Poem by Dr. Alok Kumar Ray – Let not give me Sermon! January 3, 2023
Posted by vscorpiozine in poems, poetry, Uncategorized, Veteran Poets.Tags: Dr. Alok Kumar Ray, poems, poetry, poets from India
add a comment
Let not give me Sermon!
Don’t you know, my soulmate
I am neither a habitual offender of casual type
Nor an escapist with utmost hype!
You know a little bit but very well
About me, my sense of both seriousness and humour,
My outer side that dazzles day in and day out.
My inner self that hides its face under the veil of dark paramount.
Gone are those days when though being matured by age,
I was also a novice of cent percentage.
Knew not I the prevailing atmosphere of selfishness at the core but philanthropic at the front galore.
You left me on the way,
Whether to perish or flourish,
The reasons you know the better,
How I can guess , what was the matter?
But your unprovoked indifference, being a silver lining
Gave me a lesson to learn
Don’t tell me like my grandmother,
Now everyday, at each moment of every journey I meet persons and events novel and unforeseen.
I very well know where exists the deadly manhole and also the footpath that resists the turmoil,
When to overtake at which juncture and when to say someone good bye with kind gesture,
Where the speed needs to be augmented and where the rumblers are sharp enough haunted.
The ups and downs of this road have opened up my eyes for good,
Now it’s hard for someone to deceive me in plentitude.
Even now you are not the right person for me to sermoning,
May be one of my well-wishers whom I still love and beckoning.
Dr. Alok Kumar Ray
Bio-Note: Dr.Ray is a professor of Political Science and a bilingual poet who hails from Kendrapara district of Odisha in India..He has authored two poetry books in solo i.e. Sillage (in English) and Meghapanata (in Odia). He has edited one international bilingual poetry anthology named as Trouvaille. By profession he is an academician, but by passion he is a poet.
Poetry by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal – Better Days and Biography December 15, 2022
Posted by vscorpiozine in Los Angeles poets, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, Uncategorized, Veteran Poets.Tags: Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, poems, poetry, veteran poets
add a comment
Better Days
I was less of myself
from the days I was better.
The mirror did not lie.
I left my best days behind.
I waited for daylight,
dreaming of better days.
I knew that day would come.
More of me would return every
hour of every day. The sun
would wash my eyes out and
return my soul that had left
my body believing I had died.
I was less of myself
from the days I was better.
Biography
I know I was born
and I know I am still alive.
I am here to tell you about it.
When I was a child
I was raised by my grandparents.
I had a good life growing up.
Each day was better than the next.
I had yet to see the ocean
and death was not a thing I thought about.
It might as well been a wounded beast
moaning in pain and I would not have
recognized that sound. I lived a quiet life.
I lived an innocent life.
I played in the rain and never got sick.
I learned grammar in school.
I did not know I would be a writer.
As I grew older I experienced the deaths
of almost all the people that influenced me
the most. I have my mother still,
whom I love most of all. Without her my life
and those of my siblings would be in ruins.
BIO: Luis lives in California and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles. His poetry and artwork has appeared in Art:Mag, Medusa’s Kitchen, Nerve Cowboy, Rogue Wolf Press, and Venus in Scorpio Poetry E-Zine.
VIS On Hiatus for 2023 December 10, 2022
Posted by vscorpiozine in Uncategorized.add a comment
FYI, I won’t be updating Venus in Scorpio after 1/15/23, as I will be working on other projects for the rest of 2023. The archived posts will remain on the site.
Poems by Michael Ceraolo – No Guarantees and SHE: A Non-Fable for the 21st Century June 15, 2022
Posted by vscorpiozine in Uncategorized, Veteran Poets.Tags: Michael Ceraolo, poets from Ohio
add a comment
No Guarantees
A reminder
to those who have forgotten it,
or never learned it in the first place:
the freedom to say or do something
does not include with it
exemption from comment about it.
SHE: A Non-Fable for the 21st Century
Setting: any social-media website
NARRATOR: SHE
had graduated college about a year ago
And SHE
announced she was moving into her first apartment
And SHE
announced she was accepting contributions
from any who wished to help support her
And SHE
posted the link for those who wished
to donate to such a worthy cause
THE END
Bio: Michael Ceraolo is a 64-year-old retired firefighter/paramedic and active poet who has had two full-length books (Euclid Creek, from Deep Cleveland Press; 500 Cleveland Haiku, from Writing Knights Press) published, and has two more, Euclid Creek Book Two and Lawyers, Guns, and Money, in the publication pipeline.
Poem- The Quiet World by Jade Blackmore April 14, 2022
Posted by vscorpiozine in city poems, Jade Blackmore, Uncategorized, Veteran Poets.Tags: Jade Blackmore, poems, poetry, veteran poets
add a comment
The Quiet World
Looking at the world from a window.
Apartment dwellers
laugh at the audacity of nature.
two raccoons overtake the parking garage
to make whoopee in plain sight.
The red finch at the feeder
thousands of butterflies skirting across stucco rooftops.
Then a phantasm shuttered the mountains, the planets, the movie scenes
with its’ money,
the lush green steppes only accessible
to the haughty and clueless.
The legacy friend who is quite sure she’s always right, the bluster, the vile and righteous path.
More sculpted glass in the sky,
a formula for escape or detention.
A squirrel scampers up the construction site fence,
another reminder
that the quiet world is out of reach.
Poem by Sushant Thapa – The Sky That Stopped Me July 25, 2021
Posted by vscorpiozine in Uncategorized.Tags: poems, poetry, poets from Nepal, Sushant Thapa, veteran poets
add a comment
The Sky that Stopped Me
That late afternoon
I saw the sun hiding behind the clouds.
My eyes swept
from a green tree,
Swinging its arms in the slight breeze.
I stopped for a while that afternoon
To realize that soon evening would drop.
I stopped my walk and my eyes
Stopped in the clouds,
The yellow and the blue
As if they are colours of my
Life which has been too busy.
I rush to make a chapter of verses.
That feeling and the strike
From the clock tower,
Shaking me from the buzz,
A bee hovering,
Flowers singing the tune of balance
Gave me the rhythm
Again and again.
I have learnt to stop and
Cherish life in the silver mirror of the clouds.
Words they help me to arrange the white clouds
In my blue sky.
BIO:
Sushant Thapa is a Nepalese poet from Biratnagar, Nepal who holds a Master’s degree in English Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi,India. Some of his publications include Trouvaille Review, The Piker Press, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, New York Parrot, Atunis Poetry, Visible Magazine, Litehouse exophonic Magazine, Impspired, EKL Review, The Kathmandu Post, My Republica and Harbinger Asylum. Sushant is the author of the poetry collection “The Poetic Burden and Other Poems” published by Authorspress, New Delhi, India.
Poem by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal – Too Long June 15, 2021
Posted by vscorpiozine in Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, New Poets, poems, poetry, Uncategorized.add a comment
Too Long
Could you spare
some sunlight
and blue skies?
This evening
has gone on
for too long.
It is not
even close
to midnight,
but I have
to ask, bring
on the day.
I would not
mind losing
out on sleep.
I do not
need to go
straight to bed.
I am not
in the mood for
stars tonight.
Bring on the
sun burning
hot as hell.
This is the
night you say
goodbye to
me. This is
the night that
ended us.
Bio: Luis lives in California and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles. His latest poetry book, Make the Water Laugh, was published by Rogue Wolf Press in 2021. His poems have appeared in Blue Collar Review, Kendra Steiner Editions, Mad Swirl, Unlikely Stories, and Venus in Scorpio Poetry E-Zine.
Poem by John Grey- The Flight Conundrum May 5, 2021
Posted by vscorpiozine in Uncategorized.Tags: John Grey, poems, poetry, veteran poets
add a comment
The Flight Conundrum
Last night, I dreamed that I was flying.
As far as my subconscious is concerned,
there’s no such thing as gravity.
Waking, however, brings it back into play.
I can stand up straight
but that’s as far as it gets.
Yes, I admit, that I once got high
on your sweetly passionate kisses.
But that was more of a sensibility thing.
In physical terms, my feet were firmly on the ground.
But, in that dream,
I was soaring over rooftops,
lakes and forests.
And there seemed to be no reason for it.
Nothing was pulling at me from below.
Not mortgage payments.
Not a roof in need of repair.
No backpain.
Not even a slow night on TV.
I wonder if birds dream
of having two legs, two arms,
no wings, no feathers,
and pushing a lawnmower
up and down a backyard lawn.
I’d like it better if they did.
BIO
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Orbis, Dalhousie Review and Connecticut River Review. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” and “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon.
Poem by Jade Blackmore – The Old Poets December 28, 2020
Posted by vscorpiozine in Los Angeles poets, poems, poetry, Uncategorized.Tags: Jade Blackmore, poems, poetry
add a comment
They all gathered in a basement near the beach. Sunlight covered by brick and photocopies, the pesky blonde surfers sent packing, the scourge of suburbia long gone.
The reluctant idol in western jeans ducks into his car, but he can’t escape. The parkig lot fence won’t shield him from the aftermath of his chosen profession. Every autograph paves a piece of soul flattened until he can escape incognito to another land .
Neon-haired old woman
Swathed in black
Yells across the room
Even louder than she did in her heyday,
Oblivious to the background bro calling her an old hag.
Her former partner-in-crime ostracized
For having the wrong opinion.
The woman who raises chickens and grows corn in her back yard
Discusses Bukowski with a slouching, bespectacled poetry professor.
In a previous life he was a long-haired bass player, dropping acid and sharing girls in Golden Gate Park.
The wine disappears from red Solo cups as conversations intensify.
The words of fallen comrades echo in front of scratchy 8 millimeter films.
Self-made local legends, revealed to a select few.
Only those who crack the code understand.
Transference and time fade the intent,
but the spirit remains.
Poems by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal – Two Minutes and Sea Song December 27, 2020
Posted by vscorpiozine in Uncategorized.Tags: Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, poems. poetry
add a comment
Two Minutes
Two minutes waiting
for the bus that is five
minutes late. It is
cold at Four Fifty AM
for someone used
to warmth. The bus is
late again like the other
day when it was windy cold.
I should have worn
thicker socks but I did
not want to be late
looking for them. I feel
like Forest Gump just
waiting for a bus but
without a box of chocolates
and no one around to
tell my tall tales to.
Sea Song
The moon is foam.
Six stars fall now.
The end is near.
Six stars fall like leaky ships.
The sea eats its songs.
Fish multiply despite it all.
Exhausted, the sea eats lyrics.
The sea is right to consume all.
It sinks boats and
sings along with
its waves and skylike colors.
The sea is all show.
Read a review of Luis’ chapbook Before and Well After Midnight, at Clockwise Cat.
Vscorpiozine's Blog 