Thursday, January 4, 2024

Bobby "Z" Zielinski - Two Poems

Who Are We #2


The time has come.

The time has gone.

Dreams of yesterday’s

fade away through the years.

 

What could have been,

if not for what has occurred.

Given a chance

would we have succeeded.

 

Going through life dreaming.

Was it easier being what we have been,

instead of being

what we could have been?


To be what we could have been.

Instead of being what we should have been.

Did we try to be what we were meant to be?

Or did we just become what we did not want to be?


Mentors and Surrogates along the way.

Wanting us to be what they have been.

Attempting to prevent us from becoming

what we wanted to be.


To be what we wanted to be

meant not being what we were meant to be.

Preventing us from becoming what we should have been.

Becoming someone who became someone we were not meant to be.


So to be what we want to be.

Meant not becoming what we were meant to be.

Or what others wanted us to be.

Then who are we?


Sit and wonder what

it would have been

to be someone else.

Instead of being what we have been.




WHO WE ARE #3


We walk thru the ashes of days gone by,

searching for remnants of who we are.


We see a shadow upon a wall,

a blurred vision of forgotten years.


Faded memories that fail to appear,

erased forever, lost in time.


Who we were and who we are

were lost forever in the bowels of time.


Visions that reflect moments

of times never had.


Rescinds all your desires

to review your past.


So why must it be that we're always filled with regret,

searching for memories of who we are.




BOBBY "Z" Zielinski is an 82-year-old veteran, original Jersey City 50's Bad Boy High School Drop Out and author of Friday Night at the Bucket of Blood

Saturday, September 30, 2023

Milton P. Ehrlich, Ph.D. - One Poem

A Beacon of Light

In the darkness of early morning light
I see a scattering of brilliant dewdrops
outside my window on the green leaves
of my hollyhock wavering in the breeze.
They all greet me with a collective smile
reminding me how often there is a bit of
sunlight in every corner of darkness, like
the giant daylily I once saw growing along
the border of my father’s big mausoleum.
When I was young, I viewed the nocturnal
glow of his Lucky Strikes as the only points
of light in his gloomy bedroom as he worried
about his next day Wall Street trades.
Mother never stopped singing to him:
Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think,
enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink,
enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think.



Milton P. Ehrlich Ph.D. is a 90-year-old psychologist and a veteran of the Korean War. He has published many poems in periodicals such as the London Grip, Arc Poetry Magazine, Descant Literary Magazine, Wisconsin Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Christian Science Monitor, and the New York Times.

Saturday, September 23, 2023

Eddie Heaton - Two Poems

Pilot Episode


how did we even come to be there

in the mystical white city of Algiers

where we eyeballed the sun from

our seven-storey summerhouse

as raging stoners ransacked the

darkness without replenishment

terrifying from all directions

in a velvet-lined love-cupboard

one big bang before the dawn

overwhelmed as we were by

the sheer magnificence of the

desolation we had conjured

we broke their architecture

with our mathematics of the

mind and state-of-the-art

extreme specifics some as

young as wrestling matches

only then was my service set

in slow cement with a suitcase

full of threats and a bloodied

little cloth of gold and an

unreasonable longing for an

entirely different moon a

proletariat as always

disenchanted carrying on as

they do with groping thoughts

for consolation




Off You Pop


along the smoke trails of a time

that crawls out through a purple

crust we’re lately sprung from

long-forgotten traps to find

your infantry is living off our lands

those bullet-riddled bodies

indicate enough to argue for

a lasting peace the presentation

of a priceless cup to compensate

those endless ruptured needs

your ancient runes are merely

sharp depictions of the stagnant

air that most night travelers

contest for money is as money

does is death so meanly spread

out as you sleep to dream that

all our lives are just burlesque

interpretations of an absolute

eradication so they needn’t

sound the knell that death’s-

head chanting from the wings

as bloodlust rises in the east

a desert of aborted resolutions

might continue their recitals

whilst complicating something

bestial that your dying nervous

system touched were more than

just like sprinklers on the lawn

who rowed me out should guide

me back there’s nothing stranger

than an attitude or spiral explanation

sixty-one reflect are oligarchs’

excessive guest room perks

like turbots on the bill i felt you

give a shiver slurping goat’s head

stew and proper getting ripped

apart to shard the quivering filled

-in gaps a little tighter when you

choked as sapless semi-invalids

disseminate their slightest of

suggestion strands before

returning lamely into shot to

dress-rehearse a song of restless

high-end one off cracks




Eddie Heaton studied innovative and experimental poetry under the tutelage of post-modern poet and educator Keith Jebb, achieving a first-class honours degree. He also won the 2021 Carcanet Award for Creative Writing. His work has been extensively published in a number of prestigious literary journals.

Sunday, September 17, 2023

Dr. Ernest Williamson III, Ph.D. - One Poem

 Because of the Train

                         In memory of Bloke Porter                   

                                                                                

We have twenty minutes till dawn. 

For at least twenty and twenty years 

I have worked in night.

All the night. In all the nights.

Even though no one knows

or knew about it.


Nearly now

  we can go

  like many things

  go away. Shrills cuss words in utterances.

  Mean letters coldly aligned

  shutter then lie down.

Though we pant in grey resultant.

                                                      

  Because of the train.

                                                       

  Ennui in we in soaked silence

  who smile 

  with wisdom of the fish bolts.

  As Romance and Old Visions of Rome

  land

  in our seats.

  We know nothing of these people.

                                                         

Because of the train.

             

  Iced auburn rails against the rails.

All of them so sweetly. I cannot begin to count

the burns. Our assumed words

  burned into our ears because we wasted not

our time. In hour's midnight.


       Because of the train.

                                                 

Soon birches will bend for

in smile of us, even when lights

  release glitter ash

  minus

  moment

  plus, my soul.


  Blessed is thy soul.


Because of the train.

         In spite of no solace. We worked.


And this too. This is what

I, too, remembered.


Because.




Dr. Ernest Williamson III has published creative work in over six hundred journals. His poetry has appeared in over two hundred journals including The Roanoke Review, Pinyon Review, Review Americana, Aroostook Review, Poetry, Life & Times, and Westview. Currently, Ernest lives in Nashville, Tennessee.