GAS Featured Poet: r.s. mason

r.s. mason’s debut book of poems, Nearer to Never, was published by SUNY Press in 2015. The text was a finalist in the Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize. Poems have appeared in Chronogram, THEMA, Milk & Cake, AMP, Sorte and Island of Yak-Yak. 

"My desire as an artist is to have others sense poetry as an essential bridge to what waits to be articulated, rather than confirmed; a bridge to something both intrinsic and extrinsic; something seeming, and therefore possible. " 

DECONSTRUCTING ATLAS

Once, doing so would have

shattered the very Cosmos

 

after all, your shoulders

once sustained the earth

and all the heavens.

 

Thank you, Atlas, but you

needn’t strain anymore;

 

such one-pointed devotion

is no longer understood.

 

your strength of just force --

now a tired obeisance.

 

You see, you’re only stone, 

and there’s nothing to be held

 

no purpose, or nature,

or world to be revealed.

SOMETHING NEW

          i’m more in accord with

the world to come --

 

so bequeath me nothing

leave me undone 

 

no story of pilgrims who

find home once again

 

(no carnage made glory

by ancient cenotaphs)

 

but something new,

impossibly offered;

 

something unacted

hiding in place:

 

beyond us, for us –

 

all this time, abiding

WAITING ROOM

as figures come and go in

sorties about the chairs --

 

(chairs of worn faux leather 

with stains on the seats)

 

we blink, and are pensive,

& swaddle seeming wounds

 

similar to everyone here  

who loves a weary shrine --

 

in lieu of acceptance: its

the drama of reprieve; 

 

waiting for absolution --

never wanting to leave.

WHAT I CAN'T TRANSCEND

Distance       Lust             Boxes

 

Pansies         Deathbeds   Chairs

 

Daydreams   Brilliance       Carnivals

 

Trump           Gravity         Choice

 

Paradox        Drought        Birds

 

Events          Fascism        Rotation

 

Oblivion        Delight         Entropy

 

ENERGY DISC 

Oh, my!  – now i’m  

an energy disc, light-

filled and beating 

 

my center shooting

radial sparks about

in all directions

 

while a smaller track

of colored lights chase

around my edge

 

(a sign of my own 

festival, a sign of

my own play  --)

 

a wild & happy 

gnostic joy i so 

wanted to display.

 

GAS Featured Poet: Michael Lee Johnson

Michael Lee Johnson lived in Canada for ten years during the Vietnam era. Today, he is a poet in the greater Chicagoland area, IL. He has 436-plus YouTube poetry videos. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 47 countries, a song lyricist with several published poetry books, and a nominee for 8 Pushcart Prize awards and 8 Best of the Net nominations. He has over 678 published poems. He is the editor-in-chief of three poetry anthologies, all of which are available on Amazon, and has authored several poetry books and chapbooks. Michael has administered and created 6 Facebook poetry groups. Member of the Illinois State Poetry Society: http://www.illinoispoets.org/ and Poets & Writers: https://www.pw.org/.  His poems have been translated into several foreign languages. Awards/Contests: International Award of Excellence 'Citta' Del Galateo-Antonio De Ferrariis XI Edition 2024 Milan, Italy-Poetry. Poem, Michael Lee Johnson, "If I Were Young Again."  

Dream On

 

Wrinkles etch stories on skin,

tears carve rivers through time.

Both are loyal cartographers of the heart,

mapping jubilation and lancination alike,

to the drumbeat of passing days.

Focus on the years.

Here, children burst like crocuses in Illinois soil.

Old folks fade like dusk devoured by the horizon.

Brief footprints on soft earth.

Resurrection, the sun rising anew,

rebirth in every dew-kissed morning.

It is a dream that stitches beginnings,

and endings into a single sky.

GAS Featured Poet: Dominic James

 

Dominic James (UK) lives in Glos and follows poetry meetings along the Thames River Valley. Recently published in Bad Lilies and Dark Poets Club, his second collection, Smudge, was published by Littoral Press, 2022. Of his poetry films Four Statues was shortlisted at the Drumshanbo Poetry Film Awards and, full of fun, Dominic has completed a college course in filmmaking during which his docudrama on Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning was featured in Cheltenham Fringe Festival 2025.

Time, Gentlemen

Again Great Northern Railway Tavern, Hornsey, 

first encountered, student days: tumbling 

from a tube cum deco station, Turnpike Lane, 

furthest north we’d ever been… Thinking then

of Camden, London in those velvet times.

Now cold’s returned to chase a furtive Spring 

away we find at last we own to be 

no more than ordinary men. Taking

our table by the door where Pride and gin 

keep pouring in and drinking drives the decibels

up high among the dusty shelves and books

we’ve scoured a thousand times before – being

creatures of good faith, authentic in our lives, 

men of middle years. ie. The brutal thing itself.

Back on the Wine Dark Sea

Sleeking down your musty thigh

pressed to the anchorage of thought,

young scamp: camp-up your merry looks.

I find you in the swinish hold 

and prise apart those crusty lids:

dark eyes brimming with excess. 

Who broke the slim amphora’s neck,

loosed panthers on the quarter-deck

sent parrots squawking stern to bow,

slipped-in a water snake?

How like the young Rimbaud, 

smiles tug your sluggish lips and crop 

the green shoots of your madness.

GAS Featured Poet: Pulkita Anand

 

Pulkita Anand, from India, is an avid reader of poetry. Author of two children’s e-books, her recent eco-poetry collections are 'we were not born to be erased' and 'What's left Icarus?'. Various publications include: short stories kids,  New Verse News, Green Verse: An anthology of poems for our planet (Saraband Publication), Comparative Women, Origami Press, Asiatic, Inanna Publication, Bronze Bird Books,   SAGE Magazine  and elsewhere.

Oftentimes…

Spreading the stars bedsheet, with the pillow of the moon

Oftentimes I throw the ball of the sun and it comes again. 

Oftentimes I get drenched without the rain.

Oftentimes, a sparrow eats the sun and pigeons peck at my heart. 

Oftentimes a frog jumps onto another planet, and a dragonfly nimble a mountain. 

Oftentimes loneliness comes and gives me company. 

Oftentimes a river comes to fill me and hope flutters as a butterfly. 

Oftentimes people change and seasons wonder.

Oftentimes a swan eats the world in a grain.

Oftentimes a moth burns in a desire for embrace. 

Oftentimes fireflies shine in the soul.

Oftentimes waves wash the memories and leave salted water. 

Oftentimes jasmines bloom in my heart and no one notices.

Oftentimes time flows and a heron catch it.

Oftentimes trees live where no one lives.

Rain

The sky’s grey attire is changing the embroidery of the land

The herons, the geese, the egrets, and the storks are drawing a patch

The hiding stars and moon wink in a slant shimmer

The wet morning is shaking the dew from her skin

The drops from the sky and the drops from her skin

The flakes of sun freckle on the pattering pond 

Are doubly beautiful and good

Stitching rainbow, flowers, buds in a new hue

Seasons are wearing sheen and shine

Smearing the scent and scene of refreshment 

Oozing from every pore and every part

Filling and fulfilling waltzing with Zephyr

Chirping orchards with nuptial songs

Spreading the ancient scholarship of mutual growth

Life is dripping from the drops

the sun peeking and weaving gold in the reeds

Folding its hems for the other seasons