How Mild Fall Is
How mild the fall is?
I followed a track between tall, pale green cactuses, in this harsh landscape
where even the smallest plant has thorns, where bark and leaves, of even
regular trees, like carob and olive, are tough and will not softens to human
touch. Yet this is a landscape that once was tilled and now abandoned, does
this landscape’s common soul feels rancorous of being left to fend for itself?
I found a ruin. More than a ruin, a pile of stones only its outline told me that
once this had been a home where children had been born, lived and died
for generations, till someone said: enough! And left for pastures green, (most
likely USA or Canada,) poverty is only romantic in movies. Half of November
gone, I’m walking about in shirt sleeves the ground is rock hard and dusty,
the local paper tells us that 14 years ago the weather was mild too till January,
then it snowed and it was cold till May. Feel I’m being watched in the bushes
I see a boar watching me it is a wily old boar it sees I carry no gun, yet keeps
its distance; and high above me circles eagles; the landscape is teaming with
rabbits which used to be food for the people, who lived in the ruin (when
they could snare one) now business men, who have paid for a license to kill,
come here to unwind. To kill seems to satisfy a base desire in mankind; yet, it
is better a rabbit is scarified, then to see a dead Afghan child with eyes that
reflect the grey mountains, poppy fields and the blue unfeeling sky.
poem by Oskar Hansen

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Landscapes
Landscapes
The landscape I walk, used to be guarded by stone hedges; infinite
supply of stones this soil yields if not much else. Nature has taken
back what man did, the landscape is lush of weed, and bent trees.
I’m sliding into silence, but if I listen I can hear Spanish bluebells
peal in a mild breeze that also carries a whisper of a Nordic lullaby,
Last year a Canadian couple walked with me, their ancestors came
from around here. We stopped outside a ruin and they went silent,
cried. An ancient memory stirred they knew this place. Where their
tears had fertilized the ground, is, this year, full of wild flowers.
No, they are not returning, Canadians now and proud of that too.
I sit on a stone, not by the river of Babylon, and see how the brook,
free from icy shackles elatedly run, will not heed words of caution.
I have made boats of bark, and sail of green leaves, see them hasten
towards the North Sea. The brook is no more, indifference has seen
to that, but the landscape of my childhood is clear as a stream.
poem by Oskar Hansen

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Winterlight
Winter-light
No one walks on the old road anymore, not even on a day
when almond trees are in bloom. Blue weed and thorny
bushes are shooting through, one day the road will be out
of sight. It leads to a ruin of a house, doors and windows
long since stolen, a door frame made of carved stone too;
half the roof has caved in. A vagabond lived in the ruin for
a time, till gruff voices told him to get lost. I saw him slowly
fade away, erased by shimmering winter light.
He must have walked long was found in a grotto, seeking
shelter from the rain. Three days dead, they said. No saintly
women came, cleansed and wrap his tired body in a shroud.
Funeral at five witnessed by a pale functionary of the state.
Church bells didn’t toll. No one walks on the old road
anymore, not since the bushes grew eagle’s talons and a boa
constrictor took abode in the ruin.
poem by Oskar Hansen

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My Landscape
My Landscape
Today, now as the weather is cooling, I went on my walk.
Hadn’t been here since June; simply because it gets to
hot to walk here in summers. The stony part of the track
was firm like walking on a cobblestoned street. The soft
part was like walking barefoot on a newly mowed lawn.
At the part where thorny bushes had made archway,
a tunnel of mystery, I hesitated. Needn’t have worried
the branches embraced me like a mother who’s young
son is coming home from the sea. When I stopped for
a rest under the tree where also sheep rest in the heat,
leaves, in perfectly still air, fell as confetti welcoming
the returning hero. How I love this odd landscape, once it
was tilled but now humanity have gone leaving the land
to its own devise and strange beauty.
poem by Oskar Hansen

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Fundamental of Liar Chapter CXXVI: Ruin
Do not ruin a good story
Do not ruin a perfect plan
Do not ruin a flawless lie
Do not ruin a great sacrifice
Do not ruin a hard work
Do not ruin a long trust
Do not ruin a magical moment
Do not ruin a golden opportunity
Do not ruin the current mood
Do not ruin an innocent dream
Do not ruin a sweet memory
Do not ruin a fair game
Do not ruin a mutual agreement
Do not ruin a smiling face
Do not ruin the flowing river
Do not ruin the sequence order
Do not ruin the standard procedure
Do not ruin the prepared show
Do not ruin a complete circle
Do not ruin a final ending
Do not ruin the leisure time
Do not ruin the aiming shot
Do not ruin the hidden purpose
Do not ruin a genius idea
Do not ruin the dead price
Do not ruin a determined mind
poem by Maria Sudibyo

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California Hills in August
I can imagine someone who found
these fields unbearable, who climbed
the hillside in the heat, cursing the dust,
cracking the brittle weeds underfoot,
wishing a few more trees for shade.
An Easterner especially, who would scorn
the meagerness of summer, the dry
twisted shapes of black elm,
scrub oak, and chaparral, a landscape
August has already drained of green.
One who would hurry over the clinging
thistle, foxtail, golden poppy,
knowing everything was just a weed,
unable to conceive that these trees
and sparse brown bushes were alive.
And hate the bright stillness of the noon
without wind, without motion.
the only other living thing
a hawk, hungry for prey, suspended
in the blinding, sunlit blue.
And yet how gentle it seems to someone
raised in a landscape short of rain—
the skyline of a hill broken by no more
trees than one can count, the grass,
the empty sky, the wish for water.
poem by Dana Gioia

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The Hunter And Dog
The Hunter.
The man who crosses the field carries his shotgun
tucked into his left arm. In his belt five rabbits hang.
This is not a hobby hunter in camouflage outfit,
but a mall time farmer who uses the wildlife to
augment his meager income… his dog that has been
walking at heel runs in front of him, barks, and up
from the tall, dry grass a rabbit springs a shot and
now he has six rabbits hanging from his belt….
He will sell his catch later at a hotel or restaurant.
The man who crossed field, his face is naturally dark,
by years spent outdoors, walks into a landscape of
trees and bushes and disappears from view.
poem by Oskar Hansen

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The Amazement
The Amazement
The track I walked, in the thorny landscape, was full of loose
stones that kept coming up from ground trying to trip me up,
where the track narrowed amongst unkempt trees, boughs
tried to push me over, and in the undergrowth I heard snarls
of animals too vicious and hideous too appear in the flesh.
Overcast day and the wind that blew had ice on its breaths,
I shivered alone in the enmity of a landscape gone feral.
But I staggered on unwilling to give into phobias and fear,
suddenly stones went subversive and the path was soft as
a carpet, unseen animals disappeared and trees welcomed
me with fluttering leaves; even a love hungry zephyr
whispered sweet words. In a shimmering glade- smooth as
a rich man’s lawn- a plum tree, full of juicy fruit, I picked and
ate some; they tasted of magic and sweet marvel.
Dizzy with pleasure I sat on a stone, formed by ten million
years of rain, like a throne, saw sirens dance to Pan’s flute and
swim with sunrays and moon waves that hadn’t made it home
and had to wait for night, and mother moon to come pick them
up. Fell asleep when I woke up a boar, with her seven piglets,
drank water by the lake’s far shore. White clouds on blue, time
to go home and remember not speak of this to anyone.
poem by Oskar Hansen

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A Landscape
A Landscape
Here in this landscape of bushes and crippled
trees, silence speaks of the final peace.
Grotesque dead trees, daylight ghosts, stand there
with grey boughs stretching upward appealing
to a fairytale god, “give us today a new life” but
no, there is only one god he is almighty, and hears
not your fearful whispered wishes, those who do
not understand are doomed to a life of an empty
pursuit for pleasures, crowding nightclubs and
casinos trying to avoid being alone with the night
and facing the truth: we are mortal and heaven is
to be remembered for a while by other mortals.
Faces in a black frame seeing you seeing through
you and into a void. Yet I fear not this landscape as
it is shunned by man and no harm can happen to me
here except the inevitable
poem by Oskar Hansen

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Love Lies In Ruin
love lies in ruin
love lies in ruin
love lies in ruin
love lies in ruin
leave if you want
if you can decide
leave if you believe in paradise
and stay if you must
if you'll trust my highs
stay, never leave, never go
my love lies in ruin
and better still my heart has ceased to care for anyone
you want to seize her
then tell her that you love her so
testify to all that i have ever felt for this girl
so walk on the wing
on the faith of desire
walk thru this place
as if your own
and leave as a friend
as a will that won't bend
leave as you would again
thru all the seasons
that i lived, i know i'm exiled
i testify to all that i had ever felt
as a child
my love lies in ruin
my love lies in ruin
to all i denied
i resist and i cursed
to all let me say
thank you so
for love is my way
is the path i choose
for love ever young may i feel
my love lies in ruin
my love lies in ruin
my love lies in ruin
my love lies in ruin
song performed by by Zwan

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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Cultivated Is My Valley
Cultivated Is My Valley
Peaceful is the landscape and the lane that meanders
amongst olive trees, stone walls neatly divide the land
a bit for everyone, but not enough to make you rich.
Here dogs only bark at night have cowardly, yellow eyes
there is no wolf left in these subjugated canines.
In Stockholm when spring comes ice shards fall off roof
tops, split brains in half, gore on snow. On paradise
islands too one has to look out for falling coco- nuts
they can so easily kill a man; but here, in my valley, only
petals of the almond tree flower fall.
Birdsongs and breeze that caresses olive trees, now that’s
peace, ok, so should I not be happy as I contemplate
a carob tree? I see a woman bending down, weeding her
potato field, clouds on the sky are as soft as the mustachio
on a Romanian girl’s upper lip. All this herald peace so
why shouldn’t I be happy, when seeing a flock of cows
with full udders ready to be milked at five? Yet I dream of
galloping horses on the pampas of Argentine, flying mane,
flaring nostrils. This place I tell myself lacks passion, it’s
too tame, or is it me that has been restrained by age?
poem by Oskar Hansen

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Winds bend the brown green grass of fall
Winds bend the brown green grass of fall
Whether in current age or decades past
Landscape gazers catch creatures storing seeds
Scattering yellow and white capped weeds
Preparing for winter their pattern unhindered
Winds bend the brown green grass of fall
Constant marker as mankind races
Ploughs terrain staking claim
Highways vanquish sod and plain
Yet tuffs of the brown green grass remain
Winds bend the brown green grass of fall
Off roadways geese settle and call
Despite cluttered asphalt the landscape recalls
Natures evolving, preparing and readying
For ice glistening cold when life sleeps through all
poem by Stephanie Eve Kane Arado

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Migration
Migration
In this rich flat landscape there are no stones they had to
travel to the far mountain and with mule and cart it was
a long arduous journey. Stones were only used as base for
houses and as grave stones, but since these were stolen
so this practice ended, the dead had to do with wooden
crosses which tend to rot when it rains. Farmers buried
their stones under a mass of soil, for safety mounds of
them dotted the flat landscape and made it less monotone.
Modern time, a railway line stretches across the land and
ends in a haze were the mountain begins, stones are now
a common thing, way, all and sundry has one, the poorest
even have gravelled strewn back yards. A clever man decided
to open a rise and sell stones a souvenir as a memory of
the past, when life was idyllic, but he found a mass grave,
not only human skeletons but also household goods, toys
and musical instruments.
poem by Oskar Hansen

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Zeroing In
"I am a landscape," he said.
"a landscape and a person walking in that landscape.
There are daunting cliffs there,
And plains glad in their way
of brown monotony. But especially
there are sinkholes, places
of sudden terror, of small circumference
and malevolent depths."
"I know," she said. "When I set forth
to walk in myself, as it might be
on a fine afternoon, forgetting,
sooner or later I come to where sedge
and clumps of white flowers, rue perhaps,
mark the bogland, and I know
there are quagmires there that can pull you
down, and sink you in bubbling mud."
"We had an old dog," he told her, "when I was a boy,
a good dog, friendly. But there was an injured spot
on his head, if you happened
just to touch it he'd jump up yelping
and bite you. He bit a young child,
they had to take him down to the vet's and destroy him."
"No one knows where it is," she said,
"and even by accident no one touches it.
It's inside my landscape, and only I, making my way
preoccupied through my life, crossing my hills,
sleeping on green moss of my own woods,
I myself without warning touch it,
and leap up at myself -"
"- or flinch back
just in time."
&nbs p;   ; "Yes, we learn that.
It's not a terror, it's pain we're talking about:
those places in us, like your dog's bruised head,
that are bruised forever, that time
never assuages, never."
poem by Denise Levertov

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Martian Landscape
* come from the land where
The wheat is still wheat
Where the waters in the rivers is still water
In this land every man lends
A hand when you need it
But your hands are full of life
So you can help yourself and feel it
Its been a long way from the red of my home
From the valleys
And the green plains never ending
Everyone knows that the sun in his land is stronger
And your hands are full of life
If you can only wait just longer
** so let it be a small haven big in your heart
Dont let it turn into a nova
Tryin to climb and climb
Try and forget this place where
I can still find time
To sing in rhyme
.*** martian landscape,
Ill learn to lie in your arms
Where all the freedom is mine and it comes
Martian landscape,
Ill turn my face to your sun
Where your horizon is mine and it comes
* repeat
** repeat
*** repeat
Martian landscape
Martian landscape
song performed by by Ufo

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Final Painting
The white cloud passed over the land
there is sea always round the land
the sky is blue always above the cloud
the cloud in the blue continues to move
- nothing is limited by the canvas or frame -
the white cloud can be pictured like any
other clouds or like a fist of wool
or a white fur rose
The white cloud passes a shadow across
the landscape and so there is a passing greyness
The grey and the white both envelop
the watcher until he too is drawn into the picture
It is all a journey from a room through a door
down stairs and out into the street
The cloud could possess the house
The watchers have a mutual confidence
with the approaching string of white clouds
It is beyond spoken words what they are
silently mouthing to the sky
There was no mystery in this - only the firm
outline of people in overcoats on a hillside
and the line of clouds above them
The sky is blue The cloud white with touches
of grey - the rest - the landscape below -
can be left to the imagination
The whole painting quietly dissolved itself
into its surrounding clouds
poem by Lee Harwood

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After Rain
After Rain
The audacious sun finally showed up, and green
was the winter landscape. I also saw where the sun sets,
just behind the old carob oak, where the almond trees
first blossom. Soundly and snug under a carpet of wild
flowers the sun snoozes till dawn.
Over the easterly range, which is the first defense against
Spanish marauders and the rain on its plain, the clouds
were dark blue, perhaps more rain tomorrow?
In fading light musical notes danced down a phone line,
the first flirt of spring? And should it rain tomorrow,
I will not be downhearted this day will keep me warm for
a week or so.
poem by Oskar Hansen

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Nature's Favorite Color
The green foliage is an attractive sight
On the vast landscape on a clear summer day,
As the white daisies gradually unfold along the side
Of a winding roadway that is somber and gray.
It is a picturesque view that one will readily admit,
Blesses the color of green to the greatest height,
And yet it is a scene that enlightens one's mind
With euphoria and great pleasure and delight.
It is not the beauty of the unfolding rose,
Nor the mellow sunflowers near the old mill,
But the color green - Nature's matchless green
On the highlands that gives one a welcomed thrill.
It is beholding of the color of green,
On the growth of leaves on a swaying tree,
And on the landscape far and wide indeed,
As green is Nature's favorite color for all to see.
.
poem by Joseph T. Renaldi

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How To Ruin Everything
There's something wrong with me I don't know
if it's not just inside my head
It feels like I'm walking through a dream
I still remember what you said
I know that everything will be alright
It's going to work out for the best
I think there must be something better still
It isn't really so far-fetched
You know I'll go running out
and ruin everything
You know I'll go running out
and ruin everything
It's hard to trust in somebody else
responsible for your success
But in the end I know it's up to me
I live my life with no regrets
So tell me everything I want to hear
What do you like about me best?
I've been a king and I've been a fool
I'm not about to give up yet
You know I'll go running out
and ruin everything
You know I'll go running out
and ruin everything
I've had enough of the promises
I've had enough of empty threats
Some people wait for opportunity
Why should I wait? I haven't yet
I want to burn down the prejudice
I want to destroy the evidence
Is all that really matters what you're worth?
Then what is it worth for your two cents?
You know I'll go running out
and ruin everything
You know I'll go running out
and ruin everything
song performed by by Face To Face

Submitted by Lucian Velea
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On A Day Like This
On A day Like This
The track I followed this morning in a landscape that
once was Eden but, since the gardeners were fired
had gone to seed, was dry and exuded unrelieved ire.
Leaves on bushes were rusty shaving blades, tried to
cut me up and drink my blood; neglected olive trees
tried to trip me up with sudden exposed roots wanting
to absorb my body so they, full of revulsion, could live
for hundred more years. Dead rabbits in the glade they
had been stabbed by blades of grass sharp as a mafia
assassin’s stiletto; furred creatures shivered in their
burrows. Hurt I made it to the main road where a nurse
waited, sticking plaster, a soft bosom and the aroma of
motherhood, she was my friend and lover, but, alas,
only as virtual as friends in the facebook are.
poem by Oskar Hansen

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Sun's yellow
Sun, s yellow grow,
yellow seedlings green;
Unless present the sun
photosynthesis not seen.
Green leaves change to
yellow in autumn;
Longer goes for rest
shorter present the sun.
Leaves paint landscape
in sun, s presence;
Chlorophyll goes green,
carotenoids orange.
Intensity of the sun
lot to bear on weather;
Land, s wetness goes
human sweats in summer.
(C) S. D. Tiwari
poem by S.D. Tiwari

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