Poetry H – The Recusant

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.

Rachael Hegarty

Rachael Hegarty was born the seventh child of a seventh child in Dublin, and reared in the working-class neighbourhood of Finglas. Widely published and broadcast, her debut collection, Flight Paths over Finglas, won the 2018 Shine Strong Award. Her second collection, May Day 1974, was launched on 17 May to commemorate the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. Her kids say she is a doctor with dyslexia and uses the F word way too much: Finglas, feminism and feckin’ poetry.

The Witch Sniffer

The welfare man’s a sleveen of a witch sniffer. I must smell

right if I’ve any chance of getting through the inquisition

for a School Clothing, Footwear and Book Allowance.

You’re not going up to that place smelling of petunia oils

and looking like Janis Joplin off out to the gig at Woodstock.

Ma smears lemon rind and juice on me wrists and sprinkles

drops of vanilla essence all over me second-best dress and jacket.

The witch sniffer has a grá for girls who do little but bake and skivvy.

Ma removes me bangles, beads, bauble earrings and granny’s brooch.

The heart of the Claddagh ring stares up at me in shock.

She whips off the PLO scarf, zips me jacket, all the way, to the neck

and coils up me tailing-long red hair under a grey woollen hat.

Ma flattens it down, fits the cap snug. She bites at the fat of her lip:

don’t look him in the eye, don’t let that witch sniffer come near you.

Mrs. Murphy

The odd time there’s a sighting of Mrs. M, head down,

scrubbing out their front porch with a hard bristle brush.

Crimson knuckled, elbow grease, arms reach, going ninety.

A bucket of rinse water. She starts off again. Back into it.

You wonder about the invisible dirt plaguing her doorstep.

One Saturday you see her washing windows. Spy her pale

pink basin of sudsy water and twists of scrunched newspapers

from a hideout behind their garden wall. She says nothing.

Her eyes swollen purple, a gashed brow. Her hands shake.

You leg it, race the street shadows to your front gate,

clutch cold wrought iron in your fists. Wish you could ice

her black eye, Dettol and plaster that gash. Mrs. M needs

to see the state of your gaff: its manky porch and pawed windows.

She should have a quiet word with your Ma and her sisters.

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

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.

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.

Dah Helmer

1. 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.

2. 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

3. Dictator

To those who forgive me

I loathe you

for you are weak

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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

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.

Geoffrey Heptonstall

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.

J.A. Huffman

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.

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.

A.J. Huffman

Any Shade of Redundance

Viscious colors fall – Silent!

My eyes burn mute with their echo.

Imagination’s wasteland weighs

my wrists. I cannot feel . . .

The restraint

is an abomination of senses. Sounding

in ghostly corners of dawn, everything stretches

in and through . . .

something else ovulates

inside a mind. A diamond or a demon?

I laugh

at the irrelevancies implied in the inquisition.

(As if it matters.)

Sparkle and burn both scar the same.

Christopher Hall

The Orkney Ferry

bilge water

fire-flaming war horse

Flee ridden rat carrier

cargo-tourist-tugboat-

from Glasgow I can see,

a pixel perfect bay

rolling to the salty blasted sea

a treeless paradise

blank canvas

ageless

never settling

never the slide

never the city’s long subside

para-wonder-island-dise

you are sunlit

breaking through the clouds

as the rain moves quickly,

to settle anywhere else

city bound

I dream of hot blood and fresh ashes

city bound

i belch cod Latin

dreaming Acheron

and the feet of Cassius

and Dante and Lucifer’s frozen legs

the flash of a swifts wing

is lit by the slow setting sun

and holds on the edge of a precipice

towards a never again dark night

Glasgow

In Glasgow it rained

And all her first month she burrowed-in deep

As grit to the corner of a great eye

Living leaking pipes and holes in the wall

As the building joined with the weather to

Keep her clothes damp and a cough on her chest

In Glasgow it rained

And all her first month she clung to two rooms

Winding towels round pipes

tuffing paper in the cracks

As the city blinked day and night

And the sky tried to wash her to the sea

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.

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

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.

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.

Kevin Heaton

B P 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.

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.

(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.

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.

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.]

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,

Anthony Hitchin

An Appointment with the Psychiatrist

It is located at the back of the hospital. You have to drive past Accident and Emergency, the main car park, the staff car park, waste disposal and what looks like the back of a mortuary (often, there are gurneys scattered outside). After you have passed a thick bank of trees you are greeted by a security barrier. A disembodied voice crackles static. I remain silent, staring ahead. It is my Wife who speaks into the machine and tells it that I have an appointment. As she gently says my name my stomach ties knots of revulsion. We park. Cough and fidget awkwardly. It is called the Linden Centre, but there are no linden trees. Everybody knows locally what this place is: it is a Mental Hospital. A place for ‘nutters’, ‘mentallers’ and ‘psychos’. Or else malingerers who just can’t ‘cope.’ There is no sound here: it is like steeping out into a vacuum; a different void. Psychic weight hangs heavy, oppressive as grime. It crawls my skin. I ring my fingers feeling unclean. Eyes stare vacantly through windows. A few bodies lay sprawled on the little green outside smoking. It is the dead of winter. Near the automatic doors there are more residents. They are standing upright. Sometimes I see one particular woman who always seems to be holding a bag of piss. At that point we always wonder aloud why the in-patient and out-patients share the same entrance, or why they have to medicate the in-patients so strongly and leave them wandering unsupervised. We conclude that there is not enough money and staff. Every time. The doors slide open and a secretary smiles benevolently. Her tone is soft and mild. My Wife has to say my name again and whom I have an appointment with. I feel like saying ‘I’m not mad’, I am ‘sane and logical’, but realise this will only make me sound more insane and illogical. Instead, I smile amiably and quickly head up the stairs, my Wife trailing me like a shadow. There are pictures on the walls drawn by the mentally ill. They look like they were drawn by the mentally ill and do nothing to reverse stereotypes. One has chips of different, clashing coloured ceramics embedded in it. The entire piece obviously disparate and fractured. We sit on the sofa together in the waiting area. The cushions are thick and deep. Glancing at the clock I hear the feint clicking of hands; there are only minutes to go. Fish are swimming in the tank. Sucking and spitting stones absentmindedly. The sound of the clock grows louder as the minute hand advances. I sit straining my ears; waiting for his foot falls …

The Waters of Lourdes

I taste your longing … to please me, heal me, as I lay impossible. An obtuse enigma with one savant skill; a single saving grace. Thinking if you peal back the grimy layers you will find true meaning; reasons, knowledge, love … . You cherish all my ‘good’ moments and store them up … out of which you fashion another me. Like a potter with clay, an art student with paper maiche. Can I step into him?

Will he take the weight?

You see, I try to smile authentically but my facial muscles have become frozen in an anaesthetized rictus; people like to see the whites of teeth as much as they like cheery greetings and firm handshakes. As if expressions and words and social rituals mean anything … . Yet I feel you observing me, analysing all the pieces, trying to read me. Your caress encircles my shoulders placatingly as your tears begin to fall; pure

as the waters of Lourdes. Yet all I feel is tumorous swelling …

if I could breathe my soul, I would suffocate.