Poetry H
Simon Haines
Summers Then
Summer days were longer then
we played outside all day,
not tempted by alluring screens
or interfering strangers.
The buddleia next door
brought brightly coloured butterflies:
red admirals, tortoiseshells, and more
with names we didn’t know.
Without fear of predators,
innocent and confident,
though on display and vulnerable,
playing in the sun.
Wine of the Month – Pinot Noir
At twenty pounds a bottle you can’t go wrong:
it’s predictable, but can pack surprises.
Hints of hibiscus with raspberry lurking,
it’s elegant and silkily smooth.
If you’re tempted by this charming wine
but can’t quite afford twenty quid,
there’s a food bank special at Trashco this week:
only five pounds forty-nine.
Nels Hanson
The Treasure
I keep forgetting where the treasure is,
no warm jewels under the dragon’s
sour scales, not the lode in the crystal
cavern of gold veins webbing the quartz
walls. You can’t reach the fortune
by secret elevator to the penthouse or
guessing the combination on the bank’s
hidden vault within the sealed vault,
the special safe that holds the pirates’
doubloons from the wrecked schooner
off Santo Domingo. Nor by the beauty
of movie stars, classic profile and pure
slope of body like the evening hills, or
fame, your profile stamped on every
coin. All the maps are wrong, the traffic
signs to the matinee’s sneak preview.
The treasure is right here with you and
me where we fail to notice the antique
chests of diamonds and rubies throwing
open their locks and heavy lids as we sit
together morning and evening and return
again to each other like the rising sun
and the different moons and their stars.
Graham Hardie
Glasgow
Glasgow you could not afford me the spare change
For the ferryman’s boat.
Glasgow a packet of lights and some Earl Grey April 26th, 2008.
Glasgow the green leaf of the Botanics
And the silver dollar of the whore’s ghetto.
I have breached the walls of insanity and let out the chaos.
Glasgow when will you rebuild the fire?
Fuck the City Chambers and the dead statues of George Square.
Fuck the traffic cops and the paranoid delinquents.
I write to feel alive for Blair’s Britain has killed me.
Glasgow when will you show me your nakedness?
When will you flower in the light?
When will you adopt your prodigal sons?
Glasgow why do you shit in your own streets?
Glasgow when will you be true to your word?
I’m admonished of your intolerable sin.
When can I reach for the sky above the designer labels
And executive coffee houses with my honurable intentions?
Glasgow you swim in the twilight of heroin
And the sawdust of greatness and I am but the poet of your vanity.
Your heart is what is left of me.
You speak like the widow at her husband’s funeral.
There must be thoughts in the anger you possess.
Quinn is in Amsterdam with his summer delight
And the prostitute’s cream.
Are you watching the barge on Maryhill canal
Or is this just some of your banter?
I’m willing to forgive you.
I want to rejoice in your happiness.
Glasgow shout no more for I am but a stranger
In your docklands.
Glasgow the thistle has struck you down.
I didn’t seek your truth for your bosom is swelling
With stabbings and murders.
Glasgow some of the most beautiful woman walk by your side.
Glasgow I was a revolutionary
But then I never had your stubborn pride.
I watch him talk with the dragon at every chance I get.
I stand by your estuary for hours and hours
And gaze at the gathering of grey herons on the shore.
When I go to the Barras my mother waits and I feel at home.
My head is the lost city of Sodom.
You are the witness as I read Rimbaud in your parks.
My psychologist got divorced and is now in therapy.
I say the Lord’s Pray every day.
I have gifts of bread and wine and lateral visitations of an alien kind.
Glasgow I listen to you and you confess what happened
To Marlene, 7th October 1997, as she jumped
From the Towers of Barlanark.
I’m speaking to you
Are you going to survive
And let your heart be ruled
By the malignant suit in the black wagon.
I’m obsessed with sanity.
I search for her all the time
And when I find her she looks at me form behind a glass door,
Desperate to be return to her family.
I see her in the face of my sister and my brother
But she is always unchained. I am unchained. God is unchained.
I think I belong to Glasgow.
Bush is fighting with me
In the land of the free
Perpetuating the material disease
As Sheriden the hope of the radical few
Fucks swingers, as the sweat breaks the fake
Suntan of his blemished skin.
What do I have but a box of valium, thousands
Of poems awaiting my death and publication,
The sight of an Osprey on Loch Chon
And twelve days and counting in an asylum.
I whisper nothing of my illusions nor my beliefs
Nor the multitude who chase poverty down the street
And who are housed in the bins of the rich
And whose only recourse to justice is prison or rehab.
I have banned the brothels of Charing Cross, St Enoch
And Venus will be the last.
My ambition is to die having been loved.
Glasgow what do I write in your elegy to celebrate your heroism?
I will go on like Napoleon, my struggle as significant
As his defeat.
Glasgow solace and honesty does not come cheap.
I’ll give you both for a grand.
Glasgow release Rose Gentle.
Glasgow save St. Mungo.
Glasgow your addicted sons and buckfast daughter must not die.
Glasgow I am the Anderston girls.
Glasgow when I was eight my father took me to church
Where they told stories of Jesus sang on the rickety piano
Drew his picture on fine paper knelt in sermon and prayer
Conversed with the old and dying babtised the unfaithful
And I would look up to the roof above me and watch as it opened
And proclaimed me the second Christ.
Everybody must have been an unbeliever.
Glasgow don’t drown with your salmon.
Glasgow it’s them Corporate Capitalists.
Them Corporate Capitalists them Corporate Capitalists
And them Muslims and them Corporate Capitalists.
The Corporate Capitalist wants to carve your spirit out
Of your bricks and mortar. Their ruthless. They want everything
Even the Orchids in your Glasshouses.
He wants the land on which you were born, the people who love you
To march on his wheel to keep it turning. He wants “Big Brother”
To move in and live with us. He wants to eat the bones
Of this city in his gluttony.
If not then what, packing shelves in Iceland or perhaps Farmfoods
To pay for his robes of gold?
Glasgow stand for your people.
Glasgow you are what you have made me.
Glasgow am I right?
I must leave you now.
It’s true I don’t want to touch the Devil’s cloth
Or serve customers in a sandwich bar, I’m hopeless
And too psychotic by far.
Glasgow I’m finally turning my blind eye the other way.
Bruce Harris
Rooms in an Empty Palace
Shrouded chairs and dirt-dim windows
something vaguely scurrying
across a vast imperial carpet
defecating on the way
The finery in the wardrobes
is gnawed in threads and bloodied
when King Charles’ head hit the basket
no gown remained unsoiled
The silver vanished long ago
when the Bastille boys broke in
opening and closing mouths
at a grandeur unconceived.
The battlements are in straggled white
no defence against the pigeons
Boney in an island prison
invincibility is lost
The wind wafts through empty rafters
on naked winter days
like the wails of Tsars and Shahs
in places newly cold
Dark black basement bottles
lie inert in countless thousands
piled above the unseen obscene
rotting Hitlers, putrid Stalins
Lavish wall high tapestries
lately done in vivid red
are crumbling like a certain wall
when the axes did their work
and now the Arabian sofas
gilt edged and velvet lined
are buckling at their nibbled legs
too torn to keep their stuffing
They’ve all been in, one time or other,
the god men and their mysteries
and when travellers break in finally
they find there’s no one there.
Jan Harris
your photograph in the newspaper
the burka frames your eyes
owl eyes in saffron dusk
amber where ashes reside
I lift you from the page
feel your small warm weight on my hand
fly little bird
fly on silent wings
there are men in the forest
and earth is hard as stone
In Afghanistan
He crouches against the grey wall,
leans back against his pack.
His hands, hidden in thick gloves,
point the rifle down, between splayed knees
to the safety of wet earth.
A black balaclava covers his head,
renders him anonymous –
nothing but a burka would hide more.
Snow settles on the dark wool of his coat,
on the laces of his boots,
on his lashes.
Only his eyes are visible;
revealing the man.
Everything else is soldier.
Marc Harris
A Neighbour to Wilfred Owen
At the pounding of the mortar,
the death-rattled breath breaches our wall.
Entrenched in sleep,
the young poet recoils in darkness.
And he, shocked shell of a man,
broken by the rifles’ rattle,
is penned in by dreams,
herded with the cattle.
And blinded by the blackened snow,
bugled to the slaughter,
masked, unmasked;
choked by a foul green hell,
drowned
amidst ‘choirs of wailing shells’*.
[*from Wilfred Owen’s ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’]
[N.B. Wilfred Owen was probaly the most famous poet of the First World War. He was tragically killed just as the war was coming to an end.
This poem was written as a ‘dream poem,’ in which I dreamt I lived next door to Wilfred Owen. In fact, the house where Owen once lived was
only yards from an old flat of mine. A friend used to rent a room next to Mahim (the name of Owen’s old home). My friend’s bedroom was adjacent
to the wall which separated his, and what was Owen’s bedroom. Mahim, is number 69 Monkmoor Road, Shrewsbury, Shropshire, United Kingdom.]
Mia Hart-Allison
No Accounting For Waste
The landfill site gapes capaciously,
indecent exposure defiling the hillside,
containing the same utter nullity as death,
like the noose around a suicide’s neck.
Everything here is deemed to be
as useless as a nun’s fecundity.
The cruel, complex stench summons distant insects
to gorge themselves giddy on society’s leavings.
Here, where nothing’s too good to throw away,
the shifting dunes of refuse mount up like excuses.
The on-site incinerator’s smoke, a furtive nocturnal emission,
noxious fumes released only at night when darkness
is kind to such secrets, but can’t prevent the fouling
of the unsuspecting clouds, that quickly grow soiled
and stale as creased sheets the morning after.
From the chimney’s rigid middle digit
the pollution taints the rain that fosters the site’s consumptive decay.
When the rare sun stings glints from ragged metal shards,
fool’s gold gleams deceitfully, seething meaninglessness.
This place of negation is pernicious as
a bloated, monstrous foetus, growing out of control;
indelible as perfection, it has the tenacity of cancer,
expansive enough to block a worm-hole’s throat –
harsh proof that there’s no accounting for waste.
And though dogged nature never refrains,
the blighted life that results from death’s abundance
is saturated with latent rage and pain.
Even recycling’s lie multiplies the flies;
and, among dirty sepia debris acid-
green weeds flicker like an antique film reel.
This mass grave for remains of the living, a tomb
for the consumed, final resting place of the used,
Lying along the horizon: the corpse of a murdered giant –
both a vista of the perpetual past
and a preview of Armageddon’s aftermath.
Robert Hartness
Me Tyneside Da
He rode his boneshaker bike to Jarrow
Me Da did; past those Cookson fifteen streets
The Alkali pub, the Barium and Tyne slacks.
“Want a new motor bike?” His parents said
“No”, he chose to marry the girl he loved,
me Da did; that archetypal quiet man
My brother held me up to a window.
“Look there, Dada came home on his bike”,
me Da did; to a wriggling two-year old.
Long staircase, dark, scary and ominous,
wailing loudly, I climbed on hands and knees
to Dada’s warm voice from his looming shadow.
Blazing fire, Dada asleep, me awake,
Content; balanced on his reclining body
He loved me so very deeply; me da did.
Kevin Heaton
BP Penitence
Below briny, subterranean
throes, botched
Caesarean sections
and unsutchered
spleen ruptured
methane bile emissions
pressure build into
cardiovascular explosions
of apathy regret.
In Retrospect
Civil societies
do not
forever
flourish sown
upon the servile
pain and
suffering
of those whose
inherent rights
are vested in
the
blood
of a higher
baptism. The
land I have
come to love
still
mourns
the amourous
embrace of
immoral
prejudice.
Lost Continuum
Matter was formed then
came together, gathering
in the firmament. A fiery
orb of change was created
and given dominion,
illuminating the stars upon
which we gaze. Opportune
powers of stealth and cunning
fleeced our bastions of finance;
feeding the spoils
to Eastern Dragons.
The riverbed deepens, erosion
pulls at the roots of the mighty
sycamore, it succumbs.
Morn Not Her Passing
“Babylon The Great
is fallen”, who will
right her?
No one,
for she is not.
Crushed beneath
the weight of self
and apathy, captive
to vanity; as great
Alexander,
empires into dust.
This fickle mistress
not hence regarded;
bone marrow filtered
through hourglass sand,
ashes.
Remnants of armies,
anthems no longer sung,
forgotten.
Dah Helmer
- A Longer Journey
Makers of eternity
thunder and fear, I bring this
offering, my used soul,
in return for a length of life
longer than eternal,
a slash of lightning to break the dark,
sunbeams, a stillness that moves me.
This thin air, this breath,
a momentary escape, here, forsaken
and twisted, rotted like an old storm,
caught in death’s drift, hardened
by an acrid drip of ice.
If I could break myself, these habits,
these scattered moments. If I could cut
like heat through the final ice, melt,
spill, ooze, discharge a living hiss,
some eternal life.
I rush to you this offer,
crash into time, carry wind
in my lungs, waves of blood,
drums in my heart, I rush
and pass faster into this growth
of hollow space, a cold dull gasp,
lips mute, eyes dumb.
Do not sever this hope from me,
do not break me, here, on earth,
a longer journey, a longer journey,
good fortune, good luck,
a shot in the dark, more hours
on the clock, a longer journey.
Gods of eternity
thunder and fear, I bring this
offering, my used soul, broken,
dismantled. This is all I have
and you have so much.
- Cabernet
I savor this vintage
A red-swoon whistles
like a sailor
and my tongue’s waves
wash the essence to shore
Taste buds are spellbound
A whispering lift carries me
sedates my nerves
and even more is this empty glass’s
disordered drops along the rim
Smudged lip prints like breath’s vapor
a momentary ghost
moon sliding into water
fog snow
blood of sacrificial grapes
- Dictator
To those who forgive me
I loathe you
for you are weak
No
your voices are not worthy
you spineless living
dead things
worthless as dumb dogs
If not incarcerated
I would do it again
would squeeze everything
out of you
land
pride
dignity
your life
No do not say you forgive me
you are not gods
You have no power to forgive
you are impotent
After I vanish
I will haunt you to your deaths
and there
I will be waiting
to squeeze the light from your soul
until nothing but darkness
- Sadder Than Anything
An umbrella moves
through the rain
and in between each drop
emptiness
Morning’s broken light
far from the sun
trips over the rooftops
into the wind’s mouth
passes
over my eyes
and I hear footsteps
alone on the sidewalk
alone in the rain
only to stop and wait
for a dream or a green light
Then time passes
even darker
and from the sidelines
a burly boom
of far-off thunder
Raindrops tangle in my hair
raindrops sadder than anything
Neruda has written
- Useless Thoughts
Dark afternoon
light is blocked
Along the street
water streams noiselessly
falls into a hole
dwindles its time away
Winter is lonely
In its long sleep the shortest day
barely breathes
A somber gray
hangs in the air
the wind trills
like a cry
Looking out the window
my time dwindles away
and my thoughts pile up
My useless thoughts
that I store in notebooks
and drag through life
for no reason than
they are mine
- February
A bold frost hinders the heat
Wind rocks the dead flowers,
glass chimes, the old figs
A single bee asleep in flight
I have words to say about this
but they are frozen on my tongue
A few silent black birds
small bodies of coal
sway on branches
maybe napping, maybe dreaming
of a world they love
I lift my eyes
look at the February sky
ice cuts like malicious glass
then hardens my blood
At my feet
the affection of a cat’s rub
against my legs
Today I am not the one
to give it love
Still, I lean down
touch its head
and this thoughtless motion
better than absence
fills the emptiness
like a mother’s breath
a father’s cough
Amanda Hempel
Leaving
Stray leaves slap windshields, sudden as memory,
now that the trees have given themselves over to winter
arthritic black fingers scratching at the sky.
When the owls come for the scuffling rodents,
they will dive from these branches and return
as everything that falls from branches does.
Saucepan
We had a little saucepan I loved,
blue, speckled white like an egg,
the kind everyone’s grandmother had,
and it disappeared the way
grandmothers do.
Maybe one day I will find it
and hold it, turn it over
looking for some epiphany
like waiting for water to boil.
Extraordinary Thing
The rush of air and feathers
as a crow moves from housetop to trees
as if through the rooms of his own house.
Geoffrey Heptonstall
Le Pin Doré
This first light snakes through the shutters
Soon after the music,
A song she shall hear all day,
A perfect blue painted from the sea
Beneath the sun.
Yesterday the Mistral raged
In dust and swaying pines,
And raised an army against her.
Frail world in the dark sky.
Today there is still life, serene.
The City in Mind
The view from here is familiar.
We see how far it is
From the urban ideal,
Then we may propose
Where to begin living again.
A city of cypress easily burns.
A house of glass reflects on us all.
Then there are the cedars,
Cool in the shade of noon,
Shelter for lovers in a storm.
Though the ground may give way,
The fears are fire and flood and plague.
This city has seen them all
The City Discovered
And we wonder who lives here
Where the threads of attachment
Are woven in complex patterns.
Who calls the strangers’ case
In a city of shadows?
Truth may take every room in the house,
Only to be homeless again
Now a hard hand directs us.
Some may find a private place
In the light of experience,
The engine of imaginings
Written in unsupposed styles.
We seek the stranger within.
The City Exposed
Beneath the streets sleeps the anger.
Behind the anger is the blade
Glistening in the low light.
When money talks there is a sound
Out of the measureless depths.
The walls are whispers
From the world of chances
That float like feathers.
Consider the hope of the hanging man.
He dreams of seas in storm.
His words are wounds:
An autumnal afternoon,
Anniversary of war.
The City Remade
What rumour is heard,
Returning to source:
Raw like a wound,
Deeper than a dream?
Late leaves fall on stone and steel.
Better voices speak in the rain
Washing those elegant walls.
The woman in her café corner,
Accustomed to silence,
Smiles beneath the sunflowers
Painted on a sea blue wall.
Children are amazed by the rainbow
They follow all the way home.
What Other Thoughts Are Floating?
What other thoughts are floating
In every possible world,
When so many cities shimmer
In the water beneath our walk?
Another moon is rising:
It may be an omen.
The air is a void of silence
Waiting to be broken
By a gathering of doubts
In the lost, high moon.
We are going to the gardens,
Wondering where this city is
When we walk between worlds
Now the moon has vanished.
Every traveller has a city
That every citizen dreams.
Theatre of the Absurd
We were speaking of Beckett,
Of the lyrical anxiety,
Of several suspicions,
Emotions of many kinds,
Sometimes named for pity.
And the lives of strangers
Are a living memory,
A cry of the condemned
Submerged in dark chambers.
We choose like executioners
What we cannot hear
Even in the winter night.
The House in the Forest
The leaves of previous summers
Lie undisturbed in shadows
Of this bell jar world.
The colours of the wood
Are emerald and ochre
With shooting stars in mind
And a half moon even
In the morning sky.
Trees quiver in the chill
Of an early frost
Sharpening the air
Where desires are moving
Through to the open ground.
Shafts of sunlight soften
The earth which is Cezanne’s
As seen by admirers:
An abandoned garden revealed,
And then the scattered stones
That once sheltered the dreams
Of a hungry man.
Curracloe
A creature of the coastal waters
Is the wader
Who watches each day
In shallow sea.
Who knows what he searches for,
Always out on the cold shore?
Ripples of the tidal flow
Envelop him, though
His feet tell him to run.
One day, they say, he will drown.
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.
Clare Hill
Insomnia Part II – the Sandman Deserts
It’s 3.27 am.
The drunken brawlers have left
Saturday street behind,
retreating home
to upload their video clips to Youtube.
Next door’s dog has stopped
howling at door slams, taunting cats
and whistling pedestrians.
The but-ones are not having a scream
on their doorstep about
that slapper from accounts.
My mattress is lumpy.
The curry I had earlier
is making wind in the pillows
and the naan bread has wrapped itself
around my middle
like a doughy girdle.
I listen closely to the mould on my wall
spreading maliciously.
Car headlights turn my room
into a stuttering discotheque
with the sound turned down.
A breeze sends paper skittering
on tarmac, emptying recycling boxes.
My clothes hang, polyester skins
waiting to be fleshed out,
worn out, accessorised properly.
God, these pillows are flat.
I try relaxation, breathing techniques.
I end up thinking that, one day,
even respiration will stop.
The night has teeth, sharp angles
made more dangerous
by stumbling around with closed eyes.
Mine stay resolutely open.
I don’t know why I can’t sleep.
Chapeau
My hat is not made of tin foil,
that wouldn’t be cool, I’m no turkey.
(Am I, perhaps, a little chicken?)
In twenty-eighty metallic will be all the rage
but I’ll be Lucy in the Sky by then.
My cap has no name emblazoned on it,
no triumph of advertising vision here,
just a peak that limits eyesight.
It protects me from strangers, aeroplanes,
and stops the sky from falling in.
I don’t have to look at what scares me,
(everything.)
A chin strap would be nice, just in case
the wind tried to wrench it from me
or a pigeon took a fancy to black cord.
Sod it, I’ll stay inside, become a hermit,
order groceries online,
accept substitutes for out-of-stock items
and real life.
I’ll wear my hat, exist virtually in a world
where nothing can hurt me
(except for modem trouble.)
I want a bubble,
impermeable, keeping the outside out.
I have a hat,
the dye runs when it rains.
I stay inside to keep it dry,
I have to look after it,
to avoid damage,
avoid.
Charlotte
She smiles at me
you can’t see her
she is beneath my skin
her mouth a pale scar
keloid on my arm
she speaks to me
you can’t hear her
she whispers my name
her tone bewitching
hate bitch you are shit
she laughs at me
you prefer her
she is sexy
I am as nothing
compared to her
she compels me
a serrated blade
drawn across my skin
setting her free.
Leaving me trapped.
Anthony Hitchin
Family Tree
I imagine
you stood kamikaze proud
piloting your vessel to its final
destination
eyes
o p e n
passing your neck
through the loop
twine tight … .
You
were a warrior
reaching
through death to claim
his final victim …
your floating rictus haunts her still.
Dinner Guest
Merely average, another baby performing cribbed thesis,
jaws grabbing the ball on cue –
surprise! surprise! incredulous joy especially for you, all for
you
wrinkled crepe paper skin, I could put my finger in,
though I already know every inch of you,
splashed polite chit-chat-chitter -chatter-chitter-chatter tittle-tattle-tittle tattle
a gentlemen’s club, a spinsters knitting circle
school prefects, head-boys with wetted knuckles – what miniature masterpieces!
masticating swollen lifeless
objects.
Cactus
Forget Eden. It never existed and yearning for it only pollutes the present –
I have learnt this, I promise
You will not find it in the literary life, curio relics,
this poem is only here that you should miss the spines of
the cactus.
Nigel Holt
(1)
Faith-full
Praise be to god when all around is ruin;
when shopping carts are filled with blown-off limbs;
when concrete, glass, steel and grass are skin
across a Beltane landscape’s blood-shod whims.
Praise be to god when Ruth or Hala cries;
when corn is torn to shreds with gentle smiles;
when a bursting schoolbus (no great surprise)
becomes the smoking carcass of our wiles.
Praise be to god when hopelessness has failed;
when flesh is beaten to confess—and beaten,
does. Praise be to god when dying, jailed;
when tongues are twisted till words sweeten.
Praise be to god when all else has been taken,
for here, there is a turn—a turn to strength,
for when beyond the end and all’s forsaken,
you turn and praise your god, so if at length
your child is born, its worn out mother dies,
it’s not sadness in the miracle of birth
but serenity that falls from empty skies.
(2)
Old Grounds
The bitter coffee settles. The sheesha burns.
In a Baghdad café ex-Baathists haunt,
silent men make calls no one returns.
Interrogations, missing boys, old concerns,
are blocked out by an IED’s rough taunt.
The bitter coffee settles, the sheesha burns;
no one lifts an eyelid as the churns
of dust, of limbs, of screams, ascend. When gaunt,
silent men make calls: no one returns.
The snarl of sheesha smoke the slow fan spurns
twists around the bonhomie they flaunt.
The bitter coffee settles; the sheesha burns
as slowly as the truth, for though one learns
they’re back at work, the truth will never daunt
silent men who make calls no one returns.
Ghosts linger where cold coffee grounds fill urns
and whisper to an absent ear ‘You were warned.’
The bitter coffee settles. The sheesha burns.
Silent men make calls no one returns.
(3)
Gazan Candles
‘Resistance is feasible even for those
who are not heroes by nature’
– Noam Chomsky
When bodies blaze, small flames ignite;
when rage in men is at its peak,
there burns a deeper inner light
in those whose gut opposes spite;
the vengeance and the right we seek
when bodies blaze. Small flames ignite
a house, white phosphorescence, bright,
they char a child, take eyes, a cheek.
There burns a brighter inner light
when right is throat-cut in the fight,
when those who must be strong act weak.
When bodies blaze, small flames ignite
within the charnel of the night.
When will succumbs, when all is bleak,
there burns a deeper inner light
beneath a bushel, beyond gouged sight:
there flares the tallow of the weak.
When bodies blaze, small flames ignite:
there burns a deeper inner light.
(4)
House Call
For Dr Izeldeen Abuelaish
Another round of triage, another night;
three sisters and a cousin playing games.
‘Tell me you think it’s going to be all right’,
Aya says out loud to mask her fright.
Mayar can feel the fear that noone names:
another round of triage, another night.
Bisan instructs the girls, ‘Shush! Sit tight!’,
the nearby houses shrouds of dust and flames.
‘Tell me you think it’s going to be all right’
—the last words Aya utters. The Israelite
who put the shell straight through the bedroom blames
another. Rounds of triage, another night,
‘even kids…’, he sighs, ‘…join in to fight.’
But doctor Izzat stumbling in, exclaims
‘Tell me You think it’s going to be all right!
Can you, my God, build heaven on our spite?’
His tears anoint the memory of their names.
Another round of triage; another night;
tell me you think it’s going to be all right.
Ill Wind
A Sinai wind is an abrasive tongue, spoken rashly.
Its words are licks of paint lifted from the lids
of Gamal Abdulnasser’s red-star Sarcophagi.
The desert sun scours father’s skull; a glazed rictus
of a face torched in tallow –
till the wick ran dry.
So his children burn.
A Gaza wind is an ancient hand, waved imperiously.
Its gesture, fingers of contempt that cover the red
of a covetous earth, hubris calls its own.
The desert sun scours father’s skull; a dry patch
where bloody-eared crops once bloomed into menorahs –
till the flood failed.
So his children pray for rain.
John Horder
Monster Babies
Needs
Become even more monstrous
Monster babies
When unacknowledged.
It’s no fun to remain a prey to them.
No fun at all.
Phil Howard
Historiosophy
Him? He got posted to Kandahar,
Didn’t know what action he’d see,
Out on patrol in an armoured car;
Got taken out by an IED.
That one? He was a Red Army man;
Conscripted, sent down Helmand way;
Unit ambushed by the Taliban;
Sniper’s bullet shortened his day.
And in 1880 in the sand,
Those hundreds dead? No mystery:
The British fallen at Maiwand.
How circular is history.
Alternative Histories
I slept my way to Hell last night,
I was in the trenches, on patrol,
Bathed in a flare’s implacable light,
Perhaps I found a spacetime hole
Into a parallel universe,
One that was infinitely worse.
It’s happened several times before:
A glimpse of another world so clear,
The sensation of being sure
I could touch it, it feels so near,
So palpable, so very strong.
You think you understand? You’re wrong.
A.J. Huffman
Abandoned Notes
Sheet music littered the alleyway,
crushed under dumpster wheels, drowning
in puddles of unidentifiable liquids. One
lone page clung desperately to metal grate.
As I watched, the wind nudged, forced it
through cracks. As it disappeared down
anonymous drainway, I swore I heard the light
tinkling of ivory keys, the touching
tones of a funeral dirge.
Unstruck Match
Miniature wooden sculpture. Phallic
pillar, crowned in crushed red
flint. Flecks of potential fire
wait for fingers to force it forward.
Self-consumptive momentum,
a tiny spark to burn the world.
I Am Arctic
breath, a cold exhale, a tangible
accumulation of moisture, momentary clinging
to molecules. I am smokeless tendril, a ring
blown through a ring, a trick of atmosphere.
I am temporary proof of life, a trail
of respiration. I am ephemeral flutter,
a tongue-cloud rising, an effigy
to Icarus, knowing I too will fail
to touch the sun.
Poppy
after Red Poppy, artist Osnat Tzadok
Fire blooms in petals centering
around a black-holed universe spattered
with golden suns. A centrifuge
of fragrance, it calls tiny winged wills
to its source. They worship
under graceful watch of albino sky,
the only fitting backdrop for this
well-spring of regenerative advance.
Unmined Diamond
Dull, mineral deposit unevolved,
barely more than rock. Protrusion,
clinging to cavernous shadows. Wholly
lacking, still dreaming of golden ring.
Wavering Wand
Candle.
Shadow caster,
flattering magician.
Illusion’s favor: appearing
youthful.
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