Poetry F – The Recusant

Poetry F

Naomi Foyle

Grey Sunshine

after b/w by Niall McDevitt (22.02.1967 – 29.09.2022)

October and I stop

on the verge of this world

acknowledge two small beacons

of eldritch electricity —

a pair of poet ghosts

lit by fungal filaments

drizzling onyx sigils

in the incandescent grass

you were born in Limerick I the same night in Islington

we met on our 39th birthday in a clapped-out white BMW —

I in the back with my Belsize Park beau Diana driving

up to a cold curb where you quaffed and quiffed

guitar case buttressing a lamp post Blake’s prints under your arm

squeezed in beside me and we were off

a night-scented bouquet of bohos and bon mots floating

through London to someone’s drunken boat on the Thames

where at a party being thrown for neither of us

we learned we both wrote poetry both

had backpacked round Europe with a tattered Rimbaud

when you strapped on your guitar sang Blake’s Songs

I fell silent

. . . don’t remember which ones . . .

no one had a phone

no one ever recorded those Songs

no one can delete

my first memory of your face ‒

haloed in the sulfur of Soho

and a faint cloud

of your February

breath

oh those Facebook photos of your last weeks

bedding down now in my mind —

your stoic flair a salt and dandelion poultice

I press against the axe wound

to my root

You nearly always had a girlfriend; I, a boyf ‒

except for that night you stayed at mine in Brighton after a gig.

I rolled out the futon, fetched the spare duvet, plumped your pillow

and, when you admired my undoubtedly-not-amber cat, told you the story

of my abortive trip from Cairo to the Temple of Bastet ‒ defeated

by a carriage full of smokers, only to be accosted by a man on the platform:

WHAT IS WRONG WITH EGYPTIAN TRAINS??

I towered over you, fists on hips.

You laughed. I went to bed.

Our spell unbroken.

That photo of us at the launch of b/w ‒

skulls touching, faces blissful

time twins joined at the head

Your death

singed the days

blanched the nights

snapped the spine

of twinship

drained my mirror

of movement

turned my trust

in cosmic order

into a negative

of faith

you

shocked silver hair

blackened grin

bleached soot-stripe suit

receding

as I

white-lipped

grey-skinned

black-eyed

flow on

an asymmetric 55 —

where once you walked

unseen, opposite,

in step

now a whistling wind

cold shoulders

my vision of the universe

into reverse

the past more alive

than the present

the future a tightening

trap

I write eco-science fiction.

But did not foresee your death.

I don’t recall snakes ever licking

my ears. And if they licked yours,

you never said.

We both studied Thoth.

Though when I gave you a Tarot reading

I unaccountably trembled

and the cards made no sense.

to keep my balance

I grasp

at black and white omens

serendipities

mystic correspondences . . .

Hey, little sister in the pub before the funeral

a polka dot scarf draped over the Metro box

at Victoria Station

a Tyger Angel Wing hoodie

on the train to work

I do realise that sightings

of black and white trainers

bearing our shared initial

are purely coincidental ‒

but still they burn

lightning bolts

in my eyes

To die at 55, in your prime.

To spend a tenth of your life dying.

To be tithed to death.

To not tell your friends you were ill

Because you wanted us to flower,

create our art, unblighted by grief.

You had the courage for tragedy.

Trusted we would as well.

Time, that sleepless magpie,

thieved so much from you ‒

but I will not let it snatch

the silver apples of your songs

the golden apple of your laugh

You came to a small, white bread, Tory city,

in long black coat, blue eyes sips of sky, stood

on a Cathedral lawn beneath a twice-toppled steeple ‒

and as an army of twitchers trained telephoto lenses

on invisible peregrines, you played your bodhran

to curious students, oblivious shoppers, coiffed chihuahuas,

obscene SUVs, tired Stagecoach buses, Sophia’s falcon ‒

and there you are still, opposite Waterstones and Wetherspoons,

a Pidgin English Irishman drumming up Britain’s Babel

of sinklands and tower blocks, prophetae and plague pits ‒

Soho sirens, Shakespeare’s Dark Lady, Sekhmet, the jinn,

Roundheads, Romans and Rastas, coopers, traders and hoodies,

Chagall’s psalm, Grenfell’s ashes, Blake’s Angels,

unreeling around you on the ecchoing green

The reason you have breast cancer

my oncologist told me

is because you have breasts.

Oh Niall, we’ve all fallen

asleep in the sun.

Please let us let

that one hot day

float free

blithe as a larkling

The reason you had skin cancer

is because you had skin

the white lambskin of your Northern kin

the thin parchment skin of a poet

the thrumming skin of a bodhran

and though that ‘black sun’ on your belly

proved a terrible beauty spot

the kind of ravaging beauty

it kills us to know

in your illness

in your humour

in London’s charms

and Julie’s arms

in poem after poem

impelled by the past

haunted by the future

struck by the moment

you became one

with the drum of the world

and our days are as grass

we flower among the toadstools —

those inky wigs, refulgent ruffled eggs

charged by a power beyond us

to divulge Earth’s grievous laws

if not in a grey dawn

where would black embrace white?

if the world was not hollow

how would love sound?

NOTE. Poet, musician and London ‘poetopographer’ Niall McDevitt lived with cancer for six years. A gelatinous spot on his abdomen, initially diagnosed as a ‘jelly mould’, proved to be malignant; although its colour was atypical of skin cancer, Niall, in an unpublished poem, referred to his melanoma as a ‘black sun’. The phrase ‘the incandescent grass’ is from the poem ‘Liberty Caps’ in Niall’s debut collection b/w (Waterloo Press, 2010).

Asking the Right Questions

‘What was that?’ he asked

just then, a slice through silence,

cruising through serenity,

a bomb in my world.

Why was it asked?

You may well enquire,

designed to track progress?

To answer our prayers?

Silence was broken

for a reason, fell down

like a curtain shrouding

truth, folding lives of men.

Colleen M. Farrelly is a Xennial writer (born in 1985) from Miami, FL, whose works have recently appeared/forthcoming in Spank the Carp, KDnuggets, and The Writing Disorder, among others. Her chapbook, Places and Faces, is available through Amazon.uk.

fat drops prattle on

the roof antagonizing

and punching my backyard ferns

powerless to fight

back like U.N. peacekeepers

standing watch in Kigali

April’s gentle breeze

coaxes young bromeliads

to show their reds and purples

from a winter’s sleep

I drink in the scent of life

restoration after war

M.V. Feehan

Each Sovereign Kingdom

I am better
In the small world
Of house and child
And mate
And dog
I know where everything is

The First Bird

As if the
ripple notes from your tiny breast
were shaped by some perfect link
between
your wings and throat
and the first soft thoughts
of the day.

And your happy past
is roused like rain
upon the parched fretting
that lived between the pillow
and my head at 3AM
to wake me
happy for the sleep
that came after all.

Happy for the music
you read in the buds
that rise likes notes in spring
unrehearsed but expert.

Look what you do!
Small singing feathery thing;
as light as the soul
should be.

M.V. Feehan’s work has appeared in a number of Canadian and American journals. She divides her time between the city of Providence and Cape Breton Island.

Family Portrait

Suit pressed,
hair slicked back,
Windsor knotted,
hands hidden
in deep pockets,
he smiles and poses

as she rests
a diamond-studded hand
on his shoulder,
her Oscar de la Renta floral
rustling in autumn’s breeze
as she gathers

their three children–
two boys and a girl–
to their side
before Joey’s romp
through the roses
dirties his pressed suit
or Ava’s headband
finds the koi pond.

“On three,
say cheese!
One, two, three!”

Click. Click. Click.

Like the Pyrrhic Victory
or the Potemkin Village:
the Family Portrait.

Colleen M. Farrelly, currently a data scientist, is a freelance writer and editor in Miami, FL, whose works have recently appeared in Four and Twenty, Lake City Lights, Step Away, Vine Leaves, and PostPoetry. She was born August 8, 1985, and has been a bit of a nomad over the years. She enjoys the outdoors, volunteering with Veterans’ nonprofits, and the poetry of Wilfred Owen.

Neil Fawcett

The Immortal Mosquito

When dust first rose to blind the fallow mass,

and Judas followed Jesus, I was there.

They crowned his head with thorns on bloodied hair

and dragged him through the streets beneath a cross.

I tried the blood that bloomed upon his face

and drank a glob of Jesus in despair,

but nothing in its essence could compare

to Judas blood so strong with thick distaste.

Since that time I feast Iscariot lines

their blood bulbs grapes that burst on stony ground

too full of juice to hang upon the vines.

It grows in yards with wire and barbs around

yet through the years they’ve fed me very well.

I dine on wine matured by infidels

Patronage

A man parked his car

at Lidl on the Aeropli road

and filled it with food and wine.

Watched,

by a thin man

from Pakistan

with a spray bottle

and a dirty cloth.

Uninvited,

he sprayed the screen,

scratched off dried bugs,

scrubbed it clean.

Grateful, ( for the opportunity)

the blood faced man

rummaged for a euro,

shook the cleaner’s hand,

smiled and drove off

to his villa in the hills.

Glasgow Girl

Do you know what she said,

that blond young girl from Glasgow?

The moneyless, motherless girl

sitting on the edge of her bed,

looking down to the million-souled city,

belly slopping with cheap soup;

The girl with hungry worry gnawing

the bone at the back of her brain

with ninety eight pence and some

soup to see her through until Friday –

This blond young girl child from Glasgow said:

‘I don’t think about the future

that’s ages away isn’t it?

I worry about money, but everyone worries.

Those with money worry,

just not about money.’

French Fields.

Home keys not pressed

rest.

Crosses trace the contours

white.

A chorus of silenced

chords

string across the wind.

R.G. Foster

Uneasy Quartet

Spying commerce

On a shady veranda,

The blue mink sprung

At naked knees

Well-torn, ‘mid garland swirls

of pinks, and such.

Davis, stood at the crag-top, observes

the ranks a-dangle, bone-built mutations

fat-draped, decided.

Abstracts o’ the scientists

Spin on upward,

Rhetoric in darkness,

Science & Politics:

Advancing Fantasies.

The princess, once,

Begun to think –

‘Would not

A melody brighten the house?’

But employment, alas,

was not her arena.

1959+

Titled it ‘Blue’

but it was green, GREEN

(as ole’ H.C…)

drought land, dumb stream, cassia,

a notable hole in advertising

‘Lips

Bring in

The smoke, burns in

Cells

‘til

Exhalation’

“Modern” discolouring

of an ecstasy.

ministers praise the imports,

Leisure sees itself retained

before the widening house-fronts.

Colleen M. Farrelly

Biography:
Colleen M. Farrelly, currently a graduate student, is a freelance writer and editor in Miami, FL, whose works have recently appeared in Four and Twenty, Lake City Lights, Step Away, Vine Leaves, and PostPoetry. She was born August 8, 1985, and has been a bit of a nomad over the years.

Sleeping

A blanked pulled tight over rags
half-hides
the figure curled up,
asleep on subway seats.

Beetle Bailey’s War

When “A” Company went to Peshawar,
Ole Beetle caught a bullet in the butt,
and they sent him home to dear Miss Buxley.

Cosmo went to three packs a day—nerves shot
after tour number four—cursing the day
that “A” Company went to Peshawar.

Sarge took shrapnel in the shins near Khyber
Pass, finished out at Walter Reed,
and they sent him home to dear Miss Buxley.

Killer’s wife couldn’t ease his pain, but his
Colt erased the scenes his mind replayed from
when “A” Company went to Peshawar.

When the mess took indirect fire, grenades
peppered poor Cookie’s last spaghetti pot,
and they sent him home to dear Miss Buxley.

Years later, General Fuzz pauses, then
speaks on the crisis in Chad, recalling
when “A” Company went to Peshawar,
and how war sent them home to Miss Buxley.

Portrait of Hope

Ugly spray-painted slogans scar the boarded-up building, pock-marks left by the disease of hate. The doctor opens his black bag and rummages for his tools: stencils, cans, and sketches. He preps his supplies under streetlight and performs plastic surgery on his patient‘s imperfections, precisely excising tissues marred by bullets and lovingly covering the salvaged surface with a portrait of hope.

Post-Flood

Neons welter, –

dim sparks writhing,

the river lies, without motion,

along its banks the white horses are tied

by beaten ropes, and the streets are packed

with a cadaverous congregation.

A cat staggers

by the cyclamen, dazed and drunken,

the shards of its teeth glisten

in the yellow moonlight.

The prophet is dead.

The kings emerge onto a balcony,

the mist-cords begin to stretch, unchallenged,

chariots creep from the vaults, bearing flags and banners,

damp violas cast rickety tunes, and the vair canopy, –

it reaches, embroidered with dragons and cuckoos.

The bright rags of a virgin

climb from a manhole, – the horses, awoken

with memories of destriers, break

from the riverbank. And she, she

smiles at a slumbering cat, and does not acknowledge

any reason to wake it.

Besiegement

Fog rises

to the balcony

of the watchtower,

beyond the city walls

vermilion spirits

dance on the plateau,

below, men

stagger from bordellos,

children shiver and stare

at the gallows, and here,

on the balcony,

he smiles,

carving a fresh language

into the railing,

for his smile is consumed by the fog.

Exultation

The morning rains

past the garret window.

On the bed, a mass

of fat and silk sprawls

on the blonde.

Far off, against the hillside, the heat

gathers and swirls on the floor

of the amphitheatre. And in the parados, the procession of gold

armour barks anthems of victory, marching with flags

and banners, – vair, bronze, tigerskin, – projecting the gold

face of the trophy. Ragged children

crowd the theatron, crushing the foreign grapes

underfoot, singing and shoving while they chew the meat.

On the orchestra Paris stands,

riven and bleeding, his head upturned, his chin erect, –

she leans against the window.

Wrapped in a frayed gown,

she shivers, behind her,

the commander smirks,

humming his distant tunes,

watching the harlot’s hair fade further.

Jim Ferguson

fifty-one

for Marion & Eve

now that we are fifty-one

many things done and others not

still we don’t want to be caught

on our deathbeds with regrets

how we recall our smoking teachers

belting us for doing the same

and it was meant to be better if we were talking

the Inglish of the Queen

rather than our West of Scotland ‘slang’

which wasn’t allowed in the classroom then

unless of course it was Rabbie Burns

his auld language was fit to be taught

but the language of our parents

of our homes and of our streets

most definitely was not deemed fit

for the expression of finer thoughts

now that we are fifty-one

we’re free almost from that

at least

wir almost free frae that

Ryan Foster

The Cake

my teeth snapped –

the chime of failure

& frosted steel

rang throughout

the hall.

all those brains,

personality,

ambition –

all lay broken

on the whalebone

desk. seduced

by gleaming

mouths, the smile

of this horde, oh yes,

it was healthy

stuff, i could see that.

then the leers,

the laughter,

rebounding

off the ceiling –

‘he’s useless!’

and down the

bloodless

desperate throats

swept the

shards of promise.

Colleen M. Farrelly

Teachings of a Street Prophet

Inarticulate teachings of a street prophet
ramble from his cracked, blistering lips; how can he
teach of the intricate, intimate, infinite?

I promise myself it will only take a minute
to hear his incoherent arguments, sure to be
inarticulate teachings of a street prophet.

I pause and take his pamphlet out of etiquette,
cringing inside. How can one without a degree
teach of the intricate, intimate, infinite?

Dirty, crazy, God’s self-appointed advocate,
he reeks of alcohol. His slurred words are only
inarticulate teachings of a street prophet.

At my lab, I toss his pamphlet in my wastebasket.
Reason drives science, science reason. How dare he
teach of the intricate, intimate, infinite!

But then I realize this unshorn, raving prophet
is a person—valued, loved—and I begin to see:
inarticulate teachings of a street prophet
teach of the Intricate, Intimate, Infinite.

Junkie Love

Romeo and Juliet huddle close
to the cooker near boarded up windows.
Rail thin, shivering, sweating, shaking, she
fumbled her belt and pleads, “Me next, baby.
Please? You know how I get when I miss my dose.”

Juliet rolls up her sleeves to expose
a good vein. Her age and naiveté shows;
she can’t do it herself, so they must be
Romeo and Juliet.

Warmth envelops her as heroin flows
through bruised, scarred veins, and her restless mind slows
as she nods off. Romeo lovingly
covers her with the tattered blanket he
found outside, hoping she never outgrows
Romeo and Juliet.

A Place Called Afghanistan

I sit in class and stare at the red nine of ten
atop my week’s chosen spelling test. We taught
our teacher where this place is: Afghanistan.

Fourteen years later, hear the rat-a-tat-tat,
feel the dust mix with sweat in the sweltering heat
and toss the backpack into the tattered tent.

It’s a world away, forever etched in our hearts—
names, dates long forgotten by most of the world
outside these mountain trenches—we few it haunts,

who’ve seen the children laughing, shouting strange words
in Pashto as we pass treacherous terrain.
At home, symbols of our country’s best or worst

decisions; here, we grieve, never forgetting
those we’ve lost in the Valley in the ‘Stan.

Baiting the Barbarians

Up and at ‘em! Rise and quit whining!

Today’s the day we fight to the death

to defend the right of our new BNP MP

to discuss ‘the British genotype’, immigration,

and the evidence for the Holocaust

up at leafy Sussex Uni.

Look sharp. No sickies this morning.

You, the chap from The Guardian,

forget your chinos. Grab a tub of woad,

smear it all over — don’t forget your bollocks.

Nice! Now drink this triple espresso:

if the berserker can’t go to Rome …

And you, the famous British-Muslim philosopher of science,

here’s a gáe bolga: practice your stance.

The seven barbs spring open on contact,

so remember, don’t touch the tip!

It’s an honour to die by this weapon – aim

for the Vice-Chancellor, or Head Librarian at least.

The lesbian art critic and eco-feminist activist

can commandeer the chariot:

one whip-smart woman to take a crack at the reins;

the other to crouch on the yoke, swinging a double-edged sword.

It’s easy when you get the hang of it.

Just don’t fret about the horse.

Remember, the university will have a ton of books.

Ivory’s illegal now, so they’ll hurl them

from a Tower of Babel. Some 2012 hopefuls might show up

with rifles, javelins, shot puts. Watch out

for the shot puts. Even if they miss your skull,

they can really crunch a number on your toes.

And of course the PM is aching to call in the army —

give the new tanks a good work-out,

warm up the troops for Tehran.

What? You’ve got a copy deadline tomorrow?

It’s your turn to look after your son?

The fascists can fight their own battles?

Yes, I dare say we can.

But it wouldn’t be half as much fun.

James Fountain

Work Horses

Sparrows cant, chirrup along the rooftops,
the morning moans, jolted back from night,
forcibly the world’s machine moves,
cogs climb into cars, engines groan into action,
as regimented life kickstarts itself,
wheels ignited, pistons firing, all in unison.

In the commotion, tempers flare, housed in unstable
fortresses, where cars career toward their goals
hap-hazardly, as humans hurtle to work,
aiming to avoid lateness, the angry manager,
the morose head of department, afeared
of losing their treasured occupations and incomes.

And happily installed in their batteries finally,
coffee is consumed rapidly to cement wakefulness,
though the irony is that the brown hot liquid
irritates the nerves and causes more tension,
office terrorism and email wars, hatred
for life itself, for the source of this creation.

Trio

As the rain cascades, skidding through
making the sky molten, a seething grey,
the mind awash with thoughts, flooded
in the midst of futurity, three figures
tramp the city streets.

The day’s work done, cars glide boat-like
along the rain-soaked road, the fizz of tyres
sounds as the work-stained faces of the masses
pass hurriedly along Oxford Street, umbrellas
like crosiers, leading them forward,
bags strapped over shoulders.

The trio’s path leads them through London,
from one rain-soaked alleyway to the next
in search of shelter as the pavement glitters
tantalisingly, like diamonds, fool’s gold,
shaking off the gnawing tiredness accumulated.

An hour later, in a shelter, a polystyrene cup of minestrone,
some bread, the stars twinkling overhead,
these three drowse wearily, conversation kept
to a minimum, the moon lurks like a giant eye,
the clouds dispersed, though the damp remains.

Al Khobar at Night

Mechanical monsters hog the roads,

untamed and mismanaged, amid unfinished

buildings and desert expanses, in fifty

degree heat, among the natural desert lines

and undulations, a new empire is building.

In imitation of the west, these lines of men and women

stand ready with trucks and construction materials,

steel and glass structures, cables and pylons,

as the oil industry’s centre this nation senses

potential, an attitude in response to disapproval,

an uprising against discontent at this notion

that Saudi is desert, and thus uninhabitable

man’s mission to overcome the impossible vividly evident.

In the warm hair-dryer breeze of evening

I secretly steal internet outside my bosses’ apartment,

Islamic prayers are on loudspeaker from the cenotaph,

fill the dark dusty air reverberating with the ‘God’s will’ prophecy,

as the streetlights of the desert

reveal its motionlessness, and in the eerie silence

which follows, the city seems preoccupied

by it’s own spirituality, lost in the sense of self

and place in this universe, the unifying

force of religion binding its occupants in.

In the tranquil zone of night, I tread to bed

aware of the silence and stillness of desert

windless and motionless, the sense of emptiness,

a space for the soul, as ambition itself

quietly begins to stir.

JRTF

06/10/10

Michael Fenton

GUERNICA circa 21st Century

Feet walk on jutted pavements

heads filled with lasting scars

collateral destruction by the carnage displayed

Battle zones marched by foreign boots

fire on a blink – friend or foe

the ‘gods’ claim absolution

Wall graffiti in blood

acerbity of putrefied flesh

vultures hunched in satiety

Frozen frames recorded in archives

mortuary remains after autopsies

probed for reasons of concealment

The innocent stand in rows

by empty graves ready to seed

a harvest of scythed cadavers

Hyenas, moon circled, bay their dismay

their excrement valued by gold worship

the earth trod in quicksand oblivion

Shards of stained glass windows pierce beliefs

deities showed no concern

the cleavage of self regard exposed

Chris Firth

Evening Song

The sky is lamp blue,

The horizon black kohl

On the eyelid

Of evening.

The moon is a drum,

The single star smiles,

So high, so bright, so pure,

Alone.

Town lights flicker on

Below this hill top,

Thoughts drift through

Long shadows of curving streets.

Slowly

The moon will rise,

Slowly

All stars blossom,

Slowly

The night wheels in.

Join in, join in –

Inevitably

The whole world

Is in the song.

Thank you, thank you.

Slowly now –

This whole world

Turns into song.

Flight

In sleep

I became a bird of clay;

I was yearning

For the sweet breath of dawn.

That was me

Singing like an upstart jay

Alone out there

In the apple tree.

My life

Had been lived inside a glass jar

Until you came

Throwing me from a distance.

There was no sky

For me to fly in

Until you came,

Guiding from the certainty

Of the bright star.

Slowly

You hooked me

And bound me;

You lured me on strings

To the temple door.

Slowly

You hooked me

And led me

Through doorways

Filled with blue shadow.

‘Let go of everything,’ you sang,

Or maybe, ‘Hold on to nothing.’

It is never easy to translate

The precise wording of dreams.

‘Let go of everything,’ you sang

‘Hold onto nothing.

Let it all go.

Let everything go.

Chris Firth

The Winding Way

When I searched for you

All I found was shadow

Shifting around my feet;

You were not even gossamer

When I needed concrete.

When I rushed to you

You moved further away

As if playing a game;

You stood in the distance

Teasing out my name.

I took the winding path

Through scrubland wilderness

And you were always elsewhere

High up in the mountains

Or down in the city square.

When I hid from myself

I found you’d made a home

In the bolt-hole of my heart;

You’d led me on the winding way

Right here to the start.

There is no point in running now

You are always too fast,

Just ahead of the wind.

There is no point in running now

We always arrive

Just when we would have

Anyhow.

Night Page

A comma of moon,

And all the stars are words

Named in a night book.

There you stand, far off,

Aloof

Like an estranged friend.

I don’t even search for your face

In all this anymore

It’s hard to believe a God.

When parents betray us

And leave us frozen young

It’s hard to believe a God.

In strong families

Faith takes root deepest;

The tallest trees

Grow best in forests.

For us

It’s as though the map is there

But not the country.

The night book is open

But all the words have slipped away as stars.

A gentle rain falls

But there are no ripples upon the lake.

The Tower

Even when I had pure love

I yearned for purer;

I could not drink

Enough of wine.

Like a thirsty fool on his raft

On a flooded river

I dipped my cup in too deep,

And so it ran over.

Like a frantic new city

I built my towers higher

And higher,

Believing that I could crowd

Everything right inside me.

Not even daylight

Could reach my teeming streets.

When the stars were out

I worshiped the sun;

When the sun was up

I crowed for the moon;

When she came

I saw that her face was all glamour,

A mesmeric mirror,

A cold stone clock.

Not good enough!

For years I twittered on,

Missing your gift

As the birds all around me

Sang simply

Of dawn.

Naomi Foyle

Ancient History

Assyrian warriors planned invasions twice: once sober

and once drunk. Swimming the Tigris hugging goats’ bladders

they prayed for giant angels to guide them after death

through iron gates now standing in a museum corridor.

Desert wolves, they ruled their age, with savage pride creating

Babylon and cuneiform tableaux ― the virtues of their king

crosshatched across his portrait, as if an army of small birds

had marched a hymn of praise upon his stage.

The Assyrians were also early body sculpture artisans,

from cypress sap and camel tongues engineered machines

to build their calves into the shape of conch shells,

the trumpets of their Gods …or so I whisper in your ear…

as in this hall of infidels, I pause, trying not to hold you —

who once harnessed every natural force to come down on my fold.

Snapshuts

So much is lost forever

unless we blu tack postcards

to the wall.

Naomi Foyle

English Eccentrics In Love

Not just his tiger rugs and scorpions,

all of Stanley Spencer’s paintings make me think of you:

their rich palette like the quarried colours

of your kisses; their untamed quaintness

like the way you sometimes brush your hair.

And the artist, I am sure, would approve of your desire

to start a new religion, just to worship women.

When the virgin Stanley married, he painted the Resurrection

in his village churchyard: souls arising from the soil

in tribute to the earthly succour of his wife.

After divorcing Hilda, though, he fell

hard for a dyke, painted Patricia naked

beside a leg of mutton, his own ineffectual

appendages — glasses, genitals, head — dangling

blue and strangled over her supine disdain.

I’m sure you would have warned him, man to man,

but when he offered his model all his money and his house

Patricia and her lover had a little chat,

agreed that she would walk the aisle with him ―

Stanley slept once more with Hilda on the wedding night.

Patricia scarpered six months later

(back to Dorothy’s warm bed),

unperturbed by carnal knowledge of our Stan.

Spencer, undaunted by the weakness of the flesh,

wrote love letters to his Hilda for years beyond her death.

Who’d choose to be a painter or a muse? God knows

I smiled when you announced your chosen deity. But

though gold rings have never come between us at the altar

we anoint; though women also are to me the staff of life;

still I suffer like a wife the fluctuations of your faith.

Leaves tremble, water shimmers when we touch,

swans sail down our river in the night.

But the red brick walls of factories and chimney stacks

bulge between us in the moonlight

when you rise to go back home before the dawn.

Perhaps I do deserve someone unswerving, who’ll build me up

with patient brushstrokes in his heart. But if you did

would I adopt Patricia’s joyless gaze:

irritated icon, shark in lace garters,

martyr to the marriage bed, a girls’ girl to the end?

David Francis

Our Street

Down the drowsy drizzly street

by the winter scarecrow tree

a line of parked cars,

the lousy models

there is a lot

of brown brambles

and lint-white trash

where the tinker lives

before

the sidewalk slopes

crookeding the foundations

of the narrow houses

in the little room

between the doors

I hide

then

up the street

I wander

where the blare, scrape

and scare of morning

mouthes:

the silent individuals

tread by

toward the subway

down, again,

the others, mostly women

eating ham and chatting

march toward the sweatshop

at the end of the street

wan black birds

and gulls from the canal

fly over the brick monstrosity.

David Francis

Van of Juveniles

Some “juveniles” just went by in a van,

their faces so dark in the night darkness

and they looked at me and I looked at them

huddled, guarded, indistinct, in transit;

myself at an outdoor cafe table

spotlit, and them waiting for the red light.

Their chief problem, like ours, is to kill time

but we are outside, free, oblivious;

they are like the inert scattered leaves of fall

dark-bound for the prison population:

the great waste of the undeclared empire,

the kept secret that we share among them.

But if you have ever been a teacher

you resent them and care for them much more

than you can admit to in your comfort

because they are part of your suffering

from the same target of hypocrisy,

the same angry arrow missing its mark.

Simon Freedman

Your Own Light

Hold none but your true self in high esteem,

in galleries deserted hang your art;

in this life let your own light reign supreme.

The right word is whichever word you deem,

no moral truth exists outside your heart,

hold none but your true self in high esteem.

The bright ones aren’t as brilliant as they seem,

your truth shines clearer when you stand apart,

in this life let your own light reign supreme.

The swaying hordes can never shape your dream,

their trust more deadly than a poison dart,

hold none but your true self in high esteem.

Though tongues may wag and petty minds may scheme,

the rain falls sweet on those who trust their heart,

in this life let your own light reign supreme.

The world forgot to hear your silent scream,

it still belonged to you right from the start.

Hold none but your true self in high esteem;

in this life let your own light reign supreme.

James Fountain

excerpts from Glaciation: a poem sequence

The clouds of this starless night cloak thought,

Obscure the tread of tireless pacing among dreams,

In the sun of meagre spacing, of buildings

Traced against the skyline, the mind reaches

A momentary peace, a fossilization of emotion,

While you in the far flung twinkling of Sirius appear.

To the shoreline racing seagulls, you motor through

This night, a tide of trembling feeling envelops

The senses, a glacial erosion creates a carving

In your country, hollows out a space where I once was,

Bringing a freedom, a lowland exposure yearned for,

And the stratosphere crouches, waiting to be filled.

The green lean pastures blades flow clean

In the wind, die smooth in the glow

Of light propelled, motored from within

As dimly the crashing sea reaches ears

Attuned to circumspect observation, elastic

In tones unloaded, the sky answers me,

Folds dull curling petals around the light,

Closes in, the dappled stream swings across,

And dim the sky answers, whispers amen.

Lean the sea projects her kisses, softly

Against the land’s lips, wet and wanton,

Relentless, the surf licks and steadily devours.

Soon the lunar cycle will push those kisses away,

And chance could bring you back for more, one day.

In gaze of stern, yet supple rock-clusters, the waves

Rock and intend harm, the alarms of yesterday

Smashed with scorn, blown out from within

The link pitched and secured, as steady hands

Bind in significance, fending off the weight,

As the tide turns to frustrate

Those who are less fortunate.

III: The Cliff Face

Here, the rock moves imperceptibly,

smooth through the rough ground

of peat and shale and fossils composed.

Wildly hang the crags at the summit,

cracked with age, from the weather wearing down,

a curlew cruising high overhead, wailing

for the coming of another storm,

the second in as many days, and mid-cliff-face,

three hundred feet up, four hundred from the summit

I try not to panic. I am young but have weathered

many a storm, the elements shall not have their way

nor do the strains of aching joints concern me greatly.

It can be done. I will wait for you, should I survive,

at the precipice, carve your image as I make each

movement, and hope that the trust I placed in you

was one of my wiser moves.

VI: The Surface

Here, the terrain is folded glass grass,

opaque in the open meadow sunshine blast,

as mellow in the open grassland beyond,

and high the cloud-clusters, opal-firing dragonfly

pollinated stemens, loose the cannon and send

their intended cargo into air, as bullfinch

stands and delivers his song, the sparrow hawk

soars overhead, talons ready, whilst

the juicy glow-worm squirms in the reeds,

the hawk knows the trick, knows the bullfinch,

senses his moment, plucks the air,

takes his share, to divide among young.

And mother sun looms on the horizon,

the surface broken, the mountain cragged,

the sea an open wound, gashed into the world,

magma beneath, the cliff-face above,

obstacles for the human heart, buried beneath,

and low swings the empty hand,

yearning for nothingness.

VII: The Water-Level

Now the ground-water has reached its zenith,

and the oppressive seeds have been dispersed, far

from their place of birth, migrant seeds to migrant lands

splayed from their intended path, yet settle and manage

as they can.

The water-level consumes houses,

which become boats, treading in shallow waters,

attempting to support life, to be of some solid use,

silently life adapts, bolts itself magnetically,

so that nothing changes, everything moored

and secured.

Soon, I will leave here, and seek

out the sea. The inland waterways are not for me,

never were. But here, inland, did I seek you.

Or rather, I imagined you seeking yourself.

In many ways I thought I was there,

but that was earlier,

in my youth.

VIII: The Sea Bed

Here in the blue-green depths

lie layers of settling sediment,

skewed by the time beyond time,

before the first man, before orchids named,

as life shows itself through scales,

gills contracting, fins waving,

clockwork eyes unmoved,

sharpened by the dim light,

as atoms secure beneath

allow the life above to breathe

in liquid encasement,

drowned in darkness in the deep,

captured in nothingness.

Pragmatic fish slither their way forward,

the hull of a ship passing high overhead,

its engine emitting sound-waves, bubbles of oxygen.

Its lights illuminate the top layer,

a school of yellow mantra following its headmistress

whilst other pupils mutter among themselves,

as the sky closed above jostles to be seen.