Huuklyeand Cinquor on the Unamused Muse

Don’t you read me loud and clear,

You foot-dragging, lifeless

Klutzes cluttering up my rear?

I said it’s deadline time!

Okay.

Now, take one final step forward,

Put your lives on the line and please,

Please don’t make me repeat myself,

Do I make myself clear?

Moderator’s comments: I don’t know about you but I find Cinquor’s tirade against deadbeat poets totally uncalled-for because it oversteps the bounds of poetic decency; after all, where would our muse be if it weren’t for that long illustrious line of bootlickers waiting their turn to grovel at her feet—or should I say feat?

What the **** is this?

Poetry Appreciation 2011

Unlikely Figures of Speech

They wanted

The inconceivable—

A world

Where each word

Would be human

Enough to be

Like you and me.

Increasing Your Odds for Survival in the Animal Kingdom

My three-year-old niece

Wants me to draw her favorite

Animal—a wolf—so I draw a wolf;

That’s nice, she says, and then asks me

To draw a boy and a girl,

So I draw a boy and a girl.

Looking at the pair and pursing her lips

In thought, she then asks me if I could please

Draw them holding swords, just in case

Her favorite is thinking

Nasty thoughts.

Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City

No lyric poetry here, just pure Ionian tragedy:

By Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, Newmark Press, N.Y., 1998 (Second reprint of Faber edition, London, 1972).

After reading the introduction and the closing chapter here, get the book and see for yourself how little has changed in the world of diplomacy.

Reprise

sun

rise,

re

mind

us

we

still

have

one

more

reprieve.

New Year's Day, 2011: Out with the Old, In with the New One(s)

Spring, 1984 at the fountain in the mountain village of Kefalovryssi, Messenias—about 40 minutes north of Meligalas: Eleni 22, Efiniki 3, and Tasso 1, the old man in the background departing the scene? Old enough to know what it was like to be that young.