Poetry R – The Recusant

Poetry R

of genes and bones, (godevil)

family and habitat, (saintyrant)

disease and chemistry. (patriotraitor)

I’m a mosaic (anxioustoic)

of history and destiny, (assiduousluggard)

passion and intellect, (youngeezer)

language and location. (sawood)

An amalgamation (coperp)

of planning andcircumstance, (doveagle)

id, ideology, identity, (diamondull)

economics and character. (doveagle)

A confederation (conquerorefugee)

of carbon and quarks, (laughowl)

caste and opportunity, (windowall)

rule and randomness. (wolflock)

A collage (monogamouswinger)

of gender and pigmentaion, (foground)

of luck and morality, (piusinner)

profession and appearance. (hatchetree)

Jigsaw puzzle (anchoreacher)

of luck and morality, (honesthief)

chromosomes and archetypes. (masculineunuch)

Moya Roddy

All three of the poems collected here were published in Out of the Ordinary (Salmon 2018) and ‘The Girls on my Street’ was also published in the Rush Anthology 2017.

The Girls on my Street

I envied the girls on my street

their slapdash mothers,

cigarettes dangling,

ash falling

while one or other

bent to wipe a child’s dirty face,

a lick and promise;

nobody bothered with facecloths

except us culchies.

They didn’t mean to be cruel,

the girls on my street,

it was only a bit of fun.

Wasn’t I asking for it –

with my red hair, a heart

open as a country road.

This poem first appeared in The Children of the Nation: Working People’s Poetry from Contemporary Ireland edited and introduced by Jenny Farrell (Culture Matters, 2019)

Lisa Rossetti

Sand Dog

He’s there again,

back propped against

the old church wall,

dressed in army khakis,

his surviving camouflage.

His faithful dog sleeps by his side;

a golden Labrador, head upon its paws.

But look closer. The dog is made of sand,

cleverly sculpted each day he’s on the streets.

Are they for real, this dog or man? They try to tell us it’s a scam.

Anyone can buy a uniform on E-bay, or the outdoor shop.

One thing’s for sure, no passer-by has yet

spat at you, or stoved in the dog’s head.

The Youngest Son

It’s as if he’s underwater, drifting

towards us across the floor,

submerged in Spice dreams.

He’s at the bottom of the sea now

where only holy fools dwell,

with shoals and sharks.

Smiling sweetly he surfaces,

and peers through tangled curls.

He wants no worldly goods,

a pale-faced street saddhu,

surrendered to his Fate:

the freedom to be empty-handed.

Loved, but misunderstood, he never

got his chance to shine like others.

A sweet natured, dancing child;

different even then, you said,

Now he sleeps out on the streets,

making his fellow outcasts laugh.

Still you keep a bed for him,

your youngest son,

hoping he’ll return some day.

Your face tells it all, fearful

of that telephone call,

reporting his death in the dark.

Sophie

It wasn’t the sight of you in an old pink hoodie

huddled in a doorway with your silent boyfriend,

staring down at the feet of passers-by;

nor your methadone eyes.

It wasn’t your cap of meagre coins,

nor the small stack of bags behind you,

witness to four long years lived on the street,

always homeless.

It was the little toy animal, a gilt lion or cat,

arranged carefully on a coloured cloth at your feet,

placed with other simple keepsakes rescued

from your exile.

You laid your worldly possessions before our feet,

random toys and bric-a-brac,

a patchwork of memories,

survivor art.

I see your delicate brass rubbings,

that took an artist’s eye and care;

I am enchanted by your display,

your courage.

You’re the only person who has ever stopped to talk to me

about my artwork, you said,

looking up.

Housewife 49 Revisited

It’s busy in the community kitchen tonight;

a battalion of volunteers bustles about.

How would Housewife 49 have fared here,

in her headscarf and flowered pinnie?

She’d understand the battle,

this urgency to care for lost souls

battling through cruel, dark times.

She’d recognise our apple pie and custard

served up in thick china bowls.

It’s the spirit of the blitz.

Would she find it strange to see men in aprons

or serving out the tea? Just like her,

we make it strong, with plenty of sugar.

There’s not a uniformed soul in sight.

No conscripts here; just an army of the hungry

Queuing for their rations.

Outside it’s snowing harder.

Inside, the radio plays.

Is that the Glenn Miller Band?

Am I hearing In the Mood?

Surplus

There’s more than a meal on offer tonight.

Last week we had socks; tonight it’s Army kit and kaboodle.

They rummage through the mounds of clothes

spread along the trestle tables,

turning over piles of surplus, massive boots

and khaki camouflage shirts.

Ask me: Got any smaller ones?

I sort through the packets of stiff shirts,

the colour of grass stains and mud.

They pounce upon pairs of tough leather boots,

worn once on manoeuvres.

Traces of mud cling to the cleated soles,

laces tangled, tongues lolling open.

They tell me tales of fathers, uncles, brothers,

who served in the Armed Forces –

share those family connections

to their past, long lost but never forgotten.

Borrowing a trace of family pride,

they pose in their trophy uniforms.

Now we’re an army too, they joke.

The Army of the Homeless.

The Haul

It is late. The weary ones arrive,
trudging over the threshold,
collapsing into café chairs, greeting friends.

You might think them to be fishermen
from long ago, in woollen caps
with weather-reddened skin, their beards untrimmed.

They’re toughened by harsh elements,
battered by cold winds and rain,
and daily dangers they endure.

Huddled in their coats, a second skin,
they stand around the hatch with ship-wrecked eyes,
asking for sugar, thanking you for tea.

No sou’westers here, nor yellow oilskins,
no silver-scaled haul for them;
they earn no hero’s prize nor praise.

Washed up on the shores of society,
just flotsam and jetsam – they’re lost at sea.
We throw out a fragile net to save them.

Sally Richards

Spring at Hopesay

Yellow moving;

the quivering dance of petals catches her,

captures memories

pulls them forward …

remembering

the banks at Hopesay,

carpeted.

Childhood fun, finding the frilly centred

yokey, and palest cream.

Highly scented narcissi a delicate favourite.

The energy of spring –

her heart lives

with the bloom of white cherry blossoms,

many years dancing beneath its confetti,

as tiny princess and bride

decked in net-curtain-veil.

Memories,

with every flower another

some stronger, clearer:

the tiny stream

that flowed right through the back garden,

just deep enough to sail stick-boats

along, under, deeply weeping willow.

A magical place, Hopesay,

Her birthplace:

one hot Friday mid July;

no fish for dad that lunchtime!

Her sanctuary

(when school holidays allowed)

for comfort and respite.

She longs for it, for all it gave her:

nourishment, energy, peace,

love of family.

The further time takes her

from life within its embrace

the more vividly she hears the cuckoo

echoing through copper beach

cutting through misty morning

early spring.

She remembers

Where the aconites nestled

in the wood,

where primroses hid,

and how the bluebells rang their arrival.

Now inhabited

by some other family,

creating their own memories.

Many trees removed: copper beech, birch, gone,

perhaps along with them the nature spirits, Driads,

who fired her imagination;

the grotto where the fairies played.

Do they still remain

now that she is no longer there

to see?

Edison

you arrive ..

pulled unceremoniously

by tiny legs into being, into knowing

silent –

no cries, with lungs full: fluid –filled.

Parents, family, give breath

to nine months of waiting,

let go tentatively of fearful anxiety.

Your tiny form early by three weeks,

every precious digit, hair, so longed for

now here.

Your sister’s spirit

surely with you;

ethereal sibling, angel Violet,

willing you into existence.

Precious child,

of the bravest parents,

so longed for, so loved.

We can breath … you are here.

Robert Ronnow

Numerous Blue Notes

Sitting, trying to write, nothing

comes to me. Nothing is what it’ll have to be.

Over the weekend and immediately

following the election demonstrations in the streets,

Not my president! But today is Monday

back to work and the business of business in America.

Never have we been fierce warriors.

Rhett Butler got that right: in any confrontation

with the state a platoon of new recruits

with automatic weapons outguns the stately

samurai. Ken and I were eating veggie

burgers and drinking local beers over worries

our fellow Americans will soon start shooting

Jews and Asians, lesbians and disabled veterans

whoever’s recommended on the news.

There’s a learning curve to disregarding tweets

and the remedies offered on Facebook. Our refusal

to be more than the sum of ourselves

is our saving grace. Therefore, let

the peaceful transfer of power proceed.

Democracy doesn’t guarantee smart choices,

just a chance to correct the mistakes we’ll make.

William Ruleman

For The Kings of This World . . .

(by Rainer Maria Rilke; translated by William Ruleman))

For the kings of this world, it is getting late.

Now none of them will have an heir.

Their sons died young and devil-may-care,

So they’ve dealt their daughters (pale, unfair)

The cracked and tarnished crowns of the state.

The rabble breaks them into coins

The trendy lord of the world purloins

To melt and shape for machines in the fire

Of his every sickly whim and desire.

And yet, in time, his luck will expire.

For the ore is homesick and wants to flee

The little coins and wheels and chains

That teach him to feel that life is small.

And out of bank and factory

He’ll find his way back into the veins

Of the vast and gouged-out mountain wall

That will shut and lock behind him.

Die Könige der Welt sind alt…

Die Könige der Welt sind alt
und werden keine Erben haben.
Die Söhne sterben schon als Knaben,
und ihre bleichen Töchter gaben
die kranken Kronen der Gewalt.

Der Pöbel bricht sie klein zu Geld,
der zeitgemäße Herr der Welt
dehnt sie im Feuer zu Maschinen,
die seinem Wollen grollend dienen;
aber das Glück ist nicht mit ihnen.

Das Erz hat Heimweh. Und verlassen
will es die Münzen und die Räder,
die es ein kleines Leben lehren.
Und aus Fabriken und aus Kassen
wird es zurück in das Geäder
der aufgetanen Berge kehren,
die sich verschließen hinter ihm.

A Success of Sorts

His were the same life goals many have these days:

Omnipotence and riches—the same

Pet peeves (weakness, losers, the poor) and yet,

Unlike so many, he did possess

The integrity not to deceive or to blame

Himself re: things he ‘sincerely felt.’

Still, life’s a compromise.

In every life are lies.

He told untruths to the world

For megabucks and p. r.’s sake.

They never seemed to make him sick,

So more than a few were fooled.

Now, alas, he’s dead.

Determined to get ahead

Of his kindred quick, he did.

One Who Can No Longer Play The Game

When I was young, folks wished me to be

A certain way, and I complied.

They asked me to conform; I tried;

But now I simply want to be free.

I tried to measure all I said,

Be dutiful and circumspect.

That only made me feel half-dead,

Numb, unable to connect.

I sought to smother thoughts of sin,

Wipe out every wish toward wrong;

Yet what I fought to keep within

Kept bubbling out like some bawdy song.

I moved to make my mark on the real—

An earnest man, in earnest acts—

To reason with rigor, not feebly feel;

To master fantasy with facts,

Yet found myself the prey of dreams,

Derided for vagueness, indecision,

Enchanted not with what is but seems,

And captive to a private vision

Painfully difficult to share:

How dingy and dark my old home, that cave!

How hot and flickering, the torch I bear!

How resistant, those I’m meant to save!

How save myself from this burning brand

That any moment might go out

Or burn on down, searing my hand . . .

How be sure, with so much doubt?

The Outlier

You tend to do things right;

I tend to do things wrong.

No remedy in sight

For one who can’t get along

With others as one should:

Ah, how can I be good?

I’ve tried to be a good boy—

Strained to shun the role

Of uncooperative killjoy—

Hurt to heal my soul,

Done the best I could:

Still, how can I be good?

I peer into the mirror

And see a look of hate;

What could be any clearer

Than seeing it’s too late

To hope I ever could

Succeed in being good?

Perhaps my case should show

That everyone who tries

To toe the line and flow

With the common flood soon dies

Inside, misunderstood

And held as no damned good.

Lines Written In Spain’s Baza National Park

Might what we shun as sentimentality

At times be simply refusal to sanction the cruel?

Embracing the world, we deign to accept the gruel

We down in deference to the mentality

That welcomes everyday banality

And merrily mounts the media’s dunce’s stool.

And would we rather play the fool

Than dare defy the world’s brutality?

Today I saw a falcon cramped in a cage

That barely left it room to peck its beak

Or rattle the ruthless wires with its curled-up claws.

The ire in its eyes betrayed my pent-up rage

With my day’s lust to know who’s tops this week

And who is caught in destiny’s playful paws.

Rage Against Those Who Sow Despair

The ones who fix you with an icy stare

Designed to numb your nerves and wilt your will

May know at times the thrill that looks can kill,

May make you shudder, strip your ego bare,

May make you say ‘Whatever . . . I don’t care,’

May give you untold anguish, doubts, and chills,

May garner momentary perks and thrills,

May reap crowds’ favor with their fiendish glare.

Yet these will never, surely, win in the end.

Their intentions are far too rigid and narrow;

They set their sights on far too mean a scope;

They lack the time to call a long-lost friend,

Consider no providence in the plunge of a sparrow

And shun that settling of brows that lets in hope.

Angela Readman

The Day the Letters Burnt

The day I died I prodded a sunset with a cool poker.

I knocked with a fistful of calmness. Answer.

Open, I walked into your lounge. I heard you

in the kitchen, fill a kettle, guzzle its air.

I sat in your chair, audience of the opposite chair,

a sag in the seat of who last sat on its leather.

I had no wish to fill its mould. I lit a cigarette;

The end fumed and glowed, the ashtray, Pompei.

I cleared my initials in your ash, scoured them out.

The tea tray was a raft. You sat cups on the table,

an eclipse of coffee rings stained the wood,

sets of overlapping Russian wedding bands.

I sat, easy, my smile was a tail pinned to a donkey;

you thought you put it there. Blind. You returned

to the kitchen for awfully trivial snacks. I strolled

around the room, our museum, I appointed you to life

as my curator, reading over the lines of my mouth.

I kissed the cold bust of a dead composer, hard.

Red for you to find on a cheek later, my lips

on marble stamped an undelivered letter.

You put down a polka dot plate, a crescent of cookies.

And I drained my cup and looked at my watch;

its glass eye clocked me back. I walked into the hall.

We did no dance now, sorry steps, a coy side to side

around how neither of us knew how to say goodbye.

I didn’t hang on the hook your gaze, a coat in wait

for arms to fill me, bend me into the shape of a girl.

But, for an instant, I felt my spine, dominoes,

if you stood too close ,vertebrae tipped by breath,

a word knocking my resolve down. I recalled my scarf,

left on the chair-arm, a ribbon of poppies

gift-wrapped where I last sat. I didn’t go back.

Light as a woman late for the theatre, I stepped out

towards courting night, a suede glove at the door.

Outside, our breath surprised us, ghosts dressing up

in each other’s clothes. Everything was smoke,

bonfires, a neighbour was burning his papers.

I spread my fingers, ash landed like snowflakes,

all our letters, kisses, no two quite the same.

I almost felt sorry for you watching me drive away.

On the step of the house, I saw a boy locked out, a loser

of a game only time may let you know we ever played.

Sam Rapth

The Words

However,

it is

well versed,

moulded,

coloured

sweetened

the meanings

could not be packed

in the words

precisely….

Even with

silences,

angers,

tears,

and smiles

it could never be packed

with precision…

Jacob Richardson

Quantitatively Eased

‘Plexiglass divide,

To deposit worthless paper in line,

To vacant faces in vacancy,

Gazing dead to those snide eyes.

Paper crumpled, hoarded and

Discarded, freshly printed,

Brittle and thin,

Granted little, as they can see.

Plexiglass shields,

That shall contain them in line.

Parents are wardens of their children.

Oh the deposition, suspicion!

Shall spirits be broken, like faces,

Bloodied and bandaged skulls and futures?

They and the windows shall –

Empathy not pity.

It is the cry of those and what they shall be –

Themselves.

MEMORIES AND GREETING CARDS

A biscuit tin my Booba tossed aside

I found and cleaned, restored its shape and shine,

A swarm of memories buzzed inside my head,

And now this old-time memory tin is mine.

Dickensian house, once home for trusted clerks,

Reduced to a shabby immigrant abode,

With Booba crossing – with six hand-locked kids

To Mrs Streimer’s choc-shop – Hackney road.

A friend not seen in ages sends her card,

Of polished greetings… And my mind now stirs

With images of friends and friendly places

Deep–rooted in the un-returning years.

Unique antiques! Old memories have no fellow –

They can’t be bought or sold on Portobello.

Angela Readman

Closing Time

Elbow deep in peelings, still your mother came forward,

wiped her hands to brush lint from your fathers’ jacket,

every crease ironed from her face, no judgement, a flicker of pride

at how well he turned out for his pilgrimage to the working mens’ club.

The streets smelled of potatoes, hot oil, pans in wait for wins of meat,

legless men to stagger home with joints from raffles under their arms.

You were fourteen, carted your father’s wheelchair over curbs,

positioned him by the bar. Come afternoon close, you followed tyres,

snakes in the snow all the way back to your boarded front door,

mothers’ burnt Yorkshires, for her husband and son, big enough

to bare the chariot of his father’s thirst. Long after your parents are gone

you follow the same route, cufflinks clanking the rims of your chair

as you roll to the flat. Quiet as pockets before giro day, you remember

the old dear on Sunday mornings, place a fresh shirt on the bed,

a handkerchief and tie laid out next to your father’s legs.

The streets smell of gravy trains ending. You think of mother

in wait for last orders, still peering out of wet windows,

waiting for you to bring Sunday home one more time.

Plastering

My father turned his hand to plastering,

loaded tub and a plastic hawk to set his eyes to walls

flat as notes. I watched the adult work of float,

the scrape of his trowels on eaves, sharp as tongues,

true as spades hitting stone. No time for talk,

in this race against drying, cracks and time to sign on.

He shed his shirt to sweat into buckets, drops

on the powder floor, earth brown clung to hairs,

dried flecks fell like hungry children losing their grip

from his chest. With a wet brush I followed to stop the crazing,

so careful, the tip of things I wouldn’t say between my teeth,

my brushstrokes polished away by the feather edge in his grip.

Never did he smile, stand so still, as when he stood back

sure as a man inside his own sandcastle, regarding walls

flat enough to paint any colour. Only dust to say he was

ever there.

Fiddling

We were never one for music, tuition.

But our instinct played a good fiddle,

The government taught the North’s orchestra.

‘Cash in hand’ struck chords to our ears.

Artex, fences, painting, they named it

we were never one for tugging hearts.

we twanged tunes from purse strings

tight as tendons.

The plaster hung down in stalagmites,

someone’s living room a cave for our singing,

the wandering baritone of our laugh.

The pipe job we did groaned like stolen organs,

but still we made it work, chime tiny cymbals

of coins pirroetting on bars, copper sparkled

a tiny percussion filling our empty glass.

Portraiture

Outside the job centre

he sells his enterprise:

a painting, his Sistine:

Miners dreaming in the cave of the politician.

To some, it looks like a sheet of black paper.

Others stop,

as if they’ve found their own

photograph in the gutter,

chatter silenced by how the painter

has captured their hunger,

the potholes of their pupils,

the blackened teeth of the cold wind.

Margaret

Since he heard they were in Margaret was back,

rolling into the gap in bed between him and his wife.

He feels irons breathe hot air in his ear, grudging wind

down a closed shaft. She is older now, he knows, picket lines

crossed round her mouth, hard hat replaced by stringy yellow

thatch,

but this ghost, his Margaret hasn’t aged a poll.

Her voice rises from halls of haggling men, it places him

in the bottom of a well, looking up. She makes her face the moon,

taxes his personal space. He can’t pay, so slowly, gizzard fingers

trace a dotted line on his neck, she stuffs her kisses like ballots

down his gullet, his lips a slot screwed shut over years, tight

as a box to sign his name. It’s a wonder he sleeps at all.

All day he prepares, lowers his eyes down a hatch,

makes them adjust to the dark, to raise a fistful of cold coal

to look Margaret in the eye. He’s found shouting futile as forms,

using his fists – a giro he can’t cash. So he speaks to her

like a small child, softly, ‘Margaret, did you have problems

learning to spell your name?’ He echoes her sobs in long corridors,

the break of red crayon, spilt milk on her nice blue pinafore

the first day of school and like that the iron lady breaks

into pieces small enough for him to assemble sleep.

He sees Little Margaret wake in the night, wet, twisting sheets

from the hands of a thousand men who clutched at the tails of

her dreams

with such dirty hands she had to wash them before she bruised.

Sometimes he feels the tears of the child she might have been on

his cheeks

Chasing the time he was. ‘Ssh, Margaret’, he says, ‘I understand.’

Patrick Reen

Of the Windswept Umbrella (or, Healing South Africa)

Today was another bad umbrella day

and the skeletal frames of weary victims

incongruent, indignant in plastic prison garb;

were forced to gather thoughts exiled in a bin

alongside paths littered with passing, laughing eyes.

Thus whipped by wind and mirth, they

realized one by one and their feeble, battered

bodies slumped into the damp. Their downfalls

were wrapped in soliloquy, punctuated by pathos;

what’s worse, the audience was indifferent.

So, the actors who violently fled their presence

left their angry thoughts to collect on upturned

faces and shrugged aside the tired audience.

‘As transparent a performance as the

rain which brought it into being…’ the critics said.

And later, fingers with sense of potential

rescued these captives from uncertain fate

and lined them up for creative inspection.

I was told that these hands construct reality from

the lofty unattained, one sad umbrella at a time.

Philippa Rees

The Market

Part 1. Mission Statement.

Poetry is solemn trade

So candle dark that we Company of Editors

hang back

Hoping that others will invest before we

venture capital

No mass without perambulation

Let’s wait to spear the sainted Bull

We’ll join the chorus in good time

to ride the rising tide of absolution

Don’t rush the responses

Our expertise is not for experiments

in dismal rhyme, or rhythms with a soul-beat

We like it ineffable; to leave room

for our perception and of course our long acquired acumen.

After all the authorised version’s by Yeats

If Auden sings descant, and I can’t nail Eliot

Take it as a signal of modesty.

The matter is subjective.

We have our rules:

New fishers of men must prove themselves

By taking bait on lines, elsewhere

Anything discarded we reject

Anything landed we won’t touch

Without the intercession of an intermediary

That protects our public

From the circling sharks;

The questionable authors.

They and the agents can follow the wake

Dive deep in shoals, for tossed out scraps.

Subscribe the children’s dinner money

For the prize we will award

To names that seem to ring a bell.

They are welcome to participate;

We are not a narrow faith;

Nor a monopoly

Merely discerning.

2. Guidelines

A word of advice

Do not attempt noble sentiment

Or perennial truth; we’ve had a belly-full of both.

Put it this way

Salieri can be passed off as a discovery

Mozart is more difficult.

Be younger than thirty; write pell-mell

Genius and Precocity partner well

Keep it as short as a sound-bite

The limited page; can’t argue with that

Avoid philosophy or expertise

What’s Greek about the Peloponnese?

Even Pythagoras found thinking a bore

Go with the flow, but stop it spilling

Beyond the scrubbed pine to the cutting room floor

One thing is important:

Eschew beauty of tone

You’ll never be Keats; or rat-a-tat Owen…

Paint miniatures in detail; children sell

Scour the moon but Aga it well

The Lady of Shalott? She had a nose, eyes and chin…rather

Make something of a chamber pot a la Tracey Emin.

Philippa Rees

Squatter

Under the gnarled root of knuckle,

below the drooping dug; somewhere weeping

somehow smiling, the cracking heart jokes on.

It signs no undertakings; is deaf to pleas from pain.

Conscripts the clock sotto voce; occupying uninvited

the body I called home.

Foundations gape; the lung-stove chokes,

windows rheumy leak; bats hang by their toes in the belfry…

Still the squatter speaks

He whispers to the night jar, is convivial with sheets;

entertains incontinence,

shares my vintages with ghosts

Mind, outraged by loud presumption no longer can compel

this bully boy; the drumming heart

or negotiate the lease.

No coup will now dislodge him; the palsied hand refuses…

the knife just turns its cheek. No diet, ropes or baited traps

persuade the thug to budge.

Come slippery ice, oblige me; or you sharp guillotine glass?

If I could thread myself on a railway line…or fly from Bristol Bridge….

Perform passade-con-moto with a bull-bar’s screeching thud…

My steely friend, Herr Zimmer; he’s impervious, won’t help.

He’s kinder to the robin, or the carer’s mangy dog;

disregards all my inducements…

Insists he’ll work his contract out.

Sally Richards

just how it is

Silence fills the gap

where chaos ruled.

Worker ants dance

to the tune of

she who must be obeyed –

busy busy busy

Beneficent drone

ekes out an existence

hums the strain

which swallows mouthfuls

of nothing peace

hmm hmm hmm

Solitary fatted calf

tethered shadow side

of her moon:

stares in innocence –

get off there now!

moo hoo hoo

Sally Richards

Abandoned: Mogolinio Children’s Institute, Bulgaria

outside:

barren landscape

grating wail

of rusted round-a-bout

tiny wooden crosses

row upon row

white markers for graves

of former residents

inside:

metal beds,

rejected children

rocking.

Grey walls, bare floors, blank faces.

No stimulation, interaction,

love.

Iskra has never been outside,

never seen the sun:

abandoned at birth,

shunned by a draconic culture

for mild disability.

‘New girl’ Didi – all smiles,

doe-eyed teen: hopeful

in a pool of lost and unloved,

talks to Tedor –

‘you are handsome, I like your eyes.

Mummy is coming for me

September 27th.’

In a bed close by

blind Vasky is moaning,

quietly protesting

while the carer brusquely

dresses the child

with matter-of-fact coldness.

Weeks later they discover

Vasky has a broken leg.

Sensory room, swimming pool, garden –

never used: no qualified staff.

Didi protests

‘they are all mad!

I’m not going to go insane!’

Her eyes smile desperation.

Ivanka, head nurse, insists:

‘Didi’s mother will not come!

She does not want to see the girl, ever.’

Didi’s crime? – mild autism.

the director:

‘finally available for comment’ insists

‘The children are cared for

their deterioration: lack of vitamins

and disease.’

Didi neatly folds

another lovingly decorated letter,

puts it safe with the others

in her weathered bag.

Carer Snezhana feeds Iskra

from a bowl

shoveling in huge mouthfuls

of indescribable stodge.

Ivanka: obese, manly,

puts Vasky in the bath:

thin white flesh and bones;

chicken carcass, submerged remnant,

of a young woman,

just bones.

Ilia and Atanas exist in a mute world,

eyes lit with dread, noses bloodied;

the captive abused of Yanko

the laundry man.

Their eyes speak volumes

of pain.

some months later:

Vasky’s now bedridden,

thirteen years of Mogolinio

shrinking her

to foetal position …

Didi’s eyes tell her story –

she’s losing her determined grip

on reality,

her vibrant will

to be visible.

She joins the others

rocking, silently.

I cannot forget, will never forget

them.

We must remember

so that Didi can exist

outside of the cold hell

of Mogolinio.

*This poem is factually accurate and based on a BBC2 documentary filmed in sections at the institute over the

course of approx. a year to 18months. The children are sent to the institute, once deserted by their parents,

at varying ages, often due to the most minor & borderline conditions and disabilities. The Bulgarian government insists that their Institutes meet the required standards. Meanwhile the children continue to be kept in inhumane conditions not suited to their individual and diverse needs. They are often abused, and most become crippled

and mentally ill. Many tragically die of malnutrition and neglect.

Sally Richards

Emperor Dragonfly

Pirate nymph

stalking the watery underworld

ready to strike

unsuspecting victims:

small fish, water snails,

falling foul of your extendable jaws

from beast to beauty

rising from depths

to morph on a lily stalk

till pumped-up

you emerge

magnificent.

Predator on the wing, scooting along,

devouring all smaller than yourself.

Winged crusader,

monstrous mini-beast, defending your domain –

youth versus maturity,

challenging all adversaries

in dog-fights

some to the death.

Capturing maidens,

ruthlessly grabbed by your claspers,

for urgent mating

before time runs out

on your roguish antics.

Life cut short

after ten manic days

on the wing.

Sally Richards

Dandelion

A singular white dandelion seed

floating, wind-blown, against blue:

left…right,… no, left –

no choice as to destination

though graceful enough in its descent

at any minute

one strong gust

and … into the river?

to be carried to … who knows where?

Or, after an uncertain but successful landing

on some wasteland,

the whole cycle to begin again …

could be the ‘bane of’ someone’s drive;

(no mention of glorious yellow flowers)

and dowsed in all sorts of unimaginable

poisons with variable speeds of annihilation

or devoured by various herbivores,

plucked by excited children

and blown to smithereens

accompanied by their colloquial chants,

followed by the proverbial

wetting of the bed

all this

and just a weed …

All good things …

Looking out through her window

over the perfect meadow

with carpet of frothy dandelions

set against vivid green and backdrop

of luxurious trees in their element,

late May; the sky with no imperfections,

a mere hush of a breeze

after a long sigh she wondered

just how long she had left

to enjoy this idyllic scene,

how many more days, hours, to inhale,

see, feel, its total beauty

then, as an afterthought:

actually this would be a good day to leave.

Colin Robinson

Sandgropers

The birds gather to chatter at 6.00 am

Norfolk pines tower over the conversation

misty waves cover traces in the sand.

The birds scutter by in couples

sometimes threes

rarely flocked.

They all appear to be related

sharing a number of similarities

sad eyes unblinking and stunned

curved beaks begging forgiveness and

light-ripped wings.

Pauline Rowe

Modern Love

What once seemed such a natural thing

is out of fashion, everything

maternal’s subject to a trial

of wealth and wages, then denial;

the manufacture of an heir

is not an urgent need. To bear

a son remains a future dream

– first income, house and pension scheme.

The hustling of body clocks

no longer matches girlish frocks

unless you count the feckless poor

who procreate much as before;

the girls have babies, then the dads

move on to drugs, drink, other beds.

Aspirational females who

(may have an STD or two)

have intercourse upon demand –

will not conceive unless it’s planned.

The problem is a plan’s a plan

and cannot turn into a man

or child without the working parts

not hope, not trust, not bleeding hearts.

The body won’t, in spite of cash,

obey the will – you cannot stash

fertility for a future day,

the capacity can drift away.

You cannot make your bodies be

obedient, for each ovary

lives out its function, blithely failing.

Hear the thirty-somethings wailing.

When some decide to procreate

they can’t accept that it’s too late.

For decades they’ve had rituals

of sheaths and coils and caps and pills

not knowing if the prophylactics

were useful and effective tactics.

Imagine they were amulets

for fruitless bodies… all that sex

with barriers of every kind

of heart and body, love and mind.

Creaturely couples see GPs,

want IVF, or something please –

to make their busy lives complete

for this desire – so right, so sweet.

‘The failure rate is very high,’

the doctor smiles. He has to try

to put them off. They say they’ll pay

so he refers them anyway.

‘The take-home baby rate is low.’

They nod and nod – We know, we know.

They pay out thousands, try it twice,

the treatment cycle’s not that nice.

The woman’s hope stays in the clinic,

He becomes an expert, cynic.

He blames her, she blames herself.

They take divorce down from the shelf

and separate

their dreams have died. It’s far too late.

Philip Ruthen

Parity – NHS

A laboured ache

always full of itself

no need to collect tokens

it is here, Pain is here

choices codified

the daze numbered

approximately

or even precisely

measured

losing too much in bulk buying

dispensing

perhaps gaining a little

by making text

calls chase miss-named special offers

queued

Q.E.D. this is where for over

water hoping and no walking

in other opinions

the chore of the day, and orders of perception

become able to be counted on

one finger, until that code is not enough.

And then, by chance the fearful

turn to anger and life’s recent

and still ‘quelle heure est-il?’

comment and object is poured-power

boiling onto the low white table

empty as hands

to run ritualised

filling the quiet noises and following

retreating envoys of

‘doctor-gods’ who say

they are not

all knowing, this

is a placement of hands-on-anger

as countless each carefully arranged

objection looks back

and people are not empty, as

not even closed air can lose

the loosened memories of injustice

in a daze gone by, now clear sky

clarity amongst us, now clear eyes

parity amongst us.

Anick Roschi

Stones

Loving stone

Loved stone

Stone girl

Given birth to day,

Stone prayed

Stone venerated

Stone woman

One day repudiated,

Stone of lover

Stone of liked

Stone man

Of darkness.

Capital Ground

Now is the shared time

Of our last riches

To each birth

Freedom

A drop of water

Thirsty of river

To each birth

Equality

A drop of sweat

Exhausted of misery

To each birth

Fraternity

A drop of air

Dirty of deserts

Now is the exorcised time

Of our planetary reasons

The articulated time

Of a capital

Ground.

########

Homage to Aung San Suu Kyi :

Orchid

At the seat of the Kings

An orchid

Dances its night

In the street the voices

Of the cuckoo of the crane

And the peacock

Are tinkling

Charged with emotion

The harp disguises

The goat, the cow, the horse

And the elephant

At the bestiary of the Kings

An orchid

Languishes the day

Anick Roschi July 09

########

Clandestine

In the hollow

Of a silver wave,

Young bodies

Run aground,

Dreams,

Froth smuggler,

Between your continents

The sea

Has its backwash,

Beyond

Its new clandestine borders

The sea

Has disastrous appointments.

Piano score

White stave,
Minim
For two
Quater notes,
Eighth notes,
Blood-red,
In syncopated tears,
On the piano keys
Our fingers
Colored.

Marybeth Rua-Larsen

And Every Breath A Test

I drift beside the casket, ignore advice

and look: my neighbor’s daughter, her stillness,

her waxy, powdered face can’t hide her illness –

why do this? Arrange her hands, sacrifice

her spirit. She’s not a crocus in the snow

testing winter’s willingness to let go

and every breath a test.

They’ve lost their daughter. Will this endless crush

of mourners ease their pain? One more arrangement

with daisies, her favorite; they make a floral fuss

while schoolmates cringe at her disfigurement.

An easel full of pictures boasts her former face,

then topples over in a stranger’s rush for grace

and every breath a test.

Once home, I heave myself into a chair,

feel my daughter, dirty from the sandbox,

climb into my lap. She pushes, unlocks

my arms, circles like a cat, bangs her fair,

unruly head onto my chest to sleep.

The weight of her immobilizes me

with every breath a test.

Kevin Reid

Madam Oil

Burlesque made a mock of you

so you stepped down onto the street

an expanding service

with a rising price tag

and a bottom value that would win a banker

what was an innocent itch

is now a nurtured need

a swelling stench

that lures the tumid tycoon

with his protracting package

your provocative pride

your shameless dress

with it’s slick removal you hide it’s filth

Tour de grace

i. I am hollows, rugged

affinity, Pelops

ii. Outlined pure colour

tone of your eyes

I wake then

abandon my thoughts

this mind a fifth of a score or more

lies with you highwire of balance

iii. Island verge

the rock leans on a spar

above concentration

inside the wind’s blur

of deception solid

blatant sea rock

rises unfixed if you stare

your soul lent

to unweight Poseidon

the high seas’

standpoint

has seen you before, precept

on the clouds’

summer possible

up and opening the fulcrum God’s flare

the Sun makes its own sky

prises the hill

fists day in a ball

of red that carries longer

description

it knows

even a mist won’t lift mountains

the sea has its mass

it can, in a Mother’s thoughts that separate

the numbers

iv. At birth

each child shall have a tree planted

will you give your last water to the tree?

it will remember

v. In soil sought by creation her lullaby

one day you are moisture

become the eye of quartz

ingrained in the gaudy head-dress

of a lizard

roots deepen to you swept from the whispered spray

of the Meltemi’s tail

dampness in dust following

and falling on another world –

Andromeda?

Somewhere and further than imagined by God.

Water from a rusted fuel can

discarded spatula, lawn hose

or borehole

elevated to silence.

The outcrop on a blanket of foam

above storm-drain force that topples the undersea deities

the rocks are momentarily above air across the bay and it is the season’s tonal blues that have realised earth was before unfound

respite

the quayside crane

loads every distant-heard trade

tour – the page shows tourist;

the law of historical memory

on the floor of a crate

lifted to hang over the ship’s hold

the buried are the land of grace

for grace –

be still. To water three seeds

scarce-doused from a bottle.

let them pass

to find more.

vi. This guidebook, a present

opened before closed

without a view until

there is another now

telling, no name

on the retina for seven billion colours detected

all may be blue,

remembered, invented hills

let the outline last

the island rides

soft on the fulcrum

given watch for Poseidon’s cloud-boom

leaves the Pelops to brief dream that

all isn’t one.

We will be back to swim.

Philip Ruthen. From an idea of Maggie’s also;

Nafplio, Greece. 10^th-28^th August 2009

Election Day

When the election comes –

Yes, there will be one –

As we have a Bill of Rights

Maybe even a Constitution…

In a cool air-conditioned room

(No smoke, democracy has seen to that)

They search

For a slogan

‘heidegger heidegger heidegger’?

Not so catchy; trying

‘education education education’?

Keep it simple, very selective.

In mind, the girl

With ‘an education’ turns

Nervous, her first break,

Her leotard uncomfortable

As ribbons replace bombs.

There are still bombs.

And the posters go up

With the absolute message –

No point arguing –

‘Sartre has Gone’.

Cautious, he covers his closure,

The PR consultants

Re-write with nausea

The moral tales

Before the war

Before the wars

Before more wars

And there are still bombs.

The posters go up –

A distant relation

Of a distant man

Depicting and

Prominent

She lies on the billboard

Provokingly

Naked.

There are smart bombs, depleted, perhaps –

Very smart,

Quietly

Leaving

Only

Half a life left –

They say: ‘you must be weak to aim for a fullness of life,

the dispersal of divisions’.

No.

To the other strains of an argument

Instantaneous images become almost alive

Alive – as we are able –

Her breasts painted red

Draw us in

Colluding

And we know we can

Do anything

As if God was now and new bombs

Will always be better than the times that were bad.

Tomorrow and before are now slogans,

Gone.

No.

I choose my one book

I hide it

Maybe it was Gramsci, Marcuse, Freud, The Bible,

Half a life left, and, ‘you can go’, they say,

‘try and think there are no bombs,

just fragments of a pragmatic imagination…’

‘and oh, avoid using the term ‘socialist’, even when pressed

by the BBC,

yes, especially by the BBC’.

But I can’t wait to throw away the silver pieces –

Buy my Reserva case of European Red instead and scream:

So put the fucking money into

Education Education Education –

Maybe then we won’t be

Killing ourselves.