Rembetiko, Dead and Alive!

Rembetiko'dan by koxuz

One of the reasons why the Greek spirit will never go bankrupt.

(Set volume at full blast, please--loud enough to wake the dead!)

NB: It might take a while for the video to load but hang in there--after all, it's a long way to the netherworld and back.

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Why There Are So Many Bad Poems Out There

Too few poets know when

They’ve started one—

Still fewer know when

They should’ve stopped.

Moderator’s comments: Many poets might find themselves saying many things about this one but I for one am going to stop before I get carried away.

Dawn Finds the Poet on the Watchtower

restless at his post all the night

on the lookout waiting

for the herald the inner

fires burning the rosy fingers

turning in, ward to light.

Christian Van Limbergen in Meligalas

Well, there I was in Meligalas' upper square having an early afternoon tsipouro with one of my brothers-in-law when I looked across the street and saw what must be every elderly bicyclist's idol—the one-and-only Christian Van Limbergen slowly pedaling his way into the Guinness Book of Records but I didn't know who he was until I shouted out and invited him to take a seat and have something to drink. Twenty-two years of biking around Europe while picking up seven languages and racking up 600,000+ kilometers is no easy feat—my 9000 in four years seems pale in comparison. So, as we used to say back in the late 60s—keep on truckin', Christian!

Huuklyeand Cinquor on Living with Sleaze

Tut-tut, now no tacky

Remonstrations—

We all know 
Truth is words lie.

Like it or not,

It’s our one and only

Natural habit

Tat.

Moderator’s comments:  Whoever said punning was cheap and vulgar should take a closer look at how punningly Cinquor incorporates into this droll, little poem the British noun “tat” tastelessness by virtue of being cheap and vulgar, rather than its American counterpart “tackiness”—I say bloody good show, Cinq.

Two Haikus (in the Museum Garden)

1.

Empty chairs:

the statues have gone back

to the other museum

2.

No wonder

they had no business

being there

The Stars and Stripes Forever?

In his latest column on behalf of that fiery Promethean missile of intrepid internet journalism known as Weekly Hubris, we find our trusty reporter-poet investigating his adopted country’s long ongoing obsession with bad news, violence, guns, death, Hollywood starlets, unnatural beastly sex on farms run by human animals, Hitchcock’s incredulous cock-and-bull stories, booze, cinematic rage on four wheels, bland third-rate male movie stars transmogrified into bamboozling politicians, insipid television commercials, tobacco roads, Wrath against The Redman aka The Deflowering of Virginia West by Manny Feist Destiny and many more American themes parked down by the river of no return.