Magnapoets Free Verse and Form

Hushniya the Mosque by Elisha Porat

1975

To the memory of the murder victims of Hushniya

Hushniya, the mosque, bright
of plaster, like a white eye
in a cloud of grey basalt.
The eucalyptus trees are stunted
so, bitter so,
planted on tainted water
in a land woven
of veils.  Hushniya, the minaret,
like an eye that sees
the dust, the ropes
fluttering in the never-ending
breeze, the blood vessels
entrenching themselves deep in the
roots of the fig trees slowly
growing sweet to bursting.
Hushniya, the mosque, blackens.

Translated from the Hebrew by Cindy Eisner

No Bird With Razor-Wire Plumage Can Find Heaven (J. Armstead)

Watching CNN and the Breaking News interrupts
a feel-good story
about a little girl and the family cat reunited
after the feline was abandoned
1400 miles behind them,
the new story talking about a family of cultists
somewhere in Wyoming
selling statues of the Virgin Mary to tourists
but not telling anyone the figurines
were made of C4 plastique
with radio detonators
and how one doughy Virgin Mary
was accidentally triggered
by the transmission
from a police scanner radio

Boom

A camo-patterned swastika cut in denim
rides across the shoulders
of that family of survivalists,
who keep an illegal aviary
full of rare Birds of Paradise
they've smuggled into the country,
stolen beauty on iridescent wings,
the ground littered with bright feathers
of exotic origin from a southern hemisphere
rocked by revolution, it's like they were infected

By an avian flu, flock of kidnapped angels,
composed of socialist diatribes
aimed at fascists
who eat at fast food
burger drive-throughs
while silly putty madonnas
wait the electronic signal
to spark and mushroom cloud

Boom

Salvation blasted through your skullbones
a calm ignition, napalm lava,
Salvation blasted through your skullbones

Cable TV newscasts
turn the bomb crater into a shrine,
360 Special Report,
The illusion of Vultures as Angels
while the City burns

**********************************************************

Illustration "English Rose" courtesy of RGUS, (July 2007), http://rgus.deviantart.com/

Watching CNN and the Breaking News interrupts
a feel-good story
about a little girl and the family cat reunited
after the feline was abandoned
1400 miles behind them,
the new story talking about a family of cultists
somewhere in Wyoming
selling statues of the Virgin Mary to tourists
but not telling anyone the figurines
were made of C4 plastique
with radio detonators
and how one doughy Virgin Mary
was accidentally triggered
by the transmission
from a police scanner radio

Boom

A camo-patterned swastika cut in denim
rides across the shoulders
of that family of survivalists,
who keep an illegal aviary
full of rare Birds of Paradise
they've smuggled into the country,
stolen beauty on iridescent wings,
the ground littered with bright feathers
of exotic origin from a southern hemisphere
rocked by revolution, it's like they were infected

By an avian flu, flock of kidnapped angels,
composed of socialist diatribes
aimed at fascists
who eat at fast food
burger drive-throughs
while silly putty madonnas
wait the electronic signal
to spark and mushroom cloud

Boom

Salvation blasted through your skullbones
a calm ignition, napalm lava,
Salvation blasted through your skullbones

Cable TV newscasts
turn the bomb crater into a shrine,
360 Special Report,
The illusion of Vultures as Angels
while the City burns

**********************************************************

Illustration "English Rose" courtesy of RGUS, (July 2007), http://rgus.deviantart.com/

untitled fragmentby David Matthews

The cemetery is quiet,
where she, alone with the rain,
ransacks the memories
that sustain her,
faded runes carved
in gravestone granite.
So much was sold,
bartered, frittered away
for a song and a dance,
borrowed at loan-shark rates,
squandered in dubious courtship,
assets seized in a plunder of spirit
for a semblance of freedom.
The need of such places,
cemeteries, museums, bars,
pierces her like her gaze pierces canvas,
a blond horse with pantomime eyes,
lovers in green,
bereft of speech,
like clowns in night.

It has been a great long time
since she slept the night through,
a decade of days her eyes come unglued.
Restless in her dreams,
wounded in her mind,
she walks back the miles
to where she came from,
back to the farm,
and looks out over the fields
and watches the sun sink down
on so much that once held her dear.
She turns her gaze back to the years
before it all came undone
and plays what she thinks she remembers
back over again in her mind.

She was the kind,
in the breathtakingness of her youth,
they said the world was her oyster.
You know how they are,
the ones who mean so well,
so clueless they are without inkling
that they are without a clue.
Maybe the world was her oyster,
but she never found the pearl.
She seeks her self
from the dawn of her time,
a color to break the darkness,
how it feels when the bells
way up on the white hilltop chime
through rain on the roses where it falls,
when she finds herself treading water
a stone's throw from the flame.

Rex & the Cyclops # 9 | Walter Ruhlmann

Booklet front cover by CJ McCafferty, South Cerney, UK, 1996

In the wood cabin I saw
Rex and the cyclops

naked man
and his mongrel

drinking English tea
while talking
without understanding each other...

First published in the booklet Rex & the Cyclops, Mauvaise graine, 1996

Orchard Path, in Autumn by Tom Berman

In the afternoon

of my days

I walk this path

by the medieval

caravanserai

an inquisitive fox

questions my steps

but does not stay

for an answer

the dusty weeds

and I

share our shadows

and our secrets

along this track

beneath the hill

in the avocado orchard

occasional leaves,

yellowing,

spiral to earth

It is dusk

a startled gazelle

vanishes

fleeting shadow

into darkening horizon

above us

a lone hawk

circles

our world

waits for winter

Oh, Andalusia by Elisha Porat

Oh my light-washed
Andalusia.  Oh my sweet
Andalusia.  Oh my bitter
and cherished Palestina.  Oh my
springtime Palestina.  The terrible Lorca
already strolls your plazas:
As if he had just now emerged
from between the delightful pages of
Eliaz' delicate and lovely translation.
I follow him, enter
into his eyes:  knives rest
under the roses and terror has nestled itself
among the palm branches.  And the purity
of the bridal dress becomes entangled in the rope
of the assassin, who is crouched in hiding.

Spring 2005

translated by Cindy Eisner

Metropolytta [Olympus is Burning] (J. Armstead)

If only I could find my way...

Home.

My odyssey ends in beached wreckage.

The skyline trembles as
The City
enters cardiac arrest...

It happens when City Hall is sleeping,
when the attorneys wake up blind,
while firemen fight infernos
as policemen tread a thin line
between vice and virtue,
And
Pseudo-angry paid activists
work overtime at the picket line.
It's when the sky over the harbor
Turns the color of her eyes
when the tears began to fall,
It's when my last lame excuse
won't keep her from walking out the door.

It's when the Gods finally died
and a dry sarcastic wind blows
tumbleweeds
through the Gates of Olympus,
that's when I finally see sunset
slowly grow into night.

Asphalt streets shudder as
The City
clutches at its ruptured chest...

It happens when the Poor go to prayer
In a church lightyears from Heaven,
It happens when little girls,
like broken dolls, start singing
their nightmare's names.
It's when I pick up the phone
and hear the dial-tone of your
neglectful heart
like the sound of the sea
in a dirty, oil-stained seashell
And
It happens when the Tax Man comes
knocking
on my withered door demanding
just one last tithe from a well long dry
And when the single mother next door
starts her daily weeping because
her loneliness is even heavier than
her responsibilities,
And it's when the last hollow promise
I made haunts me like
a familiar sadistic family ghost.

It's when the dying Gods' last breath
blew a Generation's dreams away like
cigarette smoke
past the broken Gates of Olympus,
that's when I finally see shadows
stretch into eternal midnight.

If only I could find my way...

Here.

My odyssey is a message in a bottle.

-- (originally published in Poetic Voices, August 2004) --

Image courtesy of Dreamstime Photographic Stock: "Mysore Temple At Night-III" by Shaileshnanal, dreamstime_4041653.jpg

On The Coastal Road by Elisha Porat

Hold your fire, soldier, hold it,
and do not heed the barking of the bloody dogs
of Sarafand, bursting out
from the groves and the huts in the shade.
Hold your fire, soldier,
and do not fear the biting shots
that fly and strike
the side of the armored vehicle,
as it crosses the heavy walls
dark with ivy.
Hold your fire, soldier,
and do not forget:  the convoy advances
flying and galloping
to the warm blue south.
There the heat is steamy
the white rock shines,
and the evacuation teams are on call
ready to give their hearts for you,
to give their all.

South Lebanon, 1985.

Translated from the Hebrew by Cindy Eisner

Out of the Night #13

I kept nothing from you, except this burning stain sticking to my skin.
Red skin of my sleepless night, what shadow do your veins belong to?

I can smell a cold tobacco perfume in the heavy air of May.
The city is semi sleeping and can't even move on.
These three forthcoming days are three gaps I'll enjoy sliding on, losing myself in for ever.

Winter breath

You’re the muscle of winter,
flexing and storming on through;

You’re the lifeblood that rivers
across the deserts of snow;

You’re the ache that inhabits,
formed from ice and windy howl.

I'll recall you once you’ve passed:
you, the cold warmth of my soul.

Janet Lynn Davis
Poetic Voices, 2005