Poetry M – The Recusant

Poetry M

Stuart McFarlane

Hope

A man stood on a stage;

shouting, screaming, cajoling with his arms.

A movie of his own face, much, much larger,

blared behind him on a screen.

And a crowd, crazy on his words,

cried out ‘Yes’! ‘Yes’!

in rapturous unanimity.

Deep within the roaring crowd

one man whispered ‘No.’;

and this voice seemed much louder.

A darkness settled on the land.

The darkness increased so much

that the eye could perceive only

an inky blackness seeping

through all things.

And, in the darkness, almost invisible,

yet there, a flame flickered into life.

In the cold darkness the flame rose higher;

and, as the darkness deepened,

so this solitary light burned brighter.

Journey-men

Though hungry, and the evening cold,

we carried on, for we could see,

or thought we could,

sunlight on the mountains,

so very far away.

And we knew that where the sun shone

there was warmth, and that,

over the mountains,

in the valley beyond,

sunlight nurtured fruit;

that, in this bright valley,

there was life; were better days.

So, under a starless sky, we trudged on-

our footsteps the only sound-

echoing across the rolling fields.

And is this dark, this cold,

we grimly smiled;

our hearts cheered only

by the promise of future fruit.

Stuart McFarlane was born in 1954. He has spent many years, both abroad and in the UK, teaching English. In the UK this mainly involved teaching ESOL to refugees and asylum seekers. He is now semi-retired and so can devote more time to writing poetry. He has had a few poems published in local magazines and in online publications such as Borderless Journal, based in Malysia and Culture Matters, based in the UK.

Sheila E. Murphy. Murphy’s most recent books are Permission to Relax (BlazeVOX Books, 2023) October Sequence: Sections 1-51 (mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press, 2023), and Sostenuto (Luna Bisonte Prods (2023). Murphy is the recipient of the Gertrude Stein Award for her book Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003). Murphy’s book titled Reporting Live from You Know Where (2018) won the Hay(na)Ku Poetry Book Prize Competition from Meritage Press (U.S.A.) and xPress(ed) (Finland). Based on a background in music theory and instrumental and vocal performance, her poetry is associated with music. Murphy earns her living as a management consultant and researcher and holds the Ph.D. degree. She has lived in Phoenix, Arizona throughout her adult life.

Her Wikipedia page can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheila_Murphy

Thanks! Sheila Murphy

from Ghazals for 2023

76/

Precise mistakes lodged between repeat signs.

Sing to me in your pretty solvent sleep.

Immaculate reception zithers here.

Listen to taut strings be lovingly touched.

A perfect world might mean no afternoons.

Rakish tilt to hat perched atop the head.

Salesy type lacking just intimacy.

Lonely life a whole in one mirroring.

Rumors circulate and pick up high speed.

Tales of boondoggles recited as facts.

from Ghazals for 2023

77/

Breath happens once and then repeats itself.

She said the one I loved was proud of me.

Illusion: windows filling up with light.

Reflection gives back what is not absorbed.

Innocence unlikely to be retrieved.

Pray that I might locate maturity.

Kitchen disposal, working properly.

At last releasing dross with a firm grip.

Autumn loose leaf littering the mind yard.

I retreat to fear the place of kindling.

from Ghazals for 2023

78/

His tears although genuine are rehearsed.

In full flower of the Hallmark channel.

Tonight unblistered singing me to sleep.

I long for history’s encore flower.

Decibels in the lively restaurant.

The coughing has outlived its usefulness.

Poetry’s own elasticity blooms.

Once again I live for a rehearsal.

Your love an endowment I don’t deserve.

Magic me to life here among the blooms.

from Ghazals for 2023

79/

I could not replicate your smart advice.

In the fireplace up north newspaper flares.

Chance operations embody this life.

A good luck charm begun at root chakra.

Within me the snow path leading upward.

My school a state of mind and poetry.

Hasty fractions pushed together form breadth.

A healing depth arises from within.

Chalky sky or is it milky daylight?

Homespun weather recalls another time.

Stephen Mead

Your Suicide

attempt never quite left us.

There are days, there are nights

when it wears nothing but insides.

That skin is a testament my eyes

keep confessing.

How many times I’ve wanted to be done

with it, to take the gaze and, with

comprehension, kiss each lid

towards its rest.

This is not to discount vengeance,

getting back, the wrathful tongue.

Never see you again.

That was particularly blasphemous

for you were going to marry

& I couldn’t congratulate,

thinking how one month before

you were the first, you were the only,

though of course we were young

& no one understood

the country never before visited

of infatuation & hate.

Too late, this returning

& still in the dark about methods.

Memory. Ignorance.

Who’s the more knowing ghost

with a picture of your death

superimposed on my face?

Still, many exist so,

with simply something that happened,

& it’s over, the long ago, the rehearsal

for the other route

we both tried.

Father & Son

You are the poem I never had to begin.

The words were born before me

already attached.

For the life of me I have cherished them,

an unspoken riot.

Suppose it burned like a jet trail.

There’s such electricity in air,

with eternity a rip tide.

It has lightning’s function.

That’s how I was delivered

& shall return, an erosion of gold leaf.

No, Father, we are not Gods.

Your own silence taught that,

but how love still blazes

when confession tears it forth.

Resident Artist & Curator for the online Chroma Museum, artistic representations of LGBTQI persons and organizations predominantly before Stonewall, Stephen Mead has been a published outsider artist/writer going on thirty years now. He is immensely grateful to the myriad publications who have presented his work over this timespan, and given his need to create a voice of support. Recently he has had work published in The Pinecone Review and Neologism Poetry Journal. (Born 8/15/63, Albany NY)

Keith Moul

A Story of Pseudo-Factual Distractions

She asked

if I could tell her

a happy story,

just the way small

children would.

Dogged by realities

of the moment,

I blurted “No.”

She asked then if

I might know

another kind of story,

maybe not so happy,

but one not to make

her be afraid.

Dogged by realities

of history of our world,

I answered slowly “No.”

Our silences mixed

like two wide rivers

that obey their law,

quite poignantly

I thought.

So I made do

with downward force

so I wouldn’t have to define

gravity itself; attraction

as if it were affection,

suitable for a little girl;

and flowing rivers motion.

Buoyed by pseudo-factual

distractions, I proposed

a story of dishonor,

a sanitized history

of Donald Trump

and Mitch McConnell.

Colorless Night Pressing without Demand

My neighbor’s dog barks after…

A boy passed by during…

Sometime more barks…

Sometime hungry…

We speed into hunger ever.

Quiet sharpens gut grumbles lately.

Later is a first time, my engrossment

cleaves into hunger, neighborhoods and a dog.

Then later again, no sounds except electrons

demonstrating formal hubris in a molecule.

My split attention

widens and neither I nor a neighbor

explain animal limited brain power

barks to toll a dinner bell

and ventilates through its tongue.

Dog-empathy halts a clock.

Chew on this then.

Keith Moul © 2020
Charles J. March III

A Human Furnace

I have an intense sweating

sickness that cannot be

quenched

from an unmitigated

mind that’s incessantly

monkey

wrenched.

It causes my

nervous

stomach to fill with a

noxious natural gas,

which makes me want to legally

euthanize myself in a

chamber of glass.

Maybe that would free

me from the

masonry.

I probably

deserve it, for

all of the

illegal things I’ve

done.

Thankfully, my friend’s

Mom is a

member of the Jewish

World Watch.

She watches over me, and

makes sure my

fires don’t permanently singe my synapses.

But I guess my

combusting brains give me the energy to grab the reins.

Although, they once

put my soma in a

catatonic coma, and left my surface with a catalytic sheen—so I

torched up my blast furnace with refined coke, and as a

chemically reacted result—the supervening detoxifying heat became too extreme.

I could no longer plan on using

a white, Chinese fan.

My pressure cooker had

reached a boiling point, and became more than a wet dream,

even

though my beehive horno

hearth hole was covered with muddy,

root chakra

earth.

I was white hot from

the white guilt, and

thought I

couldn’t get a

queen bee because my face was

covered with

stings.

So I took up apitherapy and

started smoking beeswax, until I was smoked out of my brooding nest for being such a pest.

I started to develop a colony collapse disorder, and thought I was

destined to drone alone

forever.

This was especially the

case when a big black bear needed a taste.

So I slogged as a

blacksmith, while

listening to

The Smiths to rework the

bloody iron of my

black soul.

I went through a

black pickling

process, and became an

uptight tinman while in the

slitting mills, which made me want to cut my wrists, and nail myself to a

cross in

Black County.

Little by little, the wood-fire began to

take its

toll.

I became disillusioned by seeing all of the black ovens slaving over the travails of the dirty, carbonized plant matter toils, while the white ovens got their easy heat transfers from trusty moils, even though they deserved coal for Christmas.

So I came to the

collusion to get lost in the

languor of White

Russian ovens.

I perambulated down a

labyrinth of

mystically smoky

passageways, but wound up

tarrying down there and becoming

full of hot air.

But heat and cream rise to the top,

so this hot cream traveled up the corrosive,

torridly duct taped (but little

used) pipes, to the

firebox that was

unfortunately

blocked by a

damper door that was put there to

stop the natural draft that

over chilled my flues

with sweet smelting blues.

This left me with a

lack of heat exchange, but even when I would…

I’d just wind up with burning

wood.

Akin to a vacuum kiln, this

created a deep, parabolic

depression from all of the

constant stimuli that

incessantly swirled around me in a centrifugal-like force, so I

sought out to be an inexpensive, low-tech solar oven in order to

save myself and the environment.

I realized that the only

way to come out of my dark ages and adjust the gravity of my situation

was to bring about

balance in my

waning ways

by maneuvering my

effulgence to catch the sun’s

declining rays.

So I moved to the Valley of the Sun,

but not even the Prescott Hotshots could put me out.

Perhaps one day I’ll

rise from the flames like a

Phoenix.

My iron heart couldn’t

get enough blood,

so I signed up to be a

colloquial doc

with the devil dogs

who were forged in

hammer dropping fires.

I had to go through

formidable foundries to get

molded into shape, and their

crucible almost

melted my metal, but they nevertheless wound up casting me out into their cadences after a lot of moldy air

conditioning.

Even though I was a

major appliance- -I couldn’t quite apply myself to their Majors, because

deep down, I knew my ticker was too radiantly yellow, so I

relinquished my reenlistment, and didn’t

languish through another tour as

their sleeping bag bedfellow.

After that, I just kept rolling

while my metal was still forming.

I was dualistically warm and cold, depending on the

geographical and

geometrical properties, which

resulted in varying degrees of

relaxation based on my

internal patterns of stress and compression.

I could of had a

crown in my

workpiece, but I guess I

was never meant to be

perfectly flat.

I did, however, go through a

period of surface

remediation, and

was able to overcome my

deflection by being exposed to

different loads.

I suppose it can be

said that I’m an asymmetrical

edge wave,

especially since

driving a

galvanized

vessel through an

electrical arc furnace of

oceanic freedom.

After many

recidivistic heat treatments, I was

able to dispel the dross, and take off the proverbial barbershop

cape that I had

crusaded against for so long, due to the insulating and

suffocating heat

under its noose-like

collar.

My French Bulldog could

finally

rest her suckling sow-like

pig iron

ponce

next to mine, and

for a

moment—we were

free

from the

conflagration.

Sometimes I

regret my hot air

rhetoric, but I

refuse to be a

generic, Dutch oven

blanket that’s

pulled over my eyes while a

potash casserole slowly

suppurates in your stomach.

I suspect I’m just an old soul,

alien-like

octopus furnace

who’s trying to

vent the lead

out of my head.

Hopefully one day when I’m

dead, I’ll be

cremated upon a

magnificent funeral pyre,

instead of

eternally

resting in a

hellacious

hellfire.

Jim Morris

Strange Meeting

(lost in the new supermarket)

‘Fire Door’

I read and read until ‘Fyodor’ entered my head.

How he was led to his mock execution.

The utter dread of being dead.

Suddenly myself in the very act of fear;

‘I’m locked up in here forever’

Total terror, total dread.

‘Turn Left’ it said, so relieved.

How Dostoevsky felt,

After his reprieve.

Keith Moul

Reconstruction, a Conversation

Yes, slavery days discharged the stink of black sweat,

life on the block, available to my touch before buying.

And such delightful entertainment, fruit of prerogative.

I tingle at the thought, whether female or male. Surely

we had dollars at stake and depletion by inordinate heat.

I’m no historian, we lose truth’s angle, how heartstrings

quaver as our comforts, even reputation, may be ruined.

Also, the war. Your name cropped up at cards last night.

A Tangle of Mangroves

A belly flower, a flower filled with popcorn and

The enticement of fucked pollens. Sugar my

Candy sweet one, thread together chains

Of your Kindle, of crusty lights with which we

Shall wrap our room like severed black dogs

Where upper ends chew tissue & the bottoms

Simply flop down behind desks or your bent legs;

For you side-sleep, a narcoleptic tic like a sheet

Of marble sleeps upon wooden supports or hewn

Ridges carved precision-like into mountainsides

Soon drawing fluids out of a deep-throated earth.

This a fiddling dance fashioned under water

In a tangle of mangroves, seduction of left-

Over movements and right assumptions

About just how deep watering holes do go.

Keith Moul

Las Vegas, Refuge for a Christian Nation

Christians alone in the universe

straining first to reach,

then on the long ride home,

to cleanse their sins.

Conscience makes a hard bargain:

what happens in Las Vegas

stays in Las Vegas.

Olympic Discovery Trail Monday Questions

Forest Disciple Stripped

A red cedar log has been abandoned

to currents of the Salish Sea, drifted

to this sheltered bay, to lie stranded

on basalt rocks lining the pedestrian

shore, finally lodged, come to rest.

Who will repudiate its ragged scars,

its unquiet felling, peeling red bark?

Where did it fall? Clear cuts abound

on the nutcracker’s heights. Would a

nutcracker refuse a proffered peanut?;

abet a logger with another scalping?;

accompany a tree to its deep descent?;

mount a resistance on a tree’s behalf?;

denude a tree’s protective bark; delimb,

stress a bole to split and crack, dump

an icon of romance to float and bob?

This castaway proves unwelcome to

denizens of the Salish Sea; it pricks

the herons, the ubiquitous gulls, and

raccoons shuffling by as if a squatter,

tongue lolling, indifferent to its death.

The Beak Penetrates

A crow drops its prey from its beak,

plummets to retrieve it on the shell,

guts the bivalve like a true gourmand.

A satisfactory meal of clam depends

on a durable shell and adductor hinge.

I’m here mainly for exercise, after which

I’ll return to sup with the crow on the pier.

Midwesterner as Tourist

My place presents forever flat vistas

seeking horizons in every direction,

seething displacement without calm.

This place is much different, as I see.

Will you tell me how to stand erect

when only the bay surface is level?

Of course you may refuse to answer.

Will I offend if I ask your reasoning?

Would you agree that these differences

will tend to provoke bitterness except

when the clouds settle on our heads?

Do we dare to believe our ideas false?

Do you also tend to avoid your time?

Keith Moul

Elder Prerogative

A native tribe displays its dugout canoes. Mightily

the river hides beyond the cloaking trees; men

come to celebrate. Blue herons arrive for joy.

Canadian geese in a line promote organization.

No need to debate the practice or its image; it

repeats without audience often over vast time.

Sometimes I climb short trails or hike to see falls

or an astonishing river valley. At such times

contentment and rest from labor mean the same.

Such sights spark imagination of most viewers, but

today I rest at an interstate rest area and look west

on miles of dry, flat terrain, with one equal width

to separate the highway’s lanes for endless miles.

Bathed in perspiration with little breath in my lungs,

no respite accrues. Down the road at a small museum

the curator displays a well-fitted and well-maintained

Conestoga wagon, “best” travel mode, plains-tested.

3$ Bill

My father taught me the want of a thing early,

a thing easily had for work, or money, but not

non-existent like a $3 bill. Dad was the kind who

would give one of his few shirts off his back if

someone had a need. He had lived a long time

with need, often food in drought years. It twisted

his gut and bent his mind toward giving that hurt

to forget or to ignore. In bad days for neighbors,

he thought this nothing more than old sincerities.

Our taproots bore, and like hickory in willful wind,

resist shame of obeisance. Dad knows quartering

wind that must attack until expired to exhaustion,

as if he had often dug deeper than furrows to know.

Dad can move over this land as if he mimes a waltz,

still with energy to bring mom and me to the dance.

Consider it All

Sometimes the ground opens up

and there at the entrance to the cave

arrives a spelunker, even for a shallow cavern

someone tests him(her)self in the darkness;

someone writes a magazine article with art;

thinking mostly of future fame, fortune or

an afterlife; or alone on the prairie someone

considers the soul, called an everlasting spark,

a testament to future generations. Nothing

really new happens under the sun, a light breeze

in quiet will not form a reputation.

Concentrated effort may actually do, or

strict consideration of the past carried

forward for a future audience, intended

for a future audience might well do it;

crazy similitudes expended, under influence

of the great may do it, but probably not.

Stars off course in the universe may collide;

the prize bull’s seed may fail in performance;

conditions sought may not exist in fierce winds;

dark reaches may indeed contradict intentions.

Go forward a few steps and simply cease.

Nothing meets its end happily or other than

with survival in mind except the farmer

in the adjacent field, pungent with possibilities,

who paces his tractor and attaches immortality.

Christopher Moncrieff

Flotsam

Through its many cracks the evening sky,

a smudged grey mirror without horizon,

empties its reflection into the sea, mingling with

the blood of the dying sun, staining the water

on which float or sink the tide of little boats,

their foreign eyes fixed on the ghost of land.

Up in the old town of small blue houses,

where cats and dogs fight their owners for a crust,

people drift out of Vespers in unmended shoes,

their souls patched one more time, hoping it will last another day.

The ageing priest stares after them, a trickle of ragged shapes

running down to the shore

where crimson water laps the beach

on which children used to play.

They run across the wet and shining sand,

gazing out to sea,

wondering what the waves will cast off tonight,

how many boats will turn to driftwood

for the fire to keep them warm.

Fingers of foam, cold and searching, brush a tiny, sodden shape,

a question mark curled up at the water’s edge,

one arm stretched landwards, its bloodied fist clutching

the last few shreds of hope.

They turn the young boy over, close his lifeless eyes

as the Aegean whispers his name.

The Iron Gates are closing

all over Europe,

slammed shut against the Other,

faceless strangers fleeing homes bombed flat

by pounds and dollars.

While in the island to the north,

land of crumbling, pockmarked cliffs

and instinctively doffed caps,

they are rolling down the shutters of their shops,

counting the day’s takings,

balancing the books

for posterity.

Put the kettle on, be a dear.

Is there honey still for tea?

A resident of NY, Stephen Mead is a published outsider artist, writer, maker of short-collage films and sound-collage downloads. In 2014 he began a webpage to gather links of his poetry being published in such zines as Great Works, Unlikely Stories, Quill & Parchment, etc., in one place: Poetry on the Line, Stephen Mead

Stephen Mead

I Sent a Letter to My Love

(Thanks to Bernice Rubens)

A drop in the bucket it was, water, water

welling. I thought if perhaps we were

suddenly stone-struck, then we’d have

some sort of beauty, noble, immutable

to the descent of gray sheets. Marble slabs

chiseled gothic, poignant under a curtain

of trickles: what a presence, perfection,

catharsis of a kind. The features would be

set, no recesses revealed, no sadness, no longing,

only a passion, roman cold, cauterized right into

rock. I needed that,

desired metamorphosis, at least some coral cove

for gulls flapping over, their tattered whiteness

a mirror-series of flags against the mad seas

distraction, its lament, intractable:

the moon rise, the tidal pull—–

Stone is never so desperate, & to fathom

my real hunger would be to acknowledge

just what you have been. Instead I embrace

the statue of my carving, & enter it, fitted

to form. In that stasis there is a storm

to weather the shelter of, evading,

evading the secret each wave delivers

as it eats my basalt. Breath after breath,

the solitude spreads shadows on far shores,

a whole continent of lighthouses, & my

engraved craving falls, littered letters in surf.

Drifting, now eyes watch how gulls come,

picking

(Currently recorded as unreleased mp3 sound collage) https://stephenmead.bandcamp.com/track/i-sent-a-letter-to-my-love

Vessel of Light

Your belly is a lantern globe

of a thousand handstands

all luminously invisible.

If a palm is laid upon it that palm would glow

like fingers around the cone of a flashlight’s beam.

What warmth of melon-pink, cantaloupe-peach

from the white linen.

What a pearl from the oyster shape of grace

seas still murmur of.

They are the sound of rain

when just a little bit under the surface

of an old metal barrel.

They are the colors of the whirling ripples

seen also from underneath.

The rain is so steady it is itself radiance

and the suggestion of lightning with the percussion

far from thunderous.

I hear you in the streams

shaping the shelter of a lustrous umbrella’s wan beacon

of promise, an absolute sand cove of rhythm and salt.

On the altar one should set shells, pomegranates

and clear glasses of water

as candles contain nothing else

but the melting which is glory.

Yes, becoming Other, you too are the sails prophesy:

sails, new moons, and the boat

its own voyage unseen beyond the pale.

Figura Rerum

It is sprig-simple, spade-shaped:

Oregano from the herb garden,

that arbor’s door.

Lavender lines it,

sun drying against the wood’s peeling lime

Chamomile reaches and Wort steeped in Rosemary.

The tendrils are strong enough,

vine of a heart, branch over branch,

Olives are the ceiling of.

They unearth a cloister, those treasures

of tapestries, and more than one thousand

stained glass books, each cover a Rose Window

opening in.

Further, further, are the scripts for our lives

which we do not know we illuminate.

and at the center is a shadow naming us better

than the names we’ve been called,

but with a finger to the lips.

Now we can see the ruby mouth

of Artemisia’s blood

where the court’s cords cut her fingers

and she was raped once more to bleed out

Judith’s legend so we also could learn.

That canvas restored her

as will the painting at the root of this pain,

this landscape of words arch-loving

as carvings are

charitable to scars.

Paris Windmills

Wand, wand, wand—–

I know this big pinwheel,

what whole sky it slices

while the whole sky continues…

Whir, whir, whir—–

a cathedral in this turn & then,

in the next, a block of cool lozenges

circling up from boulevards,

their sherbet-hued roofs…

I can taste each as I pass

here on a Holland Hill, struck,

kaleidoscopic, as the most amazing

clock.

Time shines in its passage

as arcs & blades.

Time whizzes helicopter style

through a slowness funneling grace

back to French braids & French kisses,

the knot of just being where Chagall was once.

Listen, his donkeys bray from a wedding of fiddles

past the ghettoes, past the Holocaust, & I,

not bride, any more than canvas is a veil,

or paintbrush, religion, I yet let the wind mill me

as if married to these hands, these images,

this paradise spinning

reels

Wrapping

the dead baby, a cold burn

for a minute, then white duck nappies

changed, the blanket folding over, tucked

eloquent, a wool cocoon with room for

the head, the fingers, life’s dignified

casing.

They say, “Forget it, have ano…”

They say… awkward, apologetic,

and of course we understand.

There’s no adequate etiquette

without tripping maudlin, heavy

on the violins, or switching subjects briskly.

Yet, in utero, premature, after six months

of expectation, suddenly, say, a gray

pigeon feather, lying flat across the screen

and a consoling hand on the cheek

as opposed to an Alpha Centauri wail.

Still, loss is born, so it must not

be a dream, bad, forgettable. The body

knows, having carried, held pictures, a triptych

now ripped at its hinges or, no, not ripped,

rather bound quite invisibly, as if at a distance…

So we and our child travel

J.B.Mulligan

the only good Muslim is a Good Muslim

The past is an edgy terror to the small

of soul, whose faith informs them they are all,

that history outside of them is lies,

and truth bids them tear off its crude disguise.

How odd it is, that it should be their past

(but not just since it’s theirs, we’ll have to trust)

that matters to us all, their stone worth saving,

and all without compulsion of believing –

Their husks of skin bereft of any god,

their souls unwilling to admit that void,

yet still expect their honeyed martyrdom:

a deity which claims that through the gloom

of sin and man, its light will rise and spread,

will find some proper hell for those hollowed dead.

public use of reason

Per Kant, the engine of the Enlightenment

was “freedom to make public use of one’s reason

on every point.” As truth was not a season,

but sunlight at the mouth of the cave, that meant

we had to be able to say the say, to seize on

any source of fire, and give it to men

to warm or consume, to light the way and then

to bathe in light, illuminate the raison

d’etre of every beast that calls to the sky

for justice, while it shaves the verbal dice

and strips the gears of logic for need. The wheel

that spins in the ditch is moving for you and me,

they claim, protected by passion from the real.

“We only believe those people who lie for us.”

most of the war over war

Eternal truths would laugh (if they had mouths)

to hear their twisted versions rage about

in rut, or flutter, sulky pallid moths

drawn to an absent light. There’s not a doubt

(or thought) in those blunt minds, but furious noise

like plastic swords aclatter, sturm und drang

and signifying a clueless, bland release

in frenzied clash of lack-of-right and wrong.

Meanwhile, the mindless maggots have their meal

on a roadside corpse, victim of a front

where truth eviscerates itself with steel

in endless irresolution, stripped of cant.

A lover glances down the silent road.

A seed of fear cracks open in her head.

Ray Miller

Gone to the Country

A half-ploughed field haunted, two tractors abandoned

beckon the future. Agricultural labour

has paused for a cider and a piss in the ditch;

a puff on a pipe to turn matters over,

late afternoon slumber in the shade of a hedge.

Light dapples a tree stump and lends the appearance

of fairy enchantment or deer at a distance;

the cadence of branches, the rhythm of swaying,

melodious birdsong flatters the forest.

Our children and dogs heckle notes of discordance.

Fair-weather features will be tacked to the borders;

defacing the country, they shall in due order

grow beards and moustaches, pimples and glasses,

alter complexion from top to the bottom

for the crosses that count – the plight of the commons.

Tomorrow this birdsong will be too intrusive

or pass us unnoticed like shopping mall music

and trees, grown too tall for bowing and scraping,

snatched from the breach between earth and its ceiling,

will groan for the good of the greatest number.

Jim Morris

Tempestuous Times

Like Ariel
Delivering thunderbolts from the sky
America.

Like Caliban
If they could only see themselves…
The Taliban.

The Town Intellectual
(‘a little learning is a dangerous thing’)

It is the ‘found’ poetry idea only audio;
Snippets of dialogue-
He cuts from radio, TV.
Splices them together (as the Artist)
To own and treasure.

‘A narrative to my life’ is what he says.
Connected to his life.
But they are not his words.
So he has a typescript for actors to use.
So utterly confused.

It really is madness I said one day,
A plea to return to reality.
But that’s something he can entertain,
Because all ideas are the same,
Even to madness.

Donal Mahoney

A Critic Comes to Dinner

I told my guest

it’s just a poem

doesn’t mean a thing

a salad tossed

with colors bright

while listening to

piccolos of

wrens and robins

overcome by spring

James Morris

Dole Day

He folded his lottery ticket

Like a handkerchief.

In his top pocket.

Like spurting champagne

The tramp puked up.

In the fine rain.

A delicate spider’s web

Sparkling in the wet.

Like a necklace.

EnCounter

Slouched at the counter or desk; the opposite of statuesque.

A sort of active indolence; a sort of passive insolence.

A sort of excessive leisure; an expressive pleasure.

She arrives expressionless; giving away nothing.

The ‘Scrounger’ at least giving of himself.

Vladislav Martynovitch

The Builder of Corrals

The old leader was nervous: messengers came

To the camp from the Métis people calling for war –

For the threat has risen in the distance, once again

The whites have waited, primed for the sprin,g

To send scourges to Saskatchewan,

To avenge freedom in “the legal way”;

And under his banners Riel called to every dwelling,

To stamp his will upon the oncoming struggle.

But the Cree of the Plains fled the war,

From the South to the North, thirsting tranquillity:

Attracted to the hunt and the earth which, bringing harvest,

Gave shelter to all, protecting every newborn child,

Being fertilized with blood that no one wanted –

Except those whose souls drew nourishment from war;

The old chief, having lived an age, knew this better than anyone,

And long ago would have refused the Métis entering…

Half-breeds—Family! What should we do…? It is so:

Nature ploughs furrows through the human flesh;

They were aliens of all frontiers, but now their flag

Was waving freely over their new country—

Manitoba, which they called “Home,”

For the rogues united the North and the South.

Their dreams were so fragile—they counted the days,

Knowing what it takes to take what they want …

But the old chief said: “All my life I roamed,

Hunted buffalos upon the prairie

Captured in the practical magic of corrals,

And came to learn sometimes survival is not a sin.

“We have come to this land, which ‘The Hudson Bay’

Beneficently described before us:

White Power—the Law, whose voice can be beautiful,

And whose cruelty is stronger than steel and gunpowder.

“So who built the ‘Great Corral, and for whom was it built’?

You for the Ottawa, or the Ottawa for you?

And who will be herded inside? Protect yourself!

Your numbers are nothing against the might of the Whites…

I will not give you anyone… May our weary people

Not be driven from the path!” And the Métis left.

But then came the Youth.” We are tired of doing nothing

And having no glory; it is painful for the Warrior

To gaze on his knife rusting with disuse… With empty eyes!

Aimless is your peace: it is the heritage of Elders—

We crave war!L ong have you buried strength in your weakness,

Disguising it with your grey hairs, like dust on feathers!

“But we will rediscover our courage with the half-breeds

And the blood we will let from our White foes in battle.

You, obsolete old man, do not rebuke us—

We, who are blossoming, can stand anywhere on our own!”

And the old Chief, now seeing he was among his enemies,

Departed from his camp and visited the Whites

Declaring to them that his tribe would bow down

To their power, and pledge support to their Laws.

And together they inscribed a new law—a vast contract,

Signed jointly by the Chief and an elderly General;

“I built a Corral that precluded all Discord,”

Whispered a wise old man, before riding away…

Then a campaign of indiscriminate raids

Spread all about, and all those suspected of guilt

Were dragged before the Court; and the Métis meekly surrendered

Their territory and property –and though still protecting

The Country with small attacks and skirmishes, the frontier

Was now a haven harvested by bandits and partisans.

And the Great Hunt was conducted where the “Great Corral”

Opened to anyone who smelled the danger of pursuit.

And suddenly came the patrols over the Cree

To the young that had left for “glory” and “blood.”

Their massacre was long and drawn out—their fight

For “meaning” felling them unto the Earth until dawn.

The General was surprised when he saw the outfits—

The Agreement with the Chief had already been concluded.

But suddenly again he stood, greyer than before,

Suddenly unable to disguise his grief:

“I came down the path that is not overgrown:

Because if you do not use it, it disappears.”

His words started out from a distance, and he touched his forehead,

Then continued: “My fatigued people mourn,”

“Being unable to cope with the tiredness of the adolescent,

And unable to relieve what is given only to pacify:

So let me take them with me—

And by myself redeem the mistakes of others!”

And he was allowed to take away

The bodies by the path that he’d bequeathed to them to guard,

And did not touch the tribe, which began to grow

In newly recognised lands inhabited again.

“‘- Guard Corral” – he used to say since then. –

“Resist not what is destined to be:

The Hunter is the one who is quiet, careful and fast,

The Victims are those whose doom wears no disguise, ”

“Valour is where it is given to avoid the Loss;

Fame is where it is given to overcome the Loss:

We live together with those who will decide –

For small will be more to go! .. ”

Since that declaration, he left the Camp and his power,

To live out his days alone, saying “ Bison must fall

In the Race” – and hunted to maintain his Spirit.

One day he fell down and, closing his eyes, said:

“At last, the Corral is destroyed! ..” – A tear rolled down,

And his face froze in a smile. But soon, up rose his Spirit,

Borne on powerful shoulders tapering to dainty hooves –

His soul, a mighty Bison, but not cumbersome for O

Such speed and impossible purpose…

Строящий Загоны

Старый вождь был взволнован: в стоянку пришли

От Метисов посланцы, чтоб звать на войну –

Ибо снова угроза восстала вдали,

Ибо белые вновь выжидали весну,

Чтоб отправить карателей в Саскачеван,

Чтобы мстить за свободу «законным путём»;

И Риэль под знамёна призвал каждый стан,

Чтобы в стойкой борьбе настоять на своём…

Но равнинные Кри, от войны уходя,

Юг на Север сменили, к покою стремясь:

Их охота влекла, и земля, что, родя,

Всем давала приют, – с новым чадом роднясь.

Удобрять её кровью никто не желал, –

Кроме тех, кто с войной не расстался в душе:

Старый вождь долго жил, лучше всех это знал,

И Метисам давно отказал бы уже…

Полукровки – Родня!.. Что поделать?.. Все так:

Путь Природой кладётся из плоти людской.

Они всюду чужие, но ныне их флаг

Развевается вольно над новой страной –

Манитобой, что «Домом» назвали они

Для изгоев, что Север и Юг единят;

Их мечта столь хрупка – счёт ведётся на дни,

Они знают, что нужно, чтоб взять, что хотят…

Но сказал старый вождь: «Я всю жизнь кочевал,

На бизонов охотился в прериях век,

И искусство созданья загонов познал,

И постиг, что порою спасенье не грех.»

«Мы на земли пришли, что «Гудзонов Залив»

Для себя раньше нас очертил, описал:

Сила Белых – в Законах, чей голос красив,

А жестокость сильнее, чем порох и сталь.»

«Так кому кто построил «Великий Загон»?

Вы Оттаве, иль вам? И кто загнан в него?

Лучше вам уберечься! Ведь ваш эскадрон

Против Белых – ничто… Я не дам никого…»

«Чтоб народ наш уставший с пути не сбивать!..» –

И Метисы ушли. Но пришла Молодёжь.

«Мы устали без дела, без славы страдать;

Ибо мука для Воина заржавленный нож»

«Видеть взором потухшим! Бесцелен твой мир:

Он удел стариков – мы же жаждем войны!

Своей немощью долго ты силу губил,

Покрывая личиной твоей седины!»

«К полукровкам уходим за целью – и кровь

Наших Белых противников в битве прольём:

Ты же, старец отживший, нам не прекословь –

Мы, Расцветшие, всюду стоим на своём!..»

И увидел себя старый Вождь средь Врагов,

И отправился тотчас же к Белым самим,

И сказал, что склоняется Племя без Слов:

Что поддержит Законы всем Станом своим.

И вписали в Законы большой Договор,

Что с Вождём заключил пожилой Генерал:

«Я построил Загон, что сокроет Раздор,» –

Прошептал мудрый Старец и вдаль ускакал…

Рейд карательный после преследовал всех,

Без разбора к судам привлекая вину;

И Метисы безропотно сдали успех,

И достаток, и кров – защищая страну

В мелких рейдах и стычках; граница-заслон

Стала хрупким убежищем для партизан.

И охота велась, где «Великий Загон»

Открывался любому, кто чуял изъян…

Но однажды разъезды наткнулись на Кри, –

Молодых, что за «славой» и «кровью» ушли:

Длилась долго резня, вплоть до самой зари, –

И за «целью» летевшие в Землю легли.

Генерал удивился, наряды узрев, –

Ведь с вождём был уже договор заключён:

Но внезапно явился тот вновь, поседев

Ещё боле, и горем своим удручён:

«Я пришёл по тропинке, что не заросла:

Ибо если не пользоваться – зарастёт.» –

Начал он издали, и коснулся чела,

И продолжил: «Скорбит мой уставший народ,»

«Что с усталостью юной не смог совладать,

И унять то, что только дано усмирить:

Так позвольте же мне их с собою забрать –

И ошибку чужую собой искупить!..»

И ему разрешили тела увезти

По тропинке, что он завещал охранять,

И не тронули племя, что стало расти,

В новопризнанных землях, обжитых опять.

«Охраняйте Загон!» – говорил он с тех пор. –

«Не противьтесь тому, чему быть суждено:

Тот Охотник, кто тих, осторожен и скор,

Жертвы – те, чьё обличие обречено;»

«Доблесть там, где Потери дано избежать,

Слава там, где Потерю дано превзойти:

Мы живём рядом с теми, кто будет решать –

Ибо малым дано лишь с большими идти!..»

С этих пор он оставил свой Стан, свою власть,

И ушёл в одиночестве дни доживать,

Повторяя «Бизон должен в Беге упасть!» –

И охотился, чтобы свой Дух поддержать.

И однажды, – упав, закрывая Глаза, –

Он сказал: «Наконец-то разрушен Загон!..» –

И Улыбка застыла. Скатилась Слеза.

И восстал его Дух – словно мощный Бизон.

Тот Бизон вынес бремя на мощных плечах,

Что сужались к изяществу легких копыт –

Вот Душа, что летела сквозь радость и страх

К цели, что невозможна, чья скорость – магнит!..

Sargent

Beauty, reflected by Glance –

Glance that catches the reflection of beauties:

All remote – is hidden nearby,

All deep – is concealed by motion.

Here fantasy is reality

For the goal – is an exposure of means,

For the mystery – is just a sheer given

In a combination of Time with Place…

The world of wealth is with fantasy at hand,

And one pours into another:

This is the sensibility of smooth outlines,

It is the Mind led by the Hand.

The sea of tissues is swaying listlessly,

Shine of treasures caresses and beckons –

These waves of matters bottomless –

From foams of dreams sprout Aphrodites…

Сарджент

Красота, отражённая Взглядом –

Взгляд, что ловит красот отраженье:

Всё далёкое – спрятано рядом,

Всё глубокое – скрыто движеньем.

Вот Фантазия это Реальность,

Ибо цель – обнажение средства,

Ибо тайна – лишь сущая данность,

В сочетании Времени с Местом…

Мир богатства с фантазией близок,

И одно вытекает в другое:

Это чувственность плавных абрисов,

Это Разум, ведомый Рукою.

Море тканей волнуется томно,

Блеск сокровищ ласкает и манит –

Эти волны материй бездонных

В пене грёз Афродит порождают…

Nobel
A Genius in the silence of renunciation, –
World of tubes and flasks, –
Outputs connection,
The magic pillar of formulas,

And the creation of the “World

Of the New” proclaims:

Edit it with Nitrate

And build – Dynamite!

Explosions from now will awake

The old sleeping expanse,

Life will be explosive,

It will dare to fly –

Shards will flow into the sky, –

Nerves, hearts and minds, –

Making the possible the “Obligation” –

Uprooting foundations of prison!..

The explosion of creation “in basis”

Ballasted against the “blast of destruction” –

The Formula will be tied by blood,

Will flow in human veins.

People will clutch to one another,

The whole world will be detonated –

Cords blaze all around,

Fiery, menacing kneading!..

So wealth is created –

Destinies will pay for the dream:

The world as the “Universal Brotherhood”

Will be freshly re-clothed –

The Formula of unification

Will be withdrawn – from new ages grow

New gardens of Eden furnished with benches,

And foliages that flower to clouds!

Nobel

Гений в тиши отреченья, –

В Мире пробирок и колб, –

Выведет соединенье,

Формул магический столп,

И сотворение «Мира

Нового» провозгласит:

Править в нём будет Селитра,

А созидать – Динамит!..

Взрывы отныне разбудят

Спящую древнюю твердь,

Взрывоопасною будет

Жизнь, что посмеет лететь;

В небо взовьются Осколки, –

Нервы, сердца и умы, –

Сделав возможное «Долгом»,

Руша фундамент тюрьмы!..

Взрыв созиданья «в Основе»

«Взрыв Разрушенья» несёт:

Формула свяжется кровью,

В венах людских потечёт.

Вцепятся Люди друг в друга,

Мир детонируя весь –

Шнур полыхает по кругу, –

Огненный, грозный замес!..

Так создаётся богатство –

Судьбы оплатят мечту:

Мир как «Всеобщее Братство»

Вновь облачат в чистоту –

Формулу Объединенья

Выведут, – Рост на Века

Станет Эдема цветеньем,

Кроной уйдет в Облака!..

Ray Miller

Donkey Jacket

They said it was the longest suicide note in history

and created Care in the Community.

They said it was disrespectful to wear a donkey jacket

and then they sold us shell suits.

They said that council houses were rubbish

and everybody bought one.

They said there was an enemy within

and gave birth to New Labour.

They said there was no such thing as society

and so we all stopped in.

They said Gotcha!

and we laughed.

Jim Morris

My Friend

Drugs for breakfast, dinner, tea,

Late night snacks of Smak.

Incompatible with life.

You went away (like Sebastian)

Never came back.

I never asked, I knew.

Around the time of Dead Sheep

You drew

A dead bird in the street

Which didn’t offend its dignity

Enhanced it indeed

Darren

dead sparrow

The Life of a Smackhead

My friend said-

Smackheads smack each other’s heads.

If they haven’t any money (to fund their habit).

The dealer will also give them a smack as well,

Smack them around for a bit.

Habitually they nick from shops (Smackheads)

Then invariably get nicked.

Banged up they get a ‘bang’ in the head again.

Or just another smack for a smackhead.

The Builder of Corrals

The old leader was nervous: messengers came

To the camp from the Métis people calling for war –

For the threat has risen in the distance, once again

The whites have waited, primed for the sprin,g

To send scourges to Saskatchewan,

To avenge freedom in “the legal way”;

And under his banners Riel called to every dwelling,

To stamp his will upon the oncoming struggle.

But the Cree of the Plains fled the war,

From the South to the North, thirsting tranquillity:

Attracted to the hunt and the earth which, bringing harvest,

Gave shelter to all, protecting every newborn child,

Being fertilized with blood that no one wanted –

Except those whose souls drew nourishment from war;

The old chief, having lived an age, knew this better than anyone,

And long ago would have refused the Métis entering…

Half-breeds—Family! What should we do…? It is so:

Nature ploughs furrows through the human flesh;

They were aliens of all frontiers, but now their flag

Was waving freely over their new country—

Manitoba, which they called “Home,”

For the rogues united the North and the South.

Their dreams were so fragile—they counted the days,

Knowing what it takes to take what they want …

But the old chief said: “All my life I roamed,

Hunted buffalos upon the prairie

Captured in the practical magic of corrals,

And came to learn sometimes survival is not a sin.

“We have come to this land, which ‘The Hudson Bay’

Beneficently described before us:

White Power—the Law, whose voice can be beautiful,

And whose cruelty is stronger than steel and gunpowder.

“So who built the ‘Great Corral, and for whom was it built’?

You for the Ottawa, or the Ottawa for you?

And who will be herded inside? Protect yourself!

Your numbers are nothing against the might of the Whites…

I will not give you anyone… May our weary people

Not be driven from the path!” And the Métis left.

But then came the Youth.” We are tired of doing nothing

And having no glory; it is painful for the Warrior

To gaze on his knife rusting with disuse… With empty eyes!

Aimless is your peace: it is the heritage of Elders—

We crave war!L ong have you buried strength in your weakness,

Disguising it with your grey hairs, like dust on feathers!

“But we will rediscover our courage with the half-breeds

And the blood we will let from our White foes in battle.

You, obsolete old man, do not rebuke us—

We, who are blossoming, can stand anywhere on our own!”

And the old Chief, now seeing he was among his enemies,

Departed from his camp and visited the Whites

Declaring to them that his tribe would bow down

To their power, and pledge support to their Laws.

And together they inscribed a new law—a vast contract,

Signed jointly by the Chief and an elderly General;

“I built a Corral that precluded all Discord,”

Whispered a wise old man, before riding away…

Then a campaign of indiscriminate raids

Spread all about, and all those suspected of guilt

Were dragged before the Court; and the Métis meekly surrendered

Their territory and property –and though still protecting

The Country with small attacks and skirmishes, the frontier

Was now a haven harvested by bandits and partisans.

And the Great Hunt was conducted where the “Great Corral”

Opened to anyone who smelled the danger of pursuit.

And suddenly came the patrols over the Cree

To the young that had left for “glory” and “blood.”

Their massacre was long and drawn out—their fight

For “meaning” felling them unto the Earth until dawn.

The General was surprised when he saw the outfits—

The Agreement with the Chief had already been concluded.

But suddenly again he stood, greyer than before,

Suddenly unable to disguise his grief:

“I came down the path that is not overgrown:

Because if you do not use it, it disappears.”

His words started out from a distance, and he touched his forehead,

Then continued: “My fatigued people mourn,”

“Being unable to cope with the tiredness of the adolescent,

And unable to relieve what is given only to pacify:

So let me take them with me—

And by myself redeem the mistakes of others!”

And he was allowed to take away

The bodies by the path that he’d bequeathed to them to guard,

And did not touch the tribe, which began to grow

In newly recognised lands inhabited again.

“‘- Guard Corral” – he used to say since then. –

“Resist not what is destined to be:

The Hunter is the one who is quiet, careful and fast,

The Victims are those whose doom wears no disguise, ”

“Valour is where it is given to avoid the Loss;

Fame is where it is given to overcome the Loss:

We live together with those who will decide –

For small will be more to go! .. ”

Since that declaration, he left the Camp and his power,

To live out his days alone, saying “ Bison must fall

In the Race” – and hunted to maintain his Spirit.

One day he fell down and, closing his eyes, said:

“At last, the Corral is destroyed! ..” – A tear rolled down,

And his face froze in a smile. But soon, up rose his Spirit,

Borne on powerful shoulders tapering to dainty hooves –

His soul, a mighty Bison, but not cumbersome for O

Such speed and impossible purpose…

Строящий Загоны

Sargent

Beauty, reflected by Glance –

Glance that catches the reflection of beauties:

All remote – is hidden nearby,

All deep – is concealed by motion.

Here fantasy is reality

For the goal – is an exposure of means,

For the mystery – is just a sheer given

In a combination of Time with Place…

The world of wealth is with fantasy at hand,

And one pours into another:

This is the sensibility of smooth outlines,

It is the Mind led by the Hand.

The sea of tissues is swaying listlessly,

Shine of treasures caresses and beckons –

These waves of matters bottomless –

From foams of dreams sprout Aphrodites…

Сарджент

Nobel
A Genius in the silence of renunciation, –
World of tubes and flasks, –
Outputs connection,
The magic pillar of formulas,

And the creation of the “World

Of the New” proclaims:

Edit it with Nitrate

And build – Dynamite!

Explosions from now will awake

The old sleeping expanse,

Life will be explosive,

It will dare to fly –

Shards will flow into the sky, –

Nerves, hearts and minds, –

Making the possible the “Obligation” –

Uprooting foundations of prison!..

The explosion of creation “in basis”

Ballasted against the “blast of destruction” –

The Formula will be tied by blood,

Will flow in human veins.

People will clutch to one another,

The whole world will be detonated –

Cords blaze all around,

Fiery, menacing kneading!..

So wealth is created –

Destinies will pay for the dream:

The world as the “Universal Brotherhood”

Will be freshly re-clothed –

The Formula of unification

Will be withdrawn – from new ages grow

New gardens of Eden furnished with benches,

And foliages that flower to clouds!

James Morris

Saint George was a Palestinian.

Fought a fire-breathing dragon.

That devoured children.

Ray Miller

Analgesia

We reel ‘em in with Ritalin,

(Big Pharma pockets the profit)

Viagra and the Vitamin –

it gets so hard to come off it.

Increasing dependency doses,

the playground exchange of bright sweets;

damned by a dual diagnosis,

the endless prescription repeats.

To manage stress a bullet-proof vest

is obligatory in these quarters:

the weight you can’t get off your chest

when there’s statins in the waters.

In the theatre critical poses

are struck at an unwilling heart;

before the final curtain closes

you’ll need permission to depart.

The freaks and loners seek revenge

on all those who disrespect them;

they don’t say much and have few friends –

they’re on the autistic spectrum

and exempt from human weakness

in our analgesic Eden

where all suffering is sickness

and susceptible to treatment.

Elfriede Mollon

Autistic Innocence

A mother, on her lonely death bed, grieves:

The child who lives to squander joyful noise —

Who will affirm and love him when she leaves?

Or understand his incoherent voice

(As if to seek a way to speak)

Of dancing, artful and unique?

He demonstrates his growing ecstasy

With whirls more passionate than beauty’s kiss,

Beholding wonders no one else can see

As angels fill his soul with cosmic bliss.

He fits no mold: his dreams untold,

His thoughts too complex to unfold.

He sways and circles, turns and tilts his head,

Hands flailing, shouting mirth, and eyes aflame;

He bumps into his dying mother’s bed,

Oblivious to her whispers of his name.

No moans, no sighs, no sad good-byes:

Amid his joyful noise, she dies.

Joan McNerney

Wintry Bouquet

This December

during wide nights

hemmed by blackness,

I remember roses.

Pink yellow red violet

those satin blooms of June.

We must wait six months

before seeing blossoms,

touch their brightness

crush their scent

with fingertips.

Now there are only

ebony pools of winter’s

heavy ink of darkness.

Dipping into memory of

my lips touching petals

tantalizing sweet buds.

My body longs for softness.

I glimpse brilliant faces of

flowers right before me as I

burrow beneath frosty blankets.

Bracing against that long, cold

nocturnal of wind and shadow.

December

The watching clock

pinches each second,

holds a minute in

its hand…drops,

catching another.

Snow gently falls,

frost gathering upon

the pane.

As gulls

proclaim this

new morning,

the sun rose…

another golden flower!

Blue your eyes

Blue your eyes

this edge of snow

in silent sky.

Brown eyes soft

tree bark patterns as

yellow flicks

sparkle in wintry sun.

And now it seems

your eyes are green

green as spruce

turning to grey eyes

glancing across as if

from a mountainside.

Your eyes two violets

hidden beneath frost.

Close your eyes

as sleepless stars

glide through night

in aerial ballet.

Black coal eyes

glowing on fire

red flames leaping

out of eyes burning

blue your eyes.

Sean J Mahoney

For a moment this afternoon

I am no longer an aspiring poet;

not while the honeysuckle

need untangling and thinning,

not while the thickening citrus

reaches into its sacred heart

and in a raspy tremor unlike

my own, whispers.

I read about my voice once –

the tongue I found –

but that book was eaten

by a quick and dirty dog

and puked out as confetti.

I am no longer a singer;

Lady Day begged me to fold

and chest my young man dreams

while she tied off.

She sirened. Enticed me

to instead embrace numbers,

raw and solid, and a life

of spreadsheets. Rows.

Columns.

I heard my voice once

but that sound was mistaken

for a sure lifeboat

and dropped overboard

for a distressed damsel.

She drowned anyway

as the wood of the device

argued itself into loose

knots as it sank.

Under the temperance

of the cool night sky

the needles of the moon snake

their way across dark waters

and prop my eyelids while

I’m pissed on –

a shower of brass figurines,

molten innuendo,

and desktops scarred

with ballpoint carvings:

Fags suck good.

Dumb as a hammer.

And irony is delicious.

May the lesser saints

be gloriously painted.

The system is flush with

finger-width loopholes

and cruel invention.

The ink bottle has spilled

and run, run over the palm-sized

photo of my father

who promised me I’d starve

trying to aspire to anything.

Sean J Mahoney

Cancer Girl’s Hair Set on Fire

“Police are investigating an 11-year-old girl who had battled back from cancer and had her newly grown hair set on fire at a school near Swansea.”

She suffered after four years with her friends. People who, in their misunderstandings of sums and parts, were not seeking Bianca. Bianca actually smothered friends with essays full of holes – she believed people needed paths. What was the point? For cancer waits. Cancer is Patience as equally as it is Pestilence. Cancer is petulant in line and in traffic, petulant while you remove your trousers or seek communion with various devils. The letter P is cancer. It’s just dreadful. Awards were given for schemes to tackle the facially paralysed cancer girl and not just tackle her but clothesline her, make her afraid of the restroom, fear her homeroom and the Quad. I’m a cancer. Cancer is a menace. Cancer is corporate. Cancer is conceived. Babies are conceived. Ideas are born in moments of duress. Why “Cancer Girl”? Why not young girl? I want Bianca to be safe. I want Bianca happy. She suffers but apparently not enough. The family has been to Hell. Only Bianca came back for more. She has cancer. Things I want are not important.

“Bianca Powell was in a corridor at Pontarddulais Comprehensive when her hair, which had grown back after four years of chemotherapy, was set alight. A 14-year-old boy has been bailed pending further inquiries.”

Such as: Who are you working for? Do you have any idea? Any at all? Do you realize that when the Americans come home all they really want are snapshots of the fallen empire? They want to see disarray and the compaction of propriety. They could give a fuck about Parliament and the Tube. They think the vanquished. They think tube steak. They think that they think like Locke and know what should be held under key and yet cancer crawled out anyway in front of their straight-for-a-price teeth. Cancer is knowledge about what could have been. And cancer dictates: Are you really an Englishman? There is nothing English about lighting someone afire. Fawkes maybe. Was this to be the second Great Fire? Your every action resembles that of a bullet fired from the cannon of stupid. You fop. Bianca’s father wired from Hell that Bianca would be best served cold but most thought him daft at best. Keep Bianca away from incendiary academics he declared. Keep Manchester united while the family seeks consulate assistance. The family pleads in unison, in choral mass, for a return to the surface where they can aggressively combat cancer and the corridors where the hair crime occurred. There is nothing normal about school anymore; not when the Diet of Worms is no longer a reliable weight loss program for believers in sola fide. Not after years of chemo. Not after years of hair growth. Not after arriving at age 12 only to learn that you are your own candle and no, there is no wind.

Stephen C. Middleton

Panic in the Desert, 2013 (for Albert)

Peptic ulcer – consumption

Albert cannot breathe
Panic attacks in peacetime
It is always the year before the war
For your centenary, blood stains the desert

Again
Algeria’s plague
The cynosure – some distant purity

(Work awkward forms into song,
Career trajectory – from notes)
Cedilla, diphthong, & breathe

Format / weave

Dormant these years
But we were not watching
Colonies we divide & rule
Can use this closer / nearer to home – & we do

Albert foregoes his train ticket
& goes by car, forever
Settler & settled, too simple for Albert
This is their game & they are winning
Spin & stale rhetoric – & desert dead
Some God’s edict
Some mud that sticks
Another process that has failed
Another taunted zephyr
Ancient scapegoats
The twisted walk to war
“Neither victim nor executioner”, he said
Catching breath, struggle in the throat
Panic – pressure, gorge rising
& there, outside in the snow – a dead rat
& that’s how it begins.

James Mirachi

Syringes

While I’m sick from work

the broomstick-butler cooks me up

some spicy vermouth soup

served in a wise old goblet

Gives me a massage

with steak mallet

which imprints tic-tac-toe boards

into my back

He says my emotional toxins

will fly right out of the “x’s” and “o’s”

I’m stubborn

so only superficial tears ooze out

My interlocking cuts talk back to him

challenging him to put some meat

on his gaunt stick-frame

He tells me to shut up

and PURGE

Be a good sick little boy

I semi-comply

He tosses me onto a couch

with platonic syringes for springs

He tells me they will suck out thru my back

any baggage and demons

I laugh

as Long Island Iced Teas, instead,

shoot from my spine like a Vegas fountain

He then drags me into a hot jacuzzi

filled with goopy brain conditioner

He assures me my cerebral cortex

will sweat itself out into blissful contentment

This technique also miscarries

With a pompous sigh

the broomstick-butler retires to the pantry

where I see him, five minutes later, in the doorway

shooting up with tree bark heroin

Of all things

this sight is my cure

and I’m now ready to take on the world

The Animator

A cartoonist couple lives

in a black-and-white tenement

among the monochromatic cockroaches

and the venom of their satire.

A disabled little girl lives

across the hall

laughing with joy.

Her mother

buys her ice cream and toys

and ministers to her

with an IV of love.

They pass by

the couple’s apartment

emitting under their door

an aerosol of pure light.

Resultantly

the depressed cockroaches

turn poignantly pink

and go scuttle to help the homeless.

When the cartoonist couple

gets a whiff of this aerosol

they too are transmogrified:

they swap their cynical comic panels

for a pastel optimism.

Inevitably

this aesthetic is also abandoned

for the couple starts to feel

like the ultimate hacks

devoid of integrity.

They soon move away

into another tenement

(a super nasty one!)

to rekindle their edge

… and end up living “happily” ever after ….

Austin McCarron
The Torturer, Now Captive

The torturer, now captive,

is a thing of transparent cages,

a maker of vast solutions,

a ruler of torn clothes, who lives

in a prison of dusty windows,

a room of silent bars, of polite

diseases, of sullen trances, and

searches for a kiss among dead faces

like a man of creative wars who

knows the obligation of

power is to raise the blood it despises.

Greater than experiments of death,

of futility, insights of blood, boundaries

of insatiable law, is the corpse of light

hair and dark skin, wearing

broken shoes, badges of courage, who

day and night, keeps a journal of blood,

in motherless air, while the sun blasts

palaces of freedom with the

body of voices and the odour of decay.

Softly like a viper shaking itself free, the

profound world of evening is still.

Softly out of stone fingers

oozes the club of strange faces and eyes.

Soup Kitchen

Seeking nourishment

I lift my lips above the soil

and starvation is a dinner

with burning voices

and my food is tins of sun

and juice of garrulous flesh.

I sit in a crowd of death with

pig of dismantled bone, hair

of diseased courses

and choose a meal of veins

from a menu of agonising dishes.

I pick at a starter of gutted eyes

and run my fork through a salad

of bitter decay. I raise knives of

dripping stone and chew on beast

of horns with maddened severity.

I drink on the tongue of a shattered

grape. I pour out the blood

of delicious blue animals on a mat of

wounded plates.

My sweet is covered in cream of time.

I inhale the smoke of life.

I pay in bills of despairing green notes.

Disappearing without trace I encounter

the body of existence and it is dead like

crabs in sunlight and it is dead like crabs

on derelict snow.

The wind of my hunger is not prolific but

obscure. I store

in my mouth fishes of venomous spring.

I see graves of my hope shudder and die.

mist of bone, sea of light, gold of sorrow.

I follow the blindest sound and it is hungry

like a bridge of

stomachs, a worm of rivers, tears of water.

In the Name of London

In the name of London I find

at each blind turn rivers

of triumph and rivers of destitution.

There it lies, in shadows of illumination,

begging for more water to burn.

I sleep in a crisis of songs and London is my

music, but the Thames is the worst of my loves,

rich with droppings, a grey

skinned trough on which savages once bathed.

Rougher than my hair of voices is this spacious

home, tied to watery cliffs, of elected gold,

where the sun of government slowly passes.

I walk down streets packed with empty flames.

I look up at St. Paul’s and see

a chain of fountains and a heaven of bitter clouds.

I smell in dark windows the poverty of snow.

Behind

each cry of desperation I see a man clutch wind.

The city is a sty, its heart grunting with glass

of inedible creations.

I grow with powerless fingers a beard of time.

I seem broken in crowds, my arms full of failed light.

I rest under stars of sand and

eat with draughts of air the berries of a twisted race.

On The Subject of Stars

Almond eyed and transcendental;

they are indulging on a banquet of stars

and tossing the wishbones away.

A caged moon is watching.

The capturer of stellar beauties is finely dressed

in only the rarest of crystallized tears.

Her net is entrancing;

some stars wish themselves beautiful enough.

Rejected stars shiver in the eyes of lovers.

There is a lack of depth in those gazes

of oceanic bewilderment.

To love truly is to drown and not struggle.

Star crumbs leave a trail to worlds beyond,

lined in single file like obedient children

marching in playground

unaware, like caged moons,

of the stars hollowed of wishes

all but crumbled inside.

To die in this manner is to never reveal their secrets;

collapsing in on themselves in a distraction of light..

The story went, but one boy

had learnt about stars in his spare time.

What is the point of anything, young fellow?

But to inspire wonder and curiosity;

to shine light upon something else entirely.”

He appeared, at first, terribly sad;

slumped like a toy-shop window puppet,

averting his eyes to a north easterly,

as to an old memory..a bucket of used sparklers,

in which he felt something had drowned completely.

One boy slept upon a slanted classroom table

as words turned into lullabies and exploded

into a fine dust, if anything, of music.

Disappeared completely.

His last thought was that he had become

a syllable whistling through a shattered

kaleidoscope of mosaic moons.

Everything was an eclipse

and could not be described

by anything but an endless concerto;

to which no one had the honour of conducting;

least of all his teacher.

Another, gazing from a window

at the mute boredom of grey figures

moving in droves with a distinct unease;

like the women on their way to concentration camps.

In one, pregnant it seemed, of heavy tears.

A book slammed shut. The teacher cross

that such wonder had not been acknowledged.

When washing escapes from lines….

if it gets high enough,

then it is free to stay up there in the sky.

Alice whispered it;

looking out into the windy street;

the swish of litter scraping.

Newspapers tiptoeing, cans hopping,

bags wheezing, banana skins crawling

like starfish, the swish of car tyres

slicing through left over puddles.

Adults rushing like the white rabbit

out of wonderland. It all seems so mute.

Routine; every moment attached

to every moment like clothes on a washing line.

How she dreams of floating out through

the window in her fathers white shirt

seeing the city below her.

Anywhere but here;

A mantra for the rest of her life.

It will become only a sound.

A heavy tocking. A soft ticking.

Alice looking out the window undone.

alice…. alice…. alice..

She hears as she chases

A white plastic bag down an empty street.

Alice!

She snaps out of a classroom coma.

“Alice, pay attention;

Why is your page blank?”

…It’s the sky miss.

“Then imagine something in it”

She folded the page into an origami bird.

The teacher had an expression only teachers know,

Her face seemed to slowly change

like that of someone watched

after a moment of laughter,

whose smile lasts longer

than the light in their eyes suggested.

As if she had lost hope,

in something intangible as love,

she would think quietly to herself was,

ironically, the only solid thing

that existed in a world so cold.

Ephemerealms

We’re all looking for something

we never find

and settle instead

for love.

And so begins

the echoes

from a time before

as if it was the end of a year long war.

As if the moon was blown

like a clock-flower.

Here we are all nameless

and it is here that I lie

under the grave of the sky.

Snow falls in street light glow

or am I rising? Time slows,

to watch outside the dream in bloom.

Your memories of me;

a chain of bells that echo.

I have taken with me; there is only

a trailing pattern in the snow;

perhaps that of a horse and cart,

a funeral hearse,

a child and sled;

you will not know.

My eyes; used catherine wheels

still nailed to the pole

are already photograph dead,

gone from green to sepia, like traffic lights.

There is a sound of bells in your sleep;

they trail from a funeral sleigh.

You follow to find a whole constellation;

you will not know which is me.

It is as if two lost bracelets had fallen in a river,

in the same place….

As if they belonged to the river..

somehow you just know.

You see them faintly glowing

but leave them there.

In another snow-globe geometry;

I am the message carried

from one street light to another.

I’m half present.

Abstract; as if sketched

into the centre of a busy scene.

I am a kind of urn full of eraser dust;

if I should spill I might become a picture..

A bird perhaps.

Strangers are notes in a silent

un-punctuated jazz, then noticing me;

fall into deep contemplation,

as though trying to place me from somewhere;

another dream perhaps. I don’t even know

what my own eyes are hiding.

It was imagined. recorded somewhere,

somehow re-rendered

in dreams, or maybe

just leftovers from a dream

unremembered.

A statue carved of pain.

The pain carved onto my skin,

so that with me,

as me,

the universe can analyze itself;

mirror on mirror.

I’m staring right into Medusa’s eyes

and turning her into stone.

Black Snow

The stars do not go;

“Gentle into that good night”

but flicker, epileptic

amongst a billion other dying lights.

Like children wailing in an orphanage.

Motherlessly hushed

by a stranger, indifferent as the moon.

Face as blank as an unrecorded night.

Mouth as hollow as a lampshade,

suspended from an unfamiliar ceiling.

Wept asleep; ash white faces, crescent

in the folds of wet pillows.

They slip away silent from december shine

like the sliver of light

through the gap of a door opened slight.

..Those missing hours strung overnight

into some kind of constellation;

by a violin, mourning from an open window;

where a young woman has not slept,

nor cared to eat

but traced over and over like a suicide note

The trails in the snow left by a hearse.

..and the footfalls of children, having no pattern;

they do not go calm, into that solemn street.

Silent Movie In Black And Blue

Things are either dark, or they glow

and do not last;

they choke and sputter gracious

in the bedraggled blacks

like chimney sweep heads detached,

while the sky has its back to the world.

The sea bruises the rocks;

Blue, then stills

when someone comes to view.

Waves folding; darkly

like a hand over a telling mouth; hush.

The moon has the whiteness of a blind woman’s eye,

so perhaps its other senses are heightened

A widow who dresses her children like dolls.

Like a sewing machine, precise in her loneliness

and all the more efficient.

A ladybird crawls onto a child’s finger

like a droplet of water on glass.

Front down in the grass; she blows out

a clock flower, wishing the same of her past.

The ladybird opens its wings; just like the De Lorean.

The moment when Dorothy sees Technicolor

for the first time, is reversed.

The ladybirds carapace resembles a painting by H.R. Giger.

A boy fell from his bicycle

and scraped his chalk knees on the pavement;

The reflectors still turning on his wheels

like Polaroid’s spilled from a suitcase.

The sky holds close

photographs of the departed

like a second skin.

Gravestones huddle close

as gossiping children,

one stands away from the others; shivering.

Grass whispers in seeming.

Leaning; passing their secrets along

in little notes. A clock flower tears it up;

tosses it against the wind.

Bits of broken bowls line the pavement

as if the moon had fallen.

One woman is picking up the pieces,

without the strength to weep;

Staring into nothing as she sweeps.

A meal untouched going cold

on her kitchen table.

All their faces, paused in one expression

Like the moon before it fell

or the clock before it stopped.

A sea of yellow cabs waiting

like Scorcese’s translation

of Wordsworth’s daffodils.

My fingers are the bystanders at the scene;

the horrific image on the pavement-

the dead dove- is someone else’s art.

If Shadows Could Bruise

I would watch waves

lap against rocks for hours, days,

until I gained a childlike sense of time again.

Though the sea moves

in formless origami

with no limit to its expressions

there is nothing written beneath the waves

that fold and clamber over each other

like blankets over blankets

on a child that is cold regardless.

..because a child’s reality

was turned inside out

like an umbrella left

upside down in the rain.

I did not feel cold, I only felt

that the snow understands

how I wish to live.

Seems I have lived a thousand childhoods

and in each of my past lives none has

seemed my own.

Poetry only makes things worse.

The way I will always hold my gaze at a tragedy;

as though there existed no margin

between the opening of ground and sky

or if a child might have left

a confetti smile in wet glass

picked up from a church puddle.

I would think of how

the sun might splash a new mosaic

through it

onto a strangers face unknowingly.

I learned from watching clouds

and strangers that would

sit next to me as a lost child

and ask me what I was painting..

why the colours so dark?

..because some colours

will simply not wash away.

To see the world through my eyes

is to be withdrawn from it altogether.

If there are children who go

wildly tracing footsteps in the snow;

I was the one who kept indoors

and watched from the window

tracing each snowflake

as it passed the street-light glow.

If I reached out to touch

a statue that resembled me

and the eyes were wet..

it’s the closest I could get

to recognising my own feelings.

I don’t have the voice or the emotion

to narrate my poetry to an audience.

I would rather they listened to the rain

and read my poems when I am gone.

…Even the snow

wants to be over and done with

before people start to come out.

These poems are on pause

in the honey coloured iris between

the red and green of traffic lights.

The rain in static re-runs of old movies..

An actress looking into your eyes

and for a moment

forgetting her lines

..these are the lines of those moments.

Its just one of those things;

when you need to be inspired,

nothing else will do.

Mark J. Mitchell

Remembering the Sixties

Time back, way back

It seemed giants would fall.

Way back, just a push

Was all it might take.

Time back, cars had fins

And everything was black and white.

Time back, way back,

That black and white meant more.

Way back, time back,

We saw the world change

And change back. Time back,

Way back.

Dialectic

(Homage to Shem and Shaun)

This is his moment, poised by chance, right here

Between green nows and orange thens. The young

Penman husbands his silence. He’ll outrun

Everyone, while staying close, keeping near.

And this is his hope and his only fear,

Pen posed over paper, poised at the post:

What if they don’t quite understand his boast?

What if they offer an ignorant cheer?

Since this is his only moment he acts

Anyway, tossing falling words around

Like stale stout, strong and sour and black as night.

Whatever they find, well it’s not his fight,

He plants his clues using the tools he’s found.

It’s his wake. Like cards, he holds all the facts.

David R. Morgan

Divorced

What was desire — Dido bawling from the precipices,

her General pondering fresher conquests,

that elegant insipidity — has gone:

there are high heels clacking in low life Luton;

what might be — when little stars are great suns

in a universe too large for discourse,

articulate difficulties like Post Modern elegies,

show- off jazz riffs — blinded in this shadow;

what is — neither convoy nor dwelling,

nothing remembered, nothing found — we have:

our wish, engineered environment, architect’s walls,

and our existence, single minds in double beds.

David R. Morgan

Life Cycle

What’s lost may never be found. What’s found may be lost forever

The sun creeps along the cement floor. Fairly soon, half my lifeless body is in light, the other in shadow,

like sunrise on a volcanic island. Dead a day or so, at least sixty flies have gathered by now, walking around

and ingesting what they’re walking around on.

I move in closer to me. Such organisation and grace–no fuss, no fighting. There’s obviously always
enough for everyone in the fly world.
And plenty of time to get off a quickie with your neighbour.

I’m now within inches of the calm feeding on something so familiar, of at least one hundred and fifty flies(give or take arrivals and departures).
None seem to notice me or care if they do, the sun glinting off their emerald thoraxes and through their purple wings.

The nobleman steps down from his carriage. It’s a district in the mountain valley.
The white shapes of old hands knit caps for thousands of spice-boxes.
At the manor, the animals are dressed up. The fox is in a tuxedo, a russet flame between his tails.

The nobleman lights candlesticks and eats rabbit stew.

The dormouse was an ice-floe of the mammoth era. The wind turned leaves in the washed linen. They heard the sun approach and withdraw, with a solemn
step, like organ music. At lunch, the decanter’s cork shone under the acetylene
burner, naive as a pear. After searching a long time, the children found a
hunter, lost, upside-down among branches. Very far off, in the bends of old roads, some robbers with a sack and a club cried: “Your money or your life!”

He gently does his angelic work. The school has four walls and its windows play
dominoes. Daytime opens its laughing drawers: yellow battles, slow cards, wise measures, sleeping gloves. Then, evening glides on the blue and white icing, his
slate scribbled with animals and heads. Bob’s toy-box contains a target, nails from wooden shoes, gelatin balls, a picture with a hunter in a derby hat.

At night, Bob sleeps in a little puff-pastry boat.After exhausting itself with white dust on the roads and bilberries in the wood, great summer,

disarrayed and weak, is pulled in through the roof, through its wicker hall shaped like a hoop-net. Now, it’s neglected: ant-eggs clog its nose

and a sore beard pushes them up to the slots of its eyes, a beard of rotting branches that’s called autumn.

The blue glasses, found in an elevated railroad car, belong to the victim, Lady Morton. But Nat and the coroner, misled to the black windows in depots,

re-enact the daily routines of her double. The job hinges on a leaking cask, painted red, with mysterious contents. There’s also a garret, a furnished hotel overrun with
nettles, padded doors, a secret platform. All the action happens on Tuesday, poor day, stamping on the rain’s filings. Guided by a jockey,

Nat discovers the culprit in a phoney pastor’s osier suitcase. He’s a horrid dwarf, of Mongolian ancestry. The pastor is his lieutenant.

The soup with jonquils that’s eaten at the fairies’
house, a dull little spoon gave me the recipe. One evening it lured me under its raincoat. In the dark, against its heart, a little light was living.

A weak little reddish flame, surrounded by a blue halo. It’s her — I’ve understood it ever since — she’s who hummed me the recipe. Alas!

My gasp was so strong that she died from it.

She’s morning’s residence. She’s as clear as she is invisible, as tranquil as forgotten lands. Her hair is golden, her smooth windows exchange glances.
She appears in bold alluring colors, a pretty basket of dew, protected by a long crystal rifle. On the doorstep, a bush shakes off his medals.
The door is open, but the bush hesitates forever: he doesn’t see he’s invited.
Gently, the house empties, she jingles her dress, her heart rustles: the dazed bush doesn’t understand. It’s a very complicated game.

From time to time, the glass rifle speaks all alone and shatters some small thing.

What was it a question of? A hair’s breath, in all. A tree was catching fire, a pond was sulking, a dew sprinkled maid-servant was lulled to sleep by currant
bushes.What was it a question of? A tiny line. Compact little
figure, naked Merisette.

When the dawn’s heart begins to beat, the high little clouds come down to breakfast in the trees. Behind the masked clouds playing the big drum, real
clouds, still and caught in dreams, are hushed up.
They are the sky’s memory. Tired from wandering alone in the roadless sky, a dark cloud has gone to die in the forest.

Thursday is always pleasant with frost and a naked girl on the country’s palm.
The merchant of clouds counts the precious stones of the amazing house: an inviting lamp. The girl in the forest, brief snow-maid dressed in
fire, in a leaving-coat. The white trees are listless. The house is a log, the merchant, Stout John, like the wind.

An uncle smokes a pipe, blows smoke, knows his target. An abbot traces a lion, builds a cardboard cone. The oldest child studies his shoulder join

A mother puts on her huge thimble, picks up a needle, yawns. A neighbour brings in a display of horns that just lies about, tells of his journey from Austria, drinks.
A table gloats in quarters. A child lies in ambush in a house. A house has a thousand windows. Heavy weather throbs in a countryman’s cloak.

We were hoping to spend Saturday in the bedroom in
Arabian sacks. It used to have a ladder under its arm and a trowel as
shoulder-belt. The clock rang carefully, with an odor of preserved
pears. A piece of thread was loafing on an armchair: it was
the week’s pay. I kill the third bird while watching myself in the
glass. The first I had taken for a chair, one of those folding
chairs which sometimes flutter between the hooks of the
mirrors. I heard the second’s peck through the keyhole. I found it squashed against the back of the glass, the mender of faces. It was clear as oblivion.
The third was the breast of the mirror itself. It was flapping a thousand blinding hands, a thousand
hands of fire. I was forced to close my eyes. It died because of them.

Saturday always means a pail of open oysters and a gaping plank, over there, in the corner of the wood where Oger, the staircase-maker, lives.

His wife Octavia washes with the black soap and eats the raw, chilled comb of a cock killed during the night by an axe-stroke, on the bakery block.

His drunken son Oscar has a sore throat. He set up a cutting table in the cabbage patch. He licks the
almanac. It smells bad. The carpenter has bare fore-arms. He whistles between
his teeth. He thinks about his brother the peddlar’s tired horse. He dreams of his daughter Odile, dead at fifteen, from hemorrhaging. Heaven is pale,

its cheek swollen, with waterpockets under its eyes and a bandage on its calf.
In the evening, a preserved egg is eaten.

A cuckoo, larger than the forest, digs a hole in the still warm, ashen landscape.
The butt of a rifle spreads over the arrogant mountains.
A wisp of straw is placed as observer at the side of the hole. A guinea-hen’s eye, detached from its body, serves as a signal.

The eye reddens: the butt coagulates, the cuckoo’s feathers gather in a very furious four-fourths movement.

The straw glitters a long time in the complicated fistula of the sky’s deserter.
Thus, in the morning twilight, the winter cuckoo is sucked in by his surroundings.

He followed, point by point, the instructions on the hand-bill. Carefully, prudently, he folded the paper in quarters, then in tens,

then again in a thousand equal little
triangles. His work finished, he hid, for the night, under his pillow. Even so, in the morning a woman he didn’t know was washing,

shamelessly, in front of his mirror.
In the mist, a quiet finger had drawn the curly head of a ram. The paper, folded so many times, had disappeared.In times of swollen cheeks,

when the clay bugles roar, the little railroads of gold coins run, in festoons, around the country.
Oh beards of fire, oh streams rousing the thirst! But, at the heart of the region, among the mold growing under arms, milk-filled celebrities of the white wood
nourish the lumpy pillow of sleep which dents the young cows.

The felled tree still has a tree house. It also is left supporting this or that branch, with its birds. But the birds die off and the trestle reaches the top,

the home will still be a sign of what has no form, the tree being, besides, overthrown.

He takes a rather spacious meadow, with a sky to match. He sits in the south or at the back, according to whether his partner is tall or missing.

If he falls, it’s water-eating. If he leaps, it’s dancing. He wins when his partner goes off and doesn’t return. He loses when his partner sits down to the table while
taking his shoes off. It’s a draw when the players resemble the game. It’s also played in the thicket (with planks) or in the
mountains (with nets).

Two ladies climb the lower street. One is dressed in black, the other in black, the third, undressed. These ladies are charged with mounting the lower street.

The street is so low that it takes, thus, four ladies to climb it. After climbing the low street, the five ladies go down it again.

To ruin the lower street seems to be the purpose of these half-dozen stylish ladies.

I would feast on scoundrels and fall into step. When the cage was parting from the bird, I was arriving at my encounter.

When the kennel was eating the dog, I confused bodies and belongings. But, in broad daylight, I recovered my distance and usually got ahead of myself.

We’d grown wiser. We might have become nosegays, on the day’s silver lattices. When someone rapped on our door, we heard the noise in our hearts.
We ran to open. There was never anyone. It was always morning, mild, settled, clear, which threw us the pearls in its eyes.

Because our visitors no longer had business at the doors. They sprung from our looks, from our furniture, in
their Sunday best, marvelous. They always wore flowers in their buttonholes.
They were sparkling or invisible, actors of light or musicians of shadows, to our liking.

Look out! This is not a bouquet: it’s a huge concerto for all the cocks.
Aroused from a daze, on the untouchable stone of dawn, at noon it sets fire to the structure’s main beam. Then it climbs, unquenchable, spreads, flings itself
into the azure depths, down to the frenzy of the
bottom, down to the wheel’s center where red is the heart of blue.

Step-ladder, tiny pyramid for miserly hunchbacks, near- sighted reckoner, the reseda, gathered in its cunning little cabin, breaks up, clears itself of perfume.
This flower is the friend of silent eyes, of century- old hands, of honest blades.
She grows near modest shale-like clusters — these, devout, dyed purple, or else those, burnt to brown ribbons, daughters seen from a libertarian star.
When the limed soil turns toward the sexton, the weekly herb heralds, at the bottom of some old fashioned desk,

some thin copy-book bound in boards of somber blue and covered with beautifully written secrets. When she’s moved by a ridge of fired peat,

the flower forecasts for the initiated only such a display of
nymphomania, such nutritious folly, nauseating tropical inheritance.
And when she becomes incrusted in the millennial foundations of bits of shale, she’s the prophetess of the glass reed, the measly pot,

the head schoolmaster, the starched virgin, the pigeon-breeding spiritualist.
Her perfume is a secondary condition since its disproportion to her stem and its continual layers make it unexplainable.

A trapped fawn: I fix her up, I dress her, I help her recover, I imprison her in a tower. I suckle her with the moon, bits of riddles, wasted blows.
When it’s windy, we travel on our mares of lace. When it rains, we climb, in slow spirals, to tease the nightingales with a stick. When the doors,

like women in fallen gowns, exchange their passwords, we unfold in green, in grey, in jerks,
piece by piece, like the perforated music roll of a player piano. I call her Mamzelle Impossible. I stuff her with food. I send her out to beg.

Standing up, weightless, Ponce has walls. They’re thin. They tremble. It’s a forest. These are princes washing themselves, unsettled quarrels,

or a lot of Chinese peddlers. He makes his move. He spreads out. He’s in Naples, in
cherries, in Dumas. He forms his woman and he forms all: all forms.

I’ve only known one emperor in my life. He called himself Zenon and did odd jobs at my parents’ house. He worked only at night.
During the day, he hid. Sometimes we caught a glimpse of him, under a disguise. I’ll always remember the orphic throne’s silence and all I didn’t see,

behind the delightful picture of kittens hanging on the wall.
He left us one October morning, a long time ago. We found the remains of his crown in the pear tree. When he left, he blocked up the low door of the garden.

I know nothing more to tell about this emperor. And if I’ve written that his name was Zenon,

it’s out of friendship for those who speak of gilded armour when they return from the goat-herds.

What’s lost may never be found. What’s found may be lost forever.

Austin McCarron

Immigration

On Waterloo Bridge I eat

a thousand languages

with my back to the world.

I taste its smell with the riches

of earth. I invent a home

for each continent of light. I find

a place for each island and man.

History is like music, a tradition

of song.

On a stone clock with gold hands,

the sun is setting on the hour.

Towering over churches of rest,

the City of London, its universal

tongue. Go in peace; the

water is equal to your destination.

The Hypnotist

Hanging around my neck the soul

of the twentieth century,

still warm from its dark cremations.

Looking

into its eyes I suggest a final number.

I hear millions and millions of voices.

The innocent conduct house to house

searches and like

grim fathers the evil return with flowers.

Green with animal nature,

the blood of countless races oozes out

of the death of its unspeakable hands.

Hoarse screams and blind laughter reach

a climax and coagulate. I snap my fingers.

I pass out rushes of light.

Returned from trances with peaceful and

calm revelations the children of snow

coloured forests and dangerous inventions.

Great War Poem

I sail on a ship to nowhere

but the sea is a cloud through

which fire passes.

Ribs of flesh I gather like coins

to throw at air.

On travels of existence I wind up

in a hut with docile sores and read

in silence

to friends of decomposing corpses.

Out of experience of loneliness

I know blood is possessed of a scent

to rub on the soul of my enemy but

truth is forgiven and

I see clearly the end of its desolation.

Animals butchered return my vision and

the water erupts like a stall of extravagant

meat, where death

is its own conscience

and scarcely is the sun a reward for time.

Rolled back like a boulder outside a cave

my compassion has few tears

but I pity grey avenues

with profound tunnels groomed for loss.

I count the price, where freakish creative

winds stir the medals on a far off shirt.

Behind silent coaches there is a grave

I once knew and its patience is described.

Jim Morris

England

The fleur de lys, Tudor roses,

(All the intricate tracery),

Plain plaster.

The old stone fireplace,

(Casting shadows into corners)

A radiator.

The wrought-iron spiral staircase,

(In the central clock tower)

A lift.

The Great Hall

(With its hammer beam roof removed)

A Conference Room.

From its turreted battlements,

Balloons hanging,

Instead of bunting.

Identification

On the morning of Friday October the 21st 1966

Waste tip No 7 started slip,

To slide…

40,000 cubic metres of mining debris,

Roared down towards Pantglas Junior School

Just after assembly.

The whole liquefied mass (40 feet deep)

Crashed into class

Then silence…

I have a photograph of the aftermath before me.

A sole sticking out of the ‘spoil’

So identifiable…

I had the same shoe

The same sole

As you.

Judith Mensch

I Closed Up The Summer Porch Today

I closed up the summer porch today

– stored the cushions

– brought in the plants

– sorted through the magazines

(I found that recipe for streusel

you said I ought to try)

I said good-bye to summer.

Remember those long evenings?

You’d listen to the ballgame on the radio

I’d do my stitching and send my thoughts

Somewhere else. I cared too much, you see,

For the home team.

When they didn’t win, I felt shame (just

As the song says I should).

Still, I was always a little sad when the season was over,

And it was time to come in,

Although when it rained we stayed inside

(“That porch was meant for sunshine,” we’d say).

These days I store pop out there

To keep it cool for Thanksgiving afternoon treats, you see

When more is needed, one of us retrieves it

Quickly, for it is like alien territory

Out there that smells different in the winter

And we are always in a hurry to return to the warmth.

Well, anyway, I closed up the summer porch today

– put away the radio

– covered the furniture

– pulled the blinds

and the door behind me

making my life smaller, tighter, limited.

I closed up the summer porch today

I said good-bye.

UNTITLED #6

I think I’ll just lie here awhile

On this grassy hillside

On a November afternoon

The sun low in the sky

The air chill but not as cold

As it will soon get

An old church’s bells blanket me

As the birds supply my pillow

I rest with leaf and blossom

Take root with worm and soil

Settle in to await

The promised spring

Come and see me sometime

We shall sit under the pale sun

And listen to the bells

And reminisce

If you’re not careful

You will come to love me again

Assessment

I am as mundane as I ever was

as lonely

as un-full of meaning

the sky is just as empty

the rain still ridicules my tears

the longing runs just as deep

in my veins as it did at first

my sighs still laugh at me

echoing the heavens’ assessment

and I remain with fears,

with holes, with shame

my life trailing off into the sunset

my life trailing off

JB Mulligan

death of a monster

The soldiers came, and you tried to crawl away,
and fell into a darkened room
where bodiless, white-eyed heads with sharpened teeth
circled and lunged and tore at you.
They moaned and prayed and cursed you – and their hair
was combed and oiled by giggling virgins.
But worse than that, the blade of God’s disdain
forever sawing at your throat.

Your family, somewhere, wept
when they heard that you had died.
They saw the boy you’d been –
as someone I know has seen
the father of his childhood,
lost beneath fallen stones,
smiling a vanished smile.
We bleed the same hot blood –
and I will not weep for yours.
Your children, stiff with grief,
are better than you deserve,
unless they snatch up the savage knife
and go screaming for random throats.

We’re home to a savage thing, torn
by each other, by the heart’s
crude claw, digging out of the chest
to unfurl its crooked wings
in the moon-silvered air,
to squeak and hunt the small,
to soar and cut in the night
away from the sun’s
hot and merciless, always-tearing hand.

Part of my mind (the Christian part,
and some of Islam also can try)
wants to comprehend your pain,
an understanding I’ll never feel
you’ve earned — and that is not for you
(there’s nothing I have that is for you),
but keeping caged the potential beast
in me — or trying to keep it caged –
or only letting it out to hunt
whatever needs to be hunted…. But
to keep the way to avoid the sin
your hunt became (or always was).

The risk is forced: one path cuts up the mountain
ragged as lightning, waiting to be walked
away from the torrential thundering rise
of blood-dark currents, up through crashing falls
where slipping means I may fall to your depth
and earn the curse I happily pour on you.

There is, perhaps, a stretch of calm beyond,
clear water, cool to the throat, and to the face.
And then further climbing, endless, needed.

from far away

It’s easy to bray and roar
for distant troops to die
for glory and for us.
It’s harder to hold back.
But that is not what makes
it right to spend their blood,
their families and time.
To spill this carefully,
to hoard these willing gems
till cause can make it good…
not pride or noise or flag,
but stone necessity —
that is when to set
the lions out to roar.

summa humanitis

Women dead with coat hangers in them.
Fetuses like deli scraps.
Christ on our cross, we offer you
the best that we have,
the most we can do.

In the valley of the damned,
even the carrion demons
snarled in the shadows, starving.

parade of the victims

Everyone’s a nigger now.
Or a Jew. Or a Palestinian
being killed by the Jews
being killed by….

I would be one myself,
but even I couldn’t
quite swallow that one.
(And what if I forget
the way back,
the secret password?)

So many dead, bleeding,
raped, hacked like melons:
Armenians, Tutsi, Irish –
history is a spike-furred,
drooling wolf above the throat
of somebody helpless:
a long, frail form, arms
akimbo, clothing torn,
a figure from Goya,
but somebody real,
whose child died
moments later.

The calibrations of pain
give us numbers, and blur
the true and global agony,
And the tender, selfish heart
knows what only it can feel
beneath the armor of the skin.

The pain of another is distant sadness.
Even a lover hides behind eyes:
how can we capture a stranger
with such frail, inadequate arms.

on rotting vines

children lit and thrown
sweet bombs brief stars
hatred flaming in innocents

such fertile soil eager
for the seeds of the future
but poured into an empty past
and lit and thrown away

Hedge Fund

HELEN MOORE

Hedge Fund

Little lines of sporting wood run wild

where hands heaved stones

to enclose – drove John Clare crazy.

Today those walls left to crumble –

cracking bark, and Hawthorn

boughs once plashed,

now ancient elbows’ fold

and sinew; Hazel, Ash –

all create a delicate asylum.

Money markets usually lie

at the core of the financial

system, functioning quietly

Colonies of Snails,

feathers, crush of brittle

lime – a Song Thrush

sings up its midden.

Startled mouths –

White Dead Nettle flowers

open where a shot Fox

crept to die; here lies

minus an eye.

Maggots;

rubbing its feet a Fly – tip,

the yawn of a fridge;

Autumn leaves, debris

rots, spawns Hips and Haws

to feed the Songbirds and Badgers.

and so efficiently that they’re

barely noticed. Like the human

heart, which beats continuously

A few bushes on,

the Elm where a Barn Owl

stared, burped its pellet –

grey ossuary of Mice,

Amen.

Still, Life finds its niches.

On rocks Lichens crottle,

and warty Elder stems

ooze with tar-black berries.

Below – cutting corners of tins,

and soft, ambulant Toads.

without conscious thought,

their global operation takes

place night and day, while

Gusts, tendrils – the scarlet fruit

of Woodbine flowers,

which lured Moths

on warm, moonlit evenings.

Glossy black plastic

stripped from silage;

Pheasants, beaters,

ha-ha,

shots, Retrievers;

coats hooked with Burdock;

shocks of electric wire.

a seizure of the market is like

a cardiac arrest, threatening

the orderly rhythm of the system

Dog Rose – thorns

like bloody fangs;

memories of blooms

that tea-cup Butterflies in June.

Cocoons, gossamer-stretch

between stems;

new risings of Ivy up old posts;

a Wren’s nest tight as a child’s fist;

Spindle, Holly;

and snagged on Bramble,

these newspaper flags.

on which the modern world

has come to depend. Now

it seems it’s on life support –

Switch mechanical,

stink-horn diesel,

the implacable wheels and reach

of a tractor’s machete. Random execution,

the insane-making crunch,

while the contractor sits

muffled in his cab,

on the wheel his hands

stiff as supermarket quotas…

share values in free-fall,

as investors predict their own

dwindling margins and returns.

HELEN MOORE

capitalism, a Sonnet

chemical Macaque glaxosmithkline

roche trepanned-brain Baboon

max factor eyes burning Cat l’oreal

Rabbit (the devil wears perfume)

o, dear easyjet ryanair

melting Reindeer, Polar Bear

but a bargain for mcdonalds –

Earth’s rainforests slashed

as Asians sweat for adidas

nike the evil empire’s goddess

o, bless all ecocidal patriarchs – so smart

in suits armani uniforms

a cocktail of intellect and greed

hellish stuff they puppet us to need

PA Morbid

Street Life

Two women with pushchairs and a gaggle of children coming up the street

in the dusk with a man on a bike, like a spare part, an afterthought.

Already I can hear the one on the left shouting, swearing at the kids, none of whom

can be older than five, because they won’t share their drink with the others.

As they pass one of the mother’s turns and grabs a child, screaming

“Come on Kylie, you’re taking the fucking piss!”

her face etched out in neon, perfectly framed by the darkness behind it.

Netherfields, Sunday 8^th of April 2007
Staring from this first floor window I can only just hear

the wind that’s harrying the clouds across this Spring day.

Its silence that rules here, lurking below all the transient sounds of the day –

the wind’s moaning, the drone of the traffic as it comes and goes.

At times it feels like I’m remembering it all as a dream, there’s such

an overlapping of past and present, the day unchanged since I was a child.

But your face is stretched over everything I see, rupturing

the illusion of timelessness I’d escaped into, a place of no density.

Brought back to myself, this body leaning against a window,

the thought of you a millstone round my soul. A lingering sickness, a curse.

Dark in a bright place: Albert Park

It was one of those days, when the sun comes out after a long absence

and the winter-white flesh reveals itself, blinding the eyes with reflected light.

Leaning against the railings with Lyndsey the sun was an eye

that watched us as we watched our respective children,

gazes sharp as if anything bad could happen in such a crowded place.

That we were in a scene from Jaws and that seething mass of small, pale bodies

was a sea of deceit, hiding god knows what? it was best not to think about it.

The sudden spurt of blood in the air or a remnant of t-shirt

washed up at our feet amidst the butt ends and sweet wrappers.

There was a chubby ginger girl, face flushed,

as she jogged past with her friends.

Happy as only the innocent, or those on drugs, can be.

And I felt my spirits lift, a smile playing on my face –

the sky so blue it was a boon to the broken hearted.

Then the day changed, moving strangely around me.

The noise and the people becoming too much, an overexposure of the senses.

Across the playground, beyond the huge blue climbing frame,

my eyes caught on a glare of sunlight flaring from a woman’s earring,

a semaphore of desire I refused to acknowledge.

I put my hand over my eyes and pray for rain.

A walk with my brother

Under lowering skies of grey we walked away from Tees-side Park

skirting the road’s edge when the pavement ran out.

All around us there was evidence of the season’s changing –

tiny buds and lemony scuts hanging on the trees.

The river lapped angrily at our side when we finally found it,

a thick dirty scum gathered against the small pontoon marked ‘private’ –

but open to the public, just like the path we were following.

The rain started when we were on Stockton High Street,

a welcome relief after the stifling heat of Cash Generators

and I didn’t even bother pulling up my hood, or fastening my zip.

I was too caught up in my epiphanising, watching the bodies pass,

intensely aware of the beings trapped inside.

So close I could reach out and touch them, make my presence felt.

But only madmen do things like that.

Nigel Mellor

The re-burial of Lord Haw Haw

Hanged at Wandsworth

Thirty years this month

His body placed in sacking

In an unmarked grave

Soaked with quicklime within the prison walls.

I had thought that justice

Had progressed.

Surely death was quite enough

For traitor and betrayed.

At times like Spain*

O.K.

So Alec often gets it

Wrong

And he’s workerist

And just a bit of a sexist

But he kicks arse

(When camera men from the Front

want photos for Bulldog)

And that’s not nice

But at times like Spain

Looking back

Words were not enough.

* For the 50th anniversary of the end of the Spanish Civil War

Official secrets

We are in greatest danger

From the freedoms we have

They do not become a part of life

But a way of forgetting

The struggle which gave them life

When we no longer have to fight

We forget why and how to fight

To be free is not enough.

Opposition

We talk

At times

As if they came with hammers

And iron bars

To kick and splinter

An oak door.

It wasn’t like that at all

The door was hollow

Rotted through

They hardly needed to push

And we did

Nothing

To hold it.

Interrogation*

I won’t hold out for long

Soon you’ll get the lot

The names

And more besides

I will crawl at your feet

I know that

But in the long dark night of your soul

You must finally face what has been done to you

That you can do this to me.

* For the fortieth anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights

The clouds*

You laughed

When I said that the verb

To own

Did not describe a natural state

You smiled at my poor attempt to reason that

Even though this ownership

Was never questioned

I could prove it wrong

You listened, painfully,

While I described

The possibility that someone

Would build a meter large enough to hold the air

And send me bills

For rent and standing charge

And so much fuel adjusted cost

Per breath

And that armies would defend

This meter

And this man

And you their right

To deny me air.

As I say, you listened, painfully.

Since that time I’ve heard complaints

That someone tried to steal the rain

From Denver, Colorado

The problem there it seems

Is that no one knows who owns the clouds.

* For the 50th anniversary of the death of Robert Tressell, author of ‘The Ragged

Trousered Philanthropists’

George Moore

Two Lives

Studying in Yugoslavia,

a place-name no one under twenty knows,

watched the unhurried merger of faces, names, rode the old Soviet trolleys

out past the inner city vinjac shops and sausage stands to Beograd’s fringes

and realized there were no echoes or only those

of the Partisans, their fight against the universal evil (of the day). Hope

always a great mask of readiness that perhaps can be too easily

renamed terror, difference, a commonality

of hate. In Mostar, I drank the nights away with farmers whose pigs

squealed at dawn beneath my open window, and talked

with students of the West, a balance, Tito’s dance

between love and hate.

But years later my brother was sent to unearth the mass graves

of men shot in the knees, buried seeing, men

whose names were among the ones I’d toasted the harvest with above the Adriatic,

and the difference was not years but a secret incantation

of the possible, the human, the way things simply change

back to the old ruts of habit, hatred, the pigs biting each other’s hind legs,

the dawn either misty or dirty in the yard below

and a hope cracked open on the past.

Crossing into Afghanistan

In the old way

across the Khyber Pass

a track narrow as a blade

between stark knuckles

forced to stop for a stone

the size of a house

and half a day to push it off

like thunder into miles of canyon

where nothing lived they said

or was hidden, the pass itself

bouldered with desert cairns

from centuries of nomadic use

the bus a tasseled hearse

weaving its deathwish woof

in a warp of dust and time

a patchwork painted husk

with cracked windows

and a driver singing radio bauls

high-pitched fever-songs of love

like romantic color-touched posters

of this and the next world.

And now this difference

made real, its secrets

exposed in blasts of news

spread like Sunday comics

across living-room rugs

and kitchen tables

centuries culminating in knots

of fear let loose like that boulder

down the canyons of the globe

coming to rest on the scar of road

that crosses a primal border.

Map of the High Byang Sang, Tibet

On my dorm wall, an old aerial map,

the forbidden borders north of Nepal,

marked Uncharted Territory in great

wide swaths, the young man’s

mind, a corner of the world

unmeasured by other than some blind

geographer, years before the borders

opened to the West.

But the seed was there, deep

in sense of the forbidden, unseen,

in the absence of others who’d say

impossible, no one’s been,

the silence of a hundred years.

Until finally I made my way, a Drukpa

disguised as someone seeking demons,

lesser gods, and meditation,

snuck in beneath the great expanse

of yellowed paper unmarked with names,

to learn the prayers on the underside

of stones, piled in cairns, all waiting.

Michael McAloran

Wound-

I am dead dressed in nudity

My teeth are sparks

My skull blood-lust of laughter

Void of my night

I am bared raw like a vacant sky

Richard McCaffery

Dad

When I was a kid, Dad took me
every week on a supermarket trip
to get some whittles in,
(we ate like a family of gannets).
Mam didn’t come, she was busy
working two jobs for us.
Dad had lost his a year ago
and he blamed it on this tribe
of grey people he called ‘Tories’
or ‘toffs’ or ‘tits’.

He would have tectonic fits
because he was a lawyer
but quit a decade back
to take up surveying
and become a ‘scabby bastard’
at Chevington Opencast.
Since then his legal license
had lapsed and he wasn’t fit
for the bar, unless it was the one
that opened around noon.

But at Netto’s he’d plonk me
on the seat in the trolley,
like a metal sedan chair,
so I could be the midget ruler
of a kingdom of crisps, cans, cakes.
And if I was really sneaky
I could snaffle a little something
like a pack of iced gems
when he was price checking.

We both loved the alcohol aisle,
the spectrum of colours, port’s obsidian,
wine’s violet, whisky’s rose gold
or vodka like water with de-icer in it.
Sometimes he’d let me pick
a different drink for him,
not his signature super-strength:
central heating for tramps. I didn’t
understand that phrase but I knew
he drank plenty tinnies a day
until he was pleasantly bevvied.

If I woke and went downstairs,
he’d be zonked in front of the telly
and that sickly looking man
who was running the country
and who thought peas
were ‘most agreeable’
might be on, talking in monotone
like a Dalek on Prozac.
Dad would be watching him, hazy
and cock-eyed. He smelled
a bit like pickled onions
when he was drunk.

Every time I went in there
it was an epiphany to him
and he’d pick me up
and hold me like the World Cup
and breathe an incense of esters
into my face as he talked
nice nonsense at me
and sometimes he’d fall asleep
with me tangled in the warm cage
of his heavy arms.

Robert Marsland

Buzzard

see the buzzard (buteo buteo) careening across

the above like a shaper of existence, a smallish god,

a being of greater or lesser dimension, no less,

– shuddering to loftier heights, eating up the purple sky

and mewling cat-like to its brethren on the highland

plateaus. he is the one who gives form

to the heavens, the singer all in one

Sun and Rose

the sun digs its claw in my head and draws out a rose

of delicate peach,

new and fresh

Michael McAloran

turning-

turning

my bloodied spit

the raped sky

decibel of tears

of remembrance
bitter sweet-

this charnel house burning

dense sky unlimbered

echoing laughter

my pulse

the ripped tide of the dark

the avaricious calm retraced

burnt cloud

the sky falling

shadow endless

bitter flesh upon fleshed lies
the nights laughter-

incarcerated the longing

in a superfluous light

my fingers burn at the touch

shadow of all things permanent

an embraced eyelid

tears of blood the nectar

burning my heart to an

ashen white

3 words

eponym

it had enjoyed itself

life, liberty and

the pursuit of happiness

satisfaction in death followed

satiation in life

minutiae

pervasive cancer

when, where, how, what

consumed the species

amnesia

they pursued their days

life, liberty and

survival

inevitability in death followed

failure in life

we remember it

who were they?

Donal Mahoney

Caseworker Takes Notes

I was there the day

there trickled down the wall

of an old man’s room one roach

that stopped across

a canyon in the plaster till

the old man’s elevated slipper fell.

The roach absorbed the blow

and as though perforated for that purpose

dissolved into an archipelago.

The old man looked at me

and patiently explained, “Despite my

constant smacking of its brethren

one roach each day will trickle down that wall

and pause and pose as if to say,

‘Go ahead and smack me, that’s okay.'”

To take advantage of the archipelago at hand

the old man pointed toward the last palpitating island

and once again explained,

“Each roach I smack, you see,

offers me that same good-bye–

one last flicker of antennae.”

Griggs’ Bar and Grill

In two more hours I’ll have to shower,

shave and coffee-prop my lids

and otherwise prepare for day. It’s 4 a.m.

and now the barkeep, Griggs,

is rushing me, the first

to come, the last to leave,

the lad who just an hour before

was coaxed to quaff one more.

At work I’ll cummerbund a smile,

hold my head and sit all day,

play another endless game

of solitaire or tic-tac-toe.

Griggs’ apron’s off. The neon’s out

and now he’ll set the locks in back.

The spittle, butts and half-slain beers

he’ll leave for Willie who’ll soon be here

to dance his broom between

the tables and the scattered chairs

as smoothly as Kelly or Astaire.

At 6 a.m., he’ll climb the ladder

near the door and aim his broom

through the transom toward the sky.

Every morning Willie puts a

bullet through the eye of sunrise.

Jonathan Mackenzie

Return to Eden

The trees don’t seem as tall

As I recall from childhood days

Though memory takes its toll;

Still the river flows

Onwards, expanding

It’s here we learned to fall,

In spite of all the lumps and bumps

No teardrops ever fell;

All that flowed was joy

As constant as the river

No cows in the meadow mooch

No flies in the buttermilk buzz

Perhaps there was foot and mouth?

Still the river flows

In waves of uncertainty

The farm-house is a ruin,

A tomb of memories like the barn

That was Narnia in the rain;

But life goes on –

Just like the river

Downtrodden

I’m just another pebble on the beach

That wants to shine and stand out from the crowd.

Instead, I’m stepped upon and kicked around,

And hopes, once cherished, linger out of reach.

Decaying driftwood scattered on the shore

Is wreckage from my ship of childhood dreams

That foundered in a shallow sea of green

To splinter in my every bitter pore.

Dilapidated shells, like unkempt graves

Are weather-beaten victims and the scarred

And disenfranchised debris from a herd

Too weak to dare oppose oppressive waves.

And yet we have the power to impeach

The tyrants who conspire to implement

Privation. Tell me who they represent?

Aren’t most of us just pebbles on the beach?

Steve Mann

world mental-health – a tribute

…two tablets, four times a day with a glass of water,

and make sure that he takes them..

bubbling cortex

ascending mind

crackling meninx

flashing thoughts

Damoclean overload

chop yer ears off

fry yer eyes

trepan yer deviance

…precisely, he must undergo a course of electro-convulsive therapy,

that is exactly what I mean…

genius unborn

lifeless heart

persona void

homeless spirit

Pyrrhic suicide

number completion, sir

riddle acceptance, sir

answer unravelling, sir

…of course, a full requiem mass is what would be right,

he certainly needs it…

Steve Mann

true friendship

make friends with

the poster-man

so adroit

carefully laying each fraction

of new-existing

left hand with the brush

right with the paste

emerging picture builds

section by section

no cracks, no tears, no lumps

juxtaposition impartial

smoothly placed

compelling present here

open invitation

Uncle Herod’s Best

Vincennes’ unwitting film extras

Airbus A300’s innocents

July’s 290 pilgrims

martyred blood cries out

Uncle Herod’s stars give stripes

they know in Tehran

they know in Frankfurt

they know in Damascus

the “Lockerbie boys” of Beirut

Uncle Herod’s stars give stripes

Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi

loyal kinsman of the Colonel

his cancerous prostate allay

reunites familial severance

Uncle Herod’s stars give stripes

sunday nineteen

“homo homini lupus” – Plautus (184 BC)

ugly faces grin their nicest wretchedness

‘will she favour me’ they think as with

maudlin haste they plunge their destiny’s

corona, eased open with defiant

negligence, not clandestinely, for all

parcels envelope to absenteeism as

cardiac momentums transcend the silver

cord, ‘not in my lifetime’ they feel, as reversing

obsequisness – bonne fide shitstream

jaws – salivates for Britain whilst they

constipate lipsticks extruding projectile, nah

nah sirens draw them into returning weirdness

poltroons when coruscating interns blag

skeptic’s atheistic ascetics, ‘no more, no

more’ they howl ‘let them die’

John McKeown

The Wild Sea

The sea heaving up

all along the seafront,

seaweed marinated

party-streamers

fired across the grass

made wetland.

Further down it rears

insanely,

tearing it’s white shirt

sharply against

the piled rocks.

Salt flying everywhere

like a fine rain of blood

when bombs go off.

And how fine

this violence,

pure as a leopard’s

at the kill.

A vast innocence

that would snap the neck,

sweep that small boy away.

Not Working

Odd that we couldn’t make it work

all those years ago.

But not odd in that

I didn’t believe in work then,

and don’t believe in it now.

It isn’t work that turned you,

so antithetical to me,

into this ageless presence, waiting

at the edge of a remembered

rain-washed field,

that I can love now.

Consanguinity

Out of the blue

you nudge me

like a faraway twin.

The perfect complement,

so perfect

you’re folded

out of reach.

But thinking of you

my beating heart

draws you in;

until we’re pressed close,

exactly opposite

against the night’s dark screen.

I feel your blood knock,

and all of me,

thrilling,

answers you.

Silver Birch

Spring is slow in coming

to the silver birch.

As if it’s fighting off

the imposition of leaves.

Winter becomes it,

seems it’s natural state;

the long, thin white branchings

reaching upward nakedly

like the limbs of a prisoner

so long incarcerated

nothing can clothe.

Our silver birch knows

winter’s long appeal,

no spring ever quite answers.

The Straits

You asleep,

Or half asleep;

Me awake,

Or drugged;

The fire unpoked

Slumbering,

Going out;

The fog horn echoing

Repeatedly

In the distance,

Half in, half out

Of hearing;

And rocks

Of treachery

Here, somewhere.

Florescence

I should go mad

Over one flower;

Put it in a glass

And watch it open,

Water it with rapture.

I should let one flower

Ignite in me a passion

That can never fade.

I should let them

Lock me away,

Arms wrapped at my back.

I should, with my one bloom,

Become uncontainable.

——-

Long-Term Relationships

They break you down

then sweep you into the corner.

Then they dominate the ring

and dare you to come out

fists flailing.

If you do they forgive you

through the tears

and give you one last chance.

You take it with bad grace

grudgingly catching the light

that glints from their good side

through your half bruise-closed eyes.

Though really, everything is dark.

The Spirit of Dublin

A local drunk,

a twitchy, aged,

little deflated old ball,

muttering to himself.

But he drank that Guinness

so reverential,

like he was kissing

some ancient beloved.

For those seconds

he was fluid, inspiring as music.

Then half-way down

the landlord comes,

tone-deaf to all the shades

of the heart,

takes his pint,

gives him his coins back,

and throws him out

An Irish Funeral

Look at all the people

you didn’t know who cared,

hanging round the churchyard

for you to slide into the hearse.

Noisy shiftless bastards! – What?

they only want the day off work?

Death’s made you so cynical –

but you forgot the whiskey at the wake.

Seriously, isn’t it grand this show

of solidarity with your family’s loss?…

Yes, it is hard to credit so many grinning

strangers

who happen to give a toss.

John McKeown

Suburbia

Suburbia almost makes sense,

Dripping with stillness, peace

Under the rain-washed, wild, calamitous sky.

Seeming to reflect a deeper order,

A natural stability, my restless, unmortgageable

Over-heated temperament’s too thick to realize.

This is the heart of things, the good life:

A house set well back, two cars in the drive,

garden trim or self-consciously unkempt.

Then two semi-detachees conversing as I pass,

His golf’s improved with those new clubs…

Suburbia’s a graveyard, and these are it’s living dead

Waitress in Cafe Imperial, Prague

Her hair a seam of gold,

she persists, spreading silently

under the killing weight

of compressed circumstance.

She arranges tables, brings beer,

smiles into massed

ignorant faces, while her fingers,

ministers of her soul’s elegance

conduct concertos of beauty

unknown to her.

The Hundred Years Sex War

No more than a skull

scrotum-skinned,

wisps of white hair.

But she drags him over

each and every coal,

still hot, and he submits

to the reins.

She pauses to dab

crocodile tears

in a compact.

He looks on Hell,

draws her close,

thinking to embrace

all of it.

Backbone of the Nation

Like some fat

little octopus

bleeding ink

the small businessman

squats at the bar

talking big.

But worse than him

is the small

willing audience

suckered

to his fat little tentacles,

in awe

of his pullulating sac

of noxious acumen.

I want to wade in,

stab and cut,

strike a blow

for everything formless,

undeliverable, equivocal;

but sit back, drink,

endure his trumpeting.

Not out of weakness, or strength,

but resignation;

the small businessman

is of another species.

Keeping Up

‘During The Troubles

life for ordinary people went on’,

the pundit reminds us.

Meaning: the eye of monotony

in the storm never closes.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

wont prevent Mrs Jones driving the kids to school.

Or Mr Jones putting the finishing touches

to his business-plan

for the New Heaven and the New Earth

to put before God Almighty in his Judgement Seat.

Dodging the Virgin

When am I going to learn

Not to tell her anything?

The Queen of Heaven

Must be kept in the dark.

She’ll gather intelligence there

Like snowfall deepening in the night

And crush me with her purity

When she’s good and ready.

But why collaborate? Keeping her informed

She reads as prayer

And freedom is a dirty

Lying business.

RC MIller

A Different War

Stepping deeper I scalp a lake

Capping the drowned on my jitters.

We break together

A lamprey sonnet painted thin.

August was poor but martyrdom is still preferred

By most tribes of daze bumping dirt medicine.

I know when I rise from the me for dead,

You’ll swim to drown this lake well bombed.

The ham we raise should assertively perish

A trait fooling musk in its everlasting fade.

Taxidermy for the Sportsman

Darling my darling,

Your miracles lend us the absent sight of dealerships

Tenderly churning

A suburban blubber,

Our link to a rawhide pain

So done with my ills and now we’ll go ahead

And fluff your feathers with a blow dryer,

Happily removing this breakfast weave.

I need no more pleasure

Seeking a place where we are of no resemblance.

O darling my darling,

I’m stoned as the hinterland enamel,

And roundly enamoring

Your greed to spend a lot of dough

When we medicate our perfect push-up bra

With the miracles sung and now I’ll go ahead

And churn the absence lending us sight,

A well worn pain seeking pleasure

Fluffing resemblances

From the billions of blow dryers hung.

Thomas Edison Service Area

O my the speed is what happens

All in the name of our seat.

Plastic builds one thing,

To bash glass is another

Civilization thought doomed.

Eastern cables hook the Western lung.

A cigarette at every rest stop.

Little crickets and thoughts of doom.

Freed a king

But not a resource.

O dearest daughter,

O dearest rat,

Freshly these mountains boil.

Their Pools

Unbearably serene,

Their pools collect the absolute

In fortified gothic casinos

Lint free and buffed as desired.

Unsettled as a vacuum,

My shrines are removed using long ropes.

An exhausted tagline is hissing

From the inhibitor of sour lamps.

Pigs everywhere, sterilizing scalpels,

Passing ironic gas and epitaphs.

I depend upon them to blend my quiet detonation,

I pulverize

Tendrils of pulp toward ripe destinations.

And the graves insert impacted antlers,

Shirtless and digging up for my nightmare

Vain butter flickering supreme vinegar.

Weird Flashlights in the Deer Feed

As will of oak and actions implemented,

Restless is our labor

Pallid by bandaged lotus wafers.

Mattress farms just back from the battle

Shriek weird flashlights in the deer feed,

Hatching for our oath

A final burden then redemption.

Each time they start to writhe

We heel,

Descendants of the cannonball tail.

My habitual jellies

Attend a musk no roots may erase.

I surrender the menu.

You surround my aura.

In mimes I start to writhe

Like our parts healing

An action of pensive rags

Burrowing the wax sun retraced.

Bulbs stiff with kin

Suspending this mechanical dawn

Welt your fins and calm

A staff of magazine inspired spawn.

Jemma Murat

Broken Water

Your mouth is full of the ocean,

it drips down your chin.

Starfish cling to your lips.

You can’t talk to me without

the crabs inside your cheeks

clawing their way down

to the floor, where they scuttle

away with your secrets.

All day long you keep quite,

like a boat, gently rocking in the sea.

Waiting for the storm that hides

underneath your bellybutton.

I’m worried about your swollen stomach,

it could be housing a blue whale,

or a great white shark. It’s fin

is getting closer and, any day now,

the water is going to go over my head.

Stairs

There were eight flights of stairs

in my grandma’s house.

I dreaded being sent to the top floor

to get cigarettes for my lazy aunts.

Past the endless rooms

that I spent my childhood inside.

When you stepped inside

the thickly carpeted stairs

led the way into the house.

A way into the maze of floors,

each landing housing a different aunt,

a different atmosphere inside every room.

But there was no room!

I was locked up inside,

my life, run by the stairs.

Bouncing around the house,

crawling along the floor,

I couldn’t get away from my crazy aunts.

I found places to hide from my aunts,

behind the banisters, outside their rooms.

underneath the carpet, right inside

the fabric that shaped the stairs.

I became the pulse of the house

living inside the floor-

boards, beating against the floor.

My name lived on the lips on my aunts,

as they wandered outside their rooms.

Little did they know I was inside

each grain, running along the stairs,

playing with the house.

My saviour was it’s vastness, the house.

It was too much effort to race me up its floors

when I refused to run errands for my aunts.

I felt like it’s queen, owner of the rooms,

able to creep around inside

every board that made the stairs.

I loved my grandma’s house. The floors,

my aunts, the rooms. I wish I could live inside

it again. I miss those crazy stairs.

PAGAN MASS

Swaying in these here aisles

I may spur on a Pagan Mass.

No time for singing praises

To jewel-bedecked icons:

Within leaves of murky trees

Minstrels swing unfailingly;

Music for a naked dance

Resounds amidst a rainstorm.

Arise to spirituals!

Can you feel Venus?

No fooling now.

Can you feel Venus?

[ Men shout }

“Sure can, and how!”

Tell me, are you on firm ground?

No fooling now.

Tell me, are you on firm ground?

{ Women shout }

“Sure makes me yowl!”

You’re next to a faithful man.

Toss a wreath to a friend.

He’ll catch a tambourine,

Rejoicing like a fountain

As his struggle with hardship

Explodes in peals of sweat.

Agony of repression

A phase of overcoming

Divided community.

Let us commune and worship

In storefronts of the downcast.

None but charlatans dispute

The joyous revelries that

Mark the people’s sweet revolt.

My tears are scorching, folks.

Can I have a witness?

{ One voice }

“I’ll testify.”

Amen!

Echo amen, folks.

“Amen!”

Joshua Meander

CRY, BABY

Through the walls of the apartment

Next door, a newborn baby’s crying,

Brassy as a hurricane,

Screaming octaves as potent

As Hasidim weeping earnestly.

Cry on, baby. The world is scary.

Wail like a jazz trumpeter

In his attempt to wake the

Sleeping prophet in us all.

The real coming attractions

Are lurid enough to make pimps sob.

Caption after caption, the handgun

Is glorified to ghetto

Youth like a grand aphrodisiac

To boost their manhood tenfold.

Frame after frame, and the genocide

Flips onward to bleed another group:

Orders droned by atonal minds

New cast members for brutal sequels.

Jailed Republicans on the airwaves

Goad on rejects toting cheap flags.

Packages received in sweaty palms:

Mail bombs have replaced angry letters.

May the sound of this crying baby

Seep through the rafters and preach

To the world its S.O.S.

Steve Mann

Zymotic Capitalism

bastardized syncopal miscarriages

governments and systems bejungled intertwining

supping in corruptions devil grail

chewing temptations roots

world not-without end

mammon

There Was A War

Bedraggled casualties strugglewalking,

Limping, breathweary,

Home from the war –

But war got there first

In a preposterous irony of betrayal –

Repudiating eyes mirroring rewards of destruction,

Landscaped by a ruthless death;

Home and war united inextricably

Without distinctive lines –

No start, no end.

Crouch, soldier,

On your scrap of has-been edifice

Where images of loved ones

Hover above your sobbing,

As your comrades march on

(More crawling than marching),

Dismembered bodies and fragmented spirits,

Unreassemblable,

Towards their own scrap of has-been edifice.

There was a war,

And it came home.

Recondite Scourge

He was one

But his name was legion

Deployed in regions

Of raging destruction

The hungry fire of patriotism

A burning liquid in his blood

Ingested death

In camouflage

He came home

Bearing tight-fitting battlefield souvenirs

Demons of surreptitious ambush

Like thorns perforating body and soul

Viseclamping their stranglehold

A little more each day

Invidiously

Insidiously

There are rats

Nesting in their stronghold

Of thorny bougainvillea —

Hungry and gullible

They seek out the poison cake

Camouflaged in green

Tomorrow

It will strangle them

4-13-2010

Adam Moorad

silo

i am sitting on the sofa

again, i am moving tobacco

i am quitting

again

when you come near me

i wish

i could disappear

chinese drywall

there are headaches

odors appear

out of nowhere

electrical problems

wide flat interior boards

sulfur-based gases

corroding air-conditioner coils

computer wiring

metal picture frames

i am afraid

i turn the TV on

this is where we live