Linked Haiku, By Martin Willitts Jr

Linked Haiku
By Martin Willitts Jr

*

cherry blossoms —
the absoluteness of dawn —
rivers to my heart.

*

Pink rose-light breaks,
pink anomies of five clouds,
calls to our skin: here!

*

A sweet-edged joy —
gladiolus — pink-yellow
tissues of our love.

*

Seedlings tell us
to plant them for much later
in memory-house.

Martin Willitts Jr is a retired Librarian. He has 21 full-length collections including the Blue Light Award 2019, The Temporary World, Harvest Time (Deerbrook Press, 2021) Leaving Nothing Behind (Fernwood Press, 2021), Meditations on Thomas Cole’s Paintings (Aldrich Press, 2021,) Not Only the Extraordinary are Exiting the Dream World (Flowstone Press, 2021) and All Wars Are the Same War (FutureCycle Press, 2021).

A Ruined Imagination, by Michael Minassian

A Ruined Imagination
by Michael Minassian

Riding in a boat
on land is never
a good idea.

To some, water is home
to others, a place to drown,
all eyes on the horizon.

Approaching the church,
the steeple winks
its crooked bell.

Trying not to make a sound
we recite the names
of God with our tongue,

hoping to see the face
she gave us before
we were born.

Michael Minassian is a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual, an online poetry journal. His poetry collections Time is Not a River, Morning Calm, and A Matter of Timing as well as a new chapbook, Jack Pays a Visit, are all available on Amazon. For more information: https://michaelminassian.com

The End of the World, by Alan Toltzis

The End of the World
by Alan Toltzis

          God destroyed Noah’s generation
          because the earth was full of petty theft.
                    Sanhedrin 108a

Alone, in the produce aisle, I pluck and palm
a single green grape,
the cool globe
smooth as a worn stone.
As if clearing my throat,
I cover my mouth and savor
a sweetly crisp explosion of flavor.
Theft worth less a cent. Drop
by drop insignificance,
surges unnoticed—a deluge
of unending violence, inundating
the last ark of honesty, afloat
in swarming swells of indifference.

Alan Toltzis is the author of two poetry collections—49 Aspects of Human Emotion and The Last Commandment—and two chapbooks, Nature Lessons and Mercy.  His poems have appeared in numerous print and online publications and he was runner up for the Thomas Merton Poetry Prize in Poetry of the Sacred. Alan serves as poetry editor for Dark Onus Lit and Poetica Publishing. After a lifetime in Philadelphia, he now lives in Los Angeles. Find him online at alantoltzis.com; follow him @ToltzisAlan.

The Cuckoo and the Warbler, by Alan Toltzis

The Cuckoo and the Warbler
by Alan Toltzis

The monotony of wings, of water, of life churrs
everywhere, when hunger coaxes a reed warbler
from her nest for a few moments.

Just like that, a cuckoo lays her dead ringer
of a speckled egg among three sister eggs.
Off she goes. And the warblers?

They suspect nothing. Minding four eggs
is as easy as three. But in two weeks
all hell breaks loose. The cuckoo hatchling

is first to crack out of its shell.
Each time the warblers leave their nest,
to collect food, the hellion’s ungainly body

and greedy soul transform into a bald,
blind, and feeble Sisyphus—rolling, pushing,
grappling with the eggs, one, by one, by one.

This murderous combination of disloyalty
and disguise will not be denied until the first egg,
perched on its scraggly scapulae breaches

the top of the nest. A final crazed push
hoists the first of the warbler eggs up and over.
It plops into the water below and bobs away.

Each egg of betrayal becomes easier to toss.
With one mouth to feed, the cuckoo dwarfs
its parents, full-grown in two weeks.

Still, they continue to feed their demon
until the nest’s integrity overflowing with deceit,
collapses under the burden of deception.

Alan Toltzis is the author of two poetry collections—49 Aspects of Human Emotion and The Last Commandment—and two chapbooks, Nature Lessons and Mercy.  His poems have appeared in numerous print and online publications and he was runner up for the Thomas Merton Poetry Prize in Poetry of the Sacred. Alan serves as poetry editor for Dark Onus Lit and Poetica Publishing. After a lifetime in Philadelphia, he now lives in Los Angeles. Find him online at alantoltzis.com; follow him @ToltzisAlan.

A Winter Vignette, by Debi Swim

A Winter Vignette
by Debi Swim

Sometime after midnight it was to start
I stayed up late to see the first
chunky flakes blowing quietly, crosswise
across the ground.
Fir trees wavered and through the gaps
a moonstone glow shown dim.
Soon the tool shed roof was covered
the yard disappearing from view.
I lingered in the beauty and splendor of
this white out. Somewhere, off in the woods
a hound bayed, tracking a raccoon, I guess.

I prayed for all God’s little wild creatures
everywhere in the cold
and trundled off to a warm, quilted bed.

Debi Swim has had poems published in two anthologies and in the Bluestone Journal for Bluefield College. She is a persistent WV poet who loves to write to prompts.

Quiescence, by Debi Swim

Quiescence
by Debi Swim

my world has shrunk to tiny…
this room where my computer lives
trips to the grocery store
a walk on the ridge
or around the yard
watching nature ready
for a long rest.

maybe a body does that too.
maybe the decades of living
and all that entails,
finally erodes a soul
till self-repair shuts
it down to a low hum
the psyche’s winter of quiescence

it worries me though.
weighty things
have been left behind,
undesired, not even a whiff
of incense draws me there
but, you are everywhere, right?
Is this sabbatical from life

normal aging or a
spiritual malady?
Have I lost
my footing?
my center?
or found
a new one?

Debi Swim has had poems published in two anthologies and in the Bluestone Journal for Bluefield College. She is a persistent WV poet who loves to write to prompts.

Summer is absurd, by Alan Walowitz

Summer is absurd
by Alan Walowitz

the way the heat and your words
weigh me down.
You know so many and wield them well.

But soon September when the edge of a breeze
will set me free,
the way your words never would.

Like a little boy, I have so many words
spinning in my head and don’t even know
what all of them are for.

And this must be how you lure me,
babbling such nonsense,
so far from my home.

Still, when I string some words,
absurd as these,
and attempt some sense

of the summer mess I’ve made,
if I start to think of you—to tell the truth—
I don’t think of you at all.

I swear, I never do.

Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry. His chapbook, Exactly Like Love, comes from Osedax Press. The full-length, The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems, is available from Truth Serum Press. Most recently, from Arroyo Seco Press, is the chapbook In the Muddle of the Night, written both trans-continentally, and mostly remotely, with poet Betsy Mars.

The More Things Change…The More They Remain The Same, by Debi Swim

The More Things Change…The More They Remain The Same
by Debi Swim

“It’s the want of something that gives you the blues. It’s not what isn’t, it’s what you wish was that makes unhappiness.” Janis Joplin

I’ve been running scared always
Nazi soldiers goose stepping down my street
King Kong rising up over the hill
Sirens in my dreams I cower in the bomb shelter
underneath the house, stocked, locked
Wonder who my neighbor is
a cold war spy dad mowing the suburban grass
sometimes I feel I’m living 1984
perpetual war, government surveillance, thought
crime, privileged elite
we sing songs of peace mid the riots of Charlotte
fall to a knee OhSayCanYouSee
freedoms just another word for what you ain’t got
I don’t want to be afraid no more
I don’t want anyone to be afraid no more
and it’s onetwothreefour
tell me what we’re fighting for
we want things to stay the same but things they
gotta change, they gotta change,
they – got – to – change.
Oh, God, we don’t need another Mercedes Benz,
we just need to live as friends

Process notes:
I was born in 1951 and I’m still waiting for humanity and civilization to get better and better. I guess dystopian is easier to believe in than utopian because of that pesky “human nature” thing.

Debi Swim has had poems published in two anthologies and in the Bluestone Journal for Bluefield College. She is a persistent WV poet who loves to write to prompts.

1-800-4-Cancer, by Alan Walowitz

1-800-4-Cancer
by Alan Walowitz

My wife loves to talk about her work, but I don’t love to listen.
Who wants the tales she has to tell?
With her pay comes the horrors she’s gathered that day:
People call the Cancer Hot Line and trade their woes for facts,
though the facts are always sad.
One woman called to find out what malignant was.
What her doctor wouldn’t tell her, the Hot Line would.

I don’t think I could.
I don’t even like to hear the word,
though I like to say words are my work.
She says, It’s crazy, these poems you keep making.
I know she’s right, but the making’s what I like:
the click I make when I close the door behind me;
the music I make when I’m rattling these keys.

But, then, right in the middle, the telephone rings.
It’s my wife wanting nothing again:
She says: I just have to talk to someone well and sane.
She says: It’s an epidemic and it’s closing in.
She says: Cancer. It can make you fucking crazy.

I’m no doctor. There’s not a single cure in my head.
But I notice if I wait enough,
the ringing of the phone will stop.
I’m an ostrich, I know, and sometimes I’m crazy.
But even she finds me easy
when left to these poems–healing me
and of my own tentative making.

Alan Walowitz is a Contributing Editor at Verse-Virtual, an Online Community Journal of Poetry. His chapbook, Exactly Like Love, comes from Osedax Press. The full-length, The Story of the Milkman and Other Poems, is available from Truth Serum Press. Most recently, from Arroyo Seco Press, is the chapbook In the Muddle of the Night, written both trans-continentally, and mostly remotely, with poet Betsy Mars.

Yellow Leaves, by Søren Sørensen

Yellow Leaves
by Søren Sørensen

Yellow leaves blown by late October wind,
drab sky obscured by frosty, tedious rain
drearily drumming on the windowpane…
they bring back memories I thought were bygone.

            Let the wind blow and the rain fall,
            the past is gone once and for all.

The bench under the old weeping willow,
you and I, and the evening, the moon’s timid glow,
Will you come tomorrow? you pleaded gently seeking reliance.
The wind responded with a soft whistle, then there was silence.

            Let the wind blow and the rain fall,
            the past is gone once and for all.

Now I am dreaming that it was today
and that tomorrow was one midnight away.
Alas, it was yesteryear before yesteryear before yesteryear.
Time does not cure; memories will never be wiped away by years.

            Let the wind blow and the rain fall,
            the past is gone once and for all.

What I lost one evening is revisiting me on a rainy day.
I should have known, real things come seldom, they come only once.
The void cannot be filled by belated regret.
I wish someone had told me: You can lose easily but will not forget.

            Let the wind blow and the rain fall,
            the past is gone once and for all.

Søren Sørensen is the pen name of a physics professor at the University of Central Florida. He shares the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish poet and philosopher, the founder of existentialism. These poems reflect some of his feelings, they are genuine.