Guidelines



Submission Guidelines: Send unpublished poems in the body of an email (NO ATTACHMENTS) to nvneditor[at]gmail.com. No simultaneous submissions. Use "Verse News Submission" as the subject line. Send a brief bio. No payment. Authors retain all rights after 1st-time appearance here. Scroll down the right sidebar for the fine print.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

GAZA STRIPTEASE

by Charles Frederickson


Stop look and listen yielding
To humankind same blood type
Pressure mindful hearts viscerally pleading
For immediate warmonger ceasefire dead-end

Tattered social fabric rent asunder
By decades of despotic conflict
Rebuilding its entire bombarded infrastructure
Dashed hopes daunting uphill task

Rest of civilized world demands
That Israel tear down wall
Audacious concrete monument to inhumanity
Yet zealots refuse to comply

Simmering anger has reached the
Boiling point lost temper meltdown
Powder keg about to explode
Short fuse gunning for revenge

As quaking fault lines deepen
Devastation falls into cataclysmic abyss
Huge reservoir of pent-up wrath
Surfaces from bottomless pit darkness

Too long deprived of homeland
Palestinians deserve genuine national integrity
With true Arab identity distinctive
Future of its very own


Adapted Thai poEtpourri structural scheme
4-line 20-word write on stanzas
Befitting offbeat reason without rhyme
Un-author-ized style consciously punctuation free



Dr. Charles Frederickson is a Swedish-American 4midable, 10acious, cre8ive 1derer who has wandered intrepidly through 206 countries, an original sketch and poem for each presented on http://www.imagesof.8k.com. Spreading revitalized roots and fine-feathered wings in Thailand, this uniquecorn has devoted the past year and a half to volunteer tsunami relief and child-focused educational support. 100+ publications on 5 continents.