in the heavy rhythm that knocks at the gate of history
time dissipates darkness, the dawn breaks
fragments of memories unite into one image
portraying the people from thousands of years ago
they had never seen before
the soul rising from the ruins
lightning stimulates the sleep hormone
the words sprout from the roots of the trees
the branches raise their eyes to the sky
the tears from above soothe the dry throat
insomnia brings about disorder
sleepwalk spreads like clouds
on the edge, people seek faith,
the swan isolates, the sea roars.
the wheel of time loses direction
fierce winds swirl the calm waves
the dark flow of purple rain floods the newly sprouted flowers
the dike is no longer on the shore
the sea is no longer in the sea
the pleasures of life create wings of light
lush branches and leaves grow from rotten logs
postmodernism indicates a bright period
the white sheet inscribed with yellow and red symbols
like barren lands sprinkled with saliva and salt
millennial expressions permeate ink and paper
the profound words awake from the drawers on the walls
the eyes in the tombs frightfully stare
the trembling hand reaches into the library in the afternoon sun
dusk and dawn go on
Profound words asleep
(Unsolved)
the sea removes its veil
mountain ridges create new settlements
humanity is torn apart
the celestial vault is unclear
creation and destruction became fine arts
when humans evolved, the Ice Age was forgotten
people’s desires are infinitely greater
faith and contradiction are overlapping
only the poet’s soul sees the tree flowers
my nostrils perceive the smell of old books.
morning glow covered by clouds and fog
alien guests appear in the magical sky
brains exterminating amongst each other
religion is not a true spiritual devotion
monks’ love affairs give birth to children
Buddhist nuns give birth in misery
nature undergoes a destruction process
discoveries accelerate people’s panic
but you keep your faith that death
brings rebirth,
a bird looking for the forest
June 23, 2017
Profound words asleep
Reading
the scent of ink passes from hand to heart
burning desire stimulates the senses
veins beat inside the rolled sleeves
the solution to this state is like a dream wind that smacks the flesh
I hope that fireflies jump into written words
meditating, we travel through the cosmos
an ark heading to infinity
when the morning light removes the veil
the world shows its true face
hidden dreams pass through the time tunnel
directed to the hut of steel and cement
they run back and forth through the underground
at the spring in the forest, the bone whistle whispers
my dream lifts the billows
Utopia
Foreword: If people continue to destroy the environment,
what will happen to the Earth?
the world evolves continuously, even before our era
the monkey thinks of the empty forest
the sky protests crying
his tears roll down to the ground
making the savages appear
the sun like a magic mirror,
mercury – destructive ultraviolet rays
the constellation is no longer fascinating
it sinks into the sea
the air blooms, the waters rise muttering,
ants dance inside the shells
animals discuss livelihoods
the dinosaur and the elephant sweat working in agriculture
the lion and the tiger are eager to get married and have offspring
the leaves of the trees are like the palms of the sky
butterflies and dragonflies cannot be seen under the sun
thick smoke floats above the clouds
the mountain range is like an infinite fence
we were born in the air
hands raised to the olive tree, interpret the verses of the oracle
the beast is banished to slavery
trees abound in fruits
birds and insects take care of the harvest
stones discuss how to rewrite history
the fish are guarding the corrupt officials
rain and dew create eternal life
the Earth gave life to the Earth.
Rivers
desire – a river
springing from the blood of our ancestors
civilized and primitive behaviors interchange
war, murder, and redemption
genetic mutation
in the Neolithic,
stone and fire offered wisdom
most people lived like puppets
nobody knows if there was a god
men and women crossed the rivers of the high mountains
driven by the flames of desire
their union gave birth to the seas and the land.
March 16, 2017
Anna Keiko (original name: Wang Xianglian) is an internationally renowned poet, writer, editor and painter living in Shanghai. Graduated from East China University of Political Science and Law. The founder, President and editor-in-chief of ACC Shanghai Huifen International Literary Association, the World Poetry promoter, the International Peace Ambassador Outstanding Contribution Award winner. Chinese young literary director. Her poems have been translated into more than 30 languages and published more than 2,000 in more than 500 newspapers and magazines in more than 50 countries. Published 11 books of poetry, (waiting for the bus) poems by the famous composer Tu Bahai into songs. She has been invited to participate in international poetry festivals in more than a dozen countries, Yale University invited her to participate in the International Poetry Symposium for three consecutive years, and Salem University invited her as an international poet’s personal poetry seminar program. She has won 33 International poetry prizes and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2020.
The Universal Through the Local: Brian Michael Barbeito’s Still Some Crazy Summer Wind Coming Through
(Large dark crow or raven silhouetted against a dark and cloudy sky)
Reviewer- Sabrina Moore
October 22, 2024
Publisher- Dark Winter Press (July, 2024)
Type- Soft Cover Book
Genre- Prose Poetry and Landscape Photography
Pages- 125 pages
Language- English
Author- Brian Michael Barbeito
Image From- Page 64, Guru, World, Other
Brian Michael Barbeito’s prose poetry takes readers on a reflective journey, exploring themes of personal displacement and the search for belonging. In works like Can I Find Where I Used to Be and Of Flowers and Polite Complaints, Barbeito delves into nostalgia, loss, and existential questioning.
Barbeito’s style blends narrative and lyrical elements, creating a dreamlike quality that draws readers into his world. His use of natural imagery serves as both a source of comfort and a metaphor for the speaker’s desire to rise above life’s challenges. The “Angel of Time” in, Of Flowers and Polite Complaints, is where the speaker reflects on fate and purpose in the world. Barbeito contrasts beauty with harsh realities, likening the fragility of flowers to the cruelty of life. This balance between beauty and pain gives his prose emotional depth and philosophical insight.
Overall, Barbeito’s prose poetry invites readers to sit with uncertainty and discomfort, while offering moments of hope and spiritual strength. His reflections on the divine and nature reveal a deep introspection, as he searches for peace away from the “base and cruel” world he describes. His work resonates not only for its vivid imagery but also for its honest exploration of existential themes. Through his balance of longing and acceptance, Barbeito captures the universal human experience of seeking meaning in a chaotic world.
Who among us is unfamiliar with the holocaust, forever etched in history and to some, their memory?
In Duane Vorhees’s introductory poem from his latest work Between Holocausts: “A Mind Rewinds” Vorhees captures something indescribable, when he writes:
My psyche is littered with living Its/ Disregarded superegos still whine/ Od and Ob hiss between young green vines/Bony hilltops strain to catch day’s first light/ their bloodguilt insufficiently contrite/My psyche is littered with living Its…” Perhaps he is describing sephardic warriors of yore and in extant …who were “disregarded” [and[ deemed “insufficient”.
I found the book’s neurodivergent style instructive, creative, intuitive, alarming and haunting….as it grapples with a subject matter such as the holocaust with a sort of classic poetic indirectness that reads like a literary puzzle with a cartage of sometimes obscure literary symbolisms and references that compels further investigation.
Take the use of “midnight”, which in literature can symbolize death, despair, hope, a place between life and death. For example in poetic forefather Walt Whitman’s poem “A Clear Midnight” midnight represents death as a peaceful ending of the day. Whereas in contemporary Chinese literature, midnight can suggest despair OR hope, emblematizing the emotional incongruity in the culture.
The repetitious nature of the poems make for a particularly eerie experience, like an ominous cautionary tale emanated from the sagacious tongue of someone GRAND..whether grandfather or grandmother, you want to lean forward in attention and anticipation. The author achieves preternatural phenomena in the way that he presents his writings, which I found quite refreshing.
Scholastic philosopher St. Thomas Aquinas of Sicily– who synthesized Christian theology with Aristotelian philosophy, contended that the “supernatural” comprised of “God’s unmediated actions” while the “natural” is “what happens always or most of the time” and the “preternatural” is “what happens rarely, but nonetheless by the agency of created beings…”
In “WHAT I DID LEARN”, Vorhees goes full throttle for the macabre and melancholy in this “preternatural” self-revelatory poem. I say “preternatural” because having been voraciously reading early 20th century poetry like Robert Frost and E.E. Cummings since the 8th grade, I have never come across a Vorhees-like style and I consider myself as having been around the “poetic block” a few times…in WHAT I DID LEARN, he writes:
“My music group’s hit singles/stopped so many songs ago/I’ve learned my shakes and wrinkles and still I wait for wisdom…”
As I read these words I felt like an exposed viscera on legs, figuratively inside/out vibes…for I too am learning “my shakes and wrinkles” yet still “I wait” to acquire the wisdom that I presumed would come with the drudging accumulation of years.
LIke Frost, Vorhees investigates complex social and philosophical themes with mastery but with a poignant bout of relatable and humbled vulnerability which is the plight and euphoria, conundrum and exaltation of any type of artist.
Could Vorhees be described as an itinerant troubadour, who in the middle ages were the shining knights of poetry?
Troubadour from an old Occitan (an ancient province that stretched from south of France from east to west) word meaning “to compose”? Perhaps. Or maybe he’s just a guy with something to say about some things that matter to him and he conceivably hopes that they matter to you as well.
The poems read like a heuristic and Socratic exercise replete with mythical biblical and literary symbolisms.
While we’re at it, why not add Mimetic Theory to the list? This terminology is described as a theory of human behavior and culture that explains how human desire and imitation lead to conflict and violence:
What better way to exemplify the ideologies of mimetic desire-conflict- and scapegoating than the horrific and fugly HOLOCAUST!
Here is a synopsis of Mimetic Theory, it’s inception and evolution:
Origin The theory was developed by French philosopher, literary critic, and anthropologist René Girard (1923–2015).
Process Mimetic theory moves through four stages:
Mimetic desire: People imitate others and want what other people want.
Conflict: People compete for the same goods, leading to conflict.
Scapegoating: A group singles out an individual or problem as the source of their problems and violently expels or eliminates them.
Cover-up: Human culture springs up around the scapegoating mechanism to cover up the founding murder.
Throughout history, scapegoating has been the instigator of many atrocities. From the inception of slavery, to Adolf Hitler’s holocaust exterminating millions of Jewish people and what he considered “undesirable” people to the Chinese Exclusion Act of the late 19th century and now Haitian immigrants, both having been branded as “dog and cat eaters” which makes it easier to draft laws against them for you must dehumanize to make it easier to vaporize them from the planet, right?
Although the book is replete with an infelicitous subject matter, after reading it, your resistance to transfiguration could conceivably be an exercise in futility; you will emerge from the chrysalis of self-consciousness to a wise sage having been dug up from the darkness of an egregious past and exposed to ebb and flow of a reformatory present through poetic light and historical literary erudition.
Nothing is nugatory, every word, every nuance seems carefully selected. Vorhees is serving fluid paradoxical wordplay and intrigue, cajoling the reader to read on and hopefully decode the cleverly coded script.
Vorhees writes with ingenuity, authenticity and authority. A MUST read for anyone willing to trek a trip down a dark path with a promise of light ahead. The stuff of LIFE! A familiar trope done in an unfamiliar way…a literary TRIUMPH!
Duane Vorhees’ title Between Holocausts will come out later this fall from Hog Press.
Duane Vorhees is an American poet in Thailand. He is the author of THE MANY LOVES OF DUANE VORHEES, HEAVEN, GIFT: GOD RUNS THROUGH ALL THESE ROOMS, MEMORIES ARE LINKED LIKE OASES, A CONSIDERABLE SHARE OF FELICITY, and THE WOMB AND THE BRAIN. Born in Farmersville, Ohio, USA, he graduated from Bowling Green State University with a doctorate in American Culture Studies. He has taught at Seoul National University, Korea University, and the Asian Division of the University of Maryland University College (now the University of Maryland Global Campus).
Jacques Fleury
Jacques Fleury is a Boston Globe featured Haitian-American Poet, Educator, Author of four books and literary arts student at Harvard University online. His latest publication “You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self” & other titles are available at all Boston Public Libraries, the University of Massachusetts Healey Library, University of Wyoming, Askews and Holts Library Services in the United Kingdom, The Harvard Book Store, The Grolier Poetry Bookshop, amazon etc… He has been published in prestigious publications such as Muddy River Poetry Review, the Cornell University Press anthology Class Lives: Stories from Our Economic Divide, Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene among others…Visit him at: http://www.authorsden.com/jacquesfleury.
