Published Pulsar Poems

The following poets had their work published in the September 2009 edition, #52, of Pulsar Poetry Magazine: Margaret Eddershaw, Leah Armstead, David Tross, Valerie Morton, Gemma Wildman, Dan Ames, Maggie Andrews, Gregory Santo Arena, Peter Asher, Jim Brearton, Martin Cook, Brian Daldorph, Kate Edwards, Michael Estabrook, John Feakins, Robin Ford, Taylor Graham, Rhys Harrison, Suzanne Richardson Harvey, Stephen Lefebure, John Hayes, Maria Rachel Hooley, Tim Hurley, Michael Jennings, Peter Johnson, Vicki Littlemore, Gill McEvoy, Tim Murdoch, Michael Newman, John Plevin, Donna Pucciani, Paul Tanner, Ivan Wallace, Kevin White, and Fredrick Zydeck. See poems below: (509 poets published, up to and including September 2009).  

The following poems were published in the September 2009 edition of Pulsar Poetry Magazine # 52 (the last printed edition)

Pulsar Poetry Competition, Year 2008/09, Winning Poem, £125

Ink and Wash Painting With Cormorants

Yangshuo’s mountains protrude

into starless dark

tenebrous tongues

lick the lake

raindrops printing wrinkles

on its leaden skin.

A silhouette poles a bamboo boat

dipping a brush in ink.

Beside the fisherman

seven cormorants in a line

corded necks bent like hoses

wings in dry-brush black

stretched wide

chalky backs

speckled with charcoal.

Pen-nib heads glide

slip into ebony silk

streak apart like water

on a speeding windscreen.

Moments later

each bird surfaces

in a shower of grey pearls

silver fish aslant its beak

eyes glinting like jet

before shadowing down once more.

The old man’s pole collects them

time and again

he grasps each sheened throat

to shimmer its catch into his basket.

At some unseen signal

fishers return to their perch

shake drowned feathers

over the lake mirror

utter harsh cries at the night

until they are fed.

Margaret Eddershaw, Nafplion, Greece

Pulsar Poetry Competition, Year 2008/09, Second Prize - £75

 Near Penrhyncoch

You and I stalked a muddy field

which bore a Roman fort.

We searched for stories of mushrooms,

telling the poisonous from the good.

Hungry cows grazed nearby,

suspicious of our wandering.

I kept slipping on the wet hillside

that failed to daunt deft-footed sheep.

It’s easy to feel wedded to this land,

as if somehow it belongs to us.

We are hooked  by it.  Like crows and rooks

it feels like we could nest here endlessly.

Passion’s nature is to possess,

yet our link to this place is feather-thin.

Really we belong here as much as our echo

belongs to the valley that lets it pass

Leah Armstead, Aberystwyth

Pulsar Poetry Competition, Year 2008/09, Third Prize, £50

A Wolf at the Door

The wolf is well-dressed for a wolf and speaks with a Geordie accent.

Asks me how I’m doing today.  Please call me Darren.

It rips out the fridge and then flings the plasma onto the patio outside

Where it shatters.  And don’t forget, you’re still a valued customer.

With us you get to keep your face.

It takes a hatchet to the pipes and says that if I have any complaints

or even comments, this demolition is being recorded.

You have a good one now.

It smiles, shakes my hand, and gestures towards the bulldozer.

David Tross, London SE24

Pulsar Poetry Competition, Year 2008/09, Recommended Poem

Typing Class

A budgie lived in our classroom –

the only thing that wasn’t afraid

of the teacher with the red hair

who’d lost her airman in the war.

She made us stand up every morning

out of respect, as she whipped the blanket

away from the cage  -

“Good morning Bert – repeat after me:

“good morning Bert.”

At rare moments, she opened

his door, narrowing her green eyes

as he autographed our books.

One day he crash-landed

on Molly Pouter’s keyboard –

it was a swift burial outside,

under the window.

She found another to take his place;

kept him locked up,

covered at night

with the same tartan blanket.

Valerie Morton, Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire

Pulsar Poetry Competition, Year 2008/09, Recommended Poem

Living by the Sword

He had a look of the illicitly serpentine about him

could summon a home like Caligula in Rome,

as he lifted his foot the ground would rise to meet it

and so forth.  Of course,

the pendulum must swing

and the old tree will bear the most rings,

an abstract print

shapes and squares of solid hues

gained ill repute, grey city workers and mud stuck views.

If I had dared to ask,

where he had been, where he was and where he started from

and algebraic conundrum of x to z

a man of education might meet the end

or the beginning.  But not he,

destined to be the alien stray

he’ll always leave but somehow stay

pollen carried on the wind to foreign shores

and many more, a thread through the ages to keep in tune.

Gemma Wildman, Chesham, Bucks

* * *

Lipo

I went for liposuction today
but I told the guy to only take out
the stuff that makes snotty comments to my wife

and  the part that has no patience
when the kids are arguing about hair  ties
and get that big glop of resentment hiding near my spleen
created by the blunt refusal of Miss Brandemuhel to welcome my advances

take out the stuff that keeps tossing up marshmallows
onto the blank page and loves clichés and questions
whatever it is I’m doing like it’s the kind of thing worthy of interpretation

best of all, put it in a big giant jar
and I’ll take it back to work, put it on a platter
and make a ring of gourmet crackers with a sign that says
“help yourself.”

Dan Ames,  Gross Point Park, MI, USA

Blackbird

I used to believe the experts

like the one who said the blackbird

I rescued with broken wing

would never fly.  He was wrong.

The experts were at it again when you,

a stricken fledgling, were diagnosed.

“Autism” they said, quoting Hamlet

“is like sweet bells jangled,

out of tune and harsh.”

This morning I follow paw prints

tagged on frost-bitten turf to the top

of Broom Hill, look down

on St Mary’s spire, hear

your sweet bell ring out clear and true.

Standing twelve years tall, energies

close-channelled to the task

you unleash a sound

that collapses the words of the prophets,

your plumage shifting in coloured light.

Maggie Andrews

Hadleigh, Suffolk

I think I loved you.

I drank from your glass.

And so did he, ‘your friend,’ you said.

Seemed he really needed you.

Followed you about like a puppy.

I hope he hasn’t died of his AIDS yet.

Gregory Santo Arena 

Bergamo, Italy

Please remember me, I thought.

To the little blonde nymph with

The white frilly brolly on Finsbury Park Station.

You had giggled when I asked the guard about train times.      

You were gorgeous, blonde, smiling.

I wasn’t worried any more

About having lost my travel card on the tube;

Fluttered down onto the live rail.

Gregory Santo Arena

That I Don’t Like

Supposed to be me - but

in your eyes I see I’m

my father reflected,

on his knees pleading.

Beseeching mercy; at best,

grovelling.

From the corner of your eyes

I see myself caught in a

couple of tears put out as

part of the tantrums I recognize

as my mother’s originally

for my father’s discomfiture:

And I know that

though we are attracted

by what we’ve known, we are

repelled by what we’ve seen.

That I don’t like; the idea of

me turning up miserable and broken

one day

at the back of our children’s

sweetheart’s eyes.

Peter Asher

Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire

The Anthology of Getting to Know You

Some may ask,
where are we in relation
to the nearest stars?
First, thanks for asking.

I am an old school,
no budget
Fellini/Michelangelo
Antonioni Jean Luc Goddard
Andy Warhol wannabe.

That's what I said
when I went to
a singles group for the elderly
called Carbon Dating.

I said I studied unrequited love,
until I realized
reciprocity was needed
in the I Love NY campaign.
Their jaws dropped.

Then I informed them
they can call me
the sultan of cheap vacations.
They were okay with that.

But when I told them
that I was happily married
they got really hardcore
and kicked me out.

 Jim Brearton
Albany, NY, USA

Grapes

(i.m. H.C.B.C, 1910 – 1998,

who won the 100 yards at school)

His hand gestured as though

teased by a wind-gust

and flopped into his lap,

as he tried to lift a grape

to his gaping mouth.

I took one,

placed it between his lips

and watched sunshine

in his nut brown eyes.

Thanks, but I’ll not win

the hundred yards next year.

Martin Cook, Hitchin, Hertfordshire

Rejection

Sensing my eyes on her boobs,

she hitched her plunging blouse higher,

and turned away.

Realising I admired

the soft contours of her rump,

she heaved her top down and jeans up.

I wonder whether she’d have

continued to advertise

had I been younger than seventy.

Waterworks

After the documented success of those around him
he was eager to believe the doctors when they said he
was not committed enough and not sorry for
holding back tears and withholding his patch work
from them. Lately he was one of those emerging artists
working with raw materials and shaking things up if only
he could stay sober but it’s not a drinking problem.
He swore that trouble found him and took him out back
to do horrible things to his behavior like at first
wanting a home to put lights on and a wife to kiss
when he was done, maybe some kids to throw snowballs at,
but then he wanted them all gone by morning
to hold grudges against other fathers in the neighborhood,
famously recite his line about kids mucking it up,
what he doesn’t have that makes his natives restless
with their spears, an unruly urge to impale their leader
but they can never be specific.

Tim Hurley
Crystal Lake, IL, USA

Super Heroine

Gladys,

who lost her husband in the war -

since he took off with a land girl -

and who found herself,

for the next forty years

caring for her dying mother,

and latterly minding the child

of the single mum next door,

smiled brightly

despite her arthritic pains,

and said: “I’m so pleased!”

when the single mum,

clutching a publicity photo

of Brad Pitt,

announced enthusiastically

that she was pregnant again.

Michael Jennings

Keyworth, Nottinghamshire

Since he lost his wife

Since he lost his wife

I see him most afternoons

passing my window about this time,

stumbling home from the Horse and Groom,

wearing his old Harris tweed,

with a can in each pocket,

looking as though he needs

taking in hand, as though

he could do with a good square meal,

placing a can on the doorstep,

so he can find the key

to the empty house,

and unlocking the door

with difficulty.

Peter Johnson

Burley in Wharfedale, West Yorkshire

Teenagers in Love

I chant superstitious rhymes

and stretch chest muscles; for you,

watch teenagers in the sun,

tangled arms and tongues

at bus stops.

I walk past; thirty-two.

I watch as other girls with bigger breasts

suck the wet lips of disposable men;

the same white light in the sky,

shining like something other than the moon.

In the defragmented, opium flame and glaze of sun,

in the silk-soft gilded green and bird song

of warm and cool afternoon;

gently softened skin exudes the absorbed

heat of the day, skin; soft, lush as the watered grass,

tender under the palm of him, whose palms are

somewhere else, wandering over someone else’s

skin with borrowed caresses, cupping undeserving shoulders,

drinking the evening in ignorance.

On benches or in the burning flare

of back-gardens; next to hosepipes,

trees.  Tiny red spiders on thighs.

And we, in garden chairs with pens

blooming and fizzing

with impotence and infernal futility

cup the shoulders no-one will

and wait.

Vikki Littlemore

Higher Runcorn, Cheshire

Being Told

The white coat does not go away;

the careful face stays where it is,

blue eyes searching mine

but I am

drowning somewhere under

booming tides.  A mouth forms words;

my ears are full of water

and I cannot hear.

“Do you understand?” –

a scrubbed hand, cold

and sanitary with soap

closes over mine;

blank footsteps sound;

the bed sighs back in place

and I

am

no

longer

I.

Gill McEvoy

Chester

The Technicality

In public, she blamed the dreary fens;

their featureless rain-sodden fields,

and the sinister gabled manor house

heated on three levels by wood fires,

whose logs she split herself in the shed

while minding the baby in its pram,

parking him clear of flying splinters.

Yet, as martins cloistered in the eaves,

the wide-open, provident landscape

made room for their son’s imagination

to thrive, untouched by disunity;

rumours of a ghost on the landing;

her lover’s holy madness in the light

of his ethereal stepdaughter, sixteen.

Tim Murdoch

Reigate, Surrey

Serendipity

Today I saw twelve Model-T’s

Pass by on a rally,

Proud carriages hugging the comfort zone

Of the mountain road

Between Rhayader and Llangurig.

Bishops may drone with their pulpit voice,

Set themselves six feet above judgement;

Politicians may roar with redundant promises;

The sun may set in the sea at Borth,

And the mountains play stylus

To a Welsh symphony.

Today I saw twelve Model-T’s

Pass by on a rally;

I would wish that memory

To be with me at death.

Michael Newman

Bishops Cleeve, Cheltenham

Smiling Eyes

They were detained, out of sight

delayed by traffic lights

around the corner

by the Royal Oak

but you could still hear them

warming up

the mardy folk,

a random toot

or discordant trill from a flute

broke the every day air

of ordinariness,

they remained, restrained

but bursting to go.

Then the lights turned to green

a common theme

and the whole rag taggle mob

emerged slowly, unruly

in a hap hazard way

with a loud tarra tarra

boom boom boom

accompanied by a sonic fart

from a miss-firing dustcart

that was passing by,

and the whole motley band

a platoon of cacophonic buffoons

came lurching by

out of step, out of tune

out of time

and each one gave me a salute

with smiling eyes

under braided hats

above garish suits

they knew me well,

played my lines.                                                    

David Pike

Swindon, Wiltshire

Gifts

Imagine that you had the gift

of faith, knew the way,

saw the point of arrows,

so that even in the dark you felt

embraced and not alone.

Some, maybe like you and me,

never see the arrows, just the road,

a track beat thin by tired feet,

where ladders to the upland plains

hiss their mocking tune.

I knew a man who had the gift,

watched him bustle forward

certain of his way, like a spark

from a shepherd’s fire

he lit the winter sky.

I took from him the gift of envy,

a strange child, half rose, half thorn,

and in the comfort of his spoken prayer,

I learnt to find what isn’t there.

John Plevin

Lea, Malmesbury, Wiltshire

Train

Your torch song falls from the microphone

of night, your mouth fills with the tongues

of smoke.  Wrapping your dark arms

around the silver trickle of the Allegheny,

you rock on the trestle of your heartbeat

through Pennsylvania’s green valleys

and tunnels dark as Harlem, hurtling toward

some cornfield west of what used to be

stockyards in Chicago, past Iowa’s pale visage

into the next horizon.

You are filled with longings but not bitterness.

It is simply your fate to keep moving,

not from the murder-mark of Cain, but from

your own destiny, which forbids contentment,

denies you a home, a life of settling into yourself,

except in some train yard overnight in Newark

or L.A., where gangs spray-paint mantras

on your reclining body, trying to claim you

as their own, though you belong to no one.

Forever the stranger, you came into being

like a stone, a star, a leaf, or any random

thing thrust into the universe.  You were born

not from the loins of passion but from

an obsession with steel and steam and the wide

screaming of brakes on tracks that spawn

a universe of solitary travellers.  Derailment

comes maybe once in a lifetime,

and when the crooked track is straightened,

the memories come: coal bins, the homeless,

a hand waving, a piece of sunrise around a bend.

But you focus only on the track ahead,

Your fortune long as a mile-high mountain

a small as a ticket to nowhere.

Donna Pucciani

Wheaton, IL, USA

After The Fact

Two great rugby-playing fuckers

get either side of the bar maid

and squash her guffawing

while her student boyfriend

in black drainpipe jeans

stands in the corner,

the tear on his chin

building up the courage

to jump

into his vodka shot

as I rip a beer coaster apart,

it’s a sign of sexual frustration

they say

but who the hell is

getting any really?

For seven demented months

I had the most crazy sex life,

a frightened teenage doll

I could teach

and play with

all I wanted

but finally she was

insane, naturally.

and I put the bits of the coaster

into the pint glass,

alone

in this jam-packed country

in this jam-packed world

and not minding

for now.

Paul Tanner

Thingwall, Wirral

A Winters Tale

Outside

it was pitch black.

wind whipped

around the house

and rain lashed

the window panes.

We sat

huddled together

on the hearth,

watching flames

dance and skip

over hot coals.

“Did you know,”

I said to the wife,

“that the balloonist

Joseph Montgolfière

got the idea

for hot air ballooning

while watching his wife’s knickers

billowing in front of the kitchen fire?”

She sighed deeply.

“Well,

what do you think of that?”

I asked.

“I think you’re full of hot air,”

she replied.

Sometimes

I wonder why I bother.

Ivan Wallace

Carrickfergus, County Antrim, Northern Ireland

In November

This tick, tock evolution

This unremitting cartoon of nihilism,

Rammed down your throat daily

Be homogenised or be mad. (or laugh)

Kids are alienated and stew

In a cocaine pressure cooker,

We sharpen their teeth

With the back of our hand,

Then wonder why they bite.

Murder follows motive no more

People say lock your doors.

Kevin White

Sunnyhill, Derby

Why Mother Keeps Moving Around

It was always that way with June.  She loved

moving around.   She’d bounce from brother

to sister’s house, then back to her mom’s.

There was a bit of wanderlust in her bones.

Even after she married she continued the trend.

First they lived in an apartment on the K Street

hill, then in the little house on Spikten Creek Road.

After that they moved into a farmhouse near

where Kleppes raised their dairy cows.  From

there they moved to the cabins where all my

surrogate aunts and uncles lived.  Perkins Street

was our next landing and then on to A Street.  

I lost track after that.   California, Queen Anne Hill,

Lake Forest Park, somewhere up north, somewhere

south of there, Olympia, Omaha, and on to Lacey.  

That was the first time she ever lived alone.  It didn’t

last long.  That was when she moved in with my

sister to help raise the kids. They moved at least four

times.  She died in ‘99. But since then she has driven

through Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, parts

of Oklahoma and on into Texas.  She hasn’t held still

there either.   She has  already moved from one end

of town to the other - and that’s just her ashes. 

The rest of her moves in and out of time, she hangs

out with me for a while, then moves on.   Something

tells me she is upstairs right now, sitting in her favorite

chair, having some coffee, smoking a Virginia Slim

and watching a Seinfeld rerun.  She will watch me work

for a while, then slip to some other place much the way

the last note of a song dissolves into the silence.

Fredrick Zydek

Omaha, Nebraska, USA

Holiday Snaps

So compelled by the crow of crows,

the glittering fish and fire of suns

to be complementary; each as the one

we neither thought to find in a lifetime

of looking,

so manacled to each other,

unclasping only for the sake of balance

as we break our gathering stride

to crash and stumble into

the onleaping waves,

so conditioned are we

by the wordless unfurling of the film,

so alert and magnetised,

there are a number of things about each other

we’ve chosen to overlook.

Tim Murdoch

Reigate, Surrey

***

The following poets had their work published in the March 2009 edition, #51, of Pulsar Poetry Magazine: Peter Asher, Mr A. Catterall, Hugo DeSarro, Stuart Sharp, Terry Dammery, Natalie M Dorfeld, Kate Edwards,   A C Evans, Kay Fletcher, David Gill, Chris Hardy, Gregory Heath, Nigel Humphreys, Michael Jennings, Roland John, Neil Leadbeater, Gary Lechliter, Bruce McRae, Michael Newman, Michael Estabrook, Geoffrey Loe, Christian Ward, Randall Rogers, Anne Rees, Daniel Stott, Peter A. Tetro, Peter Johnson, Gerard Melia, Ivor C. Treby, Paul Tanner, Harold S. Webster, Kevin White, Peter Wyton, and Sarah Williams. See poems below: (489 poets published, up to and including March 2009).  

The following poems were published in the March 2009 edition of Pulsar Poetry Magazine # 51

Growing Missed

In time, the desire to feed

the starving bird-feeder

and cloth the freezing washing -

line – goes -

And grows into a;

‘forgive me, I’m not as young

as I was’ -

                or;

‘I’m sorry for being

old and clumsy,’ -

              everywhere it goes.

And those who see its transformation

from participation into -

                ‘pardon me

for living on, even precariously’

Will, in all possibility,

never go and feed a bird-feeder

to warm with life an unused

(uncool) old length of winter washing -

line -

        and when they themselves are slow -

                                     why -

there’s nothing to go but themselves.

Peter Asher

Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire

Checkout

Yesterday we were

In the supermarket,

You were looking at

The watermelons,

Tapping them

And pressing your ear

Against them

While I stood

A little further

Down the aisle

Staring at four tins

Of borlotti beans

That had rolled out

Across the floor,

One of them

Had a dint

In its side

Later on, that night

Naked, in bed

You said

The most beautiful

Thing to me,

Yet all I can remember

Are those four tins

Of borlotti beans

In that aisle

Of the supermarket

And how one

Had a dint

In its side.

Mr A. Catterall

Sherwood, Nottingham

Silhouettes In Virginia

Black Angus cows

on a snow-whitened

hillside.  

Slow-moving and stationary;

blocky silhouettes stalled at the end

of crisscrossing hoof tracks,

looking with lassitude

at passing traffic,

beneath low-floating clouds

and the purple of hills beyond the hills.

The beauty of a moment in passing,

etched deeply on the mind.

Hugo DeSarro

East Hampton, CT, USA

The Art Show

Tucked away, up the stairs above the library

The pieces wait in rows by type and class

As though the vegetables of some summer fair

‘Biggest portrait’ or ‘Longest landscape’

Their numbers blend them to a sameness

Broken here and there by brilliant flashes

The sculpture of a bloated, comic dragon,

The lightness of a painted silken screen

Each one is priced, expecting,

Hoping for a hundred pounds or two or three,

And there is some joy in knowing

That I do not have to buy the best to see them

Here and now for free.                        

Stuart Sharp, Cherry Burton, Beverley

Indian Print Dress

I’d longed all day to touch what I saw

the lift of a breast

and the swell of a thigh

through the swirl of your skirt

colours as warm as fresh spice

soft as fine muslin

like the down of your legs

my hand on your knee

finding the silk of your pants

bra straps slack and sequins scattered

glinting like sovereigns

pennies from heaven

pieces of eight

like gold in the hold of the Nineveh’s queen

an ocean of plunder on the sheets of your bed

and you lying laid in an Indian print dress

lifted high to your waist your eyes as dark as dusty’s.

Terry Dammery

Hope valley, Derbyshire

Clubbing in Pittsburgh

I don’t

belong

in this

line. 

Me,

in Birkenstocks

and faded jeans,

sandwiched between

an obnoxious Italian

and bleached blonde waif,

both apparently proud

of their immense

chests. 

I belong

in bed, one

with clean sheets

and cats at my feet,

a diluted glass of

diet ginger ale

next to the bed

stand.

But I wait here

with my friends,

primping in the

pouring down rain,

reminded that we are

nothing more than

fidgety sperm, just

waiting for the chance

to shoot

inside.  

Natalie M Dorfeld, Brookfield, OH, USA

The Stalker

Wherever of whichever way I turned

he would be there, at that time so long ago.

Always there, always waiting, always watching,

round the corner of a street, or on a bus,

once standing by a shrub beside my gate,

another time on the steps of the library.

He learnt the pattern of my days, how

I travelled to work, where I ate lunch,

if I visited the cinema with friends he

would be in the darkness beyond the foyer

waiting.  Waiting for what?  To get to know me?

He never approached, although I was aware

he questioned my friends until I forbade them

to tell him anything at all about me.

There was something nasty and furtive in his lurking

annoying and irritating, but I was never afraid,

he seemed too small, too insignificant to fear,

his pale mouse eyes and ludicrous pink face

gazing at me vapidly across an empty street,

from a doorway, or through the window of a train.

A day came when he wasn’t there, not watching,

not following, not the next day or the next.

I felt light headed with relief, a week passed,

I believed his obsession was over.

Later, I read in the paper that on the very day

he disappeared from my life and from my mind

he had been arrested and charged with assaulting a woman.

He was not let out on bail.  I had to feel grateful that at least

he’s spared me the worst of his advances.

Kate Edwards

Runcorn, Cheshire

From Yesterday

Open

The way

To

Indefinite

Experience

When

Life

Can

Evade

Those

Obvious

Maps      

Of chance

Encounters

(The street,

The sky)

The frame

Of a film clip

A movie

From yesterday

Degraded colour

A sign

Of

Desperation,

Perhaps

A C Evans

East Sheen, London

In love with materials

I am love with materials

that never produce a thing; kiss the pencil,

bless the paper, the scented pigment

the icon of the paintbrush.

Some strange appeal, to interact

with these things without an idea

of what I am doing, this desire

undoes the artist, the actor with the paintbrush.

On a raft of coloured pencils

the sensual river, flesh

and wood enact their own masterpiece;

to safely love.  To be fooled without consequence.

Kay Fletcher

Tipton, West Midlands

Lunch Hour

Across the Iris Bridge

a policeman strolls in the sun.

Two swans stoop as one

to stab the twin reflection.

An egret further downstream

turns into a fan.

On a bench beside the water,

back to the big corporations

and facing the elusive palace

where his emperor slowly,

invisibly bleeds to death,

a man sits intently writing.

A poet I guess,

composing as natural a tanka

as the office-blocks permit.

Fraternal, I peer in passing:

his page is black, close-knit

with minute calculations

David Gill

Botley, Oxford

Knock Down Ginger

As we drifted off

some kids would knock

and run, they got it right

and made the game

a habit up

and down the street.

One night I

reached the door

just as they fled

and chased to where

the main road stopped me

in the dark,

across the street

majestic tall

the doctor’s house

ascended from itself

each window a winking

eye of flame.

Chris Hardy

London

Bleeders

His name was Adrian

but we called him Asian:

Asian Jones.

We’d walk round school

going bud bud bud;

we were kids,

we thought it was funny.

If we pushed him too far

he’d whack us with his ruler,

then whip out a card that said,

Don’t hit this boy, he’ll bleed

and wave it in our faces

in a kind of triumph.

Not that we wanted to hurt him;

we wanted to be his ‘friends’ -

he was the only kid in our village

with a Sega and his own TV.

And the only kid in our village

who didn’t make thirty.

Gregory Heath

Melbourne, Derby

beachcomber

a man writes his word in the sand

he gouges it with one crutch

his curves throw up redoubts

his cross members kink finally

molecules of the nth power

barrel ahead of his downstrokes,

gather at his feet in monticules

the beach is universe; he tills it

scattering galaxies and nebulae,

dots each ‘i’ with a Black Hole

when it is written he steps back

and sees that it is good

then slips between the transoms

the mullions of its letters

and calls forth an echo older

than the speck of everything

before the word drowns.

Nigel Humphreys

Penrhyncoch, Aberystwyth

Guillotine

She’s not affordable, of course

but in this dull world

spending dangerously

generates a little edge.

Don’t you just worship that shape?

The oomph under the bonnet

is irresistible.

Come on, let’s burn rubber!

We ease ourselves into extravagance

and the door closes

with the precise,

almost silent thud

of a guillotine.

Far away a hundred heads roll.

Michael Jennings

Keyworth, Nottinghamshire

Fistral Bay Thirty Years On

Hearing and smelling again that surf,

recalling thirty years ago when I rode

these waves, careless of rocks, sure in my skill;

returning I wonder whether I could do it still.

Screams of gulls, the sea’s dark roaring,

then I knew how to paddle out and wait;

also her, she who taught me more than surfing,

marked my life, our brief affair never forgotten.

This bay so important then, its sands and sounds,

the waiting for the right wave, the exact moment

to work, thrust, catch and slide sharply forward

to grasp, hoping to stand tall and swerve

into the bay’s curving and the adulation;

that camaraderie then, the talk, drinks, girls,

acceptance of the timeless, our constant present

and now in my later life do I strive for it?

Too old now, no doubt, to accept those thrills, risks;

have I the strength to fight currents, swim under

to reveal my presence, to make that elemental call?

No longer a part of it; unequipped, I hire a board.

Roland John

Frome, Somerset

Willenhall Locks

Here at the Lock Museum

we learn about locksmiths, makers of spurs,

producers of latch cams, bolts and keys,

instruments for turning, winding, tuning –

everything from a wooden wedge

to a tapered piece of metal

for fixing the boss of a wheel –

how each master

would make his tools:

chisels, screwdrivers, saws and drills –

an assemblage of skills mutually engaged

at the backs of shops and houses

before the factories

hit the big time

with names like Yale and Parkes.

Every latch tells a story –

doors open into old interiors,

people whose lives

have been lockfast for years.

One by one

we blow their cover

hoping to find the cusp of ourselves

hidden within these walls.

Neil Leadbeater

Fairmilehead, Edinburgh

Vultures in a Dead Tree

At Clinton Lake I sit
in the heat and watch
them watching me with
needless trepidation.
I am more wary of them
then they are of me.

And every now and then
one of them glides from
a branch, circles above
me, drops to the ground,
and stares at bloated
carp in the distance.

A solution to the problem
is obvious in bird logic:
the lack of opposable thumbs
will not prevent them
from waiting for the lake
to give-up her dead.

Gary Lechliter

Lawrence KS, USA

In No Particular Order

Jupiter, peopled by hallucinations,
their god a hairbrush
speaking in musical tones.

Saturn, the cosmic laundry line,
its centre a molten strawberry,
those rings the kitemark of its madness.

Uranus, the jealous castrato,
weary of the smirking,
the wordplay, the insinuations.

Neptune’s engine is a light bulb,
its main export umbrella stands –
it’s coming soon to a cinema near you.

On to Mars, the house of mirrors.
Famous for its beaches and wartime.
It’s like a pet store or windows rattling.

Mercury, which stinks of basketballs
and dresses in women’s underwear.
Inhabited by subsonic pinheads.

Then Venus, the bitch of bitches,
the villages there abandoned to time.
Its love we endure. Its pain that we bear.

But Pluto! shout the Plutonians,
waving their little placards,
the sidewalks there unusually slippery.

Which leaves Earth, the eye, blue hair,
home of the violent shadows, water
on its knees, and a bad case of the rainbows.

Postscript: The moon, Earth’s doggie,
crazy as seven barrels of ape-shit,
a goddess, they say, but in her spare time.

Bruce McRae

Victoria B.C., Canada

Shore Base

Towards Lundy,

The Atlantic roughens appreciably,

Threatens storm.

Waves deposit shingle-banks

Of decibel-wreckage

Across golden sands.

North Cornwall

Brutalises the idyll

Of seaside holiday.

A dozen turnstones fly in,

Stand sentry over barometric collapse.

Not quite motionless,

I stealth a presence

Along the rocks -

And am seen.

Wing-flight and gale-gust

Vie for directional supremacy.

North Cornwall

Returns to isolation.

Michael Newman

Bishops Cleeve, Cheltenham

Drastic

It was a drastic thing to do

everyone agreed

offered their opinions

and picked the bones of inspiration

then, as one decreed

it was a drastic thing to do

and very risky

to put all of the eggs

in one basket

then give them a bash or two

was asking for it

some would say

reckless, feckless, thoughtless

and without doubt

it was a drastic thing to do.

However, because the actions were thought unwise

it brought amusement to a few

who looked on and smiled

and otherwise did nothing

other than saying, nodding

braying

it was a drastic thing to do

others would stare into the air

then into pints of ‘cooking,’ brew

have a sup or two

and shake their heads

then moan about the folly of it all

and how it should have been done

by those who knew what to do

not by a ship of fools

they’d stare at their boots

from lofty bar stools

and at closing time

would say,

there was no getting away

it was a drastic thing to do.

David Pike

Swindon, Wiltshire

Paper-Thin Pink Morning Glories

In my wife's garden

darkening at dusk

bats flit soundlessly

above azaleas and forsythias.

While in the shadows below,

in the final moments of twilight,

paper-thin pink

morning glories glow.

Michael Estabrook

Acton, MA, USA

HMP

The Peters knew it all: the crying and

the cravings; smuggled joints that make a stretch

hilarious.  Screws came Sundays, in

white shirts and black ties, as though it was church.

I dropped my trousers and was told to stand

outside; my cellmate, joining me, complained

about his rights.  One time I understood

but that was weakness: the middle of the night,

when doors were kicked, and iron footsteps hid

themselves.  The leopard circling itself,

this was a zoo, with apes stacked miles high.

To sleep you found the heartbeat of your straw.

My family knows my humanity.  My blags

keep them alive.  They’ve eaten steak, enjoyed

Adidas, holidayed abroad.  Bank

slips flutter in my wake like tickertape.

The yard’s enormous in your head.  Like bail,

you can roam wild, and find a place to think.

I plan the biggest job imaginable.

I am an Englishman: we live like kings.

Geoffrey Loe

Shirley, Hampshire

Shifts

The picture framing shop
on the high street
has become the latest casualty
of the credit crunch,

its boarded up face
slowly being dismantled
by surgeons demanding
payment for the numerous

operations done over the years.
The neighbourhood dogs
have been seen near it at night,
dragging their bowls closer
to feed off its dripping blood.              

Christian Ward

London

Just Bought a Strat

the only differences between

me and my hero Keith Richards
are
he’s got better drugs
than me
he’s the Human Riff
and I’m just a stoned
noise maker
the neighbours hate.

Randall Rogers

Nongpue, Banglamung, Chonburi, Thailand

Solstice

Darkness closes in on the very shortest day.

Outdoors, the torn and slate-grey sheen of a bin bag flutters

puffs up, rattles and exhales, it is caught and pierced

on the bale of thorny cuttings, berried sprigs of garden waste

thrust into the brown bin, breathless, it sucks, inflates and spits.

It is pointless and mechanical, pinned in what lights shine out:

the sunset hasn’t given in.  Chaffinch egg shell bluey-green

the sky, marked by metallic, gilt and darkly bruised red cloud.

It presages spring and birth, sit outside beneath it in your coat

with a pint and a cigarette, the blazing sky is soundless!

I baled up those thorny, berried cuttings, in thick twine,

they gave me Amy Winehouse arms, I was scratched but successful,

I dragged the bales through the house to the bin in the front.

No-one else understood my planning, bale-tying and achievement,

I could hop from foot to foot and scorch myself in excitement

and receive no response, and, like the bin bag flutters, appear aimless,

as easily deflated.  I won’t destroy myself for lack of response,

for the freezing dark of loneliness in my efforts, for being seen

as fluttering in a sterile wind and pointless.  I’ll be warmed

by seeing the good despite what appear to me as limitations,

by seeing how limited I am through others’ eyes, while I baled up cuttings

I paid them no attention, they are so different and so close.  If I shout “Me me me!”

I’m closing in the darkness of the shortest day.

Recall that brilliant light dramatic as the markings on a chaffinch egg,

spring-promising, I have my wits and mental health and memory!

Anne Rees

Walthamstow, London

One Thing Leads To Another:

so is it any wonder
that two, side-by-side
Christmas-pudding shaped silos
would make me think of her at home,
with a £5.99 Blossom Hill
and a DVD ready to go?
And that the thought of her
would divert my eyes
from the road
to my phone
on the passenger-seat?
Her last text had read,
'red lace, don't be late'.
The next thing I've ran a hedge,
spun one-hundred and eighty degrees
and stopped,
with a birch-tree branch
speared through the windshield,
missing my left ear by two short feet.
Which was,
as a matter of interest,
all that was recognisably left of
the sheep.

Daniel Stott

Oxford

Negligee

Flimsy satin see-through lace

strategically stitched

           diaphanously placed

             whimsically hide

                     reveal

those body parts

          her sex appeal

enticing nature’s reaction

               focussed

           without distractions

           growing in their minds

well past reason

         transport both

      that state of single bent

         with one intent:

remove the veil

and undraped

celebrate the sight

her beauty hail

then scale their sexual heights . . .

its work done

            once again.

Peter A. Tetro

Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Service

Obsequiously

“sirring” and “madaming,”

curved deferentially forward,

servility incarnate,

the Head Waiter

condescendingly

bestows his patronage

and grants us a table.

Peter Johnson, Ilkley, West Yorkshire 

Low Pressure System

Rain sweeps in from Strumble Head

scratching runs on the verandah glass.

Damp sheep cower against a stone wall

as two crows circle and semaphore each other.

No tied cottage labourer gaitered in mud

but a Landover driver winds his window

to count the dripping bullocks, sad and perplexed,

beneath sycamore branches pencilling winter in the sky.

Out at sea the clouds hang, ill fitting curtains

above a sea mute and sulking,

too indolent to shuffle the pebbled shore;

a trawler outline fades in a sweep of rain.

Meanwhile, the pine cones on the window sill,

brazen and wide open

refute this November morn.

Gerard Melia,

Hadleigh, Suffolk

A Lifetime

Last night, intent on rescuing

the old vacuum flask from my travel bag,

planning to set it out ready

for the supply of hot tea

on tomorrow’s last leg home -

disaster.  Even as I lifted

Mr. Dewar’s modest invention,

the unwelcome, unanticipated,

jiggle of a 20’s cocktail-shaker,

the calving glacier fall

of an avalanche of ice,

the unmistakable SFX

of a shattered plate-glass window.

Which prepared me, dismayed

and disheartened, unscrewing the cap,

for the gleaming specular scimitars,

the smashed vanity mirror’s seven years’

bad luck.  No ch’a then, no hope of Rosie,

Queen Anne’s other solace -

probably half a century of service

lost in a baggage-handler’s fumbled

football tackle.  Again I am ten years old,

the War years, when a vacuum flask

is something precious

treasured, priceless, irreplaceable,

and Andy, innocent, steps up behind

schoolma’am Mrs. Farr –

pouring in break the cup that cheers -

startled, she shies, drops the ball.

Her fury is terrifying.

In the hotel waste bin in place

forgotten picnics, long lost summers,

a trusty family retainer, my own

youth, shivered dreams.  The magic alembic

all broken kaleidoscope spangles.

Mourned more than a debatable innocence.

And all the tea in China.

Ivor C. Treby

London

No Use

Ended up going for a walk

around the grey grey block,

because there was nothing else to do

and this bald old jogger,

his sensitive bits

outlined by Lycra,

scared the shit out of me

when he suddenly

charged past me,

grunting and sweating and wobbling.

I watched his fat obvious buttocks

turn the grey grey corner

and I thought,

Jesus, even going for a walk

kills you a little.

Paul Tanner

Thingwall, The Wirral, Merseyside

Flowage

Let us now be honest. 

All things glide in time from plumb.

Matter and morality flow

like a slow river

like glass in old cathedrals

now thicker at base than at the top

Nothing straight persists.

Old fence rails sunk in prairie loam

lean today way over

and yarrow we know yields with the wind

but so by god in time do oaks

as well as timothy stalks.

And lines of chalk

if they run long enough

bend to girdle the earth.

So what’s it after all worth

to speak of eternal verities

when even light in the sky

that hits your eye

from somebody else’s galaxy

has bent all to hell to get here as well?

Could it be that honesty, too, is a fallacy?

Nature warps the barrier walls. .

Gravity, Time and Rationalization

force metamorphosis,

making change slowly, of course,

so as not to alarm nor embarrass.

Truth is a slippery slope

we slide in slow motion,

with never a notion it changed

from how we saw it at the top

and with never conscious thought

the slide should stop.

Harold S. Webster

Buffalo, Minnesota, USA

Waiting

Has the mendicant a method?

Sitting out the clockwork precipitation

That lubricates this psychotic throb,

Of tolerant humanity in society

All intent on getting not giving.

What hope and determination

Meets this passive, active scenario?

Can he stand and forget money

Give back the blanket

Go home and make good?

Someone will be waiting.

Kevin White,

Derby

Damage Control

We carve our unoriginal initials onto chalk,

joining the legion of love-struck, or marauders

whose graffiti has disfigured this surface time out of mind,

a generation game esteemed by day trippers,

or armed invaders, testing their spear points before

stepping back, assessing their ill-chiselled contribution to

the palimpsest of petroglyphs and pictographs,

some tender, others graphically obscene, then tramping

upstrand to the tour bus or the rush to rule by right  of conquest,

leaving Time, the caretaker of natural monuments,

to tut-tut, pick up his weather duster, dip his airbrush

in the rising tide and commence the painstaking process

of consigning us all to well-deserved oblivion.

Peter Wyton,

Longlevens, Gloucestershire

Wrecked

My grandfathers feared the frost fairs

having to hawk gingerbread among

the clowns while show offs roasted oxen.

But mostly they were the city kings

banning the bridge builders from our guild

rowing fearlessly to their old age.

Now I beg for rides at Blackfriars

payments are tips given in pity

if I throw in a few shooting skills.

I curse the paddle men

choking on their poison

long for my last ride

to St Saviour’s.

Sarah Williams

Tunbridge Wells, Kent

Saint Saviour’s churchyard in Southwark was burial ground to many watermen and their families.

The following poets had their work published in the September 2008 edition, #50, of Pulsar Poetry Magazine: Michael Newman, Andrew Frolish, Maureen Anne Browne, Chris Hardy, Steve Breese, Fergus Chadwick, Neil Brooks, Sue Chadd, Ken Champion, Michael Estabrook, Suzanne Richardson Harvey, Calvin Green, Abegail Morley, Michael Jennings, Raud Kennedy, Gill McEvoy, Alan Morrison, Keith Moul, John Murphy, Alleliah Amabelle Nugid, Kathleen Kenny, Anne Rees, Gordon Scapens, M. A. Schaffner, A K Whitehead, Paul Tanner, Poul Webb, F. J. Williams, John Brantingham, Kate Edwards.  see poems below: (471 poets published, up to and including September 2008).  

The following poems were published in the September 2008 edition of Pulsar Poetry Magazine # 50

English Riviera              Pulsar Poetry Competition 2007/08 – Winning Poem

South.  To the south

Always the south.

Lanes lead from English Easter

Towards a Mediterranean Mystery,

Indigenous trees give way to exotics,

While the sun draws caravans

Across the Steppes of Central Cornwall.

I watch as boats

Take on outboard motors;

Oilskin-clad, children work up

A modern shanty; Far Harbour,

Parents mutter below-decibel.

The bay growls with two-stroke tuning.

Beach talk.  Tide turn.  Tide Town.

Wagtails amaze, picking away

At wet sand,

Their low loping flight characteristic.

But the smew that bobs on waves

Could be rubber duck,

Up and down a turbulent bath.

Far-out, ocean liners balance

On the earth’s rim,

Defy identification.

I attempt to focus binoculars,

Name my own inadequacy.

A dozen turnstones fly in,

Stand sentinel over shingle,

And work their patch.

I stealth a presence

Across the rocks, but am seen.

A dozen turnstones fly off,

Leaving emptiness.

Now the boats return from day-long Odyssey,

And the faithful tractor waits.

Michael Newman,

Bishops Cleeve, Cheltenham

Bones

We return to the clearing night after night

expecting to see that white glow

peel itself off the moon again:

the owl swooping between spiny trees

and the slick currents of polluted clouds.

At night, when we stoop silently

under low boughs and heavy skies,

the earth comes alive with crackling

and the scratching of prey finding cover,

shivering through pauses in the hunting.

On the third night, we find the owl’s perch,

a tree stump, rotting in its coat of fungus.

Pellets litter the dirt below: little furry sacks

of indigestible waste, the undesirable

aspects of the lives consumed the previous night.

Poking through the compressed fur,

delicate bones, like wooden splinters,

snag the earth.  Imagine the retching,

the coughing, the mouthful of unwanted

bitterness spat in a fury in the clearing each night.

Stumbling our way home down unlit paths

where the fingernails of nightened trees

scrape the flesh from our cheeks,

I look at you as the moon slips from your face

and I feel the bones catching in my throat.

Andrew Frolish

Layham, Suffolk

Pulsar Poetry Competition 2007/08 – Runner Up

Breaking Point

His tendency to complain

Remained after he’d gone to work:

A shadow, hovering

As she tackled a mountain of ironing

And headed towards dusk.

From where she stood

She could see Benevenagh

Drowning in mist

And felt,

Her sense of self drowning with it.

She reached for the last shirt:

Meticulously ironing

Around buttons

The colour of pearl barley,

Collar, pockets, pleats, placket, cuffs.

She wished she’d done his first –

He was fussy about his shirts.

She hurriedly put the ironing-board back.

Left nothing to chance:

Gave the mirror a quick look,

For reassurance:

Her lipstick was fine.

Used to concealing things

She deleted the dark bits under her eyes,

Downed a glass of wine,

Then – scrutinised:

All those things that shouldn’t be there

She removed,

For the last time.

She felt him closing in,

Just like the night,

Heard the crunch of rubber on stones

And knew

Something, definitely, wouldn’t be right.

Maureen Anne Browne, Newtownards, C. Down, N. Ireland  

Pulsar Poetry Competition 2007/08 – Third Prize

   Masinko      

When she says this city

is cold and sad

I know she makes it so

wishing she was back

in the city

without shops or money

hawks at the window

where she’s from.

They play a violin

with one horsehair string

sing to you your own song

of welcome and faith

nothing else but the song

is always new

made by two musicians

one plays, makes the words

both make the tune

until they stop, take a coin

and go, with a staff

across their shoulders

to loop and rest the arms

walking home uphill

in the dark finding the way

like swallows.

At night

the cold black sky

flows in the unlit streets

like glass, you see

between the stars

where God might be

if you choose to look

and silence offers all

you’ll ever need or get,

dawn, the singing

of the fire, birds,

feet at the door.

Chris Hardy

London  

Masinko – Ethiopian violin

Pulsar Poetry Competition, Recommended Poem

I don’t know why . . .

There on the restaurant table beside me

A recently cleaned table

A discarded empty ketchup sachet

I don’t know why this is worth mentioning

It just feels important to me

My wife sits opposite

Both of us coming to terms with the difficult news we’ve just heard

Words are non-existent when hope is asked for.

I look around the restaurant

In hope of some respite

Egged on by his friends

A man goes to the counter for a second helping of caramel apple pie.

He returns to his seat and consumes it as though the world is ending

A child repeatedly bangs a can of lilt loudly on the table

His parents ignore this, immune to the crescendo

Looking further I see a woman’s face

Skin a deathly white

A small clump of hair on the rear of her scalp is all that’s left

The cancer is beating her.

She looks straight back at me,

Her eyes a brilliant blue and within them courage and fear.

Hope is still there.

She smiles

I try to smile back but I am embarrassed of my staring.

And there on the restaurant table beside me

A recently cleaned table

A discarded empty ketchup sachet

I don’t know why this is worth mentioning

It just feels important to me.

Steve Breese

Kelsall, Cheshire                             

Pulsar Poetry Competition, Recommended Poem

Windfall Bucket

They’ve been acting strangely ever since

                the apples ripened,

yellow red, and fell plucked to the grass

                by earth and time.

How easy the magnificent insects

                can expect to find

their nectar habit, sizing up the zinc

                buckets of windfalls.

Apples undergo an art of liquefaction,

                a palette of bruises

from the orchard’s knocks; from cancerous

                tan, to white spots,

from Van Dyke brown, finally to dull

                black – skin collapsed

under the irritant miniscule chainsaw

                of surgeon wasps.

Strange appetite, weird thirst, the juice

                a clear liquor

expressed from mouldy wounds - lures

fit aficionados.

Weighed down by topload of canvas,

                one lies flat out;

another leans into the drink with torn

                stunsails like a yacht.

You laugh perhaps, and think me shameless;

                these wings that suffer

addictions thirtieth daily death, aren’t

                quite the fun I imagined.

Under clattering colours, they lift

                to drop Red Admiral

gliders in a choppy alcoholic sea,

            to drown, intoxicated, lost.

Fergus Chadwick

Thames Ditton, Surrey

The Egret

Best told by its snowy plume

it waits in the brackish water

thin yellow feet as still as mud.

Beak of blue jade darts at the

shadow of fish on the meander.

It was once hunted by man

for its crest.

In nesting season the egret

has been know to bark

and when startled

it flies silently like a white

blossom on the evening

wind.

Neil Brooks

Marlborough

Watching swifts in the rain

Below the buckram of cloud

they form aerial patterns

on the branchings of air

they stroke

their spirits wane

between the raindrops

and gravity

I watch them snip flies

in their delicate beaks

in a pelt of frantic flight

like dark arrows

in an invisible hoop

they dash in flash

of stealth

it carries on raining

they stay in my mind

on a wet day

in a empty house.

Neil Brooks

Configurations

I am drawn to you.

An iron filing,

magnetised

by the power of stars.

You move; I shadow,

mirror your image,

like all your fans.

We form a group, moving together,

amorphous amoeba that’s bent on you;

your voice, your words,

your breath, your essence.

We flock this way and that, instinctive,

as salt waves after the moon,

as starlings kaleidoscope

dark patterns against a winter sky.

Single, I am no one

I am weak, ineffective,

in a million years

you would never notice me.

But you have to love us,

don’t you?

Together,

our configurations demand

your attention.

We possess the sky,

filling it with a hurling, screaming, seething mass

tumbling down to the reed beds

to suck you dry.

Sue Chadd

Malmesbury

Napier Road

Don’t know how it began; couple of kids in an East End school,

the bell ringing at the end of a lesson marking another round, me

drawing Spitfires, zigzag propeller circles, rushing out from Art

to find him as he runs from the Science lab, punch his head, he

pulls my hair, hands smelling of bad eggs; run to our next class,

he to Geography, atlas upside down on his meager knees, thinks

Paris is the capital of Rome, me to Woodwork, planing smooth

a model racer, Mister May smiling; miss him at break, probably

writing fifty lines, I must werk harder, see him after Maths - top

again – as he hops towards me, eyes wide, tears over his face, kicks,

then scurries off to R.I., picture of a halo’d Jesus, arm round a black

boy, Chinese girl, me to P.E. where I leap over the vaulting horse

somersault on the coconut matting and score two goals in the five-

a-side in the hall, and between History and English pull him round

the parquet floor because he rakes my face with a pen he hardly

knows how to hold; then the last bell, and it ceases.  Saw him

recently, still lives in his council house, didn’t answer when

I reminded him, laughing, asked how it started.

Ken Champion

Goodmayes, Essex

to Patti

That steroid injection

I had this morning

in my spine – well,

I thought you

were the only thing

that took my breath away.

Michael Estabrook

Acton, MA, USA

Victory Song at the Custer Monument

You led them to the lip

Of a bowl called Little Big Horn

Chiefs, warriors, braves
You breathed into their spirit
A will of steel
To shatter a fortress of raped land
Slaughtered buffalo

Souvenir seekers bow their head
Before a stone planted
In memory of the man who fought for glory
No marker for you
Strategist of justice
Engineer of victory.

Suzanne Richardson Harvey

Alamo, California, USA

Terminal Dwelling

Her spirit's shrunk

To fit a dwelling

Unchosen

Such a diminutive prison

Its walls contract

The room diminishes

To a building block

In a child's nursery set

She fondles the furniture of greeting cards

Devours perfunctory get well wishes

Caressed with

Flawed precision

The carnation withers

The narcissus fade in a florist vase

A solitary iris languishes

In a dish garden gone dry

She knows one pronoun only

The importunate I

She extracts her tribute

In inelegant retreat.

Suzanne Richardson Harvey

Landscape with Ruins

The camellias are awakening, pink

and crimson, their eyes aware of the cold

moon.  All winter the garden was rank

with sodden leaves, fat persimmons hung blanched

with mildew.  Within, a stillness, a thought.

White carnations shimmered in a bronze vase.

I sat back and waited for the onslaught.

The crows assembled by the water-race.

In the silence your ghost stalks the stone paths,

sparrows chatter among the shaken leaves.

I sense your presence, a raven laughs,

gone is the gossamer the spider weaves.

Tonight, stars are streaming with memory.

In the distance, crows swarm the widow tree.

Calvin Green

Santa Clara, CA, USA

On the Brink

From the curve bow of the horizon

I watch you walk away.

Earlier we sat in the pew

cold visitors, unholy

in our separate togetherness

Abegail Morley

Cranbrook, Kent

The House Says

You ask if I will travel with you

to see the world.

The house says

I have to mow the lawn.

You ask if I will study with you

to understand the world.

The house says

I have to paint the ceiling.

You ask if I will pray with you

to love the world.

The house says

there are blinds to be put up.

The house says

would I fry myself with some garlic

and sprinkle on a little parsley.

Michael Jennings

Keyworth, Nottinghamshire

Learning to Yawn

She always said to cough

with your mouth closed.

Only open it to eat,

or to say something intelligent.

Not something that sounded intelligent,

but was intelligent.

She didn’t expect to hear

much from me,

only the sound of my chewing,

lips tightly shut.

But I surprised her

when she got older

and life wasn’t so clear

as the numbers on her ruler,

but mauve and pastel.

Behind her back

I’d learned to yawn, to grin,

to show my teeth.

Raud Kennedy, Portland OR, USA

Plugged In

Stuck behind a Prius on Barbur Blvd.

Watching the driver’s head

bob like a bobble head

as she blabs on her cell phone.

Her head nods, “Yes,”

and shakes, “No,”

as if who she’s speaking to

is right in front of her

about to be crushed

by her battery powered car.

Raud Kennedy

Waxwings

Under my feet the bridge rings out its metal song;

wind sopranos through the punched-out holes

in chain-link sides that place a hopeful

ban on would-be suicides.

The tracks fin out like bones of opened fans;

trains shark towards the station’s desolation.

Elsewhere tides are bringing in the flights of birds,

wheeling, skirling, resolute in dive and dip.

Edging the tracks like stand-by signal lights,

rowan trees are red with autumn flame.

I stop to look at them, then see

that every tree is full of waxwings feeding.

What wind, what tide brought these,

these startling rowans of the air?

Gill McEvoy

Chester

Elocution Lessons

They detected without Sherlockian nous

I scrubbed up from humble origins

by how my second-hand clothes wore me out

of pocket, kept up stay-pressed pretensions 

of ‘well-heeled’; clipped articulation –

practically accentless – betraying

state-school culling, Redbrick-pressing:

too conscious of aitches to pass for one

above my fricative station.

Old-tie school boys de-liced my foibles

as psychiatrists their patients’ phobias,

with lackadaisical lazy-lashed flicks –

You lack that air…  Flat diagnosis –

didn’t rattle me, salted with socialist distaste

for privilege-peppered classes;

though I resented those ironed tongues

flattening my vernacular creases.

Naturally snatches of taut consonants,

cavalier vowels, rubbed off on my palette

but not that lofty atmosphere

orbiting moon-cool composure;

gravity-defying, gravitas-supplying,

tripping high satellites of expectation.

Alan Morrison

Brighton

A Morning Visitor

Poised, to inquire or pounce,

one paw arched

as though pointing the finger

of guilt, this Siamese

hungers at new wrinkles

in my yard’s universe:

even light levitating

the edges of shadows;

red cherries rotting

inwardly to their pits;

rose hips sinking in heat,

cuddled by petals

peeling like skin:

a forgotten homage

of piled stones:

this is not my cat.

My cat turns its world inside out

and preys

In private.

Keith Moul

Blaine, WA, USA

Burden

You are my burden and I am yours

Nothing can free us from time and place

Time’s moments, so human, so incomplete,

Add to our sum of hours all that was late

And drive us towards the final place

Where we part, we always part,

Each prior place

A cenotaph to the day you left.

Nothing can free us

Nothing is enough

When every place

In shadow and in catafalque reveals

Your face, your lovely face

The living foreground of places I now hate

Their ruined mosaic our burdens tessellate.

John Murphy

Dublin, Ireland

Diana in Massachusetts

We live without protest.
I walk the eggshell path that leads to you,
past autumn colors we never knew.
Cambridge doesn't need you like I do.

Peripheral vision guides us through.
We meet unfailingly at the dividing line
of sight and fabrication, and we rest.
I am the master of mêlée,
and you, the harbinger of false hope,
reliving the creased memories of when

we subsisted on fissures.

Alleliah Amabelle Nuguid

Fremont, CA, USA

New Blood

I smell fresh breath

warm again on my hair,

feel my claws involuntarily

open, then close, then open.

Kathleen Kenny

Newcastle upon Tyne

Wildwood

In April the hybrid cherry blossoms frail pink tissues,

blowsy, copious petals, easily bruised, and smothering their stamens,

bees cannot penetrate: the tree cannot do right by bearing fruit.

It squeezes snake-like roots, it kneads its paws like a cat,

ruptures the asphalt pavement, grips my wall’s foundations and gives such a pull

the wall tilts aslant, a gap yawns, it leans heavily towards the pavement.

Its oblique threat weighs darkly on my heart, but

the council, told of the threat of toppling tons of bricks

sends a clever clogs to put the stupid housewife right:

It’s not “root damage,” but “soil slippage.”  Smart arse!

My neighbour works my worries up, he is a twisted little crook, if I

pay him five hundred pounds in cash today, he’ll “mend” my wall, he offers greedily.

Meanwhile, sly in its bronze-ringed trunk, the cherry

flexes destructive roots again, the wall tilts at a worse angle,

its own weight will pull it down, there’s neither King’s nor democratic council’s justice.

Thwarted in its maternity the angry hybrid trees grip in

with all the vengefulness of armies bringing Birnham Wood to Dunsinane.

Anne Rees

Walthamstow, London

Unchained Malady

As a thin young person

during the 1970s

pensions and long-term prospects

appeared on the periphery

as absurdities, nonentities . . .

the diagnostics of good sense

were viewed as being from another dimension

and seldom addressed

or were treated with bored indifference,

perhaps a nod

followed by a glazed expression.

It was all light years away

if you reached those years at all,

when you’d be decrepit, bald

and more dead than alive,

time seemed to stand still

as experience boiled over from one heated grill

to another.

Pensions were for pensioners

shrunken old dodderers

ageing plodders,

not for kids

with the world to expand

then time sped up a bit,

got out of hand . . .

David Pike

Swindon, Wiltshire

Two Faces

A sharp intake of breath

is a clue to a threshold.

Your hate is insubstantial

but as pure as hunger.

I am every worn-out name,

a light beneath horizons,

my words have no currency.

Later, a coded sigh

is a language that talks

without need of words.

Your love is a gentle force

sweeping inquests before it

into a framed solution

to hang on the wall of my life.

The world is a flower, opening.

I can’t leave the war

for I’d lose the peace.

Gordon Scapens

Penwortham, Preston

The Midnight Cat

The shout in the night

that eats into your sleep

is only the midnight cat

and none of your business.

The sound of glass breaking

is only his paw on wind chimes

and none of your business.

The shriek echoing your nerves

is only a freshly caught mouse

and none of your business.

Don’t mistake yourself

for someone else,

sweeten your instincts

with a liar’s excuse

and go back to sleep.

Cowardice can be comfortable

when you get used to it,

its journey weightless.

Gordon Scapens

ID Check

The leash laws hang oppressively around

my office worker neck.  Each morning I walk

through a park that could be beautiful without

its customary residents, and makes

it equally clear that in the wilderness

baby squirrels are nature’s way of turning

oak trees into hawks.  Which makes me wonder

what type of transformation people serve -

say, turning sodas into lines of code,

artisanal beer to regulations,

or pizza into overflowing landfills.

Then the door appears, as out of nowhere,

complete with guards and others crowding in

like cattle, sheep, or cars that seek the fast lane.

M. A. Schaffner

Arlington, VA, USA

A Writer

His poems stirred one like a crossword puzzle:

you either knew or scratted for the clue

or had to read in all the rest the creed,

a hidden stratagem revealed poem

by poem as the requiem advanced

and each half-round letter was found to reach

its own hexagonal overblown hole.

A K Whitehead

Purston Jaglin, Pontefract, Yorkshire

Our Spiritual Sores Are Dainty In This Moonlight

She’s wriggling along the kerb like

it’s a tightrope

and a car farts alongside her,

‘Ay, get in baby!’ squeals the driver

as his mates in the back

woof and whistle,

‘Do I know youse?’ she asks,

‘Get in the car an yer soon will!’

one of them yells

so she throws the bottle

of whatever she’s drank

onto the grass

without a sound

and gets in the back with them.

The car speeds off.

I spit

but the wind turns it around,

slaps it right back onto my mouth.

Paul Tanner

Thingwall, Wirral

Feline

She sits alone in her
basement flat, a gloomy place
that lets in little natural light,
not helped by the décor –
hot reds with gold detailing –
more of a boudoir really.
Most evenings she strangles
an electric organ until it howls
like a lost cat.
 
She wears those pointy spectacles –
like butterfly wings –
the diamante cluster-tip.
Not speaking, she has a way
of fixing my gaze until
my eyes fall away,
rest on her shapely legs.
 
She wriggles in her seat
allowing her skirt to ride
up above her knees.
I sense her predatory smile,
tongue caught between glossy red lips.
I am the mouse. She is the cat.

Poul Webb

Tunbridge Wells, Kent

Private Islands

As tans and sunburns fade

with the soft cruise, beach sports

and little tin shovels rust beneath the chalet,

we come back to the office

where just getting straight

means a 30-second lunch

in the small configuration

of bits-and-bobs and desk lamp.

The options flashing on the Xerox

make our blind evolutionary drift

look like private islands,

and filling the blanks with zig-zags

we use in the corporate shrine

a tired sky raining on the fire escape.

F.J. Williams

Alsager, Stoke-on-Trent

Rush Hour

We sit there dying in the conference lounge

with ‘Five Habits of Successful People’

jumping out of focus on the screen.

So we carry our portfolios through the clang of the lift,

and drive home with the commuters in some jihad.

Time abolishes its big world plan

and we stop outside the sandwich shop

for Thursday’s lunch, a paper and the wine

thankful for its brilliant cans

and someone draining potatoes in a steamy sink

like our lost Zen breathing,

the big bright flash on gas mark three,

the only place the gods might be.

F.J. Williams

Edouard Manet’s Still Life with Fish and Shrimp

The fish lies

on the cutting board,

eviscerated, cold,

with a starkness

which reminds us

that all animals

are just meat, waiting

to become food

for other animals.

The colors and the focus

on detail would make

the fish beautiful,

stunning, if it were

swimming with its friends,

or if it were cooked

and prepared until it

were unrecognizable,

and, probably, it is

beautiful to anyone

who can see beyond

what it is and what

it suggests about

where we are all heading.

John Brantingham

Upland, CA, USA

The following poets had their work published in the March 2008 edition, #49, of Pulsar Poetry Magazine: Harrison Alechenu Akoh, Ben Barton, Elizabeth Birchall, Nicola O'Rourke, Jonathan Culley, Michael Estabrook, Jim Murdoch, Andrew Frolish, Alex Galper, Wendy French, David Gill, Calvin Green, Alan Hardy, Stephanie Hiteshew, Raud Kennedy, Edward Lee, Arthur Leung, Martin RB Cook, Fergus Chadwick, Kathleen Kenny, Will Daunt, Gerard Melia, Michael Newman, John Plevin, Maggie Andrews, Linda Leedy Schneider, Kenneth Steven, Carol Thistlethwaite, Paul Tanner, Ivan Wallace, Gwilym Williams, F. J. Williams, Alessio Zanelli and Chris Hardy; see poems below: (454 poets published, up to and including March 2008).  

The following poems were published in the March 2008 edition of Pulsar Poetry Magazine # 49

To Wondo Genet

We hit the asphalt with time to spare,

Before the sun pierced through

The ambience of a new dawn

Before the cock had crowed.

Slowly we galloped down the crooked trail

Thick, dark exhaust plumed behind like a shadow.

As we heaved forward

The sound was deafening

and my thoughts were restricted

To pleasure and the downward ride.

We landed from the air with ease

and speeded faster than a cheetah

with trees to the left and right.

Macaques lay nearby, hiding from the sun’s rays,

Ostriches could be seen in a wired compound

While goats roamed in lush vegetation;

They seemed to swing and dance to the tune played

By the soft clean breeze that swept the plain.

We halted in Sheshemane – Rasta dwelling –

After Nazret, Debre Zeit;

At the end of first phase, we connected

In a jalopy for eleven but holding twice that amount

On the hilly non-railed death-road

Swallowed by dirt heap traps

Squeezed like ripe oranges

Compressed to the brim.

We reached Wondo Genet after just a moment

On Garri, assailed by sweet-smelling nature.

The end of a ride worth dieing for 

Harrison Alechenu Akoh

Sabo, Kaduna, Nigeria

 * * *

Canidae

He stares at us rolling up the carpet

like it’s the apocalypse –

the end of his world anyway.

Wet eyes beaded

and tail on full jabber,

with his paws he kneads the underlay.

            Bed moved, chewed

rat, smelly charity shop

blanket – all relocated to

the inner sanctum;

The utility room.

I know he’s worried,

he’s untrusting like that,

always has been.

Imbued with a cat’s nerves.

            The furniture unfamiliar,

he scurries by my feet

sniffing my ankles

and gazing up, dejected.

I know he’s thinking

what error or misdemeanour

            has been let out today

to warrant these intrusions.

Ben Barton

Folkestone, Kent

 What’s New?

 Critics expect a contemporary

Pastoral to conjure novelty from

The familiar delights of hedge and field

But that motor which some call God does not,

Simply to gobsmack us with cleverness,

In this third millennium paint them blue

Or change our deeply programmed response

To lengthening days, the laughing triumph

Of daffodils or rain splats in puddles

After drought.  Sun unbuttons us. Stretching

A stick across a ditch for blackberries

Crooks a lifetime.  Snow silences discord.

            Reaching out to greet each revolving year

            We relish our roots in the biosphere.

Elizabeth Birchall,

Enstone, Oxfordshire

  * * *

Demon

Hidden behind a mask; behind a cliché.

So many euphemisms.

Yet the pleasantries do not fool me.

"A joy-inducing anaesthesia,"

often clear as ice, and indeed as numbing,

yet the spectators feel shattering glass.

A celebration. A holiday. A weekend.

An excuse.

A substance; uncontrolled, unbalanced,

even inhuman.

Already, my tolerance is waning.

And I am not even old enough,