MASTERS
Shawn Bowman

As long as there is water, there are boat masters;
so long as water and fear, there will be moat masters.

In classical composition there is a motif
in which there is one note that another note masters.

Thankfully there are those of us who can't avoid wrong
and to them, in our ignorance, we slaves quote masters.

Any kite is grateful but remembers always wind, 
the parade, struggling rope that the float masters.

I might be a bad influence, skipping the ballot,
but walking was the only way not to vote Masters.

Jeremiah Masters is a character who wrote
this ghazal and I, Shawn Bowman, wrote Masters.

YOU ARE
Shawn Bowman

They are mocking their own acknowledgement of who you are
And they are fast falling apart without the glue you are.

Use your mind, it is flesh and will remain here once you've gone.
Remember that on earth whatsoever you do, you are.

I speak in first person to the first century
Christian Am I Peter in sickness and health as the few you are.

A fish knocked my calf at my baptismal, stone slime licked my
Foot's arch and then the minister proclaimed : Brand new you are!

Shawn make no aim at becoming a prophet bold in words.
Do not forget that someone else is speaking too, you are.

BOUNCE
Shawn Bowman

"He's a healthy cat that I aim to name; 'Oaken' bounces
'Round my mind." Then he whispered the name he'd spoken: Bounces.

"Sweetie, here's that kangaroo you wanted."
She dreams of him who once woken bounces.

Me Neanderthal. Me high drop square stone.
Big stone. Look it! Look you! Broken, Bounces.

How about a little casual sex?
A few careless kisses, token bounces.

"I'm a traveler of a different sort" I said.
"Shawn," he said "Just come to Jersey. Hoboken bounces!"

i heard a bird song at dawn
at dawn in the morning cool

the morning cool though it was
my hear felt oh so warm

oh so warm being now awakened
awakened my conscious being

conscious being hearing absorbing
all those many new day sounds

sounds of early morning vehicles zoom
zooming in early morning chorus

a chorus of the rooster's crow
crowing as if in response

response to the cheerie kiskadee
kiskadee kiskadee clear and cheerie

clear and cheerie after dayclean
after the dayclean her tune has sung

sung the first song of paradise
paradise first morning song

AS THOUGH
c w hawes

I was walking on a surreal plane as though I were in a dream
and I saw things as though I were free from this body.

In the petals and scent, the leaves and thorns, of this pink rose,
it is as though I touch and smell all that is Roseness.

A house, absent of color, falling in upon itself with windows sightless;
tears wet my cheeks and fingertips as though I am a child once again.

Running down the hall, legs pumping furiously, but I never move –
as though I'm destined for the shape with eyes red in the dark.

Gazing upon the billion billion galaxies swirling ever outward,
as though they are oblivious of the black hole waiting.

The warm melody the viola strings sing wrap me like a blanket
and I feel as though God's fingertips have played me.

The moonlit sea, still and shoreless, on which I float, suddenly I
know this is her love as though it were now water.

Faster than light I speed out of this universe as though I was lost
but now see my parents waiting for me.

On this soft summer morning, the seeker gently strokes his beard
and considers everything which meets his eye as though.

ONWARD
Ruth Holzer

Even today they urge you onward
with an ancient word of cheer: onward!

Geese in their hundreds against slate skies:
arrows of autumn glide in harmony onward.

Countless coins you have hoarded, then thrown
to the gods of the highway, steering onward.

There’s am end: not the one you would prefer,
no matter how cautiously you proceed onward.

Hellbound – pursued, through day and night
hearing distant cries, Ruth speeds onward.

TO DANCE
Art Stein

Bottle half empty I’m now in the mood to dance
In days past I would often forsake food for dance

You ask what more to life than wine women and song
To complete the picture you must include the dance

So let us waltz again through a Strauss-blue river
Drink that intoxicating liqueur brewed by dance

Turning turning turning the semazens in turn
Salute each other before they conclude their dance

Those predatory thrusts of Argentine tangos
Bring wonderful elements of lust to the dance

As couples began to form the blind fiddler strikes
A jig so fast it seems almost too rude for dance

Blossoms in the fruit orchard are falling now our
Petal covered dance floor a prelude to the dance

The beginning of a stately pavane proceeds
With bows and curtsies cued by the dance

The sublime art of movement brings an aura of
grace to form I long to be renewed by this dance

HAIBUN

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING
Ruth Holzer

Everyone else seems to know what’ going on while I understand less and less all the time. Modern physics probably has an explanation for the world; I can’t pay attention long enough to get it. I’ll just continue with no clear idea about the nature of things, drifting through bewildering experiences, never to find the ultimate formula, the silver bullet.

walking around
with a hole
in my pants

LATE
Ruth Holzer

Before dawn I wake to find the bed empty. If only I had yesterday to live over, I would be sweet and meek. Never again would an angry word burst from me, I swear. No one is listening.

willow twigs
in a tumbler
blustery wind

SUMMER SOLSTICE
Jeffrey Woodward

I observe the school near the pond’s surface at first, my eye caught by the occasional sparks of silver light that shoot nervously from the water, and then I see the shadowy and sub-aqueous cloud attempting to hold tightly to its pattern until, roiling at the surface, one can just make out the darker green of the predatory largemouth bass striking from the depths below:

the minnows
every which way
together

Amid the many sentimental paeans and happy homilies that I hear recited of Nature personified, I recognize, more often than comfort should like, not only the unity and balance of design but the brutal character and discipline of its economy. 
So I reflect upon matters while watching my own reflection in the pond shatter in yet another sudden veering of the school of minnows. 
On my walk to the pond and on my walk back, I pass a smattering of bits of brown fur and bits of white fur, some of the pieces of a rabbit’s coat still bloody and further testimony of this day, these meditations:

summer solstice …
a red-tail hawk
dines alone

INSTITUTE OF ARTS
Jeffrey Woodward

Whenever I visit the Detroit Institute of Arts, when I tire of taxing my mind and my eyes with contemplation of Cezanne’s portrait of his wife, Hortense, or Botticelli’s Resurrected Christ, or even the rather grandiosely didactic but celebrated Detroit Industry mural by Diego Rivera, I relax by visiting some of the rare puppets on display that make up a part of the Paul McPharlin Collection. 
McPharlin was probably the premier American authority on puppetry in the first half of the 20th century, a highly skilled puppeteer and puppet-maker himself, and founder of the Marionette Fellowship Troupe during the Great Depression years in Detroit. He also authored The Puppet Theatre in America, still considered a standard reference in the field. Unfortunately, McPharlin died in 1948 at the young age of 45.

It is no small thing to master an art, even if that art is rarely appreciated. So, again, I visit McPharlin’s collection, the puppets carefully suspended under glass, looking now at an exquisite Chinese marionette, now at a rare French clown or even at one of McPharlin’s own original and delicate creations:

for the marionette
deprived of its falsetto,
a dream of dancing

NEW DIRECTIONS
c w hawes

I rent a room with kitchen privileges. A mid-life change and I find myself in poverty. My job pays well. The money goes elsewhere. I have a few boxes of favorite books and can use the homeowner's stereo when he is out. White rice, potatoes, maybe a few turnips, rutabagas, and carrots stock the larder. I splurge on tea when I can and welcome all invitations to eat at friends' homes.

Tacked on my wall is this saying by the Chinese Sung philosopher, Wang Xinmin: "For the one who can obtain by chewing vegetable roots, that one can achieve a hundred things."

beyond four walls
lies the whole world
New Year's Day

THE GOOD LIFE
Roger Jones

Getting started this fall morning: kids almost late to school; a chore to find their clothes, backpacks, to get them dressed; schedules for me to make, appointments to remember. I step outside, with books and folders under one arm, keys and coffee cup in my other hand, coffee sloshing to the ground, the cell phone ringing in my pocket. I remember at twenty-five telling myself that no matter what happened, I'd never end up living like this.

stormy day –
a sycamore leaf
pasted to the windshield

HAIKU

a town speeds past
just now at the ground floor
a naked light bulb

contemplating
all the possibilities:
first baseball game

c w hawes

getting wet
with my lover in the car
top down

c w hawes

old neighborhood
on the boulevard one elm
with green leaves

Eclipse over –
the wind returns
our trash can lid.

Alexis Rotella

Grandma gone –
her sausages still
in the freezer.

Alexis Rotella

Added to Grandma's
junk drawer –
a piece of string.

Alexis Rotella

Apple rings strung
across the beams –
their fragrance in my hoodie.

Alexis Rotella

Parade over –
the innkeeper scoops up
all the horse apples.

Alexis Rotella

Sound of our neighbor
digging night crawlers –
first light.

Alexis Rotella

Spring hillside –
one side snow,
the other dandalions.

how the moon
wavers
in my tea cup

CarrieAnn Thunell

listen
to the silence
between each wave

SEQUENCES

FIRST DATE
Christopher Barnes

These dams
On which we edge
Suffocate.
That star –
Studded lip,
My temper tingles.

Look at the long range –
An eagle leering.

Kisses
Are promises shocked.
Those bell-bottoms tighten.

GREETINGS FROM LUNA PARK
James Roderick Burns

In the brittle light
of electric chandeliers,
the unseasonal hollow

of winter ballrooms
and colonnades glazed with snow
I pick up my pen at last.

*

Throughout this voyage
you have been much on my mind –
Alexander, son, adult.

Your majority
passed me like a gull darting
over a bed of oysters.

*

Through O'Malley's dark
I grope for the pile of shells,
separate from two dozen

three spotted weaklings,
arrange the rest to circle
the memory of your face.

*

I wake this morning
stiff as that undulating
stacked sea of metal horses,

empty as a bulb
greying out into the dawn.
Bars of sunlight stake my heart.

*

I am twenty weeks
beyond departure. Nine times
a glossy liner has crossed

expectant waters,
nudged my ha'penny absence
between the lines of the dock.

*

Like a rare whisky
I wait in bonded silence.
Maturity (I suppose)

attends the slow drop
of my spirit, but by night
I covet the angels' share.

*

On the slick boardwalk
I stamp my feet, feel down through
layers of wood and sharp sand

to the building swell.
A cormorant starts, lines up
for the coppered horizon.

*

They say a bright wire
lies thick as a giant's arm
beneath the black Atlantic ,

squeezing along words
like clots to the heart. Mine cramps;
in love's grip, I believe it.

*

I love your mother.
Even here, a thousand miles
removed for each slow decade

I love your mother
like powder in the barrel's
clean and splintering embrace.

*

Dog day Loop the Loop.
This sweltering memory –
wax-faced cuties, spitted on

gravity's needle,
the bump and lurch of hot rails –
sticks in my mind like cinders.

*

In the closing eye
of the kenetoscope, I
see myself disintegrate –

homo sapiens
in suit and hat, simian,
at last the snail's twisting shell.

*

The night manager
advised a midnight viewing –
half a million bulbs strung

above a stone moon,
nags with the breath of engines.
I smiled, walked out into sun.

*

That moment remains
sweet as a spilt gob of fire
ravening through celluloid –

under the high arc
of the roller coaster tracks
her face, her bright moving hands.

*

The jostling crowd
inches up banked stairs to view
controlled disaster – shunt, slide

a fanfare of sparks
and this swift plunge into space.
She catches my hand in flight.

*

The weeks since that touch,
the walk through flame and embers
close out the notes of my heart

like accordions
folded away pleat by pleat
on a sinking pleasure boat.

*

The day manager
comes by with breakfast and bill.
I nod, place it on a shelf

resume my writing.
This may be delayed; please rise,
go out – read it in the light.

A TANKARD OF TANKA
carrieannmarie

Even
The Blur Collar Review
won't publish
a poet who can't afford
the gas to minimum wage.

I've read
of a time before money
and status
when two artistic hands
could forage a life beneath stars.

Oh bamboo,
you did not weather winter!
From your stalks
I'll make a dozen sumi-e brushes.
You will blush pink with spring!

Zen poet,
wake from your reverie!
Your bike tire's flat,
you're unemployed,
the sorrel leaves are closing.

I am
without value
because I've nothing
to sell.
Dandelions are free!

We trade
life-force for status. Make
the company rich!
We drown in our plastics, poverty
and blue-collar pride.

Union
local # 123 for poets, artists,
and musicians.
Teamsters on winged horses
fly through my dreams!

Even the baristas
act superior. Degreed
in liberal arts,
Jane of all trades
has none.

UNA JARRA DE CERVEZA DE TANKA
carrieannmarie

Aún
La Revisión de Cuello de Mancha
no publicará
a una poeta que no puede proporcionar
el salario mínimo de gas.

He leído
de un tiempo antes dinero
y posición
cuando dos manos artísticas
podrían adentrarse una vida bajo estrellas.

¡Ah bambú,
usted no capeó invierno!
De sus tallos
yo haré una docena de cepillos sumi-E.
¡Usted se ruborizará la rosa con la primavera!

¡La poeta
del zen, despierta de su ensueño!
Su llanta de la bicicleta plana,
usted está parado,
las hojas alazanas cierran.

Estoy
sin el valor
porque yo no tengo nada
vender.
¡Los dientes de león son libres!

Comerciamos
la vida-fuerza para la posición. ¡Haga
la compañía rica!
Nosotros nos ahogamos en nuestros plásticos,
la pobreza y el orgullo obrero.

La union
local # 123 para poetas, para los artistas,
y para los músicos.
¡Camioneras en caballos alados
vuelan por mis sueños!

Aún el acto de baristas
superior. Con un grado collegial
en humanidades,
Jane de todo comercía
tiene ninguno.

Looking for Mr. Doug Fir
carrieannmarie

Nowhere
for tumbleweeds
in the city-
I long for open spaces
and roads less traveled.

A cabin
deep in the woods.
Each day
my hermitage dream
is clear-cut and paved.

As a blossom
longs for her bee
distant
and unrequited –
so I long for my hermitage.

Oh dream-love,
do not tarry.
I grow old
waiting for but five
acres of forest-grove!

With strong
limbs of Douglas fir
will my love
embrace me. With kisses
of mountain air and springs.

Who
is my lover?
Untamed
nature, retreating
from the bulldozers of Man.

No human
lover could hold as much
promise.
It is nature's own forest
I long to run off with.

Longing.
Such longing floods my heart –
to be embraced
by the tall Doug Fir-man
untill the owl calls my name!

EL BUSCAR SR. ABETO DE DOUGLAS
carrieannmarie

En ningún lugar
para plantas rodadoras
en la ciudad –
yo mucho tiempo para espacios
y caminos abiertos viajé menos.

Una cabaña
profunda en el bosque.
Cada día
mi sueño de ermita
es bien definido y pavimentado.

Cuando una flor
largo para su abeja
lejana
y no correspondida –
tan yo mucho tiempo para mi ermita.

Ah el sueño-amor,
no demora.
¡Yo me envejezco
esperar pero cinco
acres de bosque-arboleda!

Con miembros
fuertes del abeto de Douglas
hace mi abrazo
del amor mí. Con besos
de aire de montaña y primaveras.

¿Quién
es mi amante?
La naturaleza indomada, retirándose
de las excavadoras de Hombre.

Ningún amante humano
podría tener tanta
promesa.
Es la naturaleza propio bosque
con que correr mucho tiempo.

Anhelo.
¡Tal anhelo inunda el corazón –
ser abrazado
por el Pino-Hombre alto de Doug
hasta el búho llama mi nombre!

THE SEA IS DROWNING
Gerard John Conforti

The sea is drowning voices
deep down where the sunlight
where past wars
have buried those forgotten
for centuries to come

Today, the walls
of this room
are not so lonesome
where I write poems
hidden away the joy

The shade is drawn
against the dark autumn night
where the stars
are not visible
and the pale moonlight is unseen

Go, my friend
into the stars of the universe
where there is peace
among the galaxies
where God is a comfort in your arms

BURIED YESTERDAYS
Sharon Rothenfluch Cooper

Solid as an oak
and beginning anew,
I hang my anger
on a telephone pole,
freedom, more than
a prize, a new way of life.

Fire scarred, I emerge
from the ashes, stronger
and wiser, unsheathed
a strength never imagined.

Laughter, once released,
bubbles to the surface.
Eyes sparkle with a mirth
repressed over the years,
his ego punctured.

I lean forward – lever
substance from shadow
and anchor myself
in a new generation,
walk the sky and marvel
at the clear silence,
feeling my own reverberation.

LEAF-LOOKING
Elizabeth Howard

planned in July
a leaf-looking trip
in the mountains

a cold snap
red ash berries
laced with snow

a view of the peaks
leaves sail past the window
like flocks of brown birds

sleepless night
shrieking winds
pummel the warped door

pulling back the curtains
a pair of hawks
in the red-rimmed sky

SEASONS UNZIPPING
Ed Higgins

bouncing rain
off the skylight
a light-gray alto

shamelessly red
May's tulips
unhinge the day

ripe wheat
swaying in August heat
the combine stalled

unzipping summer
in the grass
your lips to mine

winter-bare willows
lining the creek
twelve robins rest

GHETTO GAME
(A Holocaust Poem)
Thomas Land

Beneath a distant square of the sky
in the shadow of awesome, looming walls, a crowd of kids met
day after day
to test and learn in the well of twilight which boys in the
block were destined to die.

A few at a time. Our faces were grey
and small, our eyes were clouded with fear.
We hung the Book and a key on a thread:
for we understood the path of death just could not make it go
away.

We huddled close in our lonely dread.
The Bible slowly turned around
and with it, the key. They came to rest
at random to point at a ghetto child.
He would be first among the dead.

The block has grown, the world progressed.
I, the survivor, stand in the sunlight aware of the cloud in
every eye
as fear of the future grips the globe, rekindling the doom in
every breast.

THE TEACHER
Kirsty Karkow

he is so cool!
accommodating clouds
across the sky
life's incidents become
ornaments and weather

letting it go
accepting what life brings
when threatened
his dance across the stage
emotion for the fun of it

weightless
he somersaults and turns
in inner space
amused by changing views
and reveling in his trip

STONE AMID THE WATER WEEDS
M. Kei

how full the bay
lapping at the bowl
of earth
pilings and asphalt
unable to contain it

they aren't musical,
these blue herons,
but how mournful
the afternoon
without them

when they lifted
the old skipjack
her bottom fell out
just like the heart of anything
if too long neglected

my old gloves
fingers poking
through the tips
and winter
creeping closer . . .

every autumn
she brought the pots
of geraniums inside
hoping they would
bloom again

it's a lonely feeling,
wanting to hold
his hand
and walk through
the art museum

that stone
amid the water weeds
left on the beach
was once the heart
of a sailor

you'd better
know how to sail
on the Chesapeake
there is no room
to run

OCEAN CITY
Werner Reichhold

Ocean city    the shore granted to    shell games'
                                                               shine
                                                     on coupons
the wit in falsehood soldiers by invented actions
                                              fastened to a belt
                                                      ammunition
                                               on both partners
                                      first choice last choice

math with no number  an osprey's cry   my own

come catarrh
from a galaxy of krill
a whale leaps
through its nocturnal desire
into light above the sea

the shape of a landing
to whom to give in
as a composer     antedating     white and black
                                               keys of a piano
                                               adjusting the air
                                            through refutation
                                              of sound texture

night with a egg-white and yolk before parted

awakened by an iPod
peep & show
it offers some vibrations
transforming the way you text
a pocket-weapon camouflaged

combat inside       at home     soon overseas
a song in my palm pivoting the delta beyond smooth

FOG
R.K. Singh

His presence
among the known faces—
evening fog

A thin fog
hides the wintry moon
rising slowly

Slowly clears
the morning fog
end of the year

Hides the sun
a dense fog in the morning:
waning winter

Stench of burning leaves
mounts with fog in the evening
asthmatic breathing

East faced
yoga in the fog
breathlessness

shrouded in fog
the lone pomegranate
in the backyard

Wrapped in fog
the flying plane
seen by sound

Feels the shadow
with wet fingers on the beach:
sound through the fog

THE WONDERLAND AMUSEMENT PARK
Robert Wilson

that sailor
writhing on the
pontoons like
a freshly caught fish
gasping for moments!

worms carving
darkness with a
shortness of breath

come morning,
the song of geese
peeling back
my childhood with
a surgeon's scalpel

a second hand,
the cicada,
with little time

peruse, sun, on
what's left of my sanity . . .
cicada's
song, mimicking
high power lines

painting over
the blackbird's complaint
with morning

on the inside
of a dream looking
out, and
no mirror to
tell me otherwise

night thickens . . .
licking her smile from
the bullfrog's tongue

i was in
vietnam when my
grandfather
passed away, eating
a bowl of rice

the world
surrounding you,
son, a
chinese restaurant
full of goldfish

was that you, son,
chasing stars with
a butterfly net?

my lover,
a pen plumbing
darkness in
the wonderland
amusement park

dark dreams
of crayfish bursting
with summer

winter's
drawing pictures
under the
table with a
milk carton smile!

will it hurt you
to lift a leaf while the
ants are working?

i'm no
longer hungry, trout,
seeing you
jump out of the stream
into this tanka

sunrise . . .
a minnow darts
through my smile

sunrise; a
would-be alice picking
rice through the
looking glass without
her friend the rabbit!

twilight . . .
a blossom whispering.
"some day"

a haiku can't
wax metaphorical
or humanize
animals when the
emperor is naked

morning frost . . .
she visits me wearing
a mask

she tosses
a cloud to me on
her way to
the marketplace . . .
winter moon

hoarfrost . . .
my shadow tossed in
a pile of laundry

from the darkest
depths of the mind
rabbit invites
me to drink tea
with a deck of cards

mother washes
dishes and onions in
the same breath

i came home
from work after dark
debating what
to do with the blackbird
pasted to its shadow

a harvest moon,
and no laborer to pluck
it from the sky

a heron, this
afternoon, waiting
for my
daughter to personify
its existence

what are you
thinking, goldfish, from the
inside looking out?

SIJO

TANKA

one day
the hemerocallis
blooms
you and I my love
have but that same day

c w hawes

incessant clanking
of the hot water heater
old and tired
will I too make such noise
when I am old and tired

c w hawes

little words
just sounds made by a mouth
and voice box
why do they make me feel good
or so utterly bad

c w hawes

more deaths
in Iraq is the lead story
on the morning news
the war should be over
by next Mother's Day

c w hawes

He is an oak tree
I am the summer wind
in his branches.
We go down together
into the deepest roots

Saying goodbye
to my dying uncle –
his eyes
already
in another world.

August drought
what I think I see
a medallion
on the garden faucet
a green tree frog

Elizabeth Howard

the story she reads
her child in hospital
for schizophrenia
this is the story
I write everyday

Elizabeth Howard

teeth of the groundhog
bristling by the bluff cave
the ancient one
who foretells weather
and atavistic aversions

Elizabeth Howard

Colorful maple leaves
twist and flutter in the breeze.
The change is upon me –
his deft and patient hands
coax me from hibernation.

CarrieAnn Thunell

Crumpled cranes
falter in the pine tree
I never could
get all those folds neat
enough for love to last.

CarrieAnn Thunell

As a wildflower
quivers before the wind
so my body
quivers at the mere brush
of his warm hands.

CarrieAnn Thunell

It's prayer to sink
into her flesh and bury
myself in her breast
to escape the faithless hands
that never became mother

Gulls along the shore
strut and posture, elegant
in afternoon gray,
like little politicians,
all empty ceremony.

Jeff Streeby