When the Poet
Sleepwalks
By Jay
Frankston
I’d like to invite you into my poem.
Please take off your shoes!
There are lines on both sides
a rhyme and a riddle
and a door at the end of the hall.
In each of the rooms
the guests are asleep,
the soldier in the arms of his war.
The farmer snores next to his cow
and the customer next to his whore.
There’s a man in pajamas
heading for the bathroom,
the poet is barefoot and sleepwalking.
This happens a lot
and when the moon is full
he sometimes walks on the walls.
Then forgotten words fall out of his pockets
and arrange themselves into a poem.
Jay Frankston was raised in Paris, France, and came to the U.S. in
1942. He is the author of several books and of a true tale entitled "A Christmas
Story", which was published in New York, condensed in Reader's Digest, and translated
into 15 languages.
In Decay
By Smzang
Today, as the old truck
rattles around the hair pin curve
on Rabbit Hill,
Blue paint gleams
like a proud possession
on the one fender still intact,
The other three flap precariously
in various stages of death by rust,
while Sue Hart’s old coon dog
bays mournfully at the rattling cough
from the aging engine,
then chases his tail
rather than make the long trek
to the stand of hickory trees
to chase a raccoon
that might chase back.
As Sue Hart’s father
cuts Mr. Miller’s hair,
snipping carefully around the giant mole
on the center of his head,
and Sue Hart sits in her 1950’s kitchen
sipping Ovaltine
from a cracked blue willow cup,
We sit on worn upholstery
at Grounds for Thought,
sipping fresh brewed hazelnut
and looking everywhere
except into each other’s eyes.
Smzang, a Maryland native transplanted to West Virginia, is
editor of The Rainbow’s Edge E-zine.
Beyond the Cycles
By Narayanan (Rudra)
In
the ageless memory,
of the Himalayan terrains,
we stand together,
alone, desireless, infinite,
beholding,
the bewildering cycles,
building on.
You become my sky.
I become your witness sun.
The many vast universes,
become, our sacred progeny.
Narayanan (Rudra), 49, lives in Kerala, India. He has published
two Philosophical books: "Kalki The Last Coming"
and "Scrap Bits From The Note Books Of A Lunatic".
Mind Mirror
By Sharon Rothenfluch
Cooper
Sea swallows sand,
landscape to my emotion.
I comprehend the familiar,
wonder at strangeness
with open awareness,
a piece of my individuality.
With a sweep of my arm
I transform visual concept
with pigment and cloth,
a mind mirror of reality.
Symbolized visuals
drench this easel - a piece
of immortality, constructed
through mortal duplication.
Walk with me through the tinted
windows of my imagination.
Sharon Rothenfluch Cooper lives in Portland, Oregon, USA and is married with four
children. Sharon is an active member of the Women’s Assn. of The Oregon Symphony,
Words of a Woman Net Society, Phenomenal Women of the Web. She has been published in over
two dozen publications.
Click here to
read introduction Order now
