The burning flag

POEMS and ART by John M Bennett, USA

Helpless

Image from sketchbook by Heleen de Vaan, The Netherlands

Text: GV

De boom staart met het hulpeloze kater-act van uilenogen naar het domme gansje.

Blind voor de waarschuwing zal hemelsblauw wellicht

veranderen in zombieroodjasgraan.

Ik sla het raam dicht tevergeefs.

De omkadering straalt een veel te sterk licht uit!

Helaas vergat ik mijn zonnebril.

A door is not always a gate, sometimes it is a well, dream

Small painted envelope I made after I wrote a text on some of my own dreams:
Envelope mailed to Lisa Perez in the USA

Dreams that occurred to me at dawn: 

One of my cats changing into a rabbit and firing a tail of fur from his back.

Second cat changing into a tiny small piglet, disappearing in the walls of my study.

A little boy that looked like me when I was young, begging for an escape route, I had to move my bed and he disappeared into the wall, thanking me for acting on his request.

Someone lying beside me in the bed and stroking my hair, calming me and I was confused: was she a lover or a mother or both?

The shadow of an indetermined animal running to the garden when I was in pain on the loo.

Opening a door to find a well, opening a window to find something I do not remember now but that was definitely not a window view!

 Images:

Katerina Nikoltsou, Greece

JJ Alltheway, USA

Martha Aitchinson, UK

Text:

Guido Vermeulen, Belgium

















I can hear the blues of a tree

I can hear the dying juice

and the squirell committing suicide

in the giant redwood I can’t see.

THE FRAME POEM

THE FRAME the frame of rosewood and ebony empty till the eye fills it with the image of a man sitting motionless on a bench as the falling leaves slowly bury him another man sees blackbirds grubbing under the elms after a hard rain beaks spotted with acid drippings old men see the whispers of ghosts pass from life eternal to a myth etched on a Byzantine silver plate they crawl across vast flats of eroded stone till their hands swell and blur into the far horizon a woman saw a colored music there a figure receding in the tapestried hall of an Eastern lamasery after death the victim would remember how the frame showed the shadow of the blinds cut across the killer's face ERIC BASSO April 24, 2012

CROWBAR POEM

CROWBAR POEM

by Mark Rossmiller, USA

crowbar Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 8:05 PM in the darkness of a drive-in car wash, i can't find your hand to hold onto. between the seats with a bottle of caffeine concentrate, i can't unlock the doors. i drink, then feel the pressure of the car closing in around me. i want to scream, but there's no air for me to make a sound. i hold a crowbar in both hands, but cannot find the strength to shatter glass. so i just hold on tightly, imagining it's you. #GabrielRossmiller #pocketpoem #antiart #mailart #dada #fluxus #art #awesome...

LITTLE BIRDS

From Theresa Williams, USA
and Alicia Starr, USA

ODE to I’m not certain what

From Cheryl Penn, South Africa
References to some Beatles’ songs

SHOW ME THE PLACE WHERE SUFFERING BEGAN

Small painted envelope for Martha Aitchinson, UK

SONG: Show me the place by Leonard Cohen, album Old Ideas

In the rings of trees

the circle of seasons sleeps;

when we are awake we lack

reminders of sudden memories.

The loss is so terrible and overwhelming

as what we can’t achieve in comprehensive dreams.

GV

around art work by Jill French and Laura Podob, USA

Ragh, argh, Gahr, grah, and so on

Visual POEM against the persecution / discrimination of gays, lesbians and bisexuals

From Neil Gordon, USA

Death in the street according to HORUS

From Julian and Dan, UK

A Mexican POEM

From Emilio Carrasco, Mexico

The descent to hell is happening now, oh Dante!

Small painted envelope for Neil Gordon, USA

References:

LA DIVINIA COMEDIA

The poetry of London past

From Simon Warren, UK

Haiku for Gilberte 1

Door dichte wolken
slapen bloemen in een vaas,
een wereld sluitend.

GV
April 2012

Haiku for Gilberte 2

EN DE BOMENTROTS
AAN DE EINDERS VAN DE WEG
VERKENT WOLKEN TRAAG

GV
April 2012

LAMUSAR MUSIC MADE IN TIBET

From Ruggero Maggi, Italy

Jackal ready to resign proof

Collage with painted fragments around the JACKAL poem by David Stone

Fragment:
«Proof,» said the jackal,
«I am turning in my chart,
ready to resign.»

ABOUT ...

About a single stone
listen to the silence of the earth
keep quiet when you open
the mouth of seasons because
the distance has no importance at all ...

GV
April 2012

SMALL THINGS: a revisited kiss revisited

Small painted envelope for Theresa William’s project on small things
Tribute to Gustav Klimt

Text contribution:

10 smal things to make life better


1. A revisited kiss revisited
2. The smell of earth after some heavy rainfall
3. The reflection of wild cats in your fiery eye balls
4. The growing of the first green grass in another spring
5. The golden waves hiding under your winter skirt but not completely
6. Hugging a tree when climbing a sacred mountain; any mountain, any tree
7. Nipples hard and soft as rocks in the palm of aromatic hands
8. Sunrise, sunset and in between and what will follow
9. The promise of another tomorrow, even when we resist this
10. Mail art from your belly-button jumping to my throat


GV
15 April 2012

At the North Sea where ENSOR lived masks were as common as fish on the local market place

Small painted envelope

The angry blackbird

Large painted envelope for David Stone, USA
Project: Blackbird
Starting point: the poem ANREDSAM by Paul Celan (from LICHTZWANG)

What we create when we think at art

From Piet Franzen, The Netherlands

On daffodils

From Jill French, USA, connected with this poem

A daffodil
in the presence of a stone
Rain
invades the kitchen



a haiku that is not a haiku but more a haiku than most haiku I read, thank you Gill
GV

Boom boom boom

New poetry booklet by John Bennett,
Last image by John and C. Mehrl Bennett

Without knowing me, my pain was a shoe

New poetry edition by John Bennett, cover art by Guido Vermeulen

Original hand delivered tiny mail

From Art like Art, around a quote by T.S. Eliot
I grow old, I grow old
I shall wear
bottoms of my trousers
rolled