New Poetry by B.Z. Niditch

Playing in a Budapest Cafe

The clock goes off, 1999
in my cold Budapest room
at the Autumnal Equinox
I'm late as usual
for my rehearsal
of Bartok's sonata in C
without excuse
know this music
pierced my sleepwalking
rush downstairs
with a strudel in hand
comb the river
with a cool breeze
by quivering hilly trees
on my tucked out shirt
bells turn up from roofs
where at first light
a cyan blue sky serves
us another color
of unconsumed sunshine
feeling like a third horseman
holding my violin case
sonata notes and rosin bag
close to the poet
Atilla Jozsef's statue
suddenly recalling
as if in a mirrored epiphany
in another world
a critic who telling us
the trio we practiced
underwritten by Szigeti
was influenced
by Benny Goodman
when jazz modulated
our composer's music.


- B.Z. Niditch 2013

New Words and Images by Wayne H. W Wolfson

Porgy On The Stairs

She said;

"You're here looking for redemption just like the rest of us..."

I shook my head and ordered a drink, she did not believe me and laughed, whipping her own shoulder in penitence with the bar rag she had just been using to dry the glasses with. I had the photo palmed in my hand, I gave it one last look before stuffing it into my pocket. From my perch at the end of the bar I would see him as soon as he came in but as I had the taps in front of me and that was where the staff gravitated to when not busy, chances are someone would be talking to me when he came in,the perfect camouflage.

It was tough making my drink stretch out but I could not afford having a buzz on during work, bloody memories of the puppy brothers incident still lingered with some who used to regularly employ me. Finally he came in, stale air and a worried look which rapidly flurried around the room akin to a wild animal that suddenly finds itself inside one of the places of man. By dumb luck I was in the middle of giving a waitress some change for the phone when his eyes fell on me. It took but a second for them to move on, well worth my newspaper money. He made a bee-line for the rear, going out the door with the backwards handle. I counted to twenty five then followed. Years of practice, i opened the door softly but fast, not all the way of course, that was an amateur mistake. As I squeezed through the opening I noticed that Little Walter had started up on the juke box. Stairs, he most likely had gone up to higher ground as most people do when in trouble. I did not want a mess but more importantly I just wanted to be done with this piece of nastiness and collect my fee. I made sure my shoes were tightly tied and pushed back my hat as to better see if i need to glance above me. Soon now it would be over one way or another.

- Wayne H.W Wolfson 2013

www.waynewolfson.com

New Poetry by Donal Mahoney

Continuity

I'm just a dog barking,

I tell my wife who's upset

with my yakking on and on

at our weekly meeting

on a Saturday morning

stationed in our recliners

facing forward as if we were

in the same row on a plane 

with the middle seat empty.

I tell her eventually

any dog will stop barking

if you give him a bowl of kibble

or let him in the house

or find his ball and play fetch.

Or do what my mother did

when I was an infant bawling 

and woke my father who faced 

work as a lineman the next day.

My mother would get out of bed,

grab her old bathrobe

and whisk me to the rocker.

Even to this day,

many decades removed,

it's the best solution:

Put a breast in my mouth

and silence will ensue.

Eventually I may even coo.

- Donal Mahoney 2013

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

The word is not Schadenfreude

Once again the Oz literary scene has been embarrassed by two blatant acts of plagiarism. In this case both the perpetrators are poets - Graham Nunn and Andrew Slattery. Neither has offered anything resembling an apology for their blatant pilfering of other poet's work, merely the most egregious dissembling. Slattery defended his crime as a "cynical experiment" in the spirit of the hoax poet, Ern Malley of the war years. Nunn merely made some wafty claim to precedent. I think someone needs to point out the italics key on his laptop. If the Avalanches have had to spend a seeming eternity getting permission to sample other people's music, then why should a writer think it appropriate to simply cut and paste the work of others without due acknowledgment, passing it off as their own for their own advancement? 

I will quote the words of the three poets responsible for exposing this travesty, Anthony Lawrence, my good friend Margie Cronin, and David Musgrave. Note the use of italics, dear reader. They denote that these are the words and thoughts of a third party:

Serial plagiarism seems to imply a lack of empathy and, in extreme cases, something like sociopathy. When exposed, some plagiarists say they are simply paying homage to other writers or use words like "collage", "cento" or "sampling". It seems that, even when the game is up and the evidence is irrefutable, the word "plagiarism" just can't be uttered".

Meanwhile, I am still awaiting an explanation from Mr Nunn for my name appearing as a judge at one of his "celebrations of the word" or some such a few years back when I was safely shivering in the mountains well south of the Tweed.

New Poetry by Ivan Jenson

Cougar alert

lady

you wear your heart

on your sleeve

which makes for 

a very sincere 

and bloody mess

you also have 

all but spelled out

the grammatically      

incorrect plans 

you have for me

and your frankly 

forward propositions would

have to be bleeped

out on prime-time TV

and I retreat

from your advances 

because you scared

the smile right off my face

when you hiked your skirt

licked your lips

and winked 

when I was only 

asking for change

for a dollar

so that I could 

feed the starving meter

where I parked

- Ivan Jenson 2013

Ivan Jenson’s Absolut Jenson painting was featured in Art News, Art in America, and Interview magazine. His art has sold at Christie’s, New York. His poems have appeared in Word Riot, Zygote in my Coffee, Camroc Press Review, Haggard and Halo, Poetry Super Highway, Mad Swirl, Underground Voices Magazine, Blazevox, and many other magazines, online and in print. Jenson is also a Contributing Editor for Commonline magazine.

After the first death

I have not let loose on the Bluepepper community for quite some time, and for that I apologise, dear reader. Sadly, I have been pre-occupied with matters of heart and soul and the illness of two very dear friends. One is still with us and thriving, thank you very much. The other, I regret to say is not. The former, the beautiful and talented daughter of one of my oldest friends, has been struggling with mental illness that reached a crisis point a year ago and this has entailed a series of trips to Melbourne by yours truly to lend support as both father figure and friend in the absence of either. Thanks to the wonders of modern medicine, she is now happily back on track. It was nevertheless a tumultuous six months which at times threatened to consume me, so torn between the conflicting emotions of love and fear was your intrepid blogger. At times I felt like a spider trapped in his own web as a pattern of co-dependency began to develop and I found part of me dreading the day she would recover and no longer need me. My fears proved unfounded, of course, but it took its toll on me nevertheless, and all the while my dog and almost constant companion for 16 years, Buster, was dying. Last Thursday he finally left us quickly and painlessly, leaving those left behind to work through the five stages of grief: Denial and Isolation, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance. I am presently hovering somewhere between the first and second stages.

I have become practiced in grief. It is one of the unfortunate side-effects of living the life I have lived for as long as I have lived it. As I write this, Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is playing over the Station Bar speakers. Perhaps no song, and no life of a singer, sums up the consequences and responsibilities of living as does that great anthem of the post-punk era. It has got me thinking of all the great poems of love and loss and mourning, such as Dylan Thomas' "A refusal to mourn the death by fire, of a child in London", with its arresting final line "After the first death there is no other". I think of the underlying sadness in that same poet's "Poem in October", which almost seems to contain the cadence of his own imminent passing. Through all the grief of my past two years, indeed of the past 13 years of my life since my mother left us on this very day in 2000, I have been both consoled and challenged by the East European masters, Zbigniew Herbert and Czeslaw Milosz, not to forget Wislawa Szymborska, all who have experienced grief to an inordinate degree, living when they did where they did, and who all exhibit the same courage and humility in the face of death and loss that seem so sadly absent from our culture.

I admit I have developed a pattern of mourning that involves wine and poetry, but I am only human, dear reader, and I don't believe by doing so I am seeking an easy path. There is no easy path through this life, not if you want to live it to its fullest. That is what the great poets tell us over and over. That is my consolation at the present as I grieve the loss of that avid miraculous little soul, Buster, and what all lovers of poetry know. Which is not to say we are a miserable bunch. Quite the contrary. We are courageous and ever-hopeful or we would not do what we do.

New Poetry by Phillip Ellis

After Ezra Pound

After all, given the nature of poetry,
it is possible to say naught of
his verse, and yet emulate
aspects of his being, the
burning enthusiasm for others that
burns in the bones and that shakes them
till the poet is working for others
as much for himself or herself.
There is that giving
away of oneself, for others
and for these others as fellow
poets. There is that development
of taste, in winkling out the betters
of one's fellows, those who will profit,
by the looming taste of those to come after
us. There is the living commitment
for the poetry of the self, and
the poetry of the others
as well, the being
that is in each of us
as poets, the dedication
to the development of poetry
as a whole, in parallel to humanity,
and then there is that isness, the cantos.


- Phillip Ellis 2013

New Poetry by Craig Kurtz

UNDER NEW ADJUSTMENT

The drop-off slot is a take-up
reel inside an administrating
system. The calendar is a
canister of isochronal pellets.
Every fossil is an absentee
ballot. This way to the
interim.

The interstice is a punch-hole
plug relayed between opposite
channels. Hold up to load.
Increments may be dormant
but the pulleys twist the
focus. The next stop is a
fixture.

Adduce synthesis from
previous.

The aperture conducts touch-
tone variance supporting
suspension operation. Restart
tension to excavate prorating.
Still motion to estimate the
locus, then enter departure
spring.

The back-up route is a cross-
hatch vent intersecting district
zones w/ short-term spokes. Open
clause. Prehistoric minutes
measured in microscopes.
Set meter for unmapped
aliquots.

Initiate rotation to
fasten.


- Craig Kurtz 2013

Craig Kurtz is an autistic 54-year old living at Twin Oaks Intentional Community where he writes poetry while simultaneously handcrafting hammocks. Recent work appears in Bad Robot, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Hyperlexia Journal, Inclement, Otoliths, Out of Our, Penny Ante Feud, Randomly Accessed Poetics, Red Fez, Samzidat Literary Journal and others. 

Vale Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)

He would drink by himself

And raise a weathered thumb

Towards the high shelf,

Calling another rum

And blackcurrant, without

Having to raise his voice,

Or order a quick stout

By a lifting of the eyes

And a discreet dumb-show

Of pulling off the top;

At closing time would go

In waders and peaked cap

Into the showery dark,

A dole-kept breadwinner

But a natural for work.

I loved his whole manner,

Sure-footed but too sly,

His deadpan sidling tact,

His fisherman's quick eye

And turned observant back.

- from "Casualty" (1979)

New Poetry by Clyde L. Borg

ADMONITIONS

To the dead! Rest!

To the drunk! Rest more!

- Clyde L. Borg 2013

Clyde L. Borg is a retired high school teacher and administrator.  He has been writing poetry and

nonfiction since 1998.  Some of his work has appeared in History Magazine, Fate Magazine, The

Hamilton Stone Review and The Rambler.  He resides in Fords, New Jersey.

New Poetry by James Piatt

Ancient Poetic Ruins

Imaginary granite words crush through my
Wandering mind, exposing jagged stone
Memories and vague questions of
Amorphous form, where space, and
Metamorphic matter mix symbolic
Similes into cobblestone sentences:

Unwritten pebbly poems, mumbling in
The insatiable never-land of my being,
Tossed to and fro by rock-strewn allusions,
Along with primordial ideas painted in slate
On fire lit walls of my gravelly soul,
Become stony ephemeral perceptions.

Images of lost poets’ words become
Blurred visions in a dreamlike world,
Disturbing my tranquility: As I sit in the
Eroding scree of rock-strewn reflections
My soul tries to perceive new visions, but
In the tangle of my mind, I only envisage

Paragraphs of flinty allegories where
Words implode into grainy poetic ruins:
I become distantly contented amidst the
Company of dead poets: My fear,
Sitting in the rubble of their entombed existence is

That I will be awakened by acts of morality, and
Be forced to awaken to today’s reality, thus being
Forced to take up my bloody pen against
The sea of chaos in the warring world, and
In doing so, smash what gentleness remains in
My gritty being. As memories of long dead poets, and
Their poems develop into rocky images, I
Pine for that, which is forever gone… or never was.


- James Piatt 2013


James Piatt is a poet from California.

New Poetry by Neil Ellman

Before the Blitz 

(after the painting by Paul Klee, 1939)

  

Before the Blitz

up was up, down was down

we knew the time of day

by the blazing sun

the length of night

by the transit of the moon

across our dreams

green in innocence

we spoke in rhymes

and played a bagatelle

on currents in the air

a moment before

the sky fell in

when down turned up

and up turned down

as time stood still

around an incoherent sun.  

- Neil Ellman 2013

The Mask with the Little Flag

(after the watercolor by Paul Klee)

Every flag in every hue

every stripe

heraldic coat of arms

crosses, crests and stars

perform a masquerade for patriots      

and pierrots

soldiers marching off to war

to die behind their masks

with little flags on shallow graves

without their names.

- Neil Ellman 2013

New Angel

(after the painting by Paul Klee)

  

Neither a bird nor butterfly

at first unformed

what creature this

with demonic, incipient wings

that dares provoke

the world to fear

new-born, hallowed child

of night

fallen from the maker

of its maker’s mind

an angel first, transmogrified

a bat

would wrap its wings

around the sun

to suffocate the light.

- Neil Ellman 2013

Twice nominated for Best of the Net, Neil Ellman writes from New Jersey.  Hundreds of his poems, many of which are ekphrastic and written in response to works of modern and contemporary art, appear in print and online journals, anthologies and chapbooks throughout the world. His first full-length collection, Parallels, consists of more than 200 of his previously published efforts.

New Poetry by Mark Goad

No Comfort

Expectations are a cheap hope.
Or no hope at all,

come to think of it:  The hopeless
have expectations

too, shaped by sere possibility,
matters not yet fact

but soon to be.  Hope would admit
impossibilities,

but that would be impossible,
wouldn’t it?

A dying man hopes to live.
His expectations

bring no comfort.


- Mark Goad 2013

New Words and Images by Wayne H. W Wolfson

                                                Blue Absinthe 1 (Wash Pencil & Paper)                                                                                                


Blue Absinthe Parts 1 & 2

The waitress told me they were having a special for today on it. The cynic in me assumed that either no one was buying it and they were trying to bleed off their stock or that a vendor had given them some sample bottles for a trial run and they just wanted to get rid of it. I had my head down in "Toilers of the Sea" and so passively shrugged my shoulders. She lit a cigarette, her gaze traveling down the street looking for the cat whose territory this area was. The drinks came, it was really blue not the wraith like pastel blue as one would have supposed. I drank it anyways, it was a little sharper than the usual stuff, i popped peanuts from the little white bowl to counter act it. Finishing my drink at first I felt a coolness akin to when one steps outside on a cold winter night, then my body involuntarily shuddered...we were right down the street from home luckily...passing the Hemingway plaque I saluted it as I did when in a good mood. My shoes were cutting into my feet..my shirt was pulling tight across my back. Oddly I had to duck my head to get into the door which was not usually the case. I asked her to help me get my shoes off they were killing me with their tightness now. She laughed saying I was lazy as I had drunk much more than this before, I was just being dramatic. My body shuddered again...I got my clothes off just before my height shot up to what I estimated   to be between 12-15 feet. I was not used to the change in perspective nor the extra weight involved in my growth. "We have to cancel dinner..." The only thing that fit was my bathrobe and that covered nothing up, I kept knocking into furniture and bumping my head, I was becoming wound up like an animal from the wild who accidentally finds its way indoors. She petted my hand told me to calm down and suggested I just get into bed as I would be more comfortable and it was safer. I got in bed, she put some Jelly Roll on to further calm me. I was told;
"Ok now breathe in...breathe out...."
The panic stopped. Unless I was on my side or bent my knees I did not fit fully on the bed. The thought of the physical mechanics of us, with me in this state popped into my head. I said her name and was about to give her my look when a railroad spike went right into my forehead killing the mood and causing me to yelp. She said that she would make coffee and if that did not help she would run back to the cafe after to ask the waitress how long the effects lasted.
I drank the coffee which was too hot for my taste out of the little doll cup. I felt tired now.
"Want me to go?"
"You should run down and check, don't mess things up for me there, they just started pouring for me with a heavy hand and throwing free rounds my way, I do not need you ruining a hang out by breaking the waitress's heart. "
Where it not for the rest of the situation she would have pulled more of a face but right now things dipped in my favor on the scoreboard, there was always tomorrow though..

                                           Blue Absinthe 2 (Ink Brush Pen & Paper)                                                          

She said "Why did you drink it again, remember what happened last time?"
I was carefully trying to handle my Stravinsky record which had been reduced to the size of a game board piece. I pretended not to hear her but it was no good, I could feel her staring at me. I shrugged my shoulders.
"How much did you have?"
Before I could, she answered her own question.
"Obviously more, a lot more as you are even bigger than last time,,,,"
I told her I was going out, being careful not to step on the cat whose cries occurred at the same times every day making him a sort of neighborhood clock.


- Wayne H. W Wolfson 2013

www.waynewolfson.com

New Poetry by Phillip Ellis

Once on a Beach

Once, when I was writing with my fingertips
on a beachbroad slate of sand, I turned to look
to where my feet had marred, and I wondered, then,
whether the wind would easily erase them.

I wondered whether every trace of myself
would suffer the frottage that is erasure,
as the wind would rub away my feet's passage
between its fingers as if contemplating.

And the wind had whispered low, and the sand hissed
as the grains were sporadically hustled in,
and I turned away then, as if born fearful,
afraid to see mortality in the face.


- Phillip Ellis 2013

BIO: Phillip A. Ellis is a freelance critic, poet and scholar. His chapbooks, The Flayed Man, Symptoms Positive and Negative and Arkham Monologues, are available. He is working on a collection for Diminuendo Press. Another has been accepted by Hippocampus Press. He is the editor of Melaleuca. His website is at http://www.phillipaellis.com/

New Poetry by John Saunders

Somebody

(im Shane Dunne)

I am somebody,

or maybe not.

Free bird with the wrought of metal,

a stand-alone – rebellious.

This dislocation of time

against the sunset

throws me a life line

that helps me ride the plains –

identity unframed.

I find a bird grounded

by a broken wing,

cup it to my breast

until its strength is found,

then it flies into the sky,

calls to me from high.

- John Saunders  2013

John Saunders’ first collection ‘After the Accident’ was published in 2010 by Lapwing Press, Belfast. His poems have appeared in Revival, The Moth Magazine, Crannog, Prairie Schooner Literary Journal (Nebraska), Sharp Review, The Stony Thursday Book, Boyne Berries, The New Binary Press Anthology of Po etry, Volume 1, Riposte, and on line, The Smoking Poet, Minus Nine Squared, The First Cut, The Weary Blues, Burning Bush 2, Weekenders, Poetry Bus and poetry 24.  

New Poetry by Nathanael O'Reilly

Ode to a Coffee Pot

Ah, Bodum! For two decades

you have travelled across the seas

my constant portable companion

dwelt with me on three continents

and never ceased to provide

comfort when called upon

Together we crossed the Széchenyi

endured American autumns in exile

survived a London winter in poverty

enjoyed marvellous homecomings

 

I gently spoon freshly-ground

Colombian coffee into you

and fill you with boiling water

let you brew on your own

allow you to take your time

like a teenage girl smoking

on the front step

of a run-down milk bar

before pressing your plunger

slowly towards your base

Together we make lovely liquid

smooth as the fleece of a vicuña

let us continue collaborating

far into the future

I will continue to protect you

whether journeying

or staying home, dear Bodum

- Nathanael O'Reilly 2013

Nathanael O'Reilly is the author of Exploring Suburbia: The Suburbs in the Contemporary Australian Novel Poetry Reviews Editor for Transnational Literature President of the American Association of Australasian Literary Studies (AAALS).

A Poem for Dransfield

a previously unpublished poem for Michael Dransfield by Cornelis Vleeskens c.1973 found among his papers while i was working on them....pete spence

New Poetry by Donal Mahoney

Concert at Bernie's

When Bernie wakes at 6 a.m.

there's a piano on his chest

and Erroll Garner's playing "Misty."

Sinatra's on the headboard 

improvising lyrics

and Krupa's in the corner 

painting on the drums.

The music is magnificent.

Once the song is over 

Bernie chants his morning prayers,

shaves and showers and limps to work

for another day at the gherkin factory. 

The foreman, Mr. Simpkins, is an ogre 

nonpareil, a sumbitch unsurpassed, 

who stalks the catwalk all day long

with megaphone and stopwatch.

At 5 p.m. the factory spits Bernie 

and his cohorts out the door 

so Bernie limps to the Hot Wok Shack

and buys a carton of Egg Fu Yung 

and heads back home to wait for dawn 

so he can hear Erroll play "Night and Day"  

while Sinatra does the vocal and

Krupa punctuates the piece

softly on the drums.

Bernie spends each day in hell but dawn 

is always a concert from heaven.

- Donal Mahoney 2013

Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.

New Poetry by Breda Wall Ryan

Childhood Sin

...the earthworm

we split

to see the head

grow a tail

the tail

a new head

instead

five simple hearts

failed

one by one...

another regret

- Breda Wall Ryan 2013

       

Stardrift

Nights we lay still as hares

in our grass form,

balanced the rising moon

on our toes,

skyward-stretched arms

finger-tipped with stars.

Tonight you sit alone

in the screen’s blue glow,

tea cold at your elbow,

while I watch

distant balefires,

light years between us.

- Breda Wall Ryan 2013

Breda Wall Ryan has been shortlisted for several international literary prizes for fiction and poetry, most recently The Fish Poetry Prize, and won the UCD Anthology Contest(poetry) 2011. Her work is published in anthologies and in journals. has won or been shortlisted for several literary prizes. A member of Hibernian Poetry, Dublin, she has an M. Phil. in Creative Writing from Trinity C ollege, Dublin. She has completed a short story collection, The Hardest Winter and Other Stories and a poetry collection, The Woman who Toasted the Owl.