Poems

What's left in reimagining our Hamlets,
repurposing our Henrys and Macbeths?
Pose existential questions over omelets?
Recounting much ado's with bated breaths?
Shall we attempt a tragedy of errors?
Leer, merciless, while driving by a wreck?
Rely on ne'er-do-wells and oversharers
to get the word out, use the latest tech?
The classics, reimagined as you like it,
performed by a menagerie of clowns,
and if a word offends, well then, you strike it,
it's not as if they're wearing real crowns,
these thespians, too modern for the Bard.
To be or not to be. It's not that hard.

Author notes: image by GPT

Two sailboats, anchors raised, will drift apart.
Is that what love demands then, ties that bind?
Can it sustain a separated heart,
or must it seek, unreasoning and blind,

entanglement with its committed twin,
and absent such entanglement, collapse,
before it's had occasion to begin,
to feed then on the remnants and the scraps,

the embers of a tepid, dormant fire,
while others burn to cinders on a flame
consuming them from head to toe, entire,
and happily, with but themselves to blame.

They seek it, for what's life if not this burn?
Two sailboats start to drift apart. Return.

Author notes: image from contest

Perfection, though just narrowly achieved,
Aunt Mabel ceases gazing at her navel.
Her face now nearly permanently peeved,
Ozempic face -- she's getting it off-label --
but losing those pernicious last few pounds,
the hips regaining youthful definition...
The pleasure she should take should know no bounds:
is there a crucial task, a higher mission,
then winning in this battle of the bulge?
And yet she cannot help it, something's wanting.
Gone too is her desire to indulge,
a shadow of a ghost that's barely haunting
this newmade version of her perfect self.
Next week's Ozempic safely on the shelf.

Author notes: image from MidJourney

When searching for the moral of a story,
which oftentimes is right below the surface,
but on occasion, plot and allegory
so driven by, it seems, a lower purpose,
work overtime to keep it out of sight,
and manage, to the reader's consternation,
to veil it. How can one determine right,
or give a rationale, an explanation,
while drowning in both nuance and finesse?
If good and bad are matters of perspective,
of understanding more, and judging less,
then likely it's to help you to discern
what otherwise you'll fail to see or learn.

"Magnificent", the editor opined.
"The characters are fresh and well developed,
their dialogue so mannered and refined.
It left me feeling cuddled, no, enveloped,
immersed in the protagonist's escape
to the remote, enchanting destination,
where as you put it, dreams are taking shape,
and nightmares have been left out of creation.

That said, it doesn't quite fit our form.
For one, had you a chance to check our guidelines?
A sonnet is so far outside our norm,
that we are forced, observing from the sidelines,
to wish you all the best, and much success.

Regards,

The Editors,

The Plumber's Press

The world is not a graphic novel. And not a play.
Though there's no lack of shit to shovel
in ways both typical and novel,
nor lack of characters that may,
to the astonishment of all,
behave as if they're in a play.
Each curtain call,
bow down and pray.

Author notes: patterned after Frost's Fire and Ice.  Image generated by GPT

magic phrases soar and hover
meet a frenemy, a lover
they're awaiting your first look
open it, and you'll discover
beauty hides under the cover
of any ordinary book

Author notes: image from facebook

When wrestling with indecision --
For those who aren't wrecked by doubt
or master answers with precision --
you can afford to go without --
but for the rest of us, the journey,
like helpless patients on their gurney,
we're dragged about a tangled maze,
explore the labyrinth for days,
but find no answer to the riddle,
and even when we see a hint
betrayed by a peculiar glint,
soon dumped right back into the middle,
the hint apparently a tease.
For us no forest. Only trees.

"this town could not be hillier", so thought her new familiar,
and he could not be sillier, this ordinary cat.
Aloof and supercilious, and carefully punctilious,
and neither wild nor villainous, and no, not in a hat.

Author notes: image from facebook

sit in a circle, knees tight
which is your left, which is right?
steady, please wait for your turn
remember, we're here but to learn
one sip at a time, pinky out
this is what style is about

Author notes: photo from Facebook

Cobblestones shimmer and shine.
Bell towers scrape the divine.
Sailboats adrift on the drink.
Sky runs from redeye to pink.
You didn't come for the views
Venice, in orangy blues

Author notes: image from facebook

For the mammoth to be wooly,
covered up, and nearly fully,
it was cold, or even chiller,
and so lacking a chinchilla,
it developed its own coat.
Now as hairy as a goat.

Its contemporary, rhino,
ripped but naked, s'far as I know,
It embraced this new found fashion.
Undertook it with a passion.
With the outfit now complete,
set and ready to compete.

So did all the megafauna --
(since the tropics were no sauna) --
became furry in a hurry,
fear no blizzard, ice or flurry,
mega large and mega biased,
stomp about the Older Dryas

By the time the ice had melted,
the Neanderthal, well pelted,
ruled the cave from Spain to Asia,
although sadly, on occasion,
he was eaten by a bear.
Few Neanderthals to spare.

Came across our fledgling species --
least according to my thesis --
found the thinly limbed Cro-Magnon,
though still lacking bow and cannon,
but, this needed to be said,
irresistible in bed.

What of us, all their descendants?
Rightists, leftists, independents,
homo sapient and stupid,
ruled by Ares or by Cupid,
learning, slowly, to behave.
But still living in a cave.

Author notes: image generated by GPT