Christopher Capelluto

JUMP JUMP JUMP

Let’s make some time go by, let’s make some time-
Skip, past the stars, stars; Gods cosmic middle finger to the earth.
Everyone needs to know how everything works.
“I could tell you how everything works” said the gang.
“I could tell you how everything works” said the clergyman, politician,
scientist, teacher, father, brother, mother, friend, military.
Which fool am I?

Lets stop some time let’s make time stop, stop lets-
reevaluate time, time to move on stop looking back, Lets kick some time to the curb.
Yeah curb stop time.
Picture this, someone dead.
Got that picture?
Snap. Ca-click, photoshopped then uploaded.
They died trying their best to jump over- Wait. Screw “They” “their” it’s not the ustedes “you all” general terms.
Its “him”, “he”, masculine, take two-
He died trying his best to jump over a fence into his pool.
He’s ugly. Not just because of the fence post that is impaled through his forehead.
The police officer, he shakes his head. Tisk-tisk.
Stop rewind. Let’s go back and unwaste time lets go smoke some heavy weed.
Of the cannabis type. He did. Right before he jumped.
At least he tied his sneakers but he’s not wearing pants or a shirt.
He’s nude besides the tied sneakers. Why?
Stop rewind ten years that’s 120 months that’s 5184000
minutes and you’re being yelled at by your dad or maybe its your mom
they’re being unfair you’re crying. “You’re” “They’re” “We” “Lets”
general you all, displace blame, it’s the word used to deny association
with. When really its “Me” “I” “Me” and “I” “us”.

“Jump, jump, jump!”
He jumps.
Close the dead, rotting jumpers staring wide open eye lids for him.
Why?
“For dignity, can you stop busting my balls? Why are you even here?” said the cop.
“I could tell you how everything works” said the law.
Look at the pole going through his dome look at him naked hanging there.
Blood splattered coagulated, red not the shade you’d expect
bits of pink not the color you’d think. Dignity he says.
He’s got a pole through his head he’s dead. He lost his dignity when he
tied those shoe laces.When he jumped.
I told the cop why I’m here: “They asked me to help”

Look past the giant finger in the sky, see clearly.
Transport to his room. Why did he decide not to wear clothes?
Look past it this time, look past time, WAIT.
Saw past seeing through the trick only for an instant.
Enough to see. He didn’t wear his pants because a girl was in the pool skinny dipping.
she shouts “Jump, jump, jump!”
Chanting it now, it’s a party and the Jumper, he’s bored.
“Let’s do some drugs, drinks or smoke something” said the jumper.
“Let’s do something sexy, lets skinny dip” that was the girl saying that.
“Sweet I’ll be right back I’m ganna’ jump from the roof!” that was the jumper that time.
“hahha dont do it –dd”
Can’t catch his name something ends it two d’s Teddy? No.
She’s taking off her clothes now there are those tits that defy
gravity. Shame our boy –dd can’t do the same.
“Nah don’t worry I do it ALL the time” said Todd. Todd was his name.
He’s not lying he does do it all the time, sober. He shot guns a beer.

“Jump, jump, jump!”
He jumps. Face free fall.
Shoes tied?
Check
Intoxicated and bored?
Check
Necessary velocity to impale your dome?
Check.

In fact he did not know it but a jump from two feet lower would have
caused him only a concussion to the head. Fate, but that’s boring. I’m
Bored let’s do some drugs lets pass some time let’s make time skip-
Close his eye lids for dignity? He looks like a Shish kabob.
Don’t do it, it’s time to unwind rewind look past the great big Godly
middle finger in the sky where if you have even an ounce of faith, if
you measure faith in ounces because I do not, I measure it in faith
units, you’d take the leap of one faith units. Find out how it all
works.
“JUMP JUMP JUMP”
We jump.

---

J.P. Celia

The Discarded Piano

Had it been discarded there
Among that wood, or did the house, formerly intact and fair,
In which it used to gleam
And gather dust, unbuild itself and scatter, stranding it? If so, no overarching beam
No iron grate, or soft, domestic voice had left its trace
Upon that wild place.

Discarded, as it must have been,
What rare man, shriveled in soul and skin,
Had thrown out,
With no redemptive qualm or doubt,
The beautiful black box that once sent up from ivory teeth
An ethereal voice? Now underneath

Its golden pedals shoot the rude weeds
Of an unkempt wood, beads
Of dew bespeckle its legs, and gurgling from the weather-warped lid
Is not music, but the green fingers of a vigorous plant, which, amid
The watchful birds, the trees, looming and strong,
Play nature’s soundless and mysterious song.

No Foul Thing

I rarely contemplate suicide
In the throes
Of a profound sadness. The thoughts subside
When turned to, and will not keep. There’s an odd pleasure, I suppose,
In profundity, however dark, as I know it.
The dissolution of love,
A miscarried infant, for whom candles are lit,
The ruin of scandal; these are too rich to be rid of.

No. It is not even sadness especially
That makes ending oneself rear up like a romance
And spread like mellifluous gold in the mind, not dreadfully,
As it usually does, breaking a joyous trance.
It is often the seemingly inconsiderable things,
Those pestilent little absurdities
That plague one’s commoner hours: the vulgar presences, the kings
Of a coarse culture, the opposite of Demosthenes

In the swinish talk of two teen boys,
The prick of civility denied,
The toys
The irreverent make of the ethereal or grand, like when they tried
The genius of Newton, and flung themselves in awkward suits
To the moon, only to golf there and plant flags.
It’s these petty kinds of pangs; it’s the blasphemy of brutes
That make of Death no foul thing in rags.

---

Ken Champion

Retro

Headscarf knot high on her forehead, senna’d hair,
shoulder pads, like a war poster; she becomes
Aunt Lil – smiling down, hand cupping my chin –
holding Sid’s arm, evening drink in the Plough,
slabbed eels twitching outside, pillbox hat for
The Harold on Sunday, turban in the tractor
factory making shells, painted line down
the calf for the Rex.

See her again, red tights, trilby, Camden-booted;
I’m Uncle Albert, double-breasted, roll ups,
knees ups, nudge and a wink to Charlie,
pencil ‘tash, flash of a gold tooth smile;
she walks away, looks back, frowns,
leaving a raggedy-arsed boy.

Speech Balloons

In the War Museum photo a soldier lies
to attention under a sheet, officer at foot
of bed, underarm baton, bonneted lady
frowning down, grim Sister behind

“Playing with yourself?” asks madam.
Sister, “Taking iron jelloids, are we?”
Officer, “Rectum?”
Soldier, “Didn’t do ‘em much good, sir.”
“Have a good war then, must go,
carry on dying.”

Lady Matronise will never do good
Sister will stand there forever
baton will one day fall
soldier will never lie at ease.

Houses: anthropomorphic

Sun on pantiles, boughed leaves against a sash,
– a mother’s hair touching an infant’s face, a cupola,
an offered breast, eaves, the brim of a merry widow hat,
radiant stucco, grinning dentrils, full-busom’d caryatide,
the long skirt’s folds for a child to wrap his face in,
jasmine hedge cushioning a boy’s boundaries.

Raised eyebrow of a high gable, railings, tall, upright,
military, ‘old yer back up, chequer pattern flint and
stone, tough, hard, don’t let ‘em score, son,
dive at their feet, the roof, pitched, steep, thick
brows frowning down, a boy too scared to move,
the house inside him.

Marx In The Park

He bumps into a bench, jumble of books, papers
under his arms, sits beard on belly, stares at a tree,
found himself in Starbucks an hour ago looking across
to a golden M, people dressed oddly, shouting at things
held to their ears, giving strange money to bargirls,
bitte, wievel kostet, prosze, familiar accents, looks
at a book, frowns, shakes his head, it’s the translation,
No, he didn’t say that, picks up a news-paper, stares
in disbelief at page three, on four a picture of Bush
on his first visit to Asia and somewhere before
Gazza ‘Aza Dazzler two lines that say India
gets a McDonalds – did he not say the state is but
a committee for managing the affairs of the bourgeoisie?

Thinks back to his coffee, gazing out the window,
vehicles flashing past posters   my  ipod   my  music
my life   smiles, lips shape the words technological
determinism, looks up, pink clad ‘chavs’ all around him,
aggressive blind eyes, tight pony tails, point at him,
loser, they chant, loser,  fuckin’ loser.    

A Brother’s Death

You move blindly around the house kicking
doors, scattering books while brittle images
fill the pain: dad letting you fall though his

opening knees, catching you under the arms,
the ritual ending when he lets you hit the floor,
don’t trust anyone son, the birthday boxing

gloves, your left feint, overarm right, the parlour
party celebrating the wiping across your cheek
the blood from his lips, the later mosaics of

urban architecture, streetscapes of an endless
city, Stan behind, gasping for a café and
becoming father lying at the bottom of the

stairs clutching his kidneys, your schizoid self
staring forever before running next door for mum;
and now see that when his six year old eyes

looked up at you, not thinking how he’d die,
you couldn’t know that dad would always hover
inside you, strangling the tears, the love.

Utilitarian

Tired of swimming through porridge with the sixth form
I walk the lunch break through terraced streets, enjoying
leafed capitals, Doric columns; a child sprouts in front
of me, still, unmovable, hard eyes quietly demanding,
gripping a square of card  we hav no muny and no
napies for little gerl and…

I rest on a garden wall, beckon him to sit, he stands
in front of me as I rewrite his plea in my notebook
demonstrate vowel sounds, consonants, pauses,
differentiate the phonetic, tear out the page, hand
it to him.

He nods slowly not taking his eyes from mine,
shows me the card again, crushed notepaper
tumbling in the gutter.

Chimneys

Their London stocks, lipped pots against
a yellow-grey sky, slate roofs, childhood;
as if looking across from the slag heap

to terraced streets, lamplights, Alma Arms –
dad coming out to bribe you with a penny
arrowroot, if you was the only gel in the world

aunts with flappers hair, who’s a pretty boy?
mum’s don’t look, son, as Joan from next door
breastfeeds her baby, the crush on Wendy

from over the road, fear at seeing her
parents kiss because yours don’t, the
Gothic psychiatry, the lost marriages;

and it’s spinning around like a reeling
carousel, my slag heap turning
into a hill of beans.

Street Games

Flinging the ball at the pennies – tanners if you’re flush –
on the paving slab against the end house wall, and mum
shouting down the street for your tea, and you run past

the parlour to the kitchen, stir the washing in the boiler
with the bleached broom handle while she salts greens,
squeal of fork inside a saucepan, hand brushing a brow;

and you want to run to the park through the sandpit,
round the bandstand, on to the Flats, jump the stream
between houses, lean on a fluted lamppost and sate

yourself on mind flicks of skinny Iris at number two
or the misty silken space inside the thighs of principal
boys your dad takes you to see at Lyceum pantos,

but knowing you’re going out to the coins again
that no-one ever seems to hit.

Victorian Whimsy

The picket fence, moss on the cracked
path, faded red door beckoning me in
to a window seat, to look out on the lock

and clip gate, terracotta tiles in the
bricks of the short terrace, the chipped
enamel Bovril past the church finials;

to scrape up the benign moss with
firm hands, to lie in it,
contented, still.

Usherettes

Some serve in a churchlike Athens Odeon, an act of observance
and Greek dubbing, others in Sao Paulo’s Una Banco pimping
ice cream while waiters tout margaritas, and a Tangier picture
palace where the audience shouts look behind you! to the hero

comfort refugees in a shell-pocked art house in Beirut, watch
contraband movies in an Art Deco theater amongst Havana
palms, fight off the manager of a Roxy in Taiwan.

They’ve heard the roar of light hit the screen, ping of a bra
strap from the back row, watched a lit match passed like
an Olympic flame across red velvet seats, cigarette smoke
floating into bas-reliefs and chevrons; torch beams gliding
over carpets they are ciphers guiding us into the lit city,
the mansion, bedrooms, bars.

There’s one now, next to my aisle seat, raised knee flicking
off a shoe, leaning back on the curtained wall, unlit torch
idly hanging, the world at 24 frames a second in her eyes.

First Day Back

Despite their stifled yawns
he tries to tell them abut Marx
and to sum up his thesis in a sentence.
Our reality, consciousness, identity,
our political, cultural and economic systems
are determined by the ways in which we
technologically transmute the physical world.
What do you think then? he asks. Is it true?
You’ve got ten seconds to answer.

They look alarmed, so he holds
his hands out, fingers cupping,
encouraging. Joke, he says, joke.
You’d prefer a story, wouldn’t you,
and their grins explode. Yes, they shout,
like sitting round a fire telling tales.
He could see firelight flickering on their faces.

They’re smiling now; tall, smooth-skinned
Somalians, gaunt Rwandans, gentle
full-faced Ghanaians, gold bangled
Nigerians making their Victorian values heard
(not for them the two inch band of flesh
at their waist, tops of knickers showing)
and the two Dagenham lads, sitting apart,
asking if this geezer was a brother of Groucho.

He sighs, smiles back at them,
asks how their summer has been.

---

S. Chandramohan

Malls

falcons.
Eagle-eyed.
Close cousin of the vulture.
Imperial bird of prey.
Munches on the corpses of retailers.
Green eyed too
a petrodollar
fueled tornado
engulfs the third world like Tsunami.

Swastika mission to space

When there is no
Unoccupied sky left
To launch a space shuttle of peace
A rocket with an emblem of swastika
Will cruise without any ceasefire
To the limitless boundaries of space .

The barren space

no air
no water
no life
no cries amidst the rubble.
The world of loss is expanding.

Apogee and Perigee

A small rocket shaped
Piece of mud from the moon
a clay model of space shuttle,
it is pointless to collect souvenirs.

The perigees of the satellites
Were  all above the poverty line.
The satellite image of impending
Drought and cyclone
absent from the apogee of the newspaper replaced
by a glitzy ad

Fiscal apocalypse

Skyscrapers of cascaded credit
Meltdown in the heat of global warming
Cholesterol of the rubble
Chokes the arteries and veins
Cardiac arrests
Seismic seizures
Tsunamis of rising sea level
Washing away lifetimes of toil.

---

Yuan Changming

Spiritual Physics

Few are really aware of
Such universes
Existing beyond our own

Even fewer of so many other versions
Of selfhood living
In each of them, let alone
This simple secret:

At the depth of consciousness
Lives a quantum
Or soul as we prefer to call it
A particle, demon and/or angel dancing

The same dance afar, far apart
In an entanglement

---

Keith Chopping

In Memory of Josef Herman

Along a corridor dripping with icons,
first you should gaze into and beyond
the haggard faces, full of piety and pity,
the bony fingers to admonish.

Then, to remind you that you are so much more
than mere soul, have mercy, the African
masks and figurines –
bodies still alive with warmth and sinew.

(Some bought in lieu of a washing-machine.)

From his studio, curling up with pipe-smoke,
you will hear one word of Yiddish, “ oy “.
One word pregnant with the agonies of  Warsaw ,
the loss of children.

Wait a little…. then join him, absorb a lesson on art and life
in beautiful English, wrapped in guttural
over a slurp of tea.

“Is it true you drank from jam-jars, Joe bach ? “

Later, as you step out in to the indifferent neon,
you allow a smile.
There may be time again to share your twilights.

CELEB…..CELEB

Aren’t celebrities wonderful?
They do so much for us.
Give their all to fill our lives
with their sparkle
in capital’s bread and circuses.

They let us in on their secrets
share their recipes
caress us with their perfume
pare us down with their diets
defecate words for us to cling to.

All they ask in return
is our attention
and we are so willing to give it, for
without them
we would need more things to do
without us they would have no-one to be
they are the heroes we deserve.

When time comes for obituaries
let them take all the credit they’re due.
Then we can be sure that we too have lived.
Immortal celebrities – they are not dead
just consumed.

---

William Leo Coakley

Disturbed Earth

Beside the emptied houses, the earth is disturbed
By war’s glut; death’s victory is complete.
Our rooms gape roofless, eat the sun. We’ve not curbed
Man’s tribal madness—Look, weeds, not wheat,
Triumph in the fields. In the thawed earth
One boot kicks free—Dig round it with your hands:
The hunched, stiff bodies will mimic our hapless birth.
Snowdrops, too, lie of the spring—No one understands
Our crazed returning. Terror’s shadows reveal,
From the air, history’s secret. Our story has been told
Time and again: The wounds scab and heal.
Winter’s starlings, we survive and shine in the cold
On memory’s crumbs. Don’t ask me to count the killed again—
We are the fools who come back, who forget, who build again.

Last Words

The call to action
Brought us together at last
In the main square, the seat of power.
As we knew, the guns were ready.
If we die defiantly, foolishly,
If guts run in the gutters again
(When will bloody man ever learn?),
Let the new world remember us
By not repeating the old sins.

Insects

Like soldiers they come, but for food,
Crawling the stone floor, enemies.
I crush them calmly with my thumb
and at their dying do not even go mad:
the biggest leap out of their skin,
spoiling the white squares with their blood.
In the air, bombers look at men
and feel as little when they press down:
a brief confusion to be left behind—
but the shadows burn to the stone.
If you would learn how to kill,
it is easiest to kill what is small.

Armed Love

inspired by a graffito on a wall on my way to visiting George Barker at his Bintry House in Norfolk: Beneath
this stone are deposited the remains of. . .Ellen LeFevre, aged 25 yrs., and her four children. . . who were
murdered at their residence in Southampton Street, Pentonville, during the night of Monday 8th September
1831 by Johann Nicholas Steinberg, aged 45 yrs., a native of Germany and father of the above children who
afterwards murdered himself and was buried according to law (St. James, Clerkenwell)

Here in the close of Clerkenwell church
on the bone-hill where death is host
I hear through stone the voice of the God-
ridden mock the unhouseled guest.

As I walk on the grave of London’s dead
from the terrible night that never ends,
the long day darkens, brightness fails—
the godless need fair-weather friends.

I summon the bones of William Blake
to shake their message of bright hope:
all things wonderful and dark
have led us out of church and home.

I sing of all children the night has taken,
all strangers who seek their rest in blood,
the four children of Ellen LeFevre,
the loved and the lover, murderer and murdered.

According to law, justice will speak;
according to love, mercy cries–
beware of the sound of sudden peace,
the feverous silence when armed love dies.

Died on the Voyage

to the memory of Walter McElroy,
buried in Istanbul, 4 June 1987

McElroy, a friend of myself and my mentor, poet George Barker, was a Communist American poet who
defected to England during the McCarthy period and years later, just before the Soviet Union collapsed,
when he came down with cancer, he went off by ship to Russia but died in Istanbul harbour and was
buried in the city; I visited his unmarked grave finally last summer. He was part of a circle of poets and
artists including Scottish painter Robert Frame, Lucien Freud, Dylan Thomas, John Minton, and George’s
son, Sebastian Barker.

Turn into the mouth of the Black Sea,
There is no haven, no golden city:
The tender of death that shuttles you home
Accepts no pity.

Our exile has no end—the will
Frets, like the traveller, never at rest,
Grows sharper, firmer as it moves
In its pure quest.

The world that rose up in your dream,
Man unfettered, barriers broken,
Falls at our feet. There’s work to do
Till the last word is spoken.

---

Richard Copeland

This is Not a Sonnet

Are we really who we say we are?
Tell me your perceptions if you dare –
or maybe not would be a better thing
than face such brutal truths and slingshot
words.
But do our eyes exactly coincide,
interpreting the meaning in a glance
to say with confidence; ‘I understand,’
and penetrate the truth behind the face?
We each have mental pictures of ourselves
and of each other, but how accurate
is sight against sensation? Both can lie
with false impressions steaming up the lens
of the mind’s half-closed, myopic eye.

A Modern Prelude

With apologies to T. S. Eliot

The summer evening’s broken down
in curry house and alleyway.
Eleventh hour.
The thrown-out scraps of smoky days.
And so a windy downpour slaps
the sodden flaps
of empty cartons round your feet
and paper blown from burnt-out bins;
the raindrops beat
on buckled shutters, stinging skin
while, on the corner of the street
a drunkard roars at passing cars.
And then the emptying of the bars.

‘A Modern Prelude’ was first published in The Frogmore Papers, 2008. All poems
from Richard Copeland’s collection This Is Not A Sonnet (Survivors’ Press, 2008)

November the Fifth

King James’ knives slit the Catholic belly,
draw the living entrails, inflict agony
with ease.
Punishment thought fit enough for treason,
and this we celebrate

as if a testament to cruelty spanning centuries
might be a cause for joy. Not content to simply kill,
outrage fired a nation’s soul to draw life

coil by coil,
taking pride in slow work;
the face a painted mask of retribution,
the heart a cinder, brazier bright,
the first firework, sealed
in eternal flame
and still we celebrate

as each new bomb, each bullet is cheered
after the fact and on
through the desert heat or jungle green
we follow the progress
of a nation’s slow evisceration,
cheer and salute the victory
of state over common humanity.

Late Night Opening

Buy two, get one free, the red tag tempts, teasing
as a temple prostitute displaying her wares
in the all night day long store.
A thing caught between times, it becomes
a whispering vault of ghosts, shelf-stacking
in reverential silence cracked by the till’s sharp beep
of acknowledgement, purring out a paper tongue.

A time when even brash banners seem to whisper
quiet confidences of twenty pence off here, fifty there
and, by the way, special reductions on Australian wines
(not sold after eleven o’clock, so forget it).

Prowl these postered aisles of gleaming tins.
Emblazoned cartons stand where labels leer.
Try to remember what need brought us here
to this unsleeping temple of must-have.
Something half forgotten dream-drifts vaguely,
slinks away behind the deli counter
now deserted, polished, gleaming empty.

Night time store dreams

a slow pad of patrons
caught somewhere
between sleep and shopping.

Where aisle-separated phantoms shuffle
no one speaks.

‘Late Night Opening’ was first published in Envoi.

Sarajevo 1914

That first shot was the detonator;
a tiny spit of flame igniting
the main charge
that was Europe.

The fire spread rapidly, burning all
in its path, destroying
the work of hands
for centuries laid down

with love, honour and spite
brought to dust, fire and blood,

Death’s dominion supreme,
nations lay smoking,
shock-splintered,
unstitched.

Where did men come from to come
to this? What drove
barbarians to fight
all against all?

That first shot
still reverberates.
Echoes back
to Cain.

Thistles

Spear sharp against the sky, the thistles stand,
their plumed war bonnets
of purple plush
challenging the eye
to question their purpose

Whose partisans spike the air against
the vengeful grasp of uprooting hands
that would tear them from resisting earth

unwanted

they stand defiant
firmly rooted
grim as Thermopylae
awaiting
the execution stroke of the hoe’s blade
later to return
unbeaten.

---

Alan Corkish

Christianity is:

The belief that some cosmic Jewish zombie can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master…

If you do this he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in all humanity and we know this is true because a ‘rib-woman’ was convinced of it by talking to a snake that sat in a magical tree…

---

Lexie Cracknell

Walking to Russia

I write to hide the pages, the ink
And pixels that spilled out of my heart
Dribbled down my veins and formed
Words upon the screen. Love turning into tears
And God, just let it go-
We write fantasies, open up our minds,
Echo over into the stars and sky
Falling forever upwards, self-denying
Defying gravity, we look, and see that I am beautiful
But ugly, ugly too.

But he’s got me back on the poetry
Caked in red and dashed to velvet
Check out the skies, like how I’m falling
Back, back, back in time…
If I reach out, Romeo’s not reaching back now,
Now he’s left me, in his self and in his heart
And he’s not reading anymore
And I can’t really expect him to.

So I can’t write, or speak his name
Without the bile for me rising up my gullet
I can’t see him without the noose
And bottles of dirty, dirty pills
But for now, he works his way in
Like the slimy lichen, the way he always was,
But how he fooled me,
Betrayed me and used me and turned away
Turned away to watch me crumble… and fall.

Will I ever stop falling.

So many to catch, but I’m so not solid anymore,
I’m a ghost of me, more than I thought
I could ever be…

So I go outside and smoke until my lungs turn black
Stand up just to collapse and cry or laugh or scream
Or do nothing, nothing at all. So I’m here-
Still-
Reach out! Reach out, grab me by these creaking bones,
Squeeze the tightening skin
Get me to eat, find me something to do with my hands,
Find something intrinsic inside me,
Tell me what I need to hear, not what I should,
Fill up my heart, just make me feel again,
Just let me trust again, naturally, not because I know I should…

What is there to die for when there’s nothing left to live for?
What is there to die for when there’s nothing left to live for?

Walk with me to Russia, show them all
Show me, I was wrong and so was he,
I’m worth it, I’m worth it all!
I’m… I’m worth it. I’m worth something afterall.

August

Writhe upon these beaches
With a fishbowl of booze inside my blood-
On the drip, and sixty euro’s gone to bring
Me back from one hell to another.
Call on me, down the shadows of the world,
And let your tortured heart of darkness sing
Of the story of the earth,
World unfolding as the sunset reddens
And evening comes:
I wear red, like a brown skeleton
And drink free wine behind the Sidari bar.
Memories…ah yes…I remember yet.

Blistered cigaretted arms, call upon me
And I turned my back from the crowd
To find a dagger in my back,
St. Peter Pan never growing old
From an offended god, call on me,
And drag me screaming from within.

So I dived into the sparkling,
Mediterranean Sea.

Dragged under. Breathing in.
Pulling up and throwing out,
Burning lungs and a broken fucking heart.

*

Like salt in the wound,
The old scar still lives,
Why won’t I heal?
Why won’t I heal?

Recall

We’re falling back through history,
We’re in the forests, tangled and wild,
All these ghosts of me,
They scatter, howl in the darkness
Inside the skull, can they see
The pink light shining though
As the sun is setting on me now,
And the passions rise and die,
Do they dream? These phantoms
Of renewing flesh.

I cannot look back, can only reflect
Can only hold the illusion of sight
The stabbings in my chest,
The ache and wheeze of the air I breathe-
If I could only write so eloquently,
Always, I would find no fault at all.
Writing with the tongue and teeth
Whip my words away to
The sky and the gods, no one of corporeal
Matter will ever know…

Hound me. Oh gods, they hound me still.

Would you remember this?
I speak to you ten years from now,
You’ll be the same, but a stranger too,
Rolling in cash,
Or sleeping in the Daily Mail-
Will you remember, remember still?

---

Bernadette Cremin

November

November is nursing my weathered eye
so staring through the shallow horizon
I will this spiteful winter to subside.

The relentless grey has rendered me blind
and I crave the memory of cloud-cotton.
November is nursing my weathered eye

and no matter how hard the view may try
it can not comfort a storm with reason.
I will this spiteful winter to subside

so as the carnage can not be denied:
the damage abandoned by late autumn.
November is nursing my weathered eye
and the sun half-hides like a guilty spy
as frozen bullets bludgeon the season.
I will this spiteful winter to subside

and lend the aching sky to kinder light:
let weather undress like a chameleon.
November is nursing my weathered eye.
I will this spiteful winter to subside.

Carney

Folklore said the track had rusted over
(a feral testament to the unleashed boy)
so the grumble smothered by years of trees
intrigued me like hands in the dark.
Carney is a flint-built nest of half truths
where frowning men murmur and women

simmer over nettle wine, haunting the muddy boys
with tight spun yarns of The Stokeens in the dark
scar of woodland, that tears like green chiffon over
Devlin Mountain. The town is possessed by Larn trees
that spill onto an incessant beach. Carney women
are lean, caramel-skinned and stubborn as truth.

I was enticed to visit it by a seamless woman
who wrote in violet ink. She wore her boy-
figure easily and was contradictory as an oak tree
on the cusp of summer. I was seduced by her dark
toffee skin and she by my name as we conjured vanity over
saki at a mutual friend’s attempt at a party.  She wore truth

and deceit in equal measure, and flirted her arrogance over
awkward art, as we stung wit, snaring [it-]our shameless dark
humour by unstitching  the polite room of other women.
She was born in Carney under a swollen Larn tree,
her twin brother torn from her by a calloused hand (a boy
that she still begs to unlock her prayers when the truth

confesses.) Then she unveiled the curse that shelters women
who ripen life in the dim season that beckons the Larn trees
to blossom crimson like blushing blood or wounded truth,
so as no other mother need ever have her warm boy
peeled from her, leaving his menacing silence to take over
her dark.

---

Chris Crittenden

City Mirrors

ghostsin the façades,
stretched and folded
like darkled taffy.

people clip-clopping by,
in vain footware
that could feed the Congo,

unmindful
of the boutiques and shops.
with windowfronts
that mock them,

reflecting

the rack and rend
of stress-borne souls,
simulacra
of the money dance,
insane puppet show,

fueled by the crowds themselves-
the bustle and hassle
of their clock-spurred flesh,

and the hellish mimes
who taunt them
from umbral walls.

---

Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal

Lost in the Dream 

It weighs on me,

your vanished smile,

at twilight in
the intimate hours,
I let the day run its course.

Farther away,
my tongue freezes.
Autumn comes
along and I sleep.  I am a
shepherd

in my dream.  Loose words
and secrets spill from my tongue.
I am lost in the dream
or the nightmare,

where disorder
echoes throughout the
darkness of my mind.

I am born into a death,
where birds fly
into the sun
and die as well.

My voice does not
make any sense
and I forget simple words
like stars and windows.

I am born into life
dreaming of death, and
tasting something bitter
with my frozen tongue.
I take flight towards the sun,
where the birds of my dream
die without
anguish.
They just die
in my dreams.
I hear murmurs.
Maybe I should fly too.
Fast asleep
I am always flying.

I Will Not Take Tylenol

I will only take Tylenol.
However, my head would have
to feel like if it was coming
clear off for me to take it.

I will not take Haldol or
any other pharmaceutical
poison that is offered to me.
I don’t care if it is free.

I will not take showers in here
because I know the showerheads
have been tainted with powder or
liquid psychiatric drugs.

I will not shave my beard or take
my watch off.  My beard is my
strength.  I always keep my watch on
to keep those who hold me on

notice.  I will remind them of
the illegality of their
actions upon me, a sane man
accused of paranoid thinking.

I am not a threat to anyone
or myself.  I will only take
Tylenol.  Do not insist on
giving me anything else.

The Hideous Humans

The hideous humans with
their hideous hearts and thoughts
mark their territory and

shoot off their guns to prove how
horrible they could be.  They
smell blood and feed off it like

the fat vampires they are.  The
hideous humans take off
toward the sun and go blind.
The hideous humans burn.

They go bald and walk around
stupidly like punch drunk fools.
They have no body hair.  They
seek a coffin or a cave.

---

Elaine Cusack

Good Girl

She told them all to “go away!” She said it calmly and clearly.
She articulated feelings they thought buried under history.

She told them all to “shut up” and stop the amateur dramatics.
She’d had enough of their mob rule, dysfunction and histrionics.

She told them all to “go away,” Mum, Dad, Gran, extended family
plus siblings, side by side, poor thing was drowning in their misery.

Her abuser had the gall to touch her arm at Grandpa’s funeral.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he lied then kissed Gran’s next door neighbour.

“Be nice,” hissed Mum, “be good! Don’t make a scene now, the family’s listening.”
Abuser worked the room, shook hands as our heroine stood watching.

The anger that she’d felt for years and those scripts she’d had to follow,
filled up her throat and mouth and mind. She tried but she couldn’t swallow.

Inside she cried like times before, “Mummy! The pain! The agony,”
but Mum, Dad, Gran, assembled clan, ignored her anxiety

so she told them to “go away!” She said it firmly and clearly.
She articulated feelings they claimed were ancient history.

She told them all to “shut up” and cease their amateur dramatics:
two fingers to mobocracy, dysfunction and histrionics.

She told them all to “go away” but expressed herself non-verbally.
She left that wake without a sound, kept walking and never looked back.

Full of English

I’m British and I comfort eat.
I eat because I’m British.
Stiff upper lips crave fish and chips,
kebabs and battered sausage.

Junk food’s the way to cope with life,
it dampens down emotion.
I’m British, I won’t make a fuss.
I’ll never cause a commotion.

I’m British so I comfort eat,
I binge because I’m British.
Uncertainty breeds anxiety
and I need sugar and sausage.

“Media’s to blame,” I crow online,
swallowing whole the Same Old Story.
Bloated, I stagger down high streets
puking England’s ‘Power and Glory.’

I’m British and I comfort eat.
I eat because I’m British.
Stiff upper lips crave fish and chips
and the right to remain English.

Take away culture

Your hometown was panini-ed and frappé-ed.
It was mocha-ed, latte-ed, pulled then crafted.

Your birthplace, that square of South East London
you cherished and shared with your family
and friends is gone.
The area’s been knocked down,
updated and gentrified.
This process
is inevitable, unstoppable.

They’re building palaces for Big Business.
Your London’s been gobbled up by Crossrail,
rebuilt by “considerate contractors.”

They’re creating a bespoke capital
for overseas investors with capital.
Revamped London does not belong to you.
The city’s economy and ecosystem are
changing forever
for no good reason.

(no title)/ Haiku

Acknowledging
her pain lets the
healing begin.

---

 Alessandro Cusimano

The Nation

the medicine man has a vision

and disappears
in a prison

of the Empire Film Producer
metal animal
worn away with the rust

and they call him killer
when the killers accuse a killer

outside
one night noble light
moon

when the windows are open

the rifle of the inhuman man
a slanting creature beyond the measure
a sergeant

eats up his supper taken from home
and kills

someone who has the power to do this
watching people do it without shame

the actor’s life

obscene reflexes
oblong planes appeal to the low

Old Glory ponders the rights and wrongs

grimaces deform the faces
and make them ugly

broken down window panes
                   internals of wide open mouths

Queen of all flowers

the gaze bends
the night damp colours
new anatomies

bold shapes wink and move

under the roses

tasting strokes
things you can touch
perfect lipstick
clear in the stretch

creamy

rose leaves sweeten the thorns
in summer
night put on its coloured plumes

the great silence wakes up
and takes away the agony of boredom

the wail of a rose is the cry
at night
of a carnivorous spider
with sweet mouths
showing off brand new throats

with its multiple body
innumerable and victorious

Excellent madman

I have an iron will

proof that the gimmick can work

in my note-books I sketched the abyss
the dung heap of inequality

trial and acquittal

nevertheless
my personality is fading away
rubbing the impalpable
overcoming my resistance
insistently

policy and carelessness
carved temperaments

reason and unconsciousness
my devotion to these two sisters grim

if only I could find a way
to deal with them

without turning away from myself
from the unreasonable friend

from the excellent madman
towering above
locked up

the taste of a ripe melon
is the meaning of a moral dilemma

everything at once

Venice prophecies

a lovely girl brings home her puppet boyfriend

and plays with him

the tall convex space appears turquoise
draws a sinuous line
sensual on the perimeter
steeped in the events of others

is the profile of a sea wave
ensures the persistence of blue

the opposite of darkness is spreading
slowly
the wave breaks regular
long
smooth
has a changing effect
hands out colours

night owns the future

forgives the guilt
multiplies the fixed and reflected light
surrounds the vaporous game
unties a curtain

after dark
you look and measure the content
of mirrors
the anxiety of the angels goes on stage
have memory
remind all

the vibrations are perpendicular
penetrate the skin
a mass of water rises and falls
is female
able to overwhelm the spectator

with the honesty of her sins
under a dim light
so as not to be seen
so you do not see the others

there’s a glare
vision is complex

comely
the volume of the music is consumed
a ruby-throated hummingbird flies free

growing soft folds follow the trend
the long radius
the imagination to reach
the underside of the tables
steel and water deposit the gray and blue
in the depths of the deepest eyes

wooden puppet head is sitting on himself
his face is opalescent
flattered
inspired by an happy melodrama

built on the water

---

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