prayer.



But When the Time Machine is Stolen

The morning blurs into smoldering crawl bys
The clouds merge with bird notes
Spitting out a clockless withering between the trees
It squints, it moans as noon adjusts its hat
And little red rooster doom flutters across
The dew chilled breathless one hundred years old buildings
And converges as it eats the rocks away
Too tired to fly anymore
In my obscuring melancholy
Tethered in the smell of the nuances of absence
Where night barks like an empty street



No More

Corroded tin cans of shifting gloom
Beguiling through iron green river bottoms
Of barely suppressed anxiety
Past sepia and abundant crumbling jungles
Of an Amazonian suburbia ever shrinking
Like the Gobi Desert that is my dreams
Where the windows of the wilderness
Get transformed into the perfumes of full bellies
As I take to the self replicating stars
And like an alien invasion altered by shipwrecks
I wash upon an island that has lost none of its power.




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.  

A Poem by Michael Lee Johnson

Willow Tree and the Rain Falls

Willow tree where the rain falls,
two loved pets beneath these roots,
Mo Joe and Joey parakeets,
gray sand like dandruff packs
them in close and tight
I offer the Lord's Prayer
a form of biblical relief.
Thunder at 3:37 A.M. Thursday night
wonder of my dream mind loves thunder rain.
It is just a part of me, loose with wind.
I know in the A.M. blending in the moisture
birds will chirp sounds blasting echoes
against the surface of the sun.
Before the dawn light, small minds like my own
become active gearing thoughts toward work--
economizing each part of me, loose like threads in wind.
This is the willow tree where the rain falls.
I am self-employed, in my
primitive occupation selling pens,
pads of paper, calendars, tee shirts
names customized printed on them.
It is just a part of me loose with the wind.
Life as an author is a daily man grind
to coffee grounds and skeleton bone leftovers--
with the thunderclaps, and lack of sleep, well deserved.





Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era.  he is a Canadian and US citizen.  Today he is a poet, a freelance writer, amateur photographer, small business owner in Itasca, Illinois.  He has been published in more than 880 small press magazines in 27 countries, and he edits 10 poetry sites.  Author's website:  http://poetryman.mysite.com/  Michael is the author of The Lost American:  From Exile to Freedom (136 page book) ISBN:  978-0-595-46091-5, several chapbooks of poetry, including From Which Place the Morning Rises and Challenge of Night and Day, and Chicago Poems.  He also has over 83 poetry videos on YouTube as of 2015:  https://www.youtube.com/user/poetrymanusa/videos  Michael Lee Johnson has been nominated for 2 Pushcart Prize awards for poetry in 2015.

A Poem by Gary Beck

The Last Blossom

A row of Magnolia trees
bloomed briefly,
exquisite flowers,
intoxicating scent,
unnoticed
by most New Yorkers
busily intent
on their affairs,
city dwellers
more and more unaware
of what is near them
rarely looking up or down,
even more dangerous,
not looking around.
As we further detach ourselves
from impending reality
it's unreasonable to expect
perception of nature's wonders,
now a row of green trees,
like other green trees,
except for one blossom,
soon to fall.

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director, and as an art dealer when he couldn't make a living in theater.  He has 11 published chapbooks.  His poetry collections include:  Days of Destruction (Skive Press), Expectations (Rogue Scholars Press), Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways (Winter Goose Publishing).  Perceptions, Displays, Fault Lines and Tremors will be published by Winter Goose Publishing.  Conditioned Response will be published by Nazar Look.  His novels include:  Extreme Change (Cogwheel Press), Acts of Defiance (Artema Press), Flawed Connections (Black Rose Writing).  His short story collection, A Glimpse of Yough (Sweatshoppe Publications).  His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway.  His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines.  He currently lives in New York City.

Three Poems by Ken L. Jones

What is the Weight of Light?

My tall pine unclipped, unkempt is plucking the raindrops
Like they were strings upon a lute
And even the cracked blacktop of my street
Looks less careworn when it's wet
On this perfect shiver of a forty degree day
That forgot to come last November



Gleaming and Disorientating

My old avocado tree used to cast a net of branches
Hoping to catch the fish like chaff of dandelions
That was blowing where it pleased
In that long abandoned neighborhood
Where clouds congregated like Mark Twain quotes
As butterflies with petal wings offered their love to my flowerbeds
Till appeared a monarch who was the same color as my steed
And who as he departed left behind only
An inelegant but most sincere hallelujah and amen
That could not be perceived by the ears of men



From the Beautiful

The fog is a corn crop ripening on the vine
As the shadowy hammers of a winter storm arrive
And the moon which has roots that reach
All the way down to the earth below
Is like my first slice of a Ferris wheel so long ago
But now nothing more than grainy close-ups
Preserved in formaldehyde on this night
When I collect the new seashells
Just washed in by the tide



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.  

Two Poems by ayaz daryl nielsen

Otiose

Often I go to the mountain
and lean against
quiet rock
quiet rocks that
rose from the earth
millions of years ago

Again, a black brim hat
for damp morning mist
a quiet rock
to lean against
beneath aspen leaves
among aster, columbine,
pasque and penstemon

Maybe there's more I can do
beyond what I have willed
and may have accomplished

Resting beside quiet rock
that rose from the earth
millions of years ago
Plenty enough for this fine day.



The bear in heavy fur

The bear in heavy fur licks its lips and
dreams the taste of berries on bushes
Wildflower seeds waiting below white-
washed chapels of frozen snow listen
to voices of wild geese and wood ducks
carried within an early chinook wind
Humbled, I pour a second cup of coffee,
again renew my promise to keep the
wondrous faith of this earth and my
loved ones, and add a splash of cream.





ayaz daryl nielsen, x-roughneck (as on oil rigs)/hospice nurse, editor of bear creek haiku (25+ years/125+ issues), homes for poems include Lilliput Review, SCIFAIKUEST, Shemom, Shamrock, Kind of a Hurricane Press and online at bear creek haiku.

A Poem by Connie Walle

as the sun

is shoved into the sea
by the lateness
of the day
am I the only one
who notices
the bruised clouds
on the horizon
and the tears
which fall
in the distance

Connie Walle, a life-long resident of Tacoma, Washington, is President and founder of Puget Sound Poetry Connection where she hosts the "Distinguished Writer Series" now in its 25th year.  Connie founded Our Own Words, a teen writing contest now in its 19th year.  Her awards include:  1998 Margaret K. Williams Award in support of the arts; Washington Poets Association Faith Beamer Cooks Award.  She is a mother of three, grandmother of seven and currently retired.  A few of her publications include Floating Bridge Press, Raven Chronicle, Tahoma's Shadow, and Cradle Song.