Pulsar Webzine Published Poems
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*
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 helped ourselves to his fruit.
Brian Daldorph
Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire
Three o’clock. A stillness holds
the afternoon. The garden drowses
in a curve of silence. No breezes
lift a leaf or stir the idle
flowers,
no insects whirring, bees lie dazed
among the lavenders, nor yet a rose
releases petals to drift noiseless
towards the recumbent earth.
All is cushioned in a perfumed dream
of summers lost, long past and gone.
A day like this I yearned for after
an aching season of fierce storms,
of forceful gales, battening on my heart,
inclement weather, echoing my moods.
Now, it is the quiet day that holds me,
serenity returned now you have left.
Kate Edwards
Runcorn, Cheshire
I cannot stop looking
at her, I cannot.
A face still vibrant
and pure and young
as if we were back in 1968
when I’d get so excited
driving over
to pick her up
at her school
for our Friday night date.
Always so special for me,
whenever I saw her
it was special for me
simply because
the date was with her,
she was going out with me,
she, who could have been
with anyone, could have had
any other guy,
was spending her time
with me. She,
this perfect Patti,
the most beautiful girl
I have ever known
was my girl
and spending her time
with me.
Michael Estabrook
Acton MA, USA
It
begins, the Alentejo, where the first cork-tree stands
all elbows akimbo in the gorse and
sand. Oranges are there
December-bright and prosperous among their glossy dark leaves,
and fields of crooked vines, rice-paddies sugared with gulls,
and farms and hamlets and towns with Moorish castles
on breasts of hills like islands in a glaucous sea of cork.
And cork-oaks beg long verses to train the absent eye
to note their maladroit deportment on the plain.
They are the bizarre ones, assemblies of eccentrics.
They are the regiments of the gawky, the awkward and the awry,
plantations of the cack-handed, crook-backed Plantagenets, Falstaffian crew
of cripples, drunkards, derelicts dancing with crooks and crutches,
so many bow-legged, knock-kneed, lop-sided, grey-headed old gaffers,
so many screwed-up, sinewy, Manueline twisters, so lively,
so lovely, disporting their jolly Renaissance chestnut hose
where their trousers of bark have been rolled up like paddlers' breeches.
Yes, they dance - don't bottle corks bob up and down in the water?
Yes, they dance in the sand, they spiral, they swivel, they dervish,
they Black-and-Decker the deck, they bore, they plug and bung
the crust of the ochre earth where devil knows what dark pressures
gather, what boilers, ovens, furnaces bubble and hiss.
Stormily they stopper it all. Their
shaggy lichen-grey heads
are clouds of pumice. They are full
of acorns, those whimsical seeds
of rickety promise. All this, from
time to time, long rows
of slim and bristling uniform pine review with scorn:
a tousled festival of rockers in lichenous jackets of cork,
an unkempt rabble, unruly circus of gestures and posturings.
Meanwhile, with a certain hauteur, the grand praetorian guard
of eucalyptus maintain their ground, their deep-trawl roots
greedily sucking the soil to boost their rocketing trunks.
They stand with battle-flags furled, green beavers against the sky,
the blitzkrieg warriors conquering on the spot,
like a foreign dynasty in situ, the future already here.
Daily the Alentejo is a silence long and green,
through which the lone, brollied shepherds in their coal-black hats
wander from pasture to pasture among shady oaks
with their tinkling flock, but talking darkly to themselves.
And age-old, changeless figures them seem on an unlettered plain -
but remember the day when the bright April captains rode out like gods
and all the grey scenery of fascism fell dustily on the boards
and when the peasants, the long-forgotten people of the plain,
the rug-makers of Arraiolos, the cork-cutters of Montemor,
the illiterate labourers of the Alentejo seized
the shiny new handles of consonants and drank from the tiny cups
of vowels smaller then acorns, and some seized estates,
but found that Revolution's tide had begun to turn
even as they were masters, and had to fade in the cork-groves,
though never again to be shut in the dark of padlocked symbols
and never again to be immured in the cork walls of the Alentejo
which is always home and 'saudade' with indigenous folksongs and sunsets
but never unchangeable, never the world, nor the only stars.
David Gill
Botley, Oxford
Planning a trip I see
I’ll drive past the place
we played Saturdays
late fifteen years ago,
where Paul lined up
the bar-maid in his mind,
her back against the counter
skirt up and legs apart
over the sink,
his balls dangling over the plug-hole.
It was love and a feeling
better than music that he was after.
Where do you find your life,
if you’re a window-cleaner
and a drummer, if not in
old caravans, 50’s Fords
and girls who like a drape jacket,
black brush-cut, Wayfarer shades
and a smile that tells the truth?
One time I couldn’t play
my dep got in a fight
with someone who came out and
as the gear was being loaded
showed that he could hit,
got past the karate postures
of the guitarist, who hoped
he was still on stage
and landed blows that sounded
like an axe driven into a pumpkin.
Everyone got away, without
a mark or lesson learned.
Living’s long,
from Help Me Baby
to Psalm twenty three,
Paul’s still there
on the end of a phone,
one day he won’t be
and the audience
will have got out of Hackney
for ever.
Chris Hardy
London
Help Me Baby
– Sonny Boy Williamson
She came to see him
in his bedsit,
I’ll stay the night
he thought this is it
and left the room
to check his only rubber
was intact,
when he came back
she’d read his diary
forgotten on a desk,
a mention of another girl
against the door
in her parents’ kitchen.
After tears
she removed his shirt
her skirt his jeans
her top and bra and
for the first time
gave him her nude touch
and all that night
against around upon
him kept her knickers
on.
Chris Hardy
Against the Glass
Close the lid
on this life.
I . . .
it . . .
has had enough.
Of the air.
The sun.
And, that bastard,
the moon.
All calling
from a distance
I’ll never retrieve.
Myself.
From the dream.
Both have been unbreathing
for years.
Suffocated in dust.
Full of footprints.
Never fingerprints.
Which was the touch
needed
to shatter the visible lock.
Holding me.
To this living.
Like a ghost.
Amy Jo Huffman
Ormond Beach, FL
In the half light
Grandma lay under crocheted blankets
in the downstairs front room.
Behind, others had also entered –
my mother certainly,
possibly an aunt and uncle.
They stood tall and shadowy behind me.
After about a minute,
probably less,
I was taken out
as unaware of what was going on
as of the war that was raging in the skies
and across the seas.
Only now, over sixty years later,
the memory emerges
like finding, unexpectedly,
damaged and out of focus,
a faded family photograph
taken with a Box Brownie.
Suddenly, I understand.
Belatedly, but surely not ineffectually,
I say goodbye.
Michael Jennings
Keyworth, Nottinghamshire
They went all around the houses
looking aghast, entranced
examining the décor, the plants
and asking if little Jimmy’s bassoon
will fit in a room
of this size?
without having to compromise
anything else,
the placement of coat hooks, shelves
and where to put stuff
that’s not really wanted
though can’t be thrown away,
but hey, it’s on the right lines
in spite of the M5
and ticks all the boxes.
And as for the job
it’s quite challenging, demanding
earns a few bob
and although not ideal
you have to get real
in a climate of change
(no matter how strange)
and tick all the boxes
despite how you feel.
With regard to everything else
life, happiness, health
it’s all pretty good
up ‘til now
all things considered
touch wood
right up to the time you retire
loosen your belt a few notches
sit back, relax
then expire
did I mention boxes?
David Pike
Swindon, Wiltshire
Sometimes
Details flesh out
An ever-larger canvas
Further refined
By hindsight
And learning
Or; a serrated template
Festers, nurtured too long
A child – over protected, stifled
Or; a barbed escape from prison
Frail songbird
Released into the wild
Or; again
Ideas, perishable
Curdling
When not at once
Carried triumphant
To the fruition
Of a consummated vision.
Stephen C. Middleton
Hornsey, London
(for Gabrielle Cammish)
A day away always meant
returning to that place of
dormitories and large common-rooms.
How I wished the car could be faulty;
put off the hour of arrival.
I was the tail of the crocodile,
not the belly of the creature, pulsing
with life and little secrets:
never twin of another, matching
like with like, transporting
treats between beds at lights-out.
This was my cure, they said,
knowing the ways of the world -
knowing how children, resilient to change,
can spring out of themselves -
learn to be something different.
Frances Sackett
Stockport
Don’t take me for a fool.
Your promises are worth less
than the fixed smile you wear
like a medal for bravery.
Differences have defined us,
no bridge can sustain
finishing off each other’s sentences.
Offer your lost cause
to the nearest museum,
there are lessons to pass on
for the future of trust.
Now, no more words
mined from past failures
or your blush could be long.
I may look like a gentleman
but this mouth has a sting.
Gordon Scapens
Penwortham, Preston
Some booze got nicked.
Budgets as
budgets are,
they saved our jobs
by laying off
the security guards
and now
some booze
has got robbed
and the boss
is telling us to
BE MORE VIGILANT
I don’t blame him
for having a go
I don’t blame
the little scrots
who took the booze
and definitely
do not blame
me
for not being
a hero
so what’s the
solution
to whatever
the problem
is
it’s all,
we’re all
just feeling
the inevitable slicing
of the jagged edges
of whatever this
is.
Paul Tanner
Thingwall, Merseyside
it was a Saturday morning
in the middle of March.
I was standing
in the chemists
waiting to be served.
an old guy came in
wearing a cap,
hands in pockets,
his head hunched into his shoulders.
he was shivering.
“bad day,” I said.
“suppose the cold gets to you
when you get to our age,” he replied
‘damn,’ I thought,
‘he thinks I’m as old as him.’
‘maybe I should
dye my hair.’
then I remembered.
I didn’t have any.
Ivan Wallace
Carrickfergus, County Antrim, Northern Ireland
The drips of the broken taps
the winter sniffs of the old sheep
the reluctant shakes of their heads
scuffed grass and nettled floors
light diffused
as if through frosted windows
the green stains of old water pipes
rusty shelf-brackets unscrewed from broken stones
the wet wet mists
the sudden chills under the skin
the invisible talk in the strange language
the discordant movement of air
breathless ghosts
climb the dark blue stairs
to the tops of the mountains
sudden knocks on fallen doors
the wind is playing tricks
everything passes and nobody stops
except me
and the likes of me
but we have our reasons
the memories
the tick-tock of the clocks
the grind of pulleys and the explosions
heard on the wind's howl
in days filled with endless night
and candlelight
the door in the derelict house
opened to 3 rooms
one with a view of the rain's curtain
the cleft-foot print of the sure-footed goat
is to be found
in the ruins of the village
where patched plaster
like a skin disease
awaits fresh paint.
Gwilym Williams
Vienna, Austria
So I can cover my ass, I befriend the receptionist,
for love like hate is always acted out.
I bring her the fizz to cure all thirsts
and a rose for her hard little heart,
showing an interest in her Guy mags
and showbiz birthdays charts.
I chase her street shoes and her office shoes
round the squat little letters of her desktop
where she welcomes the mad and specialist,
deals with the screech of messages in purgatory
and squeezes my hot balls
of paper in her hand.
Punching in and out of work each day
in the toxic sludge of the small print,
I’m lucky to have so much to lose
as I sag on the ropes from the fight;
her body scarcely moves to save my ass
and washes down her sandwich with my Sprite.
F.J. Williams
Alsager, Stoke-on-Trent
