First Quarter, 2013, Fifth Selection

#92

"Tibetan sources tell VOA that another person has set himself on fire in western China as part of a protest against Chinese rule in ethnic Tibetan areas." --Voice of America News, December 3, 2012

Released from the cocoon of his face

rising butterflies of flame

unfold their wings

his eyes and lips have not

           yet been consumed

he seems engaged in his detachment

focused far beyond his immolation

but his robes are the color of a match head

           Tibetan red

           the match tip has just been struck

caught in the sight of a camera

and the combustion is still beginning.

--Wulf Losee

First Quarter, 2013, Sixth Selection

Springtime in the Underworld

She sits in her car            waits for the rain to end

listens to classic rock songs             from before she was born

her cigarette flares            in the green radio light

smoke seeps through            clenched teeth

teeth stained with lipstick             red as pomegranate seeds.

Her thoughts wander            through a hothouse

filled with dead orchids            she strokes parchment leaves

brown as nicotine they              drain the color from her skin

and life returns to them             briefly

tear-drop flowers              dangle and coagulate.

That mummified bird she found              under the driver's seat

wasn't an omen              just a reminder note

from a season of amnesia              but feathers pinned to lizard skin

tell her there's no way home             that's free from memory

so she's sleepless because               she prefers not to fly

                                         in her dreams.

--Wulf Losee

Full Moon Poetry Society News - Feb 2013

Full Moon Poetry Society News

Our December Selections concludes our collection of poems 2012. 

February 22nd, 2013. Full Moon Poetry Society is beginning its sixth year. This winter, we are  making a few changes, and we think you’ll like them, or at least, be intrigued. We are.
We accept submissions at all times. Whenever you feel the urge to submit, do.  Instead of selecting five poems monthly, we will select however few or many poems really please us. We will be posting our Selected Poems quarterly, not monthly. Our next chapbook, The Full Moon Poetry Society Selected Poems of 2012, will be available this summer, in electronic, rather than printed, form.
The actual full moon, that shiny rock in the sky, is a great rallying point, a symbol of awareness and of our group, but that doesn’t mean we want poems about it. We don’t. No poems about the moon, please. This time we really mean it!
What we are looking for is poetry that shows heightened awareness. Free verse and traditional forms are both welcome. Length, less than five hundred words.
Consider the spirit of “show, don’t tell.” We seek poems from Zen, and other Buddhist, practitioners. But we prefer poems to show the trials and fruits and whimsy of practice, rather than tell about them in specifically Buddhist terms.
And yes. . . there is a full moon coming on the 25th. . . there’s that rallying point! 

join our conversation at Full Moon Poetry Society under Groups at community.tricycle.com as well as on Facebook.

December 2012 Selected Poems #'s 1 & 2

leaves fall

the river reappears

there all the time

              --Patrick Mizelle

Example Case

Regret without wishing it otherwise, here’s an example.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that you’re involved in the break-up, and

Let’s say that you determine that driving into the rice lands due West,

Even though the sun is below the Coast Range, is a good idea.

And so you do, and it is, and soon you’re strolling about on an irrigation road,

Alone except for hundreds of water fowl and their distant calls that

Stretch to the color of the sky, that in this bless-my-soul clear day, now

Hums an avocado hue, swear to god, and - of course -

Reflects in the flooded fields, in places the water and sky light nearly touching, equally bright.

And the moon is up and the birds are on wing,

And your heart is brimming – another field flooded with light.

So let’s say this is happening and you realize that the person you must leave,

First showed you that we all

Live in one vast heartland of the World - our native home.

The feeling that you might be having right then,

Might be an example of regret without wishing it otherwise.

I’ve learned from science instruction it’s best to provide an example case.

--Chris Gaffney