Poetry D – The Recusant

Poetry D

Francis Devine

Francis Devine was born in London, and is a retired Tutor, SIPTU College, Dublin. He has published Organising History: A Centenary of SIPTU, 1909-2009, and histories of the Communications Workers’ Union and the Medical Laboratory Scientists’ Association; was an editor of Saothar, Journal of the Irish Labour History Society; and, with Steve Byrne & Friends, issued the CD My Father Told Me in 2014 with a second CD, An Ownerless Corner of Earth, due later in 2019. His poetry collections are Red Star, Blue Moon (1997), May Dancer (2007) and Outside Left (2017). ‘Hup Gralton’ & ‘When Abdul Moneim Khalifa Met Darach Ó Catháin’ were first published in Red Star, Blue Moon (Elo Publications, Dublin, 1997), ‘The Steamship Hare’ was published in May Dancer (Watchword, Dublin, 2007).

The Steamship Hare

for Pádraig Yeates

Since first light

we were there,

cramped close against the Manchester

Shed at the South Wall,

a clawing dampness

enveloping the quays,

all eyes sifting the fog,

watching the bar for the first

sign of a heralded deliverance.

The cold slow bore –

worms in a stair skirting –

mother’s thin shawleen

insufficient to lag the bones,

the fevered excitement of daybreak

waning, belief in Jim

challenged by rumour, begrudgery

and the citing of false gods.

Then at a quarter to one,

a Port & Docks Board man

high on a steam shovel, glass to eye,

spotted the streaming bunting,

the flutter of the National Transport

Workers’ Federation flag,

the steamship Hare butting

into Liffey mouth, entering history,

bearing Larkin deep

inside our souls.

There was no disorder

but disciplined attendance,

a silent respect for Brothers

Seddon and Gosling –

important, bowler-hatted Englishmen

from the Trades Union Congress –

a patient vigil rewarded

by ticketed parcels containing

ten pounds of potatoes

and a further ten pounds of bread,

butter, sugar and tea, jam and fish –

all in boxes and bags with the letters

‘CWS’ printed boldly on the side.

Our mother shared out our ration

with other unfortunates in the building,

something that seemed

unquestionably natural.

There were biscuits for the childer

which we sat on a plate

and would not eat

lest we had nothing

left to admire.

Jim had delivered us from hunger,

now we had to press forward to seize

the Promised Land,

knowing that our army

could henceforth march

on heart and belly.

A half century on,

I saw an old, wizeny man

stood outside the GPO on May Day

with the other dribble-drabble few,

cheering Paddy Donegan and Seán Dunne,

a gold, Shilling

Co-operative Society medal

swinging on his grease-shine lapel.

When he told me he got this

for crewing the Hare,

I instantly saw his image

in those digital photographs

thousands unconsciously took

on that dank, drear day

in September Nineteen and Thirteen

as evidence that Hope

did once actually walk

amongst us.

The poem first appeared in May Dancer ((Watchword, Dublin, 2007).

Following that, its second appearance is in The Children of the Nation: Working People’s Poetry from Contemporary Ireland edited and introduced by Jenny Farrell (Culture Matters, 2019)

Arjun Dahal

To My Cigarette

A kiss to the lips,

With the rush of palpable breath

Eternal tranquillity you possess,

Everytime I hold you.

Then, a short pause

And a panting,

To kiss again…..

In a loop….

Now, we must quit,

Before, it ruins us both.

We are half burned,

But, will the memories conflagrate?

The solitude of wisdom

He told the candle,

“We must burn ourselves,

The light divides the darkness.

The scorn they painted

Vile and frozen

Now chafes beneath the veins.

The prophet’s dream they sang

For a profit on the street

Now immures us in between the sinister and dexter.

The votive shadow lies vacuous,

And the spirits of angels

Belauds us with the intoxicating prelude,

Counting the souls for sale.

O my friend

We must be cremated,

To be new and pristine.

Unfathomable burdens must be dropped,

There’s still a long road to walk.”

About Author:

Arjun Dahal is undergrad student of Physics at Tri-Chandra Campus, Tribhuvan University, Nepal. Talkative, Crazy, Funny, and Fun loving guy, his passion lies in Physics, Mathematics, Music, Literature, and Philosophy. His Non-fiction has appeared in Blue Marble Review. His poetry has appeared/forthcoming in Burningword Literary Journal, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, The Fable Online, Ann Arbor Review, and DWIT News

Stephen Philip Druce

The Gardener and the Rose

The gardener felt

inferior to the rose.

The rose, with its natural

beauty for portraits –

a blazing jewel in the dirt,

flaming without fire,

ice cool for the burning sun,

alluring to the bees, its sweet

perfumed scent, its eagle petals

that swooned with clutched

un-spilt raindrops, bestowed

from ballet clouds.

Then one day the rose got

too old. The gardener wept as

he cut it down –

the rose with the inferior soul.

The Murmur of the Goose Machine

Behind the shuttered rapture

the raconteur pours a diamond sun.

Did you hear the murmur

of the goose machine?.

As you slinked astride rackety

fruit stall – gorged on shrieked

spleen to its riotous belly,

did you clamour to such book flesh,

as trumpeting foxes leapt from

dead chapters on paper horses?,

did you warn the night fox

of the snapped twig?.

For the storm preacher, did you

run with drumming hounds upon

drunken daisies splashed in carnival wine?.

Or did you turn and face

the dust in the cruel wind?.

Amir Darwish is a British/Syrian poet of Kurdish origin, living in Middlesbrough. He arrived in the UK late 2002 as an asylum seeker. Darwish completed a BA in history at Teesside University, England. Currently, he is a postgraduate student at Durham University, England, School of Government & International Affairs. His poetry published in the UK, USA, Pakistan, Finland, Morocco and Mexico. His work has been translated into Arabic, Finnish and Italian. Darwish’s forthcoming collection, ‘Don’t forget the Cuscus’ will see publication in October 2015 by SmokeStake books publisher, England. Twitter: @darwish_amir

There must be a light at the end of this tunnel

There must be a light at the end of this tunnel

At a point where

So many eyes look into darkness

Cut through a bone and

Shine it.

There will be a creature there

Strange One

With no hands

No lips

No arms

No ears

No body

And only eyes

Eyes and soul.

That being will find a light from within you

And strike it out to the world.

Over there

In that place

The river of sadness dries

Melancholy waves hush and

The Sorrow garden

Reflects an Arabian desert moonlight

To shine the universe.

There

You sit with your hand back and forth

Playing the water of a Damascus fountain.

Imprisoned Tongues

They imprisoned our tongues

And declared our sex speechless

Like two Babylonian stones

Our eyes are now useless.

Palestine

Palestine is a rose that rose

To refresh the air as it enters the nose.

Alan Dunnett

Guillotine Blues

We hold our knitting as the edge comes down.

We hold our knitting as the cut heads roll.

They fill the big baskets in this old town;

and we walk the streets of freedom after the poll.

The blood in the baskets is running out

into the gutters and down to the sea.

Everywhere we go, we hear our brothers shout

that we are living and not just supposed to be.

We hold our knitting as the edge comes down.

We hold our knitting as the cut heads roll.

Tomorrow’s another day in this new town

and we walk the streets of freedom after the poll.

The blood on my hands is noble and fair.

I know the truth now and I do not care.

with thanks to Arthur Lee

No More Killing

Why didn’t we see this coming?

We must take a share of the blame

and act in another way from now on.

No more blindness. No more knowing

nods and unwise caution. I speak

from experience because I could have saved her

although it would not have been easy.

Now the bad weather rises up and shakes the window.

Don’t wait till tomorrow. Go out

and put a different thing in place.

Olfa Drid

Marital masquerade

same house

no home

same kitchen

different food

same roof

separate beds

same constraints

diverging views

same hurdles

different angles

same kids

opposing instructions

same sofa

back to back

harmonious in public

enemies in private

praise in the face

bullets in the back

silent outwardly

cursing inwardly

close bodies

distant hearts

same family name

secret pseudonyms

same real life

discrete virtual lives

common destiny

polar opposites

united

each on his own

together

alone

masked

unmasked.

wedded

unwedded.

Olfa Drid © 2014

Olfa Drid is an English teacher, a PhD scholar and a committed poetess from Tunisia. Her passion is meditation at the ailments and aches of the human race and her utmost target of writing is not art for art’s sake but to trigger thoughts, question given- for-granted facts, shake the readers’ hearts and uplift their souls. Her poems appeared in print and online reviews such as The Poet Sanctuary (2009), The Voices Project.org (March 2014), The Sirens Call ezine (April 2014), Taj Mahal Review (June 2014), The Haiku Journal (June 2014) and S/tick Review (July 2014). Apart from the passion of poetry, she is an ex-international volleyball player and she is also gifted in design and interior decoration. Alan Dunnett

No Mercy

I will be back with a gun. Talk alone

did not serve. I know it is a mistake

to commit to violence. Its dark moan

begets violence. That’s why we must make

everything go away, die forever,

suffocate under salt, gasp at a stake

driven through the heart so that you never

rise again, not in this life or the next

crawling in bright limbo instead whether

the day dips or ascends. Blinded, you take

no comfort through eternity. Rather,

you will never sleep yet always awake

ragged and staring, restless with no home

to head for begging the Kind Ones to break

you into little pieces and be done.

Stand-Off

I am resolute, Oh Lord, for the Right,

just wondering why it must involve dead

violence.

Facing you in the red,

wet eye of battle, I only see this:

matters must not end here. Don’t apologise

at this point when you find it is all done

for you. The time to make amends has gone.

In finishing you, I bring the hot breath

of a curse upon myself though the gods

know exactly why it has come to this.

You hurt my children. We talked about this

and it made no difference. You burned

our homes and we fled to the mountains.

For a long while, it seemed like all was lost

but you could not kill us down to the last.

Now it is a new day. Even these thoughts

put blood upon my hands but sacrifice

buys the future although they call it vice.

In This Light

You sit with the others staring at the agenda.

Everything is in order and respectable.

The chairperson is venerated, the coffee

is not instant. The doorknobs are burnished gold

in this light.

You are here by design and not by mistake

and yet you wish it were not so. You wish

you could leave and return with force

because this meeting has a foregone conclusion

in this light.

Everyone is polite. Some are confident. Some

are riddled with concern. There must be a way

to change the future but this is not it.

They will smile and minute with accuracy

in this light.

José Hernández Díaz

LILAC

We watched the seagulls

The fountain at the boardwalk

You wore your hair up

Plain dark sun glasses rested

On your cheekbones pale

Small World Bookstore

We scanned the black- and-white

Photography books

And criticized the lack of

Diversity in the poetry

Section Another Autumnal

Another Autumnal Another

Autumnal.

Japan in April

I crave silently and far away.

Naked, filled up with perfection,

I am attending enjoyment.

Where there is trust there is always glee.

He never painted my passion,

Dreams from the color to the word,

Without suspense and shivers.

The moment of light strikes me.

Pressing Japanese air onto my face.

April is slowly spilling its colors,

above duplicate shadows dancing away.

To the uncaring

Lost in the grey loneliness.

Cognition intruder – rustling from the mind.

Unclear thread, passionate, cruel, is awoken.

The fruit is not conspiracy.

The lunatic, genius of silence!

Get closer to the unspoken.

The analysis of reason- slavery!

During walking, visible shame.

Exciting autonomy,

Opened door, the windows,

Draft!

In the mist the stairways

Leading to heaven.

Paralyzed conscience,

Portable mirror.

In the plural against the fluency,

Conducting, behavior,

And admit the guilt.

The line connecting,

The road to the spacecraft.

We walk on by in dishonor.

Bronze woman,

Brass man!!!

The Leader Seeks to Retire

Then we started fighting among ourselves,

disagreeing about what should be right.

All this while, we had not been getting fat

as the gruel was thin, thinner by far

than the thick, rich soup the sleek burghers smeared

on their soft, plump lips as they slurped it down.

We were losing sight of our intentions

and failing to act together. I thought,

it’s time to go. The road is open.

We will leave the rest to argue things out.

We can walk through the night and be long gone

before the sun comes up. Let them argue.

This is a failure. We’ll be forgotten,

Marie. No, you say, this is a mistake.

We are not important but things we said

that were given to us to say though

all the words were ours and the way we spoke

the words were ours will not be forgotten.

The children grow up and may be angry

because they do not know what freedom is:

a light which comes and goes in the distance.

Once, I chanced upon it and nearly drowned

in a moment and then…. then it was gone.

Freedom is not licence. Not seeing you

ever again would be hard so I say,

stay. Be strong although you feel weak. Business

needs to be finished. Don’t think of failure.

You make me feel as if the only point

lies in staying. I feel weak if I go

but perhaps I am weak if I stay. No,

stay and argue harder and better. Stay.

I’ll stay and make leaving a memory.

Let go my wrist, Marie, and trust me now.

Chris D’Errico

The Cheap Seats

Lured in by a poster of a bear riding a unicycle with a flaming baton, Yoshi finds a vacant seat with the beer-guzzling crowd—high-fiving, belching, slapping their flabby guts. They’re all crunching peanuts, mumbling impatient, then the curtain explodes. Moving spokes, circus bikes and bowling pin jugglers hypnotize everybody. Everybody’s blinded by monkeyshines, and circumstance. Everybody’s chewing cotton candy and applauding short men who clean up clown sweat and elephant shit. On what he thinks is a dare by the guy beside him (pumping his fists, pointing and grinning—”Go! Baby, do it!”) Yoshi finds himself running down into the center, pointing and yelling at the ringleader. But the ringleader is oblivious and soon Yoshi’s ducking the somersaults of trapeze artists and mimes pretzeled together, hurtling over his head off giant trampolines. Stupendous! Where are the lions? Knife-throwers? Swordsmen? Can’t see the fire-breathers but uh-oh he smells something foul. The thick reek of burning flesh takes Yoshi aback. (He knows that smell. He smelled it once during an apartment fire; he stood outside the police tape and watched as the EMTs rolled out the bodies.) Did something go horribly wrong with the human cannonball? The lights cut out, the stage clears and it’s just him in the dark. In a flash of glitter, a poof of white smoke, the Eagle’s “Witchy Woman” cuts in abruptly—”raven hair and ruby lips / sparks fly from her fingertips.” Wide-eyed, a woman strolls out to greet him, looking something like Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra. Or, maybe a B-movie imitation. Everyone quiets down and Yoshi’s smiling like an idiot as he escorts her down the catwalk for a hand-in-hand bow. What else could he do? Bent over, she loses her tiara in the floodlights. Spotlight on him alone! He IS the show! Where’s the pinhead, the bearded lady, the Siamese twins? He grabs hold of the aerial silk as it swings his way. Yoshi is hoping that the technical rigging doesn’t fail, that the stagehands aren’t too hung-over, or still drunk. Careful now, just one more spiral, one more fantastic flip. Can he tame the big cats? Swallow and belch fire on command? Let’s see how many plates he can spin while dancing a waltz…

Ex-Executive Considers His Future

I was diligent through all the hemorrhoid flare-ups, wasn’t I? Now my jowls droop and the one-liners just get duller as the calendar flips. Grand notions pucker into benignities and sprites of below average wisdom flick off the tongue, sputtering awkwardly as the central program in my brain unwinds in laughable fragments. Where’s my tenacity? I feel like I can only witness spirit vicariously, yet all around me I see vacant-eyed mutts ruling a certain freedom all their own. Not half of the cojones I have. Now I’m the little man, self-involved, yet without answers, nervous to emerge from behind my fictitious mask, still too much in awe with the mask itself. I wanted to be a champion, getting my rich friends richer. Now I sit in my high-back, leather chair, clicking the ceiling light on and off with the remote this afternoon remembering that last blow-out of a shareholder’s party; playing with myself under my silk boxers in the monotonous light and shadow, light and shadow, light and shadow. I walk outside and under my feet the earth murmurs suggestions to move on as the green returns to old sod. Springtime is on its way. I go back inside and try to write out my feelings in a poem. Nobody knew that I wrote poems. Not the wife that left, not the kids that are incommunicado. Not even Mertle, my ex-secretary. “Breath composes its black canon / whose aural specter strums / on the day’s grief.” Eh, balls. How about a hymn, a celebration of some sort, for chrissakes? Nope. I wasn’t born to pen verse. I wasn’t born to be a king that others might pen verse for. That’s what poets do, no? Maybe I’ve got it all backwards. Anyway, all is not lost. I’ve got this mop, and that break-room isn’t going to clean itself. The moving truck will be here in a few hours. The landlord will collect the keys tomorrow. Now, how the hell do I fix that damn dishwasher?

I Cannot See the Heart

No barrel-blown gunshot, no knives to the gut, no clothesline with a baseball bat. No obscene gesture, no stink eye, not even a minor quip. Still, there’s violence here. Right on the money: meticulous annunciation, carelessness in the tone. The smile of a predator showing its fangs. Sound-bites and dogma. It’s high crime dressed down in business casual. It’s the banality of trying to wash the blood off stained hands while yachting and golfing and building their industries above all else. What sycophant would admit that sincerity’s better done with word-tricks and wink-winks, guffaws and knee-slaps; fart jokes…than so-called heartfelt confessions, waffling half-truths? “Narcissus checked himself out in the spit-shined lens.” It’s either me or this other jackass, groveling in front of a live media feed so to spin all eyes elsewhere. I would never poison the planet but if I did by accident I would come clean, I would, I would. What I’m asking for is a sense of humanity beyond the tired old tenet that concealment of truth is not an abandonment of truth when it plays toward a perceived greater purpose. What greater purpose? Whatever, but please, tone down the fist-pumping and chest-beating. What politician would expose the dark, ugly mirror, the imperfect a-hole, the bright white shiny tooth cracked in the middle? I’d rather see a pair of Groucho Marx glasses with the furry eyebrows and mustache, a big red clown nose, or a fright wig. Then I might believe the indignation. A king down to a servant, master into a fool—now that I might buy.

Crumb Island

I’ve heard we are but footnotes at the bottom of an obscured page, cluttered pencil scribbles in the margins, roses on a headstone, graffiti on a grave-marker, ornamental shrubbery cut around the steps of glass houses. Great wild beasts, or quiet kids mulling in corners, brilliant with lint and candy wrappers, pockets full of dice. Living inside a spoiled child’s anticipation, wanting to lick the whole world, lucky to get a morsel. Adrift on Who-Gives-A-Shit Ocean, or maybe some concrete-encrusted north forty stamped on the armpit of Middle America. That I should deal with my own hang-ups, take off my tinfoil hat, wet thumb hitching up to the sky. Maybe someday when the devil comes as a happy accident, silly with horns and red-face—no choice but to take that pitchfork and scramble up something useful. My meager oeuvre maybe to be discovered by a weepy grandkid, rummaging through a cobwebbed attic for heirlooms amidst forgotten junk. It won’t be the nostalgia that hits, rather—the Scribble of my Truthful Dagger, the Dagger of my Truthful Scribble, or the Truth of my Scribbled Dagger. First scene: me as a kid squeezing my butt-cheeks together, trying not to shit my pants at the register of a grocery store, parents gabbing away with the cashier—finally, me letting loose, letting nature take its course. A muzak version of “Sweet Jane” playing over the intercom, a soprano sax jamming the lyric-less melody where Lou Reed would sing: “And there’s even some evil mothers / Well, they’re gonna tell ya that everything is just dirt.” Cut. In a grainy flash, squinting for eye-poppers inside dusty aisles at The Last Bookstore, I still have hope enough to believe that I might open up to find A Life Not So Different From Yours, or A Life So Different It Takes You Somewhere Else. When words seduce and complicate like hot carnal infractions—juxtaposed, flesh pressed against flesh—cry out for Great Mama of the Mongrel Muse, Gritty Queen of Funk, let go, climb up those dyed auburn locks, those espresso dreads, grab hold and swing on that grey armpit hair. Like an anti-hero from an unreleased take, a blooper cherished by fans of the director’s cut, reach out from the Great Beyond, snatch up and snap the cord. Yelp out a quasi-religious slur, smash in her cagey disposition. Snag a piece, however miniscule, make art with that Batty Bitch of Chaos and Inspiration.

Alan Dunnett

From his Civil War sequence

Instruction

And then I went to the elders who said,

Do not give up. It is hard but do not.

You will be tired. You will taste defeat

but you must go on. Learn from everything

that goes against you. Make your enemy

your friend although you eat dirt. Take yourself

right away from this chamber of echoes

where men are lost in complaint and entrapped.

Defeat

With dark winter coming on, we went back

to the reservation, those who were left,

(we had nothing but ourselves in bare feet,

no blankets, no food – the horses were gone)

silent children with thin arms and swollen

stomachs, women with dry breasts, men with guns

we were prepared to lay down. Our masters

took us in smiling, seeing we would serve.

Now please know that in this moon we are dogs

but every dog has his day. Let them drink.

Let them smoke cigars and put their feet up.

Do you think we will just forget this shame?

Let every single drop of blood be weighed.

There will be an accounting and meanwhile

we are fed and grow strong under the yoke.

When they sleep, they will get what they deserve.

Burning the Land

Following a retreat.

Then they started to burn the land. We looked

down at smoke crawling and sent a runner

by the safe, secret pathway to Kimble;

still he would not come. In the hour of need

he would not come but in being alone

we took strength; we thought harder, weighing up

how we might hold sway over our lives

as we looked down at the slow smoke

and men moving with their own dark purpose.

I said to Marie again: we’ll end it,

no more living like this, I promise you.

We’ll go home, have peace. That is right, the way

it should be but first I must do this. Men,

she said, in a small, still voice. Well, please God

you win your day. God is good. Where is God?

I asked. Look hard but you will not see Him.

He is in us or nowhere at all. Pigs

are cleaner than these fire-abusers.

I’m telling you, God speaks in my actions

and, if I do not act, God is nowhere

and I am nothing. We are in a place

that is cold and beyond the sun’s long reach.

No one will help us. Men draw back and care

for themselves and that is their carelessness.

Our fathers fought for what we’re losing.

For them, it was not easy, either. No

time is easy. Let us be strong. Let us

stand up for others and return to light.

Then the air was silent and the red bands

of sky held their place in deepening dusk.

Far below, there was drinking and feasting

and a child called twice and Marie went in.

___

In Chains

Defeat but the war is not over.

At this time, we became slaves. Our masters

were pleased since we agreed with everything.

We did as they said and life was easy

for them. They grew fat. Down below, we slept

with rats and found a kind of steadiness

in only thinking as they did, only

doing as they said

but in dreams, Marie,

I am myself again. The children grow

each day and forget me… I will return.

In dreams, I remember captivity.

In Susa, I rusted in chains. Wet air

went to my chest in perpetuity

but I learnt patience unending, pursuit

of those men who did these things now and then.

I will return and you will forgive me

for the violence that has stamped our lives.

It will not be too late. I swear it. Love

was an incidental because business

came first. You know that will change. I swear it

though we’re older by a day, by a year.

It is spring again

and we should be free.

Each moment marks the face: blind, wrong moments

that carry death. The right moment will come

like an angel. I stand before its wing

and straighten my spine. The sun strikes my face.

Stand with me and break the spell of tyrants.

Chains can be broken and voices heard. Right

sweetens the air. Let us breathe and change the world.

Return to Violence

Time passes. Kimble takes control of the east while the narrator is left with the west where, 2 years later, things flare up again.

I had to send this message, Kimble, though

you bear the scars. They say your crops are good.

Here, the water has run out. We all die

daily. When I scratch myself on the dry

lips of my wife before I go to work,

I realise it will never end. Guns.

They speak of guns just like the time before.

If you do not fight, you are not a man,

they say, and you cannot fight bare-handed.

The people trust me. If I went alone

Into darkness with fire, they’d follow.

Then I must show no fear and be sure

of my beliefs although he’s tried to change

my mind ever since the whole thing started.

Don’t judge me harshly, Marie, when I leave

you and the children to do violence.

You say I should never have prayed. A lie

is what you call my prayer since I prayed

for peace. I will understand you in time.

Right now, I am going in hard. The jaws

of a mad thing are agape and drooling.

I am going in, deeper than ever,

Kimble. God is good. Allow me that. God

is on the side of the believer. I,

like him, with his unreasonable eyes, sad

and brutal and non-negotiating,

will kill him all ways again and again.

Whiskey bright betrayer –killer of time

fizzled into candles and light bulbs

I left you, hugged and smiled and done with

mountains closer than your faraway looks

an orchard of crooked limbs

I won’t even cry in your sleep anymore

carefully I slip into dying

rise up black foam to the top of the white city

hold the belly in before

the dusty light has closed the door on me

reached deep into the shadows

with the rasp of logic

quibbles with your voice

grown tragic with flaws

spread the compliments a little thin

lab rats await your experiments

ready and waiting

with coffee warm in your hands

Nightmare makes her rounds

the folded legs of gorgeous scissors

a hollow lantern dull with smoke.

You appear to have regained my senses

the shiny side of depression

you are someone close to stay apart from

catching onto real

I listen now for all your looks

holding up the sky and locking in the trees

it’s early for pouring out the wind

a girl deaf with the touch of men

the currency of darlings with counterfeit faces

colours change clothes with circles and squares

walk ahead of me, streets that shape the light

hum with the voice someone left for you

the lie built around your family

where have all the colours gone in the box of dark?

boxes that open at both ends of the bottle

I backed in with taunts of love

into the chattering mind

lights chiseling into bits of view

tightening the sky for another run at the sun

a smile comes eager to share

understands the look

undresses a drink

the shallow end of every conversation

talks you out of the room.

I’m ready for someone spoiled on lust and looks

her mind clangs with coins and keys

Who goes between a coffee and the cigarette

damping down light with snowflakes and fog

a soot drifted look

what the whiskey did, what the music wore, where the mountains hid, why the rain delayed

a riddle unlatched by the power of staying away

the scrape of your words sit in my attic

piss against a shy mountain

hug close in the brittle scratch of your hair

with a grip on your lip

a moment comes between us with intense light

an ocean stretches out with your hands

a river takes a whisper to shout up a canyon

a gift that shimmers

Light runs out of your mouth

what rain shines up for the wind

the crumble of strawberry houses

will not remember if you hold them

the grip of polyester on wooly minds

the lace of generous trees

the bulge of grey mist

Love is a jinx

knuckled under to the boot of the Earth

I thought I saw us far away and shiny

your figure slips from my fingers

puts down my guitar and remembers.

Anatomy of Migration

Older than time, migration is the story

of survival. Change and betterment,

desire and dreams put motion into feet.

The first stirrings begin in the brain. Reason

catalogues gains and losses, credits and

deficits. Movement becomes compelling.

New visions bring desires to the heart.

Collaborator of the brain, it fantasises

greener places on the other side of the globe.

Eyes become alert, spotting dangers before

they arise; stealth and caution rule the feet;

the alien speech ties the tongue to silence.

Hair, more passive than others, is the first

to protest at the change. Climate plays

the ruler; willowing tresses must straighten,

the growth made sparse, the sheen can’t stay.

The innards fail to cope: kidneys to filter liquids,

liver to process food, the body functions harden.

Turning native comes at a cost. The identity

is recorded and must not change or, asylum can

be withdrawn. Deportation is round the corner.

Peter Dudink

Dianysus’ Indecent Poem

Tribe of the how are you!!

The happening and well-to-do…

I have cried

for the powerful, rich and successful,

and just a bit for the poor children

blasted and broken by big-time dolts,

by hunger, despair and

oh, did I mention

the greedy blasted dolts?

No, I have not turned to violence, not just yet

I have been a slave of the pen,

in a comfortable poverty

fought inner battles

against despair, against eternal pity,

to give the children nutrition,

I have sought the milk of happiness

But look at this mess!

roughshod and too rushed

I manhandled my words,

and spurted this pretty fountain

of boiling black blood.

Ah, there’s no treasure in this chest,

my children,

for I am but a man.

but you, oh ladies of the nice hairdo,

so dressy and endowed,

hunters of new fangled freedoms,

envy of the emperors:

flaunt your teaties!

your sculpted, uplifted busts,

drive the poet-man mad

with jealousy.

Bah, your empty breasts feed no one!

call all the weak, the starving,

and mentally malnourished,

with their millions of tiny gnashing teeth,

I call the children,

on this day of love

to devour you.

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

there’s ha-happiness

Grecian style.

I’m so anachronistic!

I think I’ll go admit myself

to Tomorrow’s Sunny Meadows

Mental Asylum

for dairy cattle

and eat purple grass

with my fellow ilk

until the day I surely shall pee

the best curdled milk

you ever did sneeze.

But wait – my dear,

for proof these words mean happiness

squeeze out, just for me,

the most rottenest

carefree smile.

Alan Dunnett

Civil War

Start

This is what we did: we crossed the river

under the shifting light. Everything else seemed

the same but we knew nothing would ever

be the same again. I turned to Kimble

and he smiled. What’s next to do? Burn the land.

Destroy bits of ourselves that are not him.

Some nights, I fail to remember reasons

or else remember them as dead things, things

I could make an effort to understand just

in a grim way. With fingertips, I press

my brain but it is not understanding.

It is memory, an arterial

injunction determined lifetimes ago,

disconnected by natural erosion

from passion. However, it is easy,

then, or easier, to deploy. Duty

and practice give the professional touch.

If I get home, I might sleep a little

but for now, with the river behind us,

I am inhaling smoke. They say he’s mad

and will last the winter. I cannot tell

what comes with spring. Renewal, even-handed,

draws from the young light without distinction.

You smile, Kimble, and note the wind has changed.

Early (Bloody) Incursions

We took the first city last night. I looked at

my hands missing a piece of comprehension

and said to Kimble: what now, Kimble, what

are we doing, these are our people, what now?

Already, the phone is ringing. New friends

want to show support. They sort of believe

what they are saying. I know I said no

going back. I know what I said. I knew

in my heart there would be no going back.

Maybe it was the boy, staring without

a father now. Am I his history?

Anyway, we go forward. That is clear.

They are sending virgins in white dresses

but first Oh God we must burn and destroy.

Practical

I denied the child and in different ways

said you were another person. Beneath

the caff light, I explained I was going

to Lima on an expedition. Back

whenever. How much money do you need

assuming I admit to this? How much

does it cost? In the time it takes to drink

one more black coffee, we shall resolve things.

Last night, a man shot at me. London’s not

what it was. You could die in an instant

that is immeasurable. Stop your coughing.

Let me sort the coffee and then we leave

separately. A reconsideration

would be too much. Do not now speak of love.