Pulsar Webzine Published Poems
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*
Pulsar #61, Pulsar Webzine #9, (December 2011)
Poems published in earlier Pulsar Webzine editions may also be viewed further below
Index of poems posted to Pulsar Poetry Webzine #9, December 2011; click on the surname of a poet in the list below, to view their poem.
Poem Index
Chaos Theory - Lynn Ciesielski
Acid Rain - Michael Jennings
the stone: a meditation - A A Marcoff
Existential - David R Morgan
The Carracks - David Pike
Pavement Ends - Donna Pucciani
Statement of Intent - Gordon Scapens
Found - Fiona Sinclair
*
This alley runs through a
living museum
that displays layers of
the octogenarian's life,
crumbs of linoleum,
threadbare carpet with
wilted roses.
I fold myself in the only
easy chair.
He ordered chaos all his
life,
figured formulas, solved
equations,
but can't locate his
bathroom in the house
where he's lived for
eighty-nine years.
How is this language
called math?
It’s all so foreign and
complex.
He lectured on fractals
and Mandelbrot sets
from the podium.
Here this mix speaks in
tongues.
Mine is not among them.
Depression mentality:
each day he visits the
bread line
for more ornaments to
fill the shelves,
chimes, cherubs,
substitutes for students
who once gathered to bask
in his brilliance.
Buffallo, NY, USA
We only met in rain
sometimes so fine
we did not notice it.
Only the forged beauty
of summer days
sustained things for a while.
No sun of commitment
ever shone – scepticism
and unwillingness
to be wrong
soaked into us,
producing not growth
but putrefaction
beneath our dark protective coats.
Michael Jennings
Keyworth, Nottinghamshire
I see an existentialist passion in a simple stone.
Its purity is its purity, its
own, its intense
dense independence.
This is the apparent and inconsequential, the element of its being here
in the world, as we walk by in relative mood.
Could we be more aware of how it is lost to its own universe
– (itself)? Within its darkness, its completeness, it is still and tough and
hard, as real as the nature of the mind (itself), rugged in the milieu of the
whirlwind.
A A Marcoff
Leatherhead, Surrey
Seven hawks hang
above the farm
like some immense,
slowly turning mobile.
They glide silently
as blood,
the sun
warm in their wings.
Beneath them, the Cockerel,
his eye
cocked heavenward,
struts around his hens.
David R. Morgan
Ampthill, Bedfordshire
And the Atlantic seals
looked down
from their craggy island thrones
of granite
and spume
upon another boat load
of tourists
during a jaunty afternoon
to view seals
looking down from
precarious stones
it’s because they are there
remote and alone,
they come to stare.
David Pike
Swindon, Wiltshire
The Carracks are a collection of
spume blown rocks situated off the Cornish coast, approximately 3 miles south of
St Ives.
for Dorothea and for Greg
This week the pavement ended
for two I used to know.
An old teacher from the coast of Massachusetts
disappeared into the fog, leaving behind
a world of sailboats and long walks with the dog,
where the lighthouse in the distance off Cape Ann
flashed its measured yellow signal in the night.
How would her cheerful theology explain
this woeful road, this cryptic yellow diamond
of a sign, blackbirds scattering like dark beads
from a broken necklace, and the trees only
a distant grey lace?
You can keep walking,
says the fence of wood and wire, but
there will be no road.
Your feet will be
in unknown pasture, tall grass and mud
clinging to your earthbound shoes.
But keep
walking as long as you can, for no reason
except that the fog will eat you when it wishes,
or the soil will lay you down underneath it
and sing you to sleep.
The second loss was my cousin Greg in Maine,
on helluva guy.
He was not on a beach,
in his bed, or along a crumbling road.
Just that morning, he had walked on the seashore.
His treadmill tipped him off too young, at sixty-three,
the moving sidewalk of momentary panic
still going when his wife found him, inert and purple,
on the floor.
His journey halted suddenly,
unlike Dorothea’s, whose long illness,
said the obituary, was her personal yellow sign.
Whose footsteps will we follow?
Will we grow old
and vanish in the mist, a few steps past a pavement’s
end where out ancestors wait in the soft meadow
of annihilation?
Or will we hit the floor running
with a bursting heart, surprised like birds flapping,
and the treadmill’s rhythmic motor
still pulsing with our invisible footsteps?
Donna Pucciani
Wheaton, Illinois
All winter the tree has posed
outstretched claws grasping
in silent greed for the sky,
always competing with the wind.
By street lights, sinister intentions
are at war with the night,
clutching shadows menacing
the path, innocent by day.
Dogs run home with eyes
bared of all confidence,
people hurry from ambush
of a ghostly stranger.
But come the spring, buds fan out,
softening outlines to gentleness,
branches relax intimidation.
The tree’s arms grow a welcome,
a statement of intent
that’s a lesson
Gordon Scapens
Penwortham, Preston
Two pitches down people pick over a life.
Amongst crockery, a wooden box on cork screw legs,
I stroke its mahogany flanks.
Inside baby blue lining is glimpsed through
a ramshackle nest of sewing materials.
My trespassing hands are pricked by booby trapped pins,
churned contents release charity shop smell,
nevertheless £15 and it’s in the back of my car.
Back home, I turn with curator care
the pages of her log
Knitting needles set 4, brown 978
ciphers baffling as a spy’s field book.
Goose bumps as her tiny sleeping beauty thimble
is slipped onto the tip of my little finger.
Bottom of the box, her hoard
of Woman’s Realm patterns and embroidery cloths.
One bearing a few links of colour and a needle lanced,
when she was called away.
Following Sunday, the materials are a lucky dip.
A brake is applied on a buggy
‘Stop pestering and let me look’
The woman speed reads the contents
‘How much for the lot?’
She carries the container off on her infant’s lap,
planning snatched trysts with her needlework
when the kids are asleep.
In my bedroom paper, pens and thesaurus begin
to make themselves at home in Mrs Taylor’s sewing box.
Fiona Sinclair
Faversham, Kent
Pulsar #60, Pulsar Webzine #8, (September 2011)
Poems published in earlier Pulsar Webzine editions may also be viewed further below
Index of poems posted to Pulsar Poetry Webzine #8, September 2011; click on the surname of a poet in the list below, to view their poem.
Poem Index
Greenbottle Flies - Martin Cook
Crows - Bruce Louis Dodson
Akazawa Hot-Spring, April 10 2011 - Tom Gill
I was too young when he died - Michael Estabrook
Resting Place - Delores Guglielmo
Four Jay Afternoon - Mark Halladay
Please Be Quiet as You Leave - Mark Halladay
Making My Own Acquaintance - Raud Kennedy
Afghanistan - Raud Kennedy
Old Love - David R Morgan
A Likeness - David Pike
Not For Resale - Gordon Scapens
Spring Warriors - Gordon Scapens
Mapping Shadows - Julia Stothard
Sisyphus - Harold Webster
Toy Soldiers - Ron Yazinski
The Bleeding Horse - Ron Yazinski
*
They explore mouth-gapes
of children and the old,
whose sub-Saharan bodies
drift into early decay.
We see them on telly,
without the stench of decay,
perpetuating their kind,
plunging eggs into flesh.
They are ubiquitous.
I see them queuing
to bury ovipositors
into our dying cat.
I watch African flies testing,
exploring lifeless limbs
and open lips below
staring but sightless eyes.
Martin Cook
Hitchin, Hertfordshire
They go unnoticed overhead
Above the supermarket malls and cities
Countryside
Suburban fields and meadows
Watching
Airborne gangs dressed in black feather jackets
Fearless wise guys with a raucous comment
For the goings on below.
Bruce Louis Dodson
Federal Way, WA
Akazawa Hot-Spring, April 10 2011
Who would have thought that chaos could be so close?
As we watched the sun burnish the scaled sea,
The still fishing boats at anchor,
A kite wheeling in the thin air above,
The steepling forested cliffs of Izu
Who would have thought
That not far north from here another stretch of this same
shoreline
Was gone, bitten off by a suddenly hungry ocean
That smashed every standing thing to matchwood,
And left half the dead still missing, taken by the tide,
never to return.
Up there, things have fallen apart.
Down here at Akazawa, we naked men are all together
Reclining in an outdoor cliff-top hot-spring
Gazing with vacant eyes at the slow-burnishing, pacific sea.
A man, bowed beneath a man-made waterfall,
Turns one shoulder, then the other, to the pummelling jet.
A second, damp towel on his head, examines his toes in the
mineral waters
While a third, poised on a boulder, puts fist to jaw, a
thinker perhaps like Rodin's
Thinking perhaps that these green granite cliffs could one
day vanish into the ocean too,
The little houses perched optimistically atop them tossed
into the air like playthings
And that this tranquil scene might be at a stroke
transformed to one from the pages of the Book of Hell
Think not of that; observe instead, in the blue-white
heights above,
The kite, infinitely solid, infinitely light,
As he banks, surveys, then banks again in shreds of cirrus.
Catastrophe means nothing to him;
Let it mean nothing to us
As we bask in the genial waters
That bubble up from the molten mess below,
To soothe our worn bodies, our tired hearts.
Tom Gill
Yokohama,
Japan
I’d give
most anything
to time-travel back
45 years
to have a beer
with my Dad
and I don’t
even drink beer.
I can only imagine
having a beer
with my Dad,
one of his favorite
beers, perhaps:
Piels, Schaefer or Rheingold,
Schlitz, Ballantine, Pabst,
or just a plain
old Budweiser.
Michael Estabrook
Acton, MA, USA
Where the earth traverses
And the sun’s equinox
Cowers on cold bodies
And buried bones
In a fury they surround me
A phalanx of heads
Wombs
Breasts
Arms
Legs
And torsos
Like a giant sarcophagus
They come together
In a final resting place
Of matted hair
Tattered rags
And dust
The color of powdered ash.
Dolores Guglielmo
Flushing, New York, USA
Four Jay Afternoon
Out in the tatters of the year
in December’s dullest darkest days,
all bran brown, broth puddled
and breath,
four horses gather round the hay,
a barber quartet
with nothing to sing,
and likewise four jays,
pink bodied,
white assed, make-up
faced,
have turned up in fancy dress
to a wake.
Mark Halladay
Hartshill, Nuneaton, Warwickshire
Please Be Quiet as You Leave
Robin song packed up the day.
Neatly, folded, ready to go.
Not all glorious,
entering the dream red glow,
but clouded,
shrouded.
Like an old women in a head scarf
coming home from town,
full of thought,
facing down.
Mark Halladay
I used to smoke, crave it, enjoy it.
Now it’s something people do
who are ambivalent about life,
not sure if they want to live or die.
I used to drink a lot.
It was the high and low of my day.
Now it’s what people do who are in pain.
Their pain has taken on a life of its own
and needs to be fed and cared for
like a lost soul they’ve brought home from the bar.
I used to feel sad and needed that sadness
to have something to escape from
because without it I’d be left alone
experiencing an uncomfortable silence
with a stranger.
Raud Kennedy
Aloha, OR,
USA
In bed, prolonging the moments
before pushing back the covers.
The voice on NPR, a reporter in Afghanistan,
refers to the spring fighting season
as if he’s announcing the opening
of ski season at Mt. Hood Meadows.
I brush my teeth, minty fresh, extra whitener.
Death tolls from suicide bombings.
Toweling off after showering, it’s total US casualties,
a number that could be the population figure
of a small city. A city of dead young men and women.
The refreshing lather lifts my beard
as my triple bladed razor shaves my face kissable smooth.
Tell me again why we are there while I am here.
Raud Kennedy
Less fiercely than river
carves banks.
More subtly than glacier
hollows lake…
you fit my body
to yours even now,
turning slowly in sleep;
weathered stone to breathing soil.
David R Morgan
Ampthill,
Bedfordshire
A
partly bald, white haired,
walrus moustachioed
paunchy, other age
lackadaisical, whimsical
displaced older person
looked vaguely perturbed
staring from the concave-curved
shaving mirror.
The reflected image
glaring back
couldn’t be me,
that would be absurd,
but absurd it was
a
cross between
an
uncle and my dad
with a bit of London
thrown in
by
way of lack of hair,
perhaps with an air of apprehension?
I
look like them
and they look like me
to
a degree
at
a certain point
in
the adventure;
but who will resemble me?
Few would want to
I
would venture.
David Pike
Swindon, Wiltshire
All that’s possessed
is the here and now.
The past can lie,
the future can’t promise.
Today is the result
of years added up,
reaping the whims
of arbitrary fortune
Today is luggage carried
on a tour of life.
It’s the horizon
always aimed for,
nearer than thought.
It’s a bridge
built of small hopes,
collected scraps of envy.
It’s what age is fashioned from.
Today is valuable
and not for resale.
Gordon Scapens
Penwortham, Preston, Lancashire
The snowdrops are brazen
in their shivering nakedness,
white petals hanging,
medals for fighting the cold.
They’re standing to be counted
through the hard ground,
a lesson later plants copy
of how gentle force can be.
They wave to the world
boasting early rising
as conquerors of Winter,
the first heroes of Spring.
They are an antidote
to the madness of men.
Gordon Scapens
On the estuary, at evening,
a god is rubbing his hand across
the black rocks, tousled with seaweed,
pilling up a flock of bellies
with shell-sharp wings and slender necks.
They wheel overhead
sketching figures in flight;
silhouettes hooked on the sky.
On the shore below you are counting pebbles,
one-by-one for the water,
aim a guileless lob
that believes it is furthest,
singular, best; regardless of whether
it clatters short
or arcs right out and triumphs the depths.
As the light gives way
the birds submerge into night
and the mapping of shadows on black
is a pact between
land and sea and sky.
The unordered sum of day,
the combinations and cross-talk,
will pick away at your dreams;
leak uneven drips,
drenching your sleep with discomfort.
This is the pain we dismiss
with a gesture, an easy frown
but your god is kind;
he redefines the thresholds,
straightens what horizons bend.
And standing in this tallow black
of burnt-out day, nothing sparks,
nothing shifts nor overlaps –
the ocean rubs the river’s tidal banks,
as speechless as it always is.
Julia Stothard
Shepperton, Middlesex
We watch the battered madman
roll by bloody inch
the great rock up the rugged hill
marvel at the knotted ropes of muscle and chafed flesh
as he strains against the massive load and makes guttered
groans and curses gravity with
every bloody nudge.
Spittle spews in streams from lips cracked
and split by stiff grimace over clinched teeth.
“ Will! I will this rock, this goddamned rock
from deck to top, and will not stop, not now, nor ever,”
he howls, and shakes a bloody fist against the gods that be
who wish to see him wilted snivelling on the trail
in foetal crouch, sobbing in
surrender to their power.
But he does not bend and sees the struggle to its end.
He pauses briefly at the top to see the hard won view,
and in fierce renewal squares his shoulders
and with fists
on hips bellows one defiant roar.
With stubborn swagger then he strides his way back down
again
to reach the other end. He has done an incredible thing
and knows he can prevail and do it all again.
Harold Webster
Buffalo,
MN, USA
The mysteries of God were with my toy soldiers,
The cheap plastic kind that parents bought by the bagful,
In those years after World War II
When all returning fathers were heroes.
Mine were the most mundane.
All Khaki, they marched with their rifles slung over their shoulders
As if there was an engagement elsewhere.
They were always on parade,
As if that were the purpose of soldiers,
That war just weaned out those that didn’t drill hard enough.
Soon I became as bored forming them into ranks and squadrons,
As God with the angels,
So I stole a few figures from my cousin.
One crouched on the ground like a sniper,
Another lay prostrate behind his BAR,
And a third was throwing a hand grenade.
And I thought as little about it
As He did about stealing another gods followers.
Just to relieve the monotony
I had my murderous stolen squad lying in wait,
Behind storybooks, socks and packs of baseball cards,
Ambushing the rigid soldiers in commando raids.
But growing up means putting certain toys away.
And so I did, just like Him,
On the top shelf at the back of the dark closet,
Too selfish to give them away,
For some other god to play with.
Ron Yazinski
Covington, Pennsylvania, USA
Two Mollies at their pints,
Fussing with their racing forms on the same dark bar
That Joyce once polished with his ink-stained sleeve,
When a young deliveryman swings in from the icy Dublin rain,
Brandishing a bouquet of roses,
Asking bashfully, at first, as if in confession,
And then louder, if anyone knows the whereabouts of Adelaide Road.
The older one slumps off her stool,
Smiles and says, Yes, sweet Jesus, sonny, you’re nearly there.
Just take that handsome face of yours left out this door,
Then right at the first corner, then a left at Hatch,
Then a right and a right, and there you’ll be,
If the rain don’t drown you first.
He thanked her as if she had stood him a round, and was gone.
As she hoisted herself back to her stool,
Her friend said, I’m greatly impressed
With your knowledge of this neighborhoods geography.
To which the older woman said,
I haven’t a fecking idea where that street is.
But I couldn’t listen to that whiny altar boy voice of his for another second,
now could I?
It was spoiling my Guinness.
The other woman licked the foam off her upper lip,
And sure that would be a sin.
Besides, if fine lasses like us aren’t getting flowers,
Why should some other tart?
Ron Yazinski
Pulsar #59, Pulsar Webzine #7, (June 2011)
Poems published in earlier Pulsar Webzine editions may also be viewed further below
Index of poems posted to Pulsar Poetry Webzine #7, June 2011; click on the surname of a poet in the list below, to view their poem.
Poem Index
Snow - Holly Day
Lost Souls of Zimbabwe - Hasani Hasani
Humpback Song - Clinton Van Inman
Another World - Michael Jennings
How To Read For Other Poets - Noel King
Skies - Noel King
Heliograph - David Pike
Still Life, Twenty-First Century - Donna Pucciani
Return to Brandymore Castle - M.A. Schaffner
So You Want To Be - M.A. Schaffner
Snow
We wake to find the snow
has covered everything. I open
the front door, stand on the porch
hold my infant son up so he can see
how much the world has changed.
His head moves back and forth
taking it all in
the immense white
sea we find ourselves lost in.
Already, the surface has been
broken by the noisy crows
rolling in the snow.
Holly Day
Minneapolis MN, USA
Fear is written on poor
mothers faces
As the drumbeat sounds
It’s the drumbeat of
lost souls
Souls lost in bitterness
Mothers run like
headless chickens
Run for their precious
young souls
Innocent young souls
Caught in the crossfire
of a mortal game
It’s a deadly game of
politics
Where killers are
glorified
Where murderers are let
loose
Let loose on the masses
by fake liberators
“Kill the opposition!”
they shout
“Kill the sell-outs!”
they shout again
“We liberated this
country!” they shout
These are the lost souls
of Zimbabwe.
Hasani Hasani
London, SW2
Once a slug only I squirmed
In your swollen, stillborn seas
And felt the perpetual pull
Of midnight moons across my back
As I floated face down adrift
In your Paleozoic tides.
Only in fleeing am I free
My fins protect me from
Your invertebrate claws.
My humpback song will find
Deeper, purer waters beyond
The needle of your compass point.
Far from your perfect
Perpendicular shores that could
Never square me.
Clinton Van Inman
Sun City Center, Fl, USA
Erect despite the arthritis,
a stiff bow and a firm handshake,
his eyes serious, the white moustache clipped,
the greeting formal,
he seemed from another world.
A world where formality ruled,
where a chance meeting in the street
elicited a known liturgy,
where a letter to a friend
flowed with noble respect.
Here each person was accorded
the stature proper to a human being –
king of the known universe,
the lone decision-maker,
shoulderer of grave responsibility.
Michael Jennings
Keyworth, Nottinghamshire
Because you can’t attend
the prize-giving, I stand
on a podium, speak your
words
known silently to me
since their birth;
but only with your
intonation.
Your poems stand without
you
and I take the applause
across counties before
nightfall
hand-clap my . . . your
audience back to you.
Noel King
Tralee, Co. Kerry,
Ireland
Until she went to the
Crawford,
Angie just painted
skies.
She defended her skies,
or sky’s;
that they were her feelings, what
she saw,
that there was whites
and greys as well
as blues in sky’s, or
skies.
Now at the college, she
doesn’t paint
sky any more but grass
instead. Maybe
sometime, she tells her
cheque-book-mother,
she’ll merge the two.
Noel King
Gleaming, shining, refracting;
maybe three, four or more
miles away
in the lowland vale,
mid-summer in shimmering heat
a car retreats, moves
unaware of screen
reflecting shafts of light,
relayed as random flashes
to casual watchers
on the Manger gape
near Uffington,
in the wake
of many many years,
where in distant lands
signallers relayed commands
in similar ways
on South African, American
and Asian terrain,
skilled operators
flashed mirror-code
between mountain range
and telegraph hills;
shining
to instil.
David Pike
Swindon, Wiltshire
Still life, Twenty-First Century
A music book lies open on the piano.
A hundred years ago,
there would have been a
vase of flowers,
fruit in a bowl, or a
carafe of wine,
but now only a cup of
coffee
half-spilled, a pencil
stub to mark the score,
a cell phone.
Behind,
a mintoned window waits
for sound.
An invisible pianist
moves one finger at a
time,
in tune with the void.
She rises from the
bench,
a wingless butterfly,
and lights
on the arm of the sofa,
where a man with no body
waits to touch her.
Donna Pucciani
Wheaton, Illinois, USA
It may have always felt like an island:
a lone steep hill, its apex surmounted
by a rough crown of boulders. More so now
with the leaves gone and the surrounding view
all homes and highways, electrical lines
and queues of cars. The Indian quarry sinks
further under the centuries’ litter:
plastic bags and bottles covering layers
of stove slag, china, embossed brass buttons.
Decades have passed since I last climbed this hill;
then to build that summer’s fortress, and now
to ponder what remains for me to guard.
I run now for my health, or to draw time
into seemingly infinite lines leading
to a vanishing point beyond which I
hope not to vanish but to discover
another castle, with a broader view,
that one more century may yet lead me to.
M. A. Schaffner
Arlington, VA, USA
The band leader could be as old as us –
that is, my friend and me, there in our suits
with the rest of the lunchtime office crowd
pretending we never graduated.
We’re slimmer – his gut is the clumsy prow
of a trawler looking for a lonely beach
on which to run aground its suspect cargo.
He can hardly hold his harmonica
but plays with a feral intensity
while his sidemen, all younger, march in step
to the slightest twitch of his matted mane.
He must have spent years just to get this far
or to get back, having soared and fallen.
We are the fans he has yet to garner.
We sit on the screams he still imagines.
But halfway through the set we have to leave
for a meeting, somewhere, and must wonder
if we’d have done as well, if we had tried.
M. A. Schaffner
* * *
Pulsar #58, Pulsar Webzine #6, (March 2011)
Poems published in earlier Pulsar Webzine editions may also be viewed further below
Index of poems posted to Pulsar Poetry Webzine #6, March 2011; click on the surname of a poet in the list below, to view their poem.
Poem Index
Beginning Ends - Lynn Ciesielski
Diana (Moon) - Clinton Inman
Waiting - Michael Jennings
Baton Rouge - Erren Geraud Kelly
Hybrids - David R Morgan
Crannell Trees - David Pike
Weather forecast - Jon Plunkett
Gatecrasher - Fiona Sinclair
Thousands of fancy black
birds with red wings,
iridescent starlings, an
odd duck fall from sky,
dying, near midnight New
Year’s Eve.
Like bad memories from
last year,
they drop in uninvited.
Neighbors wake at
daybreak,
hope to discover
promises, instead find death.
Tiny corpses litter
lawns, roofs, roads.
People hide children’s
eyes, lock them inside,
themselves afraid to
drive or walk.
They remove remains with
shovels,
keep their grief.
Theories arise about
grounded birds.
Scientists find signs of
blows, perhaps
lightning strike,
hailstorm or shock
from fireworks that
celebrate year end.
Or, say those waiting
for the last day, a sign.
Drag your white skull beyond blind seas
that tumble dazed to you mono-eyed magic.
Go tell Neptune when the night is through.
Charm him, too, with your waxing and waning.
But you can’t catch me with those veiled half smiles.
Your borrowed brilliance exposes you.
I know your darker side.
Go charm some other star struck rhapsodist.
Clinton Inman
Sun City Center, Fl, USA
Who turned your head, sweet Albiona?
They say James Watt me be the cause.
It was his wealth you took
to far off lands of luxury,
leaving your mother behind,
at first upset and then distraught.
Far away from her you drank
the poisoned pleasures of excess.
Avoidance of suffering only caused you more.
You gave yourself to the men
of sport and song and acquisition
and dark philosophies made of straw.
They say you are losing your looks,
your once lithe body has grown fat,
your speech intemperate, your manner coarse
that you have lost your self control and self respect.
They say you have become selfish and that
frustration sometimes makes you violent.
Come back, Albiona, come back!
Your mother’s door is open, the house is yours,
no-one else can calm your fears,
restore the beauty of your youth
and soothe the torment of your heart.
A lamp still burns in the sanctuary.
Michael Jennings
Keyworth, Nottinghamshire
Baton
Rouge
Much needed rain comes
Makes genies
Rise up from
The blacktop
The ducks peck around
In my father’s
Front yard
Erren Geraud Kelly
New York, USA
(Christmas 2010)
There is mulled wine in the slow cooker,
and the long evening drinks it. There
are words we wait for, as Adam
for Eve before language was made…
like the love of hybrids, certitude’s
question mark; yellow fields of flowers
blue with butterflies, not yet a memory
but a cross breeding of beginnings.
So it seemed we were all here
and locked in for the evening.
We played pretending we were safe,
pretending we were young.
But you never really arrived,
and it was not you who returned.
So that I taught myself
the things I thought I'd need:
I learned how to keep time. Though
there was no one in the crowded room.
I made an alliterative alphabet; showed
everyone painkillers and prayer books.
And whenever you were telephoned
you were startled by the familiar voice;
as if there was time to change things,
as though you were still alive.
There is mulled wine in the glass,
and the long evening drinks it;
there are words we waited for,
and they changed us like our lives…
but the night needs only night
so that, being what we are with our
love of hybrids , yellow and blue, we
turned back once again to our beginnings.
David R. Morgan
Ampthill, Bedfordshire
Sweat would bleed
from your brow
dripping down to sting the eyes.
We’d run;
a string of what a secondary school
could bring
to local paths.
They called it cross country running
and run we did
along Hedge Hill road
fitter than delinquent whippets
gulping the breeze
heading west towards Childrey
charging, pounding, for Crannell trees
then ascending, winning still
to a derelict quarry, skirting the edge
then descending, scuttling down Windmill Hill
enduring, gasping
past Fulling Mill
towards Hamfield
and Challow road.
Years ago,
names were known
and are hopefully still around
unlike Crannell trees
that mainly in later years
succumbed to Dutch elm disease.
David Pike
Swindon, Wiltshire
of a fake wooden desk
while he sat in front
of his framed achievements
tapping our words into pixels.
He raised an eyebrow
in surprise
at our lack of isa
and non-existent pension,
and looked gravely concerned
that we had no savings
for a rainy day.
He did not smile
when I pointed out,
with a laugh,
that this is Scotland.
Jon Plunkett
Aberfeldy, Scotland
Sucked in by Jo’s cyclonic welcome, I use bouquet and card
to shield snagged cardigan and naked face from legitimate
guests.
Look who it is! to the middle sister still remembered as an
adolescent snow queen,
who elbows deep in washing up, beams.
I am slapped not just by
the older sister’s ‘your car is blocking the
road’ but the collapse of her Ali McGraw face into a cow’s
dewlap.
Yet darting between rooms in frocks and vivid make up, the
sisters
are still exotic birds
spotted amongst dowdy sparrows in a British garden.
Jo settles briefly. I ache to deliver the news that will
trump blissful marriages
and glamorous travel but my stammered attempts are pages
of a letter tossed away on the breeze as her attention gads
about the
room. The split second her eyes alight on me I gabble my
lines.
‘That’s wonderful dear’, as if to a child who has won a gold
star at school,
while she turns to inquire if more blowsy cup cakes are
required.
How long have you know each other? My voice lost beneath
Jo’s
railway station
loudspeaker, I defer to her retelling of how at 8 we were
cautioned by the local
bobby for a prank, the surviving memory of two little
girls whose sagas were played out in this garden every
summer.
In the lounge, Jo’s mum giggles with chums like Cranford
ladies after
too much wine. Novelty tiara and balloons announcing she is
80 today.
Years ago, picking up the friendship dropped by our mothers,
newsy
letters and visits have kept me in Rosemary’s journal
entries.
Fiona Sinclair
Faversham, Kent
Pulsar #57, Pulsar Webzine #5, (December, 2010)
Poems published in earlier Pulsar Webzine editions may also be viewed further below
Index of poems posted to Pulsar Poetry Webzine #5, December 2010; click on the surname of a poet in the list below, to view their poem.
Poem Index
Afterwards - Martin Cook
Great Granddad - John R. Cornwall
Losing Touch - Robin Daglish
Bubbles - Kate Edwards
Slag Heap - Mark Halladay
One Funeral and Ten Years Later - Frank Joussen
Monsoon Affair - Frank Joussen
Wisdom - Noel King
The Work Party - Thomas V. Lysaght
What the Fairy Brings to the Table - David R. Morgan
Mediocrity is not enough - David R. Morgan
Tiny Fish - David Pike
Coming Home - John Plevin
Moon Halo - Julia Stothard
*
My roots
suck sustenance
from
rotting humus.
Once wind
tickled my leaves
above
hurrying folk.
Companion
trees
deadened
traffic grumbles.
But now,
tracks in dust
suggest
dithering rodents.
Martin Cook
Hitchin,
Hertfordshire
Great Granddad
In that chair,
Basket woven,
You sit with
Victorian solemnity.
I resemble you.
My eyes, my hair,
My gaze
Are all yours.
Down through time,
Through these years,
This is all that's
Left
A starched photograph,
Sepia,
Positioned
As if real.
Now I fold
Back
All thought,
All awareness
As if
In a caught
Second
Everything
Implodes
And the soul,
Uneasy, swells
To nothing.
John R. Cornwall
Accrington
There was
no forwarding address
where you
used to live,
no clues at
the camera shop
where you
used to work.
You’re
trail was cold in the old
Victorian
labyrinth of terraces:
silent rows
of doors
offering
inhospitality
to empty
streets.
I remember
the tasteful dilapidation
of your
home: a husband who left only scars,
a
delinquent son you couldn’t get rid of,
a mad
hamster rolling around in a plastic ball,
most of all
I remember your laughter
like
stuttering magpies.
.
Maybe you
were like that hamster:
one day
instead of concussing yourself
against the
skirting board,
you just rolled out of the open door.
Robin
Daglish
Weymouth, Dorset
The fizzing
explosion of a champagne cork,
bending,
you licked gleaming drops from my skin.
You sat up,
flushed and panting slightly, saying
‘your turn
now,’ and lying supine
pushed the
half full bottle into my hand.
You lay,
eyes closed, waiting, while I
dressed
silently, drinking from the bottle.
As I closed
the door, your eyes opened,
a shout of
protest followed me out.
I’d gasped,
surprised, as you grasped the neck,
trickling
the liquid all over my body
dripping
into the curves and hollows.
I suppose
you only meant to delight,
how could
you know that for me
sex starts
in the mind, the best foreplay
is
conversation, finding ways of thought
running in
parallel through our heads.
If you had
questioned me, sought an insight,
listened to
me, shown me the reality of you,
the affair
might have proceeded very differently,
then there
would have been plenty of time
for
champagne games and bubbles late.
Kate
Edwards
Runcorn
Slag Heap
It got into my cousin’s wedding photos
did mount jud.
That great bell end on the skyline
between the town and wood.
Backing the happy couple with a bemused frown.
Behind mum
in that strange feathered hat
and the three bridesmaids,
all fat.
And so it should.
Even if it is just a huge pile of slag.
At least some effort went into all that crap and mud.
I liked that morning
it was topped with St George’s flag.
Better landmark for a town
than men lying down
amongst beer cans and litter,
lazily sucking life from the butt of a fag.
Mark
Halladay
Hartshill,
Nuneaton, Warwickshire
One Funeral and Ten Years Later
I’m kneeling almost exactly where
I received my First Communion
but in my former parish church
I feel like an ex-junkie today -
my hands and knees are shaking,
my visions filled with
flashbacks and déjà vus:
from behind this uncle looks
a lot like my long dead grandpa,
that aunt has always limped a bit
but at the end of this time tunnel it’s worse,
ten years ago I also wanted
to talk to this cousin, badly,
but I couldn’t then and I can’t now.
We’re moving slowly towards the coffin,
the age-old priest is mumbling something
about the consecrated host, then even hands it
to me,
but I feel undeserving
and must look bewildered, slightly stoned.
I’m so disoriented I can’t
find my place in the pew
and do what I’ve already done too often -
I take the next exit.
Frank Joussen
Germany
your face is the most
beautiful place
where I can kiss
the smell of rain
your tears no longer
the fluid disguise
for the laughter hidden
behind our mask of pain
our emotions still
go under
in the first-monsoon
day commotion
but, like the gurgling
water in the gutter,
passion floods
our hearts and veins
Frank Joussen
in memoriam, Eamon Kelly
Your lips
are shapes of moons
that light
scenes from a past age,
holding a
century of a life;
you can
frame a mountain
and take us
to dreams
of a world
gone except for you.
And when
little parcels fall
in our
imaginations’ doors,
waking in
us a strive to storytell,
we can hear
your Kerry,
and we’ll
remember, we’ll remember.
The body
went around our eyes
of a
carpenter’s son
who played
Broadway and back,
but too
show the cool Kerry
of a
Coolock, Dublin suburban man.
Wise man,
wisdom is what I find
in me,
because you beam it
from Kerry
rafters
forged in
stone-mad lore.
We find in
you our core
Noel King
Tralee, Co.
Kerry, Ireland
Everyone
knew their part at the work party;
where to
stand and who to talk to.
There was a
great deal of smiling
by the
people with the best teeth.
Almost
everyone accepted the script
and was on
automatic pilot.
It was a
small, multicultural party
of
comfortable and magnanimous people,
and
everyone brought a dish.
Some of the
bit players (all women)
had
prepared crisp little things
in their
personal kitchens.
Others
brought things they’d brought;
“edible but
shoot for unusual”
was sort of
the rule.
People took
turns showing others
complex
facial expressions of intense interest
as they
sampled something new to them,
or the
“fond memory” face
for
something familiar.
The two top
men wouldn’t watch
the
displays of others,
they ate
like slightly careless children at home.
Thomas V.
Lysaght
Floral Park, New York, USA
What the Fairy Brings to the Table
He brings his balls.
He is not Abelard.
He brings his ears on a plate.
He is not Van Gogh.
He brings his eyes.
He's not Oedipus in disguise.
He presents his entire head.
He is not King Charles.
He is the final fairy from
the final tale and you are privileged …
by his persistence.
David R
Morgan
Ampthill, Bedfordshire
(In the Bodleian Library, Oxford)
I pursue decades of
obscure study
and publish nothing.
The drunk reads maps of
the skies
under which he sleeps,
and like the stars he is remote.
In the eight-hundred section
the drunk lectures me on T S Eliot.
I sigh and offer unrealistically
to trade my tie for his bottle,
leather for his tattered
tennis shoes.
Ignoring me, he reads in a scratchy
bass from The Waste
Land.
Neither of us is content.
Neither can be.
That is the point.
Outside, bundles of books in hands,
we watch clouds roll
across from Wales.
All I see is rain.
Rubbing his weary eyes,
he sees locusts, angels, artillery.
David R Morgan
Through the
bright
sun-reflected glare
you see
them
in harbour
brine,
small
denizens
hovering
there –
tiny fish,
unburdened
oblivious
to everything
other than
being fish;
anything
beyond this
doesn’t
concern them.
David Pike
Swindon, Wiltshire
Look, this
was taken at school.
See, he was
always smiling, playing
at
soldiers, dressing up, firing his gun.
Thought it
cool, marching around,
saluting
his Mum.
He was
always going to be a soldier,
loved it
being with his mates,
more than
friends, he reckoned,
more like
family,
ready to
die for you, he said.
Good at his
job too, driving his tank,
whipping it
round the Plain,
turn it on
a sixpence, he could.
Funny that,
too young to know
sixpences
and what it’s all about.
Here’s one
with his unit,
some
exercise somewhere
getting
ready for the real thing.
That’s him
on the left,
dreaming of
glory I expect,
always the
dreamer.
Funny that
for a soldier,
maybe he
thought he could save the world.
I would
have liked to have had a letter,
something
to tell me he was alright,
you know
before it happened,
before this
last coming home.
Someone
said they’re going to fly him back,
a last slow
march through a quiet Wiltshire town
and
soldiers to carry him home.
He would
have liked that.
John Plevin
Lea,
Malmesbury
Two loose threads plucked clean through the hole
the moon has blown in the icy stratosphere;
reeling out and out, insanely distant
we slip the needles eye; unwitting pilgrims
sequinned into the constellation, unwinding
our lines from travelling light, unravelling words.
We return in the luminescence the moon reserves
for exposing skeletons in vacant rooms
and pack our bones so neatly back inside
no-one is any the wiser; we’re not quite
who we were before we started out
along the moon-blanched country path, the last
of the farmhouse lights snagged out as we whispered past
slow cows stitching themselves into the shadows.
Julia Stothard
Pulsar #56, Pulsar Webzine #4, (September, 2010)
Poems published in earlier Pulsar Webzine editions may also be viewed further below
Index of poems posted to Pulsar Poetry Webzine #4, September 2010; click on the surname of a poet in the list below, to view their poem.
Poem Index
When Baggy Barks - Frank Finney
Matters - Carl Griffin
Aloft and Aloof - Michael Jennings
In the Apothecary's Lab - David R. Morgan
Ink - by David Pike
Illusionist - Richie McCaffery
Daphne
Laureola
*
When Baggy barks it usually
means there’s a stranger
at the gate. Twice it
signified a python sliding by
her doghouse on its way to
the garden.
But she’s no stand-in for Cerberus:
the other night around two in the morning
she was barking away as if to warn of
(or ward off)
big trouble on the premises.
I ran outdoors with a torch, a stick and a
frog in my throat, and what was all the
bow-bow row about?
One large land snail slowly
sliming a path towards the
silent flowerbed.
Frank Finney
Bangkok, Thailand
Trepidation’s out of sync
as I’m not exceedingly
out of sorts, though I sport
the shell of someone
who is. Let’s gauge action
and think what it connotes
to be this hollow, scraped out,
yet stooped at the sink.
Carl Griffin
Swansea
My answer would be “yes”
if I was sure I knew all the facts,
but since this is an impossibility
in any matter not measurable
by standard calibration;
and, since I do not wish to be negative,
I will spread my arms
and plane with wings of playful cynicism
on the thermals of contradiction,
aloof as a buzzard,
over the rifts and thickets
of real life.
Michael Jennings
Keyworth, Nottinghamshire
In The Apothecary's Lab
In this jar see so many mornings,
in this bottle, twilight sucked from grass;
there are trays of longed for dawnings
after delirious nights that you must pass.
The formulas of secret qualms are here
countless catalogues of forgotten dreams;
the bones of hope, the taste of fear;
the mass from sunlight's restoring beams.
Memories distilled from antique mirrors;
tinctures formed from lovers' breath.
Pills of joy and powdered terrors;
things to ease your eventual death.
All, all has been found out and tested,
certified as true;
time alone must be invested:
I absolutely depend on you.
David R. Morgan
Ampthill, Bedfordshire
Before personal computers
before word processors
before typewriters
before the ballpoint pen
there was flowing
gorgeous, curvaceous
elegant
fabulous, fabulous
hand writing,
a kind of art form
a form of Zen.
David Pike
Swindon, Wiltshire
Illusionist
His parlour trick was sleight of mind.
When I was little he found a woodwormed
barstool spindle and told me oracle-faced
it was a bit of the Cross, turned to treen
keepsake by a batty Victorian collector
and occultist. I had a litter of kittens
when he threw it on the fire.
It isn't until now, a decade since he died
that I remember his perennial Arran jersey
and realise its nicotined wool was nightly
pulled over my eyes. And I love him for it,
all of it. From the 'dead fly pies'
to the parchment poem, shakily quilled
by Mary Queen of Scots on the axeman's
dais, aged with tea-bags and ensanguined
with last night's Rioja.
I love him for cozening me into the world
and trying his best at the end to kid me
that little black marks on scans were nothing
but the stalactites every old man gets
in the dusty, bat-blind caves of his heart.
He saw the Santa-atheism in my eyes
and changed the subject to tell me some
people break bones just to melt their X-rays
down for the silver they contain, he also said
there are harder ways to make a living.
Richie McCaffery
Edinburgh
She lounges in the window seat
and idly texts the friends she left;
wine in her mouth no longer sweet,
her eyes pulled down.
Midnight had earlier jammed the train –
a shattered, after-battle mob;
but they’ve got out, into the rain
which angles down.
The glass is dark, the neon dim;
she can’t remember when he came;
she’s suddenly aware of him
sitting quite near.
She lifts a shoulder, thumbs her ‘phone;
the battery is guttering;
its little death leaves her alone –
but he is near.
He’s moved – he’s sitting opposite;
she stares intensely at the night.
Her face stares back, macabrely lit,
sober as stone.
He puts a hand upon her knee –
she flinches, glares, crosses her legs;
she wonders where the guard can be;
why she’s alone.
He puts a hand upon her thigh –
she jumps up, pushing him away;
she smells his sweat; tries not to cry;
the train so slow.
Doors creak apart – she stumbles through,
and ricochets along the aisle;
they creak again – he’s following –
where can she go?
Each carriage full of dirty light
and nothing else; the train slows down –
her throat is closing up in fright –
she must leave now.
Bushes. . . a platform. . . empty, dead.
The train draws out; she is alone.
A pebble stirs; she hears his tread.
The laurels bow.
Lynn Roberts
Tunbridge Wells, Kent
She listens for fledglings feeding in the eaves,
examines the patterns in the carpet, the faults
in the lilac painted walls; the doors
left open for rooms to breath.
She keeps the green room as it is;
its olive shade is late summer -
a field where blown seeds clock up
the days until the birth.
In the blue room, optic heat
strokes her skin, she taps out news
and day-to-day routines; her hands
falter between two rhythms.
Julia Stothard
I ask you to cure my lover’s lips
til he can taste
the resin in me
the hum of cedar, balsam,
stop closing down
like a treatise that never comes
a half forgotten homily.
My lover wears a cotton shirt to bed
no longer lounges in his nakedness.
He barbwires his face
likes the distance in things
undermines the love I keep stashed
inside the room for him.
You don’t occupy
the ground of scarcity
say it purges lovers’ lips
casts doubt that pummels
every seed bed.
I am a girl on a hairpin
curve to nowhere
a salacious woman,
eat rock salt
safeguard my kids.
You blow kisses
into the blue basin.
Encourages me to taste and test
the elsewhere
that is left to me.
Toni Thomas
Milwaukie, Oregon
Because it is
When you get all of six holes in the heart of the card-board model,
the shooting range acquires new significance.
When art is a life-like sketch, not a call for change,
or a bucket-load of paint, splashing orange on a canvass,
spread like the open part of a lover’s legs,
you understand work.
You understand effort.
You acquire an ethic, a disdain, a check, a smirk,
and an understanding . . . losing desire.
The only thing worse than having a job
is to have to be looking for a job.
and the one thing worse than those two? Looking to do it well.
They call it a killing.
J.T. Whitehead
Indianapolis
Granny and Auntie Babe were scaredy cats
covering mirrors at the first groan of
thunder and refusing to wear green dresses.
Friday was unlucky as opals and
May blossom never carried into the house.
Yet they carried fire spills from the stove
through to the front room and stood on outside
window sills to clean the attic dormer.
When their men died both in the same summer
Billy’s heart disease then Dick cut his throat
they resumed their childhood fears
though still daring to walk past
The Laughing Cavalier
hanging in the hall
without shutting their eyes.
Sarah Williams
Tunbridge Wells, Kent
I always overestimate the value of things,
Like my dad’s old grey suit that I’m donating to the Salvation Army,
Not because I want to see a poor man going to his grave
In clothes that haven’t been stylish since Nixon’s impeachment,
But for the tax write-offs.
Knowing my father, this is the suit he wore to my first wedding,
When I and my wife were only kids who believed that we could just sign up for
love,
Like enlisting in the service.
And our time together would make us lovers,
Like recruits in booth camp all become heroes.
I remember watching him in this suit, standing with his glass of champagne
Waiting for our best man to propose his toast,
And wondering what he would do.
I knew that he hadn’t had a sip of wine in thirty years,
Even at my older brother’s wedding,
Ever since a wounding hangover he once had on homemade wine,
Right before he shipped out for World War II.
But the servers had neglected to fill the glasses at the head table.
So, as the best man raised his empty glass, he quipped,
“May their lives be fuller than these glasses.”
And we all laughed.
When I turned back to my father,
His glass was already back on the table.
The embarrassed staff apologized and hurried to fill our glasses,
And my new wife and I assured them that it was all right.
No harm had been done.
It would be just something else to remember from this day.
Something to tell the grandkids.
But we never had grandkids.
Nor even now the marriage.
Just a memory that goes with an old suit
For some poor man to find peace in.
Ron Yazinkski
Covington, Pennsylvania
*
Pulsar #55, Pulsar Webzine #3, (June, 2010)
Poems published in earlier Pulsar Webzine editions may also be viewed further below
Index of poems posted to Pulsar Poetry Webzine #3, June 2010; click on the surname of a poet in the list below, to view their poem.
Poem Index:
Heaven Said - Lisa Marie Brodsky
The Way The Cookie Crumbles - Lynn Ciesielski
Auction - Louie Crew
Words on the Street - Ann Gibson
Churchill at Chartwell - David Gill
No Change - Alan Hardy
The English Adviser - Peter Harris
In the Wood - Michael Jennings
Off! - Michael Jennings
Distracted - David R. Morgan
Laughing Giraffe - David Pike
Unendorsed Poem - Paul Tanner
Christmas Chronicle - Ivan Wallace
Mississippi Fred McDowell - Ron Yazinski
Manatee Bar - Ron Yazinski
Heaven said it's got you
in its angelic clutches, said you
got there quick, like a blink
or a cough or a blood clot's sudden burst,
red ribbons unfurling out of your body.
Heaven said it's glad to have you.
Heaven, I want to ring your
billowy, cloudy neck. Heaven, I want to
bomb you and send them all back home to us.
But you sit me down at a diner
and explain the many definitions of 'home.'
I give you the finger. I say
fuck you, Heaven, fuck you and your hands
grasping, always taking without asking.
Lisa Marie Brodsky
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
She fights the idea that she
could lose her independence
The table where she always
feeds us begins to creak,
creak like her knees do
every time she bends them.
Her inner circle squeezes tighter.
The circles that ripple beyond it,
begin to loosen like rubber bands
stretched too many times. Still,
the pain restricts her movements.
Mother feels exercise might keep her
in the loop. She stretches past the
bounds we place. She doesn't rest.
She twists her neck and points her
chin. I mean, she tosses her head
defiantly
She dumps that cup of sympathy.
and makes tea and cookies for us...
Lynn Ciesielski
Buffalo, NY, USA
Give me one, give me one, give me one;
I see ya: one cracker smile.
Give me two, give me two, give me
two cracker smiles.
Who'll make it three?
Three cracker smiles?
Who'll make it three?
I see ya! Three cracker smiles.
Three going once, three going twice,
Sold for three cracker smiles
this pretty little pickaninny's
photograph just before they blew up
the Sunday School.
Give me one, give me one, give me one;
I see ya: One good ol' boy's grunt.
Give me two, give me two, give me
two good ol' boy's grunts.
Who will make it three?
I see ya: Three good ol' boy's grunts.
Who'll make it four?
Now surely some one of you recognizes
a real bargain when you see one.
I mean, it ain't everyday that you gets
to see wimmin libbers hauled off to jail
and raped. That's better:
Sold to the Colonel there,
one 8 millimeter projector with the full details
for four good ol' boy's grunts,
with a pair of the panties thrown in for good measure.
Give me one, give me one, give me one;
I see ya: One basher's knuckles.
Who'll make it two?
I see ya. Two basher's knuckles.
I see ya. Three basher's knuckles.
Well, folks, trading's fast here today.
I see ya. Four basher's knuckles.
Come on now, who'll make it half a dozen?
Four going once, four going twice
Six basher's knuckles, I see ya.
Half dozen once, half dozen twice,
Sold, for half dozen basher's knuckles
bid by that man yonder in blue overalls
for one sissy school teacher, with all of his fancy clothes.
Give me one, give me one, give me one.
Who'll give me one? I see ya.
Two. Who'll give me two?....
Sold to America.
Louie Crew
East Orange, New Jersey, USA
Have a nice day:
the chugger’s call,
shaking his head
for all the poor people
you’ve refused to help.
Take care now:
the magazine seller’s
threat
when you give him nothing
but a smile.
Come back soon:
the shop girl’s chirpy
chat
as you leave
empty-handed.
Muttered obscenities:
from the young man
passing by,
refreshing whispers of
raving honesty.
Ann Gibson
Tadcaster, North
Yorkshire
After the demolition of Germany’s cities
the great man in retirement
took a bricklayer’s trowel
and built a quite
small wall.
David Gill
Botley, Oxford
No Change
Amidst the tales I've heard of her being ill,
and the lines I look at on her face,
she speaks to me of an old lady she feels
has begun to forget, be puzzled, upset over things.
She was always like that,
had the knack of slagging off others,
despite her own moral question-mark,
a flirty earthy young lady
who loved to suck male finger-tips,
and criticize.
She's aged badly, nicotine teeth and gaps,
a frailty of body she grew into
has roughened her, careless of lipstick and make-up,
and the mirrors she applied them in,
but it's nice to notice the wicked animosities
she would mouth
have not left her,
looks, in ill-health, for flaws in others.
Alan Hardy
Flamstead, St. Albans, Hertfordshire
You were the old school type, a real school ma’am
who frightened us at first with stern advice
but that was just your way: you meant no harm.
You counselled us about what would suffice
to satisfy Ofsted and QCA
and with your pedagogic strategies
you gave us tools to make it through the day
and bring to life Macbeth’s soliloquies.
How strange it is to hear then you are dead
and yet the grief we feel is very real,
for though this world of youth and APP
and yet another teaching strategy
with targets set makes death appear unreal
and often keeps our gratitude unsaid,
or causes some to lose their sanity,
we are not robots yet and will not be.
Peter Harris
Gravesend, Kent
In the wood –
stillness, silence,
dappled light and shade.
Beauty invites attention,
and wonder,
and respect,
beyond all microscopes and slide rules
to assess.
Only in awe
should we gather its fruit,
carve its timber,
cure ourselves with its medicines.
Michael Jennings
Keyworth, Nottinghamshire
Driving to work,
obedient to all the signs.
Another day conforming
to the route determined
by the mechanics
of acquisition and entertainment –
not a bad life but . . .
what the hell!
I stamp on the accelerator,
fly over the lights,
head East over Dover
and abandoning everything
but a penny whistle,
toot my way across the Russian Steppes
in the company of an angel
and a pixy with pointed ears
towards a forest glade
where, I vaguely thought,
Virgil might be waiting.
Michael Jennings
In my other life, I stayed
up all night, in charge of the moon
in the clearing, where the sticks
got up and joined hands and danced.
I had a crown of clover
and baby's breath
and sweet minions and I presided
sitting on a soft mushroom, drinking moonshine
from an acorn cup till dawn.
I made love to my goddess
between the roots
of a great tree.
This went on for three hundred years
when one day, distracted, I died.
I woke up human, asthmatic and Baptist,
In an enormous estate in
Slough …
which shows you what can happen,
when you don't pay attention.
David R Morgan
Ampthill, Bedfordshire
Write something pleasant
write something nice
cover an up-beat optimistic subject
that doesn’t make you wince
think twice
or want to top yourself.
Write something uplifting
beguiling
that picks out
all of the good points
and shouts a loud ‘hurrah,’
be cheerful and mindful
to sensitivities of others
and don’t smother paper
with stilted views
laugh and amuse
and have a good go
if that doesn’t work
return to what you know.
David Pike
Swindon, Wiltshire
I sit through
the adverts
fingernails into the couch
arm
they tell me I need
this product
to smell acceptable
and that product
to look good
I rip the couch arm off
they tell me
this show is sponsored
by some product
that will improve my life
no end
fingers tearing chunks out
of the couch
and then the show starts
a gameshow
with contestants
trying to win
lots of nice new products
that will complete their
lives
there’s no couch left
so I go to the bathroom
rip open an en
ex-girlfriend’s
pack of
Bodyform press-on-towels
and wait
for all the cheery bronze
girls
to come bursting in here
on roller blades.
Paul Tanner
Liverpool
I moved with the crowd
of shoppers
along the pavement
in downtown Belfast.
Christmas carols
flowed from shopping
malls,
children bounced along
beside parents
clutching bags of
shopping.
A small
dark haired woman
passed by
talking loudly
into her mobile phone.
“She’s a bitch,” she said,
“that’s what I call her –
that’s what I have her
in my mobile as,
BITCH!”
In a doorway
a fat man with a hat
was blowing
‘hark the Herald Angels’
on his saxophone.
He looked like Van
Morrison
perhaps he was Van
Morrison.
It was that kind of day.
Ivan Wallace
Carrickfergus, Northern
Ireland
Everybody has his own favorite cemetery,
But this one isn’t mine.
I was just passing through,
When my son asked me to do him a favor, since I was
coming so close,
And pay his respects to one of his favorite blues
men.
So here I am, on the outskirts of Como, Mississippi,
Miles down a washed out road on this beautiful
October day,
Paying homage, but not prayer, by proxy.
And proving it with a photo I can send back.
The image on the marker is that of a sweet-faced
man,
Wearing a black bolo tie.
My son told me that he was buried in a suit
The Rolling Stones bought him when he toured with
them years before.
And that Bonnie Raitt paid for this very headstone
with his image on it.
Other musicians loved the way he peeled his soul in
public,
With a voice the cross between the hiss of a snake
and the cry of a hawk,
Fingering his guitar with hands gnarled from bar
fights.
On my cell phone, I talk to my son at work in
Colorado.
“Is there anybody else around?” he asks.
“There’s neither a rustle in the grass nor a wing in
the sky.”
“That’s how I imagined it would be.”
Most of us haven’t suffered enough.
Or if we have,
We’ve done it to ourselves, castrating ourselves
with our own complaints,
So that we can hit those plaintive notes that make
dogs, if not gods, cry.
Our talent is as limited as that of a dog pissing on
a tree,
Our mark of individuality and ownership.
“You know son, I never travel with my good suit.
“I don’t want you to have to buy one for me,
“In case anything happens.”
Ron Yazinski
Pennsylvania, USA
At the Manatee Bar, a sign cautions
Against talking to Mermaids.
I assume it’s just a joke,
But men get desperate when they’re lonely.
I walk out past the shops that predict Christmas is
little more than two months away,
Including a window display of
Pouting mannequins wearing little more than a
rattlesnake belt,
And bandoliers made from hawks’ feathers.
In a little gallery in Old Town San Antonio,
I admire the small statues of H.P. Meyer,
Especially one of white elliptical pieces
Arranged on a black velvet tray,
Suggesting a lewd woman, partly submerged in the
fabric,
Who may be all scales and fin beneath the cloth.
What unspeakable acts with beasts and plants did
Adam attempt,
In his struggle to become one with the earth,
Before God ate from the Tree of Knowledge,
Took pity on his exhaustion,
And constrained him to procreation
By pulling Eve from his side?
Ron Yazinski
Pulsar #54, Pulsar Webzine #2, (March, 2010)
Poems published in earlier Pulsar Webzine editions may also be viewed further below
Index of poems posted to Pulsar Poetry Webzine #2, March 2010; click on the surname of a poet in the list below, to view their poem.
Poem Index
Black Eyes - Miki Byrne
Desk - Martin Cook
cold summer - Brian Daldorph
Winner - Brian Daldorph
But all the doors were locked - Michael Estabrook
Not Talking About It - Sheila Hamilton
Mother Takes A Trip - Chris Hardy
On the Patio - Michael Jennings
Hi Neighbor - Gary Lehmann
On the Side - David Pike
Ferris Wheel - Donna Pucciani
'Hurts' - Fiona Sinclair
Comradeshit - Paul Tanner
Priority - Paul Tanner
Discrimination - Tony Turner
Knitting Cows - Wendy Webb
Remembering Gerald - Mary Williams
We walk Orwellian streets
Bathed in the bland gaze
Of watching automatons
That perch on poles,
Hide under eaves,
And follow our every move with
Black eyes grimy and glazed.
They are not tempered by reason or
Gifted with judegment, they
Simply spy and relay.
Sharing our faces with
Anonymous digital databases.
Keeping tags, storing us away
For future checks and reference
As we pursue our lives
Wrapped in our ignorant innocence.
Miki Byrne
Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire
(i.m.
Colonel Hugh Cook OBE 1910-1998)
The bottom drawer was jammed
with the weight of family papers,
a stamp collection and notes
from military histories.
The oak’s nut-brown polish
was unaccountably paler –
till I recalled the content
of Dad’s countless chota pegs.
The writing flap, with its cracked hinges
was permanently open, its brass mechanism
broken under the weight of begging letters,
military maps, the clutter of photographs
from wherever he was called
by the interests of fading empire.
When he left it me, I didn’t want it,
considering it an Edwardian excrescence
for which I had no room in my cottage.
Then I thought of him, wreathed in pipe smoke,
his concentration absolute – now I sit
at his carefully restored desk, drawers
weighed down with poems and memories.
Martin Cook
Hitchin, Hertfordshire
I’d rented a house on the beach,
told you I had to do this now --
work on my novel, or else I’d never finish it.
I knew what you thought about that:
“Why does anyone need your novel?
Aren’t there plenty out there already?”
You just couldn’t see it.
You said, “Who knows if I’ll be here
when you decide to come back?”
But I went anyway. It would be
glorious.
A cold hard wind blew off the water.
It got into the house through the cracks
in the walls, the broken windows
that wouldn’t shut properly –
I tried to seal them with newspaper.
At night I lay under all my clothes in a heap.
I called you, told you it was going great,
10 pages a day, sometimes 15.
Felt like I was telling you news
from a country you couldn’t find on the map.
You said, “I hope you’re happy.”
That cold hard wind of your voice.
Brian Daldorph
Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire
Tuesday, 8 a.m., knock
on my door. Neighbor to tell me
my dog’s gotten out?
Kids selling candy for their baseball team?
In fact it’s this guy in pink glitter suit
and Glory Day smile, speaking on camera,
“Here He Is! Here He Is!
The Man of the Moment, the King,
The Big Winner!
And don’t forget your friends
when the money comes through!”
He’s got this huge check under his arm
with as many zeroes as the Federal Deficit,
and the lights are glaring at me,
“speech! Speech!”
I shut the door, return to my desk
where I’m working on a poem
I’m so damn close to getting right.
Brian Daldorph
Tried to get into
the old high school today
where we stalked the halls
40 years ago,
but all the doors were locked.
In the front and on the sides,
all I wanted
was a furtive glimpse
down the Building 7 hallway
where I walked with you
carrying your books, trying
to sneak a touch of your hand.
All I wanted
was to peer for a moment
up into that narrow auditorium
spotlight booth where I stole
that very first little kiss
from your sweet lips
ages and ages and ages ago.
Michael Estabrook
Acton MA, USA
Not Talking About It
i.m. James D. Wilkinson
Like many who survived,
he wouldn't talk about it.
He would talk about :
family members;
friends;
photography;
the workings of old clocks;
things that happened in Grangemouth
in his childhood.
But not: it.
He was in the Army, somewhere in France.
(Where ? He wouldn't talk about it.)
One thing he did do, in the Army,
somewhere in France, was drive officers
from one (almost certainly absurd) meeting
to another (almost certainly absurd) meeting.
But what else did he do ?
Did he sit in the trenches ?
Did he breathe gas ?
"Did he KILL anyone ?" my son asks.
He wouldn't talk about it.
Sheila Hamilton
Eastham, the Wirral
My mother’s going on a trip
but that’s OK
she’s tough and thin
doesn’t need much sleep
she’ll take the train
be met, looked after
and return.
Then I see my father
left alone
he won’t starve or freeze
but what thoughts will arise
with no one to distract him?
When you’re old
you should never be alone.
But that’s not how its
been arranged.
Your friends, your wife
sometimes your kids
might vanish before you do.
When you least need solitude
you get it.
It’s a curious thing that
we will die but not be dead,
we won’t move on
will not be dead and gone,
so being alone is
no preparation
for nothing anywhere.
He takes a turn
round the kitchen while
stirring a pan of food,
carries it to the TV
to eat and watch a programme
chosen to confirm
he’s still interested.
Then to sleep
which is not like death.
He’s waiting at the door
when she comes back
busy, questioning
with a bag of presents
he doesn’t want.
Chris Hardy
London
I sit down on the bench
and the early sun
penetrates the summer shirt,
the paving patterned with lichen,
the red-stalked herb-robert
flourishing in the joins
and the bee moving methodically
from one tiny violet flower
to the next.
Stone, plant, beast, man –
all gently charged
with energy, hope, joy,
confidence, expectation,
inspiration, courage.
Later it will be too hot.
Michael Jennings
Keyworth, Nottinghamshire
A wealthy friend of mine has a cabin in the Canadian North Woods.
Every winter the locals broke in and drank all her expensive liquor.
When she got tired of cleaning up the mess and replacing the
door frame, she asked the carpenter what could be done.
Now she leaves the door unlocked, a cheap plastic tablecloth on the table,
and a whole gutter full of cheap liquor in plastic jugs on the table.
This way the locals drink what they like, don’t have to squeeze down that
foul tasting expensive stuff, and they guard the place all winter for free.
Is this extortion or just neighborliness North Woods style?
Gary Lehmann
Penfield, New York, USA
Compromise
the difference between what you desire
and what you achieve,
a blurring of the edges
a change in the weave,
but acceptable none-the-less
following the lines of least resistance
to sit on the fence
makes sense,
if you want to survive
in the real world.
It’s said it is best not to stir a hornets’ nest
for fear of being stung
and most go along with this
to lead a fine existence
although their songs remain unsung.
David Pike
Swindon, Wiltshire
Navy Pier,
Chicago
Jump on, don’t hesitate.
Follow the fat man
who’s slow sliding out of his seat,
dazed from light and space.
Follow his wife, who shuffles behind,
her gray hair showing patches
of pink scalp when the wind puffs,
her arm reaching for his.
How long have they been married?
They have just been to heaven and back,
like birds, falling stars, or the sunlight
that slants through the spokes like pickup-sticks,
twigs of fire burning white over the lake.
They concern themselves with bunions and busses
and whether the roast has defrosted for dinner.
The wheel holds the shape of their eyes,
the form of gold rings on swollen fingers,
the wide-brimmed hat she wears in the garden,
the vinyl records he plays in the basement on rainy days,
or the hub caps he collects in the garage.
They have paid six dollars apiece
to dangle high above the lake,
not thinking of the roundness of their lives,
they arc of their tired love.
They recall the carnival in Little Italy fifty years ago,
where, in the grip of creaking metal,
they floated above the tenements in Lower Manhattan,
saw Lady Liberty, green and ever young,
wave at the Circle Line, flaunting her spiked crown.
They have come full circle.
Step up. Swing into the shafted
sunlight.
Donna Pucciani
Wheaton, Illinois, USA
She learned to pick her father’s pockets from her mother,
who whispered ‘Don’t tell Daddy, but look what I’ve found
as she plundered husband’s jackets. The money regarded
as treasure trove, like loose change down the back
of the sofa. So daughter would sneak into her parent’s room,
vowing every time ‘was the last.’ Plunge into the thick
undergrowth of dad’s clothes. Working blind, her artful hands
frisked the garments, slipping like hungry rats into each deep
pocket, ears twitching for the clatter of footsteps on the stairs.
Next morning at school she handed shopping list and cash
to the local girl allowed home for lunch who like a bent screw
supplied contraband to inmates. The
girls crowding round
her like pigeons as she doled out sweets with cartoon
colours and Technicolor taste. At
home daughter hid them
in the brocade ottoman beside her bed like a pirate guarding
his hoard. Stashed in the attic above, Christmas selection
boxes, presents from aunts and cousins secreted by her father
like Santa in reverse every Boxing night whilst she slept.
One afternoon returning from school, silence in the car that
collected her from the station. ‘Upstairs’, the school sweets
were laid out on the bed like exhibits in a courtroom. ‘How
did you get them?’ led to the usual hide and seek for the truth.
No smacks but well aimed words. ‘Why can’t you be more like...?’
She took her punishment not as a cocky Steve McQueen in the
cooler but rather a ghost watching the family carry on without her.
In her 20s when she and mother lived like two people trapped
inside one body daughter would stalk the supermarket aisles,
basket bloated with sweets and crisps and biscuits and cake.
Breakfast was often 10 chocolate bars, lined up on the table
like bullion. Each slab stripped then gobbled down but like bad
sex , over much too quickly. Afterwards she lay flat as a snake,
stomach domed as if trying to digest a small dog. A miracle
she did not become a giant dough expanding to fill her single
bed in the cellular room of the tiny bungalow. But noticed too
late the great lakes of thickened skin erupting to cover her upper
body as if the food itself was trying to escape. Years later, a little
girl traced the scars gently with her finger and named them her ‘hurts.’
Fiona Sinclair
Faversham
Please, he said
I’m begging you
I’m scared
I don’t know what
it is
it might be something
serious
YOU’VE GOT TO
HAVE A LOOK AT IT
what could I do
we’d known each other
too long
shared girls
even punched each other
on certain evenings
so we went to the gents
and he unzipped,
whipped it out
IS IT CANCER, he said
as I leant down
squinting
OH GOD
IT’S CANCER ISN’T IT
You gimp, I replied
getting upright
you made me examine
your horrid little pecker
for a spot!
and it quickly became
one of those evenings.
Paul Tanner
Liverpool
They had a 30% off sale
and we had to
go around with a cimble gun
tagging every single thing
in the shop
with a 30% off sale tag.
Now they want to have
a 50% off sale
so we’ve got to
go around again with the gun
cutting off the old 30% tags
and re-tagging every single
urgh
I
am
spiritually
haemorrhaging
just
writing
about
it.
Paul Tanner
Do not speak ill of my beliefs
Do not speak ill of me
Do not speak of your beliefs
Do not speak
Believe me
Share my beliefs
Do not stop sharing my beliefs
There is no turning back
once you have embraced my faith
Tony Turner
Cookham Dean, Berkshire
I wore another woman many times,
in a bowl of cereal at the breakfast table,
where milk was poured out like my cow
to udder in a pool of blood-red dye.
Where, fishing for each soggy crispy corn,
I filled her stomach just like mine,
until it pouted to a bloated cod
and gaped in the delivery suite,
all mouth;
as I gulped for her air that breathed me out.
To spills of sour milk and sugar granules,
when that other woman’s burnt toast
curdled in my melted butter dawn.
She borrowed my flesh from the fridge
and scraped a new-shape skin:
a balloon, deflated, like a post-Op. bag,
with room for endless balls of thread
and needles knitting my skin back inside.
I still wear her, empty bag,
a tablecloth new-laundered, creased in folds.
Wendy Webb
Taverham, Norwich
Inspired by: ‘Changes’, Frieda Hughes
Photo of Wendy Webb, above. Click on thumbnail image to enlarge.
I remember Gerry
Cooking red beans with coconut,
Disdaining ‘bush’,
Feeding the kids on shark.
(Sardines on toast to you and me).
I remember Gerald
Holding our youngest child,
Who sat pulling his beard
With his white pudgy baby fist,
Happy as Larry.
Five in the morning and all was well.
I remember a slow soft way of speaking,
Going all round the houses,
But arriving at a different place,
With Grenada at the core.
You damn monkey – I can hear him now.
And I remember the cricket,
His laugh, with those strange teeth,
The way he carried himself,
His quotes from Shakespeare,
Calypso memories.
A good man with some bad habits-
Trapped in his past, our past,
Weighed down by a huge sadness,
Concern about his kids,
Fears for their future.
Grenada is far away,
The bottles are out of reach,
The sandals are empty of his feet
And he has gone.
Memories remain.
Mary Williams
Market Drayton, Shropshire
Photo of Mary Williams, above.
Pulsar #53, Pulsar Webzine #1, (December 2009)
Index of poems posted to Pulsar Poetry Webzine #1, December 2009; click on the surname of a poet in the list below, to view their poem.
Poem Index
Of Life and Language - Peter Asher
Dream of Rain - dedicated to all women - Mbizo Chirasha
Retribution - Martin Cook
the strawberry man- Brian Daldorph
Tranquil - Kate Edwards
My Girl - Michael Estabrook
Alentejo Psalm - David Gill
Down The Plug Hole - Chris Hardy
Sheath - Chris Hardy
Against the Glass - Amy Jo Huffman
A Visit - Michael Jennings
Boxes - David Pike
Ideas - Stephen C. Middleton
The Cure (for Gabrielle Cammish) - Frances Sackett
Terminal Liaison - Gordon Scapens
Be More Vigilant - Paul Tanner
Withering Sights - Ivan Wallace
Brief History of Welsh Slate - Gwilym Williams
Befriending the Receptionist - F.J. Williams
It is the upper-case
that to kick
a sentence off;
those Rugby-posts
of Heaven, Hell, or Hope
can each be scored
capital tries from.
But by the alternate
lower-case
of life and language . . .
during a sentence –
not beginning one –
heaven, hell, or hope
may each form small
uncomfortable chairs
to sit upon
whilst other words
pass judegment.
Peter Asher
Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire
Dream of Rain
- dedicated to all women
this is the land that fed our dreams
wind suffocated by yellow smoke of wheat husk
our fields crimson red and grey with millet sheaves
pans hissing with oil baking bread
gleaming thighs of our days sweating under the rain season sun, that bloomed
the flamboyant flowers
weeds of hunger already exiled.
Mbizo Chirasha
Harare, Zimbabwe
Obscenities were barbs,
pinning me down –
my webbing belt tried
to squeeze resistance
from my young soul.
Why yell so, corporal,
I’m perfectly turned out?
Profanities were inter-syllabic
as the stubby corporal,
who’d fought at Monte Cassino,
snarled about my kit,
his spittle liquid buckshot.
I scrubbed the guardhouse floor
with a toothbrush, mocked
by sardonic regulars, then
suffered contemptuous invective
from the barracks commander.
Inspecting my platoon later
in the heat and dust of Cyprus,
the first man to salute,
was my training NCO,
who tensed when I inspected
his webbing belt.
Martin Cook
Hitchin, Hertfordshire
always had treats for us.
“Try these,” he’d say, slipping pills
into our fists. “Guaranteed
pleasure trip.” And it was.
The strawberry man knew his fruit.
He dressed in a sharp suit,
I bet his neighbours thought
he was a young attorney on the make,
or an accountant scrambling up
to the top of the heap.
But he was the strawberry man,
our connection, our man to wait for,
our good Samaritan
who’d give you a little something
if you had to have it and couldn’t pay.
He looked after us
until we slit his throat
and