Better Than Starbucks Formal & Rhyming Poetry Jan 2017

Formal & Rhyming Poetry

with Vera Ignatowitsch

Our Interview this month is with Michael R. Burch, Formalist poet and editor of The HyperTexts, and we are proud to offer another of his beautiful poems..

Isolde’s Song

After the deaths of Tristram and Isolde, a hazel and a honeysuckle grew out of their graves until the branches intertwined and could not be parted.

Through our long years of dreaming to be one

we grew toward an enigmatic light

that gently warmed our tendrils. Was it sun?

We had no eyes to tell; we loved despite

the lack of all sensation—all but one:

we felt the night’s deep chill, the air so bright

at dawn we quivered limply, overcome.

To touch was all we knew, and how to bask.

We knew to touch; we grew to touch; we felt

spring’s urgency, midsummer’s heat, fall’s lash,

wild winter’s ice and thaw and fervent melt.

We felt returning light and could not ask

its meaning, or if something was withheld

more glorious. To touch seemed life’s great task.

At last the petal of me learned: unfold.

And you were there, surrounding me. We touched.

The curious golden pollens! Ah, we touched,

and learned to cling and, finally, to hold.

Originally published by The Raintown Review and nominated for the Pushcart Prize

Michael R. Burch’s poems have been translated into nine languages and set to music by the composers Alexander Comitas and Seth Wright. Burch’s poems, essays, articles and letters have appeared more than 2,000 times around the globe in publications which includeTIME, USA Today, BBC Radio 3, The Hindu, Kritya, Gostinaya, Light, The Lyric, Measure, Angle, Black Medina, The Chariton Review, Poet Lore, The Chimaera, Poem Today, Verse Weekly, ByLine, Unlikely Stories and Writer’s Digest—The Year’s Best Writing. He also edits and publishes www.thehypertexts.com.

Oklahoma House

A broken home sits on a hillside,

A gust of wind sings through its ribs;

Grass pokes through its rotted floorboards,

Its curtains billowed by the winds.

The dishrag hangs, still folded neatly

As it was hung up there with care

Years ago by ghosts of people

Who once lived, then turned to air.

Look and you can see them leaving,

A half-packed suitcase on the floor.

Clothes still hang on rusted hangers;

The pantry still has jars in store.

There are footprints in the carpet

Trapped below by years of dust -

Someone’s dreams are still there sleeping

On bed frames stripped and thick with rust.

All the footsteps that were made here

Are covered up by drifts of snow.

When weary, wrung out people leave

How do their stranded houses know?

Ruslan Garrey is a Russian born poet now living in Gunsan, South Korea. He previously founded the North Fork Oklahoma Writers and his work has been featured in Short Orders Poems and Anthroposcene.

One More

Breathe out, breathe in your fill of willful air.

Now that the meds are gone, you're free to go

but hold your ground for one more breath, one more

act of defiance. Make death wait its turn

on pins and needles for a change as you

breathe out, breathe in your fill of willful air - -

deep, sudden, hungry gulps, each one a dare,

your wasted body boasting it's not through,

will hold its ground for one more breath, one more.

Your eyes open. You smile. I smile. Hello there,

I'm dying, you say. I hold your hand. I know,

breathe in, breathe out my fill of clear-eyed air.

This must be the time to finally share

my secret -- I get all my strength from you,

to stand my ground for one more breath, one more

day and face down half of what you do, bare

-knuckled, bleeding, defiant, razor-tongued. You

breathe out, breathe in your fill of willful air and

hold your ground for one more, one more, one more - -

originally published by The Road Not Taken

Michael Getty is a writer and educator who lives with his husband in St. Louis, Missouri. His work has appeared in The Healing Muse, Pidgeonholes, and is forthcoming in Poetica

I'll Wait

“Writing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.”

~~Don Marquis

Alas there is an echo, though but small
come from a drifting petal after all,
so monumental such a thing appears
if nothing would be less then I'm all ears.
We must not limit self but go beyond,
it only takes one pebble in a pond
to send the ripples to the farthest shore
and to the deepest depths, the basin's floor.

Just like the dropping of the pebble be
a mighty force dispensing poetry,
together we can fill that massive hole
a petal thrown from every poet's soul;
to make that old Grand Canyon overflow
with poetry that all the world will know,
we care not whether echoes will be heard
for something greater then will have occurred.

And so we say to you old Don Marquis
it was not an impossibility;
improbable as so much often seems,
the echoes are for poets in their dreams.

DE Navarro is the Founder of NavWorks Press. He is an author, poet, editor, publisher, speaker, and life coach. He is the originator and owner of the We Write PoetryTM forums and the Pride in Poetry PrizeTM and Publication. He is a husband, father, mentor and friend and Banking Sr Analyst, Tech Editor/Writer. Visit DE's beautiful Website at http://www.de-navarro.com for peace and to learn more about his work. He lives in Greater Los Angeles where he writes and publishes. His most recent book, Dare to Soar, is a poetic journey via 151 poems and 12 essays, diverse in style, tone, voice, approach and form, to explore self, humanity, the city, country, nature, people, society, life, and spirituality.

Lighthearted Verse & Limericks...

There now is a man in the Azores

who has a young lady he adores.

As she does eight chores

he mans the great oars

and both of them enjoy midday snores.

John J Mathews

member of DE Navarro’s We Write Poetry Wordshop

LOVE POEM À LA PARKER

My love, she is a pretty thing,

a dream of girlish charm,

a regular siren when she'd sing

(at least, a car alarm).

She laughs with such a dainty trill,

you'd never think of thunder,

and curses with such modest skill

the devils blush, down under.

She's witty, tasteful, wrinkle-free--

it's like she can't grow older!

(You won't hear otherwise from me:

she's reading over my shoulder).

Charles Joseph Albert

Two to Six Players

Let me thank you kindly, Milton Bradley,

For this lovely marriage of Dilly/Dally

Which you call Life: This boxed experience,

This packaged heteronormativity—

Self-expression reduced to Blue and Pink

And fossil-fueled, put-putting sedans:

Monochromatic, even their windshields.

And God forbid one wins without breeding.

One gets the feeling that one has domain

Over Time itself, spinning the clock-like

Wheel (though it’s base-ten) front and center,

Watching each peg be flicked/molested by

A plastic prick, the players made agents

Of their fortune: one hustleless-bustleless.

Devin Taylor studies English and Creative Writing at Washington College. His work can be found in Five 2 One, Maudlin House, BLYNKT among others. He has forthcoming publications in Gargoyle, Infinity Ink, Clockwise Cat, and elsewhere. He plays bass and electric kazoo and aspires to be a golden retriever.