Neil writes: Each poem in the sequence seeks to distil the essence of one of the great maestri, either by capturing their personality or focusing on a formative moment in their life or career.
Nikisch
The father, they will call him, of modern conducting:
the man who cut the guy ropes on the past, detaching the art
from periwigged tradition, staffs beaten on hard floors.
The man who set the blueprint for a century and a half
of maestri – economy of gesture, communication as a non-verbal act,
the score as holy writ, understood on the deepest, most intimate level.
Boskovsky
Intended or not, there’s a hint of the vaguely pejorative: waltzmeister instead of Maestro; the chocolate box evocation of old Vienna on the album covers.
It’s too easy, the cloyed recoil from the Musikverein’s opulence.
Listen: done-to-death repertoire is brought back to life, agile and joyous as it was ever meant to be
with a seriousness of purpose, a depth, that would befit Bruckner.
Driven; relentless; no quarter asked of himself or given.
Workloads shouldered in an agony of against-the-clock momentum.
“My time is now” – raison d’être as epitaph in waiting. Self-discipline
as an act of self-destruction.
Mäkelä
In interview, he is charm itself; enthusiastic to the point of boyish:
the transformation comes as he takes the stage,
metaphysical as it is palpable –
a rising, a deepening; something to do with stature, with aura. Something to do
with an almost impossible synergy.
Neil Fulwood was born in Nottingham, England, where he still lives and works. He has three collections out with Shoestring Press: No Avoiding It, Can’t Take Me Anywhere and Service Cancelled, with a fourth scheduled for publication next year.
For Peace comes slow A sudden birth Unexpected win Balms your soul A royal blue impish touch Sometimes A hurricane It just Soothes For Peace comes slowly More difficult Than Love Loving One Each breath Each Eyelash It is private A fine jewel Must be hidden Kept Under your shirt For peace is precious Than Love Itself.
The e-mail kiosks lock on to me as I cruise the Mall. My exo- skeleton — beltbuckle, glasses, the tips of my shoes, even the decidedly feminine gold chain I have around my wrist — lights up with messages. They are not for me; I am being mistaken for someone else. But there are few shops in this part of the strip & I’m a snoop be- sides, so I read them with half an ear, even though my heart is in the jeweller looking through their recipes for eloquence & my soul is in the toystore set on rich dark fruit cake laced with brandy.
Strange, dear, but
true, dear. The Cole Porter song enters my morning mind as if it had every right to be there, as if it lived there & was returning home after a night out. But not simply the song, a specific rend- ition of it. k.d. lang’s, first heard on the Red Hot + Blue tv special & subsequent album compilation. What is stranger is
how to interpret the locus of the singer, of the mindsong. In the video, k.d. lang sings as if she is person who is being sung to; & in my mind, it is also as if I am the recipient. To personalize, it is the not-I singing to the other which is me. It’s a tableau that has a logic only because of its similarity to that Magritte painting
La reproductioninterdite in which a man is looking into a mirror in which his re- flection is thrown back, but as if seen from the back. Twenty years ago I wrote of this painting: “Shown from the back the image is androgynous — think k.d. lang in her man’s suit phase.” & here she is again. Strange, dear, but true, dear.
I-less in Gaza
Nothing makes sense anymore. Everything does. I bind my camel to a smokestack at the edge of an anticlimax & set the guidebook alight to give me light to better read it by. The hidden pattern in the last flicker of a hologram tells me I’m in Machu Picchu where I shouldn’t be. Entropy arrives to peck out my I- balls. Equilibrium. It’s a eunuch experience.
Mark Young was born in Aotearoa / New Zealand but now lives in a small town in North Queensland in Australia. His most recent book — his sixty-second in fifty-five years — is with the slow-paced turtle replaced by a fast fish, published in 2023 by sandy press.
You can find more of Mark’s work here on Ink Pantry.
I listen to the voices of night frogs croaking, in the late hours of the night, and try to understand the meaning of their messages echoing off the silver moon:
Their hoarse voices curl through my sleepy, mind, sewing strange thoughts from long- forgotten memories, in my mind. In the midst of their croaking, they speak to me in their language of sorrow.
During the fading hours of the night, I search for metaphors to translate the meaning of the frog’s melancholy mutterings as their voices continue to burst into the mysterious emptiness of the moonlit night, but all I end up with are strange symbols.
When I Am Old
When I can no longer see stars crawl lazily though the vastness of sky
on silver moonbeams, or the beauty of verdant trees in secret hollow glens, and my weary bones and ashen hair tell me I am no longer young and it is useless to believe in magic anymore or see elves and sprites dancing in meadows fallow, I will feel sorrow’s weight upon my shoulders.
Long Lost Memories
Amidst the cold, brisk gales On an abandoned winter night, Long-lost memories Suddenly burst forth Inside the billowing steam, spewing From an ancient iron horse As it disappeared into the Unforgiving gap of dark fears Riding on rusted iron rails, And I wept in sorrow.
Memories of Grief Were Forgotten
Emerging in the hours of an iron-colored metallic night, rusting symbols covered with an aging patina of dark contractions whispered across an old man’s ebbing life, causing him anguish.
Crystal poems written in scarlet ink were shattered by metaphorical hammers pounding words of grief into gloomy synonyms and causing dark allegories to ache inside the cold dreariness of his aging mind.
Images of broken tombstones in a field of unknown graves entered his consciousness and his trail of tears melted into the cemetery’s soil, damping it with more sorrow than it could hold.
He sensed dark, once-forgotten memories being awakened, but as sharp pangs of grief started piercing his collapsing mind, the tainted memories in the blink of Meng Po’s eye were forgotten, and calmness ensued.
What Are Those Strange Images, Which I Think I See?
Is it helplessness Suspended in rust-coated visions,
The hallucinatory echo of An old broken tenor saxophone,
An antediluvian sea where Dead things scream at midnight,
A place where abandoned women Cut their hair with broken glass shears
While they painfully paint crimson roses, On their bedroom walls?
Is it a shattered, rusted nightmare that Tastes metallic like rusted blood,
Desires twisting like toxic tendrils inside poisonous mushrooms,
A white psychedelic pill that Confuses similes with syntax,
Or a dark poem about death inside A nightmare that haunts a poet’s mind?
Is it a melancholy song sung by A bone-thin chanteuse in a shadowy bar,
A decaying memory corroding Atop a broken cement tombstone, or
perhaps a cemetery where ghosts devour reality, and whose skeletal hands scrape at your bones?
James, a retired Professor and octogenarian is a Best of Web nominee and three time Pushcart nominee and has had five poetry books The Silent Pond, (2012), Ancient Rhythms, (2014), LIGHT, (2016), Solace Between the Lines, (2019), and Serenity (2022), 1770 poems, five novels, and thirty-five short stories published in scores of national and international magazines, anthologies, and books. He earned his doctorate from BYU, and his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, SLO. He lives in Santa Ynez, California, with his wife Sandy, and a dog named Scout. His great, great aunt and uncle, Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt, and John James Piatt were prolific poets in the 1800s.
You can find more of James’ work here on Ink Pantry.
He’s making A mental list Of the things He misses And those That he doesn’t, He has Awful in-laws In his Does not miss category, Then he realizes That those people Actually belong In their own category.
Taylor Dibbert is author of the Peace Corps memoir Fiesta of Sunset, and the forthcoming poetry collection Home Again.
Outside, summer is dying into fall, and blue daddy petunias sprout ears— hear the beginning of night chills. In their yellow window box, they cuddle up and fear death together. The balcony sliding door is poorly insulated, and a cold draft creeps into all the spare rooms.
Bowl of Black Petunias
If you must leave me, please leave me for something special, like a beautiful bowl of black petunias— for when the memories leak and cracks appear and old memories fade, flowers rebuff bloom, sidewalks fester weeds and we both lie down separately from each other for the very last time.
Memories Past
(Hillbilly Daddy)
I settle into my thoughts zigzagging between tears my fathers’ grave— Tippecanoe River Indiana 1982. Over now, a hillbilly country like the flow catfish memories raccoons in trees coon dogs tracking on the river bank, the hunt. Snapping turtles in the boat offline— river flakes to ice— now covered thick snow.
Now That I Desire
Now that I desire to be close to you like two occupants sharing a twin bed sensing the warmth of sweating shoulders, hungering for your flesh like a wild wolf leaning over an empty carcass, you’re off searching unexplored cliffs, climbing dangerous mountain tops, capturing bumblebees in broken beer bottles for biology class, pleasing plants, parachuting from clouds for fun. In shadows, you’re closer to life, nonsense, a princess of absurdity, a collector of dreams and silent sounds. In clouds, you build your own fantasy. Share it with select celebrities. But till this captive discovers a cure for caring, a way of rescuing insatiable insanity, or lives long enough to be patient in longing for you— you must be vigilant, for with time, snow will surely blanket this warm desire.
Michael Lee Johnson lived ten years in Canada during the Vietnam era. Today he is a poet in the greater Chicagoland area, IL. He has 289 YouTube poetry videos. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 44 countries, a song lyricist, has several published poetry books, has been nominated for 6 Pushcart Prize awards, and 6 Best of the Net nominations. He is editor-in-chief of 3 poetry anthologies, all available on Amazon, and has several poetry books and chapbooks. He has over 453 published poems. Michael is the administrator of 6 Facebook Poetry groups. Member Illinois State Poetry Society. Do not forget to consider me for Best of the Net or Pushcart nomination!
boots, smelling of here and there, long roads, unending hours
motel beds and sullied skin, roughage along rugged cheekbones
harsh winter, seasons on turn, fireplace or heartburn, calm water-blue eyes
oregano flavoured evenings, albatross wings, words exchanged in hello or goodbye
one closed door after the other, new room, unkempt future, checked bills
half-eaten dinner for rats, tips on a desolate corner table, future sunrise
ignition key on the move, tyres screech release, to a new dream, new flag down
through untold stories, haunted myths or chinese- whisper, shadows live on
Born and brought up in Kolkata, India with parents having an intense interest in literature, Raja Chakraborty grew up in ambient surroundings. Chakraborty is a bilingual poet writing in Bengali and English. To date he has published five books of English poems, and six books of Bengali poems/rhymes. He is also a regular contributor to magazines and anthologies.
This, a good place to begin the circle, dear jogger, opens up the park and the morning.
You should not stir the goodness or the goose. The skein of the waterfowls are scattered in the pasture. Today’s mood made them shells holding a hollowness and a howl for the sea.
*
When the exotic wings glide in the park the goose fights for her boundary at first.
Zen eventuates. She settles between the flocking birders and the winter’s slaty sun.
We, the local walkers, already gave her pet names. The goose stares hard with its hundred names, native pride, doubting vigilance.
The Mystery, Life
My mate finishes pissing. He plays drunken bird toy swaying on the port bow.
“Now we are out of wine in our blood.” He slurs. His voice is ash and sand.
The current streams five shades of the river. A conical buoy oscillates midst this concurrence.
“You may drown.” My shouting sounds gay, buoyant. Sometimes he does drown, emerges eaten by the fish.
And then we steal the boat from the pier leased by his father again and again.
Brother Blood
The brother who opens your id and loses the key, makes you drunk and piss in your own yard as your wife watches from the first floor boudoir returns.
You know the grey. You know the why. You know the honey and the sting he hides. You lower your guards in the ring, let the blood ooze, trickle down your chin and yet do not wipe the corner of your mouth.
He offers your children a lift to their school, takes them for fun instead. Nothing sharp, not more harm than one pale ale too many, your wife sees a blade whenever sun catches his glasses.
He returns. He disappears. You know where. You know why.
Kushal Poddar is the author of Postmarked Quarantine and has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of ‘Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages, published across the globe.
My brick home of tough times Looks like My miniature islet. Like some fantasy lovers Dancing under the whole stranded sky My miniature of an islet home Has no address. I cannot whisper my ill wind of ease To my miniature islet home. I admire members under its roof The love is danced, The love is greeted, Love is treated. To a remembered beloved I address my islet. One home I should build For Imagination, I often knock its door Where my imagination wakes up, Becomes a task doer, Makes the world fitted in a room More spacious. But I want to walk in my garden!
Sushant Thapa is from Biratnagar, Nepal. He has published four books of poems: The Poetic Burden and Other Poems (Authorspress, New Delhi, 2020), Abstraction and Other Poems (Impspired, UK, 2021), Minutes of Merit (Haoajan, Kolkata, 2021), Love’s Cradle (World Inkers Printing and Publishing, USA and Africa, 2023). He is an English lecturer to undergraduate level students of BBA and BIT at Nepal Business College, Biratnagar, Nepal and Master’s level at Degree Campus. He also teaches English poetry to M.A. English students at Degree Campus. He holds an M.A in English literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He has been published in print, online, school book and anthologies around the world. He also writes Flash Fictions, Short Stories and Book Reviews.
You can find more of Sushant’s work here on Ink Pantry.
Her Face tickled by the zig zag stubble in the sea weed She wore a Silk Rorschach mask to sleep in the clay Like an Alabaster Ghost Woman face to face with a squid Sleepy eyes, reading they start to wrinkle Wild waves between her toes not her hand to catch Sun sets star begin to twinkle Woman raised her cap in an abruptly fetch A bit damp waltzing as the cat’s tinkles’
Lobe to Lobe
Old Octopus woman camping on water Lobe to Lobe Gathering Tuff from the midland bogs Lost her new red cap at stone cutters yard Passed by the half-life of the old tramp Dumping water and stones, from her left boot Ninety nine times’ guilty only circumstantial Un-weeded garden, grows no more Wrongfully condemned, one more outrage Curbstone requiem’s mass funeral was yesterday They still love reading about her today
Sleepy Whale #203
Blood wet Irish Cephalopod Try to remove haunting remorse Of our Soul’s divorce Lonely silence drinking the Church Broth Emunctory wroth Star thrown shadows follow the nights’ course Like her burr sticking in the mane of a horse Ruddy Wool’s haunting moth Meadow of her murmuring water Great brightness is the complaint Robbing peter to pay Squatter’s Pub Mercy of God, oh so faint Henchman began the slaughter Islamic of Sages and Saints
Terry Brinkman has been painting for over forty five years. Poems in Rue Scribe, Tiny Seed. Winamop, Snapdragon Journal, Poets Choice, Adelaide Magazine, Variant, the Writing Disorder, Ink Pantry, In Parentheses, Ariel Chat, New Ulster, Glove, and in Pamp-le-mousse, North Dakota Quarterly, Barzakh, Urban Arts, Wingless Dreamer, LKMNDS and Elavation.
You can find more of Terry’s work here on Ink Pantry.
