Brand new soul (by Aline Rahbany)

Brand new soul
by Aline Rahbany

I pull
And I pull
And I pull
The string of my being
I hold on to it
And pull again
And I fall
On the unknown land
I drift
And I search
And I seek
A familiar face to grab
I roam
And I rove
And I end up
In the place where I first landed

No face is familiar
No words move me on
People of the unknown land
Are all distracted in shedding the thorns
That got stuck to their souls
As the years went by

I am new here
I have a brand new soul
How long will it remain intact?
How long until I am one of them?

* * *

© 2009 by Aline Rahbany, all rights reserved
included in the Crisis Chronicles Online Library with the poet’s permission

She writes:

I dream. I dream when people are not watching. My dreams exist some place in the air – written in a dashing way. All I do is grab the air with my hands, wash my face with it, let it penetrate my body straight into my soul; only to come out in the form of words. A dreamer who puts her imaginings in words and plays on filtering them as an attempt to create her own little world. I only started translating my thoughts into writing recently. Upon taking writing as a way to escape from reality, I never knew I would go this far. My writings are pure thoughts and“raw emotions” mainly exploring different aspects of the human being. When I am not dreaming, I am another 24 year old distorted person living in Lebanon and indulging in – down to earth – humanitarian field of work for the past two years. I have been published in Shoots & Vines, Opium Poetry 2.0, Black-Listed Magazine, Eviscerator Heaven and soon in Calliope Nerve.

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Bye Buy (by Steven B. Smith) – video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV6dfo-2Dgs

“Bye Buy” © 2009 by Steven B. Smith
(appears in the Crisis Chronicles Online Library with the poet’s permission)

Filmed during Lix and Kix 8 at Visible Voice Books in Cleveland on 19 May 2009
(photography & editing by John Burroughs, a.k.a. Jesus Crisis)

Click here to read the text of “Bye Buy”
 
* * * * *

For more, visit Smith’s renowned art and poetry website at www.agentofchaos.com
Follow his and his wife Lady’s cosmic adventures at www.walkingthinice.com 
Visit Smith on MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/smithcrimes
Get over 44 years of poetry & collages by Smith in Zen Over Zero

Read a Jesus Crisis blog about Smith: S is for Smith (my favorite poets from A to Z – volume 19)

Like Candy on Ice Cream (by Steven B. Smith) – video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ85hMqWokw

“Like Candy on Ice Cream” © 2009 by Steven B. Smith
(appears in the Crisis Chronicles Online Library with the poet’s permission)

Filmed during Lix and Kix 8 at Visible Voice Books in Cleveland on 19 May 2009
(photography & editing by John Burroughs, a.k.a. Jesus Crisis)

Click here to read the text of “Like Candy on Ice Cream”
 
* * * * *

For more, visit Smith’s renowned art and poetry website at www.agentofchaos.com
Follow his and his wife Lady’s cosmic adventures at www.walkingthinice.com 
Visit Smith on MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/smithcrimes
Get over 44 years of poetry & collages by Smith in Zen Over Zero

Read a Jesus Crisis blog about Smith: S is for Smith (my favorite poets from A to Z – volume 19)

Dada Greybeard (by Steven B. Smith) – video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIvcOYQIBQw

“Dada Greybeard” © 2009 by Steven B. Smith
(appears in the Crisis Chronicles Online Library with the poet’s permission)

Filmed during Lix and Kix 8 at Visible Voice Books in Cleveland on 19 May 2009
(photography & editing by John Burroughs, a.k.a. Jesus Crisis)

Click here to read the text of “Dada Greybeard”
 
* * * * *

For more, visit Smith’s renowned art and poetry website at www.agentofchaos.com
Follow his and his wife Lady’s cosmic adventures at www.walkingthinice.com 
Visit Smith on MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/smithcrimes
Get over 44 years of poetry & collages by Smith in Zen Over Zero

Read a Jesus Crisis blog about Smith: S is for Smith (my favorite poets from A to Z – volume 19)

Owed to Coffee (by Steven B. Smith) – video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbF0orxwn8M

“Owed to Coffee” © 2009 by Steven B. Smith
(appears in the Crisis Chronicles Online Library with the poet’s permission)

Filmed during Lix and Kix 8 at Visible Voice Books in Cleveland on 19 May 2009
(photography & editing by John Burroughs, a.k.a. Jesus Crisis)

Click here to read the text of “Owed to Coffee”
 
* * * * *

For more, visit Smith’s renowned art and poetry website at www.agentofchaos.com
Follow his and his wife Lady’s cosmic adventures at www.walkingthinice.com 
Visit Smith on MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/smithcrimes
Get over 44 years of poetry & collages by Smith in Zen Over Zero

Read a Jesus Crisis blog about Smith: S is for Smith (my favorite poets from A to Z – volume 19)

Swans & Ducks, Skating: November Rain (by Carolyn Srygley-Moore)

Swans & Ducks, Skating: November Rain
by Carolyn Srygley-Moore

I
At any time, I can return to your form as to a field
unfolding into a certain eternity; mallard ducks at dusk skating
the pond in circles around you, the point
at the center, amidst snowed-in houses. How

you would lie upon me like an anchor,
like a ballast of violets on a stage where language was
forbidden, & you would empty into me, & I was
a flower opening to the rain. The pulse of sky, the rain.

II
Perfection is hidden like that. An unreality,
so real when it occurs, like the photograph
of the eye, up close, of your eye, indeed, so close
I can see the visions driven behind it. Sketching

III
the structure of the human eye! Grass is stubble
pealing through new snowfall, almost
last year’s grass, a 5 o’clock shadow
the sun cannot restore to what the one-armed man
wants. As I recall swimming one morning

in the lake when the swans were sleeping
with the green-crowned ducks
& “splash” // a man with one leg entered, skipping
currents around him, of the faith

IV
that confronts despair as the sunflower confronts
the light, not to follow it, no, but to demand why.

* * *

“Swans & Ducks, Skating: November Rain” (c) 2009 by Carolyn Srygley-Moore
all rights reserved, used with the poet’s permission

Carolyn Srygley-Moore
is a long-ago, award-winning graduate of the Johns Hopkins University
Writing Seminars. She has been a Pushcart nominee, widely published in
journals including Eclectica, Mimesis, Antioch, Stirring, & the antiwar anthology Cost of Freedom. Her digital chapbook Enough Light on the Dogwood is available at www.mimesispoetry.com. She lives in Upstate New York with her husband & daughter.

Visor’d (by Walt Whitman)

Visor’d
by Walt Whitman

A mask, a perpetual disguiser of herself,
Concealing her face, concealing her form,
Changes and transformations every hour, every moment,
Falling upon her even when she sleeps.

* * *

[from the 1867 edition of Leaves of Grass]

To read other Whitman selections in the Crisis Chronicles Online Library, click here.

  

Homesickness & The Machines (by Carolyn Srygley-Moore)

Homesickness & The Machines
by Carolyn Srygley-Moore

There was a dream: a beautiful ancient hospital
one could reach across seven bridges // where the spoked lanterns
could not be distinguished from desire: & in the rooms
the wounded sat before great machines
with great black dogs at their feet:
machines that healed their souls. There was a dream.

The homeless vet stood on the bridge
carrying a sign like a ransom note: it all begins
with hunger, it says. & from his hand,
or a vein in his hand, springs

a lighthouse, spiraling yellow shafts
by which the lost or abandoned might find their path
home…Stars like tadpoles swimming,
skinned commas of light. There were people

in the passage, shoveling
footprints from the sand, spades like the very dragons of the sea;
who could find his way back?
Vision was one of the elements, brutal as all beginnings.
Your hands were too grimy for lust or love.

The very air, shiny like the gesture the wounded one makes
when informed his soul is wounded no more; is
restored, like the hand in the photograph,

that is not real, but computer graphics…

but real enough to those sick for home.
In a place where the bridge arcs
from island to hospital,
& the trains & the planes & the plans run no more.

* * *

“Homesickness & the Machines” (c) 2009 by Carolyn Srygley-Moore
all rights reserved, used with the poet’s permission

Carolyn Srygley-Moore is a long-ago, award-winning graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. She has been a Pushcart nominee, widely published in journals including Eclectica, Mimesis, Antioch, Stirring, & the antiwar anthology Cost of Freedom. Her digital chapbook Enough Light on the Dogwood is available at www.mimesispoetry.com. She lives in Upstate New York with her husband & daughter.

There is a grey thing that lives in the tree-tops (by Stephen Crane)

Stephen Crane, 1871-1900

There is a grey thing that lives in the tree-tops
None know the horror of its sight
Save those who meet death in the wilderness
But one is enabled to see
To see branches move at its passing
To hear at times the wail of black laughter
And to come often upon mystic places
Places where the thing has just been.

-*-

   

I swallow colored pills for fun (by Aline Rahbany)

View from the Surry Inn (Maine 8/25/2006) — photo by Jesus Crisis

I swallow colored pills for fun
by Aline Rahbany

I run naked under stormy skies
I feel the wet ground under my feet
Pulling me inwards, underground
I slide
Only my head is over ground
I look upwards at the sky that turned red
It is coming down
Soon it will touch the land
And my head will be in between
The reality of the solid earth
And the illusions of moving red skies

I remain naked, surprisingly unimpressed
I feel the soil soaking my skin
Infiltrating the pores, making its way into my veins
Coloring my blood chocolate brown

The sky is moving closer, too close
I close my eyes and let go
I let the colored pills take lead

* * *

© 2009 by Aline Rahbany, all rights reserved
included in the Crisis Chronicles Online Library with the poet’s permission

She writes:

I dream. I dream when people are not watching. My dreams exist some place in the air – written in a dashing way. All I do is grab the air with my hands, wash my face with it, let it penetrate my body straight into my soul; only to come out in the form of words. A dreamer who puts her imaginings in words and plays on filtering them as an attempt to create her own little world. I only started translating my thoughts into writing recently. Upon taking writing as a way to escape from reality, I never knew I would go this far. My writings are pure thoughts and“raw emotions” mainly exploring different aspects of the human being. When I am not dreaming, I am another 24 year old distorted person living in Lebanon and indulging in – down to earth – humanitarian field of work for the past two years. I have been published in Shoots & Vines, Opium Poetry 2.0, Black-Listed Magazine, Eviscerator Heaven and soon in Calliope Nerve.