Rik George writes

Midsummer’s Night
(Horace, Carmina III, xxviii, “Festo quid potius die...”)

Midsummer’s Night, my friend. 
I’ve stashed a Sonoma Merlot 
in the cellar for tonight. 
Fetch it, amigo. 
The afternoon’s wound down. 
Dusk unwinds it shadows. 
I’ll get some ice and a bucket 
to cool the wine. 
While it chills we’ll sing 
songs for the holiday. 
I’ll do songs of the sea. 
You warble laments. 
We’ll end with a duet for lovers, 
uncork the wine and drink 
a toast to fermented grapes 
and drowning sorrows.

Greek Wine -- Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Vitaliy Mashchenko paints

Spring Megalomania

Arlene Corwin writes

The Mating Frogs

Well it’s April, and a Brooklyn girl

Along her Swedish country road,

Swedish husband by her side,

She, still naive and uninformed

Sees/doesn’t see the camouflaged

Small grey-brown speckled frog guy

Spackled on a grey-brown lady.

Garbage truck may come today; they’re in the way.

So nudging these two pre-historic

Monsters, (I beg Kent to leave them be.

They’re having sex). If that were me

I’d be in shock. “For God’s sake, it’s their yearly fuck,

So stop it Kent!”  

But still he seems indifferent.

They don’t appear to give a fig.

A fuck, a fig - the bottom lady frog hulk big.

Bumping, lunking, schlepping, hopping off  into the wood,

Off towards the lake, still glued

And much in love.

Matthew Fischer performs

Cuntree Blues

Karlo Sevilla writes

Soul Tango

Without eyes, we gaze at each other.

Without arms, locked in embrace.

Without ears, enraptured by music.

Without feet, dance till curtain falls.

My declaration of faith:

where flesh is phantom,

love embodies.

 

Phantom Lovers -- Josie Grant

Kenneth Vincent Walker writes

Web of Lies

Ahh... to spin this web into a lie,

Forsake the truth and then deny.

A silken web woven to any size,

To lose the truth within one's eyes.

Within the womb life slowly dies.

This lifeless tomb of hidden cries.

There's no success if no one tries

With no commitment in our lives.

The sun sinks in the swollen skies

And darkness lends no compromise.

So now we turn to claim our prize.

We sell the truth that no none buys,

That which is solely based on a lie,

And yet we try, and yet we try...

Web #1 -- Vija Celmins

Carloluigi Colombo paints

Woman naked on the beach