Poem by John Sweet – with broken wings, with bruised hearts December 29, 2022
Posted by vscorpiozine in John Sweet, poems, poetry, Veteran Poets.Tags: John Sweet, poems, poetry, veteran poets
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with broken wings, with bruised hearts
& the future is prisons, you see,
and the future is loss
let go of yr house, of yr
children, but hang onto the hatred
that defines you
give up christ
give up all those pretty songs
your mother used to sing
close in on holiness
like a soldier taking aim
Read more of John’s poetry at The Bleeding Horse, Avenged
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
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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.
Winter-Poem by Jade Blackmore December 3, 2022
Posted by vscorpiozine in Jade Blackmore, Los Angeles poets, poets from Illinois, Veteran Poets, winter.Tags: Jade Blackmore, poems, poetry, veteran poets
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It’s not cold enough at 50 degrees. The seasons are all mixed up.
We need a challenge, a thin sheet of ice, a specter from the sky.
A myopic wind chomping at the reigns.
Something to make the tribe tougher.
And then the window rattles you awake
To guarantee ice cube drudgery with each step.
The bridge across the river clotted with snow,
A crunchy and obstacle-ridden
reminder of your delicacy.
Square shards of ice in shoe corners, a numbing,
And then the reprieve –
A push through flimsy aluminum,
flesh crooked with cold pushes through to the crackle of home
The door hinge squeaks like a welcoming sigh
Then seals you into recovery,
A warm blast of love and soup.
Poem by Jade Blackmore – A Man of Some Renown July 24, 2022
Posted by vscorpiozine in Jade Blackmore, poems, poetry, Veteran Poets.Tags: Jade Blackmore, poems, poetry, veteran poets
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He was a man of some renown in certain circles. All the crusty bohemians, naïve wanna-bes, and adjuncts to the rich and famous crossed paths with him. You’d find him at blueblood soirees, art galleries, and biker bars.
“I met this guy in the Village,” someone would say, and drop his name, with no description or story attached. And their friends would chime in with unbridled enthusiasm. “Yeah, I know, he’s an asshole” “He owes me money!” or “A girl I work with is his mistress. He treats her like shit.”
But when he died, everybody was ready with a sound bite.
“He was an outstanding guy, a real trailblazer” they all agreed, “We’ll miss him.
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
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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 John Grey – Coin in the Jukebox February 11, 2022
Posted by vscorpiozine in John Grey, Veteran Poets.Tags: John Grey, poems, poetry, veteran poets
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Coin in the Jukebox
Put a coin in the jukebox
and remember what you wish to remember.
You half-smile when the needle hits shellac.
You can breathe without having to worry
whether or not your lungs are there to greet the air.
You don’t have people wary of you
as if your very touch is poison.
Put that coin in the jukebox.
The effort won’t be wasted.
You can spread your arms wide
or hug yourself tighter.
It doesn’t matter if strangers think you’re crazy.
Insanity has all the best tunes anyhow.
You can be yourself, by yourself,
with legs kicking up a storm
and hips swaying a hurricane.
Put that coin in the jukebox
and sing along with the best croak
your old frog throat can mister.
Show them how wild you can be
as song plops on top of song,
and the names get lost in the vinyl shuffle.
It’s all about the beat
and not the hens who cackle how
you should act your age.
Put that coin in the jukebox
for every old friend gone mute,
for the guys who’ve long hung up their dancing shoes.
Forget the time.
Raise the volume.
There’s nothing like a luminous wrinkled face.
Your withered legs could do this all night.
Put that coin in the jukebox.
A neglected high awaits.
Some singer, long dead,
will give you tips on how to stay alive.
So what if you don’t know the words to the song.
The ones you sing will be minted in the moment.
Put that coin in the jukebox.
Ignore the bartender, the other drinkers.
Leave them to their alcohol-powered disillusion.
Some guy has a trumpet in his mouth.
Another thrashes a willing kit of drums.
The singer unleashes a string of passionate half-sentences.
So much for the soft hue of memory.
It’s a blazing cauldron.
Put that coin in the jukebox.
You create an island for yourself
in waters of sneering and disgust.
With a healthy strut, you grant time permission
to take all those unwanted years back.
You want to be seventeen again.
So push that coin in the slot.
Increase the likelihood.
BIO: John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review
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
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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 John Grey- The Flight Conundrum May 5, 2021
Posted by vscorpiozine in Uncategorized.Tags: John Grey, poems, poetry, veteran poets
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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.
Three Poems by Alan Britt – Zen, Swallowing a Wine Soaked Flea, and Salary Cap February 19, 2017
Posted by vscorpiozine in Alan Britt, Towson University, Veteran Poets.Tags: Alan Britt, poems, poetry, Towson University, veteran poets
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ZEN
One minute mullets slap my face,
slash my grin, & fill the boat,
next I’m chasing split fingers
in the dirt.
One minute folks beg photos
for basement mausoleums,
next I’m coughing steroids
in a pine-paneled dehumidified
definition of the Old Testament’s
Heaven & Hell.
One minute thunder plunders
the virgin lips of imagination,
next I’m waltzing the long
end off a short pier.
One minute I’m a saffron wasp
digesting the succulent underbelly
of a green leaf caterpillar hidden
beneath a July broccoli frond.
Unfortunately, he’s the one.
SWALLOWING A WINE SOAKED FLEA
It tastes a little like pepper
if pepper didn’t taste like anything.
SALARY CAP
Stadiums shiver; knees knock;
knees not what they were
before that right field sprinkler—
then hips complain, & shakedown
of the skeletal system ensues,
& nobody wins.
So much for Cleveland quakes,
Baltimore tremors, Pittsburgh’s
yellow mud, Chicago elections
that don’t involve liquor. So much
for buying the World Series, Yankees
style, ubiquitous, nonetheless.
BIO:
In August 2015 Alan Britt was invited by the Ecuadorian House of Culture Benjamín Carrión in Quito, Ecuador as part of the first cultural exchange of poets between Ecuador and the United States. In 2013 he served as judge for the TheBitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award. His interview at The Library of Congress for The Poet and the Poem aired on Pacifica Radio, January 2013. He has published 15 books of poetry, his latest being Violin Smoke (Translated into Hungarian by Paul Sohar and published in Romania: 2015). He teaches English/Creative Writing at Towson University.
Library of Congress interview at this link.
Poem – She is Sci-Fi by Stephen Philip Druce January 31, 2017
Posted by vscorpiozine in Stephen Philip Druce.Tags: Stephen Philip Druce, UK poets, veteran poets
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She Is Sci-Fi
BIO: Stephen Philip Druce is a poet from Shrewsbury in the U.K.
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