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What’s a prisoner to do when justice fails
and the innocent is escorted off to jail?

What’s a prisoner to do once stigmatized,
caged and abandoned and ostracized?

What’s a prisoner to do there’s no one to trust;
the system fails and the outcome unjust?

What’s a prisoner to do when family decide
the punishment is warranted and justified?

What’s a prisoner to do while confined in a cell;
the perpetrator’s free and faring quite well?

What’s a prisoner to do once his reputation is dead
and his life has been ruined because of what someone said?

What’s a prisoner to do when he’s not believed,
though he’s telling the truth, he’s thought to deceive?

What’s a prisoner to do as he sits all alone,
no one seems to care; former friends all gone?

What’s a prisoner to do sitting lost and idle
and most of one’s thoughts become suicidal?

What’s a prisoner to do when freedom’s taken away
and the will to live diminishes each day?

What’s a prisoner to do when hedged in by strife;
with no escape possible; no chance for a new life?

What’s a prisoner to do when he can no longer see
the beauty of the sky or the waves of the sea?

What’s a prisoner to do when the sun he can’t feel,
nor the breeze of spring because his fate is sealed?

What’s a prisoner to do when doomed to despair
but still praying to escape the electric chair?

Tell me, what’s a prisoner to do?

Rev. Saundra L. Washington, D.D., is an ordained clergywoman, veteran social worker, and Founder of AMEN Ministries. She is also the author of two coffee table books: Room Beneath the Snow: Poems that Preach and Negative Disturbances: Homilies that Teach which can be reviewed on her site. Her new book, Out of Deep Waters: My Grief Management Workbook, is expected to be available in July.

You are welcome to visit AMEN Ministries: Your Souls’ service Station for spiritual refreshing, soul edification or to browse our newly expanded mini shopping mall. http://www.clergyservices4u.org.

Blessings to all!

For those of you who are mindful of wish lanterns and have utilized them umpteen times earlier, you’ll have been distraught that in the last month or so our breed of wish lanterns at our Wimbledon warehouses decreased to none. We were forced to let down numerous customers wanting to buy wish lanterns in mass for a wedding party or party, because we quite simply didn’t have any available. This was not because of catastrophic organization on the part of the wish lantern team, nor due to an amateur and sub par supplier. We got into this situation simply because customersworships wish lanterns so much. Due to huge demand, the team found themselves selling wish lanterns swifter than they could load them up. While this was very good for business, it was not so good for customers when we eventually reached the point where there were no longer any lanterns left to sell. We had to let down many people wanting to buy lanterns in bulk for their wedding or for parties, because there were simply none to spare. Thankfully this is no longer the case. Duos won’t have to put their weddings on hold because of a lantern. We now, finally have them in stock again in their thousands, so get purchasing!

Fantasy/Controversy or My Reality is triumph over the desperate house wife syndrome. After Ruth Garnes walked away from a fulfilling career to become a fulltime wife and mother, she claimed that she momentarily became a desperate house wife. Not wanting her chore filled day and disappointments to over take her she started to express herself in verse.

“My life as an individual was not only about caring for seven children. It was also about my dreams and aspirations. I wanted and needed a life that was about love and laughter and most of all triumph over challenges,” says Mrs. Garnes. As a young woman I worked to put myself through college. The road to becoming a nurse was not easy but I attained that goal. Why should I now allow the challenge of rearing seven children to defeat me?”

This is what Fantasy/Controversy or My Reality is about. Triumph in the face of difficulties, finding joy inspite of pain. We all have had to over-come something; this is what makes Fantasy/Controversy or My Reality appealing to all. It is available on line from Barnes & Noble, Amazon or the publisher; Publish America. For more information about the author visit her web-site at http://www.home.earthlink.net/

Ruth Andrews Garnes was born in Belize the second of six children. She moved to New York City at age eighteen. After studying nursing she worked in the emergency room in Bellevue Hospital. She currently resides with her husband and seven children in the Houston Texas area. Having always had a heart for hurting children she adopted four sisters. Through her writings she hopes to be able to make a difference to hurting children everywhere by giving a voice to their struggles.

To many people contemporary poetry is a turn-off. The reason for this is that the majority of these poems are boring. They are so because they fail to enable people to identify with them. The bulk of modern poetry is no longer about reader identification but about information transfer, information that could just as easily be conveyed in a prose form. These poems are written merely to convey the poet’s thoughts and feelings about a specific event, situation or place he or she has experienced or is in the act of experiencing. The poet is not necessarily concerned with whether the reader is moved or not by the poem, so long as he or she understands clearly the information the poet is trying to convey. This may consist of some “important” insight gained from an experience, or it could be (as is usually the case) a jaded statement or commentary about some mundane aspect of contemporary life.

The popular song at its best, however, does more than this. It excites both the imagination and emotions; it enables you to unlock your own highly personal box of images, memories, connections and associations. This is most readily evidenced in the songs of Bob Dylan. Even the most perfunctory of his songs is able to do this to a greater extent than most “serious” poetry. This is because his songs (and to a lesser extent songs in general) frequently utilise imprecise and abstract statements rather than particular and specific ones. Contemporary poetry, on the other hand, does the exact opposite of this: it utilises particular and specific statements rather than imprecise and abstract ones.

Dylan is not afraid to generalise, for he knows that it is only through generalisation that the reader can recognise the specific. Keats understood this when he said that a poem ’should surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity’ and that ‘it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost as a remembrance’ (letter to John Taylor, 27 February 1818).

David Bleich, in Readings and Feelings champions the creative powers of the reader. He believes writing about literature should not involve suppressing readers’ individual concerns, anxieties, passions and enthusiasms because ‘each person’s most urgent motivations are to understand himself’. And as a response to a literary work always helps us find out something about ourselves, introspection and spontaneity are to be encouraged. Every act of response, he says, reflects the shifting motivations and perceptions of the reader at the moment of reading, and even the most idiosyncratic and autobiographical response to the text should be heard sympathetically. In this way the reader is able to construct, or create, a personal exegesis by utilising the linguistic permutations inherent in the text to construct units of meaning constituted from a predominantly autobiographical frame of reference. The ambiguities present in Dylan’s oeuvre enable the listener to do exactly this.

Jeffrey Side has had poetry published in various magazines including: T.O.P.S., The White Rose, Poetry Salzburg Review, ism, Sphinx and Homeground. And his poems have appeared on various poetry web sites such as Poethia, nthposition, Ancient Heart Magazine, Blazevox, hutt and Cybpher Anthology.

He has reviewed poetry for New Hope International, Stride Magazine, Acumen and Shearsman Magazine. From 1996 to 2000 he was the assistant editor of The Argotist magazine. He now runs The Argotist Online web site:

http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/index.html

34) Eros Ploy

From her mind to her clitoris,
To her nipples and lips,
Wooed like a bird perched on a stick:
She melted like butter
Until there was no other.

35) Tagaririm (Arch devil Belphegor)

He speaks only in Aramaic, calling up the dead
For vagary, spells and signs, to hide
The Atziloth scrolls, until the four heavens divide,
Untiluntil the end of time….

From different worlds, his powers come
Briah, Yetzirah and Asiahwhere immortal veils
Never meet (Neschamah, Ruach and Nephesch);
And questing armies never die.

Lo, Samaul, Evil Spirit of the soul, waits for thee,
Thy signature O Belphegor
To unroll the scroll,
Bearing the names of angelic beings and demonic foes.

36) Dream Maker
[Part 1 of 5]

Who crafts a dream
Puts us to sleep!
What ear shall hear
Or balance meet
To wake us up
Upon our feet?

II: Comes the Dream

Comes the dream,
An inkling memory
Sealed tightclasping
In a darkened room
(In soul-vaults).

III: Ancient Scrolls

Endless mysteries
Of the spirit’s plight
Weave the inner twilight.
Unending sunsgloom!
Ancient dreams and scrolls….

IV: Sleeping Mind

In each sleeping mind,
Light can seldom find
The formless decay,
Of ones dragging worlds
To be left, behind;

For heaven’s melody,
Darkness lurks
As the mind hovers:
The strains seep out
Lo! Bend the vine:
Let the sunsets in,
Awaken
(All’s forgotten).

V: Lonely, Lost

The Dream-maker shouts:
“I found songs unsung,”
Lonely, lost a while,
Unto and into thy grief,
Thy grief, my grief now sung.

Ah! Death has lost its sting:
And dreams have lost
Their pulse
“Thou shalt not wake this time,”
The Dream-maker shouts.

37) The Macabre Serpent of Space

With chilling sarcophagus grimace,
The ill-omen serpent appeared
From out of the shadows of space…

Lo! More ancient than man, it thirsts for a name
A place in unutterable space
Yet, only blacknesscul-de-sac….

38) C.A. Smith

The cypress blows over my grave:
Oh would I hide from you
Yet I write…all the same.

Ah! -I am a ghost:
With shadows above me
And demon ears below.

April 17 2004, Lima, Peru.

Published on the Eldritch Dark website; a favorite of my friend’s, Phillip Ellis.

39) I. The Woods in the Sea

Upon the throne, of the moon,
Across the land, into the sea,
He treads: walks endlessly
For the entire world to see.

The wind is from the north,
The bright stars rest in the west,
The gift of second-sight
Resides within his chest.

He knows he cannot rest
For unseen shores yet to come
From lands both dim and gray,
Lands of new outcomes.

Published on the Eldritch Dark website 6/04

40) II: Shadow of Fate

If one lives with the god of hate,
High or low be he,
Such is his fate….

41) III: Talons

I will weave the pale shadows
(Time lost, time forgotten):
All into pallid brows
Onto the stranger’s talons:
While I sink into the board-walk
Let him tell his tall tales.

42) IV: Wild Stones

Who is the witch, the demon
The culprit and the ghoul?
I could not tell for the life of me:
So I forgave them, one and all.

And then I slept a long sleep
(Forgiving is quite a chore)
Then, when I woke to meet the day,
Love had conquered all.

43) V: Satan’s Sidekick’s

The men that chum with Satan
Their hearts cannot forgive;
They see no more in love,
Than mercy can see to give.

The men that chum with Satan
Their gods are many and small;
They drift away like white ghosts
Climbing demonic walls.

The men that chum with Satan
Seldom can they sleep;
And through their nightmare visions,
With flames and smoke they leap.

They walk the earth alonethey do,
Strange, deep with palest eyes.
Always thinking they were cheated:
With footsteps dogged by lies.

And in the halls of Belshazzar
Their ghostly eons twist and twine;
Always knowing naught of hope,
Beyond the blazing line.

44) VI The Great Flood of ‘51

The night is dark, the Mississippi
Lies asleep;
Velvet mists veil the blood-spattered moon
(With hoary strange eyes):
Restless with hazy fear, and slumber
Of her sleep
(White thunder in the skies).
She hears the whisper of the
Ghostly storm (booming far
Encircling near)
Glide overnightoverheadready:
To be born (like a hammer of Thor).
“I shall go forth!” she hears:
And down the scarlet veil, hails
Triumph is in its roarthe storm:

Roads, men, levee and homes
Cliffs and bridges tossed about:
The untamable god has freed the clouds.

Continuation from the: Macabre Poems

45) Poe’s Legacy

If Poe hadn’t have been born

There’d have been no rapping or tapping
(at least for a whileat my door?)
Nor would there had been morbid beauty
with depth and sin…
That circles the globenor HPL and CAS.
What a mundane life (it would have been)
without the devil’s pen.

I gripped the legacy: lying on savage ground,
the third-eye of the hunter, filled with wax
calls for breath, in the silent Valley of Shock;
thus, stungI remain, by the fruitless trees
of horrorthen I hear a whisper:

“Lord, help my poor soul.”

June 4 2004

Inspired by Phillip Ellis.

46) Loving in Limbo

Mother! Mother!
My precious one!
To whose dearest love
Will harmony run?
Oh! Thy will it is
In the winters to cross
Or lay simply still
Like October’s frost;
Now my form is cold
(As in trance I’m snared)
Keeping heart and soul
With songs threadbare?

June 6 2004

47) Mystery of Mysteries

We’re born alone, as shall we die
Looking at the hour of drifting
A Mystery of Mysteries!
We are pitifully helpless things….

The Watchman’s guardian eye,
For Himit is not loneliness;
The drumming of the unguided
Lends allurementwith chanting nearby.
In life and death, two faces pry;
One shall overshadow: they cry

Be it night or day, though face may frown,
Unready for the final dawn
And pandemonium near, throbbing:
Comes the drifting of the hour
As we’re born, we die: alone
A Mystery of Mysteries!

48) Rosinina Tapi of the Sacred Valley

It was long, long, so long ago
in the Sacred Valley of Peru,
wherein a maiden lived, no one really knew,
by the name of Rosinina Tapi
and this maiden lived with no other thought:
than to live out her life within this sacred spot.

I was a Prince and She was to be,
in this kingdom of the Sacred Valley;
we fell in love: ardent and unconditionally,
I and my Princess to be
with a cherished worship, that only Heaven
could see.

And so it was, that long, long ago
in this kingdom in the Sacred Valley
a ghostly wind blew to and fro
(out of a void no one knew):
after my lovely Rosinina Tapi,
thus inspiring her kinsmen
to take her away from me.
They hence shut her upin a eerie vault
Within the kingdom of the Valley.

Ah! the devils, the devils, that dwelt in Hell,
Were envying her and I
Oh yes!’twas their quest
(as all knew within the Sacred Valley),
that the ghostly wind that blew to and fro
through the cracks of the earth:
had seized and killed my Rosinina Tapi.

And sad was I, to bury my dreams,
(such memories that had to be):
and under the moonbeams, my beautiful Rosinina Tapi
was buried within the Sacred Valley.

49) The Ancient Sharra

You that rest in utter and gloomful darkness
Who come from the middle of the world
The Sharra Indians with shrunken heads,
Colored feathers, blow-guns with
Fearful darts,
Along the equator’s rimthat doesn’t spin
To you I pour forth my autumn nights.

Note: 4/20/04: written during a visit at the Middle of the World at the Ecuador (000)

50) Satan’s Galapagos

By the dark shadows
Vowed to Lucifer,
By his sealed prophets
Foreshown,
By these, by these I claim
Thee
By trickery, wine and sorcery
I have tried to bend thy
Footsteps
In the peaceful Galapagos.

April 24 2004; Lima, Peru

Note: written returning from the Galapagos, to Lima, Peru; many strange and disruptive incidents, occurred.

51) Fading Worlds

Behind a great shadow,
A world fades
This is the price of beauty
How many stars are lost
This way
Lost within the oceans,
Fading skies?
So many lost worlds… die….

In memoriam Clark Ashton Smith April 10 2004, Lima, Peru; revised May 5 2004.

52) Lost Souls

Shadows of the lost souls,
If you call on them,
Will never let you go.

April 17 2004, Lima, Peru

53) The Goat man’s Fancy

She heard the coming of the Doom
In the silence still of the moon
For, half-enchanted with his stars
In the twilight of his youth,
To the desert he did part.

Now, with the moon unlit,
He left her heart…
As if she was to mutter on
And sing his starry, lonesome song!

Henceforth triumphant
Was the Devil’s rose:
For she poured his devilish poisons, cold
And muttered on, to a new moon….

54) The Hoofed Demon

He heard me not, nor saw
Knowing my presence as he should:
He whispered.

*Ecuador, Quito, 4/25/04

55) Buried Souls

And there his sarcophagus lay
Beneath the towering mountains
Stretching out of the deep, dark sea
(With all its weight, sealing his fate),
No light, no day, only binding chains.
Lost, forgotten in the sand’s density…

Where no travelers have yet been,
No roads or skies to befriend,
Faceless skeletons, silent voices:
They all embraced in this veil of dark
Embraced by looks: face to face
Hungry to fill the emptiness of space.

April 1 2004, St. Paul, Minnesota

56) The Pale Horse of Rano Raraku

Jesus said: “Know what is before your face and what is hidden from you will be revealed to you;”
From: ‘the Gospel of Thomas’.

It is to you, to you among the living that I write; for indeed, I may be dead, and am of little concern if so. For the years now that are in the past, the last few in particular, have been years of terror, of intense dread, as circles the world this very moment, to escalate, I do believeescalate around the globe, and so I write this by inspiration of a story I heard:

Into and onto the Isla de Pascua,
Navel of the world (window to the Pacific)
Whose Moai Eyes of towering volcanic stones
Look towards the Heavens,
As if their spirits were trapped, bound within,
Afraid, fearful, frightened, to leave their stone abode,
To face their worldly sins

Thus, rides the Pale Horse of Rano Raraku’s rim
of Rano Raraku’s rim.

Ah, distinctly, eagerly, pacing,
‘Tis a visitor who comes racing
Into and onto the whisper of Rano Raraku
To catch the first glimpse,
The very first glimpse, peep, and hint… of Apocalypse
Deception and pestilence travel with him,
The Pale Horse: Tribulation

Whence comes hail and fire from above, mixed with blood;
The sun, moon and stars darken.

Henceforth, the Pale Horse comes racing, riding,
From the rim of this wondrous volcanic site.
The seventh trumpet is now ready to be blown,
The woes and vials to be poured:
Within the magic and mystery of this story
Rides the Pale Horse dying, dying, dyingdead,
On the rim of Rano Raraku;

Watching, watchingthe stranger, Austrian, grim:
Thus comes the world’s sins;

As he witnesses the painthe horse’s message:

“The God-King is not dead
The God-King is coming….”

Inspired by my poet friend, Johannes [2004]

See Dennis’ web site: http://dennissiluk.tripod.com

Afraid of Bird Flu it is coming you know and could kill 100 worldwide? Are you worried about bank robbers like Bonnie and Clyde?

International Terrorists are coming to get your family and You? Are you afraid of lions escaping from the Zoo?

Fear the Comet that will soon hit the Earth? Are you afraid of the coming of Satan, it could well be the next birth.

Totally annihilation and Nuclear War coming soon. Are you afraid of the Tropical Hurricane Season staring early in mid-June?

Are you in totally in dismay of the Santa Clause virus worm, which might ruin your day? Homophobic and worried your kids will grow up to be Gay?

One traffic accident could end your life? Aren’t you afraid of the mailman sleeping with your soul mate and wife?

Are you concerned you could lose your job tomorrow? What if they foreclose on your house and you are in a World of sorrow?

Are you concerned that when you die your soul will burn in hell? Do you have dreams of watching the stock market crash your investments went up and then fell?

Holiday Belly bulge making you fat? What if you grow up lose your mind, not know where you are at?

Does the nightly chaos bother you on the world news? Are you worried of being an alcoholic unable to stay off the booze?

I am here today to tell you my friend, the sun will rise tomorrow and this isn’t the end.

“Lance Winslow” – Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; http://www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

Have you ever read the lyrics of a Simon and Garfunkle song? Pure poetry. Want to write poems like that? Start copying them. Let me explain.

The Myth Of Creativity

Creativity is somewhat of a myth. It isn’t that it doesn’t exist, but people’s ideas about it are mis-informed. Many believe that to be creative is to come up with something completely new. There isn’t an artist or inventor out there who has done this.

Somebody had to write the first four-line verse or haiku poem, right? Now is everyone that uses these forms an uncreative copy-cat? No, of course not. We must copy forms, general ideas and techniques, so why not do it more systematically?

Poem Writing Tricks

Copy a poem you like, and then play with the elements. Part of the beauty of a poem is in the structure and the rhythm. Why not insert your own words into that, to see what happens?

Here is the last part of a poem titled “Gratitude.” It started by painting a picture of the mountains,and then;

Words fail, as they should…

But gratitude

Now, if you take the general “gimmick” of the diminishing lines, you could insert all sorts of thoughts. An example:

Pain returns, as it must…

But to life

Shameless? No more so than the second time somebody wrote a four-line verse. New words have created a new poem. In the context of a longer poem, this copying of form in one verse might not even be noticed.

What is creativity if you don’t create something? Use whatever tricks and techniques you need to start creating poetry.

Steve Gillman has been playing with poetry for thirty years. He and his wife Ana created the game “Deal-A-Poem,” which can be accessed for free at: http://www.dealapoem.com