‘This Will Not Make the News Today’ and Other Poetry by Bruce Dale Wise

This Will Not Make the News Today

“My mother told me to take nothing stronger than aspirin.”
—Bruce Dale Wise

By Dr. Weslie Ubeca

O, we have come far from the years of back-yard farmacy,
when business had not dented medicine and dentistry,
when healthy goods comprised organic pharmaceuticals,
when up to seventy percent were plants and minerals.
Fast forward to the present day—the situation’s changed.
The FDA defines a drug as something that’s arranged
without the use of substances one would call natural,
and drug-laced medicines are now imbued with chemicals.
I would not say the human being’s being sacrificed;
but well before Big Pharma’s soar, Sweet Nature’s cures sufficed.

Connecting

By Sri Wele Cebuda

He wanted all his stress to go away, and so he sat
down on the brown mat in the middle of his cozy flat.
He spread his legs out to his sides, and stretched them out and wide.
He longed to leave behind his troubles and go on a ride.
He longed to tap into the ever-moving universe,
and catch the flows and flux of life and see their routes disperse.
He felt new power surging through his body where he was.
It seemed so natural a high, a clean, electric buzz.
He threw his hands up to the sky, but had to bring one down,
o, every now and then to check he was still on the ground.

A Lone White Sail

By Cadwel E. Bruise

The sea is gleaming in an azure streak beneath the sky.
A lone white sail shows but for an instant in the light.
What did it leave behind—what lovely lands did it depart?
Where does it go? What does it seek, o, secrets of the heart?
It is not happiness it seeks, nor joy there where it flies.
The billows play. The tall mast bends. The fresh breeze moans and sighs.
The blue waves dance and tremble in translucent shimmering.
The sun’s bright rays caress the sea, aquiver, glimmering.
It longs, it begs for brisker winds, for maelstroms unleashed,
as if in stormy weather it might find a calming peace.

Bruce Dale Wise is a poet living in Washington State who often writes under anagrammatic pseudonyms.