Once again, here's this week's snapshots, and thanks to all
who participated, and let me know if anything's gone missing!
Best,
Rebecca
Rebecca Seiferle
www.thedrunkenboat.com
Slug and I
Last night, first hot one since last summer,
we left the bedroom window open.
This morning I see across the carpet
a silver snail-trail. Which way did it go?
Do I have to hunker down and track it
under the bed? Forget it. Later I see
in the wall-corner furthest from the window
not a snail a houseless slug, stalled at eye level.
Having turned tail on the lush back-garden,
it¹s seeking lusher Lebensraum in the front.
Only our dry roofed boxes, bathroom
excepted, foil the transition.
Good going, slug, but totally futureless.
Excuse me now as I take a tissue,
delicately detach you from the corner,
take you to the front door. No garden
deserves you your clan here are
numerous enough already. Penalty, death.
Creature like me, defenceless. The morning is
overcast, the execution un-witnessed.
Powers above, if not blind and deaf,
grant me stay of execution.
Max Richards
North Balwyn, Melbourne
8.30am, Wednesday 19 November 2003
moves inside me
breathe rattle breathe
death an embryo
floating on sky
your card adds up the call
thinned to blood reality
far from the city
where they cover Oscar
with kisses hide Gertrude
behind the stone
there's a loss of continuity
this time of the world
Jill Jones
9.45am 19 November 2003
SUNDAY MORNING ROSE
(“I’d like to keep going . . . “ – James Rosenquist)
Right there . . . all the colors in the universe
of paint,
so I never have to roll up canvasses.
Eye, then if we go across the room, it’s a painting.
Barry Alpert / Silver Spring, MD USA / 11-16, 11-19 (9:17 AM)
MY LIFE AS AN EXTENDED X-RAY
Transparent for years--more now.
The chiropractor points at my insides,
turned to the question mark that is
nothing new to my mind,
but's moved now to my spine.
Scoliosis. Disk degeneration.
Not the first time I've been called
a degenerate, either.
But there are upsides:
if my voice holds out
perhaps I can sing Rigoletto
or cast myself in the miniseries
"The Voyeuristic Passions of Alexander Pope,"
made when Reagan became too controversial.
In the meantime I need to buy myself
The Comfy Chair.
KTW/11-19-03
sky coming steel grey
a single snowflake falling
beyond the near pane
elsewhere bombs falling
into dark morning / amBushed by
'violent restraint'...
Douglas Barbour
Edmonton 08:10 Wednesday November 19/03
thinking too much
but newscycles drive
thinking
just the same--
each vote cast
for Bush/Cheney
changed
into a bullet
for Afghanistan
each bullet
also changed
into $ for
regional war lords
each bit of land
it changed
to profits for poppy
growers
each bit of horse
changed
to a nervous
system
of fear & frenzy
and bad nerves
changed
to bad news cycles
and news is
everyone's
back in business
which changed to--
yes we elected
all of it
West Irondequoit, New York, 12:19 11/19/03
Gerald Schwartz
guilty (do I have to feel - am I) guilty
I am (guilty)
tired_warm_comfortable_bored
_because of an aged day - I could have
said nothing/smiled all the way down
it’s all set against changes
you end up discovering
the same old riddle
in the middle of your intention
ironical set of a masquerade
your guiltiness
protects against daily repeated paralyses
Bozen _ Anny Ballardini_ 11.40 pm
(Stage directions for snap (in case of formatting disturbances) poem is centered--
reading can also at centered "i" or be read down or maybe even from the bottom up; bidirectional (although it may sound like my pet "Furby" toy))
down
they look
edge
of building
along a line
display
interactive
yet orderly
decorative
but in a row
hanging out
starlings
sky
at a november
up
look
-------------------------------------i-------------------------------------
look
again
through a veil
of twig
four perfectly ovals
identical
last of season
drooooplets
hanging on
waiting on
a breeze
a goodbye
wave
-------------------------
Deborah in NJ
6:37 pm
Newark
Hanging on
her every
word and
hearing not
a one, he thinks
that none
of her characteristics
are secondary.
Mark
Food drops and leafleting
disperse the crowd
our leader waddles through
on stumps of prayer.
Here is a rhetoric-
al question: by
what right if not
of election
(washed in the stream
of His love, the white
skein of water
slurring with pollution)
does he stand in his
whiteness
to bear such witness
before the people?
Dominic Fox, Leicester 19/11/03 / Northampton 20/11/03
Modemless
It's gone !
just a sad space
a square of dust
where it was
with a few
biscuit crumbs
a sweet paper
and some
cat hairs
friend said
you need a
bigger brain
or two update
screen all blank
keyboard so still
printer frozen
all cut off
from the poets
just me
and the cat
which is trying
to get out the door
deserting me
I suppose
I could try
to write
a poem
patrick 8-47 raynespark
on some-one else's computer
Psy-ops Sonnet
There is much pain there. Across the vastnesses
between us, small birds carry messages. The sky,
wanting, above all, to be blue, arches its back,
as everlasting fire pours through space.
Men dying in burning houses wait for their
women to return, to feed them, bear their children,
mend their clothes. But even on the best of days,
in relatively stable orbits, men tremble before
women only average in appearance. A little too
much beauty is so hard to bear when souls are torn
to shreds, an infinity of detergents stretching them
to some breaking point, memory prospecting and
mining, leaving deep flooded shafts among heaped
dishes, appliances, lying in ambush in kitchens.
Hal
Halvard Johnson
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