Tuesday, June 12, 2012

A Thousand

by S. E. Hart

stretched between myself
a thousand ways within and without
a twisting contortion that blooms
iridescent in your sight
with a thousand heartbeats inside of my chest
flutters of moments and seconds
crescendos of life and atoms smashing
together in perfected sequential order
I give way under the
weight of your thousand stares
lost somewhere in your eyes and
traversing an elliptical ring around
your misplaced dreams
take hold of me and we can
live and make love in ecstasy
a collision of senses and sensations
just you and I
and the heartbeats beneath our chests
for a thousand years before we die

All of You

by Kufre Udeme

All of you speakers of truth
Beaten and hated with passion
Casted out into the hungry storm
Without a shield over your bleeding heads;

All of you sowers of true seed
Sent into jungles of pagans
Attacked by cannibal monsters
Without an eagle to swoop down for your rescue;

All of you figures of laughter
Noahs of today's century
Stoned like Stephen of old
Without the council to appeal for your sake;

All of you lambs among woves
Steadfast in the warfronts with evil
Yet charged for holding your swords
Without trial, impede and cut short like John the Baptist;

Continue in diligent while you sow the goodnews
In my father's house you'll have eternal rest
Your present agony shall never stand against your joy
And your crown shall surpass His Excellency of White House.

Angels & Coyotes

by Kallima Hamilton

Leonid meteors pepper the western sky
where eagle chicks hide in the belly of pine.
Smoke signs gone, I'm
confused by the strong shaman dust
of old peyote buttons and broken bones.
The pain
of lonely cloud whisperers
is echoing their silence with arrows of forever.
Here, along tear-stained trails,
angels & coyotes
dance hungrily
high on the ridge, moon-drunk, howling.
Vision quest, shape shift,
our minds luminous from fasting,
we see through vast canyons of stars,
straight to the heart of Earth Mother
who lives on this dangerous rim.
Some strange ghost glitters
at the far edge of lodge pole, skims
sage, speaks vaguely about rain
for blue corn. Caught between
flesh and earth, we shudder under
shadows of loose feather and stone.

By All Counts

by Joan McNerney

Proper and improper fractions
have distinctive differences

Proper fractions study at
prestigious universities.   They
attend cultural events and play
at least one musical instrument.
Proper fractions step aside
for ladies patronizing only
haute couture shops.

Improper fractions are hooligans.
Each one guzzles cheap beer,
crunching potato chips while
screaming at wrestling matches.
Improper fractions knock over
seniors to reach clearance racks.

Beware of mixed figures.  These
hybrids can not decide what they are.
Medication might help them plus
talking therapy so popular today.  Never
allow children to associate with them.

Negative numerals should be avoided.
Those will only subtract from your life
flinging freezing rain in your face.
Conversely, positive numerals are
delightful handing us glowing statistics
and bright bouquets of fragrant daisies.

Never take integers for granted.  Do not
allow yourself to be divided but let
all quotients be fruitful and multiply
until that day when your number is up.

The royal palace in Hyderabad

by Jagannath Rao Adukuri

The palace was luminously wet reaching out to sky
In its shadow lay the kings and their faceless women
Whose fine drapery interrupted their noses and eyes
Under many big-vaulting domes and resounding halls.

Their noises went up to ceiling to return empty
Like their noses and eyes lost from their faces.
They were not lost really but had never been there.
When the silks arrived they forgot w omen’s faces.
The women sat there gossiping about other women,
Other women in the harem and their fine draperies.

Their men’s bloated egos did not show on the faces;
Their man’s egos showed on the woman’s stomachs,
On the little heirs to the throne who came from there.
A fine bangle, a glittering necklace and some pearls
Hushed talk about the latest addition to the harem
And the scraps of conversation went on as it rained.

They had no faces for the evening conversation,
Only bodies fully draped in the finest gilded silks.
In the beginning they sat on the ground huddled.
Later the West grew on them in white man’s land
They sat on sofas and high backed chairs presiding
Tea ceremonies just like the sophisticated women.
They still did not have their noses on their faces.

What He Finds

by Mather Schneider

First came the men
who carved figures in rocks
on the hills in the
desert.
Eons later the art teachers came
like lizards slinking
from the sea.
The teachers soon dominated the land.
Their philosophy:
the soul is a spring
you have to pay them to drink from.
They couldn't understand
how anything had survived
so long without their
instruction
and they institutionalized art
so that it would never slip
from their sticky
paws.
They brought it all inside
the safety of the yellowed walls
and stuck stiff
to the single agenda:
preservation of the status quo.
Every once
in a great while
a student will summon the courage
to walk away to the
desert
and fend for
himself.
What he finds
out is how
strong those first
men were,
how small one feels
alone under
the stars, and how hard
that rock is.