She searches the radio
for a night song
a blend of Texas and new age
her room lit up by holographic bingo lights
she plays dice
emptying her woe out the window
singing along:
“Be kind to your disguises
Be kind to your sins
Be kind to each other...Amen.”
-Nancy Pontius
Lying in the grass
we watch clouds
spheres of the mystics
hovering over our heads
enchanted by their songs
in and out of doors
Hidden energy
uncoils
Another poet scatters flowers
-Nancy Pontius
Moon happened to listen
as I tried to organize my consciousness
while the wind danced
like a whirling dervish
beneath the aleppo pine
Yesterday was like a movie
without end
bits of information
scattering across space-time
then there was love
like a gathering,
making shape out of chaos
into something like a moonstone,
secret and delicate
peach and blue-grey
-Nancy Pontius
What kind of toy is this monocular?
The moon and the stars are visible in the pipe,
the red glow twinkling,
a trembling hand holding the monocular gripe.
Black spots thicken
on a round yellowish circle,
the movement of the Earth is noticeable in passing,
we humans are like those grains of sand
or small like home chickens.
-Slava (Vyacheslav) Konoval
Freely plastic items feel in water flow,
waste piles up even on the waves,
moan seas, moan lakes, and the oceans,
and indifferent human blow.
Confusion and tears melancholic beg,
the time is killing field flower, oh, leg,
why she is not in fresh mud
she succumbs to plastic torture,
slaughter between man and nature, and there is blood.
The Earth is rotting from plastic
she unconquered, fighting by storms and thunderstorms,
this is fantastic!
The Earth defends herself without words,
our care for her is non-intellectual and sarcastic.
In deep darkness
the country is gnawed
by a despot with his teeth
free people of the righteous,
the Moscow executioner transformed them.
Cossack’s land, steppes of descendants
burned the cannibal to the background,
and now in the homes of the Ukrainians
there is no light either.
I meet the autumn twilight at the threshold,
the wind is blowing, frost is near
who drew heads on blades of grass all around.
Oh, that there would be spring
so that there is light and warmth,
I think about it.
The eighth month of the eighth year
torments Cerberus the East
I have no peace
I wish victory for the state with all my heart,
Please, God fire cease!
To have a dream is to have an incentive,
cry and want with thirst meet Prometheus
to give divine fire
shine in people's homes and warm them.
My restless soul
the heart worries
make my dream come true God
she is already on her way to You, father!
The clamp on the pipeline changes
a tired man in a sharp cap,
listening to his swollen hands
drops of fuel oil are visible,
which are stuck under the nails.
Pallor on the face
the second week bothers him
wrinkles flutter with sorrow,
dad’s pancreatic disease,
like gangrene
a snake that cannot be held in chains.
The man had strength and intelligence,
I envied you, dad.
You left me alone
on both sides of the road to life.
Dad called me
to him in the garage,
and I bathed in worldly affairs,
now it hurts to be a wasted moment.
I saw You off, dad,
a stone on the heart.
Exhausting fatigue does not take the body,
no wonder the summer heat bothers my mind,
frustration, despair
a soldier’s foot passes through a minefield.
Tanks clatter, artillery rocks,
the enemy stopped, the invader rages,
no promotion of it
avenges brave warriors with a siege ring,
people call it «сauldron».
The earth is crying, the rains are pouring,
2000 sons of patriots of Ukraine
shot jackals for the dictator's amusement.
The heart burns, the tears choke,
bad stopped for 8 years
on February 24, the enemy entered the battle.
When the Divine Enters History
. . . it’s always messy. Consider the story
of Jesus. Bride and groom in a people
defined by law, by tradition, by observances
and the bride pregnant. By the divine.
Something whispered in her ear by an Angel.
Something whispered again to Joseph.
And the acceptance of the barely heard
words and what had to be done – what
acts of deception – to keep the two,
the three of them safe, not scorned,
not driven away. For months until
that decree for a census and Joseph
and Mary preparing for the journey
to Bethlehem and back – three or four
days there, as long as it takes to be counted,
three or four days back and Mary ready,
waiting before the ride on the donkey,
before finally finding a manger,
before the star, the Angels, the shepherds,
the wise men, the Angel speaking again
to Mary and Joseph to flee, to the wise men
to break their word to Herod. The shepherds?
Who would believe them? And then the Massacre
of the Innocents, the rage of Herod turned
into the Angel of Death as Mary and Joseph
and Jesus seek their safe haven of exile
in Egypt, the land of their people’s bondage.
For three years their journey
continued, twelve hundred plus miles
of which we know nothing except they survived,
thrived for years before we are told the story
of their boy in the temple, the child-wonder
confounding old priests. This all is part
of the story, the way the divine enters history.
Best not to forget how hope comes to be,
how light grows out of darkness.
How we come to say, “Merry Christmas.”
-Byron Hoot
