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WordPress PlanetFive Poems by Bruce Whealton Being Published in The Horror Zine
I am happy to say that five more of my poems have been picked up for the next edition of “The Horror Zine” at: http://TheHorrorZine.com and I’m scheduled to appear in the second Anthology of the Horror Zine, which is being edited and published by Jeani Rector. My poems appeared there last December as well. The poems being published are the following: “Shelter,” “Becoming,” and “Sensuous and Strong as the Serpent,” “Kid Fears,” and “Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”
You can find other poems by Bruce Whealton on The Horror Zine here.
This blog is published by Bruce Whealton, more information about Bruce Whealton is here… Bruce Whealton is the owner of Future Wave Designs, a North Carolina Company providing Web Design and Web Development. Visit:
NC Web Design:Future Wave Designs
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Word Salad announces the latest edition has been released
Word Salad staff editors Jean Arthur Jones and Bruce Whealton are proud to announce the latest editions of Word Salad Poetry Magazine and Haiku Ramblings. These two publications are available here:
http://WordSaladPoetryMagazine.com
and here: http://WordSaladPoetryMagazine.com/Haiku/
This is Volume XVI, No. I for Word Salad Poetry Magazine – that means we are moving into our 16th year! Word Salad is made great by the contributions of the many poets and by the talents of Co-editor Jean Jones and Co-Editor and Publisher Bruce Whealton. Haiku Ramblings is a huge success and we are moving into our second year with that publication.
You will find various other publications on Word Salad beyond the quarterly magazine. Just click on Word Salad Publications from the top menu. We’d like to highlight one publication in particular and that is a new poetry collection of poems by Jean Jones. Bruce Whealton reports that this is one publication that he doesn’t take much credit for publication, unlike the rest of what you will see on the site. This manuscript, for “Post Mortem: New and Selected Poems” by Jean Jones, was created and edited by Wilmington poet and contributor to Word Salad, Scott Urban. Scott also provides a nice introduction to the publication. Scott also collaborated with Bruce Whealton in a collection of poems about vampires and vampirism, called “Puncture Wounds,” which can also be found among the Word Salad Publications.
Bruce Whealton would like to share his first edition of “What Really Matters,” one of the “Word Salad Publications,” available from the top menu. Wilmington poet and writer, Thomas Childs will be contributing to the editing of this publication as the second edition of this publication is in the works. So check back soon for updates to this.”
Word Salad also announces a slightly new look to the publication online. Bruce Whealton, writes, “I wanted to accomodate a growing amount of content on the site and make it easier to find what we have. Originally, Word Salad was just a quarterly poetry magazine, but we’ve grown from that.”
Word Salad would like to submit a request for artwork and photography that will become a part of the permanent features of Word Salad. So, if you are an artist, graphic artist, or photographer, this is your chance to showcase your work in a great publication. All contributors get full credit for their work if it is used on Word Salad.
Print copies of Word Salad are available for $10 each plus $1 shipping per copy. Payments can be sent via paypal to editors@wordsaladpoetrymagazine.com
or you can mail the payment, made out to Bruce Whealton and sent to
Bruce Whealton
Word Salad Poetry Magazine
112A Dillard St.
Carrboro, NC 27510
Thanks,
The Staff of Word Salad.
This blog is published by Bruce Whealton, more information about Bruce Whealton is here… Bruce Whealton is the owner of Future Wave Designs, a North Carolina Company providing Web Design and Web Development. Visit:
NC Web Design:Future Wave Designs
From Bruce Whealton: Career, Interests and Values, post Five Poems by Bruce Whealton Being Published in The Horror Zine
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My poem "Shelter" appears on "Aphelion: the Webzine of Science Fiction and Fantasy."
I’m excited to share that another poem of mine has been published. Here is a link to my poem on “Aphelion: The Webzine of Science Fiction and Fantasy.” This poem can also be found in my poetry collection entitled “Puncture Wounds,” available here.
Word Salad co-editor Jean Arthur Jones has a poem that also appears here at this link in that edition of “Aphelion: The Webzine of Science Fiction and Fantasy,” his poem is entitled “The Patron Saint of Dinosaurs.”
More poetry by Bruce Whealton can be found at http://brucewhealton.us
This blog is published by Bruce Whealton, more information about Bruce Whealton is here… Bruce Whealton is the owner of Future Wave Designs, a North Carolina Company providing Web Design and Web Development. Visit:
NC Web Design:Future Wave Designs
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Lost – poem by Bruce Whealton
I wonder if anyone has ever had this experience… of getting so lost… in their life. It seems that in the dream, I’d want to remember more, to remember that I found my way back, eventually. Yet some roads in this world are too terrifying to be on.
Lost
How could I have gotten
so lost?
I thought I recognized where
I was going…
Until it hit me,
that I didn’t know where
I was heading
or what road I was on -
it was dark…
the road signs
made no sense.
So, I drove faster
and faster,
“Eventually something
would make sense,”
I thought.
Fear began to rise
in me,
an existential fear
of total isolation
and more.
So, I decided to get off
the road I was on,
to turn down another road.
It was a bizarre choice
there was nothing familiar
about this road
unto which I was turning
I had no idea where
it would lead
some vague and unknown
instinct told me to turn.
I’ve had this dream
more than once.
I try to think about its meaning
adding my commentary
as an omnipotent voice
in the dream.
That last turn
before I wake up…
I would never have taken the turn
if anything at all
about the road I had been on
was at all familiar
and if I had not been
so desperately and passionately
scared and lost.
I always wake up
shortly after making the turn
because instead of relieving my fear
I begin to feel
even more terrified,
a sense of foreboding,
and even greater existential fear
than I had known previously.
I think, even in the dream state,
I decide,
“No, I cannot face ‘this’”
So, I wake up.
Yet there’s never resolution…
never a coming to understand
how I could have gotten
so lost.
This blog is published by Bruce Whealton, more information about Bruce Whealton is here… Bruce Whealton is the owner of Future Wave Designs, a North Carolina Company providing Web Design and Web Development. Visit:
NC Web Design:Future Wave Designs
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Inspired by Knots II – poem by Bruce Whealton
Here is part two of my poems based on R. D. Laing’s collection called Knots. He deals with how communication, as a social phenomena can be rather tangled into knots. I’ve felt that way recently.
Inspired by Knots II
I came to a party
everyone was playing a game.
I know they were playing a game
but I don’t know how to play
because I never learned
how to play.
What if they were playing a game
of pretending to play
a different game
or vice verse.
I was afraid I’d play the wrong game
and never be allowed
to play more games
even though I never played
any of these games,
I don’t think,
because I never knew what game
they were playing.
I want to play a game
so I won’t have to play
games.
Others also want to play
the game
so they don’t have to play
the game.
This blog is published by Bruce Whealton, more information about Bruce Whealton is here… Bruce Whealton is the owner of Future Wave Designs, a North Carolina Company providing Web Design and Web Development. Visit:
NC Web Design:Future Wave Designs
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Inspired by Knots – poem by Bruce Whealton
This was inspired by a poetry collection by R. D. Laing. He wrote about a wide range of topics, from mental illness to communication and often framed his thoughts around what he called Social Phenomenology. So, this is about social situations and how utterly bizarre they can be.
Inspired by Knots
We’re playing a game.
Does everyone know
we’re playing a game?
Does everyone like the game.
If you play the game
it shows you care,
when you first meet people
in a social situation.
I need you to play the game
because I’m nervous
and the game helps me feel relaxed
when we play the game
and it shows
you care about me
enough
to play the game
with me
until we know each other.
But I don’t even know you
so wouldn’t it be fake
to act like I care about you
by playing a game
in this social situation
which helps you feel more relaxed?
Don’t be so serious
just play the game.
This blog is published by Bruce Whealton, more information about Bruce Whealton is here… Bruce Whealton is the owner of Future Wave Designs, a North Carolina Company providing Web Design and Web Development. Visit:
NC Web Design:Future Wave Designs
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Kafkaesque News Program: Fox News is not a News Program
I thought the news was about who, what, where and when? Isn’t that the dictum. That’s how we learn the truth. Reality.
So, I’m in KFC and as when I was at McDonald’s, I decide to sit near the tv that is displaying the news, or what looks like the news. What I see, and read on the screen is rather bizarre. Most recently, I noticed what really amazed and befuddled me, while sitting at KFC a few days ago. I saw the title for the current topic, and the topic read, “Why isn’t” such and such being discussed or happening. I thought the news was about who, what, where and when. That’s it. The truth! Reality! I think the current segment was about why President Obama wasn’t discussing or concerned about such and such.
Basically, this station was not telling us what was happening but what wasn’t happening… “This is what isn’t happening in your world.” How utterly and completely bizarre! So, what other stories was I seeing on this “News” program that had nothing to do with what was happening?
I call this posting Kafkaesque News, because as a existentialist, I enjoyed Franz Kafka and when I considered a local bizarre newspaper, a fictional publication, I thought I’d call it Kafkaesque News. This seemed to describe the one in three or so stories I was seeing as part of “Fox News.”
This was not what I was seeing on the local 6 o’clock news or CNN. We don’t have someone coming out at 6:20pm and saying, “And this is what life could be like if the weather was 20 degrees warmer today.”
When I turn on Saturday Night live, I expect to get some spoof, or humorous take on the news. I know that, but I don’t know what to make of “Fox News.” From roughly 11am to 4pm, based on my observations, they present a program that looks like what you might find on CNN, interspersed with these bizarre programs, topics, or “stories” that make one ask oneself, why is this “why is this being presented as a news story?” or, “I thought I was watching the news, what happened?”
I’m creative, but when I turn on the news I’m expecting to see facts. The Truth! Reality. Who, what, when and where… what happened, not might have happened or what didn’t happen.
This blog is published by Bruce Whealton, more information about Bruce Whealton is here… Bruce Whealton is the owner of Future Wave Designs, a North Carolina Company providing Web Design and Web Development. Visit:
NC Web Design:Future Wave Designs
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The Appeal of Poetry about Family
The appeal of poetry about family: Poetry versus Greeting Card Verse
I remember long ago being told about the difference between poetry and greeting card verse. As a poet, you should strive to avoid greeting card verse type poems. As mature poets, that might seem like a rather juvenile bit of advice, maybe. However, I was thinking of this when I considered some poems that I wrote about or dedicated to family members – my father, or my grandparents. I was wondering, what appeal could these have for a general audience outside my family. At a recent poet reading (at St. Andrews College), Jeff Wyatt read a poem read a poem dedicated to his father. Probably no one in the audience, other than maybe 2 or 3 folks even met his father.
What does this have to do with the topic of greeting card verse? Well, in a greeting card, one might right something for a father that could be given to any father on Father’s Day, for example. Jeff’s poem and the poems that I’ve written to my father, these could not be applied to any father. Jeff’s father was a pilot, so I wonder if there was a connection there. Maybe someone listening to that poem, who had or has a father who is a pilot would connect because of that. There is something more though. I appreciated Jeff’s poem, yet my father wasn’t a pilot and I don’t know any pilots. I cannot really put into words what it was that allowed me to appreciate Jeff’s poem.
Now, let’s turn to my poems about family. My poems had to do with the dynamics of the unique relationship between my father and me, or between me and my father and my grandparents. I might have to reproduce the poems here to make my point, but maybe not. Maybe, though there are very unique aspects to the circumstances of our lives and our relationships – myself and my parents, grandparents, I think that perhaps there are universal themes here. Some themes that stand out in my poems are the ways in which a guy (I, myself) is the same or different than his father or grandparents and how that plays out in the relationship over time… What a family tries to leave behind for the next generation… how a guy learns to appreciate these things only later in life.
As a poet, we have to have faith that our listeners will be able to appreciate something within our poetry, even when it seems we are writing something that is so personal that it would have no appeal other than with our own family.
This blog is published by Bruce Whealton, more information about Bruce Whealton is here… Bruce Whealton is the owner of Future Wave Designs, a North Carolina Company providing Web Design and Web Development. Visit:
NC Web Design:Future Wave Designs
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A Love Affair That Ended Before it Started – Poem by Bruce Whealton
I’d like to introduce this poem with two quotes from Anne Sexton.
From “Sylvia’s Death,” by Anne Sexton:
“(In Boston
the dying
ride in cabs,
yes death again,
that ride home
with our boy)”
And from “Letters to Dr. Y, February 16, 1960″
“To die whole,
riddled with nothing
but desire for it,
is like breakfast
after love.
A Tragic Love Affair that Ended Before it Started
Oh, Anne,
What was it about death,
the lover with many faces,
and many forms,
shared by two poet friends,
you and Sylvia?
To hear your words,
you’d think he was a handsome boy -
the man of your dreams,
your angel.
You were insanely chasing
an illusion
and drunkenly toasting your hallucinations.
Even suicides cannot be perfect.
In the end,
there’s only one
suicide.
You couldn’t see him,
through the fog,
for what he was,
barren of features,
cold skeletal,
like wintry trees…
but you were in love
So, you dreamed
and you dreamed.
You spoke of suicides,
like so many imperfect boys,
who never lived up
to your expectations…
but in end
there’s only one
suicide.
This blog is published by Bruce Whealton, more information about Bruce Whealton is here… Bruce Whealton is the owner of Future Wave Designs, a North Carolina Company providing Web Design and Web Development. Visit:
NC Web Design:Future Wave Designs
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Health Care Reform from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops
Interesting to note what the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote in a resolution back in 1993. As a Catholic, I’m surprised I never read this to know something about the stand of such a large religious body in the US. Reference: http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/national/comphealth.shtml
Emphasis below is my own.
Priority Concern for the Poor/Universal Access: We look at health care reform from the bottom up, how it touches the unserved and underserved. Genuine health care reform must especially focus on the basic health needs of the poor (Le., those who are unable through private resources, employer support, or public aid to provide payment for health care services, or those unable to gain access to health care because of limited resources, inadequate education, or discrimination).
When there is a question of allocating scarce resources, the vulnerable and the poor have a compelling claim to first consideration. Special attention must be given to ensuring that those who have suffered from inaccessible and inadequate health care (e.g., in central cities, isolated rural areas, and migrant camps) are first brought back into an effective system of quality care. Therefore, we will strongly support measures to ensure true universal access and rapid steps to improve the health care of the poor and unserved. Universal access must not be significantly postponed, since coverage delayed may well be coverage denied. We do not support a two-tiered health system since separate health care coverage for the poor usually results in poor health care. Linking the health care of poor and working-class families to the health care of those with greater resources is probably the best assurance of comprehensive benefits and quality care.
This blog is published by Bruce Whealton, more information about Bruce Whealton is here… Bruce Whealton is the owner of Future Wave Designs, a North Carolina Company providing Web Design and Web Development. Visit:
NC Web Design:Future Wave Designs
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