Black Moon Promise Bathroom confessions backdoor redemption Black moon promise made to a leather winged Angel Afterglow addict disciple of dawn woman standing at the edge of love listening for the silence in between the words whispered by an ambidextrous tongue. Loiterer in dim luminescence under bloodshot skies. beautiful visions reminding her of horrible things knowing the best part of truth are the lies casualty of kindness twilight apostle feeling what is not her favorite color the song of flawed perfection its taste bitter on her lips The melody fading along with the last smile of summer
Christopher Bernard’s installment of The Ghost Trolley
The Ghost Trolley: A Tale for Children and Their Adults, Chapters 5, 6 and 7
By Christopher Bernard
Chapter 5. One Eye
The two children crept up to a fallen tree just a stone’s throw from a gate where the Korgans had entered. Soldiers were beginning to come and go, carrying burdens of various kinds, nondescript bags and crates, some of them weapons – what looked to Petey like spears and rifles combined in some weird way – and a few civilians, maybe working for the military, on early morning errands and chores outside the camp. A burly guard kept watch, eyeing his fellow soldiers with deep suspicion as if expecting at any moment to find a spy.
The Korgan with the muddy boots had glanced back as he entered the gate with a salute to the guard, who stiffened to attention – Petey noticed muddy boots had only one eye. The other was covered with a patch.
Sharlotta whispered, “We got to get into camp somehow—”
A strange, cruel shriek interrupted her. Under a tree nearby a trio of scruffy-looking Korgan kids—a few years younger than they were—were playing, to the two children’s horror, a cruel game of toss-the-kitty. The kitten mewed frantically, its little tail spinning as it flew as the little Korgans tossed it back and forth with yips and shrieks of a mean pleasure. A large tabby sat crouched in the grass, its tail fluffed, its mouth open and clicking ominously, its eyes watching the kitten being tossed back and forth with a look of fascinated hopelessness.
“So terrible!” whispered Sharlotta.
Petey scowled under his watch cap. He always hated seeing helpless creatures being tormented.
A moment later Sharlotta said, “Where you go?”
“Just a sec.” Petey slipped away into the brush.
A few minutes later a stone came flying out at the Korgans. Then a second. Then a third.
“Paonas!” shrieked one of the little Korgans.
The kitten fell onto a soft patch of grass and the three kids ran off, disappearing through the gate. The guard ignored them as he peered hard at a passing soldier hunched under a box of projectiles. “Ain’t you seen me a thousand times, Harree? Watcha staring a’ mee loik ya’ thought me were a Paonee?”
“Maybe ya’ bee, Jorok!” snarled the guard. “Ya wouldna bee the feerst t’ve turned tween dawn ’n’ noon on a visit outer the gates.”
The guard’s brief distraction did not go unnoticed: Petey ran from the brush, swept up the frightened kitten, and ran back with it to Sharlotta.
“Mew!” went the kitty. “Mew!’
“Poor thing!” Sharlotta whispered, cuddling it against her cheek. “You safe now.”
But the kitten didn’t look too sure of that.
After a moment, the large tabby emerged from a bush and sat nearby, staring at them suspiciously.
“Must be the mom,” said Petey. Sharlotta placed the kitten carefully near the tabby, who hissed instinctively at the young Creel, then sniffed at the kitten, bit it by the scruff of the neck and carried it swiftly into the brush.
“Now all we must do be to get into camp,” said Sharlotta.
“And follow One Eye.”
Suddenly they looked at each other. They had gotten the same idea.
“We have to dress like Korgan children,” said Petey.
It was a little trickier than that, of course: they would have to disguise themselves until they convincingly looked like Korgan children.
“Well,” said Petey, in a subdued voice, “their hair is dark, and really long . . .” His own hair was bright orange and very short.
“And dirty! And full of snarls!” Sharlotta’s voice was filled with disgust. “And clothes of them be all muddy, and they look they have not had bath in one month!”
Petey looked solemn: he did not exactly enjoy taking baths himself, and in fact had skipped one last night, so he could get up early (anyway, that had been his excuse). He hoped Sharlotta hadn’t noticed.
“But that means,” he said, “that if we get all dirty, and rough up our clothes and hair, they might not notice we’re not Korgans. After all, adults never really look too closely at children who aren’t their own.”
“Yes,” Sharlotta said thoughtfully, “I notice that.”
“And if they do look, and think we don’t look quite right,” Petey said, brightly, “they’ll just blame their parents!”
So, not having a better idea, and needing to get into the camp as soon as possible so they could follow One Eye, they set about roughing up their hair and clothes and smearing mud on their faces and hands, and making themselves look generally scruffy and grungy and beat-up and dirty. Petey had to apply a lot of mud makeup to the hair at the edge of his cap: it took a lot of dirt to hide the orange, even when he pulled the cap down to his ears.
“There be one good thing,” Sharlotta said cheerfully. “I can wear my jacket right side out now.”
Now the smears of ash stains looked just right for a scruffy Korgan girl.
“How I look?” asked Sharlotta after they were done.
Petey looked her over doubtfully.
“Your hair looks too pretty.”
Sharlotta scowled.
“And your head look too ugly! You never have to comb long hair full of snarls!”
“And it’s way too clean . . .”
Petey, without further ado, filled both hands with mud and splattered it over Sharlotta’s hair, at the same time grabbing and violently matting it.
Sharlotta shrieked.
“What you doing! Stop that! Right now!”
They started wrestling and fell in the mud.
“What’s goin’ on over there?” a Korgan voice rang out.
A shadow fell over them and they stopped, suddenly terrified.
Petey glanced up and saw, against the sun, the guard with his lance staring down at them.
“Quit fightin’ and get back into camp. There be Paonas around here, and they eat little-uns like you for breakfast. Go home!”
The children, covered with mud and with their tangled, dirty hair in their faces, were too frightened to say a word, so they stood up and scampered through the open gate into the camp.
Chapter 6. The Camp of the Korgans
The children were faced with a spaghetti of dirt lanes and passages through which a strange assortment of ox and donkey carts and curious-looking tanks, with long snaking treads, snout-like guns, and tall, needle-like turrets, and fat, tubby armored cars and troops of Korgans moved, mostly armed soldiers, some marching in platoons as their sergeants barked orders, some on the backs of horse-like creatures, or on patrol, some bustling about on unknown errands, some sitting in front of their tents, cleaning their weapons and trading jests.
Among the crowds were more civilians, women and children and a few old men and women, but all of the Korgans looked curiously fierce, whether because of the styles of the clothes they wore, or their habit of expression, or just how they were born; they all looked angry about some unknown grievance, and Petey quickly decided he had better put on his “angry face” if he hoped to fit in—even though he didn’t feel especially angry, just excited and a little scared—and looking scared he realized would definitely not do.
The camp was as big as a small town constructed entirely of tents and cabins, huts and sheds, arm depots, bivouacs, lookout towers and long, ramshackle barracks above which flagpoles rose and the Korgan flag flapped loosely in the morning air—a black flag with a pair of lightning bolts crossed in a crimson circle.
The children had no time to investigate their surroundings and didn’t want to stand out by gawking, so they scampered down several lanes till they found an unused tent in a vacant corner and crouched behind it. They had been right: no one had paid any heed to them; they were just a pair of urchins playing in the street.
One curious thing that Petey noticed about the Korgans: though the hair of some of them was brighter and shinier than that of others (they ran from sandy to streaked, from dark to dirty to platinum, and some were even like what Petey’s mother referred to contemptuously as “peroxide”), they were all, every single one of them, blond.
“You know what?” Petey suddenly grinned. He felt quite exhilarated.
“What?”
“That was fun!”
Boy, Sharlotta looked funny, with her hair all mussed and full of mud! But maybe he should keep the thought to himself. Girls could react weirdly to teasing—not like boys, who would just push you and tease you back, then forget about it.
Petey was also going to tell her about making sure she put on her angry face, like the Korgans, but she looked angry enough on her own, now they were in the camp, so maybe she didn’t need to be told.
Sharlotta looked askance at Petey.
“There must be special place where they keep prisoners,” she said in a whisper.
“I’ll bet he’ll take us to it if we can find One Eye,” said the boy. “He was talking about having to interrogate your family.”
“That was the other one. But no matter.”
“It was One Eye.”
“It was the other one!”
“No, it was One Eye! And anyway, we only know what he looks like.”
Sharlotta was silent, with dignity.
“All right, Know-It-All, and how do we find him?”
Petey stared down at the dirt between his knees where he was crouching.
“Well, we can’t stay here,” said Sharlotta. “They won’t come to us. How do I look?”
“Honest?”
“Honest.”
“Terrible!”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. You look terrible!”
“Good,” Sharlotta said stiffly,
“How about me?”
“Well, you look awful!”
“You sure?”
“Of course I be sure!”
“Really truly awful?’
“Really truly awful!”
“Good!”
Petey rather liked the idea of looking awful but decided not to press his luck by asking a third time.
He paused and took a breath.
“Are you ready?”
“No. But that not matter, yes?”
Petey shrugged.
They both took a breath, and went out into the camp.
There was a feeling of tension in the air. Korgans on duty seemed especially busy, rushed, and even off-duty Korgans looked tense; a truck bristling with armed soldiers careened through the street past the two children, the soldiers shouting for pedestrians to get out of the way.
Many of the soldiers had covered their faces with red and black war paint, and their solid, hard bodies made the ground rumble as they marched past on the double.
Soldiers walking the streets greeted each other with sharp, animal-like cries.
Some of the Korgans looked at the two children a little too closely, a cold gleam in their eyes. Petey was especially worried Sharlotta didn’t look quite “terrible” enough. Maybe she was one of those girls who, no matter what they did to themselves, always looked nice. He should have put more mud in her hair.
He was going to tell her to cover her face with her bangs when a Korgan suddenly stopped them.
“Hey, girlie!” he said, grinning at Sharlotta and pulling her hair away from her face. “Anybody tell you you cute as a Paona? Bet you get that from fellas all the time!”
Sharlotta stared furiously at him.
“And you,” she shouted, “look just like a Korgan!”
The Korgan hooted, laughing, as the children scampered off.
Sharlotta pulled her hair over her face until only one eye peered out as if through a parted curtain, without her companion having to advise it.
They huddled behind a pile of junked weapons, watching the passing parade. Drums thundered, trumpets rang out, and cries of “Ramora, Ramora!” and “Death to Steed!” echoed through the camp as a war party gathered in a parade ground in front of them.
Then, from a broad space between two low barracks, a solemn procession emerged and moved toward them.
Chapter 7. Bang Bang and Blue Moon
Columns of armed soldiers in black uniforms and helmets, with the strange crossbow machine guns across their chests, marched in precise and mechanical order, their simultaneous tread shaking the ground. Behind the soldiers moved a platform, like the floats Petey had seen in parades at home, but draped in red and black, on which stood a Korgan, in a commanding pose and wearing scarlet robes and a black cone-shaped hat, like a wizard at a Halloween party, that Petey would have laughed at any other time. He looked to the young boy like a priest and held a staff shaped like a young dead tree, its branches writhing in profile against the sky. Behind him rose a monumental figure of crossed lighting, like the figure in the banners, but all of gold. The priest’s face was covered with red streaks like war paint. And kneeling in front of him, two acolytes held up an open book as he made elaborate gestures with his small, gloved hands and chanted in an incomprehensible tongue.
The platform, a kind of large moving altar, was being pulled by a mass of tall, delicate-looking creatures, with pointed ears and elven features, and patches of fur on their cheeks and arms, their heads and faces, and they dragged the platform with long ropes tied around their shoulders and waists. They seemed vaguely familiar to Petey. Two Korgans with whips “encouraged” them, with shouts and lashes, to keep moving in time with the marching soldiers.
Suddenly the boy realized where he had seen them before, or creatures like them. They were like the monkeys he had seen when the yellow trolley had first entered the forest in Otherwise.
“That must be Altar of Ramora,” Sharlotta whispered. “I hear of it but never see it before. And those are Paona. Prisoners that have been turned into slaves.”
Petey realized something else that was strange and unsettling: if the Paonas were like monkeys, then the Korgans were like people . . .
Behind the altar a choir of Korgans in black robes solemnly marched, singing a hymn to the rhythm of the marching soldiers—but it was like no hymn Petey had never heard in any church he knew.
It was a series of blood-curdling cries and swooping yells, with fists raised to heaven, to discordant blasts of trumpets and drums.
Behind the angry choristers came a crowd of Korgan women, looking cowed and fearful, their hands clasped before them and their heads bowed. And behind the women scampered a rag-tag gang of Korgan children, whooping and shrieking.
Sharlotta and Petey watched as the procession passed. Then a couple of the Korgan children following the women ran up to them. One of them picked up a pistol from the pile of junked weapons and started waving it.
“Bang, bang, Paona!” he shouted at Petey. “You dead!”
“I’m not a Paona!” Petey shouted back, immediately regretting it. Being silent would probably have been wiser just now; this was not the first time that thought had occurred to him, invariably a fraction of a second too late.
“Yes you be!”
Petey glared back at the boy.
“You new here?” the girl Korgan asked Sharlotta, in a deep, froggy voice.
“Yes,” Sharlotta said, carefully lowering her voice and trying to imitate the frogginess of the other’s voice.
The boy aimed his pistol at Petey.
“Bang, bang! You dead!”
“Where you from?” asked the girl Korgan.
“Over there.” Sharlotta pointed vaguely toward the east.
“The land of the blue moon?” the girl said, sounding skeptical. And the blue moon was indeed already drooping in that part of the sky.
“I said you dead! Now fall down!”
Petey glared even harder at the boy. He would not fall down just because he was ordered to.
“I always wanted to go to the land of the blue moon,” said the girl.
“You fall down! You dead! I just kill you!”
“Maybe I can come and visit you?” she asked politely.
“If you want,” said Sharlotta in her froggiest voice.
“No, you fall dead!” said Petey, who pulled a pistol out from the pile and started waving it at the boy.
There was the sound of an explosion. All of the children stared in alarm at the Korgan boy: his pistol had gone off, the bullet just missing Petey’s head.
The hair on the Korgan boy’s head rose like the fur on a frightened cat, and he threw down the pistol and ran off, followed by the girl, after a shrug and a shy glance back at Sharlotta. “Boys!” she cried out as she ran off.
Petey dropped the pistol and the two of them ran behind the pile as a massive Korgan soldier picked up the fallen gun and tossed it onto the pile.
It was One Eye.
“You!” he shouted.
Petey felt a hand grab his shoulder and lift him bodily from the ground.
This is it, thought Petey. I’ll never get home alive.
“Many times you have been told never to play around weapon dumps.” The Korgan spoke in a calm, measured voice, like a more brutal version of Petey’s dad’s. “How often must we tell you? You might kill someone. You might kill each other. You might kill me.”
One Eye gave Petey a single hard fierce shake that made the boy’s teeth rattle in his head (unlike his dad, who rarely did more than give him lectures and send him to bed without his smartphone), then opened his hand and let him drop to the ground.
“Now go home. And take your girl friend with you.” One Eye looked at Sharlotta, whom he had not even bothered to chastise—she wasn’t sure which insulted her more, this, his calling her Petey’s “girl friend” or his general attitude of condescension and contempt. She was about to give him a piece of her mind when Petey—seeing her turn red and open her mouth—pulled her away, and they ran off, as ordered. Sharlotta glared back, with fury in her eye, and caught One Eye staring after them strangely, with his single crimson eye, as though he had noticed something that did not seem quite right. Then Sharlotta noticed that Petey had a tear in his cap, and a patch of his hair was exposed, like the bright skin of an orange.
They ran behind a horse cart and stopped.
“Some of your hair be showing through a tear in your cap,” said Sharlotta.
“Oh!” said Petey. Unfortunately, there was no mud where they were, but there was some dust, which he applied vigorously. “How does that look?”
“A little to left—no, to right—no, to left—no—yes—here, let me . . .”
And Sharlotta applied her hands to his head as Petey scowled.
“There,” she said, “that better, anyway. What be your parents thinking when they give you orange hair?”
But Petey had no time for another tedious debate on that subject.
“Look!”
One Eye was walking away after commanding a guard to keep watch over the weapons pile. Petey pulled the young Creel to the other side of the cart as One Eye disappeared into a warren of lanes among a chaos of tents, then they followed, at safe distance, after him.
One thing made it easy for them: the black strip of his eye patch stuck out against his dirty yellow hair, even in a crowd of Korgan backs, so they didn’t have to follow too closely. Sharlotta was worried he had seen through their disguise, but knew there wasn’t much they could do about it. As long as they didn’t bump into their new Korgan “friends,” Blue Moon and Bang Bang.
They threaded slowly through the colorful encampment, passing whole mini-villages where tangles of Korgan families lived, with smells of cooking by the small Korgan women wafting across them (and making both of them hungry, as Petey hadn’t had much breakfast, and Sharlotta hadn’t eaten since before the raid on her home the night before)—smells of baking bread and soup and coffee—with long lines of washing hanging out to dry, showing the array of Korgan fashions for men and women, girls and boys, and even their undergarments waving like banners in the breeze (Petey was left wondering at some of those, they were so peculiarly shaped, whereas Sharlotta delicately pretended not to notice)—but all the time keeping One Eye in sight, losing him only once, when he turned into a weirdly constructed little hut with a chimney three stories tall and didn’t come out for ten minutes, and they thought they had lost him for good; then he came out, adjusted his belt and continued on. Petey turned to the young girl and grinned. “A Korgan outhouse!”
At last One Eye turned into what looked like a litter dump in a distant corner of the camp where skinny, famished pariah dogs lurked, biting and snarling at each other over snatches of left-over garbage. He approached a forbidding-looking tent, black and low. Two guards at the entrance saluted him sharply, and One Eye saluted cursorily back and disappeared inside.
The sun stood, brilliant and hot, at the peak of the green sky.
Then a light wind began blowing.
Steven Croft reviews Joyce Carol Oates’ American Melancholy
Human is as Human Does: A Review of American Melancholy by Joyce Carol Oates
Reading American Melancholy (Ecco, 2021), the new collection of poems by Joyce Carol Oates, I thought: America is manic in our uncritical self-esteem and self-confidence, Joyce Carol Oates is mantic in her suggestion of where we are going and poetic descriptions of where we have been — [I couldn’t resist]. She begins the collection with a husband reading the Nation in the ease of a hammock. A poem in which doubt is delivered lightly, easy to bear in the beauty of the metaphors:
before dusk rises from the earthbefore the not-knowing if (ever) (again) the earthwill turn on its axis to the light, the great furnaceof the light….
A virtuoso writer, Oates could have spent her career as a poet soothing our anxiety and we would have bought those books. Take a poem like “On This Morning of Grief” from a previous collection (Tenderness), it will make you feel absolutely good, but Ms. Oates has always had an Ancient Mariner bent towards awful seriousness in her storytelling, and by poem number two of Melancholy we are already heading there (there is the blithe, Apollinaire-like surprise of “Kite” — a shape poem with a soft pensive turn, like a kite — and her consideration of her cat Cherie’s purrrsonality traits [I couldn’t resist], Jubilate: An Homage in Catterel Verse, but “easy listening” poems are as rare here as in any JCO collection).
Poem number two, Exsanguination, a short lyric, its question like an uncryptic koan, makes me think of the age-old question, “What is the nature of suffering and what is its ultimate cause,” and if we listen to the poems in American Melancholy Joyce Carol Oates will tell us, and it is us.
The third poem, “Little Albert: 1920,” begins a consideration, in several poems, of American behavioral psychology experiments in the first half of the twentieth century. Again, a virtuoso writer, few can personalize, make us internalize, the physical and psychological vicissitudes of pain and fear as well as Joyce Carol Oates. At the end of “Little Albert,” the poem’s speaker — Little Albert himself — morphs into a sort of collective narrative speaker — we become Little Albert — the speaker is us:
All this was long ago. Things are different now. John Watson would not be allowed to terrorize Little Albert in his famous experiment now. Ours is an ethical age.
Or was it all a bad dream? Were you deceived? You were Little Albert? You were conditioned to fear and hate? You were conditioned to thrust from you what you were meant to love? You were the victim? You were the experimental subject? You were Little Albert, who died young?
The question this and many poems in the collection suggest to me is “are humans brutes, always at risk of engendering or falling into depravity?” With this question hovering over many of the poems, the poem which stands out the most in American Melancholy is “To Marlon Brando in Hell,” where the answer is “yes,” even for this seemingly larger than life talent. The speaker here is a woman the exact age of Joyce Carol Oates. The anaphoric repetition of the word “Because” gives the poem’s indictment of Brando, the man of such talent and promise, a sort of fever pitch. It begins:
Because you suffocated your beauty in fat. Because you made of our adoration, mockery. Because you were the predator male, without remorse.
Because you were the greatest of our actors, and you threw away greatness like trash…
Because the slow suicide of self-disgust is horrible to us, and fascinating as the collapse of tragedy into farce is fascinating and the monstrousness of festered beauty….
The speaker is angry and affronted that as a girl of fifteen she was “lured out” to take a bus to a neighboring city, “in the most reckless act of her young life,” to see Brando star in The Wild One in a seedy theater: “a place that would have been/ forbidden, if the girl’s parents had known./ What might have happened! — by chance, did not happen.” (Calling to mind what happened to the Grimes sisters in 1950s Chicago after venturing out at ages 12 and 15 to see Elvis in Love Me Tender: their naked bodies found by a road outside Chicago a month later — and evoking America’s true crime underbelly which much of Ms. Oates’ oeuvre has a Venn overlap into.) The poem covers many of Brando’s film successes and turns them all into indictment against what he will become as he manifests more and more moral agnosticism, perverts his success and his physical beauty into insane mockeries. Brando’s twisting of himself has twisted the speaker (only more reason for her anger), who after such sustained dismay and loathing still desires him: “Because you have left us. And we are lonely./ And would join you in Hell, if you would have us.”
If “To Marlon Brando in Hell” is maybe a centerpiece of the collection, as centerpiece I think of it more as panopticon, a central, substantial, and substantially damaged life that looks out at lesser known and unknown lives with greater or lesser degrees of damage, varying degrees of self-doubt, anguish. In “Edward Hopper’s ‘Eleven A.M.,’ 1926” the speaker is Hopper’s famous nude looking out a window (not as so famous as Brando, but famous). In the poem her self-worth is tied to the married man she waits for, leaving her in the loneliness and isolation of his too infrequent visits. Fans of Oates will want to bring her short story “The Woman in the Window” (which also interprets Hopper’s painting) into their consideration of the poem, but the more sinister elements in the story (contemplations of murdering the other by both) are not in this poem about unhappiness and frustrated fulfillment.
In “Old America Has Come Home to Die,” an “iconic” twentieth century vagabond, entirely one of Robert Service’s “men who don’t fit in,” returns home physically broken and vaguely remembered, his only value now to play himself and be videoed for a budding Ken Burns great-niece to make an “A” in her college Film Studies: “Tragic, vividly rendered & iconic.” In these cases, the speakers’ lives are perhaps atypical yet without pathology. There but for the grace of God could go us, but there are other speakers in Melancholy we will see as “other.” Like the damaged speaker of “Doctor Help Me,” obviously coerced as a minor into sex by her best friend’s father, her life now a disaster of promiscuous sex, that baby and more babies. But, she has the traumatic time-confusion of Porter’s “Granny Weatherall,” so how many babies? Hard to tell. This too damaged woman could not be us — and for Oates’ fans her anguished pleading for an abortion will call to mind Luther Dunphy from A Book of American Martyrs who could never be us.
Likewise, the Chinese doctor in the poem “Harvesting Skin” whose medical work forces him to become a sort of occasional serial killer could never be us. He is one of just a couple non-American speakers in American Melancholy, but is he truly un-American? — a question central to this collection of poems. America, us, the US, is a humane country. Many of us contribute to charities annually. Some of us even work in soup kitchens. “All” of us, respectable people, try to do good deeds. We are a humane country — littered by mass shootings.
Until we embrace, know the “other” as us, its pathology will continue to run through us unabated. To be truly human, be really better Americans, we have to know the part of us that is sick, and we have to want to be cured. Otherwise — on page 40 of American Melancholy is “Apocalypso.” For me its “too late warning” is buried in the poems like a key. I invite readers to read it and the other poems in American Melancholy, the latest book by the reigning Queen of American literature.
A US Army combat veteran, Steven Croft lives happily on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia on a property lush with vegetation and home to various species of birds and animals. His poems have appeared in Liquid Imagination, The Five-Two, Ariel Chart, Eunoia Review, Anti Heroin Chic, Synchronized Chaos, and other places, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
Poetry from J.D. Nelson
frog, what? dee p hee liminal e-e-e circuit ch. clack, amour duckling armor, THAT when sounding, arose a rose, risen! low ding & forests gum bull soar sore R om edison yore morn shark rope, a dee dee can swim, swam bio/graf J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) experiments with words in his subterranean laboratory. His first full-length collection of poetry, entitled in ghostly onehead, is slated for a 2021 release by mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press. Visit http://www.MadVerse.com for more information and links to his published work. Nelson lives in Colorado.
Poetry from Mark Young
Room 281 A divination of entropy, in which people pass but collide with one another in corridors that then be- come impassable. When he found her, she was reading an Icelandic detective story, somewhat convoluted as well as full of multi-syllable patro- nymic or matronymic names. The building that housed the radio telescope was caught by sunlight, then let down gently. Its message bank was empty. Later he walked home alone. From the Pound Cantos: CENTO XXV Propped between chairs & table, torches melt in the glare. Flame leaps from the hand, the rain is listless, the leaves are full of voices. Our bodies also heavy with weeping. Time spent knocking at empty rooms, stubborn against the fact. An ex-convict out of Italy, water running off from his twis- ted arms, swung for a moment & knocked me into the black snout of a porpoise gripping the blue-gray glass of the wave. A line from Jimi Hendrix Despite it being a culturally inclusive environment, delive- ring messages intended for airborne bacteria presents a unique challenge. Because of constant barriers — such as a vacuum cleaner able to rescue a dog from a mini iceberg — there is only ever one way in. Test the water, & in time find that the most efficient method is to hide them in a radio program full of mirrors. languor longer He thought indo- lence might be a group of languages along the lines of Indo-European, but found he didn't have sufficient drive to look it up.
Personal essay from Ike Boat, writer and artist
*Pro-Bio* Of *Ike Boat* *Professional Biography* – Pro-Bio *Pro-Bio* – *Ike Boat* #IB Growing Up Story – GUS:
His life, like the metamorphosis stage of an African butterfly going through lots of dramatic changes thought him tremendous things, both negatives and positives. It all started on the suburban street of Amanful West in Takoradi, Western Region of Ghana where he mingled and entangled in a life-style some described as being ‘Gutter-Snipe’ or seemingly ‘Ghetto-like’. Thus, both lowly and highly cherished characteristics of a boy with futuristic ambitions in relation to his passion of every-day life. He’s a teenager with heart for reading, writing and reciting what he later termed as ‘Read Aloud Session – RAS’ for short.
Thus, literally or meaning his solitary moment he picks a story book, newspaper or magazine and hides himself at a backyard or close-door to read aloud like communicating in front of audience coupled with gesticulation and sensation in an atmosphere of loneliness. Factually, learning new things and sharing ideas became his hall-mark. Well, as the saying goes “All works and no play, makes jack a dull boy”, viz he sometimes played on sandy pitch football with some neighbors and subsequently played for his primary and junior secondary school football teams. Academically, he’s brilliant and good in lots of subjects hence won the hearts of head teachers to become school prefect in both primary and junior secondary levels respectively. Needless to say, ups and downs as well ‘Doubting Thomases’ of the hood never stopped or bothered him, as he focused in turning his passion to profession in the Arts global industry. LOL, one of his comical growing up character during his early child-hood days of life as a boy, he combined ‘Crying tears with bathing water’ often-times when he’s asked to bath and come for his meal.
Well, if this were Scripture in the book of Psalms, I’ll state ‘Selah’ literally ‘Pause and Think’. So, this GUS happens to be a mixed bag of nostalgia about the Ike Boat chap as it brings to fore deeper things yet to come in his creative arts life-style. Who’s IB Biography In Focus – BIF: Ike Boat (IB) as his popular artiste pseudonym or stage-brand name. He’s originally called Isaac Adjei Boateng to his parent both hails from the Central Region of Ghana, West Africa. In relation to his life-style of creativity and simplicity he chose the current name Ike Boat with the following as meaningful acronym I = Inspirational, K = Kind, E = Effective (IKE), B = Brilliant, O = Oral, A = Artistic, T = Truthful (BOAT).
Well, no wonder such a name has gained both local and global recognition, being on actual and virtual mediums. He’s pushed to welcome and embrace mother nature ie(Earth) on 11th June in the 80s (Eighties), being the fifth male child of seven siblings in Takoradi, Western Region of Ghana. His child-hood classroom education started at Bishop Essuah Day Nursery and Kindergarten where he continued to Bishop Essuah Primary and Junior Secondary school respectively, for which he completed in the year 1999. Unforgettably, he’s also part of the school’s choir which rehearsal was organized and done bi-weekly, thus during days of secondary cycle education. Again, academically he continued his studies at St.John’s School and completed in June,2002 as a General Arts graduate. Later in the years, his passion about ministry made him a student of Theology at Maryland Bible College & Seminary of Takoradi being on the list of starters as a means of acquiring insight and knowledge in the scriptures.
Fast forward bit, in the year 2014 specifically between October and December he’s sponsored to study A1 German linguistic at the Goethe Institut of Cantonments in Accra, Ghana. He’s such a true admirer of languages and always ready to learn from other tongues with clarity of accent as well as intonation. Indeed, he’s capable to express himself as in communicating and writing a bit in German language “Ich sprache ein bischon Deutsch”. Of course, he had average pass-mark during after test examination at Goethe Institut of Cantonments in Accra, Ghana – West Africa. His passion for music and poetry is a natural result of inspiration through writing and singing. In relation to marriage, he’s never married and remains faithful to have cross-cultural inter-racial marriage as he’s still single chap with life purpose.
Works And More – WAM: In the year 2016, he’s appointed as Manager and Librarian of Amanful Digital Library & Learning Arena – ADLLA at Amanful West suburb of Takoradi, Western Region, Ghana. Whilst there he taught school kids reading and writing skills, thus through pronunciation and dictation. His other works also proper arrangement of library shelves as well as online publications of ADLLA. It’s under his managerial role that’s when ADLLA benefited from book funding donation of $1000 dollars. Aside, he’s also able to organize first ever pre-Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) evening classes.
In 2018, he played solid management role with Samanti Super-Market, a subsidiary under the auspices of Samanti Group of Companies, thus he contributed effectively to the social media publicity and strategic online marketing of it products. He’s administrator and media director in charge of vlogs as well blogs of the super-market. On 28th, 30th and 31st July,2018 he’s instrumental in coming up with a program outline for the official grand opening of Samanti Supermarket being the MC on 28th July,2018. Subsequently, he came up with the ‘Shop And Chop – SAC’ concept as a means of customer attraction acts which took place at the Samanti Supermarket premises, Lapaz area of Accra. Specifically, as buyers were entreated with free Pizzas and Drinks, thus Monday on 30th July,2018. On the last day of July,2018 he’s part of the .Samanti Group of Companies – SGOC, team which donated $2000 dollars plus items to the Accra Psychiatric Hospital in Accra, capital of Ghana, West Africa.
Directly and indirectly, he’s also contributed to mini promo-vlogs for B-Flat Studio under PAP Zone 101 Sound Equipment and Events Company based in Kasoa, Central Region of Ghana. He also engaged in assisting then Manager of Estate Lodge Limited – ELL hitherto at Estate Top of Kasoa, Central Region of Ghana. Thus, sometimes as receptionist and other times as cleaning fellow of the premises whilst residing at same place. He’s also worked as a local port volunteer onboard the OM ships such as MV Logos II, MV Doulos and MV Logos Hope as well as serving several other mission-oriented travelers and tourist in to Ghana, thus from countries such as Britain (UK), USA, Canada, Australia, Germany just to mention but a few.
He’s also hired to worm as social media page Assistant Manager on Facebook courtesy Sprinforth Community School – SCS and there’s progressive numerical Likes. Better-still, he also did a promo-vlog to help online publicity of the school, located at East Legon in Accra, Ghana. Book Reading Review – BRR Promotional Concept He’s done special social media BRR for Authors such as Mr.Okechwuku Okugo (Nigerian) based in New York, USA. Mr.Dennis Mann (Mr.Dennis Agyeman) – Ghanaian based in Accra, capital city of Ghana.
Hitherto, he’s also been featured publications on the following online Magazines: *Wake Magazine – USA *Synchronized Chaos Magazine – USA (www.synchchaos.com) Portfolios As Artiste – PAA: Musically, his first ever demoed song titled Jubilee Love reggae genre was recorded at KODED Studio in Takoradi by then studio Assistant engineer, this in 2007. And in 2010, he recorded another Gospel Reggae single dubbed Gabbatha To Golgotha at the P&M Studio also in Takoradi, Western Region of Ghana. He has composed several songs, one titled OM All The Way dedicated to Operation Mobilization – www.om.org
It’s later recorded in-studio whilst at Tema with a professional instrumentalist fellow. The following are some notable audio portfolios online: No Mom Like Rose (Spoke-Word Poem), I Can’t Understand – ICU (Spoken-Word Poem), Oh, CV – Corona Virus! (Spoken-Word Poem), The Piano (Spoken-Word Poem). They can be listened to via Sound-Cloud Web-Link: www.soundcloud.com/ikeboatofficial Special birthday dedication dubbed Our Triple A @ Seventy, thus Mr.Alfred Addo Acheampong (Dual citizen of USA and Ghana) with Mr.Kenneth Anim as the Executive Producer. Being such a talented vocal individual, he’s done series of Voice-Overs ranging from Adverts, Promos and Jingles which have aired both on-air (radio) and on-line (world-wide-web). Some notable ones includes: Mount Sinai Enterprise (Takoradi), Samanti Super-Market (Accra), PAMUCHAHA Program By Breakthrough Family Ministries International (Takoradi), Raycona 1 Venture (Kasoa), Green-Light Academy (Kasoa), Shining Light Educational Centre (Kasoa), Fire Of Favour Chapel International (Kasoa), Smally Green Super Collections (Nigeria), Crystal Palace Hotel (Kasoa), Poks Vocational Training Institute (Ashaiman).
He’s also recorded unreleased Poetic-Ad piece for Bel Aqua Mineral Water as a creative promotional work dubbed AABA Project still in-studio pending remix and refix engineering touches. Indeed, he’s such an incredible Voice-Over in terms of vocal prowess for making Adverts, Promo and Jingles. He’s also featured on P.O.E.T Anthology and Spoken-Word poem feature on Blaq Ice Production album in USA respectively. As a professional vocal talent, he’s also a good musical figure with demos and singles as part of his unreleased audio portfolios. In relation to film-making or movie acting, his first ever character feature took place at Blue Top Villa as he played a dramatic role as Patron in one of the scenes courtesy Gh-Media School students film project. Precisely, on 4th January,2021 – Title of Film: Riddles. He’s often open and hopes to enhance his professional portfolios to the apex, thus on higher heights in both local and global arts industry.
Media Experience – ME: Radio/Television/Internet (Online) – His first ever radio experience, thus exposure took place on Radio Maxx 105.1 FM as mere introducer of a Christian program dubbed Power Word of Jesus hosted by Rev.Nyameyekese Wireku. Specifically, it’s in the year 2003 as a fresh graduate of Senior High School (2002) at the heart of Western Region, Ghana.(West Africa). As a matter of fact, he’s associated with the following media organizations: BBC – World Service, being instrumental during the official launch of BBC 104.7 FM in the Western Region of Ghana. He’s the microphone holder towards audience contributions at the Skyy Amphitheatre during the live broadcast of World Have Your Say – WHYS hosted by Ros Atkins of British Broadcasting Corporation – BBC fame.
Unforgettably, he’s interactive and informative several times during the weekly broadcast of Maple Leaf Mail-Bag show on Radio Canada International in Montreal, Canada hosted by Ian Jones precisely via phone contributions and online submissions on the show. Better-still, he’s done numerous postal correspondence and received behind the scenes recognitions on Voice of America – VOA in USA as he did a creative poetic write-up about VOA. There’s been some other effective contributions on some notable international broadcasters, thus acting as Correspondent.
The following are some key radio stations he’s had connections and contributions in relation to program or content participation, thus even interviews and being a panelist on-air i.e. (Good-News 96.3 FM, Help 103.9 FM, Beach 105.5 FM, Paragon 99.9 FM, Empire 102.7 FM, Radio Silver 92.3 FM, Y.97.9 FM, Cheers 90.7 FM, Angel 95.5 FM, Kingdom 107.5 FM, Kyzz 89.7 FM, Twin City Radio 94.7 FM, Western Region, Ghana). GBC-Uniiq 95.7 FM, Sunny 88.7 FM, Class 91.3 FM, Joy 99.7 FM, Starr 103.5 FM – Accra, capital of Ghana). His first ever television appearance took place on TV3 Mentor as part of Western Region music audition/screening in 2006.
Subsequently, he’s also on the Vodafone Icon – Mixed Edition music audition in Takoradi-city at the time. He’s been on several other TV screens sometimes on street vox-pop and phone-in or text message contribution. Prior to 2020 General Elections in Ghana, together with Face-TV crew under the management of Grino Multi-Media he did a pre-election vox-pop sampling views about which political party and presidential candidate was likely to win power to rule the nation, Ghana. His maiden moment on live TV show as a panelist took place on Awake TV dated Friday,19th March.2021 at 10pm to 11pm which was simultaneously streamed live on Facebook. Directly and indirectly, he’s contributed to several other TV and Radio programs both in the Western and Greater Accra (Capital) regions of Ghana. Besides, He’s been effective on some notable online broadcasting platforms, even when it comes to social media publications. His rich knowledge in the media-spheres has revealed his versatility and creativity with respect to radio and television.
Hence, has made him one of the secretly and highly sought-after creative content provider, being a reputable contributor of different programs on-air and on-line respectively. He has professional connections with other on-air radio station personalities in different regions of the country due to his insightful broadcasting expertise and communication experiences. Last but not least, he’s also good when it comes to social media page and group management. Gigs In Detail – GID: Ike Boat as a Spoken-Word figure, has performed on stages such as the maiden launch of Western Music Awards in Takoradi, Western Region, Ghana. Peace Gospel Concert organized at Bethel Methodist Church, Takoradi in 2016. Spoken Reasons by Takoradi Poetry Club in Western region, Ghana. Valentine Night Show by GIE Events in Takoradi, Ghana. Reflections Music Album Launch by Minister Shedrack Tronu at Takoradi Polytechnic Auditorium, Western Region, Ghana. The Thinking Conference organized Good-News 96.3 FM, Takoradi, Ghana. Shine Awards – Breakfast Meeting – March,2018 in Accra, Ghana. Poetry And Drama Festival by Centre for National Culture – 2018 at Fijai, Sekondi, Ghana. Maiden Event of Street Praise by PAP Zone 101 at Kasoa, Central Region of Ghana. I-Code Event 2021 – Takoradi, Western Region, Ghana. PAP Zone 101 – Africa Union Day Event at Crystal Palace Hotel, Top Hill – Kasoa, Central Region, Ghana. of Just to mention but a few…
MC Of Events/Shows: IB as a skillful and brilliant Master Communicator #MC of ceremonies. He’s thrilled audiences of Birthday parties, Wedding, Engagement, Album launch and other social functions. He’s chosen to be the MC of his uncle’s 70th Birthday Party at Estate Top, Kasoa. Constantly and consistently, he’s Anchored as MC of Church programs at Mount Zion International Gospel Church, Estate Top of Kasoa. In 2018, he’s the official MC during the opening of Samanti Super-Market at Lapaz, Accra. Indeed, two consecutive times he’s MC of Street Praise organized by PAP Zone 101 at Kasoa, Central Region of Ghana. He’s also contributed as supporting or auxiliary MC of Wedding Feast which took place at Blue Top Villa, Kasoa, Ghana. Better-still, he’s the auxiliary MC alongside DJ during Graduation Event organized by In God We Trust Vocational Training Institute at Kasoa, Central Region, Ghana. Interestingly, he’s often quite entertaining when MC alongside DJ playing music to audiences. He’s often influential figure, be it minor or major events or shows.
Achievements/Awards/Nominations – AAN: 2014 – Nominee (International Poet of the Year), NPA – National Poetry Awards, USA. 2015 – Nominee (International Poet of the Year), NPA – National Poetry Awards, USA. 2016 – Awardee (Winner) – (International Poet of the Year), NPA – National Poetry Awards, USA 2017 – Awardee (Winner) – (Best International Artist of the Year), NSWA – National Spoken-Word Awards – Courtesy ‘Blaq Ice Production’ – USA. People Of Extraordinary Talent – P.O.E.T – Africa Ambassadorial Award, USA. 2018 – Awardee (Winner) – (Best International Artist of the Year), NSWA – National Spoken-Word Awards – Courtesy ‘Blaq Ice Production’ – USA. Shine Awards – Nominee – Poet Of The Year, Accra – Ghana, 2019 – Awardee (Winner) – (Best International Artist of the Year), NSWA – National Spoken-Word Awards – Courtesy ‘Blaq Ice Production’ – USA. 2020 – Nominee – (Best International Artist of the Year), NSWA – National Spoken-Word Awards – Courtesy ‘Blaq Ice Production’ – USA. Bronze Certificate – Vocal Category – Virtual Edition – World Championship Of Performing Arts – WCOPA, USA. Tikpan TV Writing Contest, UK & Ghana – 1st Edition – First Winner 2021 – Nominee – (Best International Artist of the Year), NSWA – National Spoken-Word Awards – Courtesy ‘Blaq Ice Production’ – USA. 2021 – Nominee – (Humanitarian Of The Year) – Global Empire Entertainment Media Awards – GEEMA, USA
Poetry from Mahbub
O My Sylph
What to do and not to do
In this circumstance I like to go in touch of
The leaves and seeds of a sycamore tree
The yellowish-green flowers of the long shady tree
Under which we can sit for taking rest
The blissful birds soothes the eyes
Setting at acute angles,
The carpels of the female flowers mature into a pair of winged fruits
The plant grows in soft wave of wind, willowy and graceful figure
Staring at the growing head and the sky
O my sylph, you are my heart to leap up and down the hill
Refreshing my body and mind
I pass my days and nights
Love and shade, the expressions of beauty
How rhetoric you talk to me!
A feeling in the moonlit starry sky, the ocean rises within
Shake me up from dying out in darkness.
Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
23/10//2020
Life Yearns for
Why are we breaking down
In this misty darkness?
Why are you clapping so loud
In this gray evening?
The White Silence of awe
Embarks on the long line of pathos
The ceaseless flow of the tides
The timid humanity whispers
Seeming sacrilege – the maggot’s life
A journey towards the deadly world
Tremble at the audacity, frightening around
Though life yearns for the life of immortality.
Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
26/10//2020
The Betrayal Of Glaucus
Disclosing the secrets Glaucus, the king of Corinth
Caused a great harm for himself
To vie with you is not my nature
Crossing the land with the goats, lambs, or cows
Across the lonely green fields
And talk to the lambs
A force to live with man and nature
The furious tiger follows me running so fast
But I fly over its mouth, burning eyes
Not being able to have me in its paw
Instead I saw its tame-looking eyes
In this deep green field
I observe the dear’s eyes as beautiful as you
The pet tiger is out roaming with me
A shove back from the track
I still drive around the way – my fascinating power
The secret that must be obeyed
Though every moment it walks on the shadow
How enjoyable the fleshes of Glaucus to the horses!
Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
26/10//2020
On The Dewy Grass
I walk on the grass
In this winter dew-wet grass
The morning glitters on the colorful light of the sun
In a moment the world seems to be covered in the mist
The dense white fog deepens the earth
So many lights from so many vehicles before and after
On the way itching the eyes
The dense white fog retards the speed
The drowsy hand on the steering
Leaving behind the grave memory
We start in the morning and finishes at night
Can we imagine the dream in the ceaseless sleeping hours?
While walking in the dew-wet grass what a glow!
Peeping through the leaves of the large Neem Tree!
Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
27/10//2020
One Man France
Why are you killing the religion of the world?
Why you open the pages for belittling the brain utilized for?
Don’t you see the world goes upside down?
The Caricature of Prophet Mohammad (Sm.)
Why is this dark image you play for what?
This is not the freedom we attain and sustain for
This is my mirror; I see my face and respect
That is yours; only you can see and be devoted
We all are in the best condition of the hearts built the state for
Who likes to change the border? Let them do?
I live for you, you for me
We are all the same blood
Flowing through the veins pumping the hearts
The same head, eyes or all the same the human structure
That made us different from animals
Though the isle is different for walking and living
I don’t know who Zeus or Aphrodite is
So many gods we see in so many things -a mystery indeed
What a wonderful imagination; knowledge and vision
Can you open the riddle?
Most of us like to live in this world of perseverance
Though there be some exceptions
Then why is this caricature of Prophet Mohammad (Sm.)?
In the name of secularism why is this hatred on Islam?
Burning the world so furious, dear France?
Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
27/10//2020