INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
Richard Kostelanetz
Karyn M. Bruce
Duane Locke
Lyn Lifshin
Rich Ives
Chris Lord
Anton Gojcaj
Donal Mahoney
Laszlo Slomovits
Alan Britt
A. J. Huffman
Bhisma Upreti
Ali Znaidi
Paul B. Roth
Joan Colby
Rexhep Shahu
Catherine McGuire
Michelle Bailat-Jones
April Salzano
Kufre Udeme
Jane Butler
Jennifer Burd
Peycho Kanev
Joanie Freeman
Jennifer Burd &
Laszlo Slomovits
Frederick Pollack
Fahredin Shehu
Holly Day
Serena Wilcox
Ndue Ukaj
Running Cub
Fred Wolven
Allison Grayhurst
Rose Mary Boehm
Michael D. Long
Jim Davis
Christopher Dungey
Bobbi Sinha-Morey
Jason Ryberg
Douglas Polk
Janine Canan
Ann Arbor Review
is an independent
International Journal & ezine
Copyright (c) 2013
Silver Grey Fox
All rights revert back to each poet.
--editor / Southeastern Florida
------------------------------------------------
staff:
Francis Ferde
Silver Grey Fox
Running Cub
Fred Wolven
Submissions via e-mail:
TERRESTRIAL ILLUMINATION NO. 505
A POEM FOR
BETH (2)
May, the weather like a billion years ago
When red-hot cerise cosmos cooled to crimson,
To become jet-black bug-shaped ashes,
Greyed, crumbled into sound waves
Who anticipated the earth's and ear's birth.
Yes, today the air touches with harpsichord music.
I am an atmosphere that is ancient,
Beyond ancient, and destined to wine and dust.
So I am a Picasso harlequin child balancing
On a ball that is red and sonic.
But I am a paradox, thus not Picasso forlorn, Picasso sad,
But a paradise that is parable scribbled on torn pearl paper.
TERRESTRIAL ILLUMINATION NO. 635
Mumbles like words heard
Spoken by drunks before passing out
Is what was heard
Through the metal of the protective door.
It was the early evening news report,
Five O'clock. The barber although he never watched
Due to habit always turned the TV on.
He had staggered out the shop one-half hour before the demanded time,
Before he finished his last hair cut.
His floor was scattered with pages of newspapers.
He only looked at sport pages,
Bulky men with their arms in triangular shapes to secure footballs.
Tomorrow, he would have the day off, freed from scissors.
This liberty was given him so he could go to polls and vote.
TERRESTRIAL ILLUMINATION NO. 476
After an afternoon watching before small oaks
And tall pines the angular Toulouse Lautrec dance
With Flamenco foot movements, Argentine tango dips,
And trembling golds of two Flickers and afterwards our relaxing
With Vino Nobile from Montepulciano while listening
To Carl Orr's "Carmina Burana," and Luce, you vivid
And excited talk about how we are on the threshold
Of a new dispensation. In the past, philosophy
Was the handmaiden of religion, and then philosophy
Became the handmaiden of science
With Russell, Ayers, the Vienna school, and now
Their work and the treatises of Logical Postivisim
Have been discredited, proven nonsense by postmodernism,
We are on the verge of philosophy becoming the handmaiden of poetry,
Martin Heidegger with his Friedrich Holderlin was a pioneer.
But Luce, there are no poets today. There are only trivial
"wordsmiths," slave mentalities to technological enframing
And who have turned themselves into resources of being
Petty and jejune entertainments for an audience
Of intellectual poseurs and obtuse college professors>
Our current aspirant poets are ego-blinded, self-sophists
And are incapable of writing a poetry that is prefigurative
And authentic enough to offer salvation even if only for individuals
From the exploitation and degradation of our earth, salvation
From the brutality of our timid world of slave mentalities.
Luce, being with you, yesterday, the flicker dance, the music, the wine
Inspired me to write:
Words can cure our sick land,
But the wrong words are spoken in our land,
Repeated, spoken over and over.
The people live by these wrong words,
And on one lives by reality.
The people's spoken wrong words,
The poet's written wrong words.
Blind,
Deaften,
Amputate touch from the fingers,
Change natural intelligence
Into artificial intelligence,
Turn the people into robots.
Our people are robots
Controlled by a faraway power structure
Pushing buttons on control panels.
Our poets are frauds,
There is no authentic, prefigurative, poets.
All poets stand in life waiting for a handout of applause
From something that does not exist.
Our sick land could be cured by poets,
But all that pretend to write poetry are slaves
Of the prevailing au courant obtuse, destructive social order.
Our land could be saved by poets,
But there are now no poets.
Our land could be saved by the people,
But there are no people,
No people,
Only robots and slave mentalities.
Duane Locke, Tampa