The HyperTexts
Bob Zisk: Unleashed
This is a recurring column in which Bob Zisk publishes poems by poets who
appeal to him, and will no doubt appeal to many readers as well.
July 2026:
Aes Triplex
Triple Bronze
Illi robur et aes triplex
circa
pectus erat, qui fragilem truci
commisit pelago ratem
primus...
Around his breast he who first committed his fragile bark to the wild
sea was gird in oak and triple bronze... (Horace Carmina 1.3)
For this
issue we are presenting brief selections from the work of three poets:
Patricia Falanga, Bob Zisk and Bert Schultz.
Patricia Falanga,
musician, poet, lover of languages, hails from Australia. Her poetry often is
also song, an ongoing unwillingness to submit to the so called "untuning of
the skies." In a time when much poetry has been severed from the receptivity
of the ear out of deference to the silence of the printed page, Patricia's
poetry stands out because it sings.
The Years
Whooping they arrive
and weeping go;
I follow where they beckon to and fro.
The seasons chase
each other round the sky
And night must follow day in ebb and flow.
Each year brings its new promise, then good-bye;
Its primary objective was
to die.
The fleeting years retreat into the past,
Just out of reach
however hard I try.
On time's tumultuous torrent holding fast,
I
cling determined to a creaking mast
And scan the sea for friends gone on
before
Who perished in the season's wintry blast.
My vessel edges
closer to the shore
Whose rugged outline I may not ignore,
And there,
beyond the breakers’ mighty roar,
The fickle years will come and go no
more.
Blizzard
Were I to be forevermore denied
Love and warmth
and all that I desire,
Still the world is not so cold or wide
That I
must return
To burn
And be consumed at your fire.
Snow and wind are
covering
My footsteps in the snow that lead from you.
Bitter winter
widens
Between your hearth and mine.
Night and blizzard tumble down
together.
Forever
Together.
I Recall Love
I recall love.
It's a tale of tears and laughter;
Castles, knights and maidens,
Fairy
tales of happy ever after.
Set the scene right!
Roses, sighs and
moonlight.
I recall love
For it happened
To me
Once upon a time.
Petit Menu de la Vie
Read the menu at the door!
Can you afford
Life's smorgasbord?
Dreams and illusions may greet us at dawning.
Fancy
and foibles will get us half way.
Ideas and goals take us through to the
evening
But all that is left at the end of the day
Is bitter despair and
dismay.
Now that you are undeceived,
Just say thank you as you leave.
Recommend us to a friend!
Please do come again!
Serenata to the Moon
The sun has set behind the hill.
The moon is rising in the sky
While all
around the world is still
And we are here, my pipes and I.
In the keep
the sheep lie tended.
In the town whose lights I see,
In her sleep a
maiden gentle
Maybe dreams a dream of me.
An owl arrests its silent
flight
In answer to my plaintive tune,
My lonely lovesong in the night,
My serenata to the moon.
Since I am a lonely shepherd
I must sing my
lovesong
To the moon.
Though Spring Is Here (A modern madrigal)
Though Spring is here
Its fragrant rites do not delight
Though all God's
creatures
Have their way both night and day.
Though Spring is here
Its flagrant charms and open arms
Must stay unheeded
While I go my
lonely way.
Though Spring is here
Its siren song is overlong
For love
has left
A chastened wasteland in my heart.
You Loved Me Now
Love
me now while we are young,
Before our happy song is sung,
Before the
good can turn to bad,
Before the kids can drive us mad
And when "too
easy" is "too hard"
And when fate deals that losing card,
Then maybe
you'll remember how
You loved me now.
Land of the Didgeridoo
My
heart is part of the mountains.
I fall to earth with the rains.
I am at
one with the dreamtime,
Run with the emu
Over the plains.
On high I
fly with the eagles.
I plumb the depths of the seas.
I dig for ants in
the mulga,
Dance with the brolga
Under the trees.
My land of red and
ochre,
I am at one with you.
I am in creeks and billabongs
From
Muniong to Uluru.
I am part of this vast land
And all of this land is
part of me.
From Uluru to the sea
My spirit wanders free.
Dingo I
know and koala.
I leap with the bush kangaroo.
I am asleep in the sand,
At peace in the land of the didgeridoo.
Terra Australis
Land of the
never-never,
You have been here forever,
Mountain and plain and river
Underneath these southern skies.
Deserts of red and ochre,
Rivers that
plunge below
To play in the tranquil glow
Where gorges take us by
surprise.
Far from the city lights,
The sheer splendour of your nights,
The stars teeming in an endless sky.
The vast silence of your days,
The
trees blending in the haze,
The hills blurring in a mist of time.
Rain
forest, golden beaches,
Mudflats and mangrove reaches,
Lakes where the
salt lies bleaching,
Waiting till the rivers flow.
Age old rocks dare to
stand here,
Tall in this ancient land here,
Just as their maker planned
here
In the dreamtime long ago.
Great southern land,
Eternal you
stand,
A rock as the stream flows by.
Deep in the dreaming
Time has
no meaning
Under a southern sky.
Our Southern Land
There is a
timeless land
Under an endless sky,
Set in a boundless sea,
Placed in
a southern clime,
Just as Baiame planned
In an age long gone by,
There for eternity,
There till the end of time.
Vast open plains call me
again.
This is our southern land.
I have to go. Just need to know
How
the wind blows there.
Far from the lights, star-crowded nights.
This is
our southern land.
Back of beyond beckons me on
Now.
Hush, My
Baby (A bush lullaby)
All the stars are brightly shining
In the mantle
of the sky.
Warm inside these arms of mine now,
Hush, my baby, don't you
cry.
Do you hear the mopoke calling,
Hear the north wind gently blow?
Do you hear the river falling
To the rocks below?
Frogs have made a
sing-song for us
In the reeds by the lagoon.
Dingoes lend a lonely
chorus,
Barking at the moon.
All the sounds of sky and ground
Are
singing you a lullaby.
Night has wrapped its cloak around us.
Hush, my
baby, don't you cry.
*****************************
Bob Zisk has
little to say beyond the acknowledgement that Patricia Falanga is a tough act
to follow. The poems he offers here are grounded in recent experience.
Afternoon Oil Change
I sit here in the auto dealership.
A
faint, wry smile is settling, lip on lip,
As I stare at the thin salesgirls
of Spring,
Who click their phones while the young robins sing.
Out
in the sales lot it's a lazy day
For auto sales, but not bad for girls'
play.
The girls are smiling but there are no customers
For them to lure
with smiles and tempting offers.
Their charms are practiced on their
telephones
And trying all the new games and ringtones.
Their thumbs
twirl with a ballerina's grace,
And not a worry crosses heart or face --
Not one concern for what the future holds,
What some clandestine
mortality withholds
In fates not yet revealed as warblers cry,
And
collared doves softly prophesy.
In the Spring Night
I lie on
my side of our bed,
And hear your voice in an owl's call.
My pain tells
me that you are dead.
This emptiness is picrid gall.
In bitterness
and lack of sleep
I cannot see you whom I seek.
All I can do is hurt and
weep,
And not deny that I am weak.
I cannot bear to be alone,
And
I ache that you are gone.
In darkness I hear the night moan
I weep in
silence before the dawn.
Walking Alone
I have taken the
left-handed path
That winds down to the black gates of death.
Wrapped in
sorry weeds of strangling loss
I've stood before those jaws I could not
pass.
I looked through the barred passage, stretched my hand
Through
the iron grille, and touched tracks in the sand,
And in the throaty moans
of somber doves,
I laid my grief among sad, severed loves.
I
turned away with empty arms. As light
Dimmed, I spun the wheel of day and
night.
I knew my sawtoothed pain would scarcely matter
In the cold ebb
and flow of Styx's water.
********************************
Bert Schultz is a Philadelphian poet, technical writer, and award winning
film maker. He has made a widely distributed film about SDS and the
Student Movement of the 60s and 70s. Bert describes his poetry as Brechtian.
The Third Kissoff
I keep telling myself -
It doesn't even
rate on the scale of
Horrors of the mid-twentieth century -
The
Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki
2.7 million dead Vietnamese.
Now,
after 30 years, I get an email.
She goes - "How has your life been?"
I'm
like - "Fine."
“Where do you live?” “What do you do?”
“What are
your kids' names?”
This goes on for a few days, then stops.
We were
both very polite and friendly,
We never even hinted at the pregnancy.
She is too old now to have my child,
Her vagina must be dry and
menopausal,
Her breast saggy, her breath stale,
Her anus hemorrhoidal.
My cock not as hard as during the Johnson Administration,
I'm fat and
have bags under my eyes.
I snore,
And I have had extensive periodontal
degeneration.
What possible fruit from this queer mating?
So why do
I want her just as much?
Mostly Air
A spider web is mostly air,
Organized by strands that are
Stronger than steel, thinner than a hair.
My love for you is made of longing and denial,
Organized across the decades
and the miles
By maybe a dozen touches and a dozen smiles.
June 2026:
Six poems by Angela Segredaki ...
Angela Segredaki holds a CW degree from Oxford University and loves poetry,
flowers, and people. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Blue
Unicorn, The Ekphrastic Review, New Lyre, Amsterdam Quarterly, Mouthful of
Salt, The Adelaide Literary Magazine, Lighten Up Online, The Dawntreader,
Snakeskin and elsewhere. She’s currently collaborating with the American
poet Julia Denton on a joint poetry collection.
"Since I first read
poetry by Angela Segredaki a couple years ago, I have been a fan. I first knew
her as an accomplished writer of formal verse. But these poems which Angela
recently sent me show that her range of expression is not confined to
accentual-syllabic verse. I hope that both regular readers of THT and visitors
will appreciate these very readable free verse poems as much as I do." (Bob
Zisk, May 25, 2026)
Gina asks for an ice cream to feed a pigeon
flowers and freshness
painted clouds float on a blue tablecloth
where Gina just finished her ice cream.
her dress, the chair, streaks
everywhere
a shared spill of sweetness.
she speaks to a pigeon,
unafraid
of fingertips or open hands
loneliness is not their tongue
it pecks at little weeds, seeking seeds
and they both belong to where they
stand
playing the game of being, ignoring
regrets and guilt streaks.
she speaks
like white jasmine, telling truths
I’ve forgotten, while the
pigeon
nods with understanding.
Gina then takes my hand and asks
in freshly grown words
for an ice cream for her bird-friend
making me
wonder, how I missed
the moment the bird said yes
Wooden Dolls’ Houses
dolls’ houses
those
wooden houses
that we used to play in when
we were
little
in one room we put a bed
where our dolls dreamt
and loved
dearly.
in
another room, they would sit together, together, together
and talk through the night.
wooden dolls’ houses
full of childhood
dreams
wooden people
wooden hearts
in one room
themselves
there are no other rooms
Beneath
To my soulmate Lies Nijdam
I lick my wounds in the dark
store sweetness like sunlight
keep the
old spell of return.
Nothing above ground bears witness
yet every
hill is swollen
the trees stripped bare
their stillness listens.
I unearth Demeter
a year that would not turn
a hand beside her
an
incantation—stay
in the bruised light
Or me
after the
divorce
and the women circling close
when my life slipped its roots.
We walked like that
across days that feigned emptiness
I went
low
and listened
They stayed.
Love
uprooted
goes dark
sweetens
one day
unannounced
green,
Inheritance
A sharp sound rang upon the ground
lost in leaves
and settling
shadows.
Deep in the night, my home was still
a moon moth perched
upon the sill.
The echo lingered, stirred the trees
a hush
uncoiled
through ivy greens.
The wind, the clouds, the breath of frost
whispered gently
'Think what you’ve lost.’
I turned, but
no one called my name
only silence
only cold.
When all at once, I knew what broke
a button slipped from
this old coat.
The woollen coat I had on
started showing
frayed and worn.
A second button
gone, not missed
the shoulders sagged
the torn threads
hissed.
The skin I wore was never mine
a borrowed gift
I could not shed.
And as the moonbeams
softly swarmed
I thought I felt
my mother’s arm.
This vagabond, too wide, too worn
held warmth I
never
claimed before.
And in the daybreak as light grew
I bore its
weight and walked on
through.
Threshold, with a Horse in the
Distance
Look, I thought what we built would love us enough
to take us
back. The way sometimes a body forgives
a back you’ve burdened past bearing
a heart you’ve asked and asked too much.
There were days so warm I
could feel my bones relaxing
like oars lifted from the water. We called
that happiness:
the slow clicking of engines in the dark.
We carried
plastic bags full of fruit
apologies hanging in closets beside last year’s
coats.
No villain, just the hungry habit of more:
more light, more
miles, more everything. Our love
wanted to grow past its edges, like
wisteria until
the fence remembers it has ribs.
I keep thinking about
the first glacier between us
how it kept dripping; a language of patience
I didn’t understand. I was young enough to think
weight meant forever.
You took my hand. Your hand was weather then;
April, not August. Later the
heat came
and made itself ordinary. Not all at once. Like anger:
quiet,
then claiming your voice.
We conjugated it. We got fluent.
We
had crossed the line where canopy becomes cinder.
The forest inside us knew
before we did.
The day you broke a plate and laughed.
The day I cried in
the produce aisle
without a name for it.
Meanwhile the world
kept tilting toward its thick fever
and so did I. Not punishment; just the
body saying enough
and the window opening.
The horse in the distance
keeps running
unhaltered. The world swells beyond its limits
fissured,
still leafing in the broken places.
The light is already doing its foolish,
faithful thing
across the face of the water.
Mrs Prometheus
She does not remember
when the sentence was passed
only that
each morning
is fastened to her.
The alarm cleaves the dark.
A small hand finds her sleeve.
Milk warms. Shoes are found.
The day
begins before she does
at the sink, at the bus stop
in the
fluorescent glare of the office.
It returns,
not myth
but the same
precise taking:
the quiet subtraction
of what she might have been.
Still, she stands.
In meetings where her voice
is taken, repackaged,
returned
with a different name.
In corridors where her body
is
measured before her words arrive.
In numbers that tilt
slightly away
from her.
Evening:
she gathers what remains of herself
from the
margins of the day.
A voice sparked
bright as flame.
Hands, reaching.
Here,
the theft undone.
Fire passed quietly
in stories half-told.
It is not grand.
But it persists
through exhaustion
through small
violences
no one records
through the long arithmetic
of being
diminished
and continuing.
Tomorrow, it will come again.
And again
she will rise into it.
Not untouched.
Not unmarked.
Still carrying
heat
kept alive
enough to warm
the next pair of hands.
The HyperTexts