|
Happy Friday, poetry lovers. Today at SHINE online, we have new poetry by accomplished Irish writer, Edward Lee. Be sure to check out his Bio below, to learn all about his publications. Thank you, Edward, for sharing your poetry with SHINE! Who?There is nothing in me, a man, that entitles me to decide the workings of you, a woman, and your body. Nor is there any entitlement the other way, or any way, for that matter. And yet there seems to be confusion as to the rights and wrongs of undeserved opinions. Who wrote these dyslexic rules and burnt them into law? And who allowed them to do so, as though voices can never be raised in anything but rage? Who? HardSome lives are nothing more than ways to harden a soul for death and what may come after. How hard must death be for lives so hard that many choose to depart before their time, their blood the last thing they give to an indifferent world? To Get Away and Return (Mid-Life) With a crooked stare you set sail for home, across a sea without water, an ocean without a map, until you reached your destination, a few mere feet from the beginning that you left, and yet years having passed.  Edward Lee's poetry, short stories, non-fiction, and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England, and America, including in The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen, The Blue Nib, and Poetry Wales. His poetry collections include A Foetal Heart, Bones Speaking With Hard Tongues, To Touch The Sky And Never Know The Ground Again, and The Heart As Dust Lost In The Wind. He also makes musical noise under the names Ayahuasca Collective, Orson Carroll, Lego Figures Fighting, and
Pale Blond Boy. His blog/website is: https://edwardmlee.wordpress.com Poetry lovers, today I have another treat for you here at SHINE, with work by Oregon-based poet, Jack Cooper. Please enjoy two of his evocative free verse poems: "Smoke" and "Outside of Time." Thank you, Jack, for sharing your gift of words with SHINE online series! SmokeI woke up in primal suspension alone with the rising and falling of my breath as if before a great crying out even outside a still quiet moment nothing on the go nothing on the make as if the world were stuck at a crossroads the forest on pause in its bargain with the elements smoke from the fires capturing the light in folds like bread dough before the yeast dies in an explosion of significance Outside of TimeIf the Sun and Moon should ever doubt they'd immediately go out – William Blake I don’t doubt travel into deep space will only happen outside of time like in a dream or an illusion it won’t be real as we think of it but metaconscious a sense of other presences Time ties us to age and decay to linearity to distinctions between then and now and when It keeps us Earthbound rational and full of doubt am I good enough will I succeed will we ever get there I don’t doubt time is an illusion like wishes like fears like art you can do anything you can imagine with it You can take time spend time and give time find time waste time and do time You can be on time and get time off The thing about an illusion is that it becomes all too real given enough time I see her in my mind as if it were today Her smile could take you to the ends of the Earth just the way the moon can  Jack Cooper is the author of the poetry collection Across My Silence (World Audience, Inc., 2007). His poetry has appeared in bosque, ABQ Inprint, Rattle and many other journals. Cooper was the Grand Prize Winner in Crosswinds Poetry Journal’s 2016 poetry contest, and his work has been nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize. His poem, "Elm in Dirt with Bird," has been anthologized in Earth Song, published by T. S. Poetry Press, NY, 2022. In 2023, Eco-Justice Press published his first children’s book, Silly Lily’s Rhyming Adventures in Nature, with artist Greta Gonzalez.
Friends, today I'm so pleased to shine a spotlight on the very cool, LDW who brings us a delight for the imagination through his feast of words. Please enjoy his poems Tales of Elysia, The Night Bleeds Electric, and Ode to a Prizefighter. Thank you, LDW, for sharing your work with SHINE! Tales of Elysia Elysia fumbles but she fights As paper snow pouted from saccharine clouds Levels hedge maze heaven And the rain’s frowning machinery Spills grey ghost fables Through vortex thimbles Prodding grumbling waves into pelted brick Wrapping orchid wine carrageenan Around her silver sailing dance Skirting stealth menace Beneath her war tattooed ship Where glassy sky cutouts Web their slivering rankle The toothy reef dragoons Reaching to stake her briny heart But Elysia’s tiger pride Is bronzed furnace creek fire Throttled and boiled Death Valley kettle hot As she coasts high on rebel stride Heading off with Zen quickened sputter Boundless for sanctity’s palatial mouth Through grim oblivion’s parted seas And tarrying never For what is death’s melted wax kissed fate But instead Elysia dives Into the shark eyed void And beaches upon Sion sands Perfumed by hibiscus claret hands Forever kept in the time emptied hourglass of God. The Night Bleeds Electric The night bleeds electric Spilling neon throbs which halo roving satellites And mausoleum skies blanket plum thumb stars Cocooning amethyst glint in marbled solemnity Their dying fever of infinite flame Fleeced of livewire ember and dulled to charcoal vault shade While the rebel throated wind screams bawdy and nude Through sorrow beaten boulevards And hectic carnevale avenues As her teasing cabaret legs Cut through deaf air like sultry whispers And the wind speaks obscured passages known only to God Whipping her shock of dagger hair Against starless vacancy To frame the frisky and beguiled moon That washes dark earth in his pulsing currents To mirror the cityscape’s blossoming gloom. Ode to a Prizefighter Don’t panic Don’t crumble into a foggy lagoon of tears Don’t shiver under firecracker skies With its tiger roar sonic boom Or be dashed inside From night’s crooked smile And vacant moon You’ve got nerve, my friend You’ve got gutsy punch And electric storm fury That barrels through The razored maze And The needling briars Of brutes and bastards Who want to tank your ship Through the greedy storehouse Of their petty mutinies, So hold on to the wheel And the invisible calm Knowing that the absurdity of life Is all the better For you being in it, And may your transparent heart of glass Blind the dogged scoundrel And flood the malice eyed adders Hungry to bruise your heel, For the self loathing beasts At war with themselves Despise a ravine of purity And may their towers of rabble rousing Babel Plant themselves face first Into the God-smacked realities Of black and blue earth, But don’t write your epitaph Or realign your course, You’ve only touched the simple depths Of a universe of worth Alive in the kindness of your eyes And in the beautified candor of your words, So keep sweating blood If you must But saints preserved Keep pushing on, Wave your die hard flag of no return Because I think you absolutely matter To God To us To art To the world To the neighbouring prisms That reflect the stellar outline Of a diamond pearl That shines That is you So onwards you prizefighter And steady To ready To deaden The calloused nerve That pinched you In its boxing cage, But break down the gates And let the world Hear the resurrected songs Of your valour And make it A revolution Of love, Saturn’s return That dries up the frenzied Scalds of hate, Now onwards Now on!  LDW, in a thumbnail sketch, has been a composer and arranger musically, while fully exploring the joyful and cathartic merits of full-time writing. Poetry is his first love, and the bug bit when he was an adolescent. He has traversed the world and lived in Los Angeles, Portland, and Leeds, UK during his creative pursuits and those experiences pepper through his work. He loves animals, pastoral landscapes, engaging conversation, and taking walks.
|
SHINE - International Poetry Series
From the international poetry community, we have a "luxury of stars," as Sylvia Plath might say, and it is my honor to provide a home for their words through SHINE Poetry Series.
NOW IN PRINT!
Stars Over the Dordogne
|
